Children

I have two kids and I curse like a sailor. I do not curse at them, but I curse around them. And they know the difference. I tell them that "fuck" and "shit" are curse words, that they are for grownups to say. I don’t sugarcoat them. But I also do not intend to give up the words that offer me a level of catharsis I can’t seem to locate elsewhere in the English language.

Maybe grown-ups do their best physical work in a spin class with an instructor telling us when to stand up and when to sit down, but kids get enough of that kind of structure in the classroom. What they really need is more time to do their own thing.

You see, every time we watch The Lion King — every freakin’ time Mufasa dies — her small fists ball up, her nose and brows furrow, and tears well up in her eyes. But instead of worrying about herself, she asks “Mommy, what happen? Dis sad?” She pauses and waits for my response, but when I let silence linger a moment too long, she asks again, “Dis sad, Mommy? Dis sad?”

The heart wants what the heart wants, and my daughter’s heart is a Lisa Frank landscape made up of sparkles and rainbows and princesses and unicorns. It’s just who she is, and I am OK with that. But what I am not completely fine with is her labeling these preferences as being “for girls” or “for boys.”

Back when we decided to have a baby together, we had a plan. She was never, ever going to have to work full-time. She was going to work part-time, and I was going to work part-time, selling dog food at that cute little store I used to work at. We would have one day off a week in common, and we would be broke, but we would get by. We would be tired, but we would be happy.

The human brain is so easily conditioned and, without a word being spoken, the simple elimination of everything except for the “perfect body” in any form of media is enough to instill belief in our young ones that unless they have that desired body, they do not deserve to be seen.

Certainly, physical changes are imminent. A rational brain knows this. It all started with chin hairs. I awoke one day and my single, adorable chin hair I’ve had since college multiplied like gremlins. I look like a billygoat. Have you any idea the amount of time I spend a week on chin hair maintenance? Every time my husband walks into the bathroom, I am sitting propped on the counter, magnifying mirror in one hand and tweezers in the other. Or as we like to call it: foreplay.

So much has been written about domestic abuse in the media, mainly from the standpoint of the abused or the abuser. The bystanders — the children, the families that can do little but wait — are often left out.