I am raising a daughter who says “No Daddy no Daddy” as he brushes her teeth, and he brushes them anyway.  She screams.  Is this not a form of what Andrea Dworkin called rape?  Did we learn nothing from #metoo?  From Brett Kavanaugh?  Is this not, at least, involuntary penetration?

I can’t bring myself to stand up for my own daughter;  not for her boogie-boarding or balance-biking or every time her grandmother grabs her by the wrist and says: careful.  Inculcates fear.  Moms say it to their daughters nine times for every one time they say it to their sons.  Meanwhile abilities in infancy and toddlerhood are almost the same.  I am failing to protect her from the patriarchy as my own mother failed to protect me;  continues to fail to protect me.

The one trait neurobiologist Lise Eliot differentiates based on sex and evolution is risk aversion: babies with dead mothers are significantly less likely to survive than those with dead fathers, effectively eliminating female adrenaline junkies from the genetic pool.  I can see it in my daughter’s bashfulness, her timidity, and my own—nevertheless I will not push her to be tough.  She can feel her fear as I was not allowed to.

But I can’t bring myself to argue against her father, to say no to the toothbrush violation, not when the alternative is dental rot, a bad-mother calling card.

Dr. Maria Montessori would give her autonomy over the process, a wooden step-stool, control over her own brush.  Then the dried apricot remains caked on her canines.

I promise myself:  I’ll do better next time.  Tonight, I’ll say something.  And then I don’t.  I don’t even know which is the right decision.  To force the toothbrush in her mouth?  Or to let her control her own cavities and dental hygienic, thus leading to possible painful but natural consequences?  Isn’t this the essence of parenting decisions right from the beginning?  Do I let her make her own decisions, or not?

I don’t shave my legs anymore.  I quit shaving when I quit dieting, when K said I “let everything go.”  He only said it once, in the middle of a fight, nevertheless my erratically eidetic memory won’t let it go.  I have dreams where I am wearing skirts and capris unashamed, but in truth I am only courageous enough for one bare inch of ankle below my yoga pants at the YMCA.  I have one purple travel skirt, falling to that least beautiful of hemlines, the mid-calf.  Nevertheless I love this skirt.  I wear it on brave summer days.  K does not worry about what he wears.  He wears:  sweatshirts, jeans, tee-shirts.  Rarely anything else.  My clothes must look cute and also be functional, emphasis on the former, not the latter.  And my daughters’ also.  My children’s librarian compliments the baby on the tulle attached to her onesie, “a little tutu!”  She does not comment on my daughter’s boy hoodie and shoes, her home-cut bangs.  Sagan hears it.  Only girls come to library story-time, for some reason, although Mrs. Gray had all boys herself.  They are “ so wild.”  The boys show up with moms or grandmas and then just slowly stop coming, somehow, and the girls, somehow, stay.

“Creep them, creep them, slowly creep them,” she says, of my daughter’s hands, “right up to your chin, open wide your little mouth—but do not let them in!”

Then she asks, in an alpine falsetto:  “Did they get in?”

What this does to a child’s subconscious, I have no idea.  Sagan, named after an astrophysicist and a Proustian princess, sings it afterward in her car seat.

My mother-in-law plays her exactly three song videos, each effectively curating a future prejudice:

-“Zippideedoodah,” from “Song of the South” = African-American plantation mythology.

-“I - I - I - I - Like You Very Much,” by Carmen Miranda = Latinas wear fruit baskets on their heads.

-“We Are Siamese, If You Please,” from “Lady and the Tramp” = Need I elaborate on the enervating but pernicious racism of this song?  Perhaps extraneous information when it comes to this song selection is that I was raised in Thailand, the Kingdom of Siam.

We are the ones populating her subconscious.

When K is gone I read the "Little Red Train," by Benedict Blathwayt, and the conductor becomes Buffy Driver.  She jumps from helicopters and clears the rails with her ax and saw.  In the mornings, when K sleeps in bed beside us, she asks for Buffy and gets Duffy Driver instead.  She doesn’t ask why.

I hope to cloud the issue of gender.  Lise Eliot says we do not lose our sense of gender fluidity until around five.  Although we know what we are, we don’t know or believe that we necessarily stay what we are.  I guess I’m banking on it.

Online, I search for the Montessori method:  books, blogs, activities.  Then I am afraid to do them, too timid to break out the learning tower, the knives, the scissors, the spray bottles of vinegar and lemon juice, the needles for sewing, the rain boots.  Afraid to spend money on necessary equipment.  The poverty mentality that robbed me of the tools I needed to flourish will rob her of them too.

I fear; you fear; he/she/it fears.  For Christ has not given us a Spirit of Fear.  The Catholic hospital administrator who spoke out about sexism and sexual harassment inside the church because she felt called to speak by the Holy Spirit, and every Sunday, from the pulpit, she was reminded of that calling by the priest, the deacons, the lector.  Reminded of the necessity to speak by the very people preventing her from speaking.  Do I listen to my calling?  Do I go on hunger strikes to stem the rapidly changing climate, the apocalyptic future rushing forward to meet my children and grandchildren?  Or at least attend local node meetings?  Or start one in my neighborhood?  Or go to church?

No.  I do not.  I watch blue herons take wing in front of my house.  I watch the food slide past the cash register, a far-too-high percentage of it refined grain, soybean oil, factory-farmed meat, grapes from Chile, mangoes from the Philippines, and shoes from Taiwan.  I sip boxed merlot, pray the reddening garden tomato and potted Thai basil on my counter will absolve me of my sins.  I constantly interrupt my internal cycle of fear, fear, fear as my therapist taught me:  stop.  Faith hope love.  Joy peace truth.  But the greatest of these is love.

Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.  I marshal my currency.  Gather my spiritual kronor and baht and deutschemarks.  Today, maybe just one sentence, maybe just one word:  How about we let her do it herself?

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Melissa Jenks was raised as the child of missionaries in Bangkok and Manila.  She now lives near Cape Cod where she farmsteads, writes, and believes we’re all going to die from climate change.  

Art:
Sara with a H by Zula Ovelgönne