(stolen twice, you can see this stele in the British Museum; doesn't have any laws pertaining to self-recrimination as far as I can tell)
Dear People,
This letter is to inform you that you must cease and desist from describing yourselves as "trad wives," effective immediately. No; effective two years ago! You must issue retractions for past infractions.
You wonder, why? These weird blonde children on social media can call themselves whatever they want, it doesn't hurt me, you say. I beg to differ. The first time a near and dear of mine, an unmarried, non-conforming, young person (!!!) referred to themselves as behaving trad wifely in a semi-joking (but not really) way, I was appalled, and quick to denounce; but I also thought it was a fluke, a very isolated incident. Not so. A second person, a woman as untraditional a wife as I could imagine, a fabulous human, has denigrated her lovely homemade loaf of shared bread* as 'trad-wife sourdough.'
This must stop. I make sourdough. My Mom makes sourdough. My offspring makes sourdough. Friends of mine all over make bread. I won't have it. Not even for the cheap laughs. It is taking from us our making of the world, our making specialness out of flour and water, time and kindness, out of basically nothing. Do not undermine your effort, I beseech you.
You remember, the time a woman I know was talking about a photo of her from five years ago? And she said she wished she was as "thin as then?" How this utterly broke me? How I spent months trying to figure out how to bring up this with her again, to say: no, no, you do not need to say that! You do not need to feel that! How I never could find a way to say anything about it and how sad it was that this awful gapping need to be different than she was would just have to sit there, forever, in my mind and hers? A horrible great lack made of absolutely nothing, like a giant sinkhole, expanding and sucking in more innocent humans.
Maybe you don't remember it, because I never wrote you about it in the first place, because I just couldn't see how to tell it without stripping it of its gravity and pathos. I see it here, written, and it isn't half of what I feel about it. It just lies there, in the way words do, without screaming or crying, without pounding fists and rending hair, without reaching ears or eyes that are capable of change.
* For pity's sake! Shared bread! It is NOT ever, ever, in anyway, to be denigrated! Shared bread is a symbol of generosity, of kindness! This pains me so much, sisters! Please stop!
PS I know well, that you feel some embarrassment at your skills and capabilities; I feel that too- when I show up at a potluck with something I cooked instead of a bag of chips- but it is okay to be good at things; to have taken time to make something 'extra.' Your prowess is not demanding a corresponding diminution of others. It is also fine to bring the bag of chips! It is also to fine to bring nothing! It is also fine to not even go to the dumb event in the first place! Every possibility at this hypothetical potluck is just as fine as it ever could be- so fine! So fine! So f.! S. damn F!
