our perfect they/them grandchild (twos-07)

When I was a kid the message that boys were tough and girls were delicate never sat right with me. Perhaps because I heard disparaging remarks about females (mostly from my father), I didn't want to be lumped in with that category. I rarely bucked these ideas outwardly but I was furious about them on the inside. And, of course, I was raised as a girl. While I was also comfortable with many of the girly things (and got reinforcement for them), I wanted a lot of the boy stuff, too. One or the other just wasn't enough. I'm old enough to remember when boys couldn't take "home ec" and girls weren't allowed to take "shop" in school. I would have loved shop. I'm old enough to remember when Legos were mostly for boys. I would have loved those, too.

When I legally married five years ago, I wore a red dress (natch) with a tuxedo tails jacket. I just don't feel "in my own skin" when I only dress femininely. Or only masculinely. At 62, I am just exploring what non-binary feels like. At the same time, I want to make it clear that my preference is not to be non-gendered. I want to be multi-gendered. I am still comfortable with she/her pronouns but I'm not comfortable being relegated to "femme" or "butch." Okay, I'm more comfortable with femme-appearing butch but I want the fluidity to shapeshift as often as I please. 

Aside: remember gender identity is not the same thing as sexual attraction. You can present with any gender permutation or no gender at all and be a homosexual, heterosexual, bi- pan-sexual or asexual. Two different characteristics.

Here are some of the clear gender messages I got as a young girl:

• Boys are better at math and science.
• Be smart but don't threaten males with your intelligence.
• Good girls don't take up too much space.
• Good girls don't swear.
• Good girls eat, sit and act like a lady.
• Girls are never going to be as strong, smart or successful as men.
• Girls are never going to be as good leaders as men are. 
• Girls should not let themselves get fat.
  
• Fat girls won't get dates.
• Fat girls won't get good jobs.
• Young women are responsible for the sexual response of their boyfriends.
• Young women are responsible for the moral behavior of the couple.
• Young women are not sexual. At least not as compare to males.
• Women should be teachers, nurses, mothers and secretaries.
• Women can be artists or musicians if their husbands can support them and allow it.
• Women don't deserve equal pay.
• Men are the head of the household.
• A male heir is always preferred. 
• Eve was a byproduct of Adam.
• Eve was responsible for Adam's "sin."
  
• Females are "given away" in marriage ceremonies.
• Females take their husband's name. They belong to him.
• Females should participate in sports in moderation.
• Females shouldn't climb trees unless they have shorts on.
• Females who allow themselves to participate in (and godsforbid, enjoy) sexual activity will be scorned socially.
• The intact hymen was a sacred symbol.
  
• Girls play with dolls. Boys play with trucks.
• Girls make pretty things. Boys break pretty things.
• Girls are delicate. Boys are tough.

I know that my male counterparts got many similarly skewed messages about not crying, not failing, acting like a bully, not liking girl things, etc.

I might have considered being an engineer or a surgeon but that would have been an uphill fight. Not that I don't love how my life turned out but the limitations were clear and loud.

When it came time to raise my own children I was hellbent on bucking this nonsense. Society is a massive, self-propelled machine and difficult to resist but I did whatever I could. I encouraged my son to be gentle, made sure he got a doll when my daughter was getting one. I encouraged my daughter to be fearless and pursue her dreams. Important note: Bold femaleness is much easier for our modern society to deal with than gentle masculinity. Anti-gentle-masculinity is rooted in misogyny. Just like homophobia.

I hoped that my behavior was ultimately a more powerful message than any teachings. I hoped that they saw that I was a strong, able woman. That I was in partnership with a strong, able woman. I hoped that they knew I would always be in their corner and take on anyone who would try to harm them. They witnessed us standing up to bullies, fighting for our rights as queers and protesting racism and misogyny. They grew up thinking that women could fix anything because we did. They never knew what it was like to have a mother who didn't love powertools, who didn't curse like a fucking sailor or who wasn't afraid to speak up.

But even with all that, I felt disappointed at how hard it was to keep gender expectations from saturating their young lives. It was everywhere and constant. I wanted more freedom for them but didn't know how to counteract all the boy/girl shit society threw at them from every corner.

Along comes my youngest–now nonbinary–child carrying our first grandchild. She/They (accept all pronouns) want to launch this experiment in child rearing that essentially removes gender from the world's perception of the child, which often becomes the child's perception of themselves. The baby will be raised in a gender-free environment until they decide what their unique gender expression will look like. It will be daunting but every powerful change is daunting. It will be hard. Gendered speech is goddamn hard to avoid. We have been steeped in this dichotomy, this binary. But it will be possible.

Now we have our beloved grandchild. 18-months old this week. The unrivaled apple of our eye. We are smitten and completely in love with this little human. And they are they. They are dressed in neutral or gender-balanced clothing. They are not treated as a china doll or a miniature weight lifter. They are allowed to experience the world with as little gender conforming language and expectations as possible. Living in the Netherlands makes that easier but not easy. There are pockets of traditional everywhere. However, this small human being is going about their life with as much gender neutrality as their parents can create.

This makes me so fucking happy. SO happy. Yes, it weirds out the family. Yes, my 83-year old mother is struggling. Yes, I slip and use gendered pronouns sometimes–even after 18 months of serious practice. But what a better world! What an unprecedented opportunity for approaching the world with fewer gender limitations. I try to imagine all the increased options available to them and it blows my mind.

I remember people asking me what was I going to do about religious training for my children since I am an atheist. I remember my father asking me what was I going to do about raising a son with another woman...what about his masculine training? When people ask about my child raising their child in a non-binary way, I say the same thing to them as I used to say: every generation is an experiment, so we're going to take the gamble that if you raise children without god(s), if you raise a son without a male counterpart or if you raise a child without the trappings of gender and just teach them to be good, kind, curious, adventurous, strong, thinking, compassionate members of the human family then they're going to be fucking amazing. And they are all fucking amazing.

life in the time of corona (twos-06)

I realize I haven't said much about one of the most historically significant events of our times: the 2020 pandemic which is transitioning out in this country right now. This is how the pandemic affected me.

In October 2019, we moved into our 468 sq ft garage apartment for the 13-month renovation that we had waited 25 years to begin. I had spent the better part of the previous three years purging, planning and preparing. And buying. Jesus I had to buy a ton of stuff. I found a company to do our drawings and then, picked a construction company to execute the plan. This was a simple and not so simple project. The footprint would not grow significantly (from 1600 sq ft to only 1690 sq ft) but our 100-yr old bungalow would need:

• to have the back porch (bedroom/bathroom) and laundry room ripped off and rebuilt
  
• to have the abestos shingles in the back removed by an abatement company
• to have them replaced with cement shingles
• the roof and attic rebuilt and extended
• all ceilings returned to their original 10 ft height
  
• the knob and tube electrical system completely replaced 
• a central air conditioning system installed (for the first time–hallelujah!) 
• all the plumbing ripped out and replaced
  
• a tankless water heater installed
• all the thin drywall ripped out and replaced with 1/2" board
  
• a new primary bathroom 
• a new primary bedroom
• the guest bathroom completely overhauled
  
• the kitchen completely redesigned
• a mudroom and laundry room built and
  
• ceramic tile installed in these rooms, the kitchen and both bathrooms. 
• new hardwood floors installed in the primary bedroom/closet and 
• hardwood floors refinished everywhere else. 
• 16 double hung windows replaced/installed (to meet code). 
• insulation added under the house, in the new areas and added to attic
  
• to be raised 16 inches (we live in a flood-prone city)
• the space under the house graded to prevent standing water
  
• the porch completely rebuilt, along with the pillars that held up the roof
• custom cabinets/storage created and installed by a master carpenter
• new side and back entrances created and respective porches built
• me to make 4,000 decisions, give or take.
  

We were incredibly grateful for the garage apartment, tiny as it was, because while we lost the rental income it provided, that amount would never have covered the cost of renting an apartment anywhere nearby. Besides, we only needed to be there in the evenings, right? Most weekends we'd be working outside on something house-related. Most days we'd be at our respective workplaces.

In December, we flew to the Netherlands to witness the birth of our one and only grandchild. It was amazing and joyous. We returned home the first week of January. And well, you know the rest. Two months later the world shut down. And there we were in this postage stamp apartment. Still grateful. Still employed. Still so grateful.

But that space was tight! It is a testament to how easy the Saint is to live with and how compatible we are. We were rarely much further than 6' away from each other. When we had simultaneous Zoom meetings, one of us moved to the only other room in the apartment with a door: the bathroom. The kitchen was impossible to cook in. And I was used to having what I thought was a totally shit tiny kitchen. We did work on the weekends in the garage. So many projects. I created a mosaic backsplash for the kitchen, we stripped miles of old molding to be repurposed. Ditto old doors. 

For the next six months, we maneuvered around the little space. Adjusting to the size and trouble-shooting the endless renovation questions and decisions. So many decisions. We continued to work remotely every weekday from our little desks and had countless video meetings. By December of 2020, the house was done and I gave notice that I was retiring. I was planning on retiring in March of 2021 but my leadership had been five years of increasing terrible; I was miserable and done. January 15, 2021 was my last day at work. Just over six months have elapsed and I haven't looked back. I do miss the people on my team but, honestly, I haven't thought about work at all.

After retiring I had three months to unpack the house and organize the spaces. This, constant reader, is not my super power. Historically these kinds of projects make me want to pull the covers over my head. I am usually overwhelmed and teary at the thought. But not this time. I looked at the mountains of bins and piles of boxes and figured out a strategy like a general mounting a tactical offensive. With an army of one. All previously purged categories needed to be re-purged. There were items organized that I pulled apart and reorganized. There were tons of things that went to charity, friends and in the trash. It was a massive challenge and I am not going to be modest–I climbed that fucking mountain, planted my flag and crowed.

At the end of the three months, my mom, two of my sisters and my sister-in-law came to visit. The house was clean, organized and brand-spanking new. My family was amazed. 

Note: Even though they knew I was a designer, my family had seen me live in this old house for 25 years without making major changes so they may have had their doubts about what I could do, which is fair enough. My mom and sisters are constantly making upgrades and changing their homes. And they are all lovely homes. I am possessed of a need to do things right or not do them at all. Can't explain why. When I finally accomplish something, I make sure I can get what I really want and not compromise too much. And I did. 

Of course, the fact that my spouse didn't care one iota about the design part meant that I got to do whatever I wanted. Holy shit, I'm spoiled.

Early in the year St Barbara had been vaccinated at work. I was vaccinated and "safe" about 10 days before my family arrived. Since then, the U.S. has begun to open. After 600,000 people died. It will be a long time before we'll be able to absorb the tragedy of this pandemic and the political upheaval that coincided/contributed to it.

My family is all vaccinated except for my youngest in the Netherlands, who is set to receive her first shot in July. That will be a wonderful day, when she is safe. Next month we travel to Portland to reunite with our son and his wife. In October, we fly to Amsterdam and see our youngest and our grandchild who we last saw at birth, 22 months earlier. These will be joyous reunions.

While the pandemic created a lot of stress, ultimately I was made for this kind of isolation. For the most part, I love, love, love being at home. Being able to work and play with the Saint every day and not having to go to social events I was not interested in was a huge relief. The best excuse not to socialize. While I got a little too isolated once or twice, mostly, I relished the privacy and time. And it segued into retirement like a dream. I have soaked and steeped in alone time. I have designed and planned and schemed new projects. I have sewed and knitted and written. I have cooked in this insanely wonderful kitchen. I have spent time with a small number of close friends.

Between the pandemic and retirement I have learned to protect my privacy. I have dropped obligations and made decisions about how I want to spend my precious time. My sense of bliss is unprecedented and pervasive.

sex education for the cloistered (twos-05)

She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elton
Loves daydreams and her boyfriend too.

(Tom Petty, Freefallin'; lyrics shamelessly adapted without permission)

When I was in middle school, pious little good-deed-doer that I was, I would periodically volunteer to go to the state or county home for the mentally retarded. We'd all load up in the school bus and spend a couple of hours playing with mostly Down-Syndrome and other mildly retarded children. I had a comfort level with the kids because I'd met some special-needs children at church.

On one of the last trips to the home, someone messed up. Instead of scheduling us with the little ones, they accidentally put us in with the teenage boys/young adult men group. In a very short time the school bus was filled up with freaked out 7th and 8th graders. I remember one of the mentally challenged boys hugged me; I wasn't scared but he hugged with the tenacity of a toddler and the strength of a man and didn't want to let go. We were no match. So the chaperones made an announcement that we should all get back in the bus and the attendants began to corral all the patients out of the room. I must have been sitting down because when one of the young men decided to drop his pants, I got an eye level shot at his half-erect penis.

Please remember, I grew up in a prudish, predominantly female household. I had only seen the non-erect penises of male infants whose diapers I changed while babysitting. This was a horse of a different...size. What I know now and didn't know then, was that this person had an unusually large cock. I had no frame of reference. So I could only conclude...wait for it...that his oversized schlong was a part of his deformity.

The next time I saw a penis in real life was on my wedding night.

I am not making any snide remarks about my ex-husband's endowment–not at all. I was relieved as hell that he was not in possession of such a sea monster. However, can you see how a little sex education would have gone a long way? Do you think I ever talked to anyone about the incident at the home? Do you think I ever hunted down pictures of male genitalia to see what I should expect? No, of course not.

What saved me from some of my naiveté and profound lack of experience was curiosity and education. An education initiated and conducted by myself. I read everything I could get my hands on (not illustrated, unfortunately) about (mostly conventional) sex before I married. My commitment to learning, formal and informal, is based on a love of exploration and the very practical need to know what the fuck I should expect from life.

Side note: I had to go in for a pre-marital vaginal exam (my first). I was 2,200 miles away from home and my mom (who is wonderful and might not have been much informational help to me but sure would have been a comfort). Anyway, the gynecologist was your average late middle-aged white man and he asked me if I wanted him to break my hymen so I wouldn't be in pain on my wedding night. Hmmm. Not a question Sunday school prepared me for. For sure, I didn't want to be in pain, so I said yes. Shit, that hurt. He went on to describe exercises I should do to keep my vagina flexible before the wedding.

I have thought about this incident many times since. I was grateful (?) that my wedding night was not painful. Yet I wondered if the doctor got off on this cultural power trip of deflowering the naive or if he'd just seen too many freaked out young brides after their wedding nights. I do not know. All I know was that I was an 18-yr old virgin with no mom or sister to talk through this and I was bleeding and sick to my stomach. I didn't even understand the traditional implications of not having my husband "take" my virginity. Which concept enrages me just thinking about it.

Sex education. I was desperate for it.

A year or so after getting married, my husband started bringing home Penthouse Forum. It was kind of a pre-Reddit information dump about sex and variations on the same. The other side of the looking glass. My education went into high gear.

So what did I learn? First of all, that there were possibilities for sex that I had never heard of nor imagined. I learned that I was indeed attracted to women. I began to view monogamy in a different way (although I wasn't quite ready for non-monogamy when my husband requested it sometime later). I read descriptions of the female orgasm that convinced me that I'd never had one. It was an enormous amount of taboo information. And I was still a fairly blank slate.

Son of side note: here is the sum total of my previous sexual education (and motherfuckers, explaining menstruation is not sex education). The day before I was to be married my mother handed me a douche bag and my father told me when I got to the hotel room on my wedding night, that I should lock the door and take a bath.

That's it.

Clearly, sex was complicated by my innate uncleanliness. Also, lock the door? What the fuck was that about? Suddenly I wasn't safe because my husband would become a rapist at the first opportunity? Fucking hell. What a message.

Anyhow, my education continued. Dave formally asked me for an open marriage. After crying privately about the accurate suspicion that open marriage was just his way of getting some on the side and keeping his wife at the same time (read: he didn't seem worried at all about losing me and he should have been), I agreed to open our marriage because I'm an idealist and committed to learning. Laugh if you will but that was why. What neither of us expected was that I would get so much more of the action. I was tripping.

Open marriage is a post unto itself. Suffice it to say, the experience changed me. Polyamory, which I still support, is very challenging. If your foundation is not rock solid, extra marital sex will crack it wide open. At some point, for other reasons made more complicated by this, I realized that I was miserable in the marriage, open or closed.

When I left him and decided to date women I was, oh gods forgive my adolescent punning, a fish out of water. Gay women took one look at me and my offspring and saw evidence of my previous congress with men and assumed (correctly) that I'd enjoyed it. They were not only not interested, they treated me like a hetero interloper/pariah. To them, then and now, I say: you should be so lucky. 

I finally met a woman who showed interest in me (despite my stint with semen) in a Leisure Learning class on learning to tune up your own car–jesuschrist the clichés just write themselves. She was lovely and awkward. We decided to skip the last class on air conditioning maintenance because she was going camping and her camping partner bailed on her. And I agreed to take their place.

Let's regroup for a minute: 

• First of all, if given the opportunity to choose between understanding your car's cooling system or getting intimate with a woman for the first time–I am here to testify that you will never miss learning to fix your own air conditioning. That your life will be much, much richer if you pay the auto guy and spend that precious time learning the mechanics of female anatomy.
  
• Secondly, you know I was out of my hormonal little mind to agree to go camping--an activity that I am 100% disinterested in. I am also fairly sure I'd have put on plaid flannel and Birkenstocks if that would have gotten me there faster. 
• Thirdly, this wasn't just camping. This was the goddamn Michigan Womyn's (sic) Music Festival. The notorious female-only, annual lesbian event in the Michigan woods. I had read the brochure so I had some idea of what I was getting into but even so, it ended up being jaw-dropping. When I say I prefer to jump headfirst into my passion, I am not shitting you.

It was a long drive and we camped one or two nights along the way. I am a very comfortable Alpha and the lack of specialized training did not deter me. At least I got to the festival with that box checked off. (Forgive me, I really can't help myself.)

There were 2,000 women. Which is 4,000 breasts, give or take. The remnants of my modest Mormon past dropped off like a decrepit cocoon and in no time, I was shirtless as a nymph. But still weirded out. I swear I was the only one there with toenail polish on and birth control pills in my bag. I was sure they could sniff out the imposter in me. In spite of my self-consciousness though, I could barely contain my cup-runneth-over glee. It was fucking glorious.

While I hope I never stop learning about pleasure and anatomy and all of that, I'm contented that book learning and field work have made my sex education graduation possible.

making (twos-04b)

When I was little, I read a story about some poor kids in a post-war/depression era setting. I remember very little of the story but this: they were trying to make a gift for someone's infant and had scavenged for materials. They found a discarded, worn vest and unraveled it for the wool. Then, knitted a sweater for the baby. Because the yarn was worn, there were thin parts on the sweater which they hid by embroidering flowers from other yarn scraps onto the fabric.

This is probably the most boring part of the story for most kids but for me--this was the beginning of a lifetime love affair with creativity. The idea that you could look around and take the castoffs of the world and spin them into something beautiful was mesmerizing.

Of course, this applies to almost anything you want to make. My favorite kind of cooking is looking at the odds and ends in the pantry and refrigerator and putting together a delicious meal. Some of the most wonderful dishes have been created by people who had little and figured out how to use whatever they had.

I am not poor anymore and I don't have to scavenge for materials but the idea of transformation still motivates me. The metamorphosis of a hunk of wood into a table or skeins of yarn into a sweater is magical.

My current project is making a Halloween costume for my sweet grandchild, Asteroid. Their parents have suggested that Asteroid be a tiny chef. I think this is a fantastic idea. I will deconstruct and resize a small (but not small enough) chef's coat and make the toque and apron. Imagining the little munchkin in their chef's outfit is my inspiration.

Another project is making window coverings. Partly because they are ridiculously expensive and partly because I love the challenge of making them myself. Roman curtains are a pain in the ass to make but tedious in a meditative way, if that makes sense. Once I get the process started, it will be repetitious and easy.

I also have a stained glass project that I will have to attack in the fall. It's too hot in the garage to work right now and there is no way to bring that glass shard mess into the house safely. This project will replace the three panels currently in our front door.

There's a shower curtain and bedspread on the list as well as figuring out a knitting project (shawl) that I got stuck on and haven't been able to figure out what went wrong with the pattern. I would love to do that without unraveling the entire thing and starting over. Which is what I usually end up doing.

The biggest challenge is not getting discouraged by visualizing what the final product will be. 

Having time to create things has been the driving force towards retirement for many years. It feels like a I'm a kid in a candy store--planning and making all these things. But it also feels like a put up or shut up kind of thing. Which is all about the fear of failure. Part of the lesson about accepting failure as one of the most powerful parts of the learning process is publishing these words. They are not polished or streamlined. They are a work in progress...

miscellanea (twos-04a)

Goddammit, writing 1,000/words a day is harder than I'd expected. Part of this retirement experiment is to find out if the things I thought I'd love and be good at turn out to be just an appealing idea of myself and not really me. We shall see.

I'm in the sleep-fighting ring and getting pummeled. Part of the reason is a Blue Alert that went off at 4-fucking-19 this morning. What is a blue alert? Well, it's a variation on the Amber Alert to help find abducted children. If you add too many more color alerts, we're going to need a cheat sheet. Blue alert is a warning about something happened to a cop OR warning that someone who injured a cop is on the loose. Confusing, eh? Well, whatever it is, it woke me up on a morning that I was worried about waking up on time (had to pick up the Saint at 6:30 am after her overnight sleep test) and that was all she wrote. No more sleep for me.

Aside: every time I read a Silver Alert on a highway sign, I whisper, "Go grandma, go!"

After picking her up from the sleep test, she wanted to go to breakfast. I am not a restaurant patron. I very rarely go out to eat. It's a combination of frugality, a passion for cooking and a love for delicious food. The only place open before 7am was a new Katz's Deli in the Heights. You know that saying, Pick two: fast, good and/or cheap? Well, Katz's is not standing out in any of those categories. Still, it was decent and we were hungry. When we walked in I realized I could never fully escape my past. The Sinatra song playing was the aural component of damn good marketing. A New York deli with Sinatra crooning over the sound system? It was perfect. As much as I want to ignore it, I see/hear/smell/taste branding everywhere.

I want to wax poetic about daydreaming. Laud the power of letting my type A personality go to seed. Sing the praises of the blank page and the creative potential in mind drifting. But today, daydreaming is just the slippery slope to unconsciousness and I can't.

Speaking of work shit I'd like to forget, I was happily chatting with my old Art Director (old meaning past, not ancient). Then, he had to get off the phone for a meeting he'd forgotten and goddammit, I remember how much I will NEVER miss work meetings. Feigning interest in someone's insecure ramblings took years off my life and it brings me joy to never have to restrain my eye-roll again. Ever.

I also wanted to ramble on a bit about sex. You know, why it's so amazing. But I feel I will never do justice to such a delightful subject in my current state of sluggishness. What a shame. Hopefully, I'll be back on this subject before too long. I spent way to much of my energy as a young girl clamping down any and all sexual urges only to find out like the child of an all-natural, granola-head parent that they were all wrong about evils of ice cream. All wrong.

But, I am sad to say, I will only reach 500 words today, because I decided to get stoned and now I'm useless.

hunger and courage (twos-03)

In one of my recent posts I mentioned that saving the awful paperwork from the legal battle for custody of my children was a way of documenting my bravery. I was listening to a conversation between Rebecca Solnit and Sonara Jha last week (virtual events feel like sneaking into someone's living room to hear them chat) and they talked about sexual abuse and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Well, that makes total sense, right? Being sexually assaulted, like any experience with violence, would create a terrible psychological backlash. However. When soldiers talk about their war experiences, people listen with hushed reverence. Their courage is lauded. They are given medals for their actions. And now, with more mental health awareness, they are treated for their wounds, mental and physical.

When woman (mostly) have PTSD from sexual assault, they are expected to keep their war stories silent. No one wants to hear the gory details. No one wants the indelicate images shared.

Great comedians have always peppered their humor with serious cultural commentary. George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Dave Chappelle, etc. They have been sometimes been criticized but often embraced and, in general, respected. When Hannah Gadsby performed her show Nannette, I was surprised/not surprised at the anger of many men and women because she not only refused to be predictably funny, she broke the code of talking openly about the boys/men who sexually assaulted her and what it did to her. She was not polite. She did not use euphemisms. She gave no fucks if it made the audience uncomfortable. In fact, she seemed to want the audience to be uncomfortable. She wasn't interested in making men feel safe. 

She is a warrior, survivor, broken human on the mend. She deserves a goddamn medal.

I know so many women, too many women, who have survived the epidemic of sexual assault. They are powerful and I wish to all the mythical gods that their power had been built on a different foundation. Most of them function magnificently. They mother, they lead, they build and they gather others together. It is a fucking miracle and they deserve medals and hushed reverence for their strength. For their perseverance. For resisting the well-earned urge to burn it all down.

Me too. Those two words started a heartbreaking roll call across the country. Me too. My own experience at the age of 11 was short and terrifying. I spent years minimizing it because I wasn't raped. But, like Roxane Gay talked about in her brilliant book, Hunger, my life cleaved in two that day. Before I was molested and after. I never even recognized the damage done by the Mormon church leaders some years later as additional sexual abuse until the #MeToo movement. I just assumed it was what all women went through and had to bear–and please bear it silently, sister. Childhood innocence ended that day in a crowded line for hot dogs at Shea Stadium when a strange man slide his hand between my legs and I froze for what seemed like an eternity before I bolted away. I was filled with shame. I was wearing a pretty peasant top with my new training bra and some red and white checked polyester pants. Everything on me felt complicit and tainted.

When I cried loud enough in the bathroom late that night to make my mom come find out what was wrong, I told her. She asked me questions. They were probably innocent enough but each question seemed to imply my responsibility in the sordid act. I remember thinking, with a child's fierceness, no man will ever touch me again. I remember going back to bed red-eyed and sniffly. I remember crawling into my big sister's bed and feeling safer but not safe. I remember the subject never came up again. Ever. It took 10 years before I could speak of that day again. But not with my family or friends. Just to a therapist who didn't know me.

Something breaks when a woman or girl is violated. Something you can't un-break.

I finished Roxane Gay's book yesterday. It is painful and articulate and raw. She is brilliant--really, like something in a jewelry display that shines almost too brightly. I would have an unabashed crush on her if she wasn't so close to my childrens' ages. Her wife (Debbie Millman) is also very smart and full of bright shiny ideas. A queer dynamic duo those two. The thing about Hunger that impressed me most was that understanding the flawed, damaging misogyny behind our culture's obsession with the thin and white and pure does not prevent us for wanting it anyway. Even when it's not possible (which it's not for 85% of the population). I appreciate that contradiction.

She's another one--give her a fucking bronze star.

I was taught that bravery and courage were male traits. That women were to be protected and grateful. Women were only brave when men were absent but they shouldn't have to be. Maybe it was some primal form of feminism that made me reject the idea that women weren't as tough as men. Or maybe I was just a deeply stubborn child. I silently taught myself to control my fear by walking around the spooky cellar alone in the dark. I watched my father's bullying behavior with seemingly compliant composure and steeled myself for the day that I would stand up to him. I trained my fight response and smothered my flight response. The bravest things I ever did not involve physical confrontation (well, not most of them) but the ability to look your bully in the face and say, hit me again. To find a well of inner calmness and intellectually battle powerful people with my composure intact. I didn't always win but I always felt powerful.

To all the women who have shared their nightmare stories with me and still manage to face the world with grace and rage and love and defiance, I salute you. You inspire me. I wish I could heal the damaged child in each of you. You are my heroes.

el día que me desperté (twos-02)

This is a story about narcolepsy.

Long before my family dove head-first into Mormonism, the banner of Puritan Industry had been firmly planted in my little cranium. My mother was tire-less. Every moment of her waking day was spent on the domestic treadmill of perfection. She cleaned and shopped and tidied and cooked and scrubbed and laundered and cleaned. Deargods, that woman could/can clean. Eventually she worked full-time and just added that to endless lists of things that had to be done and done well. When all was said and done, she accomplished this (without napping!) while raising five children and tending to my demanding father, who worked grueling shifts as a policeman, went to night school, did yard work and never-ending house repairs.

I was born 21 months after my big sister and 18 months before my little sister. I was a round, happy baby by all reports. My baby book descriptions (sparsely filled-in as the second child but still more complete than the younger kids got) captured my essence with eerie accuracy: Good eater, healthy bowel movements, sleeps well. I was not a physically adventurous creature. My mother's cousin said that I had no interest in crawling until they put my great grandfather's fireman's hat out of reach. His red fire hat. Another odd glimpse into my not-quite-formed personality: the color red was and is intrinsically compelling to me.

I didn't walk until I was 15 months old. I suppose this isn't all that unusual but I hadn't heard about late walking when I was a young mother. If my children hadn't walked by 13 months, I'd have taken them to the pediatrician. Yet, not walking made total sense to me. Why exert effort if everything important is supplied? By the way, this has nothing to do with narcolepsy (which doesn't present until teen or young adult years), it's just establishing that I was never very physically energetic.

But my brain. Ach. My brain whirled around like a gymnast on amphetamines.

I was a bookish kid. A maker kid. A smart kid. A daydreaming kid. A kid that did not want to play outside. But my mom wasn't going to raise some naked-mole-rat-looking child and pushed me outside to play. Even in the fucking snow. My love for overcast days is a direct result of knowing that if there was a threat of rain, I was allowed to stay inside, writing and building and dreaming. As a grown woman, I would proudly assume the Superman stance and declare, "I am INDOOR GIRL!"

During my teenage years I began to crave sleep. Not all the time but whenever I stopped studying or hanging with friends or doing chores. My senior year of high school was the first time I ever had my own room. I don't remember ever having to be scolded to go to bed.

At 17, I left home for college. It was during college that narcolepsy really set in. I married Dave at the end of my freshman year (fucking religion and it's no-fucking rules). I took a few last classes after financial support from my parents was terminated because I was now independent or something (and there were three kids behind me in the tuition line). One was a 7:00 am class taught by one of Dave's professors. Now, early morning classes were always better for me because afternoons and evenings were my sleepiest times. It was a better time but not sleep-free. The professor cornered my husband and asked him if I slept through all my classes, or just his? I was so damned embarrassed.

Later on, while I finished my BFA, an art history professor (that I loved) forgot that I told him about my problem and during a post-lunch art history slide presentation, stopped the class to wake me and suggest I drop out because I slept through his lectures anyway. I.was.mortified. I penned him a quick reminder of the situation, walked out of the class and worked my ass off to get an A in that course.

Pregnant at 19, my increased struggle with sleepiness could be blamed on pregnancy. After my first was born, it could be blamed on taking care of an infant. A creeping desperation for sleep began to overshadow my life but I was so, so ashamed. I didn't tell anyone until I was really afraid that I wouldn't be able to take care of my baby or achieve any of my goals. I finally went to a doctor who listened to my concerns and promptly suggested I was a bored housewife and maybe I needed a hobby. Motherfucker. I was humiliated. It was a clear sign that I was truly lazy and undisciplined. The cardinal sins of my upbringing.

Our house was carpeted in Fisher-Price and Duplo toys. I managed to bathe the baby and most days, clean the dishes but precious little else got done. In addition to the undiagnosed narcolepsy, I had a cleaning perfection standard that I was never going to even get close to, so my motivation flat-lined. The hillock of clean, unfolded laundry was moved from the bed to floor each night. Dave did more than his share of cooking and cleaning and I ground my self-image deeper into the dirt.

I swear my precocious son's first words were "Wake up, Mommy!" yelled with his plump little hands cupped around my ear. My second child was born 3 days after my 23rd birthday. We had moved across the country when the baby was 6 months old. I hated unpacking. If regular life was hella difficult, unpacking the house and getting everything in order was impossible. One day, in a depressing, light-starved apartment I awoke sitting up from an unintended nap for the 5th time that morning and realized I didn't know where my toddler was. I found him asleep between the boxes or perhaps, he had ingested poison and collapsed between the boxes, I didn't know.

It was terrifying.

The next week, I found a random internal medicine doctor and made an appointment. Armed with a clipboard of notes and not allowing the doctor to say a damn thing, I ran through the litany of my experience, willing him to believe. He asked whether I was depressed and I said, how do I know? Am I sleepy because I'm depressed or am I depressed because I can't stay awake? I told him I didn't think so. I loved having my two children and I felt that my marriage was healthy (I was wrong but at the time, it seemed true). After telling the doctor:

• I lived to sleep.
• Halfway through grocery shopping with my husband and kids, I would almost weep to go sit in the car with the baby until he finished.
• Everything was a Sisyphean task. Everything. How would I ever finish my degree?
• I would fall asleep sitting up constantly. On the subway. On my couch.
  
• I fell asleep at stop lights.
• I could sleep 10 hours and be ready for a nap 2 hours after waking. My husband had to wake me from that nap after 3 hours because he was concerned (and probably tired of taking care of the kids).
• As I walked around, I fantasized about curling up on the floor everywhere. That low-pile industrial carpeting beckoned me to lie down.
• Sleep had become my savior and my ball-and-chain.

He simply said, I think you have narcolepsy.

Inwardly, I scoffed. For christsake, I didn't have narcolepsy! Narcolepsy was a comedian's joke. It was slumping over mid-conversation. It was stupid poodles running full out and then collapsing for a nap. The doctor said, if you had the more extreme symptoms of narcolepsy, you would have been easily diagnosed earlier. The sleep disorder, like most, is on a spectrum. I didn't collapse from cataplexy. I didn't have sleep paralysis. I didn't fall over mid-sentence. I was just debilitatingly sleepy.

I was skeptical but it was the first time anyone had ever believed me. I wept the entire drive home.

39 years ago today, the door to the rest of my life was flung open because I insisted that someone believe me.

One of the great ironies of my life was that the only legal drug available to me, coffee, was forbidden by my church. Still nursing my baby and not ready to wean her, real drugs were not an option. So I had coffee for the first time. It was stunning what caffeine, thrown into a virgin bloodstream, would do. My gastric system went into an uproar. But I was awake. I stopped near-strangers in my apartment complex to gush that it was 1pm and I hadn't napped all day. It was fucking miraculous.

Narcolepsy is an umbrella term to describe excessive daytime sleepiness. Because narcolepsy is a diagnosis based on eliminating other issues, it is often challenged. I wish just one of those neurologists could feel the terror of possibly having that diagnosis shot down and returning to that under-water state of inertia.

I believe my diagnosis is finally safe. And the medications I take are safe (enough) and effective. I don't think about having narcolepsy most days. Raising my children, getting my degree, divorce, custody battle and career success would not have been possible. I would like to think that my relationship with The Saint (my spouse and the most patient woman on the planet) would have been possible but not being alert makes many relationship problems thornier and makes simple communication harder. So, being awake also gave me back love and romance, too.

I have narcolepsy and because of the miracle of modern medicine, I have lived a rich life. My current neurologist says a narcolepsy diagnosis usually take 20 years. I credit my stubbornness and hunger for a better life with my early diagnosis. I love being awake and alert. I also still love drifting off to sleep.

1,000 words of summer (twos-01)

Roxane Gay, in her newsletter The Audacious Round Up, mentioned the writer, Jami Attenberg, who started this #1000wordsofsummer project. This year's project ends today so, of course, I'm going to start today. 1,000 words/day for 14 days. A kick start for something I've been wanting to do and because I have this fundamental belief that I ought to cobble my own shoes and be my own coach (and since that is ridiculous) I say thank you Roxane Gay for helping to motivate me.

So much has happened since I posted here regularly that I am tempted to do the gargantuan recap. But I won't. Except for this: I now have a grandchild and I retired 6 months ago. 

The grandchild, named Asteroid, has transformed me into the utter cliché of grandmotherhood. It is good and right. They live in the Netherlands, which makes exercising that cliché a tad bit challenging (particularly since they were born three months before the pandemic). The child's name is a testament to the concept that 1) I don't get a vote in what name is chosen for my grandchild and 2) any name that symbolizes your beloved offspring's offspring will become magical to you. Please note the use of the gender neutral pronouns. Asteroid will get to decide if and what gender they prefer. Again, I don't get a vote but I support diminishing gender expectations wholeheartedly.

The retirement has been an extraordinary, all-that-I-hoped for explosion of happiness. I was born for this. I am obnoxiously splashing around in my joie de vivre.

The prevailing theme of my life is that I am a maker. Of things. Fiber. Wood. Metal. Words. Food. This is what I want to do, all of the time. If you ask me what I am excited about, I will gush over the shortbread dough waiting to be made into checkerboard cookies. I will wax effusive over preparing to make Asteroid's first Halloween costume (a tiny chef--A TINY CHEF! How could that not be amazing and fun?). I will furrow my brow in seriousness while I talk about filling the natural pecan wood crevices in my dining room table with green/blue resin. I will go on enthusiastically about making sun-blocking roman shades for the blindingly sunny windows in my house. I will bore you. I will tell you as fast as I can because I want to spare you as much boredom as possible. But I am irrepressible.

Since retiring my outer world has shrunk and my inner world has expanded. Exploded may be more accurate. So much blissful time to think and dream and plot my next move. I grew up in a small house that, at one point, had 7 humans sharing one small bathroom. I shared a room with a sibling for 16 of my 17 years there. I was a child that craved solitude like nourishment. It never happened. I left for college. Spent one year in a dorm room with a friend from church that I didn't really know very well. I was married at the end of my freshman year because good Mormon girls don't fuck before marriage. Good Mormon girls don't call it fucking. Good Mormon girls don't talk about "it" at all. Married at 18, pregnant by 19. Divorced by 25. To say that I never had time to myself is an understatement.

I am nothing if not patient (with my goals, I mean. In general, I am not very patient with myself or others). At 62, I finally satiated this lifelong need for space and time.

Godhelp anyone who tries to part me from it.

In addition to retiring, we just completed a 13-month (really, a 25-years in the making) renovation of our 101-year old bungalow. So much planning and decision-making and physical work. Then, I spent the first four months of retirement unpacking, re-purging (I really thought I had done a good job pre-renovation. I was wrong.) and organizing everything. It was a test of dueling with perfection and not getting so overwhelmed by the forest of bins that I gave up. I am not an outdoorsy, hiking sort of person. This was my Mt. Everest and I was my own Sherpa.

One of the many categories of the great purge of '21 was sifting through 20 30 40 years of writing. There was terrible poetry, of course. But there were also some gems that I saved from the shred pile. Of all this stuff, I was amused to learn that my habit of keeping lists of words has followed me all of my life. Lists of interesting rhymes. Lists of words to describe unique things. Lists of homonyms. Lists of terrible corporate jargon documented during tedious work meetings.

The other rediscovery was the endless paperwork from a custody battle that my ex-husband waged for our two children. A custody battle that leveraged my being poor and queer with his being a monied white man. It was terrible and terrifying. Ultimately, it was a war of attrition and my heels were dug in so deep, he finally gave up. The documentation of all this seemed a mountain of awful. But I ended up keeping more of it than I originally thought healthy. Why? Because it was not only the hardest thing I'd ever experienced but it was the bravest I'd ever been. It was a testament to my will and my courage and I didn't want to erase the history of such triumph.

I spent last week in Cancún with a dear friend (sorry I must skip this story to finish another). When I got there I felt like my Spanish was about toddler level and that I would not make much headway with the language in the short time I'd be there. But by the end of the 5 days I managed a simple conversation, woven together by horrendous grammar, with the van driver on my way to the airport. This may seem disconnected but it's not. Like my Spanish, I trust that through practice, my writing will also get easier and better. 

Here's to my first 1,000 words. I am loquacious so it surprised me that this was harder than I'd expected. But being able to expound on a subject is surprisingly freeing. Except that I fear I will meander the reader right off the page, so thank you for making it this far.

mountaintop

13 months of isolation was followed by 12 days of family visits. You could get the bends from such an intense change. But it was far better than it was stressful.

Four months of massive, post-renovation unpacking, re-purging (and I thought the initial purge was gigantic) and organizing ended the day before my mother arrived. 99% of the little boxes I placed on the three-year to-do list had been checked off. Unpacking has been historically heinous for me. [The trade-off between never moving and never unpacking had always seemed a reasonable one. A big renovation changed all that.] But I was retired for three of those months and that alone transformed the hated chore into mostly tolerable and occasionally enjoyable.

I got to cook for my family in a kitchen that makes one of my favorite activities a real joy. Argentinian steak with chimichurri sauce. Roasted green beans and platano chips. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Requests for red velvet cake and german chocolate cake happily fulfilled. Even the items that didn’t turn out perfectly–I am rusty from 13 months of renovation living in a tiny garage apartment with a postage-stamp sized kitchen–are pardoned that with an inner graciousness that I rarely extend to myself. I thank my kitchen.

Working with my sister and sister-in-law on getting the house ready for mom’s arrival. (We call it “Dolorifying” the place, playing with her given name and her herculean-level cleaning skills. See also: “Dolorable,” which describes her innate, diminutive cuteness. Those flowery leggings are dolorable!)

Glancing over and seeing my sisters’ absorbed in their books.

Sipping coffee in the sunlit corner of the kitchen with mom.

Seeing them relax–like they’re here all the time–so comfortable and at-home.

All of this in a house that has been transformed by a 25-years-in-the-making renovation. I am at the summit of a mountain of work–a long and difficult climb. But the renovation was not “done” until I showed it to mom. Her response was gratifying and delightful. She loved all of it. So did my youngest sister as well as my big sister and her wife.

This is success of the sweetest kind.

eulogy for my father

My father was a pain-in-the-ass.

He was argumentative, opinionated and loved to be right.

In this respect, I am his true heir apparent.

My father was an inspiration.

Her left NYC’s Spanish Harlem a poor 10th grade dropout
and went on to get both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

I don’t remember a time growing up that he wasn’t studying
for something.

Education wasn’t some lofty ideal for him—it was a living,
breathing concept.

He read the classics and taught himself proper Spanish
grammar and vocabulary so he could write fluently in his
first language. He wrote textbooks and his autobiography
in both languages.

My father was passionate.

Hardly a week has gone by since I left home almost 40 years ago
that I haven’t spoken to him. Much of our conversations were
about politics, religion and philosophy.

We mostly agreed on things.

My father was a maker.

I learned to love craftsmanship by watching him build or repair
things. Of course, since I was a girl it took him a little longer to
realize that I didn’t just want to be his go-fer.

I treasure all of the tools he has given me. They are my family
heirlooms.

Finally, my father was my friend.

He gave me of the gift of his trust and respect. If you knew my
father, you know what a big deal that was.

The last time I said goodbye to my father, one week before
he died, I took his face in my hands and gently scolded him,
“Now, Dad, you behave yourself, okay?”
Even in his weakened state he managed a classic Ralph eye-roll.

I’ll treasure that look forever.

Te quiero Papi. Voy a extrañarte tanto.

Rafael Leonidas Torres 

November 29, 1934 – April 7, 2014

pudenda puritanica

pu·den·dum

/pyo͞oˈdendəm/

noun: pudendum; plural noun: pudenda

1. a person's external genitals, especially a woman's.

Origin

mid 17th century: from Latin pudenda (membra ) ‘(parts) to be ashamed of,’ neuter plural of the gerundive of pudere ‘be ashamed.’

The rise of the Puritans in the mid 17th century and the linking of a woman's genitalia with the word "pudere" or "be ashamed"

Coincidence? I think not.

i carry her heart

Happy Epiphany! I nearly didn't make it. Spent this day at St Luke's Hospital while St Barbara went through pre-op tests for an atrial ablation on Monday. It's too much to explain but it's a good procedure that will probably give her a permanent break from atrial fibrillation, no small bonus. Still, I'm struggling with my normal ability to cram all my fear into good data and historic success rates. I just hate that a doctor is going to snake up through her femoral artery, poke her heart and burn the fibrillating parts. I really hate that.

adulteries and epiphanies

Independence Day

There’s nothing like being yanked from slumber’s womb because someone left an alarm on. A persistent, jangling poke in my eardrum. Dammit, the phone. It was the phone.

“Hello?” in my best I-wasn’t-really-asleep voice.

“This is Jane. Please tell Charlie I’m alright.”

“Wait. Jane? What is going on?”

“Just tell him I’m fine.”

Click.

What the fuck was that about?

Sleep fog cleared. Oh, shit. Jane. The wife of the man I was trying to end a crazy affair with. Pieces floated out of the haze and landed with a thud on the floor of my consciousness.

Oh, shit. I came home late last night after going to a movie with a friend. Charlie called. He was desperate because I hadn’t been home and he didn’t know where I was. I was irritated. Jesuschrist, there’s nothing more annoying than a clingy lover.

“Where the fuck are you?” I asked him.

“In the garage.”

“Shit, Charlie, this doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“Jane’s fast asleep.”

If the conversation wasn’t a wise idea, phone sex was probably high on the list of truly stupid ideas. But it served two purposes: first, it got Charlie off the phone faster than the endless conversation of why we needed to stop this nonsense and second, I was wound like a top.

I like words; phone sex employed many I didn’t use in my daily vocabulary.

Charlie wasn’t bad either.

And Jane, it turns out, was not asleep.

I still don’t know at which stage of the descriptive conversation she picked up the extension. There really wasn’t a good entrance point. Not during verbal foreplay, mid-crescendo, certainly not during denouement…not even the post-coital chit-chat. It didn’t matter, the whole mess exploded (pun acknowledged) and I was standing there in the middle of the shitstorm.

So was Charlie but honestly I didn’t much care–his shitstorm was his problem. I was center stage for public stoning.

Genesis

Charlie and Jane were friends of my husband, Dave, and mine. I wasn’t really tight with Jane but I (obviously) liked Charlie. Actually Jane may have been my husband’s supervisor at the time. That still makes me cringe. This was the husband I had left some seven months earlier and was on my way to divorcing. This was my husband of seven-and-a-half years who had asked me for an open marriage two years after our über-traditional Mormon temple wedding. 

I’d always liked Charlie. 19 years my senior, he had a warmth and genuineness that I found somewhat lacking in my husband’s fellow corporate climbers. He was a throw-back to an era of patchouli and political rebellion. A grown-up Texas hippie with a job. Funny and sweet.

About the time I moved out of the house, Charlie had a stroke. He was in his early forties. Within our circle of friends, we all took turns helping out. (A circle of friends, by the way, who were closing ranks around my husband over my “finding herself” selfishness.) I went over and made Charlie lunch one day. As a student, my schedule had a little more flexibility than others so I got lunch duty. He was wearing a patch to strengthen his stroke-weakened eye. It was like he was playing pirate. Oddly charming. He could walk but was not completely steady. He was in good spirits for having had a stroke at such a young age. I thought it was all bravery but now I realize there may have been some plotting going on in his less than bi-functional brain.

I made sandwiches and we chatted. It was a delightful afternoon. When it was time for me to go, I went over to the couch where he was resting to give him a hug good-bye. As I turned from hugging him, our lips met. I would have sworn on a stack of scarlet letters it was an accident. How could I have been so naïve? I should have known that the man saw his chance and took it. Anyway, it didn’t matter—the fuse was lit and we were covered in accelerant. Oh, shit.

This was February. By April his obsession with me had cooled my passions and I was looking for a quiet exit. Unfortunately, that ship had sailed and sunk. He wanted to marry me. I promised him that the very last thing I was interested in was another marriage. If he left his wife, he’d better be ready to live alone because I had no intention of filling that void. In May, we had a moony, candlelit rendezvous in Taos under the guise of his going on a Buddhist retreat or somesuch shit. It was supposed to be our affair farewell.

But things dragged on. Of course, I bear some responsibility for not definitively cutting Charlie loose. I was on my own for the first time in my 25 years. I had a 5-year old and a 3-year old. My family lived 1,000 miles away and they were not happy with my decision to leave Dave. My circle of friends had sidled over to the poor, deserted husband. I felt truly alone. Charlie seemed like my last friend and his mid-life crisis coincided with my neediness. He thought I was the shit and that was hard to give up. Until the aforementioned July 4th explosion. Then, I told him, we were completely done. Over. Finis.

He started showing up on campus just as my classes would let out. Then, one day he was waiting for me outside my job. That was it. I threatened him with a restraining order and that threw some cold water on the crazy. He was no modern stalker...just a lovesick, impulsive, relentless, self-absorbed man. A real pain-in-the-ass.

Saint to Whore

The simplest backstory to all this was that I was raised Mormon. My overbearing father joined the church when I was eight years old. The family obediently followed the following year. Particularly suited to be a fanatic, I took to the structure and self-denial like a hermit to silence. I still find it disturbing how quickly I was absorbed into dogma. It’s complicated but safe to say I was the most straight-laced girl to emerge from my high school class. Pristine. Prudish. I didn’t drink coffee, tea or alcohol. I didn’t smoke or do drugs. And I was Acolyte to the Goddess of the Intact Hymen.

Engaged to marry as a college freshman, my fiancé’s clarion call was “Marry or Burn!” Romantic, right? I laughed along but wondered deep down if he really was marrying me just to have sex. But since pre-marital sex was verboten, I guessed this was the only way. I followed the letter and the spirit of the law with zeal. I didn’t just avoid sin—I avoided even the “appearance of evil.” At 18 I went to my wedding bed with my Girl Scout Virginity Patch sewn on. Tight.

I loved my husband. I did. But he was used to getting his way. Which meant I postponed my education while he finished his three degrees. Which meant any windfall we got (his parents were quite comfortable) was his to spend. Which meant he talked like a feminist but acted like the privileged white male he was. Three days after my 23rd birthday I gave birth to our second child. By that time, the concept of “happily ever after” was seriously tarnished. Sometime later I woke up and thought: I saved myself for this? 

My life was quite traditional, more like my mother’s than my peers’. Still, I loved being a mother. So, I went to therapy to bridge the widening gap between my dreams and my reality. My husband was supportive of me figuring out my problems so he didn’t have to deal with them. Couples therapy was out of the question.

When I left him, almost 3 years after trying to therapy-squeeze into that good wife girdle, my dutiful Mormon halo took a solid hit. Then, eight months later, on that dramatic July 4th morning, I completed the transition that had terrified me as a young zealot: I went from Saint to Whore. In 24-hours. The news was out. I was a double-home-wrecker.

Word spread fast. My estranged husband was indignant. (He’s the one that asked for an open marriage, why the moral outrage now?) Other friends damned me for being disloyal to Jane. Disloyal? Focus your attention on the one who married her, not me. I took no vows with the woman. They’d had this simple, two-dimensional image of me: young wife and mother. Suddenly, I was complicated and threatening.

The most amazing thing about the crossover was the relief. 

Not just relief but all-caps RELIEF. 

People now viewed me as a Jezebel. A woman without morals or self-control. No one had ever seen me as a fallen woman! Even if I was not all the terrible things they said, I would never again have to hold up that equally flawed façade of perfection. 

Accepting that people saw me as contemptible was intoxicating. I was drunk on bad reputation, completely okay with being judged and misjudged. I was free.