Noisy Bra

Okay, I admit, since the biopsy, I have been wearing my most comfortable bra like some kind of durable shield against trauma and breast-related ow-ies. But, finally, it was just disgusting. A bra is not made to be worn for twelve days straight. Some of which involved bleeding.

So, I’ve been going through my regular rotation of regular bras again and, today, I am wearing one that makes noises. I don’t remember it ever making noises before, though, so… I don’t know. But it creaks and groans when I stand up or sit down, like a bridge bearing enormous weight might scream as iron strains against iron.

I’m kind of curious/embarrassed to know if anyone else has noticed. But, seriously, how could they not? And what is making the noises? Is it the boning rubbing against the cloth? Is it about to give way? is it going to hurt when it gives way?

I once, when I first started working here, was standing in the production manager’s office in front of the big glass window and there was a mighty pop and then I felt a pain right under my boob. I looked down, and then put my hand where the pain was, and I was bleeding. I thought, “My god, I’ve been shot by a sniper, at work. How weird is that? Do those fools not know Planned Parenthood isn’t in this building anymore?”

But then I didn’t see a bullet hole in the window.

And I realized that the underwire on my bra had snapped and I hadn’t been shot so much as stabbed.

I guess I’m just a little fearful about whether we’re about to replicate that with this noisy thing.

WTF, Mom?

My mom called last night to chat and she announced that she and my dad have all kinds of plans for what we’re going to do while they’re here and how it’s her goal to get me up and cooking as quickly as possible. Because “you will be fine.”

I need my parents, my mom especially, here for two reasons–to drive me home from the procedure and to help me tend the wound if/when it’s in an awkward spot. I don’t need firm reassurance or to be rehabbed. Plus, the Butcher is a good cook, he just doesn’t do it very often.

I’m trying to be patient, because I’m sure they’re freaking the fuck out in their own ways, but my dad is the bossy one. My mom is the one who’s kind and understanding. I can’t live in a world where the poles have flipped.

Living Ahistorically

Last night, Nashville had a community meeting about whether Ferguson could happen here. Over at Pith, I already went into how what was a weird question, because it has happened here.

But this morning on my walk, I thought of a better way to illustrate the problem. We live in a city where white people ask a question that rests on an unspoken question, “Do we have that kind of despair over racial inequity here?”

We live in a city where people my age have living parents who were banned from whole swathes of the city, who were beaten and poisoned and arrested for trying to make that different. Those people my age are trying to raise children in this city–a city that would treat their parents that way.

The people who treated their parents that way, some of them, are still alive. Their children and grandchildren still live here.

And yet, it always seems like we want to move ahead as if the past doesn’t weigh on us. At least, some of the past. We pick the weights we want to bear and it seems like Nashville’s long history of what we do to black people is a weight most white people are constantly surprised to find still exists.