On Becoming a Woman: What Does That Mean?

I have been thinking about writing this post for a long time. That means that I will write something that is very long and still not say what I meant to say.

What does it mean to be a woman?

I mean, we seem to know as a society what it means to "be a man," even if we disagree about some aspects of the definition. Little boys hear about how to be a man from the time they are babies, and what we often don't realize is that little girls hear that too. And when we collectively discuss "being a man," we mean so many things:

Being strong, responsible, secure, determined, aggressive, stoic, smart, handy.

Now the more enlightened among us might say, whoa! That's not what being a man is about! Men could be those things, but they could also be sensitive, kind, goofy, contemplative, etc.

OK, maybe that's a step up. But my point is this: Being a man MEANS something.

Growing up, I would internalize these messages, and I remember thinking, but I will never be a man. So what will it take for me to grow up? What does it mean to be a woman?

I felt like I knew a lot of men, and that a lot of them were actually...women.

They were grownups. Adults. People who took care of themselves and anyone else who came along. People I trusted, looked up to, admired. But the only thing I ever heard SPOKEN about what it meant to "become a woman" seemed totally ridiculous to me: Getting your first period made you a woman.

Nope, impossible. I got mine at age 11.

Having babies made you a woman.

But how could that be? A lot of women couldn't have babies or didn't want to have them.

All of the things that "made you a woman" were physical things or things that happened to you, not things you did, things you made, things you decided.

I could get into a long tirade about misogyny, down to the kind of deep and disturbing misogyny that is involved in our ingrained rape culture. But that line of conversation will make me too depressed. What concerns me, now that I have both a girl and a boy to raise, is how we are so casually misogynist, ALL OF US, and how we don't even realize it. And because we don't recognize it, we don't admit how it effects our children. We use misogynist language as if it is NORMAL language. I do it too:

Man Up. Take it like a Man.

And then, little boys at such a young age learn to say things like "Ew, I don't want to do that. THAT'S FOR GIRLS." And you can practically hear them retching from the very thought. What bothers me about statements like that, or things like "you throw like a girl," "stop crying like a little girl," and even the concept of "girl power" is this:

When people say these things, they are speaking of something that is inherently less. Little girls might say they don't like something because "that's for boys," but you don't get the implied disdain with that statement. They are saying I'm a girl, and therefore I'm not interested in that. We might take issue with those thoughts. But when I hear boys saying "that's for girls," even my own son, who just learned that idea maybe in the last month or two, these boys are implying that being a girl isn't as good as being a boy. They know at three years old what we pretend isn't true at 30.

I feel like I am somewhat of an authority on this topic, and here's why:

When I was very little, I was just a little ball of crazy. I wore my brother's clothes and had my hair cut in the same style as him because my parents were broke and lazy about style. Then, I was still a little ball of crazy, with the affectionate nickname "little shit," but I wore patent leather shoes and dresses all the time (bought for me by my grandfather). Then, I became a tomboy--a really serious tomboy, for several years. I cut my hair very short. I wore the same two pairs of sweatpants with holes in the knees every day. One day in sixth grade, my best friend took me to her house before school, lent me a skirt and put some makeup on me and put a ridiculous bow in my hair and I went to school like that, literally as a joke. Some boy told me I looked pretty and I chased him around the classroom trying to get in a fight. It wasn't long after that that I told my mom I didn't want to be a girl. She asked me if I didn't like who I was and I said I did, but that I didn't want to have to do girl things. I told her I wanted to wear a suit to the prom. I told her I wanted to change my name to Keith.

She took everything but the name change in stride, telling me that was all fine, but I should keep my name, because it was the name she gave me and I should honor it.

You might hear this story and think it's funny, or quaint. I will ignore the reality that a boy wishing to be a girl would not be seen in the same light. I will also ignore the fact that it is easier, in some ways, for little girls to try on all different types of gender roles, because the gender that is opposite of them is the preferred one. Being a tomboy is cool. It's funny. It's quirky. Being a girl who acts like a boy is, you know, BETTER. Boys don't get the same message about acting like girls.

What concerns me about those phases I went through is this. What, exactly, was I rejecting? I never, not for one minute, ACTUALLY wished I was a boy. I was comfortable in my body and my own skin. I was very straight, and knew that even then. I just didn't want to have to ACT like a girl, whatever that meant. I had this vague feeling of unease about being female in the world. I wanted to be the one in charge, the crazy one, the independent one, and somewhere along the way I learned that girls could not be that.

I wanted some practical things. Back in my boy phase, I did things that are in some ways the essence of what it means to be a guy. And no, I'm not talking about playing sports or laughing too loud, though I did those things too.

I took up space.

I sprawled around, took up room, threw my clothes (what I had of them) around the house. To this day, I will be the lone female who chooses to sit next to the adolescent boy who is all sprawled out over two seats on the train. I have actually on a few occasions sat right on one of these kids' legs, just to make the point that he didn't pay for two seats so he'd better move the hell over. They are always so surprised that they just sheepishly say "sorry, my bad," or something to that effect. I still feel that one of the great mysteries of marriage is why, when we have a king sized bed, I am forced to fall asleep with Gabe's knee on my ass.

I was small, but I didn't want to have to ACT small. I was pretty, but I didn't want to be TREATED pretty. What's sad to me today is that there should be nothing in the world wrong with being small and pretty. What's funny to me today is that at 11 years old I envisioned a world where a straight 17 year old boy wouldn't mind going to the prom with a girl in a suit.

We shouldn't try to convince ourselves that everyone should be strong because strong is better, or that everyone should be tough because tough is better. But we also shouldn't tell ourselves that girls who are strong and tough aren't girly or that boys who aren't aren't real boys.

I grew out of my boy phase into whatever phase I have been in since about age 14, hovering somewhere in between, choosing boys and later men who could accept my backwards ways and even appreciate them. I have gotten used to guys initially liking my "feisty" ways and then realizing that I am not actually feisty, I am opinionated and stubborn and terrible at backing down, and losing their interest for that reason. I have chosen a man who is sensitive and nurturing because I am not, and I feel that those are useful traits.

And I still feel somewhat gender-confused, somewhat adrift. I often don't fit in to groups of women or groups of men. I told a friend last night that I am 37 years old, and I still don't know what women talk about when they go in groups to the bathroom. I have never gone to a bathroom with another person, not even in high school. And I envy the girl-power of the close-knit groups of women I see who know something about being a woman that I just don't know, because I never learned it.

I mean, you can't know what you don't even know you don't know.

I never knew that I communicate like a man until I took this "Efficacy for Women" development course at work a few years ago, which was supposed to be empowering, and I learned that for all intents and purposes I speak and act like a man, which is supposedly preferred in the workforce, but has never gotten me anywhere, to be honest. I was what, 35 years old? And finally learning why I didn't know--really, I didn't--why other women or girls had been mad at me in my life. Realizing that even when I understood, I didn't. Oh, you were mad at me because I said something that hurt your feelings? But why would that hurt your feelings? I don't understand why people get sensitive, or cry, or feel hurt in some situations, and therefore I am a woman acting like a man, supposedly, but I am NOT a man, so no one forgives me for it. And believe you me I have ALWAYS been treated as a woman at work. I've never been invited into the boys club.

I'm not complaining; it's just odd. I am as curious about women as most men are. I see how they flirt, or toss their hair, or laugh, and I wonder why I can't do those things. I see mothers talking to babies in lilting voices and I feel like there's something wrong with me as I talk to my children and everyone else's as if they are just very small versions of adults. I have a hard time inserting myself into groups of women because I'm not sure what to say, what to talk about, and I am not saying that to say that I am somehow better than other women. I am truly envious of those things I never internalized. Because men don't think I'm one of the guys either, so sometimes I feel just adrift. Gabe has this problem too. He can have trouble being around guys, because he doesn't like hoppy beer or talking about rock bands or fishing or chicks, and yet he feels weird being the only guy chatting up the women. I always tell him that the guys we know can talk about a lot of different things, but I know where he's coming from--he never learned the cues, and he doesn't know how to use them. I get it.

This friend I was talking to last night told me that she has always seen me as very feminine...just not girly. She said I look feminine, I dress feminine, and I agreed. I said this: "I guess in some ways that made it easier. I looked like a girl, and guys liked me, so I never had to learn to act like someone else."

And that's the truth. I could give people shit and make fun of them, just like I did with my older brother, and they would decide I was flirting because that's what they wanted to believe. Inside I would think, no, I am actually making fun of you. REALLY, I AM. But it didn't matter. When I was 14 years old and some friends dragged me out of the house one Friday night, looking chagrined when they saw me with no makeup on, hair in a ponytail, jeans and knee high black leather boots and a Rolling Stones tshirt with the huge tongue on the front (sounds cool, huh? Well, not for a girl in 1990, NO SIR), I learned something. That cute boy everyone liked asked me out anyway. And I literally said to myself, at age 14, "Really? This is good enough? Well, I guess there's no need to ever play myself out."

The lesson was worth learning, but the message is still odd. That same boy broke up with me because he "didn't like my personality." Specifically, he told me that I didn't take him seriously enough and I was always cracking too many jokes. I guess I was supposed to be sweating him all the time, feeling his biceps or something, but I didn't know that, so I didn't do it, and he was telling me that there was some massive disconnect between my appearance and my behavior, and I assumed that was true.

I don't know. I feel like I am feminine because I am female. I feel like my husband is masculine because he is male. And maybe, for some people, it's the other way around.

When I had my head shaved for chemo, after the tears had subsided, I took a good hard look at myself in the mirror and told Gabe that I thought I looked like a boy. Like a male twin of myself. He sounded exasperated and told me I looked beautiful, that I couldn't look like a boy if I tried. And whether that was true or not, let's not lie: He was required to say that in that situation. Breast cancer can make you question the entire nature of femininity whether or not you were so inclined to question it. But the point is this: I did look feminine. Because I looked like myself. And I am female. That look in my eyes is all me, for better or worse.

I just don't want to raise kids who believe what I believed as a child, that being a man was worth more, that the things men were and did were more important. My mother didn't teach me that, so I think it's a societal thing, not a personal one. She never wore makeup and had little to no clothes and wore glasses and did most of the manual labor and I never saw her gossiping with other women or having coffee with them or whatever and I never, not for one second, thought she wasn't the most feminine person in the world. Because she was female and she was my main role model for what it meant to be a grownup who could never be a man.

I think we need to rid ourselves of the notion that there are things and traits that are male or female, not because it is untrue, but because we have not evolved to the point where all of the things that are "feminine" are lesser. I remember being in a Women Romantics class in college, and reading the poetry of the few female authors of the Romantic age. Other students thought their poetry was pedestrian, boring. I argued that they wrote about their lives, and their lives were different from the lives of men. So, they were writing about marriage and children, and Keats was writing about becoming one with fire. Perhaps that was because him mom did his laundry for him. Perhaps he was the one who wasn't fully grown.

A few days ago, Augie had a horrible cut on his finger. We have 57 different types of kid bandaids, and I asked him what he wanted. He said "well, I like Cars and Muppets and Lenny likes Dora and Disney Princesses." The kid was crying so hard I didn't get into it at the time, so I asked him about it today when I was checking to make sure the wound had healed.

I asked him why he had said that about the bandaids. I said, you love Dora. You love Snow White. Lenny doesn't really like princesses. You have never seen the Cars movie. You both like muppets. Did you think you should like those because you're a boy and she's a girl? And he said yes. So I asked him this:

But what's wrong with that? What's wrong with being a girl? Can't you think of any girls whom you would like to be like?

He immediately said, "Lenny."

I was proud of him. As he tumbled headfirst onto my lap by vaulting himself over the arm of the couch and proceeded to threaten to bite me all while wrestling me, I asked him this: "Can't you think of any other girls you'd like to be like," teasing him, baiting him, showing him that Katy kind of love. He said no, and laughed. I asked what about me? And he said:

No. You're a boy.

I was stunned, but played it off. I'm not a boy! What am I?

He was cracking up: "You're a boy. Mommy, you're a boy."

I tried to get serious, and looked at him: Augie, really. What am I? Am I really a boy?

No.

Am I a girl?

No.

Well what am I then?

You're a grown up.

And SHH, don't tell anyone, but I turned my head away and cried. But just a little.

Hey Sexy Lady

It's a new year, and I didn't get around to making any resolutions. I wrote a New Year's post yesterday that was all kinds of irreverent, so I wasn't planning on saying anything else for a while.

But then someone dared me.

This started out innocently. All I did was share the following truth on facebook:

There are some eerie similarities between Gangnam style and the Humpty Dance. Just saying.

And then, well, I was dared to blog about that. And this out of control facebook thread made me feel like I was playing a blogging version of I Never and I was just flat on my face drunk from LOSING.

Or is it winning?

So here I am, drinking bourbon and listening to Katy's Booty Playlist, which is something I worked on when my family was out and I was supposed to be doing something much more productive or mom-like. And I'm writing this damn thing. If that disturbs you, I'm sorry, but hell, at least my kids are asleep.

Now, seriously, there's not a red-blooded American out there who was over the age of 8 years old and under the age of 30 in 1990 who doesn't know the Humpty Dance. If you claim to be the lone holdout, well, WTF was wrong with you?

So, let me just explain why it's obvious that this new craze that's taking over our collectively-impaired social consciousness is not really new AT ALL.

There was already this geeky dude with glasses and an annoying nasally voice who got a bunch of people to do a ridiculous dance, no matter how much of their self respect they had to sacrifice in the process. I mean, maybe PSY upped the ante by sitting on the john during part of the song (no one seemed to mind), but the spirit of the whole thing had been there more than 20 years ago.

Come on...hips side to side...hands in the air, awkward pelvic grinding...hands on his own ass...

"it's supposed to look like a fit or a convulsion..."

"ya got it down when ya appear to be in pain."

"First I limp to the side like my leg was broken
Shakin' and twitchin' kinda like I was smokin'
Crazy wack funky"

Are you trying to tell me that PSY wasn't doing all of that during Gangnam style? Come on!

The purposely ironic clothes, the dude making fun of himself for being skinny or nerdy or whatever, the fact that it can't really be possible that this shit is so freaking ridiculously popular, the lyrics that you can understand, sure, because they aren't in Korean, but you can't really believe that they're real:

"I'm spunky. I like my oatmeal lumpy."

"I'll eat up all your crackers and your licorice
hey yo fat girl, c'mere--are ya ticklish?
Yeah, I called ya fat."

"I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom." (LL was at Red Lobster, so maybe that was a thing back in 89-90? Now, don't say it...I was only 14 then).

"'cause in a 69 my humpty nose will tickle ya rear."

"I use a word that don't mean nothin', like looptid
I sang on Doowhutchalike, and if ya missed it,
I'm the one who said just grab 'em in the biscuits"

I just don't want to live in a world where anyone will tell me that PSY isn't basically saying the same stuff. So, friends who speak Korean, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF. Because he paid all the homage he needed to pay, practically telling us all that he was trying to be the Korean Digital Underground:

HEY SEXY LADY!

How's It Going to Be?

Upon being reminded of this heartwarming story about the high school couple with Down's syndrome who became homecoming king and queen, I was brought back to a day more than seven years ago when I had to make some extremely difficult decisions.

I was 29 years old when I got pregnant for the first time. Lenny was born when we were 30. I had no risk factors during the pregnancy, though I did develop pregnancy-related hypertension later on and was put on modified bed rest until she was induced 10 days early. None of my friends had kids and I didn't know any other pregnant women at the time. So when I went in for various prenatal appointments, I had no idea what to expect or what was supposed to happen. If they said they were going to do blood tests, I handed my arm over. I tried not to read too much or get too paranoid about all of the random things that could potentially go wrong. I was thrilled about having my first child, but I didn't particularly like being pregnant. I know there are those glowing, maternal bundles of pregnant happiness out there, and I'm happy for them, but I wasn't one of them.

Then, one day when I was about 18 weeks pregnant, soon after my 30th birthday, I went on a business trip to Washington, DC. My brother lived in Virginia at the time and was scheduled to pick me up at the airport. As I was waiting for him, I checked my voicemail and there was a long, involved message from my OB/GYN. I could tell from the tone of his voice that there was a problem, even before I heard his words.

He was telling me that one of the tests I had done, the one testing for Down's syndrome, came back problematic. He went on and on about the prevalence of false positives, about how the test doesn't even test for Down's but rather for the potential of Down's, or something, but of course I didn't hear that. He said I needed to call him.

So I did. And then this tearful conversation ensued, where my excitement and happiness about my first pregnancy was torn apart, not because I would not love a baby with Down's, but because I was suddenly worried in a way I didn't realize I could be worried. What if she was in the 50% with heart problems? How would it feel to be made aware, before birth, that my child had a massively reduced life expectancy? Would we be able to take her to the daycare we had lined up, or would she need special care? What would her life be like?

Except I didn't think "her" because I did not know the gender of my child. I decided that I would have an amnio, not because I would not have the baby if she had Down's, but because I wanted to be able to plan for these potential scenarios if she did.

I had long tearful conversations with my husband, my mom, and others from the hotel room in DC. I felt so guilty admitting that it bothered me to imagine having a kid with these issues. My mom told me that you never know what is going to happen with your kids. You can't plan for anything. My guilt was exacerbated by the reminder that I was not exactly a child lacking issues. I had epilepsy, something that is potentially much more devastating than Down's. There is no "test" for epilepsy, and if there was, I obviously would hope that my parents would have chosen to have me anyway. I began to have conversations with parents of kids with Down's or people who worked with such kids, and I heard nothing but positive remarks about these kids and how awesome they were. And so, I learned the most important lesson that there was to learn about parenthood before my kid was even born.

All you want is for your kids to be happy.

It's nice if they're smart, and conventionally attractive, and all of that, sure. But you want them to have friends, to love and be loved, to just be happy. And I've never heard someone talk about a person with Down's without using the word "happy."

And so I made my peace with it, and decided to have the amnio in order to prepare for the potential problem, but also for this reason. I knew if I did the amnio that the doctors would know everything there was to know about my baby's chromosomes, and I decided to find out the gender, so that I could name the baby and feel closer to it by naming it.

Before the procedure, I had to go through counseling. I got a little angry with this poor woman tasked with talking to me about potential risks from the procedure, when I would need to make a decision about abortion, etc. I'm having this baby. I just want to know what I'm dealing with, I told her. God help me if anyone had been able to predict the shit that would go down with me and my body and my brain in this life.

The procedure was painful, and I had complications. I had cramping for days, not hours. I had to call the emergency hotline at my practice, and some doctor who was not mine answered; he was gruff and insulting, honestly. He asked me if I was having contractions, and I said I didn't know. He told me I would know. Now that I've had two kids, I know that I WAS having contractions, and I am faced with the reality that I came close to losing my beautiful baby girl just because of a test I did for something I would have dealt with one way or the other. And of course we learned that our baby was fine, and that she was a girl, and we named her Lenora, or Lenny, because that is the only name I ever wanted to give any daughter of mine.

Labor and delivery were extremely difficult with Lenny. When she was finally born, she was small. She had jaundice. She couldn't hear out of one ear. She refused to eat. In fact, she never really learned, and at 5 weeks I had to stop nursing her and I pumped exclusively until she was 7 months old and I couldn't take it anymore. She didn't even cry when she was born, and Gabe thought she had died. The doctor had to slap her to get her to make a sound. She was a runt; if she'd been an animal in the wild, she wouldn't have made it. She seemed to have no survival instinct at all.

She was perfect.

And she was so, so beautiful. One of the nurses liked her so much we thought she would try to steal her. My OB came to tell me how beautiful she was and I nodded, rolling my eyes. He said no really, I don't actually think a lot of newborns are cute. THAT is a cute baby.

And she was SO smart and SO alert that she never slept, and we had to entertain her as if she was an adult, talking to her, explaining the world to her. She barely napped; she just watched everything with those big eyes. We were exhausted all the time, for years.

She was perfect.

And so when I got pregnant the second time, after a year of secondary infertility that is the subject for another post, I refused all testing. I said look, I'm having this kid. I know now how much I'll love him no matter what. We found out his gender, which is easier with a boy, obviously. We named him. We decided against circumcising him, because I was operating under this assumption that voluntary surgery on a newborn seemed like a bad idea.

I've got to do an aside here about that. When making that decision, I was basically waiting for someone to give me one solid medical reason for circumcision. I had no feelings about it one way or the other. We are not Jewish, so there's one major reason that didn't apply to us. If people gave the reason that there were slightly higher rates of STD transmission from uncircumcised men, I would say, ok, well, I'm pretty sure we are middle class people living in a society with excellent medical care, and I can teach my son to take care of himself and even to use a condom.

Then, we would get all these bizarre arguments both in favor and against the procedure. I loved the logic from men who wanted their sons to "look like" them and they were circumcised so obviously, their sons should be too. Um, really? Do fathers and sons compare penises? And how about the part where HE IS A NEWBORN BABY? And therefore, he really doesn't look like you, in any way. By the time he's old enough to look like you, I'm hoping that you won't be comparing. And then there are the arguments about other boys teasing him in the locker room, or on the other side of the coin, how sex is better with an uncut guy, or whatever. And I said, so. I am supposed to make a decision about this surgery based on his hypothetical sex life years and years from now or with the idea of what his penis will look like when he's a grown man, though HE IS A TINY BABY AND HE IS MY SON. I mean, this from the society where parents would rather their daughters have cancer than get the Gardasil shot, because that implies an acceptance of girls' sexuality? Not interested in thinking about my tiny kid's sex life or what he'll look like naked at 18. NO THANKS.

One friend who had not circumcised her son gave me a rationale for her decision that made sense to me, though it didn't convince me one way or the other. Once Augie was born, I understood exactly what she was saying, however. We decided against circumcision because no one could prove a negative to this stubborn researcher who doesn't believe that "that's what we do" is a good reason for being one of a tiny few societies in the world that engages in a certain practice. Gabe is circumcised but he was unconvinced too, and he hated cleaning Lenny's umbilical cord so much, he was so worried about the potential for infection, that anything that could potentially cause more concerns like that was not appealing to him.

So there we were, in the hospital when I was 37 weeks pregnant, having that kid 3 weeks early, and we told the doctors we did not want to circumcise. Now, someday I will tell my birth stories, as they are both pretty damn good, but not today. Labor and delivery with Augie were so comparatively easy. He came into the world screaming, pissed off, started nursing furiously right away, scored off the charts on his APGAR and had absolutely nothing wrong with him. I'm still convinced he was born early because he was sparing my bum hips the 8 to 9 pounds he would've weighed if he had gone to term.

My friend's words came back to me when the nurse held him by the scruff of his neck, like a chicken, by the scale. There's my newborn son. He is perfect. How could I cut him?

After roaring into the world, he promptly fell asleep and stayed that way for about three months, apparently saving up his energy for later.


We didn't know what was coming that day, with him, with Lenny, with me. We did not know what to expect. We did not know how they would be, or how we would be, or, in my case, IF I would be, at least not for the long haul. And this long, long story is just a way to say that I am glad we took it on faith, and loved them, before they were born and after. I'm glad we were able to see them the way they are, the way this homecoming king and queen's parents see them, because it's the truth.

They're perfect.

In the first picture above, that's Augie on the left, Lenny on the right.

No Words

I have no words that are adequate to describe what any parent, any person, any rational human being feels about the tragedy that unfolded in a Connecticut elementary school today. I have not watched the news. I have read a few articles about it. My mother called me to inform me right after it was publicized, telling me "you don't want to know this." And I didn't. I couldn't think about it right then, or at least I could not think about it in relation to myself or my own children. A few hours later, I sat here crying.

I hardly ever, ever cry.

And I don't know what to say.

I just deleted three paragraphs of text about my kids, about this day, about the comfort of normalcy, even when normalcy is getting as angry as you ever get at your 3 year old son because he is completely, wildly out of control and misbehaving at the CVS minute clinic where you spent the evening, only to find that three of the four of you have strep throat.

But that didn't seem right. So I'm going to talk about guns.

I am sick of hearing that such a conversation politicizes something personal and tragic. There is nothing personal about killing 27 people who never did anything to you. People have the right to take themselves out, but people make terrible, horrifying decisions that impact the lives of other people and sometimes, some awful times, take the lives of tiny children. Children who spent the last short minutes of their short lives in terror, probably asking for mommy or daddy.

There is nothing personal about living in a city that has 500 homicides a year, most of them via gunshot, of living in a place where it is not uncommon to hear of a dozen people getting shot in 24 hours.

It is not personal. It is political.

I won't get into the fact that the founding fathers did not foresee the kind of weapons that we have today, nor, probably, the kind of lunacy. They did not have media nor copycat killers. They also did not all agree on the right to bear arms, which we often conveniently forget. And as a collective, they upheld slavery and believed that women were not full human beings. So perhaps we could stand to modernize their words.

If now is not the time to do something about this problem, then when is the time?

Close to 11,000 people are killed with handguns in this country every year.

How many people successfully defend themselves with weapons? How many lives are saved in the name of self defense? I would like to see one legitimate statistic on that. I doubt it is in the ballpark of 11,000.

It is unconscionable.

If people are going to judge me for being too political, or hate me, or change their opinion of me, then I will offer a quick solution to that problem. I will do what I am good at, and tell a personal story.

To all those who ask, wouldn't you want to defend yourself? Wouldn't you like to be able to protect yourself and your family? I have a question: Have you ever been the victim of gun violence?

Because I have.

No, I have not been shot. But feeling the coldness of metal at your temple, while a scared kid tries to decide whether to pull the trigger, still qualifies.

I was 24 years old. I had been dating a 28 year old man for a few weeks after he pursued me for a few months. He was the second person I dated, and the first person I slept with, after I ended a very long and very serious relationship. He was also entirely wrong for me.

He taught me that I didn't know how to date. I was so used to being independent, so used to the total lack of jealousy and the comfortably separate lives that my previous boyfriend and I had shared for all those years, that I didn't know how to be normal, to live by the rules men expected women to follow. After all, the last time I had really started dating, I was all of 17.

So, when I was invited to a colleague's birthday party, a lively affair at a sushi place one Saturday evening, I did not invite my boyfriend. This was not out of spite, nor negligence. I just didn't think he would want to go, since he didn't know anyone, and, well, I kind of wanted to go by myself. He really wanted to see me that night, so I said we could meet up afterwards. He sounded hurt, but I was clueless. I did not understand why that would bother him.

In his doggedly pursuant fashion, he met me at a bar after dinner, we had a drink, and he proceeded to escort me home on the Green line. It wasn't very late; maybe 10:30, and I had not invited him to spend the night. We were not sleeping together yet. It still amazes me that he did those things in those early days--escorted me home, hoping he would be asked to spend the night and yet not expecting it, and then taking two different trains home to his own place.

We boarded the train, which only had two cars running. There were maybe 8 other people on the train car. We were the only couple, and the only white people. Those things became relevant later, though neither of us noticed at the time.

At one stop, two young men, the oldest no older than 19, entered the train. As soon as they got on, they cocked their guns. Everything on the floor, they said. Money. Phones. Now or you gonna get it. The older one was laughing, acting as if he did this every day, because, well, he probably did. The other one was younger, and terrified. He was shaking, his hand was faltering with the gun.

He was, obviously, the one to fear. The one who might make a mistake.

He was also the one who walked over to us.

Give me your bag! he was screaming at me. I slowly started to hand it over. No purses, bags, or wallets had been stolen at that time. Only cash and phones. What's this, what you got? He was rifling through my messenger bag, pulling out some insufferably nerdy novel or whatever I had in there. I told him to just take it. I had my hand in the bag, and I slowly removed my keys, because I didn't want them to have my address and my keys; that was, bar none, perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever done. He didn't notice, luckily. He started getting more agitated. I was terrified of my boyfriend's potential reaction. He was a tough guy, a guy with quite a storied past, a guy I didn't know well enough to trust in that situation.

He looked at me but didn't move. He handed his wallet over when asked. Then, things got more interesting. The kid put the gun close to my head. He was playing cool, looking at his buddy, trying to look like a big man.

What you gonna do about it, white boy? What you gonna do?

There was the gun, metal and all, right there. At my head. Right there.

My boyfriend shook his head, and said, take it all man, take it. No one's going to stop you. You shouldn't do this man, just take it.

And he did.

This all happened in one El stop. They exited, we all looked at each other in shock. The entire train car had just been robbed, I had been threatened, this was some crazy shit. I said that we needed to call the police. Interestingly, a few other guys got off the train as soon as they heard us say that. They had looked terrified too, and they had lost money, but you know what?

They, also, had guns, I'm sure. Lots of people do, when riding lonely trains through the west side of Chicago alone. And they didn't want to mess with the police. I will point out that they did not have the time nor inclination to use those guns to protect even themselves.

As an aside that is not really an aside, I will point out that young black men with gang affiliations are by far the most likely victims of handgun violence in Chicago. Someone fitting that description gets shot in Chicago almost every single day. Probably all young men in gangs pack heat, right? And I have yet to ever hear a story where one of them is able to stop himself from getting shot because he too is carrying a weapon. Not when it happens in the 60 seconds it takes to get from one train stop to the next, not when someone drives their car down the street, rolls down the window, and you don't even have time to pray to God before you're gone.

But I digress.

We told the driver of the train what had happened. She was maybe 22 years old, and way out of her league. She called the police, who made the brilliant decision to meet us at our train stop several miles away, ensuring that they would never catch those kids nor get my bag out of whatever trash can it was lying in right outside the station. They also were weird when we saw them, unsure of how far west we were when we mentioned the train stop where it happened, talkative and almost uncomfortable. They made jokes about how we would never take the train again, right? We responded that neither of us had a car, so, actually, we would be back on the train on Monday. After a long interrogation period, they asked if we would like a ride home. Well, since we don't even have a dime between us, we have no phones, and we've just been robbed at gunpoint, we would rather not walk, officer. And then, upon arrival at my apartment building, they asked us this:

So, did anyone get shot or anything?

And I couldn't help myself. Do you think if there were people bleeding to death on that train that I would have been talking to you about the contents of my bag? They glared at me, I left the car, and there was no mention of an entire el car of people being robbed in the news, and nothing ever came of it. About two months after we had broken up, some officer called me to ask if I wanted to look at mugshots. I didn't, since so much time had passed, and I wasn't sure I could remember.

That night, I let my new guy spend the night.

In the back of my mind, I began to wonder more and more about him. I could not shake the memory of him explaining in exact and almost disturbing detail the make and model of the gun. Because he knew about that. He seemed almost excited by the story.

But here is the punchline: It is probably because he did not attempt to "man up" and protect me that I am still alive. He did everything right. He looked down at his hands, gave in to his own impotence in that situation, and that kid with so much to prove took the gun away from my head.

We were both scared, and angry, that night. I was paranoid the next day, but I did not experience any long-term trauma from that incident, unlike the kids who lost their innocence today. In fact, we told ourselves that our odds must go back to zero now, right? But of course we both knew that that is not how odds work.

Our relationship was dramatic, and ended badly. I found out a few years later that he had died at age 30, and I never have learned exactly what happened to him. He had told me at one point that he was in love with me. I did not feel the same, and I did not know what to say, and that is when everything spiraled downward. I didn't believe him, to be honest.

But now I know that he did love me, at least in the normal, human way that people love each other, in that they don't want to see harm come to one another.

He knew that he could not have stopped that kid from pulling that trigger by reaching for his own gun, if he had had one. Everyone on the train knew that. Maybe, if the gun had been at HIS head, he would have fought. But he didn't sacrifice me for bravado, and I will always be grateful to him and to his memory for that.

There it is. That is my story. It is more authentic and relevant than the hypothetical scenarios often thrown about in tragic times like these. And it is by experiencing that story that I can honestly say there is no scenario in which I would feel safer knowing that more people had guns, even if such people were hellbent on protecting me.

I'm sorry if this post is offensive to some, or if people think that this is a time to mourn, not evangelize. I believe it is impossible to do one without the other in this circumstance.

I cried earlier today. I yelled at my son. I listened to my daughter sing Christmas carols in her room, practicing her Elf part for the school play. I forced my husband to give in to our son's demands for his mama (pacifier), because tonight, of all nights, I could not stand to hear him cry.

I have the right to these moments. So did other mothers, who have lost that forever just because they sent their children to school. My heart breaks for them, and for so many others. But heartbreak will not bring their children back, nor stop this from happening again. Neither will prayers, hugs, or love.

If we must get into discussions about protecting our rights, fine. Let us protect the right to live past kindergarten.

Horny for My Creativity: Honoring Gilda

If it wasn't for the downside, having cancer would be the best thing and everyone would want it.

Here's a test. Who said that?

Gilda Radner. She also said the thing that I'm using in this post's title. If you don't know that quote, well, who are you? Look it up.

If you are of a certain age, you might know who Gilda Radner was. She was that skinny, bushy-haired lady who was more freaking hilarious than anyone else in SNL's heyday. She died when she was only 42 of ovarian cancer. In her honor, this organization called Gilda's Club was born; it provided support services for cancer survivors. She talked openly about the difficult aspects of cancer, such as impacts on sexuality, at a time when many cancer patients were hiding their bald heads in shame inside their homes, afraid that people would "know." Gilda's Clubs exist all over the country. And now, there are a handful of them that are changing their names because young people don't know who Gilda Radner was, because she, you know, had the audacity to DIE before they were even born, and of course the number one thing that cancer centers need to be is "relevant" for the youth. Under this new plan, all of the clubs will eventually change to an extremely boring "Cancer Support Community" moniker.

This is such an overwhelming load of bullshit.

I will say little more about the cancer aspect of this tragic name change. First, let me just put out there that I don't think Susan Komen is a well-known historical figure, and there's a damn large cancer organization named after HER. But no matter. Let me mention that cancer is not supposed to be "on trend" and that people who run these institutions should realize that if someone who was born after Gilda Radner died has cancer, that person is crazy young to have cancer and has bigger problems than not knowing who the namesake is outside his support group's building.

But I've got an even bigger beef here. What does this mean, that we as adults who have some sense of history need to get all worked up over the idea that "kids today" will think we're lame? Are we going to start renaming all the streets and towns and schools all across the U.S. Clinton, Bush, and Obama, just so we don't fall into the Dead Presidents trap?

Names are important. Naming can be a meaningful, even a spiritual, act. Have you ever read N. Scott Momaday's The Names? No, of course not. Well, you should. If only so you could spend your days wishing you could meet someone who actually spoke like this, until one day you had the opportunity to do so when he was speaking at the Planetarium in Chicago during some eclipse, and you were offered one of your all-time favorite Chicago memories: "The names at first are those of animals and of birds, of objects that have one definition in the eye, another in the hand, of forms and features on the rim of the world, or of sounds that carry on the bright wind and in the void. They are old and original in the mind, like the beat of rain on the river, and intrinsic in the native tongue, failing even as those who bear them turn once in the memory, go on, and are gone forever."

And that's what I'm going to talk about here--names, and Chicago. I have to believe that Chicago's Gilda's Club will always remain such, even though that looks really unlikely. It would be great if we could be the lone holdout here. We are very proud of our Second City comedic culture, and I don't see us agreeing to dis Gilda when so many people, male and female, who grew up here still remember their mad crushes on the woman. But there's also the simple fact that we LOVE our names in Chicago.

Now in New York, maybe you're cool with saying you're going somewhere that's at first and ninth, or however New Yorkers talk. Pretty much anyone with a map could figure out what you mean. But here? Please. We have one of the most logical, well-planned grid systems in the country and maybe the world. And then we went all Chicago-style on it, and NAMED everything, making it impossible for the uninitiated to traverse.

So when I talk about where I grew up, I say Austin and Madison. The west side of the city has sub-neighborhoods with nicknames like K-town, neighborhoods that are almost entirely black today but filled with streets with random white ethnic names like Karlov, Kolin, Keeler, Kostner, Kilpatrick. Who the hell are those dudes? Does anyone know? It's doubtful. We also have this fairly obnoxious tradition here of giving "honorary street names" to just about everyone and his brother. They are these little brown signs that are attached to the regular green street signs, and they usually represent single blocks. Sometimes you see these names and you just wonder, really? Was that just somebody's uncle who always sat on the bench over there or what?

But that is part of what makes Chicago awesome. We are serious about our names. There are all kinds of people who will look at you blankly if you ask where Macy's is. Some people will refuse to answer out of stubbornness or hostility. If you don't know what I'm talking about, well, then you're not from here. And my kids don't even bother to call it the Sears Tower because they still call it the "Serious Tower."

We have this complicated highway system, right? But do we talk about 90/94, 290, etc., like every single other place on earth? Hell no! We drive down the Edens, the Kennedy, the Dan Ryan, and we don't drive on the Eisenhower because it's actually just the "Ike." And you know what? I actually know who all those people are. Over time when I was a child, I asked my parents, and they told me. And I know my dead Presidents and my Polish war heroes and my esteemed black authors as well.

We are attached to names in this town. I remember when they decided to change the El lines to color names. I'm sure the Millennials out there only know the red, blue, green, brown, and orange lines (and now the pink line--worst color for a train line, and there's that yellow line that runs for like a block in the north suburbs). But me? I still sometimes call the trains the Howard, Dan Ryan, Congress, Douglass, Lake, Midway, or Ravenswood.

When I was in grade school, the local middle school was Hawthorne. By the time I went into 7th grade, it had been changed to Percy Julian. I remember this, because there was a lot of conversation about it, and here was why the name was changed: We lived in a very diverse community and people thought there were too many schools named after white people. So the name was changed, and a bunch of kids learned about a black scientist they might not have heard of before who was a pioneer in using plants such as soy for medical advancements. He's often known as the guy who invented peanut butter, but that's not actually true. He did, however, at one point say this: "I have had one goal in my life, that of playing some role in making life a little easier for the persons who come after me."

See what happens when you name things after people who have been forgotten? Kids might actually, you know, learn to remember them.

After all, who gets to decide who's relevant? Does death put you in the irrelevant category? Is there some kind of "canon" of people who get to have shit named after them? Personally, I'm glad that I live in a place that has schools with names like Brooks, Chavez, Payton, Robinson, and Washington (not George, but Harold). I like how some of the more random names force us to learn something we didn't know before--like who the hell "Lou" Jones is. I ride the Rock Island line, a commuter rail that brings me from the far south side of the city to within a block of my office downtown. A few years ago, they finally built a station by Comiskey (OK, here's one instance where I admit that the new name can be apt, because that place really is "The Cell"). This station is called 35th Street/"Lou" Jones. The automated voice sounds hilarious saying this. Now, who is this Lou dude?

It's not a dude at all. Lovana Jones was a state senator serving the south side of Chicago for almost 20 years. She was known for her grass-roots political style and her work with poor children. She died in 2006 and they decided to name this station after her in 2009. I didn't know anything about her until then. She sounds like a pretty neat lady. I'm sure she would have gotten a kick out of hearing the voice coo "LOOOOOOOOO Jones" every time some kid got off the train to get to class at IIT.

And so, because I like names and honoring them and the people who built the legacy behind them, I hope that Chicago has the good sense to keep its Gilda's Club for as long as it possibly can. When she died, I remember people nodding wisely and saying "oh well you know she SMOKED," as everyone seems to like to blame women for their own cancer deaths, even though the SNL cast at that time might have collectively had the worst personal habits on the planet and yet, you know, they are almost all STILL ALIVE (John Belushi obviously being a major exception). Now we know that she most likely had a genetic predisposition to cancer (BRCA gene) and that if this was well-understood at the time, she might have lived. I remember the conversation around the circumstances of her death only a very little bit, however. What I remember very well was this:

There was this really skinny Jewish lady with hairy armpits and enormous bushy hair who was able to literally bring you to your knees with how freaking funny she was, and even the people she was famous for making fun of actually loved her for it, and eventually sent condolences to her family signed "Baba Wawa."

It was that lady who built the legacy that became Gilda's Club, and we should remember her for it. We should use this, actually, as an opportunity to tell those kids who are terrified when they walk through the Club door because they don't know whether they will live or what will happen or what it will be like, that having cancer does not mean that you are not still that person you were before your diagnosis. Once there was this lady who was hilarious and insightful and everyone loved her, and she had cancer, and no, she didn't make it, which isn't fair but is a reality that you need to learn to live with, and she said this:


I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

The Writing Life

People often ask me what those closest to me--especially my husband--think about all this stuff that I put out there on the Interwebs. In some ways this whole blogging thing is easier for me to get by with, because I started doing it for a seemingly untouchable reason: I found out I had cancer at a young age and I didn't want to have to talk to people about it, so I started writing about it. And then...well, all of this happened.

I started writing about other things, pontificating in that random Katy way that is too long and usually only circuitous at the end, when somehow it all comes back together. I know that soon I will no longer be able to write about my kids here, because they will be too old and self-conscious and they will hate me for it. On the other hand, on the very first day of that other blog, I said that my goal was to live long enough for my kids to hate me for some reason other than dying, so...there's that.

I also write about marriage, and sex, and past relationships in my blogs, and I know that many spouses would have a hard time with this. Gabe has never had qualms with what I say here, at least not that he has admitted. One time I did ask his "permission" to publish a post, in that I showed it to him before I hit "publish." It was when I wrote a post about how hard cancer is on a marriage. I asked him if he had a problem with it, and he said: It's your blog. It's your life that you're writing about. I'm just glad to be a part of it.

Aww, right?

Now look. Sometimes I see him rolling his eyes as he reads. A few times he has said, Really, Kate?, slightly aghast at the inappropriate shit that I reveal. Most of the time, though, he laughs, and very rarely is he surprised at what he reads.

That's because I am a storyteller. I have told him many of these stories before, unconcerned with how he would react if the story included some other man or another facet of my life that a husband might not want to know about. Gabe seems convinced, in fact, that I ALWAYS tell him stories that involve some other guy, because apparently those are the only ones that he bothers to remember. But the point is, he's here, he's my co-pilot, right? So, I tell him stuff.

Just not always right away.

Years after we met, after Lenny was born, we suddenly found ourselves in a situation where we were actually around each other a lot. We got married a year and a half after our first date and Lenny was born less than a year and a half after that. When we met, we were both working full time and I was in grad school. We were busy 20- somethings. Then, we had this kid, and we both took paternity leave. And we had all this time together, learning how to deal with a newborn when neither of us had ever even held one before, and, well, we started telling each other stories. We learned things about each other that we had never bothered to learn in the three previous years. I'm the talker here (shocking, I know) so I told more stories than he did.

What I'm trying to say is, life is an interesting story, and if you are interested in writing, it's probably because life interests you enough to remember what it was like. I write so I can remember my life. But to get it right, I often tell the story to someone first.

Gabe is not a writer. He tells stories differently. Sometimes, they take years to come out. For example, after Augie was born, I went to the department store to buy shoes (also shocking, I know). I decided to buy Gabe some shoes and was embarrassed to admit that I didn't know my husband's shoe size. Seven years together, married with two kids, and I had no clue what size shoe he wore. I called him to ask, and when he said 11.5, I was surprised. "But honey, you're only 5'9"! What's up with those big feet? And those gorilla arms and hands!"

I was teasing him, right? And then he starts telling me about how when he was 13 and 14 and he was living with whoever would take him in, he was hungry. He survived on butter sandwiches or something and his growth was stunted. His feet kept growing, his arms got longer, but he didn't get taller. Some doctor at some point told him he should have been 6'1".

I stood there in the store, not quite knowing what to do with this information that had never been divulged to me in the past seven years by the person closest to me, and I said the only thing that could have been said: "Well, damn, honey, I could have used a tall man in my house! 11.5 it is!"

And life went on. We continue to tell each other stories, but I have had the opportunity since then to hear more of them, in part because I have learned to ask very specific questions until the stories come out. Yesterday, I asked Gabe if he had ever gotten into fights as a kid. There was some reason this came up, but that is escaping me now. He gave some examples of getting picked on in grade school and high school, talked about how he used his tae kwon do to get him out of situations, said he never understood the point of fighting, especially since he has such a hard head that when kids would punch him in the head, he would just stand there and say, look, you could do that all day and it won't do a damn thing to me. And then he said this:

Then there was the time that I got suspended from kindergarten.

Excuse me?

The story goes like this. Apparently there were older kids used as "crossing guards" to stop the younger kids from running near the school. Gabe was tearing around running anyway, the older kid told him to stop, and he didn't listen. So the older kid caught him in a bear hug and Gabe began pummeling him with little five year old fists, kicking him and screaming "IT'S A FREE COUNTRY!"

So he got temporarily kicked out of kindergarten for beating up the crossing guard.

I can honestly say, I'm glad to be a part of it all too. If you like to write, you need to surround yourself with people who can provide some good material.

Here we are, 30 years ago, at age seven. Who would have guessed?

37 is the New 37

Recently, I received a terrifying invitation.

It was a facebook invitation to join a page dedicated to my as yet unplanned but still upcoming 20th high school reunion.

Everyone on the site is all, oh shit, has it been 20 years? But we aren’t that old! We look so young! Hey remember when…

And I’m thinking to myself, yeah, I remember. I mean, I had a great time in high school. I’ve never wanted to go back, and I’m a little bitter that I’m experiencing puberty NOW when I was already done with it before I even entered the 9th grade, but I’ll get a kick out of the reunion. In general, though, I’ve always been one to be happy to move on to the next stage.

So I think to myself…yeah, I can believe it’s been 20 years. A whole lot of shit has happened. If it hadn’t been 20 years, I would have to wonder how I would have had time to go to college, build a career for myself, put myself through grad school while working full time, engage in a bunch of real estate transactions, fall deeply in love and break up and have a variety of relationships, eventually get married, bring a few human beings into the world, build friendships that lasted through life changes and long distances, fight cancer, reinvent myself for the umpteenth time, and etc. and on and on.

I mean, if that had all happened in, say, five years—then I would be impressed.

So it seems like 20. It especially seems like 20 since things are so different now than they were when I was a teenager. I’ve written a post about the nostalgia that we all seem to feel for our pre-digital youth with the snail mail and the non-virtual sex and the carbs and everything. What I think about now, with my new-found perspective, is how parenting has changed.

For most of high school, it was just my mom and me at our house. My parents split up when I was 15 and my brother was already away at college. My mom worked and was going to college, since she didn’t go when she was 18 like everyone seems to assume everyone does even though of course that’s just one of those upper middle class assumptions. And maybe some of my notions of what it means to parent a teenager are just distorted through the lens of how it was for us, but here are a few examples of things that seem unlikely to happen today or be accepted today. The fact that I’m writing this should hopefully cement me as a cranky old lady way beyond my years. It’s what I’ve always wanted, after all. There’s just this old lady inside of me, going crazy for the chance to come out. I might not make it to an age where she gets to do her thing, so I’m going to get a jumpstart right here.

Here’s what I learned about being a parent of a teenager from my upbringing as one in the late 80s and early 90s. May I have the strength to bring some of this wisdom back into the rotation:

1. The generation gap was real. It was an actual THING. I was not friends with my mother. That was something that happened earlier than it might have if we hadn’t been on our own together, but in general, that friendship was an understood privilege of adulthood, not childhood. She was still the dictator of my universe. I got away with some stuff, for sure, and I know that I tried her patience and probably gave her a few mini-strokes along the way, but the bottom line is she wasn’t trying to be my peer. I understood that this was a great thing about growing up—not being embarrassed, not giving a shit what people thought of you. Teenagers are supposed to care about that, not adults. My mom would tell any kid off, no matter where or what was happening, give me shit in front of my friends, refuse to let me do things that I thought were totally reasonable, and demand that I respect people older than me. I never sat down around older people, including her, and she was only 42 when I moved out of the house. I never joked with friends about how hopelessly old and uncool people’s parents were, because we never expected nor wanted our parents to be cool. They were, you know, PARENTS. If they asked “lame” questions about school or friends you didn’t really consider it lame at all, because those were the kinds of things they were supposed to ask you. They weren’t supposed to be RELEVANT, they were supposed to be above caring about being relevant. They were supposed to be those older people who loved you even when they weren’t required to through any familial bond. And so today, when I talk to teenagers, I talk about whatever the hell I want and I don’t care how lame it sounds, because I literally DO NOT CARE. I am 37 and I can say and do what I want because I EARNED it, kids. And there’s a reason I married a man just two months older than I am. I LIKE people my age and I’m not trying to be younger, or older, anymore.

2. Your parents might not have your back. And the reason might be because you didn't deserve for them to have your back. I am always amazed when I read these articles about parents who make excuses when their kids get caught doing some stupid hijinks. In my house? Please. I went to parties where kids’ parents knew what was going on, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t terrified of being busted. Because I knew people in my neighborhood who went to JAIL for possession or being underage or what have you. Now I see 15 year olds openly wandering around in the daylight in my neighborhood drinking and they don’t even fear getting caught. My mom would have been all, ok, good luck with that. That’s your ass. So that’s how I came to be that 22 year old girl who got all vigilante on the white suburban kids who would go buy drugs on the west side and then shoot up in their cars in MY alley because they didn’t want to be too conspicuous in an all-black neighborhood. There I was, managing an apartment building as my second job, a building that happened to be next door to a Catholic school whose population consisted entirely of kids from west side neighborhoods with horrible schools, and I would see these teenagers bringing their heroin into that scene. And I would get right up in their faces, banging on the car doors, telling them if they needed to do that shit they weren’t going to do it in MY neighborhood, they were going to have to bring that back to their daddy’s basement where they belonged. I didn’t look any older than them, but something had shifted in those few intervening years. I had to learn to be that girl somehow.

3. Parents, mothers especially, really did have eyes in the backs of their heads. I just assumed that my mom would know things she could not possibly know and therefore I was kind of a Pavlovian dog about certain behaviors. My mom decreed that I could not be alone in my room with a boy if the door was closed, for example. And then, when she was a single woman with a busy life and even dating, she would just…leave. I would be home alone in the house. Sometimes, she would say ok bye I’ll be back in a few hours, and my boyfriend at the time would look at me like a terrified Lottery winner, wondering, wait, what did she say? And then we would go to my bedroom and CLOSE THE DOOR even though we had the whole house to ourselves because I had been TRAINED about what that meant. And when I was 13 and didn’t go to the pool with my girlfriend but wandered around the neighborhood late at night instead? And had a run-in with some older guys that I never told my mom about? Well, she somehow found out I wasn’t where I said I would be, and then, as I said, IT WAS MY ASS. That doesn’t mean I didn’t say I was going to do one thing and then do another when I was a teenager, but I had to learn to do it RIGHT. Those ditching skills were earned, baby.

4. You might have to go elsewhere for sympathy. When a boy I had been dating for a month or something broke up with me in the middle of the hallway in the 9th grade, I was just devastated and convinced the world was ending for about an hour that night. I cried and my mom told me it was all right. Then I got deeper into my angst and said I would never have another boyfriend ever again and do you know what she did? She pointed at me and laughed. The woman POINTED. She was doing this knee-slapping thing , cracking up, telling me I was ridiculous. I was so stunned I forgot to keep crying. Then a week later some other kid asked me out.

5. You had to get around on your own. We did not grow up with car pools or play dates. If our friends lived too far away, we just didn’t see them until we were old enough to get there ourselves, via el, bus, car, or our own two feet. Here’s an example. That kid I referenced in #4 who asked me out eventually became my boyfriend. On that first date, when I was 14 and he was 15, we were both too young to drive. Well, he had a cast on his leg from his hip to his foot due to a football injury. And yet he walked the mile and a half to my house, came in, and nervously began talking to my mother. She asked when he would have me home and made other obligatory small talk with that murderous look in her eyes that parents of teenage girls are required to have in such situations. Then, we walked the mile and a half to the movie theater, he walked me home, and then he walked back to his house. Our crappy family car was sitting plainly in the driveway in back of our house, but it never even occurred to my mom to offer us a ride…and HE ONLY HAD ONE WORKING LEG.

6. You didn’t over-share. Correction—I didn’t really tell my mom ANYTHING. I knew that I COULD tell her things, but I chose not to do it. Hell, I didn’t tell my best friend a lot of things. That’s why we kept journals. It was fun to have secrets, or to do things that only those people you did them with knew about, or to have several separate lives all at once. In fact, your mom (and your friends, for that matter) didn’t find out much about what was going on in your teen life until 20 years later when you found out you had breast cancer and you started writing a blog and sharing a bunch of personal stories. By then, neither of you cared nor judged the other.

7. Your interests did not coincide with your parents’ interests, and theirs’ always trumped. So I wanted to learn to ride a horse, or go to summer camp. My mom wasn’t feeling it, so it didn’t happen. I had to go to the park with other families because my parents thought the park was boring. We went to see a movie as a family maybe once or twice a year, at the most, and it was usually something like The Empire Strikes Back, because they would enjoy it. Afterwards we went to the bookstore because that’s what they wanted to do. We watched the Muppet Show because they thought it was funny. Our parents had hobbies and habits and we didn’t interrupt them, unless there was bodily injury involved. Even then, we might be ignored. When I was 19, I burned my arm with an iron so badly it was just shy of third-degree. Always stoic, I simply gritted my teeth through the excruciating pain, walked into the kitchen of my mom’s apartment, and told her I had burned myself. She kind of ignored me. Then I said, no really. I REALLY burned myself. And she said… “I am baking a pie.” Even she doesn’t understand that one, not to this day (see her comment here). But my brother drove me to the ER. He’s also the one who went with me for my practice drives when I was on my learner’s permit. Both of us went on errands the second our 16th birthday hit and we could relieve my mom of her driving duties. I was involved in a crazy amount of extracurricular activities in high school, and I was in charge of figuring out how to balance all of them and how to get there.

8. You would have to fix it yourself. In a way, we were all much more on our own than kids are today. In another way, I suppose we weren’t. But I remember feeling that my problems were MY problems, and I never wanted to burden others with them. I didn’t ask for help. I looked out for myself. I know I could have told my mom anything, and she would have helped me. But if that was the case, what was the point of growing up? I was eager to do it, and to do it my way.

9. You had no idea what you wanted to be when you grew up, and no one really expected you to know. So you changed majors, had shitty jobs, built a career in a field you didn’t know existed when you were in high school. You wanted to be a judge, until you realized you would have to be a lawyer first. You wanted to be a writer, but you weren’t ambitious enough. You didn’t know if you wanted to be married or have children or where you would live or how you would support yourself. You didn’t know, because you weren’t grown up yet. So you bounced around, and somehow it all came together.

10. And, of course, the music was better. Wait, no, maybe it wasn’t. I had those parents who loved contemporary music, and yeah we had mixtapes and those were the BOMB, (even my mom was jealous of that), but I won’t lie: my kids would know nothing of Ke$ha if it weren’t for me. Life’s too short not to dance in your living room when you think no one’s watching.

A lot has changed in 20 years, but a lot has stayed the same. There are still adults wondering how in the hell kids today are going to turn out normal, and kids who turn out just fine no matter how it was when they were young. Here’s to hoping we’re all still around when our kids have their 20 year high school reunions, so we can say I told you so.

(These photos are of three generations of young women from my family: me at age 15, in a photobooth at Rock N Roll McDonald’s with a random sailor, my mom posing for her high school graduation picture, and my grandmother when she was in her early twenties).