On Brokenness I Don't Understand How To Fight

This was supposed to be a blog entry about starting a revolution. I wanted to passionately make the case for teaching young Mormon women to rise up and embrace modernity while simultaneously championing the classical visions of womanhood. Key to this argument was the recognition of a growing class of young Mormon men, who may be increasingly willing to accommodate the drive and capacities of the Mormon female minted in my so-called revolution.

That was what I wanted to write about.

But now suddenly, this news: The former Bishop of my home ward has left his wife.

He was bishop for about five years, husband for well over twenty, perhaps thirty. She was small and stylish with pretty green eyes and a wide smile. She was kind and gracious, always to me in my funny dresses and awkward ways. Her older twin daughters were married early and gave birth to strong babies, her third daughter a three-sport star in high school, and her youngest a dimpled blond. Everything about her spoke of compassion and grace. She had served faithfully as a Relief Society President and in other church callings. My father spoke kindly of him during his service as Bishop.

I met with him a few times, although I was away at college for most of his tenure. He was a bit gruff in his manner of speaking, but was straightforward and I tried to follow his counsel.

That man has left his wife.

Perhaps he has left himself too. I cannot begin to imagine the darkness into which he must have descended. I feel I would rather die a thousand deaths, pitch myself off of an airplane over the ocean, succumb to Alzheimer's, rather than to leave a spouse. Where now are his photograph albums, his journals, the gloves he wore when he threw balls to that softball playing daughter? The pots, rugs, wallpaper he leaves behind tainted by his income, his choice, that filling the home he once filled-- all these he has now left abandoned.

And she, we assume, must have played some small role in this drama, but how could she be responsible for his complete betrayal? Surely she, like other women before, was only trying her best at times to deal with an increasingly distant husband she loved but could no longer understand. Now every family reunion a splintered one, every moment of reminiscing with her daughters tainted by the memory of a man who broke an eternal trust.

I suppose that if my father left my mother it would shatter my world entirely. The birds and the rain would disappear. I would stop believing in Santa Claus. I would put squares of only the bitterest baking chocolate in my mouth and then spit them back out. I expect I would stop breathing and perhaps only start when someone pushed by ribcage to revive me and then I would resent them for doing so.

But of course I believe that I am different, that Dad would never EVER leave Mom. There is no other way to believe. Doubting his fidelity would be like pouring tar over the rest of my convictions and trying to make cement. I might hold together still, but everything would be black. But I really AM different. Dad wouldn't even dream of leaving.

In the wake of such news, how can I make an argument for young women apart from an argument for ALL women? And how, HOW can I base any such argument on the existence of a reliable class of men? Such news leaves me in a world of faithlessness and hurt, a trembling at the thought of marriage, a creeping of doubt when I think of even the strongest young men that I know. "You, you too could leave me when you are fifty-four."

I've never been a true feminist at heart, because I've always believed that truly empowered women can never exist at the expense of strong men. I believe in men. I respect men. I honor their unique capacities. I am blessed beyond measure to come from a home that is led by a man who respects his role and the role of my mother, who has sought always and only to serve and to cherish her. Out of all women, I should have the greatest faith in men, through the example of my father.

The revolution isn't starting and when it comes, it won't be anything new. For thousands and thousands of years men have left their wives, left their children, left them to starve, to freeze, to succumb to the elements. For thousands of years women have stayed with unkind men, put food on the table, washed the sheets, tended to the chickens. And for thousands of years women too have died in childbirth, abandoning the men who loved them and their crying infants. Other women have been unfaithful to their men and that type of leaving has caused no less pain. Now when a man leaves he has financial obligations under the law. That is what has changed since the dawn of time.

Perhaps in the next entry I will have recouped enough to feel a revolutionary spirit again, to want to charge out to medical school or graduate school or the world in the hopes of someday living in a nice painted house and reading Little Golden Books to a chubby-cheeked redheaded infant while earning the big bucks consulting wirelessly from my carpeted living room while my husband paints the deck and reads The Economist before flying to Paris for business. But for now I think I'll shower and go then go sleep in my big queen size bed with the dark blue wool comforter, glad that I've always (so far) slept in it alone.

On It Being A Hard Knock Life

For my fourth birthday I received my very own cabbage patch doll. She was no ordinary doll, oh no! She was a one of a kind, hot off the press, premier edition: never been done before, never to be repeated, and made by my own sweet mother.

She was my mother's very first cabbage patch doll and mine. She had tight orange-red yarn curls and big blue eyes painted on her face with fabric paint and even tiny embroidered freckles and puckers in the bottom folds of her cheeks for dimples. I named her Annie.

Annie was just like me-- down to the dimples-- except for one big difference: Annie was fat. Eager in making her very first doll, Mom had stuffed Annie a little past chubby and into the chunky category. Annie's large-sized doll wardrobe barely snapped shut over her thickly padded arms and waist. At four years old, I was not a midget but I certainly wasn't fat and perhaps was the smallest of the four girls in the family. Although Annie was the first, my mother soon made cabbage patch dolls for my three sisters, and she compensated for Annie's fatness by understuffing Alice and Tina and even Sally. And so, ironically, Annie got the flack at doll tea parties for always being so fat while I avoided the same pressure in real life that haunted some of my other siblings.

Yes, Annie was the one with the fattest pinafore and the fattest pantaloons, which bulged out over her chubby knees, bringing extra flounce to her skirts. Annie's XL clothing drowned the other dolls and I always felt jealous when Alice could wear Sally's jackets but poor Annie had only her own clothes to wear.

Today at school we had pre-Halloween and I dressed up as Little Orphan Annie, complete with a red curly wig (which was actually quite redundant since I have red curly hair). The costume was a grand success. Everyone laughed and smiled and clapped their hands. Even my students got into the costume. At the end of the day Father Tito came in and took my picture for the yearbook.

It was quite possibly the most darling picture you have ever seen in your whole life of someone in an Annie costume. Not only am I curtesying, but my face just carries enough of the mix of impish charm and childlike innocence to convince the viewer that I'm precocious and lovable even to a grumpy bald millionaire.

The only difference between me in the picture and the Little Orphan Annie we all know and love from the movies is that.... I'm fat.

Yes.

It's true.

In the picture, I look horribly, hopelessly fat. I'm wearing this white bow right across the middle of my dress and it looks like a whole bedsheet had to be used to girdle my waist. I'm almost spilling into the sides of my curtsy. I realize, to my horror, that in dressing up like Little Orphan Annie I have realized the fate predestined to me from childhood:

I have become my doll Annie.

Oh yes! I still have a mass of red curls, freckles on my face, and funny side dimples. But what I have now that I didn't have at four is about ninety extra pounds that have added padding to my knees and toes and elbows, all the spots where Annie is bulgiest I suddenly feel bulgy now too. If it weren't for the Annie costume, I may never have noticed.

When I finally got home from school, I hurriedly pulled off my wig, red dress, and (poofy) bloomers, slapped on some tennis shoes and went for a run. Maybe when I'm back at school tomorrow dressed just like myself the illusion will go away.