"The Father-In-Law"

As the Title Indicates, this is a blog about my experiences as a Step-Mom.

However, as the step kids are grown, having their own lives on the other side of the continent, I have more time to muse on other subjects.

Being a Step-Mom is many things but, one thing is constant, you are forever defining and redefining your role as a woman in a non-traditional space. This is happening on a broader scale for most American women as we find our voice in the era of #MeToo

I have hestitated sharing my own #MeToo stories. I hate to give the predation that much energy but whether I like it or not, those experiences have helped me shape my sense of self, my beingness. I have many, many tales of predation.  Being a strong, outspoken woman makes you a bigger target, they can hear you and See you - and they don't like it.  Some of my other stories include:  "The Grown Up", "The Boss", "The Big Kid", "The Lawyer."  Many more...

This one is titled:  "The Father-In-Law. " Or Simply:

"Daddy"

This was not the first time, nor the last, that I was molested by a man whom I trusted as family.  I have only ever been attacked once by a man I didn't know. All the rest have been friends or family of friends.

I am going to write it down. I don't know if it will be useful to anyone or if telling it will help.  I feel these things are remembered in my body. According to Peter Levine in "Waking the Tiger," all trauma is carried in the body, regardless of cognitive memory.

I fell in love the day I graduated from college. Let's call him "Joe." Joe was from a very catholic country in Europe and was living in NYC illegally. His brother, "Matt" had come to America on a student visa and then come out to his family as gay. In reaction, the very catholic parents sent Joe to fetch and bring home little brother, Matt. Theirs was a very tight family of five children and a big extended family.

When Joe first arrived to NYC and saw how happy Matt was and how free he was in NYC to explore a bigger life, he chose to live with Matt instead of fetching him home. About 6 months after this was when we met.  We fell in love rather quickly and made plans to move in together. He couldn't keep sleeping on his brother's couch and I was newly out of college and on my own financially - it made sense. I had an internship in London for a month that first summer and when I came back we would have a flat where we could start our life together.

At the end of my internship, I decided to make a trip to Joe's home country, to meet his family. We were SERIOUS and we would be living together so this seemed respectful.  Arrangements were made that Joe's father (my future Father-In-Law, perhaps) was to pick me up and take me to Joe's sister's flat in the capitol city before I went down to meet the Mother, Mary.

The sister, Beatrice, who was a bit of a local celebrity, planned to take me out to a three day music festival she was covering in another city, so we could get to know one another. I was excited to go to a new country, meet my new family, and keep building the foundation for the life I wanted, with the man I loved.  The plane got in around 8pm.  It had been a short flight, and I had eaten before I left London. Over the phone, long distance, Joe had said this: "I can't wait for you to meet Daddy! He's a great laugh. Everyone loves Daddy."  

Beatrice had also assured me that “Daddy" would pick me up, no problem, and get me to her house.  As arranged, daddy met me at the airport.  I called him Mr. ___, but he insisted I call him, “Daddy.” That felt odd to me, especially because I was very close with my own father.  I offered to call him "Joe," as he shares his first-born son’s name. 

Daddy was a teetotaller but had a very jittery nature and spoke very fast.  I asked him how far away was Beatrice's house, he said, "Not more than 20 minutes."  We got in Daddy's vehicle but just after we left the airport, not five minutes out, he stopped almost immediately, at a roadside bar saying, "You must be hungry, we will  stop here and get you a bite to eat." I explained that I had already eaten and I didn't need to stop. He pressed the issue so I thought I might want to use the bathroom, anyway. 

We got out and just outside the door into the bar, he stopped me and hugged me and then grabbed my head and kissed me.  He kissed me with his tongue jabbing into my mouth.  I froze. I didn't understand. Was this European kissing?  It was violent and penetrating and my head hurt later from how hard it hit the wall with his tongue propelling my skull.

Taking my frozen body as consent, and pushing me harder against the wall, he stuck his hand in my pants and tried to finger me while trying to kiss me again.  This was awkward even for him, because it was a cold night and, luckily, I was bundled up under heavy clothing. 

With that pause, I regained my senses enough to push him off and say, "Stop that. I don't want that. Please don't. "  He pushed harder and pushed my head into the wall.  He said, "I just want to give you a warm welcome to the family." 

I pushed him away eventually, from what I recall. (I repressed this memory for years), and he asked me if I wanted to go in and get a drink. I told him I did not.

I told him I wanted to go to Beatrice's house. He took me there.  We drove in silence. I was stunned, a piece of me frozen. No small talk. Just get me there...

We arrive at Beatrice's flat. Her two roommates, a pair of sisters, are awaiting my arrival. They had been about to go out and I was so grateful they were still there, rather than off getting a drink on a cold night.

Daddy was speaking very quickly, like a junkie on a high. The sisters showed me the little room I would stay in.  They jokingly called it "The Coffin" and told me my Joe had lived in the Coffin when he had been a roommate there, just a year or two before.

I wanted to shut the door and crawl in the coffin and cry. I didn't have a friend in this country. I didn't know where I was, even. Why was I here?  What I was doing? Who would I tell?

Daddy was still chatting with the sisters and wouldn't leave. I couldn't ask for food because I had said I wasn't hungry. I thought he might say something about me. I was rigid with terror and could barely speak to the sisters. My mouth could not make the words. Help. I am hurting. I am scared. I have no cash and don't know who to turn to, at this moment.
For those who know me, it is a HIGHLY unusual condition for me to be unable to talk. As my Mom would have said, "I didn't know whether to shit or go blind."

Finally, Daddy left. 

The sisters made some desultory small talk but I was desperate to tell someone what had happened. I needed to stay awake for the return of Beatrice.  My mind raced.  This was in the day before ATM's and ready cash internationally. Banks were not open. Where could I go?  My Joe had told me that Beatrice worshipped her father. Who could I tell?

The younger sister finally left to meet friends for a drink. Alone with the older sister, I alluded vaguely to "this country not being what I expected," and the older sister clicked her tongue. She asked me if Daddy had touched me.  I was stunned. She guessed?? 

Turns out, he had done the same thing to the younger sister many times and neither sister could tell Beatrice (who owned the house and rented them rooms) for fear of the backlash.  This serial molester, was given a pass by all of these women. Then I asked... how could I tell Joe? What will happen?

I realized that I could ruin the relationship that I felt sure would end in marriage. We had already discussed it, he had found us a flat that we were going to move into as soon as I returned to NYC.  How could I tell him this? How could I NOT tell him this and go forward with our relationship? 

The older sister cautioned me not to speak. She would not break her own silence and it had not even happen to her. She was so imbued with patriarchy, yet so wildly angry, we could only exchange our cynicism about the world. She was one of the first who taught me to swallow my voice and to delay my experience, to stuff it down and swallow my rage.

Ironically, the older sister became a very famous feminist playwright in her own country writing about female silence. Some work better in allegory, I guess. 

Over the next five days of travel, partying all around the country, I never mentioned the attack to Beatrice. We finally landed at her parents' house where her Mother, Mary - knowing who I was and what I was likely to become - had moved herself and Daddy out of their own Master Bedroom and made me sleep in their bed. Beatrice objected that it was all too much, but the weirdness never stopped.  I spent the next three days making sure that I was never alone with Daddy. At night, I locked the door of the Master Bedroom that was his, by day, I cried in any empty room I could find when those rare respites between meeting relatives occurred.

Twice, in passing, he tried to grope me - always with that fast, sweaty breathy voice.   And then on my last day, he pulled me aside in the hallway and threatened to punish me physically and any way he could if I ever spread the lie about his behavior. He knew what he had done and I was to be his accomplice. 

This is such a boring repetitive story, as I write it. It was horrifying to me and singular. However I have now read congruent stories to this one so many times in the last few weeks that even I see the mundanity in this evil.

Also, on that last day of my visit to the family at Daddy and Mary's house, a very expensive transoceanic phone call was made to NYC to Joe and Matt. The were excited that we were all together. 

Everyone had a moment on the phone with each other and Joe and I were the last two to speak, people gave us privacy and stepped away from the only phone in the house, out of the front hall.  Joe was so delighted I was there and I could hear the joy in his voice, nearly to tears.  All his beloved people were in one place! 

In response, however, I was subdued. He sensed my uncharacteristic reticence and asked if anyone had gotten drunk or weird with me.  I told him not drunk. Then he asked abruptly, "Did Daddy touch you?" 
I said, "Yes."  He guessed? He knew. He knows! It will be fine.

He knows his father is a monster and I will not be blamed.  But it was more complicated... He didn't like that I told him. He felt betrayed by Daddy and me. He had nowhere to go. You could not get divorced in their country. You could not be gay legally in their country. You could not speak of molestation or rape in their country. His father was a big man in their region.  He told me to take care and come home soon. Our new home together was waiting.

When I finally got back to NYC, I moved into our flat. We had a cold water tenement with a bathroom ceiling that regularly exploded lime, mortar, drywall from the dripping ancient pipes in the walls and floors.  In the first month I was there, I started weeping. I attributed it to being done with travel, jetlag; but as the crying continued, I thought "it must be that I don't want to be done with school, don't want to grow up... "

But the truth was, and I will write about this again, I was in shock from the time I left that airport to the time I finally arrived back in the arms of Joe. And, upon arriving back in New York City, the flat he had gotten us was through his community. And we were surrounded by ex-patriate men from his home country and all of that culture that demanded patriarchy, silence from women, submission to their frailty as it combined with the toxic masculinity that was downtown New York in the 80's. 

My (until that time still free) feminist soul was in a bind. Live by their rules, with their required silence from me, or live alone, outcast. 

Two years later, Joe had finally decided to move home to his country so he could "sober up." That was the end of our relationship. But there was never a final "moment." We remained friends even after leaving. Within 6 months of his return to his home country, he had knocked up a gal and they have been married, now, about 25 years living on the other side of the country from Mary and Daddy.

A play I wrote performed in the capitol city of their country a year or two back. I looked up Joe, Matt and Beatrice on social media to invite them to the show. I received no response except from Matt who befriended me on social media.

Matt, who when the story of Daddy's assault on me was told, said, "I'm not surprised. I know you are not the only one. I'm sorry that happened, that's a tragedy but I am not one bit surprised." 

Matt, still gay, still outspoken, lives in Paris and records his music and is a writer.

He never moved home. 

O Tannenbaum

It's the holiday season. In our house, that means Christmas.

When we bought our tree last week, it was an 85 degree heat wave.  My Man and I waited until mid-December when his teen-aged son was free to go with us. We all picked a tree in about ten minutes because it was too hot in the sunlight to stand about too long.

My Man and I are not married. We probably never will be.  We both had bruising divorces.  But his was worse.

When we got our tree home, we started to tear the house apart looking for our Christmas decorations.  We have dated for 5 years, lived together nearly two. Two years ago, we were both in town together for christmas and we remember having a tree.  But, it turns out those decorations were boxed back up and returned to his now-very-estranged ex-wife's garage, never to return.

Our investigation of all the nooks and crannies of our house revealed much to be given away but none of my lifetime of Christmas ornaments.  I even called a newly-married friend to come pick up the futon, easy chair, two TV's and hibachi from my bachelorette home that I abandoned finally last November.  Giving up on the search of our house, I helped my young friend transport his newly-acquired furniture for his love nest he was building with his newly-acquired wife.  As I was driving to their house, thinking about young love and how far I feel from that anymore (despite the fact that I'm only 41 and still trying to get pregnant) I realized that when my ex-husband and I split, most of our most precious belongings had been stored at his house.

At the end of my marriage, we sold our condo at the moment the Southern California real estate market was at its most fevered - January of '06 .  Two months on either side would have netted us at least $50,000 less.  The poor woman who bought it from us was saddled with an upside-down house within 6 months.  I think she was foreclosed upon within a year.  That windfall aside, neither of us could buy a house. So, he ended up in a two-bedroom apartment in the genteel but older/ shabby section of Glendale.  I ended up in a petite studio in the Hollywood Hills with a 240 degree view of Hollywood, downtown and, on a clear day, all the way to Long Beach.  I had about 250' ft of space indoors with a verandah that expanded my floor space to 500' sq.  My living room was outdoors, basically. But, that meant that I had no storage space; hence, leaving all our most valued and big possessions in the care of My Ex.

My Ex-Husband is a remarkable man and 24 years my senior. He is one of my best friends in the world and, while he didn't want to father children of mine, he has promised to be the "grandfather" I give to my children since my father died in '01.  I talk to him on the phone or in person almost everyday.  I called him from the road with a truck full of the furniture from my formerly single life and said, "Is it possible that you have the Christmas ornaments at your house?"  He went and looked in the garage and told me to come over and get the boxes.

Covered with 5 years of grime, the boxes had been untouched since he moved in.  We considered "splitting them up" but opted for me to take them home and examine them there. We never have the stomach for the "hard stuff," like being mad or taking sides.  We value the friendship too much.

I brought the boxes home and hauled them upstairs.  As we opened them, I discovered lights I had bought 6 or 7 years ago that had never been taken out of the box.  Green, purple, white lights.  It shocked My Man and his son that the lights were not part of a greater "design." While I don't know my man's ex-wife at all (in five years, I have only met her three times and exchanged less than 75 words), I have a feeling she was more "crafty" and "designy" than I am.

The shabby ornament boxes came out.  Two were so old that my mothers careful Kindergarten-teacher handwriting was on the outside of the box from when she had mailed it to me years ago.  After we lit the tree,  the teen-aged son puts the "topper" on the tree - shattering the center of the antique glass.  We left it up. The top of the tree is tilted and it looks like a wilted boner, we all decided. But it is still up.

In my family, the tradition was that each child got an ornament every Christmas - always with the child's name on it. Some years, even the cats and dog got an ornament.  A lot of ornaments can accrue over a 41-year lifetime.

As we each worked on a different box of decorations, various eras of my life began to reveal themselves.  A bronze angel playing a violin with my name engraved was hung by My Man - from when I was 7 and starting suzuki violin.  A handmade counted-cross-stitch sampler with my name and the figure of a blonde, little girl is hung by his son - an early craft effort by my Big Sister from 1980 when she was in college. I was in 5th grade and thought she was the Sun, the Moon and the Stars.  I, myself, carefully hung the dried milkweed pod with dried wildflowers glued inside that my lifelong- best-friend made the year she was dead broke and gave all these "presents from the prairie" as Christmas gifts.  While I am not much of a "thing person," I can't think of many things I cherish more.

Then, there were the two boxes filled with the ornaments I had made in my previous marriage.  My ex-husband has two grown daughters nearly my age. And, he has a son whom I will call just J.

J. is 17, now, but when his dad and I first met and dated, J.  was five and lived full-time with the first wife of my Ex. When we married, my Ex declared his desire to have J. full-time with us and I endeavored to make our house a home for him.  Many things made this totally impossible, not the least of which was that J. didn't want me to be in his family. His mother had declared me an enemy (although she had dumped my Ex 8 years previously and he had subsequently lived with another woman).  The problem was compounded on many levels that I will reveal in later posts...

But every Christmas, we made ornaments together.  J and I would sit and decorate and design Christmas ornaments. The first year we spray painted cheap glass balls white and a little six-year old J. and I drew on them with paint pens.  He was always big for his age and had poor manual dexterity which made tiny work frustrating.  Nevertheless, he loved the creating and the hanging.  Another year, we painted them with many colors - dripping the paint on the inside of clear glass balls. Yet another, we glued beads on the outside of plastic teardrop-shaped ones. One other year, we stuffed tinsel, beads and glitter inside the clear balls, making abstract winterscapes inside, all glistening and pretty.

And each year, I made one ornament especially for J. It would be my best work, the most carefully decorated. And, I would write or paint or glue his name on it, just as my mother had done for us.

The last year my Ex and I were married, I made ornaments alone because J. had decided it was too babyish - he was twelve and undergoing some rough times in general.  He wouldn't talk to me nor did he want to be part of our celebrations.

I still made J. his special ornament, anyway. It was a small glass red heart on which I wrote: "To J. with all my love, Merry Christmas."  I wrapped it up and gave it to him on our Christmas morning... which never seemed to be close to the actual 25th of December but we had always managed to have a good time anyway.

Somehow, all of these ornaments were in this box intact.  I watched the teenaged son of My Man hang the ornaments of another child. Each ball caused a small spark of emotion: My Mom's gifts to me, my Sister's crafts...  and the chronological examples of J.'s continued rejection of my love and care - each struck a different emotional chord.

The last ornament we pulled out was the little, red heart from '05. I couldn't decide whether to hang it. I opted to put it aside but the cleaning lady put it up the very next day. Her need for order outweighing my emotional imbalance...

Today, I went to Target and bought a dozen anonymous ornaments.

Tomorrow, before My Man and his son arise, I will take down all the J.-specific ornaments and put them in a box to give to My Ex.  And I will put up the anonymous balls in their place and start anew...  One ornament at a time.

I have a week left before Christmas. That's enough time to make My Man and his son a couple of ornaments each.

Nevertheless, it will just take a leap of faith that this time the boxes in which they live will not need to go missing, be lost nor put aside. They will abide and grow fat with time and be filled with more ornaments belonging to others whom I love.