Waiting

I'm not feeling particularly grim. It's just that the most recent photos I have are of this old graveyard, plopped down in the middle of nowhere and filled with people buried by other people who have long since passed away. I like the sense of distance and flatness behind the attempts at permanence left by those wanting to remember their loved ones. The graveyard also sports a magnificent scary tree.

My friends and I used to take our dates to old Kansas graveyards and use flashlights to read the old stones. It was spooky and the young women stood close to us, which we appreciated. We didn't push any stones over. I'd like to think the denizens of the cemeteries appreciated our youthful vigor (horniness) smiling to themselves and remembering standing close to someone lovely in the dark. An optimist, I always imagine ghosts are friendly.

For reasons I won't go into, I found myself accompanying a young woman to a local woman's health clinic so that she could have an abortion. She has a boyfriend, and was 5 weeks along, and was in no position to carry or raise a child. I found myself acting on my values and supporting this young woman's choice. I also found myself spending the morning in an abortion clinic waiting room, a place where there appeared to be very few middle aged men. Very few. One. Me.

I have been a supporter of this health clinic for many years and was pleased with the care and professionalism displayed by its employees, as was the young woman in question, who opted for an option involving taking some medication and waiting for a number of hours. This was somewhat uncomfortable for her, but certainly preferable to dilation and curettage. We waiting and passed the time with a minimum of angst. This is a very practical and matter of fact young woman.

The waiting room was truly a feast of human interpersonal dynamics. There were a number of couples: mostly young women, college age, and their boyfriends, who sat quietly, dutifully, and held purses. One woman was pretty verbal about the wait, her discomfort, and was accompanied by her grandmother, a very patient older woman very comfortable in her own skin. There were a few daughters and mothers, and a couple whom the staff appeared to know by name, perhaps "frequent fliers" abhorred by anti-abortion activists who claim abortion becomes an "easy" form of immoral birth control. Nobody seemed very comfortable.

Behind us, a carpet of music, a sort of marriage of gentle jazz and Zamfir, master of the pan-flute. It was innocuous and constant, new-age muzak, at once calming and annoying. Best of all, there was a television, large and high on the wall behind me. It was not hooked up to cable or dish and it played, one after another, episodes of "Maude." That's right: "Maude."

Maude was the Norman Lear sitcom in the seventies that was the "answer" to "All in the Family." Maude was supposed to be the liberal foil to Archie Bunker, everyone's favorite bigot. She showed that we liberals could laugh at ourselves, sort of. Maude failed artistically, in my opinion, because it couldn't quite skewer Maude the way Family skewered Archie. Maude tended to teach us things, rather too overtly I always thought. My Mom was a serious politically active feminist and she hated Maude. And here we were, sitting and waiting for the biologically inevitable and preternaturally evasive result of a chemical procedure, listening to episode after mediocre episode of a situation comedy so dated as to be totally irrelevant to all but a couple of the people in the waiting room. Grandma and me.

It didn't take us long to realize that the first episode of Maude playing was - I'm not making this up - "Maude gets an Abortion." Maude, creeping up on menopause, finds herself pregnant, and Arthur, her impossibly patient and long suffering doormat husband, and Maude do an endless dance of "I want the baby because I think you want the baby," when, of course, neither of them want the baby. One direct conversation would have solved the whole issue and saved us from the rest of the episode. No one talked about when life begins or the potential of the alleged zygote sprouting in Bea Arthur's still fertile loins. The plot was more Lucy and Desi meets a controversial issue than any useful explication of what was, and is, a highly charged and difficult moral and religious issue. We sat in a waiting room, securely locked out of the medical and business portion of the clinic, the receptionist tastefully protected behind artful bullet proof glass, our phones and back packs safely stowed in the entry areas, listening to Maude patter on about Arthur wanting a late in life child and so she should want it . . . him . . . her. . . it.

At one point a very cool staff person came out and apologetically changed the CD. Hopes rose and fell. More Maude. She explained that the Board of Directors had discussed music and television in the waiting room and the result was all they could agree upon. Maude and Zamfir. She explained that Maude was historic in that it was the first prime time program to openly address abortion during prime time.

Several seasons later, the young woman and I made our way out of the clinic. Her care was excellent and she was gratified by the treatment she received from the professional staff. These are dedicated activists who risk their lives daily to provide necessary care to women and I'm grateful for their spirit. Activism can often subsume art and insist that art serve mission. Thus it becomes tone-deaf, oblivious to irony, particularly it's own. A little Sinatra, perhaps: The Lady is a Tramp.

Lady Godiva was a freedom rider
She didn't care if the whole world looked
Joan of Arc with the Lord to guide her
She was a sister who really cooked

And then there's Maude. . . .