Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman

A Fury with snakes in her hair

Continuing the memories of teachers and honoring their work, I find one voice echoing in my head these days. I hear my mother, “Never underestimate the power of a woman.”  As I witness the protests and the ongoing work of Black Lives Matter, I am in awe of the young women who are leading the way in these crucial times. I want to listen to them as they speak, watch the ways in which they lead, and learn from their courage, their skill, their persistence. And to learn from their anger.

Also echoing in my head is the cry, “Mama!.”. I think about what happens in, say, the supermarket when a child cries for his mama. Every woman in hearing distance, and especially every mother and grandmother and auntie – so, indeed, every woman — goes on alert. As the child cries out again and again, we search for the little one. We offer soothing words, comforting arms, we offer to help find mama. Nurses on battlefields through centuries have soothed the dying men who called out for their mothers. 

             The Words that Finally Came to Me

                                                              

The ocean is female, we say, and volcanoes.

We used to name hurricanes after women

to hint at the danger,

the danger of a furious woman.

The epitome of such a woman -- the Furies,

that wild and ancient host of woman-rage.

Mr. Floyd called out to his mama,

And if every woman who turns,

whose heart catches,

whose belly lurches at the sound

were to speak out now,

a visit from the Furies would look like a tea party.

Women’s rage could change the world.

What stops us?

What silences us?

Who, exactly, is afraid of the Furies?

And why?

The Furies fly out of ancient Greece and into our time. They wait and they watch. They emerged from Nyx, Goddess of the night, of the dark. They are hags, the old ones, the crones.  They are robed completely in black, so we cannot see them coming. Their gigantic wings are silent, like those of the owl, silent flyer in the night. We cannot hear them. But we know they are there, the three of them who can come from all directions at once. Their long black hair, full of snakes, streams in the wind. They are wrapped in venomous snakes around waists and arms. Blood pours from their eyes.

The Greeks were so afraid of them and their wrath, they would not call them by name: Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone.  They gave them a placating collective name, The Eumenides, the calmed ones.  I like to call them the Furious Sisters. Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone are not evil, terrifying though they may be. They lie in wait; we know they are there. They are especially watchful for four specific crimes: murder, lying, failure to honor parents and ancestors, and crimes against the gods. Their wrath brings utter and complete loss to the one who murders, who lies, who commits crimes against his ancestors, and to the hypocrite who professes to worship and behaves outside the tenets of his faith. The Furies bring dearth, the destruction of all that is in the way of justice, of honesty, of life itself.

The Furies are watching even now, and so are the old women, the crones in our midst who have Had Enough. I don’t know what will bring the Furies down upon us in divine vengeance, or when they will come. I hear the faint rustle in the night, feel the cold on the back of my neck. In the light of day, I feel the crones around me rising up, taking action publicly and privately, demanding justice and watching for what to do next. Turning when we hear the cry, “Mama!” and rushing to make things right.

I want to be a Fury, calm in intention, furious for justice, pointing my crooked crone fingers at the murderers, the hypocrites, the liars.  I stand with the young women organizing Black Lives Matter, the nurses and street medics, the grieving mothers and grandmothers and aunties. I want to spread my giant wings around them in protection and I want to fly into the face of the horror, to set about making things right. I am a Furious Sister and I am not alone.