Of What We Are Made

When I left Saginaw last, in August 1987, I had one ambition: I wanted to be a lesbian and a feminist in a community of lesbians and feminists. I fulfilled that ambition.

Now, twenty-six years later, as I contemplate leaving Saginaw again, I am struck by a few things. First, while I think of myself as a wildly different person today in 2016 than I was in 1987, I can see characteristics that I carry with me over time. Two are striking to me now. They are not flattering. First, I am competitive, and I despise losing. I recognize these feelings from throughout my childhood and the fact that I have few skills to really manage the competitive drive and the profound hatred of losing. I recognize that I cope with it primarily by avoiding competitive environments; I want to compete with no one but myself. Moreover, I recognize the competitive drive in my grandmother. In spite of the cognitive challenges that she faces, the decline in mental acuity, when I brought a game, Tenzi, to play with her, she lit up. She became especially animated when she won the first game and then when she beat me roundly, four out of five. I could see and understand the competitive drive, the commitment to winning. My grandma is a good sport; I do not want to suggest she is a sore loser, but she prefers to win. She wants to be a winner. I am the same way.

Second, I recognize how much I hate weakness. My own and others. I think that this intersects with the competitiveness, but I do not fully understand those connections. I just know that I hate weakness. I recoil from it. I do not want it to be around me. I despise even a whiff of weakness.

What I have learned about myself, what feels new over the past twenty-six years, is that I actually am willing to put something else in the world over my own well-being.

If you had asked me would I put another life before my own twenty-six years ago, I would have said no. I recognized, even at seventeen, my own self-centered ness. I am not sure that it actually has abated with the passing of adolescence. Somehow, though, in the past twenty-six years, I developed a capacity to put something else before me, to put the life of a dog, specifically saving the life of a dog, over my own interests in the world. I never thought that would be an attribute in my make up.

When we first came to Saginaw, I thought that I was taking these actions on principle, that I was standing on principle on behalf of Tibe. That action I would expect of me, but not an action of saving a dog, of putting his life over my own. I am not sure that this is an attribute I want. Intellectually, I prefer principles to the messiness of human connections.

I am not sure what to make of these new understandings of my interiority. I am not sure that I have isolated attributes that are positive; I think I am describing more of what is than anything else. That is, this is how things are, neither good nor bad, neither positive nor negative. Still I know, every night I ham happy when Tibe is sleeping next to me, on the bed, at the foot of the bed. Every night and every morning, he is there. And now I know how far I am willing to go when threatened, when my dog is threatened.

Maybe our actions are required only by how much I despise weakness. To return Tibe, to put him down, would have been a show of weakness. To leave, defiant, willful, was a show of strength. The loss at the Animal Control hearing was devastating to that competitive part of me. It felt like a terrible showing of weakness, of being unable to protect and defend our family. Strength–and vengeance–both take time, however. Time I have, and both strength and vengeance will be mine.

Tibe sleeps at my feet. I am scheming for the second escape from Saginaw and what ambitions I will carry with me. Somehow, competitiveness and strength will figure into the future, as will my beautiful crew of animals, each strong and gentle, each loved and loving, each fierce and kind. The bigots who attack us underestimate of what we are made. Their actions make us stronger, feed our hunger for vengeance. What are we made of? Something competitive. Something that takes hatred and turns it into strength. Something that turns injustice into power. We are made of soft fur, hard nails, perpetual slobber, and a spirit that demands righteousness and justice. Do not underestimate our strength, do no underestimate our memory, how we hold to the idea of vengeance. Do not underestimate of what we are made.