The Color Of Metal
January 2020, from the Trenches
I can taste the tin of the sky — the real tin thing.
Winter dawn is the color of metal,
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves.
— Waking in Winter, by Sylvia Plath
If it hasn’t become apparent from these letters yet, I like poetry. I really like words — especially dissecting them. But I love the richly textured words that come from brilliant minds, like Anne Sexton, Carson McCullers, and Sylvia Plath — tragic women whose written words feel more confessional than poetic. As post-modern writers, these women gifted us with important critical responses to the social realities of their time. Their words are highly personal, yet also, vaguely familiar; universal.
Sylvia Plath was as much writer as philosopher, whether jarring us awake with death imagery, or beckoning us to hold up the mirror and see the nature of our own humanity — sometimes lovely, sometimes absurd, sometimes remarkably cruel.
Plath’s “Waking in Winter” was a fragment of a poem, unfinished. Though the title might imply otherwise, the words following weren’t intended to convey the cold bite of January air, or the warmth of lovers’ embrace on a lazy Sunday morning. They were written from inside the stark, cold walls of a mental hospital — one of a few such stays for Sylvia Plath after her varied suicide attempts. They were also written during the era of the Cold War, when Americans’ domestic lives suffered the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation, yet still, people managed to enjoy living.
I suppose it’s through that dark lens that I’ve viewed society lately — where we are with regards to science, the environment, and truth… where we are economically, politically, socially… sometimes lovely, sometimes absurd, sometimes remarkably cruel.
Some days I’m reminded too much of the looming, specific, unique fears that exist when you’re parenting a trans teen. With the current conservative movement in America — the one that embraces Trump, wages war on Christmas, and intends to strip away basic human rights of minority and marginalized groups (i.e., people who in no way have any effect on conservatives’ lives) — sometimes all I can do is bury my face in my hands and cry.
With the latest spinning cyclone of political news headlines, some days feel profoundly disturbing, and yet, we still keep going, we still keep putting one foot in front of the other, we still keep worrying about our own silly hangups and facades — which all seem wholly insignificant against the larger picture.
As many post-modern poets seemed to understand, the living of life doesn’t stop — good, bad, or indifferent. And somehow, in the middle of it all, we find moments of hope. We still find moments to enjoy, give, and love. Despite what often feels like the annihilation of American democratic norms — the very ideals that make America “the land of the free” — we manage to still, somehow, find the absurdity or the irony of it all and laugh out loud.
At this season of political and social unrest, I want to take a moment to express sincere gratitude for the Medium community — a community like no other — where we can welcome both genuine connection and hearty debate.
I’m thankful for all the writers on Medium who bring us all the moments — of joy and gratitude, kindness and empathy, introspection and reflection; of laugh out loud moments that break the monotony, and raw, authentic moments that break the facade.
Here at Gender from the Trenches (or, GftT, for short — pronounced like “gift”), over the past few months I’ve been fortunate to add the voices of several more writers, and I’m thrilled that we can use this platform to amplify voices from the trans community. Writers at GftT have their own unique (and universal) stories to tell, and they deserve to be seen and heard by Medium’s vast and diverse readership.
If you’re a trans adult, a parent of a trans individual, or a cis person who’s an active trans advocate, and you have a story to tell on GftT, please check out our submission guidelines page and then reach out to me, Martie Sirois, at the email address listed on that page. You can also reach me here, on my website.
In September, Constance Rosenthal contributed her first GftT piece which I was deeply touched to read and publish. It’s about taking a huge leap of faith — as a middle-age, middle-class parent — to embrace her transgender identity in “Transitioning Out Of The American Dream.” She also reminds us, in another piece, “So, You Are Transitioning — Don’t Forget To Live Your Life!” that life still happens “in the transition space,” so make the most of it.
“Socially Coming Out As Trans” by Andy Waller is a quick-read that details living exactly that kind of life, unapologetically and fully; and Mx. Marie Chase Lewis speaks to the search (and continuing journey) of finding the right labels, in “Continuing My Gender Evolution.”
Zanne Nilsson gives some useful pro tips, from trans people to cis people, in “How Not To Talk About Your Trans Friends.” The powerful voice of GftT’s newest writer, Kathryn Foss, vividly describes the pushback so often received by trans folx for trying to live authentically in “Being An Approximation.”
Another fantastic and strong new voice here at GftT, writer Val Willham, points out the signs that are now clear (in hindsight) regarding “How Being Trans Affected Me Before I Even Knew What Being Trans Was.” Side note: after brief email correspondence, I felt I could’ve talked for days and days with Val… if you’re cishet like me, and you like challenging your mindset, check out Val’s piece: “This Idea Controls Your Life and You Might Not Have Even Heard of It.”
Ethan Tibbets is another new writer for GftT who I promise will inspire you. Ethan chronicles the very specific pain and beauty of living with Huntington’s Disease while also being a trans male in “Finding Myself Among The Ashes,” and later, shares some sage words of wisdom in “5 Most Important Things I Wish I Had Known Before Coming Out.” And another valued new writer here at GftT, Ellie Heskett, uses their strong feminist voice to gently remind us of our common, shared humanity, in “Nonbinary People Are Not An ‘It’.”
If you do social media, please be sure to like/follow/join/share our social media pages: here, on Facebook; here, on Twitter; and here, on Instagram (which is actually my personal account, but I share highlights from GftT pieces there). I always like to tag the author of pieces I share, so please let me know if you have a social media presence that I’m not following yet.
As I go outdoors each day, it seems like the sky above me has been the “color of metal” all winter so far. Not just in appearance, but in “feel” too. Just six days ago, as I was sitting here writing, my husband and I heard the strange and scary sound of what seemed like jet engines. The local news later confirmed, RDU International airport (about a half-hour from our house) was hosting 12 military aircraft overnight — 12 Navy F/A 18 Super Hornets, to be exact — and the low, sustained rumbling we heard was those jets heading back to Norfolk.
I was immediately taken back in memory to 1991 — as a high school student embarking on my senior year — when our country was nearing the end of the Gulf War. I had friends whose older siblings were in the military and hadn’t returned home yet. That feeling of instability was like nothing they’d experienced before, and it tinted our senior year with bittersweet emotion. It’s now 29 years later, but against the current political backdrop, I’m sometimes fearful that we’re returning to that world.
Which is why, I suppose, Sylvia Plath’s “Waking in Winter” resonated on some level. With two older teens (one adult son and one almost-adult daughter) preparing to move out on their own in less than a year, at the same time that my youngest will be entering high school and continuing to navigate life as a trans teen, my heart is both swelling with pride and heavy with the anticipation of loss. Bittersweet.
It’s important, now more than ever, that we keep telling our stories and disrupting the normalization of misogyny, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, racism/systemic racism, Islamophobia, and so on. It’s important and powerful to tell, preserve, and share our stories, and we must keep sharing them until we no longer have to. We cannot stand idly by allowing bullies and tyrants to run the show. If for no other reason, I hope in this regard, you’ll consider sharing your story.
As always, I look forward to meeting more of you, hearing your experiences, and welcoming new voices. I thank you for bravely sharing your truths.
’Til next time: be well, and live authentically!
In Solidarity,
Martie Sirois, Gender from the Trenches
martiesirois.com
