Negotiating New Adventures

We knew getting into this baby business that it would put a harsh end to this life we’ve enjoyed for the last eight years. Pregnancy is good for easing into our new life. For months, we planned to spend Labor Day weekend biking to from Chicago to Milwaukee, touring the city’s many breweries and one art museum, and then taking the train back like so many adventurers who came before. I don’t remember what we ended up doing that weekend, but I know it probably involved me, nauseated on the couch. Our two year anniversary ended the same way, and the tickets we’d procured to see John Hiatt and Steve Earle at Ravinia went to waste and we ate the picnic dinner Robert prepared in small bites, in our apartment, listening to a thrown-together alt country playlist on the computer. A few weeks later, we actually made it to the Bruce Springsteen concert at Wrigley, and a good thing too, because Robert put in hours of behind-the-scenes work getting his hands on those tickets, and it was largely a success, except that I kept sneaking breaks to sit down and eat bits of granola bar, thereby losing any hipster credibility I hadn’t already sacrificed by paying a lot of money to see Bruce Springsteen in the first place. Since then, we’ve only attended shows I’m certain will involve sitting at least 90% of the time (Gillian Welch, Louis C.K.).

Now, I’m far enough along that we’ll be looking at tickets for something and realize that it’s scheduled post-baby. Josh Ritter is coming five days after I’m due. Robert: I guess we probably won’t be able to leave the baby alone that early. Maybe I can go by myself. I bet I’ll need a break. Me: That’s a terrible idea. Maybe the baby will be late, and we will get to go. We’ll have to find tickets at the last minute on Craigslist, though. Robert: That might work. You might not feel like going to a concert when you’re that huge, though. Me: I will need the distraction. I tried to use this same logic to explain why we might still be able to attend a friend’s wedding that is scheduled one week after I’m due, but Robert put his foot down at leaving the state at 41 weeks. This makes some sense.

So last week Robert told me that there is another concert at Wrigley this summer that he wants to go see. Robert: Pearl Jam! Pearl Jam is coming to Chicago in June! Me: That sounds like fun for you. I probably won’t be able to leave the baby for that long, though. Robert: You have to go! The baby will be two months old, and we will probably only be give for five hours. Me: I don’t know, that sounds like a lot of Pearl Jam. Robert: Don’t worry, it will be. There’s not even an opening act, which means even more Pearl Jam. Can you tell we are not on the same page when it comes to Pearl Jam? Or with prerequisites for baby survival? Here’s hoping we figure it out inside of three months.

Things Happy Couples Do: Superbowl Edition

Watch football, even though football is my least favorite sport, and I don’t even like my favorite sport that much. Football is Robert’s favorite sport, and he’s a guy who will watch the championship of just about anything (golf, tennis, hot dog eating), so that’s saying a lot. I didn’t realize I was committing to a lifetime of tolerating big games, by the way, because Robert hid his fandom from me for at least the first two years of our relationship. He will deny this. I think it was probably unintentional, because he knew you win over English majors by talking about books, not sports, and he’s really good at both.

Pretend we don’t know any Beyonce songs, when really we know lots of Beyonce songs.

Eat barbecued pork ribs and caramel popcorn with bacon even though all our party guests are Jews or vegetarians or Jewish vegetarians. Don’t worry, we provided lots of non-pork meats and non-meat eats because we are not the worst hosts in the world. Also, Robert grilled the the porks and nonporks even though the temperature has been hovering around 15 degrees all day because Robert swore he’d grill year-round when he talked me into buying our Weber last December.

Bet on opposing teams, because a little competition is good for any relationship and somebody should end up unhappy. We share a bank account, so our betting currency is massages and milk shakes. I lost and I’m pissed, not because I care about the 49ers, but because I wanted that 20 minute massage, and now I have to give it instead.

Watch our corgi run laps up and down the hallway in lieu of the Puppy Bowl because we don’t have cable. Here is a picture.

Fantasies

It’s amazing to me the lengths people will go to to preserve their image of an ideal Mormon life. When I first announced my pregnancy, people at church would say things like, “Maybe this year Robert’s business will really take off and you’ll be able to quit your job!” Look, Windy City Salt Works is doing way better than we ever dreamed when Robert started cooking up test batches of salty caramel in his little yellow kitchen in Ann Arbor five years ago, and he works really hard to keep his customers happy, but there is no world in which the man behind a brand new one-man candy company earns more than an complex commercial litigator at a well-regarded Chicago law firm. Why is it easier for people to believe that Robert’s small business will transform in a matter of months than that I will just, you know, go back to work after having a baby and keep on supporting our family?

P.S. Even though I don’t need you to buy candy from my husband so that I can quit my job, you should totally order some blueberry wine caramels for Valentine’s Day and take advantage of his free shipping special this whole month.

Not All Stories Are Good Stories

I wanted to have a baby in April 2011. I didn’t want to talk about it with Robert or be pregnant or watch a child grow into an adult. I just wanted a baby in my arms. This desire burned like a fever all summer and then it started to fade. By November all my maternal instincts froze or went into hibernation or paled next to all the more interesting things I had to do. I attributed all of this to hormones and decided to decide on babies with my brain, and my partner. I think this was a good decision.

The day after we looked at a positive pregnancy test and Robert screamed into a pillow and I spent all day on the computer reading miscarriage statistics and symptoms, we hesitantly celebrated by driving to our favorite coffee shop in Evanston where I ordered a lox bagel, even though I knew that smoked fish was high on the list of things that pregnant women don’t get to do. I swapped my usual caffeinated beverage for an herbal tea, though, because pregnant women make sacrifices and I’m telling you that I did this because I want you to think I am a good person.

At my first doctor’s appointment the nurse with the clinical tone asked for the date of my last period and then asked if we were keeping the fetus. I said yes, because there was no question, but I was so glad she asked. Later, the nurse practitioner with the shiny hair and smiley teeth came into and said, “Congratulations!” I didn’t know what to say back, but I was so glad for her warmth. I went home and thought about how pregnancy, even early pregnancy with all it’s horrifying risk of loss, made me even more ardently pro choice than I was before, and I never posted about it on this blog, even though I wanted to.

We heard the heart beat at 11 weeks. At 14 the heartbeat went missing and my OB sent us to the hospital for an emergency ultrasound. I got a plastic hospital bracelet and prescription slip that said “No FHB. Confirm viability.” and I sobbed heavy heaving sobs until suddenly I stopped and knew I needed to show Robert that everything would be okay, even if it wasn’t. I still quake before every appointment. I still worry every day.

At 18 weeks we switched practices and the new OB told me that I could eat sushi and smoked fish and runny eggs and stinky cheese and artificial sugars and so I did.

At 18 weeks we found out we’re having a girl.

At 19 weeks I spent too much money on maternity clothes and breathed a sigh of comfort and relief.

Robert felt the baby move at 24 weeks and breathed his own sigh of relief.

At 27 weeks I started to panic about raising a little girl by myself in a patriarchal religion. I don’t know who will bless or baptize her. I don’t know how to tell her that I don’t believe the things her religious leaders will say about girls and women are right or good. I don’t know how I will impress upon her that God loves girls as much as boys, or how I will explain that not all people do.

At 29 weeks people keep asking me how I’m feeling, which feels momentarily strange because I feel happy and healthy and fine, but it also feels really, really nice.

I spent seven months not writing here or anywhere about being pregnant because I don’t know how to give these events meaning yet. I’m a storyteller, and it’s hard to tell a story without reason or understanding or lessons learned. I think the stories will unfold one of these days or months or years and I don’t want to ruin them by writing them down prematurely all half-formed and short on joy. I don’t want to ruin them by sharing them with the world. But I also know that the best way to ruin a story is not to tell it at all.

After Which I Promise To Shut Up About Pants Forever

I wore pants to church the Sunday before the Sunday before Christmas. It wasn’t any big deal in my urban ward where one or two other women wear pants on the regular. In fact, it was among the least significant of my many transgressions against Mormon culture and doctrine over the years. Maybe on par with the combat boots I wore with a dress last week? As far as I know, I didn’t cause any disruption.

I walked in to sacrament my usual five minutes late, during a hymn (if that doesn’t prove I’m Mormon, I don’t know what does), and the usual amount of heads shifted in my direction. I blame the bright red coat and the lack of husband and children in tow for that, though, not the pants. I took the sacramental bread and water, quiet as usual, head bowed. I sought forgiveness for causing contention in my church. After the first hour, I said hello to a missionary, visiting from California, who used to serve in our ward, who Robert and I used to have over for dinner and who maybe broke mission rules to text us restaurant recommendations in Chicago kind of frequently. He was also wearing pants, but the that’s not really unusual.

I volunteered a few answers during a second hour Sunday School class on miracles. I reflected on the many small events in my life I like to call miracles, never hesitant to chalk something up to the divine. That’s what Mormons do. I shed heavy, hurting tears when the conversation turned to the miracles that don’t happen. The tragedy in Connecticut. My mother’s mother. Robert’s oldest brother. The people I will never know. I thought about how wearing pants changes none of that, and how that’s sort of the point.

I taught the lesson during the third hour, that hour people not of our faith can’t fathom, not because of the subject matter, but because our services are just so dang long. Women and men meet separately in the third hour, and I prefer it that way, because I’ve never been part of a congregation where the women weren’t vastly interesting and insightful, and where they didn’t talk a little more freely when men weren’t around. We talked about how to forgive others, of the petty and horrendous, of the purposeful and the not. We talked about how to forgive ourselves. We talked about seeking forgiveness, from God and man. I didn’t say it, but I’d spent the week leading up to this lesson, no, my whole life, wondering how to forgive my fellow Mormons. The ones who don’t like the way I live. The ones who just want me out.

In the entire three hours, I exchanged glances and waves and small talk with three other women in pants, two men in purple ties, and one woman in head-to-toe purple because she didn’t have any dressy pants that fit. These are people I talk to every week anyway.

It was an average Sunday, a non-event, and completely as I expected. So why did I wear pants, if not to cause a stir? There are lots of reasons. People have written lots of words about why Mormon Feminists, as a group, chose a specific day to buck this cultural trend en masse. I tried to explain myself here and here. Others have written lots of words about why they, as individuals, chose to join us in bucking this cultural trend. Even though I think this event has already generated far more online noise than I expected (maybe even more than it warrants), I’m going to give it one more go.

I wore pants because I wanted to answer the question once and for all, can you be feminist and Mormon? The short answer: of course you can. Here is the long answer, bifurcated for people in both of the two worlds I span, people who couldn’t be more different, but who are united and determined in their insistence that Mormon Feminism is an oxymoron or, at the very least, a very stupid thing.

1) Non-Mormons: Mormon feminists exist. Yes, we know that the Mormon church is not a feminist organization. Neither was the legal profession. Neither was the United States for the vast majority of its short life. Neither was the skeptic community or the world of online gaming. And yet you don’t see women clamoring to quit their jobs, renounce their citizenship, or give up their passionately pursued hobbies. It is possible to be a feminist in a non-feminist organization. It is possible to hope and work for something better. I believe that the Mormon church is bigger and better than the way it treats black people and women and gays. Heck, I believe that people the world over are better than the way they treat black people and women and gays. I won’t try to convince you what I like so much about this religion, if you stop trying to convince me that everything I believe is wrong.

2) Mormons: Mormon feminists exist. No, we don’t want to be men. No, we don’t want men to have babies.* Feminism is not a fight for sameness. There are a lot of overlapping definitions of feminism floating around, and I’m partial to the snarky ones about equal rights and women being people too, but the best one I’ve read lately is from my friend Ru: “I just want to get treated as well as a man because there is no justifiable reason why I shouldn’t be.” Yes, I know that the LDS church talks a good talk about respecting women, and putting us up on a pedestal and all that, but the reality for me and many other women is we feel unequal. I know, it’s hard to argue with the feelings of a bunch of ladies. It’s just so fuzzy. You don’t have to agree with me. But you need to know that Mormon Feminists are, for the most part, past the point of wanting to liberate women who are happy with the status quo. Do I read parts of the LDS text The Family: A Proclamation to the World and feel suffocated? Yes. Can you read the same document and feel blessed and empowered fulfilling what you perceive to be your divinely ordained role as a nurturer (or provider, if you are a man)? Also yes. Can we worship in the same pews, sing along to the same hymns, and support each other as we confidently stride or blindly grope our way along the righteous path? Yes, yes, and yes. Am I on the clear road to apostasy? I mean, sure, maybe. I can’t tell you that. I can only tell you this is the road I was born the walk, the one my Mormon parents put me on, and no matter how many turns or about faces I make, I always find myself right back here, and my heart tells me that’s okay. Yes, I’ve prayed about it. Have you?

People keep asking me if Wear Pants to Church Day was a success, and my response is yes. Women wore pants to church. Women all over the world. People who’ve been part of this cause longer than me are calling it the largest concerted Mormon Feminist effort in history. What I’m most grateful for, though, is that people started talking about gender inequality, that thing that secretly pains so many of us, that drives us from religion and even faith in droves. I don’t want to force change upon the church. I only want to be able to talk about this, without my morality being called into question. The conversation that happened these last few weeks taught me that I operate from a very different starting place than many of my fellow Mormons, a place so different I almost want to shut my mouth and hide my head and never speak about my fears and beliefs and hurts and loves again. After all, what outcome could possibly be worth the slings and arrows and rejection? And then I imagine someday speaking honestly about who I am without facing fear, or suspicion, or righteous condescension from my faith community, in the place where I commune with God, and I realize, how could that not be worth it?

*That thing I said about not wanting men to have babies? Total lie. I’m smack in the middle of pregnancy now, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told Robert that if that esoteric Mormon bit of doctrine/folklore that says I’m going to get my own planet turns out to be true, well you can bet I’m going to try my hardest to make it a planet where women and men share that responsibility.

Learning Curve

Yesterday, I wrote, My marriage is fine. Things are fine. When I say things are fine, I mean, my life is fine. My job is fine. I am fine. And that’s all true. Except for when they’re not.

There was a time last year, when it seemed like things weren’t going to be fine. Marriage is hard when you are working long hours at a soul crushing job and your husband is underemployed. Life is hard when you are working long hours at a soul crushing job and your husband is underemployed. I started to forget the ways that Robert and I are different and the ways we are the same. I started to feel guilty for making more money than he did. Not because I felt like I was doing something wrong, but because I thought maybe he was, and isn’t that a terrible thing to think about the person you love the very most? Yes, it is. I started fantasizing about getting pregnant. Not because we were ready for a kid or even wanted a kid, but because I thought maybe a nice long maternity leave would be a good way to escape my job for a few months away from my job, and isn’t that a terrible reason to bring a child into the world? Yes, it is. These conversations, though, the ones I had with myself about how it would all go down ended up being a valuable exercise, though, because it forced me out of the pattern of magical thinking I’d been clinging to for years: the idea that I could do what I always wanted and planned to do (have some kids, work) and simultaneously do what I felt like I should do (have some kids, not work).

Before and during law school, the possibilities for being a working mom appeared plentiful. For example, in law school, I wanted to be a public defender. I knew for a fact that the public defenders in the office I interned at in Cook County enjoyed very reasonable schedules, in some cases leaving work less than an hour after the last bell might ring at the public schools in the area, well before a middle or high schooler would finish up with practice, or rehearsal, or loitering at the mall with their friends. After law school, I realized that a public defender’s salary might pay mine and Robert’s expenses, if we scaled way back, took advantage of federal loan forgiveness programs, and moved in with roommates. I realized that not all departments of the PD enjoyed such flexible schedules and that I would have zero control over which department I’d start out in, or even where I’d end up. I realized that leaving the office at 3:30 or 4:00 isn’t that great of a perk for the first five years of a kid’s life. Most significantly, I realized that the Cook County wasn’t hiring and that employees faced massive budget-based layoffs every year.

That’s just one example of the learning process I went through when I started contemplating how family life might actually work-post law school. There are lots of others.  For example, I always thought I would be an excellent professor. Then I could have summers and holidays off! Turns out, it’s tough to land an academic position and if you really want it, you have to open yourself up to moving, well, anywhere. And, again, summers and holidays off are good, but you’re still going to have to shell out for childcare for years before your kid(s) go to school. Oh, and I still had years ahead of me to get the experience I’d need to even qualify for a professorship.

A final example: In law school, I entertained the idea of hanging my own shingle. I’d run an office out of my home, and work on cases when I had time. After law school, I realized I had no clients, no skills, no space for an office, and running your own practice also means paying for your own health insurance. It’s not a realistic for a freshly minted JD in a saturated legal market to support a family.

Look, I know there are lots of people who work all of these jobs and lots of them have kids. I’m not saying it’s impossible, or even all that difficult. I’m just saying that it’s not as simple for a new attorney to find a flexible, family friendly job as I thought it would be. Family friendly, as the phrase is used in the workplace today, doesn’t mean what I thought it did. I had options, but they weren’t endless, and none of them were easy. Especially as a woman.

You see, my law school plans — no, all my plans, ever — were shaped around the idea that after I got married (which of course I would do), my income would be extra. Surplus. We certainly wouldn’t need it to eat, or pay rent. What craziness possessed me, a life-long high achiever who worked pretty much continuously since I’ve been of legal age, to think I wouldn’t need to support myself? Well, I grew up Mormon. I grew up in the suburbs. Men worked. Women didn’t, or if they did, it was because they wanted to. I knew that wasn’t the only life possible, hell, I knew it wasn’t even the life I wanted, but those images of traditional gender roles are powerful, and weirdly comforting, even while they are limiting. They seep in and influence every choice you’ll ever make. It’s easy to grow up a middle class Mormon woman in America and think that your job is to make yourself and your family happy, and to make the world a better place. Survival isn’t part of the equation, because that’s something that just happens on its own.

All of this, this background, these plans for self-realization and making the world a better place, they are the reason it hit me like a ton of bricks when I found myself in a job I hated and realized that I, just as much as Robert, was responsible for financially supporting us. For building the life we wanted. For providing. I realized that this weight, the one that men and women I never thought of have born for centuries, it’s heavy.

How To Have An Interfaith Mormon Feminist Marriage

I started writing here ostensibly to talk about marriage, and how it works as a Mormon and a feminist. I didn’t know any other Mormons in interfaith relationships and for years I couldn’t even find any on the Internet. After a lifetime of being warned about the dangers of marrying a non-member,* I was anxious to confront and deal with any issues that might arise from mine and Robert’s lack of shared faith and harm our relationship, and also to prevent any strain that our relationship might impose on my own beliefs and participation in the LDS church. Statistics show the couples who do not belong to the same religion are more likely to get divorced than those who do. I completely understood this statistic, and wanted nothing to do with it. I figured if the internet wasn’t going to cough up any role models for me, I’d make myself the role model, and write publicly, honestly, about my interfaith marriage. Maybe it would help me ferret out more people like me.

I was also anxious to deal with the complications marriage presented to my feminist ideals. I can’t remember ever not identifying as a feminist, but it wasn’t until I got engaged that I saw clearly that the world had laid out very different paths for me and Robert, based on nothing more than our difference in sex. For four years, we walked the same road, rode the same highway, swam the same stream, even when we had no idea where we were going, even when I up and moved halfway across the country one, two, three times, leaving him in Arizona, even when he was living on a bicycle and sleeping in tents and refusing to tell me if, when, whether he would eventually be joining me in Michigan, even when I was a Mormon and he would never be a Mormon and I cried to him again and again, you know what this means, right? it means we can’t get married. We knew, everybody knew, there was no difference between Sandy and Robert. We would stay together because we were the same. We knew we were the same, even after he proposed, even after we got married, but it was like everybody else forgot. Everybody forgot that Robert must have wanted to get married too, when they asked if I was excited and if he was scared. When we got married, they forgot the ways we are the same, but also the ways we are different. Everybody forgot that I spent seven years in higher education and spent tens of thousands of dollars to become a lawyer, when they asked what Robert was going to do to support us and when were we going to have kids and when was I going to quit that great job I hadn’t even started yet. Everybody forgot that Robert spent five years cooking for me and keeping his place spotlessly clean and generally caring way more than I did what kind of apartment we would live in, what kind of furniture we owned, and how to make our lives look and feel the way we wanted them to look and feel. I was afraid that, in getting married, I would forget, too. I was afraid of forgetting the things that made Robert and I the same, and the things that made us different. I was afraid they would be washed away by the overpowering cultural narrative about the way things are supposed to be. I figured that if the world wasn’t going to tell me how to have an egalitarian marriage, we would make the rules up as we went along, and I would write them down. Publicly, honestly. Maybe ferret out a more people like me.

Very quickly, this blog stopped being about that, and you may have noticed that I’ve more or less stopped writing here. Because, you guys, my marriage is fine. Things are fine. Feminist Mormon Interfaith marriages are easy, when you’ve got the right person by your side. Although clearly I’m not out of things to say on the subject, so you may see me back with a little more regularity in the coming months.

*Non-member is a term that LDS people use to refer to people who aren’t, well, members of the church. I never actually call Robert a non-member, because I think it’s sort of rude. Nobody likes to be defined as not belonging. Jana Reiss says it’s like saying, “This is my husband. . . . You know, the non-entity.” (Source.)