Audacious Freedom

Episode #31: All the Inappropriate Songs (I Love!) About Women (and Sex)

silvadavidj — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 15:39:00 +0000

What’s with all the inappropriate songs I LOVE about women and sex? I mean, let’s start with “Jack and Diane”, by John Cougar Mellencamp. The song came out in 1982, when I was 16 years old. And I loved it. I STILL love it. And the lyrics are SO WRONG. It’s supposed to be a “love ballad” – and I guess it IS. Jack and Diane are two young kids – 16 years old like I was when the song came out – growing up, as the song says, in America’s heartland and CHILLING OUT. And Jack’s got his hand between Diane’s knees. And you can imagine them kissing. And then the lyrics say Jack says to Diane, “Let’s run off behind a shady tree, dribble off those Bobby Brooks, let me do what I please.” Okay, so is it just me or does that sound RAPEY?? “Let me do what I PLEASE??” What the FUCK? I know, I know, PLEASE rhymes nicely with the lyrics BEFORE that – Tastee FREEZ and KNEES, but why not say, “Let US do what WE please??” Why is it about what JACK PLEASES?? Is Diane having sex with Jack because Jack wants it, or because SHE wants it, too? Is Jack NOT a good lover, so Diane just TOLERATES sex wtih him? What the FUCK? When I was 16 years old and this song came out, I didn’t think much about the lyrics – I just thought John Cougar was cute and I like his “little ditty about Jack and Diane”. I STILL like it and it seems to come on one or two of our local radio stations AT LEAST once a week. And I always turn it up and sing along. And I feel 16 again, just like it was yesterday. Even though *yesterday* – 16 – was THIRTY-NINE fucking years ago. By the way, some people say the reason Jack says to Diane in the song, “We ought to run off to the city” is so that she can have an ABORTION. Wow. That’s sad if Diane got pregnant and had an abortion. And it was so PREVENTABLE if they used birth control. I guess that part of the story would have changed the lyrics of the song too much, if Jack were to say to Diane, “Let’s run off behind a shady tree, dribble off those Bobby Brooks, let me put on a condom so we don’t have an unplanned pregnancy, THEN let me do – wait – let US do what WE please.” The lyrics are also sad when they go on to say, “Holdin’ onto sixteen as long as you can. Change is comin’ ‘round real soon make us women and men.” Growing up IS bittersweet. You get more freedom when you get older, but also more responsibility. So, yeah, enjoy being young. Hell, I say enjoy BEING. Enjoy BEING at ANY age. Enjoy BEING in the PRESENT. Sure, you can have good memories from the PAST and you can be EXCITED about the FUTURE. But you are BEING – you are LIVING TODAY. Okay, so ANOTHER inappropriate song about women – or about one woman in particular anyway – is Queen’s “Fat-Bottomed Girls”. And, as inappropriate as the lyrics are in SO MANY ways, I fucking love this song and I turn it up and sing along. EVERY DAMN TIME. The GUITAR, the DRUMS, the TUNE. I love it all. But good God. What are we – QUEEN AND I – singing?? “Oh you gonna let it all hang out” – okay – not too bad so far. THEN. “Fat-bottomed girls you make the rocking world go round”. Okay, so first of all, I don’t like calling anything about a woman FAT. I know, I know. This song came out in NINETEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT at a time BEFORE people had to be politically correct. Not that I have a problem really with being POLITICALLY CORRECT, with being POLITE, with not being OFFENSIVE. And, by the way, I was 12 years old when this song came out, so I can’t say I remember it and sang along with it back then. But NOW, man when this song comes on the radio, I blast it and sing along. I guess a “fat-bottomed girl” is what today we would call someone who is CURVY or VOLUPTUOUS or with BIG HIPS or – I KNOW – someone with a GREAT ASS. Then the lyrics get almost funny – I KNOW, not very P.C. – when they go on to say,

“I was just a skinny lad

Never knew no good from bad

But I knew love before I left my nursery

Left alone with big fat Fanny

She was such a naughty nanny

Hey big woman you made a bad boy out of me.”

Okay. Oh my. Now we’re calling the Nanny big and fat. AND she took this boy’s virginity. Okay so I’m sure in the HISTORY of the WORLD, a nanny has taken a boy’s virginity a million times over. And the boys are probably – I don’t know – PROUD of it, or at least have fond memories or their first time. But it’s kind of weird for Queen and me to be SINGING about it, isn’t it?? Speaking of kinda weird to be singing songs, that about when I was 10 years old in 1976 and Starland Vocal Bank released, “AFTERNOON DELIGHT”? Good GOD. I can remember singing along to it with my sister and our cousins at our grandparents’ house. We were all belting out,

“Sky rockets in flight

Afternoon delight

A – a – a – Afternoon delight”

Having NO DAMN idea what the hell we were saying.

“Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight.

Gonna grab some afternoon delight.

My motto’s always been ‘when it’s right, it’s right’

Why wait until the middle of a cold dark night?

When everything’s a little clearer in the light of day

And we know the night is always going to be there anyway”

I think I thought “afternoon delight” was like a SNACK, a TREAT, like maybe an ICE CREAM SUNDAE. And the lyrics go on:

“Thinkin’ of you’s working up my appetite

Looking forward to a little afternoon delight

Rubbin’ sticks and stones together makes the sparks ignite

And the thought of lovin’ you is getting so exciting”

HOLY SHIT. We CHILDREN were singing, “RUBBIN’ sticks and stones TOGETHER makes the SPARKS ignite??” How as THAT like a SNACK or a TREAT or an ice cream SUNDAE?? Oh my God. I CAN’T. And the year after that, in 1977, The Commodores released their FABULOUS song, “Brick House”. And there is nothing subtle in THESE lyrics. And yes, I happily sing along to this song, turned up loud on my car radio:

“Ow, she’s a brick house

She’s mighty-mighty, just lettin’ it ALL hang out

She’s a brick house

That lady’s STACKED and that’s a FACT

Ain’t holding nothing back”

And there is a way you have to say ‘house’. HOWSE. And I sort of tilt my head to the side when I sing HOWSE.

“Ow, she’s a brick house

Well put-together, everybody knows

This is how the story goes.”

And then they – The Commodores – AND I sing,

“She knows she got everything that a woman needs to get a man, yeah yeah.

How can she lose with the stuff she use

Thirty-SIX, twenty-FOUR, thirty-SIX

Oh what a winning hand.”

And I do more head tilts on ‘thirty-SIX, twenty-FOUR, thirty-SIX’ and on ‘oh what a winning HAND’. Head tilts like I’M the BRICK HOUSE, this lady with the ‘WINNING HAND’ to get a man. What the FUCK? I’m singing along, enjoying being this perfect specimen of a WOMAN to GET A MAN. This is so wrong on so many levels, including that those measurements – are THOSE fucking BARBIE’S? I mean who really is an HOURGLASS in real life, naturally BORN that way? And IF someone in REAL LIFE IS shaped that way, how many had BOOB JOBS AND/OR butt implants? How does one get a tiny waist with PLASTIC SURGERY?? Do they take out a couple of RIBS? And do women really want to get a man who OBJECTIFIES her, because of her BODY? And I continue to ENJOY singing this song,

“The clothes she wears, her sexy ways

Make an old man wish for younger days,

Yeah, yeah

She knows she’s BUILT and knows how to PLEASE

Sure enough to KNOCK a strong man to his KNEES.”

Oh my God. So wrong. It’s SO WRONG how much I love this song. And there is more head-tilting. SHAMELESS head-tilting.

“She knows she’s BUILT, and knows how to PLEASE

Sure enough to KNOCK a strong man to his KNEES.”

I should be ashamed of myself for all the head-tilting and how PROUD I am of this woman and her POWER over a STRONG MAN. I also imagine that no man CATCHES her, that she KEEPS WALKING because while she has what she NEEDS to GET a man, she CATCHES and releases him. Can’t be BOTHERED with HIS needs. And BEFORE all these inappropriate songs I LOVE and sing along to every time – before “Jack and Diane” and “Fat-Bottomed Girls” and “Afternoon Delight” and “Brick House”, there was – in 1973 – “The Joker” by The Steve Miller Band. And I LOVE the TUNE and ALL the lyrics, even the ones that are NOT inappropriate. There’s a LIGHTNESS, a FREEDOM, an UNABASHEDNESS – a THIS IS WHO I AM TAKE ME OR LEAVE ME – sense to the lyrics:

“Cause I’m a picker

I’m a grinner

I’m a lover

And I’m a sinner

I play my music in the sun

I’m a joker

I’m a smoker

I’m a midnight toker

I get my lovin’ on the run.”

And then my FAVORITE – I should be ashamed to admit this one, too –

“You’re the cutest thing that I ever did see

I really love your peaches wanna shake your tree

Lovey dovey, lovey dovey, lovey dovey all the time

Come on baby now, I’ll show you a good time”

WRONG WRONG WRONG but I still love love love this song. I mean, well, what’s so WRONG about “you’re the cutest thing I ever did see?” – NOTHING! – and “I really love your peaches wanna shake your tree?” Well the way I sing it is WEIRD at least – more head-tilting as if I’M the man objectifying this woman’s BOOBS: “I really love your peaches wanna shake your tree” and there’s really nothing WRONG with “Lovey dovey, lovey dovey, lovey dovey all the time. Come on baby now, I’ll show you a good time.” HE’s just being direct and kinda sweet, really. I can’t say I remember singing this song when it first came out in 1973 when I was 7, but as a young adult and now FOR SURE, this song makes me HAPPY. What can I say? AND The most recently released song I can think of, that I BLAST on my car radio and HEAD-TILT while I’m singing along is, “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”, by Jet. I can’t say I remember it when it came out in 2003. In fact, I feel like I only came across it in the past year or two. And I fucking love it. ALL of it. The tambourine in the beginning, the bass guitar, the THROAT clearing the lead singer does, the introduction of the DRUMS, electric guitar and then, “Go!” And the black and white VIDEO, the PRIMITIVENESS of the band-members – grungy, long-haired and a little greasy-looking even. And the SCREAMING, NOT SINGING of the lyrics – which I am so happy to MIMIC:

“So one, two, three, take my hand and come with me

Because you look so fine that I really wanna make you mine

I say you look so fine that I really wanna make you mine”

Oh my GOD – it’s SO primitive and raw he might as well be saying, “me caveman” and pull her by her damn hair! And then:

“Oh, four, five, six, c’mon and get your kicks

Now you don’t need the money when you look like that do you honey”

And I’m yelling along, doing my best Elvis LIP CURL and my head-tilts and my favorite part comes,

“Big black boots

Long brown hair

She’s so sweet with her get back stare”

And I can imagine MYSELF as this badass-looking girl and whatever exactly her “get back stare” is, which I can imagine is a look that says, “don’t fuck with me”. ANd then the song goes on and Jet’s lead singer and I yell,

“Well I could see you home with me

But you were with another man, yeah

I know we ain’t got much to say

Before I let you get away, yeah

I said, are you gonna be my girl”
I now, I am actually the lead singer, I have transitioned from being the GIRL, the OBJECT of his attention, to BECOMING HIM, trying to steal her away from this other man. And I want to steal her away BECAUSE of her “big black boots, long brown hair” and because “she’s so sweet with her get back stare” and her bad-assness. Somehow, I have transitioned into the primitive caveman – that’s redundant, I think to say *primitive* caveman, I think, just caveman will do. So, now I’M this YELLING and GUITAR-PLAYING, grungy, greasy, long-haired CAVEMAN trying to win over this girl, AWAY from ANOTHER CAVEMAN and caught up in all the MUSIC, the BEAT of the song, all the instruments: bass, electric guitar, drums, tambourine and I FUCKING LOVE IT. Is this WRONG? I don’t know. It’s not as if this girl exists, as least not in MY life. I don’t think I’m attracted to women in this way and I don’t think that if I were, I’d try to steal a woman away from her man. I certainly wouldn’t YELL – slash – SING at her to convince her to come home with me. ANYWAY, since 2003, I’m sure many more songs have come out that are inappropriate about women and/or about sex, but this is MY SHORT LIST of songs that bring me joy, make me feel young and free and really in the moment, living life, feeling fucking ALIVE. And don’t worry, listeners, in the same way that since 1939 the American Humane Association has monitored the treatment of animal actors on the sets of thousands of films, giving most of them its famous seal of approval, stating that “No animals were harmed” in the making of this movie, I can assure you that NO WOMEN WERE HARMED in my singing along with and/or yelling along with ANY of these songs. I’m cracking myself up. And FORGIVING myself to loving these damn songs.

Episode #30: Damn, Sometimes I Miss Smoking Cigarettes

silvadavidj — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 17:36:00 +0000

I know, I know. Smoking cigarettes is very bad for you. When tobacco smoke is inhaled, the TAR can form a sticky layer on the inside of the lungs. This, OF COURSE, damages the lungs and may lead to lung cancer, emphysema, OR OTHER lung problems. Yes, I KNOW. You could DIE from smoking cigarettes. Which OF COURSE is why I don’t smoke cigarettes any more. It’s why I haven’t smoked cigarettes in over 20 years. And over 20 years ago, when I was going through my divorce – in my early thirties – I gave myself permission to smoke again for a while. For a long time – in my late teens and early twenties – I had smoked cigarettes FULL-TIME – you know, from morning until night. Maybe a pack of cigarettes a day. It was the 80’s and 90’s and even though we as a general public knew better – even though I – KNEW better, I STILL SMOKED. Many of us did. I guess when you’re in your teens and twenties you think you’re INVINCIBLE. That you’ve got decades and decades ahead of you before your health will be impacted by smoking cigarettes. I want to say that I stopped smoking cigarettes FULL-TIME – all day long – in my mid-twenties when Icould no longer smoke IN MY OFFICE. I had changed jobs and many companies in the early 90’s had begun to BAN smoking indoors and created smoking sections outside for their employees. I couldn’t be BOTHERED with going outside to smoke in the middle of the workday, so I just stopped smoking during the day, during most days actually. And the time when I WANTED a cigarette was when I was drinking alcohol. So, in my mid-twenties, I became a WEEKEND smoker. And that was when my ex-husband and I were hosting or going to a lot of dinner parties, mostly with other cigarette smokers. I can remember LINGERING over dinners, with lots of wine flowing and cigarettes IN BETWEEN COURSES. Like, here’s the FIRST course of dinner, now let’s clear these plates AND our palates with a CIGARETTE. I know that might sound gross – even INCORRECT – , that a CIGARETTE could CLEAR your palate. It probably did the OPPOSITE and RATHER than allowing you – ME to taste the NEXT course better, I probably could taste the next course LESS because of the tobacco. I don’t know. I just know that somehow the dining experience was ENHANCED when smoking IN BETWEEN dinner courses. Which, I think, is something I first experienced with many of my cousins in Spain. Lots of different WINES and lots of TAPAS. And cigarettes in between. I don’t think about smoking cigarettes these days when I’m eating or even usually when I’m drinking alcohol. By the way, it was when I was drinking alcohol after the split from my husband in my early thirties when I allowed myself to smoke cigarettes again for a while. I remember one of my uncles – an Eastern medicine doctor – advised me during that time, a time when I was SITUATIONALLY depressed because of my ex-husband’s SUDDEN-TO-ME – decision to split up – my uncle had advised me to take care of my PHYSICAL HEALTH, to support healing my MENTAL health. He had suggested I exercise – and spin classes were new and all the rage in NYC at that time in the late 1990’s – AND he suggested I take a bunch of supplements. AND, he suggested I cut out drinking caffeine and alcohol and smoking cigarettes. I remember saying something like, “Look. I’ll take spin classes and I’ll take supplements. I’ll even cut out caffeine. But I’m NOT cutting out drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. Not NOW. NOT RIGHT NOW.” Like I said, listeners, I gave myself permission – during a VERY difficult time in my life – a very difficult EMOTIONAL time in my life – to smoke cigarettes as a STRESS RELIEVER. I know, I know, cigarettes – or NICOTINE – doesn’t actually CALM YOU, it’s actually a STIMULANT, I think. I don’t know. What I DO know for me is that cigarettes were a COMPANION to me, during a very DARK and SAD time. And it was still very EASY to smoke cigarettes in NYC in the late 1990’s. You could still smoke in restaurants and bars and I could smoke at home in my apartment. I remember making a very weird rule for myself that I wouldn’t BUY cigarettes in my workout clothes on the way to or from my spin classes. It’s like I KNEW that it didn’t make sense to be taking GOOD care of my body by SPINNING and to be taking POOR care of my body by smoking cigarettes. So, I would wait until I was in my WORK clothes to buy my next pack of cigarettes, before my next happy hour with a colleague. Because post-split from my ex-husband – for the next several months – I leaned on many of my colleagues over many many happy hours. Thank goodness I had NO shortage of colleagues also in their 30’s and living in Manhattan and NO shortage of happy hour locations. And while MOST of my colleagues did NOT smoke cigarettes at the time, MOST of them DID like to drink booze. I even had one colleague who did NOT smoke or drink alcohol because she was pregnant at the time – she STILL came over or went to happy hour with me while I drank and smoked cigarettes. Wow. What a damn trouper she was! TAlk about LEANING on a colleague, a FRIEND. So, why am I talking about missing smoking cigarettes NOW? In 2021, at 55 years old. More than 20 years AFTER I stopped smoking, if only at happy hours after the split from my ex? I don’t know. I think it was in about 2007 or 2008 when I was living on Wall Street and had been out drinking at a favorite local bar and I smelled fresh tobacco outside of a bar on my way home after drinking a few beers. I remember thinking how GOOD it smelled and on my way home I bought a pack of cigarettes. Marlboro Lights. I remember the familiar OPENING of the new pack of cigarettes – peeling off the plastic around the pack, opening up the box like a present, pulling out the foil and carefully pulling out the first cigarette of the pack. Pulling out that first cigarette or two from the pack was always a bit tricky because they are, well, PACKED so closely together. I remember putting the cigarette between my index and middle fingers of my right hand, putting the cigarette between my lips and lighting it with the matches that came with the pack I’d just bought at my local bodega. I had always loved lighting my cigarettes with matches – the spark of the flame and the smell of the sulfur – loved it. Then I took a couple of drags off of the cigarette and I was SO disappointed that it didn’t TASTE ANYWHERE NEAR as good as the fresh tobacco from the other patrons at my local bar had SMELLED. So I crushed out the cigarette and threw the pack of cigarettes away. I remember thinking what a WASTE of something like 7 dollars, I think. ANYWAY, that was 13 or 14 years ago – the LAST time I was tempted by cigarettes and it had been about 10 years since I had regularly smoked cigarettes during all those happy hours when I was *recovering* from my abrupt split from my ex-husband. So, NOW. NOW why am I thinking, DAMN, I sometimes miss smoking cigarettes?? FIRST, let me say I know more than EVER, I know how bad cigarettes are for my health. AND SECOND, while fresh cigarettes can still smell GOOD to me, STALE cigarette smoke – on your FINGERS, in your HAIR and on your CLOTHES smell AWFUL. DISGUSTING. Every once in a while, I cross paths with a smoker – someone who has evidently just smoked a cigarette and has come back inside and you can SMELL the stale smoke on them. It’s gross and I wouldn’t want to smell like that. And THIRD, of course, I’m also a mom and I wouldn’t want to MODEL an unhealthy habit like that for my daughter AND I want to take good care of my health for many years to come. So, FINALLY, for some reason these days, as we’re settling into our new home and as I’m PUTTERING around the house just before bedtime, making sure all the outside lights are ON and the right INDOOR lights are ON and the right indoor lights are OFF, I sometimes get little FLICKERS of MEMORIES of smoking the LAST cigarette of the night, of pulling the cigarette out of the pack, of putting it between my fingers, of lighting it with a match, smelling the sulfur, of taking drags off of the cigarette, of ASHING in the ASHTRAY, of putting the cigarette OUT in the ashtray – the WHOLE ritual of smoking cigarettes. I can remember the WHOLE RITUAL of smoking cigarettes DECADES ago and, what can I say? I fucking miss it sometimes. And maybe if there could be some kind of NEW cigarette one day that’s not BAD for your health and that doesn’t SMELL bad on you, who knows? Maybe I would smoke again, if only one cigarette at the end of the day. I think I recently read that Gwyneth Paltrow allows herself like one cigarette a WEEK. I don’t know how anyone could smoke just one a week. I know when I smoked cigarettes during all those dinner parties in my early twenties and all those happy hours in my early thirties, I would smoke AT LEAST 10 cigarettes in a whole evening. Maybe even a whole PACK. Anyway, good for you, Gwyneth. Okay, so I just looked that up – “Gwyneth Paltrow one cigarette a week” and that article was from 2013, EIGHT years ago. So, maybe she’s NOT still doing that. Who knows. And this just goes to show you how time passess by so fast for me. That something I read EIGHT years ago FEELS like it was just the OTHER DAY. Just like smoking cigarettes REGULARLY over 20 years ago at happy hours is a memory I can easily recall and MISS sometimes. But I definitely don’t miss the feeling the next morning in my MOUTH – where it would feel as though someone had laid a goddamned CARPET on my TONGUE overnight. Yes, a goddamned carpet. I”d be so THIRSTY and my motu would feel FUZZY and my fingers and my hair and my clothes would smell AWFUL. And the stale cigarette smell in my apartment was so gross and all the cigarette butts in the garbage can smelled TERRIBLE. So YEAH. I can remember what I LOVED about smoking cigarettes all those years ago AND what I DIDN’T love about them the next morning. And NO, I’m not AT ALL tempted by e-cigarettes: #1, it’s no THE SAME as smoking regular cigarettes. Where’s the RITUAL of opening a NEW PACK of cigarettes? Where’s the ritual of PULLING OUT a cigarette and putting it to your LIPS? Where’s the ritual of lighting it with a match and smelling the sulfur and smelling the fresh tobacco? Where’s the FUCKING FUN ritual of ASHING your cigarette into and ASHTRAY? And #2, I don’t think e-cigarettes are SAFE or any less UNHEALTHY than regular cigarettes. It’s like goddamned DIET drinks or sodas. I don’t get it. IF I’m going to have a sweet drink, a SODA, say a COKE, I’m going to have a regular coke. A regular coke with fucking sugar. Not a FAKE coke, a DIET coke with FAKE sugar. REAL sugar TASTES good and fake sugar TASTES fake to me and I don’t like it. And so if I’m NOT drinking WINE or BUBBLY or a BEER or a COCKTAIL, I’m gonna just drink WATER if I don’t want to drink any calories. And I’m not going to smoke anything at all – no tobacco cigarettes or e-cigarettes. So, listeners, THAT IS ALL for this episode and I’m thinking for Season 2 this is a good place to stop, at another 15 episodes of Audacious Freedom, the podcast. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for listening and for being on this journey with me. Whether you know me in real life – for a long time or for a very short time, thank you for listening. And if you DON’T know me in real life, thank you for listening, too. I feel you all out there.

Episode #29: My Little Family Loses Its Sh*t Around Dinner Time

silvadavidj — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 16:55:00 +0000

Almost every single day, my little family starts to lose its shit right around time for dinner. This is somewhere between about 4:00 or 4:30 and 6:00 and 6:30, depending on the day. And our little guy, Bogie, our 15-year-old pug, our geriatric little man is usually the one to start it. Just when I have another hour or two to go in my work day. That’s when Bogie’s little 12-pound body starts to tell him it’s meal time. The veterinarians and the doggie neurologists say that his circadian rhythm is off because of his doggie dementia. They don’t actually SAY Bogie has DEMENTIA – they call it CDS or something like that for Cognitive Disorder Syndrome. And it messes with his body clock and wakes him at about 4am, demanding his breakfast and about 12 hours later, he’s demanding his dinner. Mind you, about half the time, probably more, Bogie DOES get his breakfast shortly after 4am, AFTER I carry him outside, remove his diaper cover and his disposable diaper and I toss the wet disposable diaper in the trash. Often for that first *walk* or pee of the *morning*, Bogie also surprises me with some poop hiding inside his diaper cover, so I drop that into the garbage can – his outdoor diaper pail really – and set aside the diaper cover to throw into the washing machine later in the day, once we’ve gotten to 4 dirty diaper covers. I often don’t mind the 4am wake-up *calls* from Bogie. I am a morning person by nature and I go to bed by 9pm. And I have always liked the quiet of early mornings, before the rest of the world around me is up. And by the time I take Bogie out, clean him with a baby wipe and put him in a new disposable diaper, a clean diaper cover and do all his medications and vitamins, feed him and clean up after all that, I get myself ready for the day and by 5 or 6am, I can be taking care of administrative things for our household and/or writing and recording podcast episodes. And when Bogie is barking and *yelling* at me to go out – well, to GET FED at 4am, I’m not usually agitated with him. I’m awake and rested and I turn on the coffee pot I’ve gotten ready the night before and I enjoy the smell of freshly brewing coffee and the OTHERWISE quiet of the early morning. And, of course, I FORGIVE Bogie for his doggie dementia and I bless and thank him for every day that he’s with us, for every day he still has his voracious appetite. Because the day that dog loses his appetite is the day I will lose mine. If Bogie ever DOESN’T want to eat, I know he will be VERY SICK. Anyway, the 4am yelling for breakfast is ok. What’s often NOT ok for me is the 4 or 4:30pm starting to BARK and YELL and PANIC, while Mercedes is getting home from the school bus stop, while I finish a few more things for my work day. From his little doggie bed and little house in the kitchen, off of my office/the den, Bogie starts up. His little body tells him IT’S TIME. And I can’t rick his little body. I know because I have TRIED. I have tried to trick his little body by waiting in the morning to feed him as *late* as 5 or 6 or even 7. Doesn’t matter. By 4pm – unless he is miraculously SLEEPING, the PANIC sets in. Bogie goes from ZERO to 60 in seconds flat. Here’s my Bogie impression. Ragh. Ragh. Jwa Jwa. [Sneeze] Bang Bang. Scratch Scratch at the metal door to his little house. Ragh Ragh. Jwa Jwa. [Sneeze] Bang Bang. Scratch Scratch. CLANG CLANG. And there are a few things that are different at 4-4:30pm vs. 4:30AM. 1) Bogie’s YELLING and pawing at the doggie house door is DESPERATE, he’s truly panicking as if his next meal DEPENDS on how persuasive he is. 2) My daughter is home from school and needs my attention – to tell me about her day and for me to LISTEN. 3) My daughter is hungry and thirsty and probably needs to pee pretty badly because she doesn’t like to use the bathrooms at school. 4) And she’s just been carrying her VERY HEAVY backpack, which includes her school-issued laptop – NOT a LIGHTWEIGHT one – a library book or two and an umbrella or two. And this very heavy backpack might also get caught on her very long and beautiful hair as she takes it off and sets it down inside the house, by the garage door. 5) And somehow, my daughter’s heavy backpack, the backpack getting caught on her hair, her having to pee and her hunger and thirst are MY FAULT. I have a drink and snacks ready for her – the thirst and hunger I can DO something about. But I just have to get the hell out of her way on the backpack and hair thing and clear the way for her to go to the bathroom. All the while, I’ve got Bogie in the background, growing in intensity in his PANIC. RAGH RACH. JWA JWA [SNEEZE]. SCRATCH SCRATCH. CLANG CLANG. RAGH RAGH. JWA JWA. [SNEEZE] SCRATCH SCRATCH. CLANG CLANG. So, I’ve got my daughter MAD AT ME because she’s thirsty, hungry, has to pee and she’s fighting with her backpack and hair, I’m trying to wrap up my work day over the next hour or two AND Bogie is officially freaking the fuck out. AND NOW, I’M starting to realize that I’M getting hungry, often not having eaten all day. So, while my daughter is drinking and snacking, I turn to Bogie to get the NOISE to STOP! I take him out of his little doggie house and carry him outside – probably for the FOURTH time of the day at this point. And while I’m CARRYING him, he stops the barking and yelling and he might even turn his little face toward me and give me a quick kiss on the neck or cheek, as if to say, if only briefly – “Thanks, Mama.” I melt for a second, give him a little squeeze and I do the whole diaper cover, disposable diaper thing, go out the back gate and set him down in the grass to at least pee, before bringing him back in, doing the baby wipe thing, putting on a new disposable diaper and a clean diaper cover. Then no sooner than when I put back in his doggie house to not fucking HURT HIMSELF while I prepare his evening meds, supplements and dinner, he starts back up, even MORE DESPERATE than before. RAGH RAGH. JWA JWA. [SNEEZE] SCRATCH SCRATCH. CLANG CLANG. By NOW, my daughter is no longer thirsty or starving and she’s used the bathroom and she’s forgotten about her hair getting caught on her backpack. NOW, my daughter wants to CHIT CHAT – with the Tasmanian Devil in the background. RAGH RAGH. JWA JWA. [SNEEZE] SCRATCH SCRATCH. CLANG CLANG. So, my kid is no longer losing HER shit, Bogie is FULL ON losing HIS shit. And now, I. Now I start to lose MY shit. “Bogie, STOP!!!!”, I yell. “STOP IT! I CAN ONLY GET YOUR MEDS AND DINNER READY SO FAST! YOUR YELLING AT ME DOES NOT MAKE ME GO ANY FASTER! IN FACT, IT SLOWS ME THE FUCK DOWN!” I now know I have completely LOST it because I am yelling OVER a dog yelling at me in a PANIC, a PANIC which he cannot control. And, even if he COULD, he sure doesn’t understand what I’m saying. Sometimes during all this racket, my daughter will go upstairs and start on her homework. Sometimes, she’ll try to continue speaking to me, telling me about her school day while I am racing against the clock to feed – and therefore QUIET – the TASMANIAN DEVIL. And God forbid if my kid thinks I’m NOT FULLY listening to her, I might also get an earful from her. “You only care about Bogie and yourself, “she might say and storm off. And I’m a combination of PISSED OFF AND DEFEATED. PISSED OFF because my daughter is so PRIVILEDGED and so well taken care of and she’s in 6th grade now – old enough to know that at THIS time of day, once Bogie thinks it’s dinner time and he starts the PANIC drill, there’s no doing anything else until he’s taken out his dinner is put in front of him. I have NO FUCKING CHOICE. And I’m pissed off because rather than HELPING ME and getting all his meds and supplements and food out, while I carry him outside and back in for the cleaning and re-diapering for the FOURTH or FIFTH GODDAMNED time of the day, my daughter is giving ME A HARD TIME. How can she be MAD at me for putting our GERIATRIC dog first?? How can she POSSIBLY say that I only care about BOGIE AND myself?? What the FUCK? All damn day, she’s in the back of my mind as I plan our evenings and weekends and take care of our household. My daughter is the REASON I do everything I do four our household. AND I am DEFEATED, as I said. Pissed off AND DEFEATED. DEFEATED because by this time I’m SO AGITATED from the sounds that were coming out of Bogie and his little house, but now he’s eating – scarfing down his food – WET food, mind you. Canned pumpkin and canned medicated food for his kidneys. Wet food that he might step in and that is often on at least one of his ears. But he’s QUIET now and I’m almost done with Bogie for the next 4 or 5 hours, before his bedtime last pee and poop. He’s QUIET and usually so is my daughter. And by this time, she may have even apologized to me. And I say I’m sorry, too, for my outburst AT Bogie. And I LAUGH at myself for LOSING MY SHIT and I know I”m not acting right because I’m hungry, and I start working on dinner and know that once I’ve cleaned the food off of Bogie and his dish and the mat under his dish and put him and his full little belly back into his doggie house, I’ll eat, too and I’ll feel better. And I’ll try to think if there is SOME way, ANY way AT ALL to break this cycle of my family losing its shit around dinner time. We DO sometimes break the cycle – not for BOGIE, but for my daughter and me – by ordering dinner IN or by me going OUT for an early dinner, giving my daughter some space, and bringing dinner back home for her. A bit of distance between us is a good thing. And I’m far less agitated with Bogie once I’M fed first. And he doesn’t yell and panic when I’m not home, even if it IS his dinner time. He might not see or hear well, but I’m CONVINCED Bogie can SENSE my presence – maybe he SMELLS me. Anyway, we sometimes break the cycle and if any of you listeners have any OTHER ideas, please message me!

Episode #28: We Need a New Name for Single Parents

silvadavidj — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 16:34:00 +0000

We need a new name for *single parents* – like me! A single parent BY CHOICE. I hear both women and men all the time – real life people in person or even on social media AND fictional characters in movies and on TV talk about being single parents. They talk about being single parents, but they almost always – almost EVERY single time – are divorced or otherwise BROKEN UP from the person they created the child or children with. So, one of the biggest differences between being a single parent BY CHOICE and a DIVORCED or OTHERWISE BROKEN UP and now QUOTE UNQUOTE single parent, is that whether or not the child or children were PLANNED or a SURPRISE, the parents were usually TOGETHER when they created the child or children. They were usually TOGETHER when they created the child or children with PROBABLY – most likely – the IDEA or PLAN that they would stay together and raise their child or children together. And even in the case of the surprise pregnancy or unmarried or otherwise uncommitted parents, many couples will often give it a shot becoming a family for the sake of the child or children, or the parents may realize that THEY – the two of them – don’t belong together, but they may agree to raise the child or children in separate households with some sort of custody arrangement and back and forth between parental households for the child or children. So, the COUPLES who created a child or children while in some kind of relationship, even AFTER divorce or otherwise break-up or decision NOT to STAY together, they CO-RAISE the children. Meaning they may share all the EXPENSES of the child or children and the UPBRINGING of the child or children. And a single parent BY CHOICE – um, I’m pretty sure is usually only a single MOTHER by choice – does NOT co-raise the child or children with anyone, meaning, she – or I – do not share any EXPENSES or the UPBRINGING of the child with ANYONE. That means I truly am a SINGLE PARENT in the way that a DIVORCED or OTHERWISE BROKEN-UP parent is NOT. I get it that some divorced or broken-up parents might be BITTER because the OTHER parent doesn’t pull his or her weight. I get it that some divorced or otherwise broken up parents might carry more of a FINANCIAL burden than their former partner, that they might have the child or children with them more of the time, therefore, having more responsibilities to RAISE the child or children. I get it and I would probably find ANY kind of IMBALANCE in parenting responsibilities very frustrating, even MADDENING. But that still doesn’t make a single parent by DIVORCE of BREAK-UP SINGLE PARENTS in my mind. It makes them DIVORCED or BROKEN-UP parents who are CO-RAISING their child or children. So, maybe THEY – these OTHER kind of single parents than I am are quote unquote “single parents, NOT by choice” and I am a “single parent BY CHOICE.” But these are mouthfuls and it makes the “single parents NOT by choice” sound like VICTIMS. And maybe some of them ARE VICTIMS. Maybe some of the single parents NOT by choice were ABANDONED. Maybe they were cheated on and lied to and left to fend for themselves and their child or children after a PLANNED or a SURPRISE pregnancy. I don’t know. I DO know that this bothers ME to be lumped into a broad bucket of single parents. Single parents BY CHOICE – and I don’t think there are all too many of us around the world – and single parents NOT by choice. And when you lump single parents of BOTH kinds into ONE category, it makes me NOT feel unique or BOLD or AUDACIOUS or FREE. Until I get the chance to EXPLAIN to someone that my PLAN all along in creating my daughter with a KNOWN DONOR was to BE a SINGLE PARENT BY CHOICE. To BE UNIQUE and BOLD and AUDACIOUS and FREE. So when people go so far as to say to me, “I am” or “I was a single mom like you!” And then I discover after some more detail that they were in FACT a single parent NOT by choice, having DIVORCED or BROKEN-UP with the co-parent and usually what they MEAN is that they IDENTIFY with my being a single parent – even though not by DESIGN – because they carried ALL or at least MORE of the parenting responsibilities than their co-parent. I know I should be FLATTERED by people wanting to IDENTIFY with me – that’s an HONOR, really, but AGAIN, it takes away from my UNIQUENESS. I don’t WANT to be like anyone else. I do NOT want to be CONVENTIONAL. The word geek in me is at it again, looking up DEFINITIONS. CONVENTIONAL means “based on or in accordance with what is generally done or believed”. Oh, HELL NO. And similar words to CONVENTIONAL are “normal”, “standard”, “regular”. Yeah FUCK no. I’ll take UNCONVENTIONAL and another OPPOSITE of CONVENTIONAL: “original”. Yeah, I’ll fucking take ORIGINAL. Yeah, the O.G. Other SIMILAR words to CONVENTIONAL are: “ORDINARY, USUAL, TRADITIONAL, TYPICAL, COMMON, GARDEN VARIETY, RUN-OF-THE-MILL, PEDESTRIAN, COMMONPLACE, UNIMAGINATIVE, UNINSPIRED, UNADVENTUROUS, UNREMARKABLE. And the list goes on. JESUS. No WONDER I have such an aversion to being lumped into a category of parents that could be mistaken for CONVENTIONAL! I now feel JUSTIFIED in my REACTION – my FEELINGS, my NEED for another word altogether for single parents LIKE ME. To simply say single parents BY CHOICE vs. single parents NOT by choice doesn’t separate me out enough from the others. ANd not that single parents NOT by choice aren’t WONDERFUL, LOVING, HARD-WORKING parents because they ARE, but we’re really NOT the same in my mind. And it’s that word SINGLE that bothers me when it comes to relationship status, as I’ve talked about in at LEAST one other Audacious Freedom episode. SINGLE meaning UNMARRIED, NOT PARTNERED and implying that a single person is AVAILABLE and LOOKING to CHANGE their relationship status. I am a SINGLE MOTHER BY CHOICE AND A SELF-PARTNERED person whose life is complete WITHOUT a partner and I’m NOT – DECIDEDLY NOT – looking to change my relationship status. And I often think that the single parents NOT by choice, that THESE single parents, are the kind of people who LIKE to be TETHERED to someone, who LIKE to be in a relationship. Which might be – MUST be – why they had a PLANNED or UNPLANNED child or children – WITH a partner, even though they aren’t together any more. So MAYBE in the PARENTING world, we could look to the LGBTQ+ community for INSPIRATION to create a NEW language for people to identify as parents. In the LGBTQ+ community – for which I am a HUGE ally and advocate, people can identify as LGBT, meaning lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, the LGBTQ+ referring to anyone who is non-heterosecual or non-cisgender, instead of exclusively to people wh are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender to recognize this INCLUSION, the popular variant, LGBTQ, adds the letter Q for those who identify as queer or questioning their sexual or gender identity. Those who add INTERSEX people to the LGBTQ groups or organizing may use the extended LGBTQI and other common variants exist like LGBTQIA+ with the A standing for ASEXUAL, AROMANTIC or AGENDER. Wow. How FORTUNATE, how fucking FORTUNATE for people – adults AND kids alike these days in the LGBTQIA+ community to not have to fit into a couple of BINARY LABELS like MALE or FEMALE or in the parenting community being a single parent BY CHOICE or a single parent NOT by choice. Or in the relationship community as a MARRIED person or a SINGLE person. Because we are NOT binary as human beings. We aren’t black and white. We are in color. Human beings are living lives in FUCKING color in any category: we are NOT just HETEROSEXUAL or NON-HETEROSEXUAL or CISGENDER or NON-CISGENDER. We are not just parenting ALONE BY CHOICE or NOT BY CHOICE. We are NOT just in a relationship or single. And I. I AM SELF-PARTNERED and a single mother by choice. And I happen to have always identified as heterosexual and cisgender, but maybe only because that’s all I have ever known or thought. I mean I know there are many options, but I don’t think about any of that really. Because not only am I self-partnered, I don’t choose to go on any kind of dates with anyone or to have any friends with benefits either. I’m good seeing a few close friends here and there, and spending time with my daughter. That’s about it. I’m good and happy and free. And don’t be so quick to have me all figured out either. As open as I am in these podcast episodes and as much as I am exploring and reflecting on my life, I DON’T want to be put into any kind of BOX, to be labeled as any ONE Or any SEVERAL things. I’m still figuring it all out and somehow I am like many other people you know and yet UNLIKE ANYONE ELSE you’ve EVER known. Thank you for being on this journey with me.

Episode #27: I Went to College in High School

silvadavidj — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 15:20:00 +0000

I grew up listening to my mom speak Spanish and mostly responding to her in English. When we went several times as a kid to visit my mom’s family in Spain – all her siblings, aunts, uncles and all of our cousins – I would have to actually respond to my family in Spanish. Growing up around the language made Spanish classes in 7th grade so easy, that by 8th grade my first class of the morning was a 9th grade – a High School – class. I don’t remember how many AP – or Advanced Placement – Spanish classes I had taken by the end of High School. Must have been 3 or 4 years of AP classes and I had become bored with Spanish classes, so I think I started taking French classes by about 10th grade. I don’t know how I was able to take 2 language classes at the same time in High School, but I think somehow I must have. Or maybe I only took 1 or 2 years of Spanish AP classes, then switched to French. I’m not sure. Anyway, what I DO know for sure is that I took at least 2 years of French in High School. And I’m PRETTY sure that I went from French 1 to French 5 or 6 because I went to COLLEGE in HIGH SCHOOL. I went to High School at Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Virginia for grades 7 – 12. 7th and 8th were technically Middle School and 9th – 12th were High School and they were all under one big roof. And the local State University, George Mason, was even closer to my childhood home than Robinson was, and was also situated in Fairfax. And George Mason was where my father used to take my mom, sister and me on weekday mornings in the summer when my sister and I were kids – to run or jog laps around the outdoor track, then inside to lift weights. George Mason was also where my father was the assistant coach to the wrestling team when I was a kid and I recall going to many of the matches. Or meets. Whatever you call wrestling events, I went to a lot of them. I went to so many of them as a kid, I can still remember the smell of the gym and the humidity in the air during those matches – or meets. Anyway, George Mason was practically in our backyard and growing up, much of the – then, not NOW! – SMALL campus was very familiar to me. So, by the time I finished my sophomore year of High School – 10th grade – I’m not sure how I got the idea to do it, but I started taking French classes over the summer at George Mason, BEFORE I started my junior year of High School, when I was 16 years old. French came very easily to me because I knew Spanish. The verb conjugation is the same, including reflexive verbs like je me lave and yo me baño and there are so many Spanish and French cognates – words that have the same linguistic derivation as another – like delfin and dauphin for dolphin and rosa and rose for pink. And not only did French come easily to me, but so did being 16 and spending time on a college campus, because I KNEW this campus and – at the time, I bet it wasn’t more than 10 buildings – it was so small and it seemed like more of a COMMUTER school to me, even though already at that time, George Mason – or just Mason as we called it – did have dormitories and out-of-state students living in them. So, I was 16 taking summer college classes with other students, mostly in their 20’s and I was pretty shy and I would get mixed up speaking Spanish and French in class. I remember one day, my French professor asking me, “Parle tu espagnol?” I MEANT to say in FRENCH, “Oui, un peu”, INSTEAD I said, “Si, un poco” in SPANISH. That got a chuckle out of everyone and they – my classmates and my professor – went easy on me because I was just a kid. I must have taken at least a couple of French classes that summer before I started 11th grade, because by that fall when I started my second to last year of High School, that’s when I started taking Advanced Placement – AP – French 5 or 6. And I remember feeling behind on the VOCABULARY compared to my High School classmates, because I skipped a level or two of French to be in the AP class. I was good on the verb conjugation and reflexive verbs, but I remember practically wearing out my paperback French-English dictionary. Yes, yes for any YOUNG listeners out there, this was the early 1980’s – WAY before the internet and smartphones to look up any damn thing in a matter of seconds! And I was recently reminded that the next summer, the summer before my senior year of High School, I took Spanish classes at Mason. I don’t know for sure if I also took French classes again that summer. But I sure did take Spanish classes at Mason the summer that I was 17 years old. And I know this for sure because I was reminded by one of my fellow students from all those years ago – Dolores. There had actually been 3 of us girls with moms from Spain who were in the Spanish class together. Dolores, Lola and me. And we all had been given the birth name of Dolores by our parents. Dolores always went by Dolores, Lola was actually given MARIA Dolores and always went by Lola and I was named Dolores and always went by Dee Dee. And thanks to social media, I am still in touch with Dolores and Lola and I get to see Dolores and her amazing Ana somewhat regularly, because they live less than 1- miles – Hell, probably less than 7 or 8 miles from my daughter and me. And boy, are those girls FUN! And they aren’t afraid to EAT, unlike many other women I know who restrict themselves from digging into all foods, including CARBS! And we love our BUBBLY and our glasses are never empty for long. ANYWAY, it was during my last get-together with Dolores and Ana at Dolores’ place – just a couple of months ago – it was after we ate lunch and we were sitting around drinking MORE bubbly, that Dolores reminded me of the first time she met me, in a class when I was 17, the summer before my senior year of High School. I guess I had become a helluva lot more confident that second summer of college classes because Dolores told me THIS: “You just walked into the class that first day, took one look at me, as you walked past me to sit in a seat behind me, you ran your fingers through my hair”. “I did WHAT?”, I asked, trying my HARDEST to remember that moment when I would have had the audacity to do something so personal to a complete stranger. My memory surfaced nothing. No memory of such an interaction. Dolores went on to smile and laugh – with her perfectly straight and so white teeth, both her and Ana! – and to say, “Yeah, we all thought you were so cool and we were all shocked to later find out you were so YOUNG and still in HIGH SCHOOL!” Mind you, Dolores is only a few years older than I am, but I guess it’s a big deal when you’re younger and I was 17 and she would have been all of 20! I would continue going to Mason after graduating High School – including summers, since I had gotten into that habit early on – to get my undergraduate degree in Spanish and English literature. And I would finish a semester early, when I was still 21 years old, because of all those summer classes. I supported myself during those college years – paying my tuition, books, rent and all living expenses by working in restaurants and bars. And I was so happy to finish early, because I wanted to be done with college and to get on with my life. I had the WORKING student, the COMMUTER student college experience – not the going-away-to-college, living in a dorm, paid for by my parents experience that many of my High School classmates had. And maybe the latter is what some of my Mason classmates had. But the couple of college classmates I had who I choose to stay in touch with were my fellow daughters of Spanish moms and working commuter students, supporting ourselves. We are badass women who might have chosen different life paths after college, but who are deeply connected even to this day. I think these two women are my soul sisters, or the sisters I never had. They GOT me when I was 17 and they GET me now. I bless them and I thank them for their love and support in my LIFE and their love and support for Audacious Freedom, the podcast.

Episode #26: I Did Not Name My Daughter After a Damn Car

silvadavidj — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 14:25:00 +0000

I had chosen a name for a boy and a name for a girl when I was pregnant. I didn’t not want to know the sex of my baby, though I did have a very clear dream about half-way through my pregnancy where a technician burst into my doctor’s appointment and blurted, “You’re having a girl!” Even then, I still kept a boy’s name in my back pocket: Rafael Luis (Luis being anot to my grandfather and my father, Louis G. Mendez, Jr. and Louis G. Mendez, III). And the only girl name I chose was Mercedes Mendez, after my mother, the OTHER Mercedes Mendez. It wasn’t until AFTER I met my baby girl, AFTER giving birth to her that #1 I knew she could carry such a strong name and #2 that I would also give her a middle name. It was my sister who, along with my mother, had come up from the Washington, D.C. area to NYC to meet my baby, suggested I give her a middle name because most kids in this country have middle names and my daughter wouldn’t want to feel left out WITHOUT a middle name. That made a lot of sense to me and I started googling short two-syllable names for girls because Mercedes was already a mouthful. I got it down to Eva (NOT pronounced EVE-a) and Isa. I decided AGAINST Isa because I was afraid that Americans who don’t speak Spanish might pronounce her middle name as IZ-a instead of Isa [EE-suh]. So, my daughter’s name is Mercedes Eva Mendez. And it would be many years before an acquaintance – a friend of a friend’s – said to me, “What’s your daughter’s name again? Wait”, she said. “Don’t tell me. Porsche. Right?” Good fucking God, I thought. You think I named my daughter after a CAR?? “No”, I politely said. “I named my daughter after my mother, Mercedes.” I knew full well that this woman, a self-described stay-at-home mom with 2 kids in their 20’s who DON’T live at HOME now was probably thinking withall of her spare time – I mean, what does a stay-at-home mom WITHOUT kids at home DO with all her time, not working AND not parenting?? – well, she was probably thinking how nice it was that my daughter AND my mother were both named after a damn car. I don’t know if this is a thing in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. or what. I don’t seem to remember anyone in NYC in my daughter’s first almost 4 years on this earth thinking I named her after a damn car. But we get it all the time now. A couple of weeks ago it was a new neighbor who said, “Oh, your daughter’s name is MERCEDES? Well, I’ll have an easy time remembering THAT. I HAVE one.” And just last week a NEW doctor to US said, “Oh. Your daughter’s middle initial is E? I was hoping for a B.” “Why?”, I asked hesitantly. “I was hoping for Benz.” Oh my fucking God, I thought. Then I SAID, “I named my daughter after my mom. Mercedes is plural for Merced [mer-THED] in Spanish, a biblical term meaning ‘mercy’. And the CAR was named after a GIRL.” Mr. Doctor didn’t like being schooled by this half-SPANIARD and he muttered something about the car being GERMAN. I let it go there. I didn’t go on to tell him that Mercedes-Benz is a combination of two names: Mercedes Jellinek and Karl Benz. I did not go on to tell him that originally, Mercedes-Benz was founded by Karl Benz and Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler, and it was part of Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, better known as DMG. The company was FIRST known by the name Daimler-Benz. Emil Jellinek WITH DMG was responsible for commissioning the first modern automobile, the Mercedes 35hp. Jellinek created the trademark in 1902, naming it in honor of his daughter, Mercedes Jellinek, who was 13 YEARS OLD at the time. While the company continued to trade as Daimler-Benz, the car line began to carry the Mercedes-Benz name. Yeah, no. I did NOT go on to tell Mr. Doctor all of THAT. All of THAT might have been too tricky for his DOCTOR BRAIN to sort through, especially since Mercedes and her father, Emil Jellinek, were actually AUSTRIAN and not GERMAN. I don’t know WHY this pisses me off so much, that some people think I named my kid after a car, but it SURE DOES piss me off! And that they think the name Mercedes is just the first part of a car’s name – where do they think the name MERCEDES came from? Pronounced mer-THE-des in SPANISH. MERJ-ce-des in FRENCH. I mean I know, not everyone speaks Spanish, but I grew up with my cousins in Spain calling my mom Tia Merceditas or Tia Merche and everyone calling one of my great aunts Tia Mercedes. I guaran-damn-ty you my great aunt who would be well over 100 years old now if she were alive and my 77-year-old mom, were NOT named after a damn car, a car that probably didn’t even exist when Tia Mercedes was born. And if it did, HER parents wouldn’t have ever even seen a Mercedes-Benz in rural Spain. Why am I so wound up about this?? I mean does Ellen Degeneres’ wife, Portia – spelled P.O.R.T.I.A. – get people misspelling her name and thinking her parents named her after a car? And if so, do Portia and Ellen get wound up about it like I do?? Do parents ever ACTUALLY name their kids after cars anyway?? A quick search of luxury car brands gave me these 24 names: Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Lexus, Porsche, Jaguar, Land Rover, Cadillac, Tesla, Volvo, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Maserati, Aston Martin, Bentley, Infiniti, Lincoln, Lamborghini, Acura, Bugatti, Alfa Romeo, Genesis Motor, Range Rover and McLaren. Do parents give their kids any of these names, so they name their kids after a CAR? We DO have a young cousin named Lincoln and I’m pretty sure his parents didn’t have the car in mind when they named him. Anyway, maybe some people DO name their kids after luxury car brands and that’s their business, I guess. I mean at least it shows the parents have good taste in nice cars and maybe they even drive one, too. And maybe it’s just a memorable name to give their kid or maybe it’s even AUSPICIOUS, meaning “conducive to success or favorable” for the kid. But for my daughter, my mother and my mother’s aunt after whom my mother was named, in the bible Mercedes means “mercies”, from the Spanish title of the Virgin Mary, Maria de las Mercedes, meaning “Mary of Mercies”. And Mercedes IS a mouthful of a name, especially for little kids to pronounce. When Mercedes started going to *school* in NYC at 13 months old, the other kids could only call her Cee Cee. Which I thought was cute. Cee Cee and Dee Dee, her mom. Then when the kids were a bit older, they called her Sadies. And then one friend in pre-school called her MerceDEE for the longest time. And my daughter has always carried the full name well, just like my mom.

Episode #25: Uncle G – You are a Fcking Dck

silvadavidj — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 13:26:00 +0000

Those of you who listened to Episode #18 of Audacious Freedom, the podcast might remember that I am working on finding my voice when people are UNKIND or even CRUEL or NASTY to me. Well, this episode is for you, Uncle G: You are a FUCKING DICK. And here’s why: When I wrote to you and Aunt N in June of 2009 to tell you that I would be in San Francisco on business and that I wanted to see you…and, I shared what you might have already heard at that time, that I had decided to become a single mom and I was thrilled to share with you both that I was having a baby in September. And Uncle G – and for you LISTENERS – know – here’s what you wrote back to me in your email. Here’s what you had the FUCKING BALLS to write back to me in an email. An email that I can access in a matter of seconds on my phone in my gmail account. AT ANY TIME. Proof of you being a FUCKING DICK. Here’s what you wrote to me, your GODDAMNED NIECE. Are you ready, listeners? LET’S GO! You fucking wrote:

“Please forgive me for being straightforward and to the point. You are a wonderful woman with enormous intelligence, beauty and charm. However, I find your choice to become a single mother shocking and extremely troubling. I wish I could say that I have found grounds to celebrate your independence, but I cannot help but think that independence is measured not so much by what we do but by the extent to which our lives do not have a potentially problematic impact on others.” Are you listeners believing this BULLSHIT?? I gotta tell you, I’m so anxious right now re-reading this email and copying it down in this episode script that I am literally shaking. I have a knot in my stomach and my hands are shaking. I am full of emotion with this email and Uncle G’s WORDS to me. OKay, let me read you some more of this unbelievable awful email. Uncle G goes on to write: “A child without the benefit of a nurturing mother and a nurturing father is a child asking for heart-ache. As an aside, there may be serious legal problems for a single mother and her child.” What the fuck, listeners?? Legal – serious legal problems for a single mother and her child?? Like fucking WHAT???? GOOD FUCKING GOD. Okay, so then he writes: “I am truly sorry that I am unable to cheer you on. At this point, I don’t imagine you have anything to say to me. Nevertheless, I do wish you good luck.” No, I wish YOU good luck, MOTHER FUCKER. I wish YOU good luck in LIFE with being a FUCKING DICK. Sorry, listeners. I’m getting ahead of myself! Here’s the rest of this fucker’s email. “Goodness knows, Dee Dee, in the face of your self-created adversity, you will need it.” Okay wait. Sorry, listeners. I can’t help but interrupt again here. “GOODNESS knows”, Uncle G?? What do you know from GOODNESS? You are pure FUCKING EVIL. And my self-created ADVERSITY?? Having a baby as a single mother in 2009 is creating ADVERSITY for myself. How so EXACTLY?? How does becoming a single mother in 2009 create ADVERSITY???? This isn’t 1909 when women had far fewer rights that we do now. And being a single mother isn’t some kind of black on my life for my friendships or for my career. It’s actually an ASSET and sign of my STRENGTHS, CONFIDENCE and SUPERWOMAN GODDAMNED ABILITIES. ASSHOLE. Okay, ok, so here’s the last of the email that has me so wound up again: “But, regardless of my views and despite what I may think, you will always remain my niece for whom I have great love and affection. Uncle G.”

Deep breath. And I gotta tell you , listeners, that it feels GREAT, it feels fucking awesome to GET MAD. To be PISSED FUCKING OFF at this MOTHER FUCKER. It DOES. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it. So, what did I do when I received that email just over 12 years ago?? I didn’t GET MAD. I got QUIET. I got QUIET and I wrote back that I was sorry to hear he felt that way and that I would be meeting Uncle Rico and Tia Lance for drinks and dinner near my hotel – I told Uncle G where and what time I would be meeting his brother and brother-in-law, my other uncle and his husband, in the hopes that he would join us. That maybe he’d realize that there was no reason NOT to meet me, even though he wasn’t *cheering me on*. I hoped that maybe Uncle G’s wife, Aunt N, also cc’d on the emails between Uncle G and me – would knock some sense into his fat head. But no. They didn’t show and I forgot about it. And over the years, I saw Uncle G and Aunt N a few times at family events. But things were never the same. Cordial and maybe they or he said my kid was cute or something. But never LOVING toward either my daughter or me. So, why did I share this letter with you listeners now? Well, listeners, I will tell you why. As I’ve been committed to finding my voice at this time in my life and in these podcast episodes, I re-read that awful email a couple of weeks ago and I wrote back to Uncle G. I write back to Uncle G and here’s what I wrote:

“You are a fucking dick. In case I never told you that. YOU ARE A FUCKING DICK. ‘Shocking, troubling, independence, problematic, nurturing, heart-ache…not to mention legal problems. What the FUCK does your sorry ass know about these things?? You remember how many times I flew to SF to support you when you FAILED THE BAR?? 3 times you sorry, drunk ass. And thank God you never had to raise a child other than your sad ass self. Fuck off.” And I love reading that last part – ‘Sent from my iPhone. I don’t know why but that cracks me the fuck up. But it doesn’t crack me up more than that it took me over TWELVE years to respond to the email in an AUTHENTIC way. I spoke the FUCKING TRUTH. I didn’t stay quiet and MEEK. And. AND, I have to tell you I did something else with that email. I forwarded it to Uncle G’s wife, Aunt N, and I wrote, “Forwarding to my *former Aunt Nan* who has stood by this pussy”. And THEN I fowarded all of that – the whole email string between Uncle G and me which had started in June of 2009 – I forwarded it to my Aunt Lori and my Aunt Nikki and I wrote to them, “FYI – It was about fucking time!” And we all sure got a great laugh about it all. Even when Tia Nikki and Tio Mark were over to our new place last weekend for lunch, we realized that Tia Nikki hadn’t shared it all with Tio Mark, so he read up on it all while we were enjoying lunch. And I made Tio Mark read ALOUD my entire email back to Uncle G. Fucking hilarious to hear my words come out of Tio Mark: all of them – “You are a fucking dick…your sorry ass…FAILED THE BAR…you sorry drunk ass…your sad ass self…fuck off”. Tio Mark was sure to emphasize all of those words for the ultimate impact. And Tia Nikki and Tio Mark and I laughed our asses off. Fuck off, Uncle G. You are a FUCKING DICK. And that’s what love and support looks like, dear listeners. That’s what fucking love and support from family looks like. I bless and thank and love Tia Nikki and Tio Mark so much for their love and support. For truly SEEING me and my daughter and KNOWING us and loving us BECAUSE of our STRENGTH and CONFIDENCE and superwoman goddamned abilities. And one more time: Uncle G, you are a fucking dick.

Episode #24: The Pain and Joy of Moving This Time

silvadavidj — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 12:28:00 +0000

We knew it was coming. We knew the day would be coming to move, when we would find a place we loved AS MUCH – or could it be possible?? When we would find a place we loved MORE than the place we had been in for 5 years. At the beginning of COVID-19 – when my daughter’s school first shut down in March of 2020 – she began online learning for the second half of 4th grade and all of 5th grade. For a year and a half she only left her bedroom to use the bathroom and to get food. My daughter did everything else in her bedroom – online class, homework and even her exercise: running in place or jumping on our exercise trampoline. She would occasionally join me on a shopping trip to the local grocery store or to Target, but mostly she wanted to stay home and minimize any exposure to COVID. And she began asking to live in a PLACE WITH STAIRS. When I probed her more, she said, “It would feel like more of a home if it was a place with stairs.” I wasn’t sure about the stairs part, but I did get that we needed to be able to spread out a bit more than we could in our 2-bedroom, 2-bath apartment less than 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C., in a suburb of Northern Virginia. We loved the openness of the space and the floor-to-ceiling windows in our dining room of the corner unit, and how from only the 2nd floor of our six-story building, we would watch our community of residents, office workers, restaurant and store workers, and diners and shoppers, gym goers, dog walkers, construction workers, garbage collectors and delivery people drive and walk by. At night, we loved watching some of these same people walk by, stop, look up and point at our home, at the strings of multi-colored lights on the floor-to-ceiling columns and the multi-colored icicle lights hanging from a spiral lighting fixture on the ceiling of our dining and living rooms. I’ve heard some people thought our place was some kind of restaurant or at the very least that an artist must live in the space because it was so creative. Funny how when I hosted my new-to-me book club dinner a few years back, one of the guests said, “Oh my God! YOU live here? I’ve been admiring these lights every morning when I go to the gym. And when I saw you post a picture of the lights on Facebook, I thought, ‘Dee Dee must know the people who live there!’” What?? Why wouldn’t she automatically have thought that we lived there?? I guess my corporate job and persona have limited the view some people who don’t know me well might have of me. Another funny thing I’ve heard over the years about the lights is, “Oh, you put them up one year at Christmas and just never took them down, right?” Well, uh, no. Yes, they are technically Christmas lights, but we first put them up BEFORE Christmas, BEFORE we put up our Christmas tree in the corner of the floor-to-ceiling windows of our dining room. And after we took down our Christmas tree, when the strings of lights on the columns and the icicle lights hanging from the spiral lighting fixture on the ceiling started to burn out, strand by strand, from being on 24/7, I hired someone year-round to get up on a very tall ladder and to replace them for us. I would buy a full year’s worth of lights as soon as Target would put them out on their shelves, often even BEFORE Halloween. Anyway, those lights were enjoyed by many from OUTSIDE of our unit and even more so by our guests. Some named our place “Candyland” and that suited because of all the kid and adult parties we threw over the years. The kids – my daughter and her friends – loved to bring out every blanket and pillow in the house and to sleep over under the lights. The space brought us and our guests so much joy over 5 years, it was hard to imagine a new space we could love AS MUCH – or even crazier – a space we would love more. The search for a new home lasted over a year. And our real estate agents – a husband and wife team – were patient and really understood what my daughter and I were looking for in our next home and how we wanted the space to FEEL. We wanted it to feel open and spacious and beautiful. We didn’t want anything too big with rooms we wouldn’t really use or a big yard to have to maintain. And we didn’t want to be too far from civilization – we like being able to walk to some shopping and dining, without having to jump into the car every time we needed or wanted to go somewhere. And we wanted my daughter to be able to stay at her same elementary school for 6th grade, even if that meant I would have to drive her myself every morning for drop off and every afternoon for pick-up. Beyond being specific about the kind of home we wanted, I stayed focused on my goal at this time in our lives, to put all my energy into my daughter and me building the best life possible for us. This is a also a time of reinvention and rebirth/beginning new things – like this podcast! And our future is filled with great joy and celebrations. And this is how our new space came to us. Every day – early morning – I would get an auto-generated email from our realtors with new listings in our area. And there it was – at about 4am when I was awakened by our geriatric pug, Bogie, because he thinks 4am – sometimes even 3am is breakfast time. I checked email, opened the daily listings message, clicked on the link and I met our new home for the first time. Just 5 blocks away from our fabulous apartment – a short 10-minute walk – and 4 stories in a townhouse that allows my daughter and me to spread out. And boy, are there ever stairs in a 4-story house! My daughter would get the top floor and then the next level down would be mine – master bedroom, bath and laundry room. By the way, on my daughter’s floor is her bedroom, bathroom and her study. Even though she has started 6th grade back in person in the classroom, it seems like many parents are holding their breath, waiting for news that schools might shut down again – if only temporarily – if COVID cases increase in our school district. If the schools do have to shut down again for any period of time, we are ready for my daughter to study and do homework in one room upstairs and to sleep in another. She’ll have to go down 2 flights of stairs to get to her meals and down a total of 3 floors to get outside to the car. And if the schools don’t shut down? Well, she’ll still have her study for homework and reading and all the built-in exercise that comes with a 4-story home. So, back to the rest of our new home, the main level is the kitchen and off of that, a deck and my office/den/TV room, the dining room and in the front of the house, over the garage and overlooking our driveway, is what we are calling the *party room*. Not that we are planning any big parties – or sort of *the more the merrier* parties that we’ve hosted over the years, because this is a time to put all my energy into building the best life for my daughter and me. And we are being very selective and intentional about who we invite into our space. Only the people who love and support us and who truly see us and know us and who GET us. And this party room makes my daughter and me so happy. We each have a favorite seat in the party room – she likes to sit on the ottoman by the railing to the foyer AND the dish of chocolates, looking out a window to the street and our driveway – and I like to sit on one of the hot pink velvet chairs that are shaped like clams, facing the armless green faux leather loveseat with its colorful pillows. The room is a party all by itself with the bar, the red cracked glass and purple beaded lighting and the orange, hot pink, ivory and chocolate colored striped and faux leopard print carpet tiles beneath all the furnishings. And the bottom level, where the 2-car garage is, that fits our one car, leaves space for another car PLUS a big area for storage bins, an extra fridge & freezer, extra drinks & paper products and various household items like extra light bulbs and batteries – what we are calling a *movie room* with a big TV, games and puzzles, a gas fireplace, a full bathroom, some of our favorite stuffed animals from movies like Monsters Inc and Frozen displayed on shelves, artwork – including 3 beautifully framed charcoals by my late Uncle Rico – and a sleeper sectional sofa for guests. Now, for the first time in many years, my daughter won’t have to give up her bedroom which has doubled as a guest room. When she was younger, it didn’t matter THAT much because she and I always co-slept. Now that she is 11, my daughter usually at least starts out the night in her own room and bed, before making her way to me and my bed. So, why did I call this episode, “The Pain and Joy of Moving This Time”? Well, we have slept in our new home [for] 10 nights now. And while waking up here on the first morning and every morning since, has been fabulous, those first few mornings sure were a bit rough. My OCD shows when things aren’t in their place and when our things are in boxes. I get into *beast* mode to unpack and put away our things and to break down the boxes, the packing materials and to remove them from our home. It took a few days to figure out most of the rubix cube that it felt like I was solving and to decide how – even though the new home is much larger than the last one – to place our thing in the new configuration. I also sort of drove the movers crazy because – and there were FIVE of them, along with ME – packing up and labeling our boxes – it wasn’t an automatic labeling of master bedroom in the old place equals master bedroom in the new place. For example, my desk would no longer go in my bedroom – it would go off the kitchen in my new office/den/TV room. And the hand-painted silver and black zebra-striped armoire in the foyer of the old place, would go in my new bedroom. And the KITCHEN. Good God. It was so painful figuring out where all our pantry items would go – they came from a coat closet I had turned into a pantry in the old place, which came with built-in shelves on the door and we had put in a shelving unit for all our dried foods and canned and jarred goods. And they fit – all the food items fit after I configured and re-configured everything until it became easily clear where all the food belonged, where the pots and pans and appliance belonged, until our dishes and glassware were all beautifully placed in the lighted glass cabinets above the counter. After a few days in our new home – and except for a small corner on the counter of items to be placed – our kitchen was in order. My daughter couldn’t believe it that day she came home from school to see it. “Is THIS really OUR kitchen??”, she asked in disbelief about the transition the room had made while she had been at school. But she wasn’t always so excited about the progress I was making in the house each day. I couldn’t wait to see her after school each day to rattle off all that I had done, while taking a few days off of work to settle us in as quickly as possible. My daughter doesn’t share my OCD gene and she doesn’t have the same sense of urgency that I have to get things done and to put and keep things in order. If something can get done tomorrow, she will always choose tomorrow. And I am always looking at my lists of things to get done and trying to get just ONE more thing done each day before I will allow myself a little time to relax. My daughter – because she is so different than I am – is also my teacher. She reminded me during this move – on multiple occasions – to SLOW DOWN and to be more PRESENT. And to listen to her about her day, in this new year of school, back in the classroom for the first time in over a year and a half. In this new year of school for her where she is in 6th grade, at the top grade in elementary school. And so I listened to her and after school made sure to ask about her day and to make room for her to tell me about the book she is reading and her new favorite show before rattling off all I’ve done at the house. Mind you, all I’ve done at the house. FOR US. For my daughter and me. For my daughter to get that home she asked for. WITH STAIRS. So, a full week into sleeping in our new home, we got to about 95% “there”. Almost every piece of artwork was hung up, almost all the curtains, every single moving box and all the packing materials were hauled off by the recycling company, all our storage units were in the garage where all the recycling had waited until recycling day finally came around. And we hosted our favorite aunt and uncle for lunch that day – Tia Nikki and Tio Mark came over for a 4-hour visit – a tour of our new home and a leisurely sipping of bubbly and eating appetizers and lunch. We served grapes, strawberries, chocolate hummus, avocado hummus, tortilla chips, pretzels, aloutte cheese, cucumbers, cantaloupe and I made a couscous salad with fresh lemon juice, chickpeas, roasted red pepper strips, sliced black olives and extra virgin olive oil, a rainbow salad with blueberries, mini peppers, 3-colored tomatoes, shredded carrots and toasted sunflower seeds and a fresh two-colored green bean salad with feta cheese, toasted pine nuts and olive oil. And the rainbow salad was dressed simply as always with olive oil and a dash of balsamic vinegar. AND without knowing it, I made one of Tio Mark’s favorites: boneless country pork ribs with BBQ sauce. And I also made salmon with lemon and white wine. Speaking of wine, we enjoyed a bottle of Veuve Cliquot to celebrate our new home and Sonoma-Cutrer chardonnay with lunch. The next day, friends came over and we walked 10 minutes to the annual Fine Arts Festival and had brunch at a local restaurant. And the pain of the move is behind me. It’s like after giving birth, many women might think, “I’m never doing THAT again.” But then many women do have more kids. They forget the pain after they see all the beauty they created in their baby, in this little person who does amazing things like smile and laugh and roll over and start to walk and talk. That’s where I am now with this move, enjoying all of the beauty I have created. Even though I know a few more deliveries are coming and will need to be put together: the new coffee table for the party room, the new custom-made stool for the vanity in my bathroom. When my handyman comes back this week, I have another list of projects for him, a much shorter list this time because we are in the final stretch of this move. My daughter already commented just a few nights – or maybe it was only after just nights – of sleeping in our new home that she forgot what it was like to be in the old place, that she got so used to the new place so quickly. Anyway, when I reflect on the day or two leading up to this move and on the first day or two in the new home, I want to tell my future self – whenever we may move again – I want to tell myself a few things I’d like to do differently. Like, please, really this time – get rid of more things before you move, especially any food that you’re really not going to eat (or that your daughter isn’t really going to eat) AND make sure your daughter has really weeded out her stuff and isn’t keeping any of those little plastic toys you get at Chuck E. Cheese’s. AND doing try to PACK a whole room at a time and then check it off. AND be sure to set aside not only clean sheets and towels, but also know in which boxes to find your pillows and comforters, too! What I mean by don’t try to pack and unpack a whole room at a time is that life isn’t that compartmentalized. You might need something from every room – even if it’s just a little something from every room each day. Know where the essentials are like everyone’s supplements and vitamins – even the dog’s – and your toiletries and fresh changes of clothes and shoes. And where the coffee, coffee pot and coffee filters are. I thought I was so clever during this move when I knew where all the coffee stuff was – including my favorite coffee mug, only to have tucked them away in a drawer in the new kitchen where I couldn’t find them until the next morning. Good thing I usually prepare my coffee to be ready to go the night before, so I still managed to have my coffee the next morning! Oh, and make sure you can find a spoon for the dog’s canned food. I had his food and all his supplements at my fingertips – and even his baby wipes, diapers and diaper covers – but I had to improvise for a day or so on scooping out his canned stew and canned pumpkin with the measuring spoon we use for his powder supplement. So, I’m off to a new week, beginning our second week in our new home and I’m able to enjoy it and to be more present, especially for my daughter. She will turn 12 this weekend and I want it to be her best birthday ever as she and I start our new life in our new home.

Episode #23: The 20th Anniversary of 9/11/2001

silvadavidj — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 11:36:00 +0000

I gotta tell you, I’m not sure how we ever survived 9/11. I mean how we SURVIVORS survived 9/11. In all of its horror. How unthinkable it was. How fucking WRONG it was. All the beautiful lives lost. For no reason. All the destruction. I’ve been watching some of the many movies made about 9/11 this week and I really don’t know how on the day of 9/11/2001, I just walked back home from my office in Midtown Manhattan after I guess they sent us all home. That morning, I had walked from home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan – a crisp late summer morning with clear blue skies – I had walked to my office as I had so many mornings before and I would walk so many more mornings again. I walked free from distractions – this was before iphones and before many people had any kind of cell phone and about 4-5 years before I would have my first Blackberry. When I got to my office building everything seemed normal on this morning toward the end of 2001. There had been so much fuss and worry about Y2K and what would happen in the year 2000 – and NOTHING HAPPENED then and no one was expecting or worrying about anything in 2001. On this morning toward the end of 2001, I got off the elevator in my office building and passed by a conference room on the way to my office and I noticed a couple of colleagues watching what appeared to be the news on TV. Again, this was way before iPhones and even Blackberries, so the only way to connect with the outside world was by landline, the occasional cell phone and TV. I didn’t pay much attention to the colleagues and the TV – they were colleagues I didn’t know and I couldn’t imagine why the news would be so interesting or important that morning. I don’t remember how I first found out about the first plane. Did someone call my office? Did a colleague stop by my door to tell me? Did I hear a buzz out in the hallway? I don’t know. I DO know that I called my friends downtown – Stacey and Chris. They lived on Washington between Vestrey and Debrosses and the only way that I know that i was heading in the right direction going to their place was when I looked up when I got off the train – the subway – at Franklin Street – or was it Chambers? – I looked up to see the Twin Towers. From their rooftop terrace, Stacey and Chris had a close-up view of the towers, so they were the first call I made. Chris answered and said they had been awakened by the sound of the crash – or probably at that time we thought it had been a bomb or even maybe that it had been a small prop plane that had accidentally flown into the tower. The idea that it had been INTENTIONAL – that fucking terroriest had flown a fucking COMMERCIAL PLANE into the tower was UNFATHOMABLE. Chris and I – as he stood on their terrace on Washington between Vestrey and Debrosses and I sat in my office in Midtown Manhattan over 60 blocks away – remarked about how sturdy the building was, what good old American steel could withstand. It was amazing that the building didn’t FALL OVER. Crumble. That its twin tower would soon be hit and that it, too, would fall down and crumble. And that’s when the second plane hit – the second twin tower. While I was on the phone with Chris. And that’s when we began to put it together that not only was this no bomb or prop plane accident. THIS was INTENTIONAL. These were MASSIVE COMMERCIAL planes INTENTIONALLY flown into our buildings. Our buildings where our fellow Americans WORKED – where they WORKED to support their families who were waiting for them to come home to them that evening. Their families who would never see them again. This was so fucking WRONG and SENSELESS and UNFATHOMABLE. I think I made one more phone call from my office beroe my company officially sent us home for the day. My company who was trying to account for all of its employees around the country. Who might have had a meeting at The Pentagon – as we would soon learn had been hit by another plane? Who might have been on United 93 I think it was to be from Boston to San Francisco? United 93 which was hijacked by terrorists who are overtaken by passengers who hear – from airplane phones and conversations with family members about the towers and The Pentagon – and the plane crashes instead of into its potential intended target of the US Capitol building or The White House. I think it crashes into a field in Pennsylvania, where there are no casualties on the ground. Jesus. There are casualties on the plane. All the crew and passengers perished. On all 4 planes that morning. All the crew and passengers on all 4 planes perished. Plus all the casualties in the north and south towers. And all the casualties at The Pentagon. HORRIFIC.

DISGUSTING. SICKENING. Okay, so after calling Stacey and Chris – and I’m not sure I ever actually spoke with Stace that morning, just Chris – and I think after the second tower was hit, they may have left their apartment right away, I’m not sure. I do know that they were safe and that I spoke with them every single day for the days and weeks that followed. They were displaced from their apartment – everyone south of Chambers was – and I don’t think they ever went back to THAT apartment [to live]. So, after speaking with Chris, I know I spoke with my mom. My mom who was very scared and who wanted me to leave New York and go be with her and my dad in Northern Virginia. That made no sense to me because The Pentagon had also been hit – The Pentagon which was about 40 miles away from them and only 6 miles from the home of my grandparents in Falls Church, Virginia in a development called Lake Barcroft, with a manmade lake and 5 beaches. By the way, that morning, September 11, 2001 was the morning that doctors released my grandfather, the late Colonel Louis G. Mendez, Jr. to be sent home to die, under hospice care. I remember talking with my grandmother, Nanny, about the attacks on 9/11 and she was grateful – we were all grateful – that my grandfather wasn’t coherent to understand the horror of what happened that morning. My grandfather – DaddyGrandPappa, as we grandkids called him – did eventually make it home that day, by ambulance. By an ambulance which had been preoccupied with caring for any survivors at The Pentagon, again, only 6 miles away. Six miles away is close enough that my aunt Lori – the youngest of the 12 Mendez kids, who had come from California to help Nanny set up hospice care for DaddyG in their home, on the bottom floor of the house where they had raised their 12 kids. Lori told me that she could feel the boom of the plane hitting The Pentagon. Jesus Christ. She could feel that, but I couldn’t feel either plane hit the towers from only a few miles away. Except for what the news showed me and what people on the other end of my phone in my office or my landline at home told me, it was as if nothing was wrong in Midtown Manhattan or on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The skies were still clear blue and you couldn’t see any signs of smoke or debris from the now collapsed Twin Towers. So, the other person I spoke to before I left my office that God-awful morning, was a college friend and former roommate, Lola, who was living in Northern Virginia with her husband and their THEN, 3 kids at the time. Lola couldn’t stop crying and she was going to pull her kids out of school. No one knew why these terrorists had targeted NYC and Washington, D.C. and no one knew how many more planes there were and what the next targets might be. We were all in fear from having been attacked on our own soil, and so personally attacking civilians – people just going to work to support their families. I’m not sure why I bring up Lola now, why I so vividly remember our call and her tears. She’s always been someone who can cry and sniffle and talk at the same time – not like me when I start crying, there is nothing audible except for my wailing. Maybe I’m mentioning Lola because of her brother, Richie. He lived downtown and worked a few office buildings away from mine on 6th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Richie – like so many others who lived below Chambers was displaced after the attacks for weeks if not months. Richie who wanted to – begged the police officers who were barricading Chambers Street – he wanted to go down to Ground Zero to dig for any SURVIVORS. Richie. Richie wanted to DO something. I would see him a time or two in those early days and I would talk to Lola, too. We were all just shocked and devastated. And somehow, I managed to go on with my life in those days and weeks after. In the days and weeks when I would find out that a few of my colleagues – no one I knew personally – perished. In the days and weeks when I would find out that a friend of a friend – a woman who had joining us a couple of times for happy hour – had gone *missing*. That’s what people said in the early days after the attacks – their loved ones were unaccounted for and they were ever hopeful that they would be found as a survivor in the wreckage of the towers or that they would have missed their train to downtown Manhattan and that they would turn up later at home, after having sipped coffee in a local coffee shop. I don’t think any of those *missing* people ever turned up after those first few hours or before nightfall anyway. But *missing* was all that we could fathom, because it had all been so goddamned unfathomable. And like Richie – who was never permitted to dig through the rubble of the towers looking for survivors – I had to do something, too. And that was to bake cookies for the firefighters and police officers downtown. So, I baked 12 dozen cookies – that’s 144 cookies from them and carried them in a big shopping bag. I met Stacey and Chris at the barricade at Chambers Street and sent them on their way to distribute the cookies on my behalf. That’s all I could do, all that I knew to do, except to try to comfort or distract the friends who lost loved ones that day. And no one knew more people who died in The Twin Towers than my friend and colleague at the time, Scotty. Scotty had grown up in New Jersey and had gone to school with many people who worked in the towers. I don’t know if they all worked for Cantor Fitzgerald – the firm that lost 658 people on 9/11 – or if they all happened to be working in the towers at different companies. I just remember that Scotty eventually went to more memorial services than anyone else I knew. And I say *eventually* because many families held onto hope for a long time after the attacks that they might find their loved ones.They held off holding memorial services because once the services would be held, that would mean the end of any last possible hope for survival. I did message Scotty last night on Facebook, as I often do this time of year – to let her know I was thinking of her, especially on this 20th anniversary of the horrific events. She responded and thanked me and sent the photo of one of her friends, a friend she’d had since 4 years old. I am looking now at the photo of this handsome man in a suit and tie and a smile complete with dimples. I imagine all the friends and family he left behind 20 years ago and I am devastated for them all at his senseless death and the senseless death of so many that day. I don’t know how they’ve managed to go on without him all these years and how they can find any kind of – any kind of peace with his passing in such a horrific AND PREVENTABLE way. This did NOT have to happen. This was NO ACT OF GOD. This was NO ACCIDENT. This was the intentional murder of thousands of innocent Americans. And no amount of justice is ever going to bring those innocent Americans back to their loved ones. Nothing is going to reverse the clock back to the early morning of 9/11/2001 and change the minds of those terrorists who played out the attacks. Nothing is going to reverse the clock and shut the doors of The Twin Towers that morning and to send everyone home to take the day off of work. Nothing is going to reverse the clock for any one single person that morning who had a meeting or a job to go to in The Twin Towers or at The Pentagon or anyone flying on United Flight 93 from Boston to San Francisco to decide to stay home instead. We can’t reverse the clock to change the events or to prevent the deaths of so many innocent people. All we can do – the ONLY thing we can do – is to honor them as they have been every year since on 9/11 and in the building of memorials in their honor. Today, and I will try to every single day – I will honor all the innocent victims and their families and I will honor the first-responders – and their loved ones – for losing their lives while trying to save others.

Episode #22: Sharing Scripts in Advance, As a Courtesy

silvadavidj — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 12:39:00 +0000

Before launching Season 1 of Audacious Freedom, the podcast, an attorney friend of mine offered me very smart – if difficult to act on – ADVICE. She suggested that even though I don’t NAME my ex-husband or two ex-fiances after my divorce, that I reach out to them as a courtesy. To reach out to them as a COURTESY with JUST the script or scripts that mention them. NOT the recording of an entire episode or the whole script of an episode. Only the script that refers to them. FUCK. I KNEW this was excellent advice, though I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of reaching out to each of them at all, let alone for something so INTIMATE. INTIMATE NOT because I have ANY feelings for them – well, POSITIVE feelings for them – because – oh yeah, I have feelings ABOUT them, like what the FUCK was I THINKING to have been romantically INVOLVED with any of them. These men were among my MISTAKES, my poor decisions in life. Decisions I made spontaneously, reactively and against my better judgment at times in my life when I was most vulnerable and when I lacked confidence and believed I *needed* a man or that somehow my life would be better, easier or more fulfilled with a partner. And the ONLY reason I mention any of them in some of my podcast episodes is to share the TRUTH with you, my listeners, the TRUTH about my MISTAKES. How I got into the mistakes and how I got the fuck out of them. How I am EMBARRASSED about when I was fucking MISERABLE. So NOW, as I’m recording Season 2 of Audacious Freedom, the podcast and preparing to drop Season 1, I had to reach out to 3 of my MISTAKES. FUCK. I was able to find them all easily, thanks to Google and social media. And then came messaging them each individually. I don’t want to share with you which one said what exactly, but I DO want to share what the process has been like for ME. It’s been HARD AS FUCK, I will not lie. HARD AS FUCKING FUCK. I didn’t realize just how much of a WASTE OF TIME they all were for me and how much hostility I was holding for them and how much I wish I could go back in time and ERASE those relationships. ERASE those fucking MISTAKES and never have to think about them or to tell you about them. In reaching out to them, it was like re-living the mistakes. Writing the podcast episodes and recording the ones that mention them was hard enough – more like an out-of-body experience or something – stories – that happened to someone else though. Reaching out directly to these real people, these real people who were my biggest REGRETS made shit REAL. It was an exercise in sheer HUMILITY, to set aside my HUGE PRIDE and EGO. To approach them with KINDNESS – because I want to be kind to ALL human beings – but NOT to become FRIENDS with any of them or to catch up and have a conversation. So, I reached out to each of them with the EXACT same initial message. That I hoped they and their families – if they have one – were doing well and that I was reaching out as a COURTESY prior to launching Season 1 of my podcast. I was reaching out as a COURTESY so see if they were willing to read any scripts that might MENTION them – not NAME them – any scripts that might mention ex-husband, fiance #1 or fiance #2. And here is what was interesting about their responses. ONe said basically, “no thank you” and something to the effect of “say whatever you need to say”. Another said “sure, go ahead and email the scripts to me”. And the third said pretty much the same thing. And they ALL said, “I hope your podcast is a success”. That was kind of them, for sure. And to the TWO I sent actual scripts to, I very carefully worded the paragraphs leading up to the scripts themselves. I wrote the following bullets for them to please keep in mind:

1. I am providing this preview for you of the scripts as a courtesy so that you would not be caught off guard should someone be able to identify you, even though you are not named and I would very much like for your identity to be private

2. The episodes are filled with my stories – past and present – that I reflect on and share my thoughts and feelings about a period of time or certain events in my life

3. Although the stories are about me and my point of view, in a few episodes I describe how I felt about my ex – and/or later, the two fiances after my divorce, with whom I broke off the engagements

4. I do not mean to insult or upset anyone with my point of view and memories, though I realize how offensive the words can be

5. That said, the stories and my podcast episodes are not at all meant to be jabs toward anyone as a person or to try to settle any kind of unresolved score with anyone. I have no unresolved score with you [insert name], or with the other two

6. My stories are raw and often embarrassing to admit what I’ve thought and felt, especially in the past, and how in more recent years, I have embraced being *self-partnered* and having my daughter on my own terms, without a partner

7. Again, I do not name you in these episodes and I wouldn’t want any listeners to be able to figure out who you are. That should be pretty easy since our history pre-dated social media

8. I want you to know that in these episodes I am not trying to say anything about anyone else. Rather, it’s a snapshot of my life and who I was at a time in my life when I looked outside of myself to find happiness. If only I knew then what I know now….”

Then, I proceeded to share with each of them the partial scripts and included the Show Titles and Show Notes for context within each episode. And then I went about my life and resisted thinking about how they might react, when they might respond. I OWNED the scripts and my stories and my memories and my feelings about it all and I had zero control over THEIR memories or feelings. They both responded within a few days, I think. One said simply that he wasn’t going to dispute anything and he again wished my podcast well. And the OTHER one, Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ. I did not see this one coming. At all. Not for a fucking second. I could not have possibly anticipated this response. I’m getting worked up just thinking about it. I literally feel nauseous writing out this script now. I have adrenaline pumping through my body. My entire body is in fight or flight mode now and I want to punch AND run. If his face were right here in front of me right now I would punch him and I have never punched anyone. I would punch him in his fucking face right now if I could. I am sweating right now with anxiety and it’s so weird that I can feel sweat in my armpits because it’s freezing cold in our home right now because the A/C is on and I have goosebumps from being cold. But I am also sweating because I feel sick and anxious, re-living reading this fucker’s email back to me. I still can’t figure out how he thought it was ok to respond with the words he chose, after I so carefully prefaced my email to him. I used the same exact preface and email to both of these people. And one responded very simply and kindly and humanely even. And the other one. Jesus Fucking Christ. I have to tell you that I will NOT share his exact words with you listeners. NOT because I don’t want to air his fucking dirty laundry, because I fucking should. This guy should be OUTED. I’m not going to share them because I can’t stomach even READING them again and I sure as shit wouldn’t be able to write them down in this episode script, then read them ALOUD. NO FUCKING WAY. What I WILL do though is give you the gist of what he said. And then I WILL share with you – maybe only in part – what I responded to him. And the only reason I might not share ALL of what I wrote back is because I want to protect NOT HIM, but maybe other people in his life. That’s all I’m going to explain about THAT. Okay, so what did this fucker write back that’s got me so PISSED? I literally have to get up and pace around for a minute now. My hands are shaking. Hang on. Okay I”m back and I’m not really any calmer. And I’m noticing my handwriting is ANGRY, too – it’s a little bit messy and darker than my handwriting on the other pages because I’m writing so fast to get this story out of my body and my brain. Shit. Okay, here it goes. This FUCKER said something to the effect that he had good memories about the first half of our relationship. And then. And THEN, he proceeded to share very GRAPHIC and EXPLICIT memories of our time together. Shit that I had NEVER thought about – I had no fucking reason to ever think about. Shit that he wrote to me about – that he thought to write to me about and that he actually wrote to me about, ESPECIALLY after I shared this partial scrip about him in Season 1, Episode #8 of my podcast, called “Having a Baby DIY-Style”. Show Notes: “Here’s a riddle for you. A woman has been divorced for 21 years. She has an 11-year-old daughter. Who is the daughter’s father? Tune into this episode for the answer to this riddle – the story about my daughter and me. And it’s clearly not as the old nursery rhyme goes: ‘First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage. Hah!’” Then I wrote: “Script(s) referring to [insert character in story]: “Then comes getting engaged again a few years later [after my divorce] at 37. Then comes complaining to my new therapist about my fiance: my therapist – and this is for real! – said, ‘Honey, maybe this is just as good as it gets.’ What the fuck?? Then comes trying a little longer with my fiance – my fiance who I literally run circles around in every aspect of life – until I just can’t any more. THe comes kicking out the fiance after 13 months in the relationship and I consider this a success because I was with my ex-husband for 13 YEARS wishing he’d be someone else and THIS time I’d only wasted 13 MONTHS of my life wishing my finance was someone else.” HARSH words, I know this, listeners. I know. My thoughts and memories are BRUTAL. I get it. And this is why my attorney friend was absolutely right to advise me to reach out ahead of my podcast launch, to get ahead of any backlash and any upset from any of my three past relationships. And what the FUCKING FUCK was this FUCKER thinking?? How did this fucker arrive at – AFTER reading what I said and thought about him – how did this FUCKER arrive at REMINESCING. I want you all to know I am fucking sweating again. I had to get up and pacer around and I want to PUNCH his fucking face. I imagine myself in the boxing ring with gloves on and perfect boxer form, boxing gloves on – one hand protecting my face and the other one throwing an expert punch in his FUCKING face in slow motion, turning to the side and blood coming out of his nose. I know. I’m not proud to admit this. This is embarrassing and against my nature, to have good intentions and to be kind to others. But this fucker fucked with the wrong person. This fucker responded with the WRONG words to this person. This fucker. This is is what I responded to this fucker. But WAIT! There is MORE! “How could there be any more?”, you listeners might want to know. Well, I’ll tell you how there could be more because you can’t make this shit up. I’m just RELAYING to you what actually HAPPENED. Last week. In 2021. THIS happened: the fucker actually ALSO wrote – also FUCKING WROTE – that he wondered if I was trying to RE-KINDLE something. RE-FUCKING-KINDLE something. What the ever-fucking fuck??? I am so worked up right now