When Women Die and it's Their Fault

Recently a suburban Chicago teacher who was in the middle of cancer treatment was stabbed to death by her husband as she was trying to leave the abusive situation.

Can you imagine a bigger monster than a man who purported to love a woman but instead abused and terrorized her regularly and then snuffed out her life while she was dealing with a terrible illness?

I can't, but apparently my local newspaper and society as a whole can: the real culprit is the woman herself. An article ran about this murder today in the Chicago Tribune. It's a fairly long piece, on page 9 of the front page section. The headline reads:

"Reluctance to Accept Help Called Warning Sign."

The article then begins with a description of a teacher who warned her students about unhealthy and abusive relationships. To me, that sounds like a woman who was trying to spare young people the pain of what she was living with, but I guess I'm just an idiot, because really what was happening was "as students, teachers and friends cope with the news of Cunningham's death, they are wondering how she fell victim to the abuse she warned others about."

Really? This woman is murdered and the community is wondering how she "ended up" in the situation? I'll tell you how: there are men who think that other people are their property, who will terrorize their own family members, significant others, or even strangers into submission. There are men who believe that they are entitled to total control over every aspect of another person's body and life and will use force and intimidation to get that person to submit out of desperation and fear. I want to believe that the community wasn't thinking that at all, that they were thinking things more along the lines of the student who called the murdered woman "a nonblood mom." I hope that it is just the media that chose to frame her death as some kind of avoidable mishap if she had just been enough of a fighter or a badass or whatever trope we throw out there to enable us to blame people for the horrible things that happen to them--especially when other people are at fault for the horrible things.

The article goes on to talk about how fear of involving the police is a "warning sign." It goes on to tell "you" what "you" should do if you "find yourself" in an abusive situation. The whole thing reads to me like a condemnation of women who are abused by men who choose to abuse them. Apparently these women don't do the "right things" to get away; there is no mention of men doing the right things to stop being horrible excuses for human beings. There's nothing about how "you" should not terrorize and abuse people and feel entitled to their personhood. Of course, even if "you" do the right things to get out of a situation (the murdered woman here had only been married to this man for a year and a half and spent the last year fleeing him at various times), you might end up dead (Cunningham had called the police and was picking up her belongings when she was murdered). I found myself hoping that the quotes attributed to a woman representing a domestic violence agency were taken out of context. The paper claims that this representative "insists that the violence will continue if victims stay" though no direct quote is given. So the violence continues because of the actions of the women? How hard is it to reframe that language? "The violence will continue as long as the abusive man continues to believe he has the right to engage in it."

A few pages later, another horrible story is related. This is the unbelievably sad and terrifying case of a man who chose to shoot a 4 year old girl in a road rage incident. He was arguing with her father when he aimed a gun into the backseat and killed the baby in front of her father and sibling. I remember when I was first married and my husband would yell at other drivers. I told him that was a dealbreaker for me, that you had to leave any kind of anger at home on the road, because everyone has a gun and everyone is crazy and even if that's not always true, it's not worth it to be in the one situation when it is. However, it seems obvious that anyone who would do something so horrible as what this man did to this little girl is an undeniable monster and no one is at fault for that but him. The headline for this story reads "Man Confesses to Killing Girl, 4, in Road Rage Case." Note it does not read "Fathers Chooses to Argue with Stranger, Daughter Ends up Dead." Nor should it, because her father is not at fault--the killer alone is at fault for this horrible crime.

Think about it. Think about the kid who killed a bunch of sorority girls because he was pissed women had scorned him (because, I'm assuming, he was violent, delusional, and filled with rage) and the countless websites and commentary from other angry men about how the bitches deserved it, about how this should be a lesson to women to learn to pay attention to men. Think about the video trending on YouTube showing a guy throwing a basketball at a girl and knocking her off her bike because she was "rude" to him when he talked to her. The majority of comments I've seen on that story say that she was "out of line" and "deserved" what she got. I can't even get into the victim blaming of every single rape or sexual assault case portrayed in the media. I am astounded that anyone reports such crimes. Who wants to be the subject of a headline about "Woman Exists in Public Space, Somehow Ends up Brutalized"?

I could say so much more, but I'm tired. So let me help you, Chicago Tribune. Your headline reads:

"Reluctance to Accept Help Called Warning Sign."

Take a page from your own book of headlines about horrible people who do horrible things and change your headline to:

"Abusive Man Stabs Cancer Patient Wife to Death, Kills Self, Two Children Left Motherless."

Chicago, You Are Trying to Break My Heart

I've never had a relationship as dysfunctional as the one I have with Chicago. I love Chicago in a way I'm not sure I've ever loved another person. I always have, even as a kid.

I grew up in a racially diverse working class neighborhood in an inner-ring suburb about a block outside the west side city limits. I grew up in a place where half the people were renters, where folks lived in apartments and two flats, where we had a newspaper stand on the corner where you could buy gum, where we played kick the can in the alley and walked to the corner store to buy a bottle of pop for a quarter. I grew up in a place where no one was pretentious enough to give a damn if you called it pop, or soda, or coke, but would gladly give you half as long as he could keep the bottlecap. I grew up walking everywhere and taking the el on dates. Those dates involved the el, first and foremost. Then maybe walking around State street when it was closed to traffic and buying churros y chocolate from a street vendor, but maybe not, because we didn't have money. I grew up bored as a teenager because teenagers are all either bored or saddled with too much adult suffering or sometimes both, but I went to clubs on the north side at 15 and hung out in coffee shops in old converted loft buildings in Wicker Park before it was a hot place to live and made out in cars parked at North Avenue beach after is was closed. I had some limited opportunities to visit museums on field trips but that isn't what I loved about Chicago. I grew up in a place where everybody's momma made sure you knew how to act. I grew up with hopskotch and double dutch and busy streets where a neighbor kid died in an accident while riding her bike, where I almost died when I got hit by a car, where the cops didn't necessarily care about you, where things weren't easy or rosy so that's not where I'm coming from in case you were wondering.



I left, and went to Minnesota for college, which might has well have been Mars, and that's how it is for kids who can't imagine a different station in life than the one they've always known. I wrote a poem once about how beautiful Minnesota was, how quiet and organized, and how I would never go back. I work for a company that is based in Minnesota. I still live in Chicago. Minnesota was many things I couldn't understand, it was whiter and more passive aggressive than any world I knew, it was patchouli and never saying what you mean. I've been to a lot of places, mostly in the U.S., because people who grow up in working class neighborhoods rarely travel the world even when they can because we weren't brought up for it to occur to us. I never got on a plane until I was 22. But since then I have been in many different cities, and I have never been to a place where I feel at home with the people the way I do here. How many places would accept a perpetually angry little woman who swears too much and makes wild hand gestures all the time and has been giving the side eye since 87 but would give you her left arm, albeit after giving you crap about it? That's what Chicago is to me.

I came back after college and lived in my old neighborhood for a time. It wasn't the same. I know someone famous warned me it wouldn't be, but I'm stubborn and I didn't listen. There was more money, more homeownership, less of a Sesame Street feel. Folks were worried about kids "hanging out" in the streets. I left a condo association meeting after saying those kids were just doing what I used to do, and if you are worried there's a problem, why don't you walk up and say something? I was the 23 year old confronting white suburban kids shooting up heroin in our alleys because they thought it didn't matter if you did that in what they considered to be a "black" neighborhood. I was the one yelling about take your shit back to your daddy's basement in Schaumburg. I was the one confronting the kids other people were afraid of to see what they were doing only if it seemed like they were doing something stupid, and that's what it was, every time, just some stupid harmless crap, because the real problems and the real violence that everyone who had never dealt with was afraid of was happening somewhere else, even if only a few blocks away.

In Chicago, blocks matter. Blocks matter in a life or death sense. Neighborhoods matter, and we romanticize that, though we shouldn't. Neighborhoods matter in large part because of the deeply entrenched segregation of this city, which is emblematic of the deeply entrenched racism of this country. Parochialism is a legacy of our city's history, and we are proud of it, though maybe we shouldn't be.

Neighborhoods matter because everyone wants to own a piece of something, when we should be willing to give that up, but what we're left with isn't anything or at least it seems like loss. We have fiefdoms here, we have more councilmembers than New York, we have wars that play out in the streets as surely as wars play out in the streets around the world. But the things that happen here happen here SPECIFICALLY, on this block, in that ward, and we have some kind of false pride if it doesn't happen to us, some of us suffer and others simply look away. And instead of realizing the damage we are doing, we've fooled ourselves into believing that being tight knit is better than being equal.

I live in a place in Chicago, this place I am trying so hard not to leave, where I have lived for eleven years. I live on the far south side of the city; I have two homes here and my kids were born and raised here and we have wonderful friends here. But we are still not "from" here. I'm not sure we ever will be. People were born here and they die here. It's very...Chicago. And here in the neighborhood I call home, we suffer from the same tyranny of low expectations that all Chicagoans suffer from to some degree. A new restaurant opens up and they don't even answer the phone or set up voicemail. I try to support a neighborhood restaurant but they charge me for three lunches when there are only two people there and then try to argue the point. The schools are stripped of their resources and people just go to Catholic schools instead. We have an opportunity to elect a progressive Mayor and we don't do it because people here love a bully. We elected one for Governor too; the main argument against the old one being that he was too "soft." People get jobs they might be good at but that they only got because they know someone. Everyone does a little something on the side. Everyone knows a guy, and wants you to use that guy not because he's the best, but because they know him. I'm reading a book called City of Scoundrels that describes Chicago's politics in the 1800s and damn, nothing has changed. Nothing, in over 100 years.



So why do we stay? We stay because there is something about Chicago, and the people from Chicago. I've never met people anywhere else like the people I've known here. And I am no romantic, I am not into this second city complex. I don't give two damns what New York or some other place thinks, I don't feel this way because of some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. If you are reading this and thinking "See? I told you so!" I didn't write this for you.

And while I love my bad boy, I know he doesn't treat me right. He is violent, and flashy, he throws our money down the toilet or spends it on his friends. He lies and he loves a grand gesture. He isolates me and tries to hold me down. He tells me that this is all I deserve, and I believe him. He will tear down an airport at midnight and when the world can't believe he did it he will give the millionaires who are stranded in their private planes the finger. And we will love him for it, even when he was, at the same time, making deals in order to keep the peace that would ruin us later. He only cared about us when he was with us. But man do we love him, this bad boy Chicago. He is handsome, and strong. His butt looks great in those jeans. We've seen things with him we couldn't see with anyone else. He's hilarious, he's great in bed, we know him for five minutes and we've known him all our lives. And we know what he is, and we damn him for it, but you know what we don't want to hear?

We don't want to hear about him from the other woman. Look, distant suburbs and places where you say you've gone to "get away." You can talk trash about him, but you are sneaking into his bed at night. Chicago is your gigolo, your dirty little secret. You talk about how good it is where you are, and we agree with you. Because he has made that possible. No one hates Chicago's world class universities, museums, restaurants, transit, skyline, or job opportunities. No one hates the amenities that exist in neighboring towns simply because of their proximity to this powerful, complicated mess. When the proverbial stuff hits the fan, you show up at Northwestern or University of Chicago hospital to take care of business. (As an aside, this is a very real truth for me. As I sat there in my numbness and confusion and grief back in 2010, I was asked to choose oncologists and surgeons, and so I did, though somewhat randomly. And I ended up with one of the top breast oncologists in the world and a few of the top surgeons, because that's how it is when you have access to services other people travel hundreds of miles to receive). You love him because he's a jock, even if he's bound to perpetually lose, and jocks are mostly fun on the weekends, right? You love him for his money. Without him, your position in the swamps and corn of old would be nothing. This is the economic engine that drives the region, and we know it pisses you off, but it's true. The region is strong because there's a reason to have a region here and that reason is Chicago. When you complain about him, it's like when Ann Arbor complains about the University. When you say he will go the way of Detroit, we wonder what part you mean: the white flight, the abrupt abandonment? The loss of the single industry, when we have so many? We know that part of your issue arises from how much you depend on him too. We agree with everything you say, but we would rather be the ones to say it. Because we are with him, all the time, we come home to him. And we know he is as much at fault as you when he lets you use him for his charms and give nothing in return.



For me, love and Chicago are forever intertwined. I've been in love four times, three by age 18, once at age 27, and I kept that one. Each time, my memories of falling in love are directly tied to my memories of loving Chicago in a specific way in a specific place and time. Even when it wasn't love, Chicago has come to bed with me all my life. I gave a guy a second chance after he was insanely late to a first blind date because he was sheepish when he got there, didn't make fun of me for drinking a Rolling Rock, and didn't say a word when I told him I'd already wolfed my cheeseburger by myself but if he wanted, we could stay and watch the game. I've never had a successful relationship with someone from a wealthy neighborhood or background. I once dated a man who said he admired me because of my conviction about Chicago. He had just moved back to the city after leaving it, said he couldn't suffer the place he had been, and he needed to get back. And where was this Godforsaken place? San Francisco. I dated another man who hailed from Indianapolis, who had been involved in the streets in Chicago and not in a romantic way. He explained that he got into that life because "It was thrilling. Everyone knew your name. It was like being a celebrity." He was 28, handsome, fit, getting a PhD, working two jobs and coaching soccer when I met him. He died when he was 30. They found his body in Lake Michigan. It's like that here.



I've been reading a wonderful mystery series that is the closest thing to my city affair I could imagine. In this place where the novels are set, people are lusty and irrational. They swear, the phone rings and their first thought is "why are you busting my balls?" They insult each other, they become friends within a moment's meeting, they love food and sex and the water that surrounds them. The corruption and violence, the fact that people do what they want and no one ever expects anything to change, are part of what makes their love real. I read these books and I think, you understand, don't you? This place sounds like home. I hear you Andrea Camilleri. I see my love in yours, and I don't know what that says about me, since your love is...Sicily.

I was going to write an essay about our tyranny of low expectations, our acceptance of corruption and cronyism, the record tax hike coming our way, our failing school system, the crime, our seeming paralysis. But I've written this instead. Chicago, everything I know about you tells me I should leave you. You are trying to break my heart. People who aren't in love with you will never understand; they will think I'm a fool. I don't know how to quit you, and I don't know how to explain that.

But let me try, with just one scene.

Chicago is that: a city of scenes, specific people and places. I grew up here and I cut my professional teeth here too, in the true Chicago style, as an activist working with a Coalition of like-minded activists to combat economic inequality in our city and country. Chicago made that activism; it was born here. I can't for the life of me figure out why we cannot use that legacy to fix our own back yard. The best people I've known in my life were those people I met when I did that work, and that's the truth. And the best way I can explain why it breaks my heart to leave or think about leaving is to tell you this story.

It must have been the year 2000, or 2001. The economy was booming here, and elsewhere. Liberal politicians who would later bemoan the banking system were right there in bed with banks at the time and loving it. But there's always a shadow, even on the loveliest day. Times weren't good everywhere, the boom time wasn't booming for everyone. We were fighting predatory lending practices before anyone else had heard of them or cared, a full ten years before the economy's official fall. In this specific scene, we were fighting usurious payday lending practices, which were completely unchecked by regulation in most states at the time, and in our City were similar to the gangster loan shark shops of old. We went looking for people who cared, who would help. Congress wasn't important to us, because this was a state regulation issue, not a federal one. We planned a meeting with our numerous community organizations, and a single State Senator agreed to meet with us.

We worked in one of the landmark skyscrapers of the city, the Old Colony building on Dearborn and VanBuren. We had a frosted glass window on our office door, we had real fire escapes behind windows that actually opened, and the elevators often didn't work. It was like something out of a noir film from the 50s. Today, that building has been renovated and turned into dorms for college kids. But at the time, we worked there, and we held our meeting in a conference room on the top floor of the building. It was dusty and the furniture was ancient. It was almost embarrassing, that space, and us being in it. This Senator sat on a folding chair with his elbows on his knees, listening intently to us. He represented Chicago, the south side of Chicago. He had the most honest handshake I could remember from a politician, and I spent a lot of time with politicians then, from locals to the Speaker of the House in Congress. He didn't flinch when we had to pause every six or so minutes as the el sped past, practically inside the room itself, the roaring and shaking and rumbling making it impossible to speak. He sat there as if this was as real and important a meeting as any. We shook hands once more and left, and how could we know? How could we know that years later, that man would be elected, fairly and irrefutably, no matter what his detractors would say, to the highest office in the land...twice?

That is the Chicago I know, that I love and think of and will one day miss: the dust and decay, the noise and the broken infrastructure, the history, the gorgeous expanse available just outside the window, the architecture unparalleled in the world, the knowledge that someone made a living off of others' suffering, the people who made it their life's work to fight that injustice, the way that the future President Obama looked each of us in the eye and nodded his head. Oh Chicago, my Chicago, look what you leave us with: the beauty, the horror. The struggle. The promise.

The Duggars and the "Inevitability" of Rape

I'm not one for reality television. I've never watched a single reality TV show. It seems an oxymoron, somehow. If I want to watch real life, I can actually experience real life, and if I want to learn something from watching programming about real life that is important for me to understand, I can watch documentaries.

I'm also not a religious person. And I'm a politically liberal person. Everyone knows that already. It's not of interest here, except to say that I am about to disagree with something that I've seen popping up all over social media recently from people who purport to think like me.

If you read the above, you will know that I have never had any interest in the Duggar family, their lifestyle, or their show. I don't care about who is getting married or having babies or how many. That way of life is completely alien to me and not interesting enough for me to seek out for further review. When it came out a few days ago that one member of this family had committed sexual assault--incest--against family members and then everyone and their brother helped to cover it up, I found it repulsive, and I recognized the hypocrisy in the crowing the family apparently did about family values and worrying that all the gay folks would molest their children.

But I guess I am in the minority here, because there is something that I did not feel. I didn't feel that self-satisfied aha moment of "it was only a matter of time."

I keep seeing all these articles and blogs and statements cropping up that are along the lines of "I told you so," and "I'm not surprised," and "it was almost to be expected" and "this is what happens when children are raised in isolation" and "this is what happens when we don't teach kids about sex" and "fundamentalism leads to this."

No. I'm sorry, but NO.

The only thing that leads to this is that some people are selfish, manipulative sex offenders and society doesn't care enough to punish them. There is nothing inevitable about rape or incest in any situation. Can I say that again? RAPE IS NEVER INEVITABLE.

Rape is always a result of a series of decisions. It is not a mistake or a transgression. It is not the result of repressed sexuality or confusion or curiosity.

Look, people. Most 14 year old boys are not having sex, regardless of their sexual orientation, family upbringing, or access to their little sisters. They are as clueless about sex and isolated from the reality of it ever happening to them as the day they were born, for the most part. They are horny and curious and obsessed. What do most of them do? Fantasize. Masturbate. Play aggressive sports.

They don't molest their sisters.

Let's take this further. Boy gets curious, lives in isolated fundamentalist family. Why, naturally, he does the following: Waits until his sisters are asleep. Sneaks into their bedroom. Sticks his fingers inside their bodies. Hopes they will never tell.

Of course!

NO NO NO.

Those who claim that this is the natural result of any lifestyle or religion are not saying anything so different than those who say that when boys get together in groups, especially if they are drinking, they naturally rape people (frat parties). I guess there are no other options left. Rape must be an act of self defense! THERE WERE NO OPTIONS LEFT. Let's see--what if we decided as a society that the sororities of the world would be the ones to host parties? Do you think suddenly boys would form alliances and buddy systems beforehand so that they could avoid being sodomized by beer bottles because THAT'S JUST WHAT HAPPENS WHEN GIRLS GET TOGETHER AND GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS!

There is no lifestyle or religion that can justifiably explain why someone would sexually assault a family member. It is not inevitable, for anyone including the Duggars, and people who are using this as an I told you so moment are completely missing the point, in my opinion.

Would it be helpful for girls to be taught that their agency and sexuality is as important as boys? Yes, and we fail miserably as a society in doing that. Perhaps the Duggars are worse than most of us in this regard. Perhaps not. But let me take that argument a step further as well. Is the notion that if the Duggar girls were taught more about their bodies and sex and owning their own identities, they could have prevented their brother from being a sex offender? Even in this restrictive, isolating environment...those girls DID tell on their brother. It's kind of amazing that they did that. But honestly, what more could they do? Are people really arguing that children can prevent sexual assault from an older and stronger person WHO IS SUPPOSED TO LOVE AND PROTECT THEM by saying: "hey! that's my body! stop!" You guys. This is their BIG BROTHER. I cannot imagine any child from any family reacting to that situation--remember the situation, with the sneaking in when he thought they were asleep, with the planning and the foresight and the absolute purposefulness of it all--with anything other than disgust, fear, and, probably...silence.

I have an older brother. When we were adolescents, I'm pretty sure we each thought the other was a eunuch, a pest, and a friend ALL AT THE SAME TIME. We spent a lot of time ignoring each other, pretending the other one didn't date, and occasionally bonding by watching Eddie Murphy's Delirious together. My brother didn't date until the middle of his junior year in high school, when I had had breasts and a figure and boyfriends for years, and you guys: HE SURE AS HELL NEVER CAME NEAR ME. And his friends who I saw as funny but dorky and ridiculous? They bonded over things like Atari baseball, table football, and sailing accidents. The boys I knew as a teenager did things like get drunk and ride their bikes around aimlessly, practice with the band in the garage, eat 17 pizzas. I've written before about how I learned it was possible for boys you trusted and thought were friends to turn against you and do something that would forever alter the trajectory of your life--but THAT WAS NOT NORMAL. That experience was NOT the inevitable outcome of boys drinking together, of me being the only girl in the room. That situation was a series of decisions made by selfish, entitled people who fed off of my terror and laughed about it.

No, it was not inevitable. And there sure wasn't anything I could have done to deserve it. And there sure as HELL isn't anything I should have been expected to do to avoid it, as if it were my job to do that, though I tried for years to recreate the possibility of avoiding such situations, and 24 years later I still can't be the only woman in the room or watch a basketball game with more than 3 people.

Children's, girls', women's, experience is used against them as often as their innocence in sexual assault cases. You don't get some magic wand that stops people from preying on you because you know your body and are comfortable with your sexuality. Take it from me--please, do. I was very comfortable with myself, and outspoken, and I made decisions and related them clearly. And I was sexually abused, what I now understand to be assaulted, and harassed. I drove my grandfather around in my mother's car with my keys dangling from a keychain that read "no condom no way" when I was a teenager and I felt no shame and that did not stop me from having horrifying experiences. It didn't stop me from remaining silent. It didn't stop me from assuming I would be blamed, maybe because of my comfort with myself and my body and everything else.

Sexual abuse happens to all kinds of people, from and within all kinds of families. Most families do a terrible job of dealing with it and protecting victims. Most victims walk around with the assumption of blame, no matter how they were raised. Girls should not expect to be assaulted because of their own ignorance, innocence, experience, or social or family position. Boys should not be expected to assault for any of the same reasons.

RAPE IS NEVER INEVITABLE.

So, journalists and bloggers of the world, stop saying it is. Stop saying "I'm not surprised," or "this is what happens." No, it's not--it's just not. There is no circumstance in which ignorance, isolation, confusion, or curiosity inevitably leads to forcible incest. There are eighteen other Duggar children, all of whom must have felt curious and sexual if they are old enough, and they did not sexually assault other members of the family. One person did that, because of decisions he knowingly made, and other people helped him get away with it, because of decisions they knowingly made.

In that sense, the Duggars are like everyone else. We don't take these situations seriously as a society, and we are still finding subtle ways to explain the perpetrators' behavior and make assumptions about how the victims could have stopped the abuse. We are all guilty in perpetrating that crime.

Rape is never inevitable.

Today's Kids: Free Range or Caged?

Sometimes, being a parent is terrifying. It's hard to think about all the terrible things that could happen to your heart as it walks around outside of your chest. Diseases, accidents, bullies, pedophiles, murderers, fires, oh my God FIRES, my absolute worst fear. Today, these normal, even rational fears are compounded by a relatively new fear: the fear of being persecuted for letting your kid do stuff. I can't really wrap my mind around the reality of parents being arrested because their 6 and 10 year old children walked home together from a park, or a mother having her 9 year old daughter taken away because she played in a public park while mom was at work. I grew up in the era of latch key kids, when even though many women stayed home, they simply did not accompany their children to, well...almost anything.

Parents like me, those in their 30s and 40s, are often up in arms about the difference between our childhoods and the childhoods of our children. Our generation sometimes decries how our kids are soft, or helpless, too structured, too in control over the family. On the other side, parents argue that the world is different now, it is less safe, people are crazy, you guys the INTERNET, hookup culture, and on and on.

I feel like both of these views are too black-and-white and therefore I feel the need to call a little bit of bullshit on the way we've framed this debate.

On the one hand, there is an argument for "free-range" parenting, a style steeped in the notion that kids need to learn creativity, independence and resourcefulness, that the world is a mostly safe place and our kids are smart enough to traverse its varied roads. On the other hand, there is an argument for "helicopter" parenting, which points out the horrors of modern society that we see in the news every day: cyberbullying, school shootings, child abductions, car accidents, drugs.

But neither of these views comes close to describing how life really is for kids and families.

In part, I think that our collective fear of "just think of what could happen" is borne out of the sensationalism of the media. However, let's be honest. If you are saying that the world is mostly safe and friendly and that the violence witnessed in the media is overblown, you are speaking from a very specific vantage point. I live in a city where life is absolutely, despairingly dangerous for kids. It is not that way for my kids, but my kids are not the only ones who matter. It is no more my place to falsely transfer the fear of other people's violent reality onto my kids than it is to act as if that reality doesn't exist just because it doesn't affect my family on a daily basis. I find it infuriating that parents are being arrested for letting their kids do normal things not so much because I feel it is unfair to those parents, but because I feel like it is a complete waste of resources that could be better spent on kids who need intervention. This should not be a debate about whether allowing your kids to walk somewhere alone makes you a bad parent. Focusing there ignores the fact that there are kids who do EVERYTHING alone. There are kids who are absolutely, criminally neglected by their parents and guardians. There are kids who are abused and prostituted by their parents and guardians. There are so many kids who are paying the price for adults' bad decisions, and so many other kids who live with caring and careful adults who have no control over the larger impacts of the societal structure where they live.



I mean, what to say about my husband? I do not want to be glib and say, oh, we were children of the 80s. Gabe should not have been left to fend for himself, to go hungry, to have to find adults who would raise him, no matter where they lived. My husband at 16 should not have had to ask a friend's mother to take him in so he would not be homeless. He should not have been around so many drugs and shifted around from one place to another. So many kids I knew should not have been in those situations.

Walking home from the park? Please. What happened to real problems?

It's this classism that bothers me, this focus on the idea that people in privilege so often are able to have: the world is either GOOD or it is BAD. By engaging in the RIGHT behaviors and by being the RIGHT kind of people/parents, we can avoid all the BAD things in the world.

This is where I detract from the free range parenting philosophy, even while I sympathize with it. I will never teach my children that the world is an inherently safe and happy place. I would no more know how to do that than fly to the moon. And yet, I fully intend to allow by 6 and 9 year old children to walk home from school together next year--alone. This would shock many people who live around me. Parents often don't let their kids play outside if they aren't there. I used to do that, of course, when they were smaller. Now I send them out, though I haven't yet started allowing them to go to the park alone. Now when I say ALONE, I should qualify that. I rarely did anything in public as a child ALONE. There were always other kids around, if only my brother or one other little girl. Few kids I knew went places ALONE. You might be five years old and walking four blocks without your parents, but there were three of you.

I do not intend to give my kids independence and freedom in order to teach them that the world is safer than many people seem to believe. I actually think the world is pretty dangerous. I just think you have to learn to live in it, within reason.

I fully believe that in many ways, the world is safer now than it was when I was a kid. Hell, the existence of cellphones alone brings comfort to parents who can actually find out where their kids are and whether or not they're all right. Chicago is unbearably violent in many neighborhoods, and yet it was more violent in the 70s and 80s. I grew up in the time of Jeffrey Dahmer. Kids today have language to use about sexual harassment, abuse, they are actively encouraged to confront issues related to bullying. I just don't understand people of my generation who believe that things are so DIFFERENT and BAD today when the world was so bucolic in our youth.

I don't understand it, because it wasn't like that for me.

My mother was fairly protective. Friends often thought she was over the top. They didn't understand why I would not go against her wishes when she told me I couldn't do something. I'd get away with it, we won't tell. HA! Clearly they didn't understand that mother radar. I used to argue with my mom about some of these things. Sometimes I didn't bother to argue. I mean, I wanted a bike and thought we should have bikes like normal kids but a kid a few doors down got killed while riding his bike, so that argument rarely left my mouth. Maybe I wanted to be left alone at 6 to get ready for school by myself, but a family of kids across the street were left to do that and the two year old died in a house fire because his siblings couldn't get him out. So, I didn't argue that point, either. This one was common in my house though: Why could my brother go to the park with his friends to play baseball when they were 5 years old without an adult and I couldn't do that?

Because you're a girl, my mother would say.

She didn't try to make it fair, to treat us the same. It pissed me off to no end. Today we would argue that little boys could be preyed upon as well! Look at the Catholic church! And yes, that's true. But I would argue that in some ways, we have given more press to abuse against boys; abuse against girls often goes unspoken or unnoticed, as if it is EXPECTED. And now is the part where I can tell the story about how it was unfair of my mom to say that to me because pedophiles are rare, they aren't out there, that doesn't happen...

But it does, and it did. I was playing in front of my house with a friend when I was 8 years old. My whole family was home. A man came up to us and I instinctively started to walk backwards towards the house. I didn't trust people, not even then. I thought about what my mother had told me: "What reason would a strange adult have to talk to you? You are a child. You have nothing to offer." "What if they need help, or directions?" "Why the hell would they go to YOU for help? They would ask an adult. You are a child. You can't help." This man told us...that he had lost his puppy. Oh, that doesn't happen in real life, you say. But of course it does. Because it works. My friend started to talk to him. My mother came barging out of the house, and he ran away. She drew a picture of him for the police, who promptly did nothing.

I've written here about being molested by mechanics when my family was standing close by, about having a gun put right at my temple when I got robbed on the Green line, about getting hit by a car while walking home from school at 9 years old and almost dying. I've written about sexual harassment and abuse, being accosted by strangers, being stalked (have I written about that? It happened, when I was 16. A kid would call the house drunk and belligerent, screaming obscenities at my mother and I and detailing everything he knew about me, what I wore, how I walked to school, who my friends were, and she finally called the cops when he screamed PUT THAT ANOREXIC BITCH ON THE PHONE and when the cops came they did, well, nothing, and proceeded to act like I should've seen that one coming), having seizures in public places.



Life is hard. The world is scary. We have to live in it.

My mother did not stop me from doing things because I had epilepsy. I was not allowed to swim in a pool alone, for example, but that is also common sense. Once I got over being afraid of walking to school after my car accident, I was back to the same route with the same group of kids who almost witnessed my death. I was allowed to drive to my job and the mall while that kid was stalking me, though I know it scared my mom to death to let me do that. Hell, when I think about some of the things she let me do, I'm shocked. I went to a lakehouse alone with my boyfriend on my 16th birthday; he drove across two state lines and we spent the day there with no parents and she KNEW that. I went camping at 17 overnight with a 19 year old boy I had known for two weeks. I took the el with friends at 13, 14. I went to clubs on the north side of Chicago at 15. I was babysitting for three other kids, unrelated to me, at age 11--in someone else's house. And yeah, bad things happened then too. I got an obscene phone call once when babysitting when I was 12. I didn't know what to do, so I called my mom, and she came over and came to the conclusion that it was a call from the kids' DAD, and I never babysat for those people again.

I guess I was wrong: I did know what to do. I called a parent and said I needed help. I want my kids to know to do that too.

I'm just saying--I know that bad things can happen to kids. I know there are terrible people out there. I don't want my kids to have to be hard and distrustful and to learn to be mean like me, but I do want them to live in the world that we live in, and to gain independence in it and figure out what to do if something happens. I have no interest, however, in forcing this on them as some kind of character building experiment. I'm not going to send my kid on the subway just to prove a point. My kids have no idea where to go or what there is to do on the subway, but walking home from school or to a friend's house is a different matter. Leaving my just-9 year old home for 20 minutes when she was sick with a fever while I picked her brother up from school was reasonable. Giving her a phone and teaching her when and how to use it is reasonable. Allowing her to go on sleepovers or spend the weekend with a friend's family at age 7 is reasonable (she cried that first time, she missed us, she survived). Leaving the pool the second she gets in the water for swim practice is reasonable. I will never tell her to talk to adults if she feels comfortable with them (not that I would need to--she feels uncomfortable around all adults she doesn't know). I have told her the thing about being useless to adults. I have told her that when adults she knows, such as our friends or her parents friends, talk to her, she should notice something: they are polite to her, they are fond of her, but really? They don't want to talk to her. They want to talk to ME. or Gabe. Just like she wants to talk to her friends, not their parents. Someday, that will change. Maybe when they're 16 or so. But not now.

And at what point, as parents, do we cease to wish the world weren't hard for our kids? Why do we assume that the feeling goes away when they are grown? Is that why we try so hard to protect them from everything when they're small?

Don't you think my mother wishes she could take my cancer away, even though I was 34 years old and a mother myself when it reared its ugly head? Don't you think she would like to take my place? She has said that to me, many times. And then she has said, but I can't. I know I can't. Think about how many times I have cheated death. Each time, I was someone's child. It happened as a child, and it happened as an adult, and there really wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about any of it.

We want to protect our kids from everything, but we can't. We want them to be able to be trusting and naive and happy all the time. Well, we are supposed to want that. I don't know how to want that for my kids because I don't remember being that way. But maybe what we should want is something in between, something that isn't a debate but an acknowledgment of reality: our children are children, but they are also people. They do not belong to us. We are responsible for them but we also have responsibilities TO them, to teach them how to value themselves and their bodies and their safety and to recognize the autonomy and value inherent in other people. While I don't want my kids to experience some of the bad things I have experienced, I realize that from a very young age, I was extremely empathetic. Bad things had already happened to me and I knew I didn't deserve it and I looked out for other people, even when I was little. I wasn't embarrassed to stand up for myself or anyone else. I wasn't of the opinion that the world was particularly safe, or fair. And yet...I was happy, and met wonderful people and lived an interesting life. I learned how to go through terrifying things without feeling particularly terrified.

I don't think our goal as parents should be to try to shape our kids' understanding of the world into something foreboding or whimsical. I definitely don't think our goal as parents is to call the cops whenever we see kids living their lives, especially if we are allowing ourselves to live in a little bubble where the worst thing that happens to kids is they are left to stroll by themselves. I think our goal as parents is to do the hard work of raising children in the real world, as it is, right now. Our world is devastating and it is magical, it is exhilarating and it is painful, it is astonishing in the experiences it allows us and that it shields from us. We are here to love them even when we cannot protect them, to instill in them a sense of their own self worth as well as the worth of other people, no matter their circumstances. We are supposed to be here for them, whether life is good or bad, and it is our job to never, ever look away--no matter what.

50 Ways of Throwing Shade

I haven't read 50 Shades of Grey, and I have no intention of seeing the movie. I've been pissed off about enough things recently--everything I've wanted to write about has really been a tirade, so I've tried to keep things to myself. I've been on the receiving end of obsessive desire; it's dramatic and not really my thing. And besides, I still remember the time when someone asked me if I had asked my husband's permission to do something; I still remember it because I'm not sure Gabe ever stopped laughing.

So. I'm waiting for them to make a movie about the woman who has been so pleased with and sure of her sexuality since 14 that she can spot the dude who will take credit for it as if he owns it from a mile away--so she just gives him the side eye and then LEAVES THE BUILDING. But I doubt they are ever going to make a movie about ME, so instead I thought I'd do a little riff on these hilarious quotes from 50 Shades that are supposed to spice up my Valentine's Day. Here are those 19 "steamy" quotes re-written for Katy. These are things I can actually imagine myself saying in a given scenario, whereas I can't imagine anyone anywhere saying any of the original 19 quotes. Happy Valentine's Day!

1. “You're a pain in the ass. I can't care about you.”

2. “I am not just a pretty face. I’ve had six orgasms so far and all of them belong to me.”

3. “Do you want some ice cream? What kind?”

4. “I want you so, baby. That's why I called you.”

5. “I want my world to start and end without prepositions.”

6. “Every time I move tomorrow, I'll be reminded of this time at the gym. This is all me. This workout's mine."

7. "It's taking all my self-control not to slap you in the face, just to show you what a jackass you are. And if I want to drive away in this f--king car, I'll drive away in this f--king car.”

8. "Firstly, I don’t make love. At least not to you. Because I told you before, you're a jackass. Secondly, there’s a lot more paperwork to do, BECAUSE I'M AT WORK, DUDE, and thirdly, this is me warning you that I'm running for the hills."

9. “I've never kissed a frog, or a prince. Thank God.”

10. “Trust a man who can't dance and doesn't care.”

11. “I want you. What do you say?”

12. “What's in it for me?”

13. “I've actually read the Bible. I bet you weren't expecting that.”

14. “MMM, chocolate hot fudge brownie with a cherry on top!!”

15. “I found some baby oil. What is this, 1970? Where's the SPF 50?”

16. “I don’t know whether to worship this nectarine or eat the living s--t out of it.”

17. “I like that we have the same kinks.”

18. “I like my women friends unruly and unrepentant.”

19. “Did you know that Milton made his daughter dedicate her life to transcribing Paradise Lost for him? She wasn't allowed to have a life of her own. So we'll never know, will we? Who re-invented the story of Icarus? Did he or did she?”

Things Not to Say to Parents of Girls

I have two children, a girl and a boy (people always seem surprised when I say it that way, as opposed to "a boy and a girl," but my daughter was born first, so when listing my kids, I list her first. "Even though" she's a girl). There are a lot of presumptions that people make about children, and adults, based on gender. There are things that people say about boys that are unfair and untrue. But parenting a girl and a boy gives an interesting perspective. My kids are very different from each other, and I'm sure people respond to them differently for that reason. But over the last almost six years of having both a girl and a boy, I will say that some things that were true about me being a girl 30 years ago and my mother being a girl 55 years ago and my daughter being a girl today remain the same--and these things are not true for my son:

Girls are not taken seriously. They are often seen as a liability. Girls learn to accept being ignored--by teachers, by other children. Girls are expected to be petty and mean and vain and competitive with each other even if they show absolutely no concrete evidence of being any of those things. Girls are made to feel responsible for everyone else's feelings and at a really, really young age are blamed for the desires of others. Girls are expected to be quiet and compliant. People care how girls look and comment on it all the time, from the time they are infants; people discuss girls bodies in ways that they would never even consider discussing boys'.

I could go on. But it's hard for me to do that, because I am a woman who was once a girl and therefore to some extent my thoughts on this matter might not be...taken seriously. So Gabe and I came up with this list together. Here are 10 things that we wish people wouldn't say to us about our girl, and that we try to not say to other people about their girls.

10. Wow, she's going to be a heartbreaker some day!

Hmm, I'm not sure what that means. She will be mean and deceitful? She will use men and throw them away? Boys or men might like her or be attracted to her and she won't feel the same way? Because if it's the latter, well...that's life, and that's her prerogative, and they will get over it. And it's weird to think about that when she's in preschool.

9. Better buy a shotgun!

OK, so...why? We're not hunters. We don't want to maim or kill people who play with, talk to, date, or someday have sex with our daughter. Are you implying that we should use the shotgun on her? No, we're not going to do that either. Or, maybe this is a roundabout way of acknowledging that girls are often targeted by sexual predators. If that's the case, and you're saying that our daughter is pretty and therefore people will try to violate her, and when that inevitably happens we can go out for revenge, well...no. I want a different world for my daughter than that, and so does my husband.

8. Aren't you glad you have one of each?

One of each what? Gabe is the one who usually gets this question, as if he must be breathing an enormous sigh of relief that he wasn't stuck with two girls. It's great to experience what it's like to raise two genders of children, if only because it's easier to debunk notions of what all girls or all boys are like when you see your own acting in the opposite fashion. But two kids is two kids, and I think we would love them both the same no matter what.

7. Boys are harder when they're little, and girls are impossible as teenagers.

Nope. Gabe said this is his biggest pet peeve, because he doesn't see why either of those things should be the case. I don't see it either. I wasn't impossible. My mom always talks about how much she liked us--both me and my brother, our friends and our girlfriends and boyfriends--when we were teenagers. I wasn't catty, and neither were my friends. I didn't talk back to my mother, though I remember my brother doing so on a few noteworthy occasions. I didn't have mood swings. I wasn't very focused on being popular or dressing in a certain way. My girlfriends were smart and hilarious and interesting (my brother's friends were too). My boyfriends were adorable and doting and respectful and were always welcome at my house. I broke a lot of rules, but not because I was a girl. I followed the rules that mattered the most, and I knew how to tell the difference.

6. Don't let her dress slutty.

This is one of my favorites. I will be the first to say that I think a lot of clothes made for little girls are inappropriate. They are inappropriate not only because they tend to sexualize children but because they are illogical. Tiny shorts mean more skinned knees. Hipster jeans make no sense if you don't have hips to keep them from falling down. However. It just so happens that loose, baggy, sometimes really ugly and sloppy clothes remain in style for boys and probably always will. My son can wear sweatpants and loose tshirts for the next 10 years and still be considered fashionable. I will never tell my daughter than she can't wear yoga pants or clothes that happen to look good on her when she is older and has a figure if that is what is in style and it is within reason. Putting an item of clothes on your body indicates nothing about your sexual practices, and those practices should not be the business of the general public anyway. Stop saying that girls need to dress a certain way to be "respected" or "treated right." Girls are often not respected or treated right, no matter what. It's not their fault just because at some point they grew boobs or hips and then got dressed and someone noticed. Shorts and skirts will always look too short on my daughter, just like they do on me, and I am almost 40. Our legs are absurdly long for our bodies. I've accepted that 85% of the nicknames I've ever had in my life have been nicknames for my legs (including when some people just called me "Legs") but I'm not about to lower my hemline because of it.

5. Just wait until middle school--that's when the trouble starts.

Oh, I would love to wait until middle school! I am still sitting here hoping to live that long. Anywho, our daughter is in third grade, and we have already seen evidence of the "mean girl" stuff that people warn about--and she is having none of it. She seems to be like me--almost bewildered by the drama and the rumors and more interested in just having fun. Her friends are cute and friendly and like to have pushup contests and play with stuffed animals and snowboard and do rainbow loom. The activities will change, but neither of us is expecting her kindness or good choice of company to change. When I was in what they now call middle school, I was an off-the-charts tomboy with a best friend who wasn't like that at all, and we just goofed off a lot with each other and our other friends and cracked our parents up with our antics.

4. You'd better keep a close eye on her.

There are a lot of variations on this theme. I've heard "that one is a heart attack waiting to happen." When I was growing up it was "wow, you should put her in a convent!" My atheist mother was never appreciative of that statement. I want my daughter to enjoy and experience the world. The fact that there are horrible people everywhere--and I acknowledge that there are, and I had terrible fallout from that as a young girl--does not make me want to imprison her or spy on her. I acknowledge that this will be hard. The flip side of what people mean when they say this is that there is a danger of her somehow becoming a, God forbid, "bad" girl. You know, she might like boys or girls and want to have sex with them someday. She might wear fashionable clothes, like yoga pants, and have everyone and her brother lose their minds on her just for looking good in them. She might feel comfortable with her body and her sexuality, not ashamed or at fault for someone else's issues. I could give a million different examples of how I could have been made to feel like my own natural desires and behaviors were somehow more frightening than my brother's, but I wasn't treated that way by my parents, so I won't.

3. She's not very ladylike.

No, she's not--that's not her job. It's not anyone's job.

2. She's so quiet.

First, there is nothing wrong with that, and I don't think someone needs to be loud and intrusive with their voice (even if I am often that way) to be heard. Second, she's not really. Sometimes she is so loud she drives me nuts. Sometimes she's the one making fart jokes or bomb explosion sounds. She's a complete goofball when she's comfortable with people. And sometimes, she just seems quiet, because her voice is soft and you aren't really listening.

1. She is so beautiful!

Yes, she is. Please talk about something else.

Response to the Five Questions

If you refrain from asking me these questions...we will have a happy and loving holiday season.

Some of us will, and some of us won't. I think the most important thing is that you are 17. That is important because it is an age that many people reach, though some of course do not. Many people remember 17, and I am just one of those people.

During Christmas break, when I was 17, we drove to Minnesota. My brother went to college there and I had been offered a scholarship at a small liberal arts college in the same state. I don't think most of my relatives knew this. No one asked me about college, except the teachers who had written letters of recommendation for me and my friends who were probably going to miss me, though I couldn't imagine why. I really didn't think I would get to go, that I would get out. We drove to Minnesota and the story should be that we were going there so I could visit the school that was giving me a scholarship and where I would eventually spend four years, though I couldn't imagine how.

We drove to Minnesota quickly because my grandmother had died and we needed to get home for the funeral. My parents hadn't lived together for years but they weren't yet divorced. My mother had known my grandmother since she was younger than you are now. We dropped off my brother's things and drove through the college campus that I would eventually call home. We drove through it--we did not even stop the car. On the way home, there was a terrible blizzard. One of our headlights went out, and we could not see the road right in front of the car. We found a motel and stayed there, all in one room, and I laughed and laughed at this absurd little lamp in the room because it was easier to laugh at that absurdity than all the rest. After the funeral, we found out that two of my mother's favorite nuns (she is an atheist, and went to a Catholic college, but not until she was in her 30s, did you know sometimes that is the way of things with people?) had died in a car accident on the road not far from where we pulled over to get to the motel with the lamp.

When I was 17, I did have boyfriends. One boy lived in an apartment and his mother smoked and he always told her he hated it. We had been friends before we dated, and in the best times we sat in the apartment and he played "Lenny" on his guitar while talking to me, as if we were not in love but just friends still, as if he didn't remember he was playing at all. When my mother turned 42, that boy bought her a cookie jar in the shape of farm animals: a pig, a cow, and a rooster. My kids eat candy from that cookie jar. My daughter's name is Lenny. Another boy was 20, so maybe not a boy really, but he had a car that was hopelessly old and he worked in a cafe and knew my favorite coffee and sandwich. He whittled a box to hold my playing cards. He whittled for me. Another boy lived far away and his grandmother didn't want him to date a white girl but he wrote me letters and I kissed him at a track meet. Then, there was a boy who was 19, who became a part of my family for years and years. When we first started dating, he crawled over all the other kids in the car to walk the girls to their doors and no one ever thanked him and he never said a word. Once we sat watching a fountain shoot an arc of water across the Chicago river, and it only did that once an hour, and we saw the arc 7 times. Twenty years later I discovered that fountain had a name, and I still haven't gotten over the disappointment.



I looked the same at 17 as I did at 15 as I did at 23 because I was a girl and girls age earlier, we start to look like ourselves and then we always look like ourselves, and at 17 you are already at the point where no one will tell you that you look older or taller unless they haven't seen you since a child, and then what they are really thinking is, you aren't a child anymore and you never will be again. And the thing is, you don't know this, you won't know this until you are 35 and learning to ride a bike for the first time and your daughter takes the video of you after your husband lets go, but she is afraid you will ride too far away and she doesn't want to lose you, so you come right back, and it's like being a kid again but not at all.

When I was 17, the only relatives who came to my high school graduation were my mom and my brother. My husband attended his graduation, but didn't walk to get his diploma, because he didn't care, and he was there by himself. Our graduation was formal and you had to wear a white dress, but I got permission from my dean to wear an offwhite wedding dress I had bought at a thrift store with $35 of the money I made at the job she had hand-picked for me in one of her many inexplicable actions of saving me when I didn't know how to save myself. She wore beautiful, bright clothes, and she wrote a note for me, allowing the dress, and one day she was exasperated at me for how I was ditching class all the time, and she who never swore slammed her fist down on the table and said "Damnit Katy! Just graduate from high school!" and I was actually speechless, I was without the ability to speak, for what seemed like forever until I said "Yes ma'am" and then eventually there I was, in a lace dress carrying a dozen roses and shaking her hand on a stage for longer than I needed to, I'm sure.



A few months before that, I was at a friend of a friend's house and we were going to go drive somewhere, anywhere really, because we had nothing and everything to do, and as we sat there giggling and plotting, the girl's dad came outside and glared and I thought, in that way that I used to fantasize about how corny and normal fathers behaved, that he would say have fun girls! but instead he threw his daughter the car keys, said "don't get pregnant" and slammed the house door.

Some people's parents drank too much. Some people never talked to their parents. Some didn't have parents, or lived with other people's parents. Some wanted to flee their parents.

We didn't have family parties.

And somehow, I knew the stories. I knew that my best friend's parents had met when he was a dance instructor and she was learning to dance. Years later, at her wedding, I would dance with her father and understand what the phrase "my feet didn't touch the ground" actually meant. I knew that adoption was different in the old days, because I had asked, and thought it was so curious that you could tell the kind of baby you wanted (A German baby, please), and babies were free, and no one would ever know if the teen mother had wanted to give the baby away or not, and back then, no one cared.

I knew that my grandmother loved trains and had a lot of boyfriends as a girl. I knew how much whiskey at Chicago hotel bars cost at various points in history because my grandfather was a young man during the Depression and he knew how much everything cost, everything, forever, and he used to tell me. I knew which of my uncles had been wild, I knew about people's jobs and experiences in war and everyone's favorite sports teams. My mother's brother had once had a job at a farm and he cut the heads of chickens and then they ran after him and he never ate chicken again for the rest of his life, not even today, and I knew that then, when I was 17, and I was known to ask questions.

It's hard to picture, isn't it? Someday, you will be almost 40, and there will be this idea that your life will be boring, but that is the last thing it will ever be. People say you stop talking, that life becomes mundane. It's hard to know that you will go to a bowling alley with your husband, and it is the same bowling alley you went to at 17. The people are the same but different. You are still not very good at bowling. Your husband still likes to watch you from behind. You had gone out to dinner first, and you had seen a couple so cute and obvious, he so much older and trying again, she enamored with the attention he paid her and his stories of his children who she didn't even know. After bowling, you would talk to your husband about how strange it was to see couples like that, so deeply in love as if the other loves weren't real, except that's the thing, isn't it? You told your husband that at the moment of your biggest breakup, which sounds like nothing but is so much something, you told your lover that the hardest part was not that you would never fall in love again, never feel like that again, but that you would. And your husband just said "oh." And you told him you meant it, that if you died, he should and would find someone else, and he said no, not someone like you, there isn't anyone like you. And you said, there isn't anyone like anyone. Because the things that are hardest never start out sad.



It might take more than 20 years, but you will come home from the gym one night, even though you usually go in the morning, and you will still be in your bike shorts and hoodie and headwrap, still sweaty, and you will barge into the kitchen as your husband makes pasta. You won't even sit down before you begin to tell your children about this article about the Five Questions, and how you hope they will always talk to the people who try to talk to them and show an interest in their lives, and your daughter will say "of course they will ask. Because they don't know. How can they know if they don't ask?" And you will say, ask them a question. Listen to their stories. And your husband is the quiet one, but he chimes in when you remind them that someday they might be inclined to think your casual love for them is misplaced. He will say, yeah, what do I do every day when I come home from work? I always ask "so everyone, what was your favorite part of the day?" and for now, you tell me. But you already roll your eyes when I say the same thing: "My favorite part of the day was walking in the door and seeing your smiling faces!" And your daughter will say, but DAD! You say the same thing EVERY SINGLE DAY.



And that's the story. The story you will tell someone else decades from now, in another house, maybe in another country, maybe after half the people in the story are dead, is a story about your mother in her bizarre workout clothes and inability to keep the words in, and your brother constantly getting up from the table, and your dad laughing at himself, and maybe you will remember what they were trying to teach you about being respectful and empathetic, but really, probably not. You will remember, perhaps, your mother's face burning with endorphins and intellectual agitation, when just a year before she had been like a ghost of herself, all paleness and thin hair and dizziness and lists of other people's names, and you will remember your father telling a story about himself telling the same story. Someday, you will tell someone. Every day when your father came home from work, he asked the same thing. Every day your father had the same answer. Every day, your father came home.