Author: Lauren

I'm a reader, over-thinker, idealistic cynic, and hopeless knowledge seeker living in the wilds of Seattle, Washington. I write, but am not sure I'm a writer yet. I'm blind. I was an activist in my former life for the LGBTQIA etc community and still love reading about and discussing sexuality, queer issues, and living an out and authentic life... plus the constraints our society places on allowing us to exercise that right. I write about what it's like having a disability (I'm blind, you dig?), things I love about Seattle, and my hopeless addiction to all things culinary. Also, I'm on the bus a lot, so I write about that too.

Things have been a bit heavy around the blog lately. I feel heavy, and therefore my writing is heavy, and therefore my writing is more scarce than I’d like it to be. Tonight, I thought I’d attempt to sit with some bright spots and quantify them for a little change, instead of concentrating on so much dark.

My favorite restaurant right now in the Twin Cities is Nightingale, and you can walk there from my house in a brisk 15 minutes. There are lots of small plates, my favorite being the pickle plate. But, they also have fantastic bruschetta, grilled bread with seasonal toppings like squash and kale and mushrooms, cut in half for sharing. Their olives are ridiculous, (that is a technical foodie writer term). Their flavors often change, but right now they are smoked in olive oil, then infused with orange and lavender. Smoke and lavender are ethereal and mysterious, and two things I will almost always go for separately, and together I could eat them all day. I’ve gotten to go to Nightingale twice in the past week.

Today, my friend Kyla sent me an MP-3 file of a song with words about witch hazel, “bright yellow flowers blooming in the middle of winter time.” It was sung by a group and there was harmony, and one singer had an uncannily similar voice to another friend I’ve neglected for far too long, and then neglected longer because I felt bad for neglecting. I need to get back into group singing. I miss that connection with strangers. And, I need to reconnect with my friend. And to remember that flowers still bloom in winter.

A month or so ago, Arlie, who I know just loves being mentioned in this blog, compiled a zip file of Pacific Northwest song bird calls. Many of them are the same as Midwest song birds, or at least Minnesota song birds, since we are fortunate enough to be near lots of water. I finally got around to unzipping and listening today.

I have an incredibly obnoxious, drippy cold. I don’t say drippy hyperbolically, either. I was supposed to make sushi and hang out with a new friend tonight, and had to cancel because I was concerned about my cold contaminating everyone else’s meal. I felt terrible for flaking out, especially in the tentative early days of a new friendship, but just discovered that she emailed me back with understanding and compassion, and offered to drop off some sushi anyway.

Someone extremely important to me told me very gently the other day to not think of myself as unlovable or unworthy of love based on not having my life at all together. They know who they are. Thank you.

People are so kind, and the world right now seems so fragile, and I must hold onto that kindness, extend it, and return it, over and over. It is the way I live the most in the present, the way I live best.

I am afraid.

I’ve grown up being told by those who don’t know me well how brave I am. I would like to throw water all over that idea right here and right now. I am afraid. I am uneasy, I am unsettled, I am restless, I am hanging on to shreds of sanity, I am afraid, I am afraid.

People on social media are fond of bringing up Trump’s fear-mongering tactics as one reason he has any supporters left at this point. The implication is that people are afraid of differences: immigrants, people of different religions, people with disabilities, queer folks. They are afraid of things like taxes, free education, universal health care. They are so afraid of being jerked out of their comfortable lives, and of having to look at something differently and change and adjust according to those differences. People who don’t want to deal with those things are afraid.

I’m afraid too.

I am afraid of a world where it is even more impossible for me to find a job without having my qualifications questioned because I am blind. I am afraid of living in a world where the current federal administration normalizes and even approves of harassment of minorities. Right now, I have to walk down the street while blind, while queer, while presenting as a woman, while vulnerable, while shaking, while crying, while minding my own business, while not asking for it, while not having a car or the opportunity to hide in one, while not having financial stability, while just trying to be a better person today than I was yesterday. I am afraid of a world where this will be even harder than it is now.

I am afraid of a world where we will not go far enough to ensure good quality of life for everyone. And although it’s no secret who I will vote for, I am afraid she will not do enough. I am afraid that the smugness and righteousness I see all over Facebook, people’s moral highground, the cockiness and certainty everyone has about the outcome of this is misplaced. No one thought we would be here, and here we are. How can we possibly assume we know what will happen, let alone that it will be what we want?

I wager that the people who are so confident are those who live well-off lives, who do not live in fear for their safety or livelihood, who don’t have their life dependent on this fight. It’s easy to be smug when you’re comfortable. It’s easy to throw around stats when you own your home and are warm and well-fed and cuddled next to the “success” that America approves of. It’s easy to feel like you’re 100 percent right when you’re not afraid.

I am afraid.

Last night I dreamed about Seattle and woke up near tears. If I read this in another context, one where I hadn’t written it, I might have scoffed. I don’t generally hold any sentimentality about dreams, nor do I find mine, (or anyone else’s), particularly entertaining. And yet, I’ve been awake for several hours and still can’t shake the way I felt in that dream. I dreamed of a winter, though wet and gray with low-hanging skies, where I could still go outside every day. I could wait at a bus stop for 15 minutes without freezing the tips of my fingers. I could see life growing in January, a different kind than in summer, but life all the same. I could curl up for hours in my favorite tea shop, the pot warmed underneath by a tiny lit candle, the daylight waning outside.

I know I loved these things about Seattle when I was in Seattle, but I don’t know if I love them more now in the act of missing than I did when they were my reality. I wonder if the fact that I am still thinking of Seattle two and a half months later and missing it as fiercely as when I left is important, or if it’s just something I need to let go of.

When I first moved to Seattle, I met and talked with a disproportionate number of transplants from other parts of the country. I heard an overwhelming number of people say they were drawn to the West and wouldn’t ever leave. I assumed that this was largely due to the scenery and the mountains, and without a visual reminder of the climate, I would not be similarly drawn back if I left. But I have left, and it wasn’t the mountains at all. I don’t know what it is. I suppose it doesn’t much matter, all that matters is that I feel it and understand it deeply.

I wonder if there are places we all dream of returning to, and what percentage is just plain nostalgia and what percentage, if any, is actually worth paying attention to. Do you dream of places you’ve loved and lost, and wake with fierce yearning to return? And if you, too, are inexplicably but insistently called West, maybe I will meet you there someday.

This is my second time in Vermont. I traveled here for the first time five years ago to look at a grad school, (my grad school quest has been forever long and winding), and I stayed in a story-book New England town in southern Vermont called Brattleboro, which rests right up against the Connecticut River and, on the other side of that, New Hampshire. For that trip, I took Amtrak from South Station in Boston, a new experience for me, and one which I loved. To this day, I dearly wish Amtrak were cheaper.

I started this present Vermont journey in Brattleboro as well, and had a few moments of surprise as we wandered the small downtown. I remember five years ago, how I took a taxi to the grad school open house, spending a night among welcoming strangers, who chatted and ate junk food like it was summer camp. The next day, I took a bus back down the hill to the hotel I’d booked, then walked from that hotel to a coffee shop to the co-op and back. I ate that co-op dinner on the floor of my hotel room, my back against the bed and my feet stretched out, and I thought, as I would of many other cities I’ve visited, that I just might move there. The next morning, I bought coffee and walked to the Amtrak station, boarding my train to Springfield, and then back to Boston.

This may seem like a mundane story in the life of a wanderer, and yet, I remembered it with surprising clarity on my return this week. It was the last time that I traveled alone, making all the arrangements myself, managing my own independence. It was an exhilarating challenge to walk the streets of an unknown town all by myself, even a sleepy one like Brattleboro, even when I had to stop to ask for directions when my GPS got me completely lost. I made friends with the guy at the Amtrak station, who knew to look for me on my way back. That roasted portobello sandwich from the co-op looms in my memory not because it was delicious (though it was), but because it represented my freedom and the power I had over my life and my whims. I could do as I liked, independently, and I succeeded and survived.

Upon returning, I wondered how I’d done it. I felt a pang of nostalgia, of wishing for that person who made that trip happen, who took small risks and reaped a huge sense of accomplishment. I wondered if I could still find her after Seattle, after the closing of NILA, after moving back to Minneapolis and not immediately finding the joy I’d hoped for.

This time in Vermont, I visited another school, this one in Montpelier. Within the first half hour of the open house, I was tearing up and almost had to leave the room. I hadn’t been around writing students, prospective or otherwise, since my last residency at NILA. It was like coming home, and maybe you realize someone has been there rearranging furniture and leaving you a love letter, and even though it might look and smell a little different, it’s still home nonetheless. I felt sad and happy. I felt like this might be the perfect place to take new risks.

There’s something about Vermont that just feels good. It’s similar to how I feel in Seattle, breathing clean, soft air, feeling the sun pour liquid light over my head, walking up and down hills briskly enough to feel just a bit breathless. Like in Seattle, my legs feel strong and capable here. I am drawn to the feeling of state pride, of pride in the land and the food it provides and the mountains and the crisp air, a state of co-ops and a culture of community.

Risk and revelation is what I want. Community and connection, hope and healing, my heart and mind full of infinite possibility. That’s what travel does for me. That what this trip, in many ways, has done.

Exactly

I was just in Seattle for a week, gathering my strength.  It was as restorative as I had hoped. It was exactly, exactly what I needed.

 

I flew in early Friday morning, under a generous sun,, and spent a story book autumn day drinking chai, eating smoky kale and sweet potatoes, taking a nap which I never ever do, and going to a writers’ salon on Capital Hill.  I got to see many people from NILA.  I got to talk about writing without any qualifiers or worrying that I was boring my audience.  I basked in the support and love of my weird and wonderful writing community.

 

Practically perfect days followed the first practically perfect one.  We wandered around Pike Place Market.  I stocked up on tea and Rachel’s Ginger Beer.  We tried to go to three restaurants for a snack, and were run out of all three by the sheer gobs of tourists.  This, in itself, was so indicative of Pike Place on a sunny September Saturday that it too was practically perfect.

 

That night, I visited my old “Cookbook Club” meet up.  The theme was “Tom Douglas Recipes.” Tom Douglas is a chef in Seattle who owns a bunch of restaurants, though I’d never eaten at any of them.  I think I made a tomato soup of his once, which was delicious with the bite of celery seed, buttery croutons, and a few lashes of cream.  On the whole, though, a far more decadent tomato soup than I’d normally make.  I expected similarly decadent fare from the Tom Douglas potluck.

 

There was plenty of that, and also, there were peanut butter cookies.  Peanut butter sandwich cookies, rather, with a smooth Skippy peanut butter filling squashed in the middle.  It was like eating a peanut butter oatmeal cream pie.  It was like eating the idyllic childhood most of us didn’t have in reality, but may remember in nostalgia.

 

I needed to eat way more of these cookies than I dared politely justify at the potluck, and I had a copy of the cookbook the recipe came from, Douglas’s Dahlia Bakery Cookbook.  Incidentally, apparently, the recipe was so beloved by Nora Ephron that the cookies are called “The Nora Ephron” in the book.  Also, of course, they were ridiculous: using two kinds of peanut butter, Skippy and a crunchy natural type, requiring a long dough-chilling time, and calling for a “double-pan” baking method.  The recipe called for baking only eight cookies per sheet.  For a batch making two dozen cookie sandwiches, I’d technically need 12 cookie sheets unless I wanted to be constantly cooling and washing and reusing them.  As if.

 

Next best option, and clearly the only option in this scenario: go to the real live sugar-and-nostalgia-filled Dahlia Bakery before I left Seattle.  Which is why the last evening before I boarded my plane back to Minneapolis found Arlie and me speeding downtown in Seattle traffic to try to get to the bakery before it closed at 7 PM.  We hadn’t realized it was closing at 7 until approximately 6:13.

 

It was a nail biting car ride.  Downtown traffic in Seattle is terrible most times, parking even worse, but we were being downright cocky thinking we could make it in time during rush hour.  And yet, somehow, we only encountered a few snarls, managed to park (somewhat illegally) close to the bakery, ducked in and snagged a dozen Nora Ephron-approved peanut buttery goodness and get back to the car by something like 6:47.  Someone must have really understood my feelings about those cookies.

 

Honestly, there were some non-practically perfect points in Seattle, and during the writing conference I attended in the California high desert during the same trip.  Most of these moments involved the usual financial anxiety, unemployment panic, school decision angst.  Things haven’t been picnicky for me lately.  And yet, I have to think that as long as I have people in my life who are willing to have those ridiculous adventures with me, to screech through traffic just before closing time simply for a cookie, to react to silly spontaneity with open-minded enthusiasm, then I’ll always have incentive to push through the hard shit.  If there’s a cookie on the other side, count me all in. It’s exactly, exactly what I need.

 

How about a good, old-fashioned rant today.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about accommodations, and how we accommodate people with disabilities, (or don’t). The ADA has given us a term for this, “reasonable accommodations.” Everybody says these words like we all know what they are, but it’s really just an easy buzz wordy way to make black and white something that, by its very nature, is always going to be gray.

I’d like to talk, specifically, about the reactions of people who hear about the “reasonable accommodations” someone with a disability might receive. When, on the rare, rare occasion that I’m given some printed text in an alternate format, whether it’s Braille or a Word document or an audio file, I’m thankful for the consideration that has been given to me and my situation. I will usually thank the person responsible, and mean it sincerely.

However, if someone else finds out about the alternate format, they often will break into a gush about how fantastic that is, and how nice they were to provide an accommodation, etc etc. And, don’t get me wrong, it is incredibly thoughtful, and I appreciate that, but it is only particularly noteworthy because of how rarely it happens.

I could count on a few fingers the times I have not had to ask and advocate for my own accommodations. Most people have know idea what accommodations are, and how to define “reasonable.” I tend to say that, for a blind person, a reasonable accommodation is whatever is comparable to what a sighted person receives in a given situation. This is most important, for me, where text is concerned. If someone sighted has access to identifying text, I should too. It is not “nice” for someone to do so. It is the law. It’s not “nice” when it’s done for sighted people, either, and it would be silly for someone to say so.

Since most of the reasonable accommodation giving centers around employment, and whether or not a requested accommodation is, indeed, reasonable, I’ll mention, too, that I’m sick of the way we talk about people with disabilities finding and sustaining work. Often when I have a job, I feel enormous pressure to be constantly positive about it, because someone was so “nice” and “took the risk” of hiring me. And often, an employer will expect so little from a blind employee, and be all too quick to say, “Well, it just wasn’t working out. They just couldn’t perform the essential functions of the job.” (In case you were wondering, “essential functions” is another ADA phrase which employers love and I loathe.

Blind people, overwhelmingly, are not unable to perform the “essential functions” because they don’t have the skills to do the work. They are unable to perform the functions because they are not given adequate, reasonable accommodations. Can you imagine if a sighted person didn’t have something as simple as an agenda for a team meeting in a format that they could read? What if a whole population of sighted people were continually not given agendas? When someone comes to me and apologizes for not getting printed materials to me in a manner in which I can read them, my expected response is supposed to be: “Oh it’s ok. I know you’re busy. … Yes don’t worry, you have a lot to do.” Certainly, everyone has a lot to do. But what if blind people had permission to say something like, “I understand you’re busy, but not having the same materials as everyone else compromises my job performance and my job security in turn. How can I work with you to ensure I get the materials in advance next time? And how can we work together to get me the materials for today as soon as possible?”

I’m sure many of you, looking at the above, diplomatic statements, are thinking: “Say it! You go girl!” And certainly, I wish we as blind people could all feel empowered and confident enough to say these things. But even if we’re not told by individuals, we’re told by society that we should simply be grateful to have a job. If we’re not making adequate money, or don’t have full materials, we should just be grateful someone took the risk when our skills are inferior to others. We need a shift far greater than “reasonable accommodations”, which only sounds good to a certain point. It needs to be practiced, to be demanded, and to be honored without repercussions. Of course, there will be blind people (just like sighted people), who will turn out not to have sufficient skills to do a particular job. They may have to seek other employment. But blind people should be given everything comparable to what a sighted person receives, so that there will be no question about why it didn’t work out.

I’m sitting on the porch of my childhood home, or at least the home that we moved into when I was thirteen, just a few blocks from my then middle school, which now, as far as I can remember, no longer exists. The house sits a block off a main avenue, and moving in at 13, it was the first time I’d lived somewhere where I could walk to restaurants with my friends: McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, a snowcone truck, a coffee bar where I drank a few hot ciders in the fall. I remember feeling grown-up, even though I never walked anywhere by myself. But the fact that my friends and I had the freedom to get cookie dough blizzards without our parents, was novel and exciting and, in a way, addicting. Today, I still feel that same thrill when I go somewhere new, and especially when it involves ice cream.

Last September, I wrote about what summer felt like in 2015. 2016 summer has been a tapestry of new and old places: Lopez Island over Memorial Day, where we read books and watched movies and dared to be as lazy as we possibly could; a cold, rainy June day on Whidbey Island with my parents, where I felt the strange realization that I would never get my degree there all over again; fourth of July in Seattle, revisiting Slate Coffee Bar and flying high and crashing on caffeine. This summer, I rode a tandem bike up and down the main drag of my neighborhood in the Fremont Solstice Parade, wearing nothing but a jingly bellydance belt and sandals. It amazed me how quickly our varied, beautiful bodies became normal, and how no one hurried to dress at the end. This summer, I sat on a blanket under a generous sun, eating blueberries and listening to Neko Case sing one of my favorite songs from the past few years, radiating awe and happiness to my core. This summer, I worked from home on long afternoons and canned cherry butter and pickled garlic scapes and wondered what I’d be at this time next year. This summer I spent two nights in an author-themed hotel on the Oregon Coast, reading in a top-floor library with spiced wine in my belly and a fire at my feet. This summer felt like adventure, felt like I could do things, had permission and desire and just barely enough money to do a little living. This summer, I ate way too many thin-crisp fries at Brouwer’s, and drank way too much beer, and fell in love with blackberries, again.

This summer I left Seattle. I cried and questioned and dragged my feet, and yet, in the end, I ultimately left. This summer, I made another life-changing decision, and will spend the time until next summer seeing how it plays out.

What did this summer feel like for you?

This week, you are traveling east, back to a place you left for hopes of a better one, which, whether you found it or not, (and you’re not sure, but you think so), you are leaving anyway. Your stoicism looks good except for the cracks, the tremble in your chin, and the fact that you have trouble swallowing. You say, “See you later!” instead of “good-bye”, and hope noone knows your sadness.

The states between the two stretch wide and press close, somehow at the same time. You want everything: to get there, to go back, to have the drive go on forever so you never have to choose. Miles of mountains and no water, and you try to picture how it would be to live here. To raise a family in a state that makes you feel so small.

And then you arrive, and you’re in another new apartment, trying to find some joy, and if not joy, comfort, and if not comfort, resignation. Instead, you feel a sense of loss, of the person you were when you left, only a year and a half ago. Maybe now you are better, or at least maybe now you know more, but you are surprised to miss who you were, or who you think you were, and you are dismayed that you can’t find your old self again in the streets and the people and the places that dared continue in your absence.

You miss the sound of the boats that floats to you on the breeze. You miss the distant seagulls, the mist, the blessedly cool cradle of night. How the city grows wild, how you always wondered idly if someday no one would be able to hold back the blackberry brambles and the mulch and the heavy-hanging branches. You miss the idea of the closeness of the coast, you miss that “going to the beach” actually might mean a beach, sand and bracing salty water and a tide. And not a lake.

But you’re here now. Comfort or not, you’re here now. You dig through the boxes for the things that will make it feel like home, the candles and the soft blankets and the teakettle and the spices.

Everyone says, “Give it time.” You wonder how much time you should give it. You are often impatient. You often want things you can’t have, so you pretend you don’t want them, because it’s easier that way. Or that’s what you’ve been telling yourself, anyway.

Maybe, hopefully, you will find your feet here again. The worst that could happen is you don’t, and so you’ll just keep moving. You try to remind yourself that this won’t mean you’ve failed, that you’re just living, the best way you know how.

As much as you thrive on discomfort, on the high, on the adrenaline of new challenges, this seems like an old challenge you know all too well. So you do what you’ve done, what you know, what you must: you pour the tea. You pull the chair to the table. You picture your shadow, there with you, offering comfort, keeping you from being alone. You settle in for a long night.

We are all scattered in the plains and the hills.
Visits, all tiny postcards of life
I fold us together a sunset picnic
so you can watch the night birds on the Sound
You buy me coffee while I write our lives entwined.
We climb what there is to climb.
You bring me lavender in escaping bundles.
I sleep some of my best nights under your watch.
Whenever I leave I am welcomed back
and I need to remember, re remember, re re remember
how I’ve been given the precious gift of so many homes.
We kicked around tourist towns
you talked about architecture, I pulled you to the ferry deck
and breathed until the salt air shocked my lungs alive.
You showed me your city
I fell in love and hauled everything across the country
only to haul it back.
Who knows what is right forever
I can only guess what is right right now.
You hold my hand when we’re walking
You make jam with me in a cramped kitchen
You painted my toenails, once, and I wore flip flops for a week.
You showed me the softness of your life
I reveled in it all.
I’m always looking back while walking forward
and you tell me you’ll love me whereever I decide to go.

She said, “I hope this is ok to tell you. The reason I decided to sit on the board of the Lighthouse for the Blind is because I needed to be hit over the head, again and again, with the knowledge that blind people can and do have better skills than I do. That, as an individual, I am not a sighted person talking to a blind person. I am a professional talking to a professional.”

I sat quietly in my straight-backed desk chair, listening to her speak, though what I really wanted to do was shout, “yes!” and “thank you!” and “You win!”

No person, no “professional”, had ever talked to me like this before, with such candid admission of prejudice, of having thought that we, blind and sighted, were not equals, that we couldn’t be equals based purely on what one of us had and what one of us did not have.

People don’t want to tell me this. I see it all the time. I see prejudice around me, from people who are basically kind, from people who would unequivocally deny their prejudice to my face and then, in the same conversation, remind me what an inspiration I am. They don’t see that in that basically “nice” sentiment lies the assumption that I should not be as independent as I am, that I should not be capable, and that the act of doing something as mundane as get out of bed and get to work makes me inspiring to someone who believes, no matter how innocently, that they are more capable than I will ever be. That it’s an inspiration that I’m even trying to measure up to them.

People are always telling me they don’t “see” my blindness. They don’t think about it. They don’t make assumptions based on it. But based on their actions, I know they do and that’s ok; what’s irksome is to be told that they’re not.

Finally, finally, in that closed office, where we could be real, someone was telling me this, what I’d always known and what no one had quite had the nerve to tell me before. That sighted people do, in fact, dismiss blind people’s skills and talents because they are blind. That sighted people do have lower expectations for blind people, because they’re just amazed that we can dress ourselves and make an omelet. Finally, somebody had enough respect for me to tell me, and also to tell me she was wrong.

The Lighthouse for the Blind is an organization in Seattle (with chapters elsewhere, too) which employs blind people who have skills working with hardware, tools, and machinery. All things that I know nothing about. All things that awe me slightly when I see someone who knows a lot about them. I say, “I could never do that”, but not because I’m blind. Because I’m closed-minded about my own skills and ability to learn. I am in awe of anyone who hammers a straight nail, regardless of whether they are blind or sighted. I try, as hard as I can, with regular checking of my thoughts, to be impressed by skill and not by my assumptions about how hard I perceive that skill to be for any particular person. I’m not perfect, I don’t always succeed. But I know what it’s like to be an “inspiration” just because I crossed a street. I don’t want to put that heavy weight on anyone else.

I’m so glad Lighthouse exists for blind people who have skills and who are overlooked because of their circumstances. I’m glad it exists for sighted people who “get it” enough to actively change their thinking by purposefully interacting with blind people, and being willing to take that hit again and again until our worth is ingrained. And, I’m glad that someone had the guts and the humility to say all this to my face. Thank you, Becky.