Seven of Wands

Lately, I’ve been having a recurring nightmare. I’m in a public place and I realize that there’s something stuck in my mouth. At first, it’s a minor annoyance, gauze in my gums, perhaps left over from a dentist appointment I can't remember. When I try to discreetly remove it without anyone noticing, the gauze expands. I pretend to cough and scoop out what I can, depositing wads of gauze and wet paper into whatever trash can is nearby, but inevitably, I realize there is still more stuffed in my cheeks. No matter how much I take out, I can never get it all. The nightmare is the same no matter the location — I’m in a meeting and I’m supposed to pitch but my mouth is stuffed with paper, or I’m giving a speech at a wedding but I can’t get the words out. Last night, my favorite podcast host came up to me at a graduation party and asked me to sing a Michael Jackson song, but I couldn’t answer him because my mouth was packed tight with paper.

I don’t know how long I’ve had this dream, but it’s an old standard, one of the hits my brain returns to again and again. In the nightmare, I feel anxiety, confusion, shame, frustration, and embarrassment. I don’t know how this paper got in my mouth, and I don’t know how to get it out without anyone seeing me do it. I’m frustrated because I can’t speak, and I’m choking. I’m confused how it got there, I’m hot with embarrassment (who eats paper?!). In every instance of this nightmare, I’m failing miserably to speak, thwarted again and again. No matter how much paper I scoop out of my mouth, there is always more.

As we approach the election, this dream has been happening multiple nights a week.

The Seven of Wands is about speaking truth to power, defending your position, finding the right hill to die on. The Seven of Wands reminds you that sometimes you are your own best ally, and if you don’t have your own back, nobody else will. When you receive this card in a reading, it’s time to stand up for yourself and what you believe.

So with that, let me clear the paper from my mouth. Ahem. There are a thousand reasons why voting for Kamala Harris is the only reasonable choice a person can make, but I’m not here to convince you. I assume that if you read this newsletter, you probably agree with me politically, and if you don’t, thanks for being here and keeping an open mind.

Today I just want to talk frankly about abortion, or more specifically, what is possible because of life-saving abortion healthcare. Much has been said about the life of the mother — we’ve all read the heart-wrenching stories of women who have bled out in the parking lots of hospitals in states with abortion bans because of their doctor’s fear of prosecution. Plenty has been said about desperately yearned for pregnancies that had to be heartbreakingly terminated because the fetus was not compatible with life. Much has also been said about rape and incest — I was floored, horrified, and moved by the bravery displayed by Hadley Duvall in her speech at the DNC, talking about how she had been raped by her step-father and became pregnant at 12 years old. 

These stories are important to tell, and of course, these horrors help draw a clearer picture of what is at stake in Trump's post-Roe America. But there are other, quieter stories that are just as important. Sex is an important (pleasurable, fun, intimate) part of most people's lives. One in four women will receive abortion care in her lifetime. A majority of these women are already mothers. And now, because of Donald Trump's abortion bans, one in three women live in a state where they do not have access to life-saving healthcare.

Sometimes abortions are performed for the simple reason that a woman is not ready to be (or does not want to be) a mother. These stories may not be as compelling to a religious person with moral objections to abortion (but who is reasonable enough to agree that a 12 year old shouldn’t have to carry her rapist’s baby), but I think it’s important to talk about abortions that saved lives in simpler and quieter ways. Women are not incubators. We deserve autonomy, choice, free will, and self determination.

This brings me to my mother-in-law, Pam. Pam is an artist — a painter who went back to grad school in her sixties to get her PhD in Art History, a mother to two children (my husband and his older brother, Jed), a step-mother to three, and a kick-ass grandmother to my kids and their cousins. Pam has stories about New York City in the sixties, about working for Dick Cavett, and traveling through Europe on her own in her twenties. She has lived an incredible life, filled with love, accomplishment, heartbreak, friendship, romance, and laughter. I’ve long admired her bravery, her frankness, and her willingness to talk about things that other people might shy away from. 

Pam received two abortions that saved her life, one in a pre-Roe America and one after abortion was legalized. When I say these abortions saved her life, I do not mean that her health was in danger — it wasn’t. What I mean is that now, at eighty-two years old, Pam can look back at her life and feel good about the choices that she made when she made them. She has no regrets. Those abortions paved the way for the life she lives now, the life where she married the love of her life and gave birth to the love of mine.

After watching Sally Field’s straight-forward recent telling of her abortion, I asked Pam if she’d be willing to talk to me about hers. She didn’t hesitate.

This is our conversation.

Eliza: Can you tell me the story?

Pam: It was the mid sixties. I was unmarried. I had a boyfriend, but I wasn't ready to get married. I was too young, and I was also afraid of my parents’ disapproval.

Eliza: How old were you?

Pam: I was probably about twenty-one. It was illegal then. My boyfriend, he was very sweet. He was in the Army reserves, so he was tied up. He couldn't take me anywhere, but he did some research with friends, and found out that the best possibility was in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We had to wait until he was free from the service, which worried me, because it meant a delay.  I was worried that the delay would cause some problems, but eventually we got down to San Juan and we got to a hotel. Outside the hotel, we hailed a taxi, and we said Women's Hospital was the destination, and the taxi driver said, “I can't. I cannot drive you there. I cannot go there.” My heart seized up with panic. So we got out of the taxi and we hailed the next taxi, and he did take us to the women's clinic in San Juan. My boyfriend was very sweet. His hands were shaking as he handed over all of his cash at the desk, and I waited, and then I went in, and it was… It was very clinical, very clean. I didn’t know what to expect, but… I was there for a few hours. And then I was released, and we went back to our hotel, and flew home the next day, and nobody was any the wiser. Nobody, my parents… I was living at home, my parents didn't know. Nobody knew.

Eliza: What did you tell them you were doing for the weekend?

Pam: I told them that I was going to New York to visit my roommate.

Eliza: Did you tell any of your friends?

Pam: No, I told nobody. I was so scared, I didn't dare tell anybody.

Eliza: Well… it was illegal and Google wasn't a thing. How did your boyfriend find that clinic?

Pam: I don’t know. He did it without my knowing how. He asked friends and they knew. One of the strangest things is that in the waiting room at the abortion clinic, at the Women’s Center in Puerto Rico, I looked around and saw somebody I knew– my old sorority sister from college.

Eliza: Wow. And she was obviously there for the same reason?

Pam: She was there for the same reason, but she was alone. I felt sorry for her. Afterwards I asked my boyfriend to go and find her to see if she was all right. But she wasn't there anymore. She was married, but I guess she couldn't have another child. Years later, I saw her at a reunion and I said, “Do you remember where we met?” And she said, “I don’t.” And when I reminded her she said, “Oh… oh yeah.” I think she had sort of wiped it out of her memory. But apparently that was a well-known destination for that procedure.

Eliza: Did you talk to her while you were in the waiting room?

Pam: No.

Eliza: You just made eye contact, and then looked away?

Pam: We acknowledged each other, and then kept silent.

Eliza: Wow. How hard was it hard to make the decision to have the abortion? Was it hard or was it like, this is obviously what I have to do?

Pam: It was obviously what I had to do. I just didn't want to be married, you know. I loved the the boy very much, but he was not real marriage material, and I just knew it was the wrong thing.

Eliza: Did you guys ever talk about it again after that? You and the boyfriend?

Pam: We never talked about it, but we continued on dating for about another year until I moved to New York. If we did talk about it, I don't remember talking about it. I remember being pregnant and afraid and going to work, and, you know, feeling sick in the morning, and all that stuff that goes with it. But once it was done, I was not really able to recollect it or think about it much.

Eliza: You and I have known each other now for fifteen years. You told me this story for the first time at a brunch with some of my friends at a restaurant in Santa Monica. Maybe in the lead up to my wedding… A bunch of my friends were there, and I just remember everyone at the table being so impressed with your honesty, your frankness about this subject. So many women have had abortions. I know so many women who have had abortions, but none of my friends had talked to someone who had had an abortion before Roe. To hear a story about having an abortion when it was illegal, and to think about how scary that must have been for you… I think we were all really moved. I’ve always been impressed by your honesty. Did you ever tell your parents?

Pam: I finally told my mother years later. And she said, “I thought something was wrong. I thought maybe something was going on then.” She didn’t express regret or sympathy or anything. The whole thing was scary, but I never had any indecision about it. I was worried about my health, about how it would happen, but I never had any qualms about doing it. I was scared most about the repercussions. You know, that my parents would… I didn’t want to marry this boy, you know? The whole thing was a really bad time.

Eliza: When you went to Puerto Rico, had you talked to anybody who had been to that place before?

Pam: No.

Eliza: So that must have been really scary, not knowing what it was gonna feel like, or look like… 

Pam: It was very scary, especially when we got in that first taxi and the driver refused to take us there.

Eliza: That’s terrifying, and you were in such a delicate and vulnerable place. How old were you when you had your first child?

Pam: I was 32, so it was almost ten years later. In the meantime, I had another abortion, a legal abortion. I had a love affair with a man in France.

Eliza: Wait! An affair? Tell me more.

Pam: I had won money in a quiz show in New York. I won a 3 day trip. I flew to visit my sister in Edinburgh, Scotland, and then I flew alone to Majorca, and then flew alone to Lisbon, and on the plane from Majorca to Lisbon I met this Frenchman. And I can't believe I did this, that I agreed to this… He could have been an axe murderer. But he said, I'm here on business. I'm driving up to El Porto, and I could show you the the country a little bit. And I said, No, no, no, thank you, no. I went to my hotel, and the next morning I thought, oh, you stupid lady, you should not have turned him down. And then the phone rang. It was him, and there he was, asking if I had reconsidered. And I said, Yes, that I'd like to join him. So he came, picked me up, and what followed was a five day whirlwind romance. He changed my return trip, I stayed an extra three days. When I went home, I told my sister, you’re not gonna believe what happened to me. And I told her about this handsome Frenchman that I had met. But I ended up being pregnant, and then having a legal abortion. Two or three weeks later, he wrote me a letter saying, it wasn’t just your imagination, it was a really wonderful time, and I’m coming to New York… So he came to New York, and I was already working for Tommy [the man who would become her husband, Tom Whedon], in that first year or so of working for him, and this French man, his name was Claude... Claude would come to New York onon business and stay at the Carlisle Hotel and I would go and sleep with him for a night or two.

Eliza: Did you tell him that you'd had an abortion?

Pam: Yes, yes, I told him that I had gotten pregnant, that I'd had an abortion, and he was very sweet and contrite. Eventually, I was getting serious with Tom, and I realized it wasn't good for me to be doing this anymore so I ended it. But it was… it was my big fling, my big fling before marriage.

Eliza: I'm so glad you had that. Have you ever looked this man up? Where is Claude?

Pam: No, no. He was about eight or ten years older than I was. He was married, he was on his third wife.

Eliza: Oh no!

Pam: I’m sure he was a scoundrel, but he was absolutely charming and funny and fun, and we joked about the little town in Portugal that we visited, and it was just a fun escapade. I still remember it as my last big fling before marriage.

Eliza: What was the difference between the legal abortion and the one you had in Puerto Rico?

Pam: The process itself was very simple. I just made an appointment in the hospital. I don’t remember who my doctor was, but I just went in and it was normal. Just going in and getting a DNC. You know, there was nothing frightening or terrible about it. The two procedures were similar, you know? Very medical. What was different was the anxiety I was feeling. The fear and not knowing how it would go. The first time, I was so desperate and so scared. 

Eliza: That makes sense. And obviously the second time, you didn't have to pay hundreds of dollars, or whatever it was to get a plane ticket and go to San Juan, where you'd never been before. Do you remember what it felt like when Roe V. Wade was passed?

Pam: I felt very relieved. During that time, there was a lot going on, demonstrations, pictures of the coat hanger and all that stuff that came with it. It was very much on my mind at that time, and then when abortion was legal I was so relieved. It was such a relief. There had been such a strong push to legalize abortion. It was just so incredibly apparent that it was needed for all women. It was a lifesaver for me obviously.

Eliza: Your entire life unfolded differently than it would have if you had had a baby at twenty-one years old. Your whole life would have been different. Zack would not have even existed.

Pam: Yeah.

Eliza: How did you feel when Roe V. Wade was overturned?

Pam: I was horrified. Horrified. I could not believe it. It felt like a bunch of men not understanding women’s rights or women’s bodies.  There were all those hideous comments by Congressmen saying, Well, if you're raped, you don't get pregnant. It was absolutely devastating to hear their lies, and the way those justices lied in their confirmation hearings, saying they would never overturn Roe, and then…

Eliza: Fuck those people. It’s interesting to me that America, in spite of the ways our founding fathers tried to protect the government from being embroiled in religious conservatism, we are still such a religious country. So much of the conversation about abortion focuses on rape and incest and life of the mother. But I also think it’s so important to talk about, y’know, getting pregnant when you’re twenty-one. Or having a love affair with a French man and that being a beautiful part of your life, but also not one where you are going to give birth to and raise a baby! That was a pivotal, important part of your life. I haven’t had an affair with a French man, but god I wish I had.

Pam: I'm here to tell you: It was just fine.

Eliza: Women's sexuality is not something that should be legislated by a bunch of creeps in the Supreme Court. It’s just none of their business. They don’t have to have an affair with a French man if they don’t want to, but women get to do what they want with their bodies. Or at least they should get to.

Pam: I hoped I would be able to conceive when I wanted a child. You know I was hopeful that nothing had happened to me physically that would prevent me from getting pregnant. That was a big worry I had.

Eliza: Well, that makes sense, especially having to get on plane to go have an abortion far away because it was illegal at home. It sounds like where you went was clean and professional and safe, but it could have gone a very different way. 

Pam: Absolutely.

Eliza: Well, I love you. I'm glad you had those abortions. Your life is better because you had them. And now you have two beautiful children and a bunch of cute grandkids.

Pam: I have wonderful offspring all the way down.

Eliza: So, are you voting for Trump?

Pam: Ha. I cannot wait for the election. I already sent my ballot in, and I hope once Kamala wins, that we will never ever have to hear about him ever again.

Eliza: Me too.