WOMAN

For Judey's divinely challenging anagram prompt. A meditation on my assigned sex at birth and therefore my assumed gender identity. I don't know if it counts because they aren't all a single word, BUT it was fun to write :) Many thanks.

They say a woman belongs in the home, in the kitchen by a stove, tending to children, but that has never been my belief or experience. Of all the roles a woman could fill, these never crossed my mind. I knew some families lived like this, but

Ma won that bitter war in our household. Dad made the meals, entered our world, and got on the floor to play. Mother? Made sure the bills were paid.

What was it Lydia Davis said in A Mown Lawn? "She hated a mown lawn. Maybe because mow was the reverse of wom, the beginning of the name of what she was..." Mother might agree, she never mowed the lawn, but she never hated her assigned identity. She did, however, crave the camaraderie of all people. She leaned into her social femininity; hosting dinners, parties, and book clubs that made life look so easy.

I am now certain that myself and many others are not and have never been "women," how we might think them to be, because of their behavior or preferences or self-love and dignity. I know this because when how we present ourselves doesn't fit the standard mold, we're "not like other girls," or so I've been told. But I don't hate those who use the term or the gender or even the prescribed roles. Should people want to follow them, that's their prerogative, even if I think it's old.

So, from one "woman" to another: think about what that word means and what you can do to make it fit better for you. We're all just trying to navigate this world so we might as well make our own rules.