Removing the Labels

One of the things I really get about myself is that I have always understood that there is not one label with which I can identify. I am not one dimensional. I do not neatly fit into any category. I never have. When I was a kid I played basketball constantly. I woke up in the morning thinking about getting to the court and once there, tossed one ball after the next from the foul line towards the netless hoop. I got to be pretty good, so good that the boys from the neighborhood let me play on their teams. I got a bit of a reputation as a jock. I happened to be a decent artist as well. I sold my first drawing when I was thirteen to Dino Chernasky, a kid from down the street, who wanted me to make a copy of a Cat Stevens album cover for him. He paid me fifteen dollars. So I was considered an "artist" as well.

I loved going to church. No one had to prod me too hard to get out of bed each Sunday morning to get to Sunday school, followed by church, followed by Sunday social where the tall stainless urn was filled and refilled with pale brown liquid and the smell lingered on the church basement's folding walls. The best part was the church lady made cookies, usually Toll House or jam thumbprints laid out on white doilies. At one point I was attending church three days a week between after school Bible studies and Sunday school and Catechism classes. I was given the honor of presenting the sermon on the day of our class confirmation. I talked about the importance of women in the church and we sang hymns written only by women, so I got this feminist/religious reputation as well. My minister, the lovely soft spoken Reverend Jacob Longacre who baptised me, confirmed me, and performed my first wedding at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church, really encouraged me to consider the ministry. I rejected this idea once I started partying in high school and lost my virginityand wondered what God would ever let me into his heaven after all of the sins I committed and the ones I had hoped to commit. I embraced drug experimentation, including L.S.D. which I took for the first time while wandering around the Boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey. I had this strangely permed hair that I never combed and wore embroidered gauze peasant tops sold at the same head shops where we bought bongs and rolling papers. Landlubber jeans with wide bell bottoms and Earth Shoes were all the rage. I doubt that I was considered stylish but I had little concern for what anyone thought of what I wore. So I was sort of a fashion rogue in my school, mix matching thrift store finds, gauzy shirts, and ponchos and vests my elderly great aunt crocheted for me.

Somewhere in a box is a ragged blue folder of poetry that I started writing when I was eleven or twelve. My love of writing got me an editorship on the school newspaper in both junior high and high school. I became the art editor of our art and literary magazine as well, and again when I was an undergrad in college.

My social groups were diverse and I felt as comfortable hanging around the housing projects with an ethnic mix as I did with the children of steel executives. I moved through the jock population and the artist/cerebral scene where we talked about Ginsburg poetry and Hermann Hesse novels, and got stoned on the weekends with my football player boyfriend. I went to church on Sundays with my great Aunt Mildred. I was a decent student.

Tim and I had an interesting discussion one day when he identified himself as a "hippie". I asked if he didn't find it limiting to label himself. People associate hippies with pot-smoking, free thinkers, who eat lots of vegetables, and in Vermont, typically drive Volvos or Saabs. As our conversation progressed I explained my rejection of labels because I want the opportunity to grow in ways that I might not even be aware are possible. If I identify with one group, doesn't that restrict my movement between groups? Can a hippie hang out on a basketball court? Or in a steak house? What about the cocktail lounge where my co-workers like to hang out on Fridays after school? They eat lots of fried stuff and drink pastel colored drinks while the rap/R&B music throbs from the speakers behind the bar. If I were a hippie, could I still go there?

Something I take great pride in where my daughters are concerned is how they have and continue to create who they are as individuals. They are open to the world. They are open to possibilities and they are fearless in their attempts. Over the years I sat in recital halls and gyms, ice rinks, stood at soccer fields, watched game after game of field hockey, had a ringside seat at indoor and outdoor tracks, gymnastic meets for all three, edited a manuscript and many papers, watched them cross stages, waiting with pride, my heart full, for the sound of their names. My head is full of memories of watching them become...I have purposefully chosen not to label them as any one thing. It's not Sarah the writer and Kate the actress or Molly the athlete. They surprise me all of the time. The gifts that they each possess will reveal themselves as they move through their lives and I look forward to what is to come. They too have each chosen to remove those nuisance labels that always get itchy and stick out way too far.