Call the Midwife, Roe v Wade, & Women's Bodies

My almost 12-year-old son, Henry is hooked on the show Call the Midwife. My husband and I are watching the series again, and Henry is fascinated by the various storylines that so accurately depict the complexities of childbirth and womanhood.

“Are you sure this is appropriate for him to watch?” my husband asked.

I take no issue with it. There’s no nudity or sex scenes, the language is mild, and even though extremely difficult mature topics are addressed, it’s an excellent way to educate a child on the history and reality of childbirth. My son is of the age to know that pregnancy is no longer the end result of “when a man loves a woman”. He is about to begin a Growth and Human Development curriculum at school, and watching this show has been a great way to open up conversations about pregnancy and childbirth, and how the experience can vary extensively depending on certain sociological issues: religion, family dynamics, race, social status, community, culture, etc. It shocks me how much a period drama is still so accurate today. Modern medicine may have changed a lot when it comes to childbirth and birth care, but the social situations of women and pregnancy are very much the same. And as we watch the rapid regression of women’s rights happen in real time, the storylines in this show seem more poignant than ever. I am glad Henry is engaging the show so thoughtfully, and I’m thankful for how the show keeps my conversations with him going.

I woke up this morning angry. Not just about the leaked SCOTUS draft on Roe v Wade and what it will mean for women. But seeing so plainly how we got here—the widening chasm between left and right, and the irrational unfairness on both ends. I’m angry at the ongoing denial that what we are experiencing is the inevitable consequence of systemic misogyny. How so many men and women alike couldn’t stand to see a woman president. That their distaste for Hillary Clinton or the naivete around the “perfect politician” blinded the larger picture of how a Trump presidency would, and has, set us back for generations.

I don’t usually post my political/social thoughts openly on social media anymore. It’s never gotten me anywhere. I have in the past tried to engage hard topics in earnest, but nuanced dialog is no longer tolerated, and one wrong word can cost me a friendship, a mentor, a book deal, a writing opportunity, or a job. I’ve lost these things before, and I always feel a sense of misogyny as the baseline—intentional or unintentional. The inherent concept that women will always be just a little less is so built into our bones, that some days I wake up hating myself, wishing for just one day to navigate life in a man’s shoes.

This weekend was the launch party for my book Crow Funeral, a book that deals with postpartum experiences that nearly killed me. I always knew that if the book got published I would find a way to give back. I am to donating the proceeds of the event to UNICEF, and their ongoing effort to help the displaced women and children in Ukraine, but also Postpartum Support International, which promotes awareness, prevention, and treatment of mental health issues related to childbearing in every country worldwide.

Just the stress of putting on the event caused me to wake up with this incredible unexplainable back pain. I had spontaneously and unanticipatedly gotten my period. Women’s bodies are unbelievably complicated. Every day, women maneuver through unique physical, mental, emotional and social challenges of this gender. I’m glad I’m teaching this to my son—that women deserve complete autonomy of their physical and reproductive health. That we all deserve bodily autonomy—women, men, boys, girls, and all other gender expressions and orientations. It is my goal that my son will grow up to be a true empathetic good man, and not a performative woke one.

After I paid the expenses related to my book launch, the amount I have to donate to UNICEF and Postpartum Support International is abysmal, but I will still donate with a heavy, (yet hopeful) heart. If you’re feeling helpless about the news this week, or the news last week, or for all the unknowns ahead, I encourage you to donate to one of these causes, or pick an organization you think could make a difference, and offer what you can.

https://www.postpartum.net

https://www.unicef.org

(Images from Call the Midwife)

Pam Ferris, far left, and Jessica Raine caring for a pregnant woman in the East End of 1950s London on the PBS show “Call the Midwife."Credit...Laurence Cendrowicz/Neal Street Productions

Crow Funeral Cover Reveal

Forthcoming March 2022

“God doesn’t know a thing about mothers”

If you take God out of women, there is no God. Kate Hanson Foster’s world is a beautiful barn, a frightening mind, and a shimmering street. A timeless America.

— Kristin Hersh

American singer-songwriter and author of Seeing Sideways: A Memoir of Music and Motherhood

Through poems of motherhood, mortality, loss and faith, Kate Hanson Foster’s collection Crow Funeral posits what it means to not only make a secure home for your children, but to become the literal dwelling place. From gestation through birth and the accrual of days spent mothering, Hanson Foster circles the challenges and hard truths all mothers must face. Hanson Foster’s unflinching examination of post-partum depression and anxiety is tempered with love letters to her children:

“I became a mom / only once, you know. // You are the bike / I learned to ride.”

She writes stark lyrics for home, her complicated relationship with Catholicism, her husband as father and lover, and most powerfully, her own body. Hanson Foster not only honors her body’s capability to bear and sustain children and nurture a family, but sings praises to its sensuality. Crow Funeral depicts the unique intimacy between a mother and her children, an intimacy which sometimes blurs the line between “me” and “we,” that which “God doesn’t / know a thing about,” fraught with overwhelming love and shot through with ferocity.

— Sarah Sousa

Author of Hex and See the Wolf

In Crow Funeral, drama and desire build line by line and poem by poem. The work here is intensely personal. The narrative and its themes concern specific human beings, yet they maintain a universal posture that calls all of us closer to our humanity. Kate Hanson Foster is a poet of uncommon wit, charm, candor, and clarity. She keeps her focus on the poems, not the poet, and deploys her abundant skills to create an enduring and important testament that is simultaneously devastating and hopeful.

— Michael Kleber-Diggs

Author of Worldy Things, winner of the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize

New Review: That Was Then, This Is Now by Vijay Seshadri

“In a simple sense, poems can be viewed as the “afterimages” of everyday experience, but the intuition of knowing when to embellish language, when to strip it down, or when to surrender completely to an abstract ‘Truth’ beyond articulation, is where Seshadri really excels. Metaphor can center the chaos of a very scientific world, but language also has its limits, like the poet declares in his opening poem “Road Trip” when he says, “I won’t dim with words the radiance of my gesture….””

Friends: I Have a Big Announcement! I Have a Book Deal!

Friends: I have a big announcement! Yesterday I signed a contract with EastOver Press to publish my book of poems titled, Crow Funeral. As many of you know, this is a book I once gave up on. I never wanted to publicly bury my book, but I needed some grand, (albeit dramatic) gesture to find peace in saying goodbye to a manuscript that I had put everything of myself into for 5 years.

I owe an immense amount of gratitude to my friends, you know who you are, who eventually forced me to dig the words back up again. “I’m retired” I said. “Join this Zoom writing group,” you said. I added new poems, I took poems out, I stopped submitting for over a year. It felt good to write only for the voice that lives inside me. The Crow Funeral that will be published is not the book I buried. It is a different kind of story now, even if many of the original poems remain.

I want to thank EOP editor, Denton Loving for that phone call I never thought I’d get—for believing in my work, and wanting to put it out into the world. EastOver Press is the home where my book belongs, and I’m so thrilled. Crow Funeral will be published in spring/summer 2022.

Want to know a little bit about what a Crow Funeral is?

I have an essay I wrote that talks a bit about it here.

Thank you again to all of you that continue to believe in me and what I write. I really do have some pretty sweet friends…and a husband who is my biggest fan.

Love,

Kate

Dear World Wide Web:

Dear World Wide Web:

 

I write to you from another Saturday. The kids are suiting up to go sledding. Marianne Faithfull’s “Beware of Darkness” is playing in the living room. Watch out now, take care, beware the thoughts that linger, winding up inside your head…

 

In our little log home-bubble I can turn off the TV and forget everything but this. I’ve memorized every grain of wood in the knotted pine walls. I’ve repainted the only two rooms with drywall. I’ve changed the fixtures on all the cabinets and replaced the plastic light switch covers with new plastic light switch covers. In a little while, I’m going to plant the first seedlings of the season, and for the next few months my dining room table will be a makeshift greenhouse. This year’s garden is going to be unparalleled, I hope. Each year I carefully tend to every garden plant until Autumn flicks away the last worthwhile flower. I just ate cold Chinese Food and cracked a beer. Later I’ll nap, exercise, and then begin again. 

 

My dog follows me wherever I go. He is sleeping on my legs as I write. He whimpers when we are apart. He looks to my face to signal what’s next. I think it is funny how he gives me so much power—I can make him bark with excitement with just a hint of a smile. He loves it when I growl playfully and chase him around the house. I do not love him as much as I loved my last dog. 

 

I am sorry I haven’t returned your phone call. I probably still need to email or text you back. I didn’t wish you Happy Birthday. I didn’t thank you for wishing me a happy birthday. I have been avoiding the internet. How can I explain the weight of my shortcomings? Sometimes the chore of living is hard. The totality of me goes to the children. They get all my love, my joy, my jokes, clean laundry, and food. I am bad at so many things, but I will not fail when it comes to them. Every step of motherhood feels like the 11th hour of a crucial deadline I cannot miss. 

 

I wish I could say I have been writing or reading. I have not. My time alone is fleeting. The kids have finished sledding. Soon I will make them lunch. I told them if they don’t let me finish writing I will return them for a refund and move to an island, and so I think I bought myself some time. Bert returned home with a bouquet flowers and some seedling starter soil. So much of what I have I do not deserve. I do not pause to cherish it.

 

 

Friends—last year was just so terrible. I’ve lost so much of me in it. But I know I am just the penumbra of a greater shadow—one ache among many. And so, as another day sloshes into the next, I write to you simply to say hello. I hope that you are well.

 

 

That Marianne Faithful song I mentioned has long since ended, but a line lingers:

 

Beware of sadness.

It can hit you
It can hurt you
Make you sore
And what is more,
That is not what
You are here for.

 

 

I miss you. I love you. I think of you often.

 

Love, 

 

Kate

96089C6A-769A-4755-973B-E1B31AEEA98A.JPG

Funeral Cars

I am thinking about the time I used to clean funeral cars. A guy I met had just come back from the navy, and the funeral home was his family’s business. 

Because I thought he was hot, and life can often be perverse in that way, I agreed to help him clean funeral cars for 3 dollars a car. There was the limo, the hearse, and the flower car—a black Grand Camino. 

We never talked about who had died and how. We just had to make the cars shine again. Vacuum the dirt and graveyard gravel out of the car mats. Wipe off the tears, and trash the crumpled tissues. Sweep the broken petals and stems that had fallen from floral baskets out the back of the Grand Camino. And then the hearse. Well, since no one usually has to be in a hearse alive, it usually only needed a simple once-over. 

I wouldn’t say I didn’t think about the dead, or that I didn’t feel the strange weight inside of each car. It’s a muted energy that stays after the ceremony—like static pulsing across a turned-off television screen. It was simply my job to wipe the static away, and so that is what I did. 

We flirted and laughed through most of it, made crass jokes, talked about our day—all the while making sure every speck from the previous funeral made it into the shop vac. In the end I would have 9 dollars, and at that time, it was about enough for a cheap six-pack of beer and a pack of cigarettes. 

People say a hearse is the cleanest car you’ll ever see. I am here to tell you that the smell of formaldehyde does not wash off. Or maybe it just clings to the air inside the long blind curtained rear like old pickle stink inside a jar. Either way, I pretended the smell didn’t retch the back of my throat. I pretended like I was fine with all of it—the way I’ve always pretended to be fine with most things. I just wanted to impress him. One night, he dared me to get into the back of the hearse and lie down, and I did. 

And that is all I remember about the time I used to clean funeral cars.

Poem in Nelle Journal & CMV Awareness

I am beyond thrilled to have a poem in latest issue of NELLE alongside some incredible women writers like Francesca Bell, Lynne Thompson, Alison Pelegrin, Lisa Beech Hartz, Lauren Camp, Sandra Meek and so many more. I have so much admiration for Lauren Goodwin Slaughter for all her hard work to make Nelle such a powerful magazine. Thank you, Lauren, for believing in my poem.

This poem, "Four for a Boy" means so much to me, because it deals with one of the biggest heartbreaks a woman can go through. It feels extra special to me that it lives in a mag that publishes all women. 

I have found a generous, anonymous donor who is willing to match the cost of buying a $10 subscription to NELLE and I will donate the tally from this post to the CMV foundation in memory of my sister, Emma's son, Shane.

In one click, you can support women writers, as well as a cause that is very dear to my heart. Please just Notify me that you subscribed so I can make an eventual total of the donation. I will be matching subscriptions with donations until the end of May 2020.

Subscription info is here:
https://www.uab.edu/cas/englishpublications/nelle/subscribe

To learn more about the CMV virus and the foundation, click here:

https://www.nationalcmv.org

Thanks so much for reading. 

Nelle.jpg
Nelle2.jpg