Another Sunrise
This post marks the beginning of a new theme here, one to which I’ve given little attention in the past, and one that, shamefully, I’ve only really begun to understand with the birth of Essie. It begins with a story…
We took Ess along to see Out on a Limb’s Nutcracker show at the Rosedale Mall. Mykala was occupied running the music, so Ess was my charge for the evening. Just the sight of her mama, without the ability to run over and get a hug was a challenge for Essie, so after feeding her, she and I began doing circuitous laps around the first level of the mall, biding our time, on each lap showing Ess the dancers while avoiding sightings of Mykala.
It was on one of these laps that Ess began going “booba booba booba” which I thought was a bit odd since (1) Ess only says that around Mykala and (2) Mykala was behind many storefronts about 300 yards away. Why was my 16-month-old daughter saying booba? I knew it wasn’t anybody in the area, so I began scanning shop fronts. You’ve probably guessed it already: mannequins. At Gap. Wearing sweaters. That’s how obnoxiously out of proportion these lady mannequins were: Ess perceived obvious, beat-you-over-the-head breasts on them through winter sweaters. As the father of a young daughter, this grated. What was worse was the men mannequins: you’re probably thinking they were overgrown steroid-adled gladiators, right? Wrong! They were, for all practical purposes, slim, humanly-proportioned individuals.
Sexism is awful. Double standards dump salt in the wound.
I’ve always been respectful of women to the point of obsequiousness, though that has been more an outgrowth of my personality than any true understanding of what it is like to be a woman. Recently, with the help of the Twitter stream of John Siracusa and, in turn, his following of Everyday Sexism, has the concept of what it is like to be a woman in the world begun to sink slowly into my thick head.
It probably began in earnest with my viewing of a video of a woman wearing a bog standard black t-shirt on the streets of New York, surreptitiously filming the amount of harassment a woman endures in public. Then a few more anecdotes expressing similar experiences. Slowly, slowly, these anecdotes strung together in my mind into a theme, a theme of outright and implicit verbal and physical abuse. Then, under the overwhelming weight of countless recollections and summaries of double standards, tacit gender norms, molestation by the male gaze, more double standards, violence, parking lots at night, walking in the city, walking anywhere, interviewing for jobs, keeping jobs, makeup, subtle sexism, overt sexism, snide comments, rude implications, the heartbreaking stereotypes endured by women bosses, OFFENSES DISMISSED AS JOKES, minimization, accusations deflected as overreaction, more parking lots, more city streets… well, this theme then became generalized into universal experience. It is not one type of woman that endures this hell: it is all women.
It was upon finally arriving at, and trying hard to empathize with, this shared female experience, that I felt like I finally began to understand being a woman in this world.
And it enrages me.
A seven foot white pine Christmas tree, grown at the Kroeger’s family tree farm from which you pick it up, freshly cut for you, baled, and drilled plumb for a tree stand is $59, which I believe is an excellent deal. We went to get ours yesterday and marveled at the difference a year makes with Essie. Last year, Ess was in the Björn, reacting a tiny bit to things, and generally kind of just along for the ride. This year she is 16 months old and far more interactive: riding on my back in the Kelty, reaching out at trees she likes, drinking sips of apple juice in the warming house, beaming at people she sees. The long-needled trees like our white pine feel soft to the hand, and, as with anything she feels that is thick and soft, Ess says “maoww”, meaning that it feels just like her cat at home.
I popped the tree into its stand as Mykala put Ess down for her nap. In years past, we would get the tree, put on the lights, put on the decorations, do it all at once in one marathon decoration session. This year, by necessity, we do a little Christmas at a time. Some decorations one day, the tree another, the lights today. We consider things like strands of lights without lead in them to be far more important than we ever did before. We take precautions against Ess knocking over the tree or drinking the tree water. It is a lot to think about, and that extra mental overhead, the thinking of someone else before you, is the next stage of Christmas we are growing into.
Mykala and I were talking a few days ago and we agreed that there’s a point where Christmas loses some of its highlight-of-the-year quality; sometime between high school and the end of college. Your peer group expands, you start interacting with the world differently, your mind and efforts are distracted by an entire other social sphere, even when you are home with family at Christmas. Your attention is divided. Then, out of school and into a job, before you have kids, and there’s this odd feeling of remembering how special Christmas was, but realizing it will never be that way for you again. For the first time, it is tinged with a little melancholy, if only a little. Then, as suddenly as something so profound can happen, you jump into the world of parenting and your attention turns to your little one, and your efforts become about making their Christmas the highlight of their year. It has been said and described by a thousand authors and observers, but you really do see the season through the freshness, the newness of your children’s eyes. It is something you read about, but a quite a bit more memorable and lovely to experience yourself. It makes the child-proofing of the Christmas decorations incidental, just a little speed bump on the way to your non-stop efforts to make the world a gentle, special, loving place for your children as long as you can.
It’s a sunny 42° outside and Mykala graciously extended what was already a long week of parenting through this morning so I could go workout at Lifetime. I came back and jumped into the unfolding morning: Marge had juice spilled on her and Mykala had already washed her; she was damp and drying. Ess had dismantled a few areas of the house, and was ready to play more. Mykala had to leave. With the cutest little repetition of “bye” you could possibly imagine, Essie wished Mykala well, and then it was the two of us.
I love how I can ask Ess to do things: put the magnet on the cabinet, let’s count the socks and then put them in the basket, those clothes are already dry so lets take them out of the dryer. Oh, and: don’t climb in the dryer, even though it looks fun.
Then, we came across a rogue pair of Dad socks, and Ess knew she wanted to put them in the dresser. She walked right over there with me, and I picked her up, and she dropped them right into the drawer. It is such fun to feel our communication developing. Ess can’t yet form sentences, but her cognition, understanding, and even sense of comic timing are remarkable.
Essie selected the still-damp Marge and a rabbit to take a nap with, and she drifted off after a few minutes of frustrated cries. She’s napping now as I write this in the sun of our dining room, sipping some coffee Mykala made and eating my morning oatmeal. “A Baroque Christmas” is playing in the background. I feel I will look back at this time, rough edges worn away by the retelling, with great fondness.
All I saw was Essie’s feet around this corner until I realized she was “hiding” from me. This is what she looked like when I “found” her.
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