A Most Fortunate Confluence of Time and Place

Now is the time of year to be thankful, and thankful I am. I struggle at times with envy, self-doubt and anger, but beneath it all is a baseline of gratitude that usually carries me through. I thank my slightly neurotic imagination for that.

You see, I have a very easy time imagining what my life would be like were it not for many lucky breaks--starting with the biggest break of all. The sperm that was to become me was the fastest, strongest one in the swarm (school?). Not the second fastest. Second place doesn't matter in conception. But it fought its way to the front, it did what it was made to do, and the greatest stroke of fortune in the universe befell me. I was to be born.

I do not take this for granted. In fact, I've spent many a sleepless night contemplating--I would call it worrying, because that's what it feels like, but you can't worry about a danger that's already been avoided, can you?--no, contemplating, with great dread, what would have happened if the me sperm had lost the race. Hence, I am grateful that, for once in my life, I was the speedy one.

So I was given life. But not just any life. I have a life that started in 1982 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. A liberal place, a progressive time, an affluent society. Everyone should be so lucky. What if I had been born a mere hundred years earlier? My life would be governed by the whims of the men who controlled me. I would not be free to exercise my creativity, except perhaps through needlepoint. Life would be a painful, messy prospect; I may very well die young of a now curable disease, or bury several children in my lifetime. I would be a slave to the home, with no opportunity to travel, to choose my own partner, to make my mark on the world. And when my stifled intellect bubbled over in fits of rage, bouts of depression, I would be hospitalized for "hysteria." No, give me the modern world, please, for even if women aren't treated equally always, at least we're considered people. In some countries.

And what if I had been born in another country? Well, when I'm in a foul mood I think, yes, what if I'd been born in Rome? The artistic mecca of the last 2,000-some years, that glorious, sun-speckled paradise where the beauty of the architecture is only rivaled by the impeccable good taste of its citizens, where life is an experience to be savored in all its myriad pleasures, where love is exalted and people are frank. Sigh.

When I'm being realistic, though, there are a great many worse places to be born than Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I could just as easily have been born in Darfur. Bosnia. Iraq. A slum in Rio. A slum anywhere. What if I were born in any number of countries controlled by despots, consigned to a life of hard labor, the fruits of which would not even allow me to feed my children? What would it be like to live in constant fear of my own government, never certain when a band of militias might pillage my home, slaughter my family? I might be raped and murdered myself, or just left to die a slow and degrading death from malnutrition and squalor.

Instead I was born in a stable democracy. One of the world's only stable democracies. Here we raise a fuss when the grocery store runs out of our favorite cereal brand. Our biggest concern is remembering to feed the parking meter. We can blog about our wretched leaders and still sleep soundly, without fear of retribution. I was blessed to be born here. I was blessed to be born into a family so solid and loving that I've never once had to question their support, no matter how badly I feel I've let them down.

I was blessed to be born into financial stability. I was blessed to be born to open-minded parents who trusted me to find my own path. And finally, I was blessed to be given an education that allowed me--encouraged me--to think about things like this.

So, from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you. Thank you, Mom and Dad, thank you Grandma Katie and Papa, Grandma Marnie and Grandpa Puss, Joe and Nina, all my cousins, aunts and uncles, all my friends, past and present, Atwater School, Shorewood High School, The University of Wisconsin, Magpie Media, Kartemquin, Daily Planet, Shorewood, Madison, Rome, Chicago, Doug, Doug's family, Taffy and Poppy. Thank you, thank you, thank you.