Parenting in the U.S.A., Home of the Free, Land of the Brave

6.24.2022

I am sitting in a Panera, ignoring my phone as it buzzes with bad news. I don’t know how anyone in here is holding it together. There are teenagers, moms, dads, regular suburban people drinking the decent coffee, eating half-toasted bagels, all while federal protection for abortions were swept away, it seems in the middle of the night.

But not exactly swept away. Decided. By men who will never understand what it’s like to be in a body like mine.

I am the mother of a daughter who at four is boundless with energy and curiosity — she doesn’t walk down the street, she skips. Her knees are skinned and bruised. Her hair is wild and wheat-colored, blowing behind her as she runs. I would give her everything and anything.

She pretends she has jet engines as she glides around with her raincoat wide. I tell her she is as fast as the boys are. I repeat it because she doesn’t believe it because society is already telling her she is slower, weaker, less than. I blur through the gender-separated toy aisles with the fashion dolls and the pretend cell phones and the fake make up.

All the messages she will get from these toys — that she is nothing more than an ornament.

I tell her pretty isn’t important. That mommy wears makeup for fun. That she can play with dinosaurs and trucks because she likes them and that boys can like unicorns and wear tutus too. I let her dig in the dirt.

I am doing my best to save the world for her.

It’s not enough. There are little girls in our country, land of the free treated like servants. Ones told daddy makes the rules, that their place is in the home and that they should make a plate for their kings. Bring them their beer. Take off the boots. Let them sit at the head of the table. Be quiet. Obey.

It’s not ok for women to have opinions. That behind every good man is good woman. That women are nothing more than bodies. That men are smarter. That a woman needs a man. That a woman needs children. That a mother who works outside the home is not a mother at all. That a mother inside the home isn’t working at all.

It doesn’t stop at mothers. Women, everywhere, always taking care of everyone else, doing their part for a society that doesn’t even see it.

I am trying not to cry.

I live in a blue state, one of the bluest of the blues and I am in my 40s. I worry for all the people in states far from mine and what they will endure.

The ones without resources to travel in time. The abused. The woman who accidentally gets pregnant from “just that one time.” The woman who will die if she gives birth. The woman who simply does not want to carry a child. The women without means. The marginalized people who are already fighting numerous battles and have been forever.

The message in the overturn of Roe V. Wade is clear. The country does not care about women and children. There is no support for single moms. There is no unpaid leave. No subsidized childcare or free college education. There is nothing, but miles of debt and the message to just “bootstrap” her way out of the situation.

I watched My Octopus Teacher and (*spoiler alert*) wept as the octopus turn pale and died, giving her life to new ones. The image of that octopus and her closing eyes, the fish pecking her torn-apart body will linger with me forever.

I do not want to be an octopus.

July 4, 2022: Let Freedom Ring

I am afraid to drop my kid off at pre-school. She’s already had lock-down training and told me she had to be quiet as there were bad guys in the kitchen. How do you keep pre-schoolers quiet? Should I teach her how to get out a window, to play dead? She thinks she can fly and unicorns exist.

Should I just keep my fingers crossed that this never, ever happens to us?

Or leave the country?

Wherever I go: the mall, the movies, Target, I picture a gunman (always a man), coming in and blasting away. In the nights after Buffalo and Uvalde, I stayed awake, restless, picturing every horrific scene.

And still –no movement on gun control, a compromise bill, where there should be no compromise.

And now, a fourth of July shooting, just north of Chicago, the city I grew up in. More people who died just trying to have a little fun, just this morning. I watched a video and saw the moment where the band shifted from marching to running in terror.

I have trained myself to stay alert. To know the sounds of gunshots. To force my body to move. To move, fast. I look for the emergency exits anywhere I go. Would I be able to pick her up in time?

Is this home of the free?

This is what it feels like to be a parent in America.