The Man With The Plan Is A Woman
You know how it is—you get on an airplane and though you are thrilled to be getting away from it all, you are also nervous because most likely, someone you don’t know is going to sit by you. If you’re like me (which means that your therapist has given you some deep breathing exercises to use during take-off and you have a Xanax hidden in your wallet just in case…) you have this vision of it being a fascinating person. In my case, it is always a woman—a “business” woman. In my fantasy, we get to talking and she finds me as fascinating as I find her, in fact she is totally intrigued by me, even though when she asks, “What do you do?” I just say “I write stuff sometimes.” She of course, is a woman of power in the outside world. Maybe she is a vice president of a Lulu Lemon type of exercise clothes, or maybe she designs purses. She is so totally cool though.
I was on a plane recently, heading to Connecticut to see my youngest son who has a job out there. I decided I needed to go to him, because now that he is adulting, I assume when he takes vacation time, he is going to take a real vacation, not come home and sit in his room firing up joints and playing Wii like in the old days. And, I miss him.
So, I get on the plane, Southwest Airlines, and I am an A. A-50 actually, the last of the lucky first to board. And I want a window seat. And even though the plane is still half empty when I board, I panic and grab the first window seat I see which is in the exit row. I sit down and immediately start to sweat because basically, the fate of 143 people is on my shoulders. I look at the door and wonder where the latch is. Is it easy to open or am I really going to have to tug? Now I can’t even have a Bloody Mary during the flight. It’s okay though, I will make the sacrifice, which is bigger than you know because: 1. I need to be alert, aware and ready to push this door open at any moment and 2. Though I feel they are one of the few things in life besides Amazon Prime and my kids that make life worth living, Bloody Marys have a way of causing my IBS to flare up, so I‘m actually doing two huge favors for my fellow flyers.
Anyway, back to my airplane fantasy. In my scenario, as I said, this woman, is the president of a huge company and I’m not sure if I mentioned that she has a husband who is a publisher in NYC. As we already know, she finds me totally hilarious and if I may say, completely mesmerizing. By the time we land, she has sent my book to her husband, we have a date to meet for drinks in the city and we are now very close friends, in fact, if you play your cards right, you MAY be on the invite list when she throws me my next book launch party. I can’t promise, but I’ll do what I can.
I settle myself into my seat and snap my seatbelt across my waist as I scan the people still boarding. A woman with a thrashing two year old is looking at my row. No. If there is a God— and I swear, I have always been a believer— that screaming package of tears and urine will not be in the seat next to mine. Thankfully, she continues on. My eyes then land on an overweight man wearing a Hawaiian shirt open to the belly button, actually eating from an open bag of Fritos as he makes his way clumsily forward. I accept my fate. But, once again I am spared! He munches on right past me.
Then it happens. I see her, my businesswoman! She has that thick head of blonde hair with an occasional swirl of gray, exactly as I pictured, right down to the Robin Wright, House of Cards haircut. She is wearing a purple blazer and a white button-down shirt, strong yet feminine. She has on black slacks, which frankly, you have to be really, really confident to wear slacks. Do we even say “slacks” anymore? But on her, they work. She is pulling behind her a briefcase on wheels with her Louis Vuitton purse slung over her shoulder, and I can see papers and file folders sticking out—probably the latest sales numbers from her designer shoe company’s last quarter.
Guess where she stops?
This is fate, I’m thinking. This was meant to happen. Something fabulous is going to come from our journey together today. I watch as she settles herself in. She puts her briefcase in the overhead easily, her arm muscles tensing just barely beneath her white shirt. I’m pretty sure people seeing me put my carry-on into the overhead, assume I have either just broken my back or am recovering from rotator cuff surgery based on the grimace on my face as I hoist my rolling bag upward. How can a blow dryer, one pair of skinny jeans and one pair of fat jeans, weigh so much?
She slides in easily, putting her LV under the seat, while at the same time extracting her laptop from it and setting it on her lap. Then she looks at her phone, which is buzzing, and turns it off. I haven’t turned mine off yet because I am still hoping to get the text that my Free People order has shipped. I want to take off without a care in the world, knowing my oversized boyfriend-tee is on its way.
As she buckles her seatbelt I sneak a glance at her shoes. What is this? My businesswoman is wearing a purple canvas-type of shoe or what we used to call a “sneaker.” With slacks? Now this is something I would never do. For some reason it just reminds me of when my grandmother would wear those bright white, totally unscuffed Nikes under her polyester jeans when I dropped her off at physical therapy.
But my businesswoman is KILLIN’IT! It really works for her. Her sheer bravery and her “I don’t give a SHIT what you say” attitude, has paid off.
Once we are all secured, the flight attendant comes over to us to get our assurance that in case the doors need to be opened, you know, if we are going down in a burning flame of melting steel and metal, with passengers screaming, fainting and probably urinating on themselves, we are perfectly comfortable and capable of opening the exit door. “Are you okay with that?” he asks? Trying for levity in a situation that has my stomach doing some very bad things, I say to my businesswoman, “Oh, I’ll let you handle that,” to which she replies— and I am totally serious— “Of course I will.” As if, “It’s completely obvious you are totally incapable of saving a plane spiraling to Earth at a speed faster than light. Just let me do it.” The flight attendant seems quite comfortable with this arrangement and moves on.
The plane takes off and stabilizes at 30,000 feet or whatever, and I keep looking over to my businesswoman to see if she feels like talking. Perhaps she would like to share with me how well her latest designs are doing on HSN. Or, maybe she sees a kindred spirit in me and wants to tell me about how her young lover, a dead ringer for Shawn Mendez and an assistant manager at Starbucks, has given her an ultimatum— it’s either him or her Wall Street Whiz of a husband, and she has to pay him some money so he will go away quietly and not rock her marital boat. I mean really, it’s just a way for her to blow off steam, he means absolutely nothing to her. Kids these days!
But no, she is very busy typing away on her computer, and actually doesn’t even seem to notice I am still sitting here. “Well two can play at that game,” I tell myself and immerse myself in level 87 of Candy Crush.
The drink cart begins making its way down the aisle, and this gets her attention. She reaches down into her purse while finally making eye contact! “Would you like a coconut macaroon?” she asks, pulling a chocolate-coated lump from a bag in her purse. This is it! My businesswoman is offering me a macaroon!
“Oh, gosh, no thanks,” I reply.
Idiot!
She instantly turns her head back to her computer. I have shunned my businesswoman. I have ruined what was on the brink of becoming a life long friendship, like the one between Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey in Beaches.
It’s just that I hate coconut.
The rest of the trip is quiet. She is working. I am exploding jellies all over the place. We begin the descent and right before we touch ground I decide to give it one more go. It’s not too late. We can get a coffee in the airport. We can exchange phone numbers and I can text her funny gifs and emojis.
“Do you live here in Connecticut?” I ask.
“No, I’m just here for the weekend. For work.”
“Oh, what kind of work do you do?” I ask, hoping I’m not breathing loud.
The tension mounts. Shoes? Exercise clothes? Banking? Purses? Which is it?
“I’m the president of Planned Parenthood,” she says.
Oh.
That was my next guess.
What can I tell you? This took my breath away. This is the face of the woman who is going to go to bat for the rest of us. This is the woman who is going to go up against all the men making decisions in Washington, you know the ones who think vaginas and uteruses can withstand just about anything, whether it is an STD that no one told us they were carrying, or an unwanted pregnancy because of that one day we were deathly sick with the flu as were our two toddlers, and we forgot to take our birth control pill. These big strong vaginas don’t even need birth control because women should really practice abstinence, you know, JUST LIKE MEN DO! If you absolutely must have sex, you big whore, then buy a condom and pray to God it works. But for God’s sake, leave us out of it.
I first became aware of Planned Parenthood in eleventh grade. I really didn’t know much about sex, even though my mother gave me a very thorough explanation when I was ten, by reading me a book that had a picture of an adorable fuzzy baby chick on the cover and a black and white photo of eggs in cartons on a truck. Made total sense to me. “Oh…yeah….NOW I get it,” I thought.
(Sidenote: Many many years later when I had my own daughter who needed to learn the whole, sex/here’s where babies come from thing, I too whimped out. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: Meredith, do you know about periods?
Meredith: Yes, blood comes out and you put in a tampon.
Me: Right. And this happens for about 4 days every month.
Meredith: For a WHOLE year??
Me: No. Til’ you are super old and everything hurts. Now come downstairs, dinner’s ready.)
So, okay. We should work on this as a family.
Anyway, the way I became aware of Planned Parenthood was when Ellie Nussbaum missed school the Friday of the homecoming football game, even though we all knew she was going to be named to the Queen’s Court. Who in their right mind would miss their chance to walk across the football field, arm in arm with their boyfriend, (hers happened to be big Jim Z, captain of the football team) with Earth Wind and Fire’s “Reasons” playing in the background as the whole student body cheers for you?
It started during first period, the whispers, and the gasps. Rumor had it that Ellie was pregnant. Apparently her and Big Jim Z did not know about the whole fuzzy chick and the cartons of eggs thing and something had gone terribly awry. By now, of course, we had read Go Ask Alice and some other racy teen books and had some idea of what this meant. Her best friend Jenny told her second best friend Lynn that Ellie was at Planned Parenthood with her parents, getting an abortion.
Well. This blew us away.
But you know what really blew me away? That night at the football game watching Big Jim Z run through the paper banner, arms held high, ready to take on the opposing football team. And the cheers that rang from the crowd anytime he ran down the field with the ball. And the vacant spot where Ellie was supposed to be standing in her Gunnysack maxi dress and glittering tiara ready to take her place on the Queen’s Court. Even my innocent mind thought, “Hmm..something is really fucked up about this.”
Ellie showed back up half way through the following week, a bit pale, and maybe a little thin but within days, she appeared back to normal, cheering at the games, practicing tumbling in the gym, and totally keeping her distance from Big Jim Z. Life went on for Ellie.
BECAUSE OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD!
Let’s think what may have happened to Ellie without it.
First is the question, would a doctor have helped her? This was around 1975 and I am not sure if abortion was as accessible as it is today. I believe it was legal, yet limited in certain states. Assuming a doctor would agree, we were from a lower middle class neighborhood. There would have been a question of expense. Notes on medical records. You know, the whole this is going on your permanent record thing. Adoption? Send her away to give birth and then never see her baby once it descends from her womb? A trauma and sadness she would live with forever? Why? A young girl makes a mistake. It can be rectified and she can live her life after learning what I am sure was a very valuable lesson.
I am not writing this to be political. Do I believe in abortion? Yes, in certain instances. Like, if you find yourself in an unplanned pregnancy and you know you just cannot, for whatever reason, be a mother now. I do not think of it as an easy fix to a minor inconvenience, like, “Oh shoot, looks like my due date is November 15th, the same weekend as our girl’s trip to Cabo. Definitely can’t be a mother THAT weekend.” And let’s be honest, if we miss a period and are sexually active, we can assume we are pregnant until we take a test and rule it out. Don’t wait five months, look down at your bulging belly and say, “I thought I was just drinking too much beer.” Be an adult. Take care of yourself.
So, when it came time for me to take the plunge and figure out just exactly what this whole chicken and egg thing was, I went to Planned Parenthood. I was given excellent instruction on the different methods of birth control. There was no judgement. Of course, this was before HIV and the prevalence of STD’s. All we had to worry about was a little VD, not being rendered barren or dead. I’m sure these days Planned Parenthood gives very in depth instruction on not only how to avoid unwanted pregnancy, but deadly illnesses and invisible uterine invaders that could ruin your chance of ever having a child, which may seem unimportant when you are in eleventh grade but will have you inconsolable when the time is right and all you can think about is holding a baby that has your eyes and his chin.
So, thank goodness for my businesswoman who turned out to be President of Planned Parenthood. She is a do-er. She will get shit done. There was no doubt in my mind, or the flight attendants’, that should our plane plummet to Earth, our President of Planned Parenthood would have no problem opening the exit door and ushering everyone out in a calm and orderly manner. More importantly, there was no doubt in HER mind.
I know that she will use this strength when she begins the fight for all the Ellie Nussbuams out there. For all the hormone raging teenagers who know there is a chicken, there is an egg but from there it all gets kind of foggy. For the single mother of twin toddlers whose birth control patch let her down— yes— she was in that .1 percent failure rate. She will make sure there is support for the young wife who finds out that the reason she cannot conceive a child is that at the age of 16 she was infected with an invisible pelvic inflammatory disease that has kept itself very busy eating away at her fallopian tubes and is now ready to sign off, leaving her forever childless.
There is no doubt in my mind she can do it. Look, anyone who can wear slacks and purple sneakers and still look like she is going to a political fundraiser in the Hamptons can pull off just about anything.
When we disembark and wind our way down through the jet-way and into the Bradley Field airport, I watch my President of Planned Parenthood make her way through the sliding glass doors to the taxi line, now talking on her phone and shaking her head in disagreement. She gets into a cab and I see the bag of coconut macaroons sticking out from the top of her LV purse. The cab pulls away and I know without a doubt, she is on her way to save us all.