Experiment in the Essay #4: Shitty Diapers for Peace and Justice, #52Essay2017

Mmmmmm.....I think I smell some shit....Could it be atmospheric, the Cosmos's crappy diaper?  Could it be the eau' d' crooked ass-hats occupying the White House?  Could it be just another one of the consequences of childbirth, which rewrites the rules of your body, screws with your senses, and makes you a prisoner of love?  Which gives you bad ideas, many of them hinging on grandiose metaphors,  at inopportune moments, especially while breastfeeding in the wee hours? Ideas which you then road-test for the sake of your-- and everyone else's-- progeny?  

Or do I just smell aging shit because my highly-forgetful-but-he's-beautiful-anyway husband forget to take out the full trash bag to the hallway chute, where residents happily mangle the recycle rules, because, fuck it? 

Until a few months ago, I was one of the least explicitly politically active people I knew.  And then I found myself unable to turn away from the big (white, not brown) pile of shits that our country had held up as our newly inaugurated leaders et al of the free world.  What was my complicity in the system that had managed, whether fraudulently or not, to elect such unethical, greedy, bat-shit crazy characters? 

Is there a limit as to how many times a redundancy-averse Brooklyn gal can use the word shit in a single essay? Let me know, K? 

A, the world is not free at all.  B, as a woman, a white woman, a mom, a writer, an educator, I could not just do my social justice work on the sly, for and through my young students of color.  Writers cannot play ostrich; moms cannot play small; teachers don't actually educate ("to lead out of darkness", anyone?) without the bigger picture in mind; white women have power de facto, even with the patriarchy keeping one firm hand on our heads to remind us where the ceiling is.  So, white women, while we're at it, let's use that shit for decency. Not to unconsciously perpetuate a broken racist system, which we inherited with our whiteness, onto the bodies and concerns of other people, primarily people of color.  

Oh folks it is so messy.  And with Trumpitis in the white house, I was suddenly not just afraid for the state of our world, for the suffering of all people, but also so personally afraid, as people of color and other marginalized identities must be afraid daily, and for generations-- Will the system protect me?  Will the system refuse to meet my basic needs, my basic rights? Will my child be exposed, will her or his health be neglected?  Suddenly, we shared these questions more than ever.  The grossness of the assault was the only thing that was vaguely equitable. But the answer could not be about me and my rights.  It had to be about us, or creating an US where there wasn't one historically.

Sometimes the answer is in that very mundane thing you do daily, that thing you consider just part of your routine, nothing special.  Honestly, I don't mind THAT much the shitty diapers, which come in spades with the turf of reproduction.  But sometimes they get to me. For obvious reasons. 

While I change diapers, which I do a bajillion times a day, I talk to my 20 month-old son about making good choices with his penis.  I remind him no one can do anything to his body that is not OK with him, nor can he do anything to anyone's body that is not ok with that person. Ever. Period.  And then I up it a level, because he loves singing: I remind him (hey,he is a dude, a white boy, although of invisible Mexican descent on his daddy's side): "Her body her choice."  

Toddlers get this intensely focused look in their eyes as they practice longer and longer syntactic units, or find a rhythm or sound appealing.  They have an impressive capacity to repeat, repeat, repeat, testing a phrase or sentence for its usability or effect. And this one he found very useful. When he fetches the shekere and diaper, so he can shake something vigorously while I clean his butt, he calls out, "Her body her choice, her body her choice." (The phonetics: Huh buddy hud choyce)

If you've ever changed a shitty diaper, ever wrestled a wipe out of a dispenser, ever awkwardly held back a flailing kiddie foot to avoid the poop-splat of diaper-crobatics, this proposal is for you. Let me know if anything fell through the cracks of the sentences; fissures in the logic.  

This is an essay you should talk back to. 

You know that saying that children should be seen and not heard?  That's bullshit.  Children should be seen AND heard.  Except my toddler on Wednesday nights when he uses his new power to form full, grammatically correct, preposition-inclusive sentences to say things like: "I don't even want to see Chicken; I didn't poop yet, soon." He's under two.  Not for a day in his short life has he been seen and not heard.

But what about seen and not smelled?  Children should definitely be seen and not smelled.  But it doesn't work that way either.   They are part animal.  They smell like it. 

For a while now I've been suspecting that I got a poop particle lodged up a nostril from changing one too many shitty diapers, my face lovingly gazing down at my son and the pile of poop that came out of him. I make sure never to wince at the smell; I congratulate him on his body doing its job, on his fabulous digestive system.  

Legend has it when I was small I pooped only a begrudging once per week, if.  And even then not very impressively, more like that compact rubber band ball someone makes who gets sick of loose rubber bands plaguing their desk drawer.  My boy, by contrast, emits impressively.

So I smell poop everywhere; and when at last I even smelled it at work, I realized my nose was no longer 100 percent reliable.  That or I'd gotten something on my shirt sleeve, which you better believe I triple checked for. 

When you are pregnant, you really can smell the faintest particle of whatever substance, seemingly within a mile radius.  I ventured to think you could smell a french fry wedged in Orion's belt. So my nose made me take a pregnancy test.  I was not pregnant.  My nose was full of shit. 

So, no younger sibling yet, My toddler would be the only one pooping in his pants for a while in our house. But he doesn't like to admit it.  Even when his diaper is sagging off of him, he'll insist, "NO POOP." You have to chase him to prove yourself correct. On his back, on the floor, ready to worm out of the way, he smiles knowingly, like all shit-evaders, like Saints are pictured smiling at their supplicants. 

And then I knew it-- from his smile, from the repetitive nature of the diapering, from wanting to repurpose some shit to elevate us all.

I'd find a way to talk back to the (Too Too) White House: The Shitty Diapers for Peace and Justice. 

My template for this unusual model of activism was taken from a whipper-snap sharp character in an amazing YA book, Seedfolks, by Paul Fleischman (read it. It's quick and heart-rending).  I read it yearly with my 7th grade students. I'm going to sum it up one of its mini-narrative vignettes for you: a woman of color, who lives in a contemporary ghetto in Cleveland, gets sick of the city not bothering to collect the accumulating trash from her neighborhood. She makes calls, calls, calls to the government-- nope, too easy to ignore, too easily put an angry (poor) woman on hold.  

So finally, fed up, she opts for direct action. She takes a big bag of neighborhood trash and goes to the elected official's office.  And sits there.   And opens it.  Of course it smells horrible. You can't ignore the steaming trash no matter your political positions.  She is ushered into a meeting nearly instantaneously. And her complaint is registered.  The city comes for the neighborhood garbage. 

If people could be persuaded toward greater decency using a bag of trash, why not up it a level and use what every new-ish parent has in spades: DIAPERS? DIRTY DIAPERS?

So here is my version. Will you and your shitty diapers join me and mine? 

What if we bring our baby's shitty diapers-- all of them, en masse--by which I mean the used dipes filled with baby poop- to the offices of any elected official who is voting against reproductive rights or reproductive health? Or who is voting for policies generally that harm women and families? The poor and resourceless? This is the real world implication of those policy decisions. More shit.  More shitty diapers. MORE SHITTY DIPES, can ya sniff it? Gotta a whiff of the future? 

You or I know that the smell of even one fragrant shitty diaper can overwhelm a room.  Leave two in your regular trash and you are pretty soon ready to move it on out. But what about 20, 30 shitty diapers, say, right in front of your office door?  With some pleasant, peaceful, mobilized parents willing to sit there with them as long as it takes to be heard? 

This is not only symbolic (HEY, YOUR POLICY IS SHIT!) it is also literal. WITH THESE POLICIES, MORE PEOPLE WILL BE UNDER-EQUIPPED TO DEAL WITH THE SHIT THEY HAVE TO DEAL WITH.  

It is also impossible to ignore: YOU HAVE SHITTY DIAPERS IN YOUR MIDST.  YOU MUST TAKE ACTION.

It is also visceral: SHOW ME SOMEONE WHO CAN KEEP THEIR COOL IN THE FACE OF A BAG OF SHITTY DIAPERS.

It is also based on historical precedent of fallout of economic greed and human oppression: SOON-TO-BE SLAVES HAD TO LIE IN THEIR OWN SHIT FOR WEEKS JOURNEYING TO THE AMERICAS. 

I'm happy to delay toilet training to help bring effective action. 

Please let me know your reactions or ideas for modification or elaboration. 

There are smarter people than me in this arena organizing and doing great work.  But here I am-- mom, shit-changer, shit-shaker, ready to give a shit in a big way.  

I really am feeling this one.  So tell me your shitty story, and join me. 

(As an aside--This is why you should read books, people.  It is not only real life that provides you with real models for change.  Sometimes it's a bad-ass fictionalized character.  Somebody tell the kinda-sorta-barely-president).