Some Say…

I watched Oppenheimer last week and found it to be a very good movie. Over the years I’ve read a lot about the Manhattan Project. I grew up when the possibility of nuclear war seemed imminent. I remember only too well hiding under my desk in atomic bomb drills at my elementary school. We were all terrified of atomic war in the 1950s and early 60s, particularly during the Cuban missile crisis.

A couple of days after seeing Oppenheimer, I went with Cathy to see Barbie because, well, why not? I was not prepared for how good it was. I cried, like, a lot. I cried during America Ferrera’s monologue about the life of women. I’ve only been Paula for ten years, but I have already experienced a lot of what she described. But that wasn’t the only reason I cried.

Ten years into my life as Paula, I have come to feel comfortable in my own skin, though not always in the world I inhabit. I do not claim a cisgender experience. I do not see the world in 28-day cycles. I see it as linear. I do not have ovaries or a uterus. I have lots of estrogen and no testosterone, both of which feel right, and I also love that the world receives me as a woman. That is important to me, and it is true 99.9 percent of the time, which is very much  a blessing. But I have no illusions. I come from the borderlands between genders, from the liminal space between male and female.

I do not describe myself as non-binary because I am not. I am a transgender woman. Still, I do not feel like I belong in Barbie Land, though I give a big nod to the producers for including a transwoman as one of the Barbies. I also do not belong in the short-lived Kendom, inspired by Ken’s brief trip into the world of the patriarchy. I do not belong in either fantasy land.

Increasingly, I also do not feel like I belong in America. Given what happened to Anheuser Busch after their support of Dylan Mulvaney, I feel vulnerable. Corporate speaking engagements have dried up alarmingly quickly. Companies are afraid of having a transgender speaker. With 78 anti-trans bills signed into law this year, there are now 20 states in which it can be dangerous for me to travel. All of that was also on my mind as I cried through Barbie.

I also cried because of what Cathy and my daughters, daughter-in-law and granddaughters have gone through, living in a patriarchal system in which they do not even realize how heavy their handcuffs are. I know how heavy they are. I lived for six decades without them.

I watched both films while I am also watching Dickinson, the AppleTV+ show about the life of Emily Dickinson. The show ran for three seasons and thirty episodes between 2019 and 2021. In my opinion, it is a superb show, especially after the first few episodes. It takes a while to get accustomed to the somewhat jarring juxtaposition between 19th century New England and the show’s contemporary music score, as well as more than handful of current cultural colloquialisms. But give it time, it works.

There is a point in season two in which Sue, Emily’s sister-in-law, and according to many scholars, her life-long romantic interest, says to Emily, “You don’t want fame. You crave meaning. You crave beauty. You crave love.” That was when I cried hard in Dickinson.

Good storytelling brings tears, and laughter, and all manner of emotions. I cried all the way through Ted Lasso. I imagine you did too. Given how much the show runners were affected by James Hollis’s The Middle Passage, no surprise there.

People sometimes say, “You live life with too much drama.” My response is that maybe they don’t live with enough drama. Life, this short pause between two great mysteries, is complex, awful, wonderful, and profoundly difficult. I accept all the feelings that file in through the front door, bringing their bags with them, sometimes for an extended stay. They tell me I am alive, and making the most of my time on earth.

Life is peaks and valleys and long periods on the open plains. Sometimes bright sunshine, sometimes shadows and storms. Periods of elation followed by pensiveness, followed by the worst, boredom. I need to be busy. So did my father, and his father before him. So do Jonathan and Jana. Jael is more like Cathy, enjoying times of quiet solitude.

I want my work to be meaningful. If you believe the call toward authenticity is sacred, and holy, and for the greater good, you also believe in the importance of good work.

Oppenheimer’s legacy is complicated. Was his work good? Given the line he spoke to Einstein in the last scene of the movie, it is obvious he asked the same question.

Emily Dickinson was virtually unknown during her life. Most of her poems were not published until well after her death. Her legacy was her poems, and they endure. All things being equal, I’d rather leave a legacy of poems than a legacy that, in the wrong hands, could spell the end of the species.

How will people see the journey of a transgender pastor a century from now? Will anyone care? Will the fight for LGBTQ+ rights be seen as laudable, or will the conservative side have won, or will the controversy surrounding it be so far in the past that no one pays any attention? Who knows?

I do not care about a legacy. I care about living as authentically as I am able, given my flaws and such. I hope my children and grandchildren remember me fondly, when their lives slow down enough to allow them to remember the past at all.

I’ve only memorized two poems from Emily Dickinson. I memorized the first about a quarter of a century ago:

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.