Resentment

I know it’s unwarranted. I’m aware of the illogic of feeling this way. But still . . .

I had a vibrant social life when I lived in my old city. I had a sister-soulmate just a couple of miles away, and I had a menagerie of friends from all walks of life, some I’d known since I was seven, some I’d met in graduate school. When the kids were with their dad, I was with my friends. Hitting happy hour at a family-owned Mexican restaurant. Sitting around a kitchen table drinking lots of wine. Going to plays. Eating giant slices of cheesecake at Something Sweet. Dancing our asses off at the cowboy bar. Drinking beers by the pool. I loved every second of the time I spent with my friends, and every time I get a chance to go see them, I do.

Nico didn’t have the same sort of social life. He didn’t go out, unless he was down visiting me and I dragged him along with me. His lack of friends was part of how he tried to justify having that whore Nicole hang out–she was one of his only friends.

I remember getting frustrated when I came to Metropolis to spend a week with him and he struggled through even a second without me. I went out for a walk . . . and my boyfriend who doesn’t even walk to the mailbox put on some tennis shoes and walked until he found me. I wanted to be part of his life instead of being his life; I couldn’t handle being someone’s entire existence again.

Move the clock hands forward, and here I am, living in Metropolis with Nico. I have a few friends here, which is cool, but most of my friends are two hours away in my old city. Add to that the boys’ father being a bit of a deadbeat when it comes to his time with them, and my social life has shriveled.  LOL, and just then I inadvertently gave Nico a social life of his own again.

I needed a lawyer for some custody issues. Nico called up an old buddy of his. Awhile back the two of them had had a practice together that was more frat house than workplace, that is, until the friend’s wife, a very serious lawyer, came in and ruined all their fun. So Nico left the firm.

While not fun, the wife is a kick-ass attorney who happens to specialize in domestic issues. She’s dedicated and can be a bitch when she needs to be, which makes her incredibly effective at what she does. She once got a child returned from Venezuela and back into the arms of the parent she was representing, for heaven’s sake. Totally the person I wanted on my side in a custody case.

So I got Nico and his old buddy back in touch with each other, and they’ve been going out for beers after work. I was so excited. Just what I always wanted–a social life for Nico!

Once the ball got rolling, he started getting back in touch with other friends. He goes out to get beers with his friend J (who he hasn’t hung out with since we started dating . . . and I think it’s because J and I flirted a hell of a lot before Nico and I started dating). He hangs out with his half-brother, too. Good, good; very good. Demi is happy.

Nico was sick all week. I was super-awesome at taking care of him, for which he thanked me profusely. Today he feels better, which is great. Just in time for date night. My ex takes the kids on Friday evening (they still come back to sleep, though), and Nico proclaimed that those precious child-free hours shall be date time.

At about 1:30 Nico texted me while I was at work. He was going out to get a drink with his friend D. from law school, and he’d left me lunch on the stove.

Despite the sweet gesture of lunch, Demi is not happy.

Yes, I know, I got what I wanted for him. He’s got a social life. Even if it is date night and he’s been with his buddy for five hours now and I don’t know when he’s coming back.

But it’s not really that. The thing is, I’m jealous. I want my own stuff to go do and people to hang out with. I don’t want to just hang out in the house with my kids all the time.

A few days ago I decided to go out and do just that. I arranged for babysitters and signed myself up for a yoga class that starts next week. Yay doing something I love! Yay meeting new people!

Nico asked me about the class with keen interest. And then he asked if he could take the class with me.

Of course, yes. I’ve been wanting him to get healthier. I’ve been wanting to find some other things for us to do together besides going to movies and eating out. Of course, yes.

But even as I said yes, I felt like I’d given up something. It was my thing, mine, and I was excited about having a thing. Because I want him to be part of my life instead of him being my life.

I’ve always wanted to learn how to knit; maybe I’ll go join a knitting circle. He’s sure to not want to join that

(Over)Sexed

So I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately. Okay, for a month or two. Because, well, I miss sex.

Sex has always been a central feature of the relationship Nico and I share. When we were young, we never had sex, per se, but we made those first steps into the sexual world together. He was the first guy to take off my bra; I was the first girl to go down on him (lol, the way he tells it, I, in my novice-ness, kept stopping and saying, “Are you going to come?” as if I was nervously awaiting a bomb explosion . . . I don’t remember that part but, uh, I think his retelling is accurate). When we got back together in our mid-30s, that feverish need for one another’s bodies was still there. After we finally had sex, we both kept asking one another, “Why weren’t we doing this all along?” It sounds like cliched romanticism, but it felt like our bodies were meant to be together. I actually had an orgasm when he’d only been inside me for about three seconds on that first night–which seems like a physical impossibility, I know. It was a confluence of things, though: the rekindling of my sexual awakening all those years ago, the intimacy of having the person who knew me better than anyone inside me, the perfect physical match in terms of his size and my preference.

I guess living in two different cities had something to do with it, but whenever we were together we couldn’t stop touching one another. Watching TV, sitting at a bar, walking up to a restaurant, riding around in his Jeep . . . we were *always* touching. And then there was the sex, too. I think in all that time we lived apart that there was only on night I spent with him when we didn’t have sex. We had sex in his bed, on his couch, in his kitchen; on his mom’s couch, in his nephew’s room, in his Jeep. Oh, and once on the hood of Nicole the Whore’s car. We just had this need, not merely a want, to connect physically.

And then we moved in together.

So, I know my life is exhausting. Having two kids with autism running around doesn’t make for a quiet, simple life, especially when my younger son had some significant freak-outs about all the new things and new places around him when we first moved to Metropolis. And it’s not just the kids who make the house chaotic; therapists show up four days a week to work with the kids. I’m always running around, the kids are always running around, the therapist are always running around. My house is a three-ring circus.

Maybe it was that circus. Maybe it was the familiarity of living together. Maybe it was the health issues Nico encountered. I dunno. What I do know is that every night when I curled up next to him that I still craved him . . . and he was content to kiss me goodnight and roll over.

I wasn’t deterred. I seduced him frequently. Sometimes it was rather overt; sometimes it was subtle. Eventually, I started to get resentful; we were having sex, but I always initiated it. And he was starting not to get my subtle seductions. And even on a couple of occasions he rejected the overt ones: “It’s 2AM, love.” I’d never had a man turn down sex with me because it was late.

I wanted my boyfriend to crave me, need me, and I tired of seducing him–I wanted him to seduce me. So I gave up, for the most part. There were times when I wanted him so much that I couldn’t sleep next to him, so I slept on the couch some nights instead. We started having sex once every one to two weeks and had one three-week plus stretch. I talked to him about it, of course. “I miss you not being able to not touch me, I miss you craving me, I miss you coming up to me in the kitchen and needing to be inside me right then.” But there’s a point when sharing how you feel can start to sound naggy, and I sure as hell didn’t want to nag my boyfriend into having sex with me. So I stopped saying much about it.

And then came the worst part.

It was a Friday night, and the kids were out of town. I put on the black lacy thing that I’d had sitting in my closet for about a month and struck a sexy pose in the bedroom doorway, waiting for him to turn the corner and see me. Which he did . . . and then he went to the front of the house to turn off the TV and turn off the lights and lock up the doors. Then he came back into the room . . . and plugged in his cell phone. LOL, I was so sure that he’d take one look at me, scoop me up, and throw me on the bed. Yeah, not so much.

I had a “what the fuck?!” look on my face and he asked me what was wrong. I told him that he’d turned off the TV and plugged in his cell phone. “I knew we were done with the living room for the night, and I knew I’d forget to plug in my phone if I didn’t do it now.” Um, sure.

So there was some back and forth, both playful and serious, and he kept trying to convince me that he wanted me and I kept trying to convince him that he was a dumb ass. Eventually we did get to the bed, and he started touching and kissing my body. Worst oral ever. Not because he was doing anything wrong, but because despite all his practical reasons for not responding to my alluring black lace immediately, I felt heartbroken.

Maybe he was responding to my disappointment, but the past few days have been good. We had sex on Thursday night. We had sex in his home office during the middle of the day on Friday. We had sex last night (granted, I did say when we got into bed, “Let me know if you wake up and want to be inside me”). Phew. But at the same time, I wondering if he’s just trying to appease me.

I’m left wondering, am I just an over-sexed woman who wants too much? Nico does tell me about 80 times a day that he loves me, so should I be content with that?

What do you think–is it normal for sex to drop off when a couple gets past the two-year mark, or should a woman be worried when her partner’s interest drops off?

Dad

Nico had gone to Sonic. He comes from a family that shows their love for each other through food, so he is constantly wanting to make me food or buy me food. LOL, not good for my waistline.

I was unloading the bags to get to my chili cheese tots (the most awesome creation in the universe, aside from pizza), and I stole one of Nico’s regular tots. And stole another for my older son.

A minute later my son asked, “Can I have another tot?”

“They’re Nico’s; you’ll have to ask him.”

My son turned to Nico. “Dad, can I have another tot?”

*********

Nico and I looked at each other, holding each other’s eyes for a moment. It was a simple slip of the tongue, I suppose, but we were both aware that it was a pivotal moment. My son had called Nico dad. It was unintentional, and he never even realized that he said it, but that he would subconsciously call him that, think him that . . .

*********

Saturday was visit dad day. Nico and I drove the kids down to their father’s town and pulled up to his house. My older son got out of the car on his own, but my younger son didn’t want to move. His disability is profound and he has significant developmental delays, but while he may not be able to put his feelings in words he can very clearly communicate them. I unbuckled his seat belt.

He rebuckled it.

He screamed about getting out of the car. He kicked his feet. When his dad tried to walk him up to the house, he dropped dead-weight to the ground, just like my self-defense teachers always said to do when someone was trying to take you where you don’t want to go.

He didn’t want to go with dad. He wanted to stay with mom and Nico.

*********

On Saturday night Nico and I were asleep at his mom’s house; we’d stayed down there rather than driving back to Metropolis and having to drive back on Sunday to get the boys. Somewhere in the middle of the night Nico jolted up, which woke me up. Then he laughed at himself.

“I heard a sound and thought it was one of the boys. Guess that’s what happens when you have kids.” He didn’t just have a girlfriend who had kids; he had them.

*********

I knew that Nico would be good to me. I knew that he would love me and take care of me. I just never knew how good he would be to my boys.

He has become their dad. Not begrudgingly, not because I forced him to be (I actually worked very hard to keep him from having to fulfill any parent responsibilities), but because he wanted to. He willingly steps up because he cares about us.

Last night after we got back to Metropolis I started vacuuming the kitchen floor, getting up all the crumbs my younger son had dropped on the floor. Vacuum still running, Nico came over and took it from my hand and said, “Let me do that.” I wrapped my arms around him and nuzzled my face into his neck. The vacuum was screaming but I held him tight, kissed his neck, and told him I loved him before I relinquished the vacuum to him.

“You go relax,” he said and pushed the vacuum toward the crumbs.

Tears rose up in my eyes. It was such a simple thing, a man vacuuming, but it was so foreign. He stepped up to clean my son’s mess so that I could rest. My children’s father never even did that.

Nico loves me. And he’s a good father. That’s the sexiest combination of all.

My Family

Nico came in from the garage. It was his in-office day, the day of the week I secretly love. During the rest of the week he works from his home office in t-shirts and ugly shorts, but on his in-office day, he’s magically transformed into this strong, incredibly sexy man when he puts on a crisply pressed white shirt, a smartly knotted tie, dark dress trousers, and expensive leather shoes. Nothing hotter than a man in dress clothes. Nothing.

My younger son and I were there by the door when Nico came in. He hugged and kissed me, and then he looked down at my son, scrunched up his face, hunched over, and became the tickle monster. My son squealed in delight and ran to his room to “hide” from the tickle monster. Giggling from under his blanket, he said, “Nico tickle [his own name]” over and over again.

My son’s developmental delays are very pronounced, so a sentence like this is rather amazing.

Nico stopped tickling for just a moment and my older son came into the room. The two boys created a cacophony of ‘Nicos’, each saying his name over and over again as they vied to get his attention.

For the first time, I looked at the four of us together and knew we were a family.

*********

Last night Nico and I were in bed and he laughed. “I just found a rock in the bed!” he exclaimed. “I know who it was; it was one of my chir-ren,” he said playfully, and then, again, “my chir-ren.”

He was being playful, as he always seems to be when he expresses the most serious of things, but his message was clear: these are my children. They aren’t just some kids his girlfriend dragged along from a previous relationship; they are his. And I know he’ll always love them as his own and be better to them than their biological father is.

We’re a family. A family.

Moving In

Nico and I finally did it: we finally moved in together. The air conditioner works, the washing machine works, the bugs have been killed . . . finally everything has fallen into place.

My biggest concern wasn’t the physical details of the house, though. My biggest concern was with how the occupants of the house would mesh together.

The single mom thing colors and changes everything about dating. It’s not just me that Nico was moving in with; it was my kids, too. When Nico started talking about marriage back in the spring I told him, “You can’t just love me. You have to love all three of us.” We’re a package deal, my boys and me. Nico and I meshed just fine, but how would the four of us be together?

From the moment my little dudes and I stepped into the house, my older boy was glued, absolutely glued, to Nico. Oh my god. It was like Nico was the coolest person in the universe. He wants Nico to play Bakugan with him and watch him do cool tricks in a video game and listen to him tell stories.

My older boy happens to be the keenest judge of people I’ve ever met. He can sense if someone is a good guy or if someone is a tool. And he’s never quiet about those opinions. At school there were a couple dumb-ass teachers that I’d love to punch . . . and my son got the same vibe from these individuals and would march up to the principal’s office to demand they be fired. And he doesn’t want to fire Nico; he wants to spend every second he can with him.

Last night the boys’ dad called. My older son talked to him for all of 90 seconds then handed the phone off to me. I realized that since we moved to Metropolis, he’s never once asked about his dad or said a single thing about missing him. Never once. Like I said, he’s a keen judge of character.

For his part, Nico seems a bit shell-shocked. He’s not used to living with kids so all of this is a major adjustment. I’m trying to pace myself and give him time . . . but I’m impatient so that’s hard.

The Comedy of Errors

Nico and I always joke that if it weren’t for the one crazy thing, it wouldn’t be us. It seems our courtship was a comedy of errors with every date starring some new quirky insanity. It started with the first date we had after we had sex for the first time: I set him off on a scavenger hunt to pick up wine, the dinner I’d pre-ordered at an upscale Italian restaurant, and firewood . . . and we finally met up at the romantic little campsite I’d picked out to find there were burn restrictions, so no fire, there was no wine key, so there was no drink, but there were plenty of wild animals wanting to come eat us in the dark.

Then there was the odd Cuban blues band at the pizza place who tried to serenade us, the Mexican restaurant that spilled cheese all over me and put so much tequila in my margaritas that I was slurring after two drinks, the night we drove around downtown for hours trying to find the amazing bistro that I knew was just around the corner . . . stuff like that. There’s always the one crazy thing with us–that’s who we are.

And so we found ourselves a house, and we were both waiting, just waiting, for the one crazy thing. After a frustrating time of looking, we’d found a great place, and one day after seeing it, it was ours. It was unoccupied so we could move right in. Perfect! I joked that it was all going too well, not a snag in sight.

Knock on wood, Demi.

Nico was going to start moving in first since my kids have day camps and extended school year and all sorts of other activities going on in June. He had four days off for Memorial Day, so that was when we chose to move him. Got the truck, got the relatives to help unload, and . . . the house was hot. Super hot. The air conditioning was dead. Keep in mind that we live in one of the hottest cities in the universe.

LOL, and I joked about how great it was that we got our one crazy thing out of the way. Knock on wood, Demi.

Then there were the sugar ants–I hate those damn things–and the too gross shower that needed the cleaning crew’s re-attention and the strange outlet for the dryer that required re-wiring and the flood . . . but that was Nico’s fault. He’d damaged the water tube on the washing machine during the move, and when he went to turn the machine on, WATER!  Awesome.

*Hopefully* we’ll have AC on Tuesday. After having to strong-arm the homeowner’s warranty company to get it addressed, we learned the part that was needed would take three weeks to arrive. We weren’t okay with that so they are installing an entire new unit for us. Progress! And the other things are being managed, one at a time.

But that’s Demi and Nico for you. The craziness follows us. But in the end it always works out just fine

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice . . .

Shame on me.

My sister had been trying so hard. She was trying to be thoughtful and caring, the way a person who doesn’t have a mathematical mind tries REALLY HARD to figure out an equation. It was completely foreign and unnatural to her, but she was trying.

My ex was being crazy, and I’d talked to my mom about it . . . which inevitably means that it gets to the whole family. And so, on Tuesday morning, I got a text from my sister: “Hello sis! Thought and prayers with you!” It creeped me out–I mean, not only is she not someone to give a thought to anyone else’s struggles, but she also is certainly not someone who would use the word ‘pray.’ Not knowing what else to say, I said thanks.

That night she texted and asked if I could chat. I told her that I was tucking in my sick baby. She sent get well wishes. I don’t know . . . it was just nice enough that I opened up that sister door and texted her back. I told her about my baby’s fever and how I was worried he was going to miss his last day of school and the going-away/birthday celebration his class was having for him. I joked about having to eat 30 cupcakes myself. We chatted about cupcakes and weight gain and the curse of women in our family always putting pounds on in the chest. And it was weird; it started to feel almost as if I was talking to a friend. I liked the idea of my sister becoming my friend. She’s always been so lost in drugs and alcohol that I’d never experienced that.

She texted me back at around 11 the next morning: “Hiya sis. Whew. What a day already. I really want to tell you that I love you So very much. And thank you for giving me 18 million chances. I really am a good person” The text ended there, without a period, and then another text came through saying, “Thy will, not mine.” I suspected there was something in the middle that hadn’t come through.

I took about 30 minutes to respond. There was so much to think about. It was new for her to be appreciative of me, and it was even weirder for her to be spouting something that sounded religious. But I wanted to take that branch she was offering.

And so I told her that I didn’t believe that there were good or bad people, that we were all simply people. However, I thought that there were good choices and bad choices. I told her that she and I were very much alike in the hurts and voids we had (we did grow up in the same dysfunction, after all), but that we had simply made very different choices in how to respond. I said I only had positive energy for her and that I wished her the best but that I had my own life and children to focus on so I could not be the person she leaned on to get her through her sobriety. I ended with “I love you.”

She didn’t hear the part about how she couldn’t lean on me and was ecstatic. Lots and lots of thank yous and I love yous in texts that seemed unfinished and had half words.

“I love you so much! I am sending quite the  pos”

“I have such a peacE”

“I love you so much sister. Took me a long time to let go and let God”

“And being able to put my life in the hands of God, I’m still steering!”

Again, the religious rhetoric  weirded me out (if you knew her, you’d understand), and I knew that she was probably more happy because I had let her of the hook and she didn’t need to feel guilty anymore than she was sincerely wanting a relationship with me. But still, it was a step forward for her.

************

That Tuesday night when she’d started texting me she’d taken off. My family lives in Nevada, and my sister had gone to a casino to drink her ass off, but had left a note for my parents that she was “staying at a friend’s house.” A 42-year-old lying to her parents in a note. Nice.

When she drinks, she gets ugly. On Wednesday morning, she’d been sending spiteful messages to my brother, who hasn’t come to see her since she got home from rehab. He was caustic in return, telling her that he was sick of everything in our family being about her and pointing out that she hadn’t even bothered to show up to one of his birthday celebrations in five years. He then told her that he was not going to text her any more, that if she wanted to sit down and talk with him, that was cool, but that he was done with her texting bullshit.

So then my sister texts my mom about hating everyone in our family and about how evil my brother is for refusing to talk to her ever again. (She twists details.)

Then she texted my brother’s awesome wife a spewed more hatred.

This is what she meant by “Whew. What a day already.” She’d been raking up drama all morning.

I was her pawn. She had decided my family was evil and that everyone was against her, and she wanted an ally on her side. So she texted me and was nice to me. She was manipulating me so that she could in her twisted little mind have someone standing beside her in the puppet show she’d created.

Unaware of all the other drama of the morning, I fell for it. Damn it.

She’s in hospital now. I don’t know how she got there or why she’s there–I’m assuming that drinking her ass off for 24 hours after 60 days without alcohol severely fucked her up.

And I don’t care how or why she got there. There aren’t good or bad people, but there are good and bad choices. She makes awful choices. My good choice is to stay as far away from her bad choices as possible. I wish her the best, but I will not be there for her. I won’t be tricked again.

Sometimes doing the right thing . . . sucks

It’s a small town. And the community for my sons’ disability is even smaller.

Small towns don’t function the way big cities do. People view everyone as part of the community, as friends. People talk openly about others because everyone knows everyone. People skirt regulations because people are more important than policy.

That’s not a bad thing, necessarily. I like feeling part of a community. The trouble is, when that small-town feel leads to people violating federal laws designed to protect my children and others like them, I’m not okay with that.

Some of you have been following the saga of my home-based therapists elsewhere. Dealing with so many therapists is a circus high-wire act: I have to advocate for and protect my sons (one of whom cannot speak at all for himself), I have to monitor and manage employees, and I have to create a warm working environment so that in a career field with VERY high turnover I can make sure to keep the good ones for as long as I can.

Part of creating a good environment has been to fall in line with some of the small community’s conventions, even when it meant cutting corners on some rules and regulations. For instance, when the therapists would do respite time with both the boys, the state says there is a two-to-one respite rate, which is a couple dollars higher than the regular respite rate . . . but the accepted practice is to charge the regular respite rate at two different times, one for one child and one for another, so that instead of getting, let’s say, $13 an hour, the providers are getting $11 an hour twice. Twenty-two buck is better than $13. It bent the rules, but that was the tacit expectation so I followed along.

But bending the rules and hurting my children in the process–I’m not okay with that.

I’ve been having difficulties with the agency I was using for over a year. One therapist didn’t take any data for two months, another didn’t take any data for four months. One therapist forgot to move my son up when he mastered certain levels of his goals, so basically my son was stuck spinning his wheels, not being introduced to any new goals and not making any progress for an entire year.

Then there were the HIPAA violations. Yeah, federal law prohibits sharing private information about patients, but this is a small town where everyone knows everyone, right?, so it’s okay to share that information. That’s what some of the therapists thought, at least.

I heard so much privileged information about other clients and their families that it horrified me. And the therapists always used the children’s names.

Child A (I’ll protect their privacy even if their therapists won’t) was a kindergartener with a chip on his shoulder. He liked to tell teachers to fuck off, and he refused to eat certain foods. On Thanksgiving he demanded strawberries, and his parents held off on dinner so that they could drive around town looking for an open store that had strawberries . . . and when they found the strawberries A refused to eat them and asked for a bowl of sugar instead, which his mother got for him. Speaking of his mother, she was bipolar and had a seizure disorder. And his dad was a misogynist alcoholic. His drunken behavior was so bad that one of the therapists filed a CPS complaint against him.

Child B was a preschooler who lived in a suburb south of town. He had horrible gastrointestinal issues; sometimes he would be constipated for as long as a month. His mother took him to every specialist imaginable. He loved numbers and reading.

Child C wasn’t really a child; he was 18. He had a developmental disability and a seizure disorder. He was on his second year as a senior; he was going to stay in high school until he reach 21. He hated the school librarian. He loved his dog and was devastated when he died. His parents were affluent Muslims and lived in a specific gated community at the base of the mountain. The therapist  was always bothered that the family didn’t take C on their vacations to Mexico; they always left him at home with respite providers.

Child D had a crazy single mom who used the therapists as babysitters. She also had a crazy sister who apparently told lies about having cancer. Oh, and a thief roommate with a drug problem. And I can’t forget the ex-con ex-boyfriend, either.

I shouldn’t know any of this about any of them.

They knew as much about me, I’m sure. Once I met A’s mom, and the first thing she said was, “So I hear that your son’s dad isn’t following through on the potty training routine.” Who knows what else people had been told about my children’s therapy sessions.

I contacted the owner of the company dozens upon dozens of times. I shared my concerns. She said, “Oh yes! Those are important concerns! I’ll speak to the therapists about it.” And that’s all that ever happened.

It got to the point that the boys’ DDD coordinator stepped in a called a meeting. (She’s awesome, BTW.) I had a list of things related to the boys’ programs that needed to be fixed. And then there were the HIPAA violations. “This is the one thing I’m going to be a bitch about. These violations have to stop.” Everyone from the company agreed.

And a week later, the HIPAA violations were in full swing again.

I terminated my relationship with the company and I have FANTASTIC services set up for the boys in Metropolis. I’m so freakin’ excited about moving next month and all of the opportunities for my little guys.

My kids would be fine–more than fine, they’d flourish. But what about the other kids who couldn’t escape to Metropolis? I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Could I really live with another child losing a year of progress and having his privacy violated?

I deliberated and deliberated. And finally I filed a complaint with DDD.

The investigative team jumped into motion. I’ve never been so impressed with a governmental agency. The team consisted of three auditors whose main job is to make sure the state isn’t unfairly charged money and the other was a confidentiality officer. I brought them about two inches worth of material, mostly email exchanges with the company and the data books that showed horrific gaps in the therapists’ work. The team was so appreciative. They thanked me so many times for protecting other children. They reassured me that I had done the right thing.

I left feeling a peace that I’d done what I’d needed to.

But small towns, they are close-knit communities. There are no more than two degrees of separation and one person’s actions cause a ricochet effect on others. A human Rube Goldberg machine.

Sometime yesterday A’s mom discovered she’d lost her favorite therapist, the one who she’d leave both of her kids with, even though only one was getting services, the one that listened to her rants, the one who her son didn’t tell to fuck off. Coincidentally, it was the same one blabbed everything in the paragraph I typed about A.

A’s mom is rather vociferous. She’s an angry, manic woman who lets her voice be heard. And her voice is saying today that I’m an evil woman who gets innocent therapists fired from their jobs.

She’s doing the equivalent of trying to blacklist me. Today I found that not only were my admin privileges to an inclusive playgroup revoked, but so was my membership. She un-friended me on Facebook and has dedicated a rather caustic status to me, according to some mutual friends. To her, I violated the tacit rules of the community. We are supposed to protect our own, not tattle on them. I’m a horrible person.

I know that I did what was right, and I know that I will be gone from this place soon so it doesn’t really matter . . . but it still sucks.

Where Have All the Feminists Gone?

“Demi,” she said in an incredulous tone, “do you really think there are any feminists anymore?”

I’d just returned from a conference and was telling a colleague what my panel had presented on. The word “feminist” in the title made her roll her eyes. How foolish of you, Demi, to think that such a thing exists.

I told her, of course, there are still feminists, and she challenged, “Well then where are they? I don’t see them anywhere.”

I started pulling out examples as fast as I could. Women like Neda who was shot for advocating freedom in Iran. The Egyptian women who were attacked in Tahrir Square because they protested for more political rights. The Afghan women pursuing their education even at the risk of death.

And I had some bad ass feminist friends in the States. Really, I did.

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I was at the conference with two of those bad ass friends. I mean, here are two women who, for as long as I’ve known them, might as well have had “Fight-the-Patriarchy” as their middle names.  Smart, strong, assertive, carrying out their discourse with action. I’ve always respected the ways they’ve been able to stand so strong in advocating change.

One of those friends spent almost the entire time on the phone with her new husband.

And it wasn’t love-dovey talk. He thought it was “inappropriate” for her to stay out late drinking with her colleagues on the first night of the conference. That night they were on the phone until 3AM, him castigating her, her trying to defend herself.

I was just dumbfounded. Here was this woman who used to be the kind of person to say “fuck you” and hang up if a boyfriend tried to tell her what to do, and yet here she was, wasting hours listening to her husband judge her choices.

What had happened?

But at least my other friend would strongly maintain her feminist principles. I knew it. But then she started saying some strange things. She told me about how she and her boyfriend had been fighting all week because she was going to the conference. She asked me if I was “allowed” to smoke weed now that I’m with Nico (weed is very important to her, lol), and I was taken aback. Why would Nico’s views affect my personal choices? Why would he control me? (As it was, the question was rather ironic because if Nico’s job didn’t forbid it, he’d *totally* be smoking weed.)

And then, as we were coming back from a giant corporate party, this same friend started waxing about how much she wanted a wedding, and all the presents, and the bridesmaid dresses, and the wedding dress . . . you know, when she’s always been very staunch in her position that she would never get married because she is ideologically opposed to the institution.

What happened to my friends?

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I was just on Facebook before I came over to my blog. At least there were some strong feminists over there. Like C. She’s bad ass. Very active in the gay community, volunteering her time to an organization that helps young adults when they are first coming out. She has always challenged patriarchal institutions. Like marriage. Like monogamy. She lived out her politics in her life choices.

Today she had a new profile picture. Of a disembodied hand wearing an engagement ring.

She started dating a woman a couple of years ago, and as that woman made the move from being called “she” to “he,” the dynamic started to shift. My bad ass friend started to become more dependent upon her “boi” the more manly he became. She deferred choices to him, starting arranging her life based upon his wants. And I guess, technically, she was giving up her lesbianism for him because of the sex change . . . but that’s a murky line, I know.

Now, here she was, once the staunch anti-monogamist, making her engagement ring her profile picture.

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I know we are not static; our life experiences continually reshape us. I like that we’re always changing. Truth be told, I’m changing too. Here I am with a man who doesn’t mind if I’m out late drinking with my friends at a conference because he trusts me, a man who is proud of me for being at conferences and sharing my work because he loves my “big brain.” Being in an egalitarian relationship like that changes a person, and Nico and I have had some conversations about the possibility of marriage . . . someday.

But what unsettles me is seeing friends give up the principles that have always mattered most for the sake of men. I’m standing here looking at my friends, wondering if my colleague was right about all the feminist being gone.

Love at First Sight

Today all my blog posts seem to be about love. But this one is a lot sweeter than the one I posted on my mommy blog.

Nico’s dad is, well, a rocket scientist. He’s fucking brilliant. But less than social. When I come into the house, he’s usually sitting on the couch, watching TV. I always say hello, but he never responds. He’s completely zoned out, oblivious. It’s not that we don’t talk; he’ll share soliloquies about his rather adventure-filled life, we’ll talk about the importance of understanding the Indo-European linguistic family tree, he’ll make erudite puns about just about any word he overhears. We get along really well–I mean, I can speak geek–but it certainly isn’t a warm and fuzzy sort of thing.

And then there was yesterday.

I came by the house with my younger son. He’s a beautiful little boy, six years old, with a developmental disability. My older son had been over to the house on occasion, but I’m incredibly protective of my younger son, and he gets stressed out in new situations.

Shortly after we got to the house, Nico’s dad came in from the back porch. I was standing there, holding my son because he was afraid of the dogs, and Nico’s dad’s eyes immediately locked on to us. Or onto my son, rather.

He was enchanted.

“You make the most beautiful children I’ve ever seen,” he said with awe in his voice.

I thanked him as he drew near to my son, his eyes never wavering from his face. The doting commenced. He offered him snacks. He asked me if he liked visuals, and when I told him my son was a very visual person, he took us into his office, a room I’d never been in all this time. He had a giant computer monitor–bigger than my TV–and he sat my son up in the chair. My son’s fingers began to explore the keyboard, and I moved into stop him. “It’s okay,” Nico’s dad said, “he can touch whatever he wants.” And so my son explored the smooth edges of the keyboard, gently ran his fingers over the letters without pushing down on a single one.

Nico’s dad loaded up Vivaldi on his media player and then my son sat in the chair, watching the swirling patterns on the screen as the music played. After awhile his eyes went on to explore the rest of the room. He got up from the chair and danced as he watched the ceiling fan spin. And then, on the top of a high bookshelf, he spotted it: “Airpwane.”

It was an antique metal bi-plane, one that I would never have let my son touch because of the cost. But Nico’s dad pulled it down immediately for my son. He spun the propeller for him. Seeing how enthralled my son was with that plane, he clamored for another, much larger antique plane. The next thing I know, he’s pulling down an antique clipper ship and a cheesy stuffed gorilla . . . any toy he could find for my son.

My son was most interested in the large plane, though. He reached up, took Nico’s dad’s hand, and brought him to the airplane to play with him.

My son doesn’t do that, not with strangers.

The afternoon went on like that, Nico’s dad doing all he could to share with my son. It was time for us to go, and he was still clamoring. He made the most caring, sacrificial move–he wanted to give my son his precious TV-viewing time. He flipped through the channels. “I want to find something he’ll like,” he said, determined.

“Pop, they have to leave,” Nico said. His father’s face grew sullen as he realized his time with my son was over.

Later that night, Nico was still flabbergasted. “He said you make beautiful children. He doesn’t say things like that to anyone, ever.”

It was love at first sight.

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I blog about my kids somewhere else, so you likely don’t know all the horrors my boys have encountered over the years. My former in-laws, learning about my younger son’s disability, immediately suggested I buy him one of those kid leashes. They treated him like an animal rather than a human being.

But here was Nico’s dad, meeting my son for the first time, falling immediately in love. Here was my son, falling in love back. It’s rare to see someone treat my son with so much kindness and gentleness. Most people are nervous around him at first because he is “different,” but Nico’s dad wasn’t–he’d found his kindred spirit.

Yes, they may be a bit crazy at times, but I love Nico’s family. I love them for loving my children without reservation, without fear. There’s no greater gift you could give me.