女と男!

In my Feminist Philosophies class I dream of having 8 children while others raise their hands and preach that marriage and even love are social constructs. By 8 I mean 10 or 12. I'd live on a farm and when my hubby and I were not fulfilling our normal roles as mother and father (and surely female and male), we would also be the family teachers, doctors, chefs and artists.

The girls and I would cook wonderful food all day and sew and dance in between meals whether it be inside with all of the windows open or outside in the pure sunlight with our armpits naturally smelling awful (but happy nonetheless). The older girls would be playing instruments in the kitchen with the cats resting on top of the refrigerator batting their paws at the loud noises and nonchalantly grabbing our sleeves as we walk by. Or maybe they would be reading Descartes or Hemingway out on the porch in my great-great grandfathers rocker that earlier they had decided to Mod Podge with old newspapers. I would be teaching the younger ones how to make food from all of the goodies we gathered out of the garden earlier in the day. Practical Chemistry and Mathematics. A couple would make juice or run out to milk the cow. They would knead dough, churn butter and throw food at each other. I, too would be learning from this whole experience with a fist-full of flour flying out of my hand. Domesticity, love, freshly sewn skimpy dresses, womanhood! The dog would lick up our messes and we'd give him ponytails.

Dad would be fulfilling his manly roles, of course. These would consist of little chores around the house early in the day with the boys and maybe a trip out to the woods to do some reading and writing in the late afternoon before supper. They would make mud pies and talk about flowers and trees while learning all of their proper names. Maybe they would be reading the Wonders of the East or the Vercelli Homilies in Old English. Loud and proud. They would carve their names into trees using katakana and possibly take some acrylics out there with them and paint simple yet lovely things on rocks and leaves. I'd send the enormous, shaggy, dirty but lovable dog out to gather up the men whenever the girls and I were finished setting the house up for dinner. We would do an extremely quick cleaning job while listening to music from my youth and letting the birds fly around the living room and eat freshly picked strawberries. Cleaning up old messes and creating new but not caring a bit.

After dinner some of us would read aloud, some would run off to finish making the wine we have been working on for a while. If it was cold we would use the kotatsu and fall asleep under it with all of the cats in the middle by our feet. The others would be playing with the new kittens that were just born out in the hayloft. Maybe the boys would mix a few things up and blow up a wall or spend the night up in their tree house. We'd dance and play the omnichord. Always something new, always something to learn from one another. Always fulfilling the roles of onna and otoko and loving every minute of our sexualities and "oppressions."