I’ve been sitting on a seasonal post about gifts. Just kind of noodling around and waiting for it to bloom like a great poisonous poinsettia. I add poisonous because I went through the emotional rollercoaster of having had poinsettias in the house, then learning they were toxic, feeling like I dodged a bullet that all my pets and children emerged from the holidays alive and well with the exception of tinsel and too many sweets induced puking (pets and children respectively), becoming an ardent bewarner (not a real word) of poison-settias (also not a real word) while feeling superior to other parents and pet owners, only to actually look up the information on the device that I am constantly scrolling on to find the deadly xmasbane (alas not a real word or thing) is only mildly toxic. The holidays can be emotional taxing in so many ways.

My postsettia (I’m on a roll!) never blossomed in time for the gift giving season, its all bedraggled like those ones half off at walmart right now. Although, to be fair, Chanukah is still rocking it out until Jan first. I just mangled the spelling of Chanukah so egregiously that spellcheck reached out from my screen and slapped me with the strength of many Jews. I deserved it. It is possible my postsettia suffered because the holiday season gives me the weirds. I become more seasonally defective as advent counts down, but also more desperately hopeful like Jack Skellington trying to work out the Christmas spirit mechanism on his blackboard. I’m pretty sure I share his maniacal grin at this point.

But perhaps, this is the best time to write about gifts. Now, as the holiday season ratchets down into a long cold dark winter and the presidential inauguration is around the corner and we all start eating like normal humans and wondering when exactly our kids are going back to school.

So the thing about gifts is- keep giving them. I don’t care what people say about having everything they need. In some sense that is true, but in other senses that could not be further than the truth. And I get it, minimalism is all the rage, people are having parties and explicitly asking guests to not bring gifts. And there’s fear around it, like what if I don’t get the perfect thing and I don’t know what to do with it or it becomes clear that you don’t really know me or I caused obligation for another and the intimacy of that even though I’ll call it a million other things makes me really uncomfortable… I just don’t care. And shut up, its not about the environment. I will not read the fucking fine print in your invitation. I come bearing gifts, so buck up buttercup. And I like to sway things the other way by asking, actually ASKING, my guests to bring gifts. And no, your presence is not a gift. Don’t try to fool me with your semantical shit. I want a present for when you are no longer present (see what I did there?).

Here is a totally unsponsored and untimely gift buying guide (you’re welcome).

• Give something that causes memories. Your own or someone else’s.
• Give something that required research.
• Give something symbolic with explanation. Or none.
• Give something that reflects your talents. Or there’s.
• Give something that reflects your relationship with the receiver.
• Give something lighthearted.
• Give something that shines.
• Give something they could’ve gotten or made themselves but now they don’t need to.
• Give something that feels good in the hand.
• Give something that provides creature comfort.
• Give something that feels magnanimous.
• Give something they didn’t know they wanted.
• Give something that enables avoidance.
• Give something with an inscription.
• Give something surprising.
• Give something artfully presented.
• Give something better than they deserved.
• Give something that honors their values.
• Give something that re-defines who they think they are.
• Give something to remind them that they are loved.
• Give something that introduces them to something new.
• Give something that shows you were listening.
• Give something that shows you believe in them.
• Give something that is a promise for the future.

Whew! I’m tapped. The important thing here is- keep giving. Even as the Christmas inflatables collapse drunkenly and the snow grows gray, slushen, and tiresome- keep giving.

My friend Yamila came bearing one of my favorite gifts for my December birthday. She gave me the gift of her words, and her experience, her vulnerability, and her kick ass delivery. She performed this spoken word for me in my kitchen, a piece she authored from her heart and she said was inspired by me. And us. And all this, on Illuminous Flux. And in turn, I offer this gift to you.

A Birthday Ode to Nora
Or
Apparently My Vagina Is Broken.

You’d think I would’ve noticed this before today, being a woman of the world. I am not my mother’s daughter. My mother (also named Nora) raised her daughter in the catholic tradition. My period arrived? “Things can happen.”

One opens ones legs as a duty, as a sign of a failure to one’s animal nature. Fallen skirts, fallen angels. Same difference.

So when my doctor asked what I had done in the past about my prolapse I cocked my head to the side, curious dog hearing a new sound.

Off he sent me to the vagina therapist.

There I was given a hot pad in the quiet room with cotton sheets thin and soft from years of wash.

There, a woman I had never met before showed me myself in the form of a plastic model. She took me apart piece by piece, dropped a bit on the floor.

There, she made me a map.

There, as I watched the deepest parts of me on the shelf next to vase of dusty flowers all I could think about was my friend Nora, and her 25 plastic clitori.

There, I realized that if I had one plastic clitoris for every year since I first bled, the 25 would not be enough.

There, as the stranger spoke, I could see how, if I moved that section to the left, and pressed firmly, as if my hand had no muscle memory of pushing so hard that something broke, as if I knew my own strength and was not one bit afraid of it, as if I was channeling all the hope of all the women who never even knew they were broken, I might be whole again.