I remember when sex seemed like the border between childhood and becoming an adult, shrouded in mystery and myth, perhaps wonderful and exciting but also dangerous and distasteful.  Information was scant in my middle-America 1950’s childhood, but my mother managed to pre-empt more unreliable sources by explaining the basic “facts of life” in mildly appalling clinical terms.  Mom!  Stop!

That, together with the diagrams of shedding uterine linings in the film that served as sex education for us sixth-grade girls, didn’t make the reproductive process sound like much fun, let alone the monthly travails of pads and mess and embarrassment.

I don’t remember anyone mentioning how wonderful flesh-on-flesh could be, how perfectly right the experience of intimate and gentle human touch–but what a fortunate discovery that eventually was! In a world of potential violence and disrespect, I was lucky.

My “coming of age” coincided with the summer of love, the generation gap, the antiwar movement, civil rights and women’s liberation.  Rules and expectations, including prohibitions around sex, changed dramatically.  Despite the new freedoms and joys of sexual access, the practical considerations of reproductive health and pregnancy (for heterosexuals particularly) did not magically disappear.  The sexual revolution looked different for men and women.

Information and access to contraception, especially the pill, was critical.  The Boston Women’s Health Collective produced “Our Bodies, Ourselves”, the bound newsprint bible that detailed anatomy, sexuality, conception and contraception options, abortion (still illegal), sexually-transmitted infections and related conditions.  Sometimes you had to wonder if the sex were worth the consequences, which seemed to fall mostly to women. As they always had. And still do.

Medical information was not routinely provided by the male-dominated medical profession.  The women’s clinics where I volunteered took time to help women understand their health issues and many of the staff went on to become medical professionals, as did I.  We shared the explicit goal of improving women’s autonomy and health.  Over the past fifty years, much has improved.  Women have generally had more life choices and become more accomplished and powerful in ways previous generations could only imagine.  We rejoiced when Roe v Wade finally made abortion legal, and it is an ongoing agony to see the destruction of that right in the U.S. today.  Yesterday, today and tomorrow, women’s reproductive health in all its manifestations remains fundamental.

Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll! It’s all happening again. Right now! It’s the ultimate do-over.  Okay, the sex is likely not the same.  The drugs aren’t, likely, the same.  The Rock & Roll, likely, but may be is, or not, the same.  That is, if you still listen to your favorite golden oldies, dare I say exclusively.

But it’s a definite re-do people.  Or call it a re-boot.  It’s Chicago again.

And, I for one am thrilled. The context is different but also the same. We’re fighting for freedom, equality, and yes stop the war (feel free to choose which one).  I couldn’t say it any better than my beloved artist India Arie.

Please listen to the lyrics of her song ‘What if’.

 

Who knows.  We may live through the shattering of every possible U.S. glass ceiling.

Jessie’s Earrings

It’s sweet how a chance word can evoke a flood of memories.

My mother Jessie is gone more than 20 years and I think of her I often.  But after talking to a friend about the current rage for tattooing and body piercing I thought of a habit of Jessie’s I’d forgotten.

She didn’t have a lot of jewelry and was the furthest thing from a clothes horse,  but she almost always wore earrings.   Her ears weren’t pierced and so she wore earrings that screwed or clipped on.

However as a teenager I  wanted to get mine pierced.  For some reason she forbade it,  and altho she and I battled over many things in those years,  on the pierced ears fight I backed down.  I guess it wasn’t that important to me,  but once I was no longer under her roof I did have mine pierced.

But as I knew from the time I wore screw-on and clip-on earrings myself,  they can pinch after you wear them for several hours.   And I now remember a gesture of my mother’s I found endearing.  She’d raise her hands to her ears,  pull off both earrings,  and massage her earlobes.

And now how I wish I could watch Jessie pull off those earrings just one more time!

(For more about Jessie see My Game Mother,  Fluffy and the Alligator Shoes,   Elbow Grease,  The Dinner Party,  Art Imitates Life,  Still Life,  Jessie’s 79th, and  Moonlight Sonata)

– Dana Susan Lehrman

I don’t know if I ever would’ve gotten a tattoo if my daughter hadn’t made us appointments with her favorite artist. I agreed to do it, but didn’t know what to choose. I went back and forth between some ideas (Hawaiian sunset! Lavender roses!), but finally decided on a bluebird of happiness. At the time, my sister was very near the end of her life and I wanted something beautiful and uplifting I could look at every day. And so it came to pass that I got a very optimistic looking bluebird on my midsection, right across from my appendectomy scar (still visible from when I got it at age six!). This was in early 2015. Painful? Yes, it was. But it’s also lived up to my expectations.I don’t know why people get tattoos in places they cannot see themselves without a mirror or serious contortions.

A few years ago now, after my husband was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment and I was struggling to deal with the changes in my life, I got my second tattoo–this time a reminder of what I needed to remember (notice the forget-me-nots) to do when I got frustrated or upset.

A few weeks ago, I drove past the place where I got my second tattoo and saw a “walk-ins welcome” sign. On impulse, I made a U-turn and went inside. Again, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but had time to think about it. What I ended up getting has historical and religious significance: the Hamsa Hand.

Google says: “The Hamsa Hand is a universal sign of protection, power, and strength that dates back to ancient Mesopotamia. Known as the Hand of Fatima in Islam and the Hand of Miriam in Judaism, it’s believed to protect against the evil eye and all negative energies.”

And: “Beyond its protective qualities, the Hamsa is also a symbol of peace and blessings. It’s often associated with the idea of bringing its owner happiness, luck, health, and good fortune. For many, a Hamsa tattoo is not just a protective talisman but also a symbol of hope and a source of positive energy and blessings.”

I figured: what could it hurt? (I didn’t mean literally, but still). Who doesn’t want to protect themselves from negative energies, while attaining good luck and happiness? And a dose of hope, positive energy and blessings–all for the reasonable price of a little tattoo? I was all in.

There’s no way I can keep up with my daughter, pictured here. But I’m delighted with my ink. At this point, I won’t say I’m done with tattoos, but the ones I have carry great significance and I do look at and think about them every day.

Breathe, seek happiness and positive energy, count my blessings–these things are more than skin deep.

*The variety in skin tones here is not accurate. I cannot account for the vagaries of cell phone photography

In the early 1970s, I landed back in San Francisco. For three years, me, my partner and her two children had been living a gypsy life, traveling from one collective household to another, from San Francisco to the Colorado Rockies, to western Massachusetts and finally, back to San Francisco. Read all about it in The Kitchen.

During all that meandering, we retained a few tribal rituals from the late ’60s.

One of those rituals revolved around the summer solstice and its many implications. To celebrate the awesome power of the sun on the longest day of the year, we few, we tribal few, would sit around the kitchen table with a cork, a needle, a burning candle, and a bottle of tequila.

Clutching a solstice token of our choice — a post, a ring, or a stud — we would sit in the throne (a liberated straight-back chair) and our brother in song, stage, and spiel would take a belt of tequila, pass it to the initiate who slugged a shot, passed the needle through the candle, placed the cork behind the ear lobe, and, with a wolfen growl, pierced the earlobe of the solstice celebrant, and inserted the post, ring, or stud through the newly pierced lobe.

Despite our meanderings, the tribe gathered each solstice to drink tequila and take another shot to the ear. Solstice by solstice, my array of posts, rings, and a gold hoop with the foot bone of a fox climbed up the gristle of my ear in a five-pierced arc.

Time passed. Year by year, the holes closed and my willingness to have the holes re-opened diminished. Finally, although the molten core of resistance, rebellion, and love continued to burn, the solstice days relaxed into a toast with a joint and a glass of wine. And that is the story of my piercings.

# # #

A local brewery named itself “Bad Tattoo”, a good description of far too many skin decorations.
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Saturday Night at the Big Y

When the lights went out in New York during the great northeast blackout of 1965,  I was browsing with a friend at Georg Jensen,  an upscale Madison Avenue shop.   All us shoppers held hands,  and in single file we groped our way out to the dark street.  (See Aunt Miriam, Diva)

And some years later I was in a movie theater when suddenly I smelled smoke.  We were told to evacuate and we all hurried out post-haste.  And more than once at Jane Addams High School in the Bronx where I taught for many years the principal ordered the building evacuated after a bomb threat .  (For more about Jane Addams see The Diary of a Young Girl,  Magazines for the Principal,  The Parking Lot Seniority List,  and Educator of the Year; Remembering Milton)

Then incredibly in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New York,   we were ordered to leave our apartment building after the basement was flooded knocking out the gas and electricity. (See Cooking with Gas)

And recently I was ordered to evacuate a building once again.

We were expecting friends for Sunday brunch in the country and I planned to shop for what I needed on Saturday.  But the weather was glorious that day,  and knowing our local Big Y supermarket is open every night until 10,  I procrastinated my shopping and didn’t leave for the supermarket until after 6.

All started out well – I got a parking space in the Big Y lot near the shopping cart station,  I remembered to bring my shopping list,  and even remembered to bring my reusable bags.  (Unfortunately I did forget an umbrella.)

Once in the store I walked up and down the aisles filling my cart and crossing items off my list.  But just as I got to the checkout line,  I heard the alarm and then the announcement.

“Attention shoppers!   Leave the store immediately!  The fire alarm has sounded and although there is no smoke or evidence of fire,  according to Fire Department protocol the building must be evacuated.”

And so I abandoned my shopping cart,  and with hundreds of my fellow shoppers I headed for the exits . Then once in the parking lot I found myself in a torrential rainstorm –  with no umbrella.

Very wet,  and with none of the groceries I’d gone for,  I drove home.   Later I called the Big Y to ask what had happened,  and was told fortunately it had been a false alarm.  Early the next morning I went back with my shopping list.

Although stressful to some degree,  and certainly inconvenient,   all my evacuations were safe and relatively orderly.

But what nerve to evacuate the Big Y on a Saturday night when I had guests coming for bagels and lox on Sunday morning!

– Dana Susan Lehrman

 In San Francisco in the early 90’s it seemed like everyone from lawyers to street punks was getting pierced and tattooed.   "Body Modification" was the buzzword with tattoo and piercing shops as ubiquitous as Starbucks.   Above a popular sex club sat a large school to train would be piercers.
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