Hayley for President

I decided to try to write earlier in the day.  Most of my posts are late at night when I can’t sleep and I need to put the words in writing to get them out of my head.  Does that make sense?  This past week I just can’t seem to have a decent day.  Each day is filled with tears, screaming and ugly crying.  I am set off easily, raw and sensitive.  The puppy is still not a great sleeper and last night urinated in his kennel and I swear rolled around in it like cologne to spite me.  I think he was very soundly sleeping as he had his shots yesterday.  I picked a very cranky 15 year old up from a sleepover and took him with me to Marymoor with the false assumption he would get out of the car and help me give Finn a bath at the dog wash.  When he didn’t I decided to first walk over to the Dog Park which is quite extensive I found.  I figured more mud was just fine.  He loved it, me not so much.  I was cold and paranoid that all the other dogs would hurt my puppy or have a disease.  A great dane went by that his ears came up to my shoulder.  Finn at 40 pounds fit neatly under him and proceeded to sniff out his dick.  I scolded “Finn, uh uh, leave him alone”.  His owner said “that’s okay, it IS awfully big”.  I had to chew my tongue not to respond with “that’s what she said”.  Evidently all dog people ARE weird.  I was not wearing a coat or shoes for this mucking place.  When I went to wash the dog, Henry claimed an upset stomach and stayed in the car.  While I juggled his debit card, paying, the dog’s leash, and his need to love everyone I dropped my phone.  I had to use Henry’s debit card because I am still missing my wallet and it is looking more likely Finn took it and hid it with his other treasures under the deck.  It is Hayley’s Kate Spade thin one that would be so much fun to hide.  We don’t have access to under the deck ourselves.  The phone landed screen down in it’s Folio Case shattering the screen protector and the small part of the phone screen not covered by the protector.  I had just complained to my Verizon guy, yes I have a guy, that the protector didn’t go all the way to the screen’s edges and that the protector makers needed to get their shit together.  My first thought was this would not have happened if that boy would have gotten his teen ass out of the car and helped me.  So now I am mad at Henry.

Washing Finn is something you cannot do and be mad.  He is so funny and wants to like it but thinks maybe he shouldn’t.  When done, he was clean, mostly dry and gorgeous.  I get him down and he runs to greet the proprietor and proceeds to roll around in a puddle on the floor.  It is clean water but now he is soaking wet.  I decide to keep him clean and carry him to the car.  He is over 40 pounds and I am weak.  I am huffing and puffing with one dog leg over a shoulder, my arm between his back legs and his massive head under my chin walking briskly in the muddy parking lot towards my car, yelling, “Henry open the car door”.  Henry does not even get out to open it, opens it from the back seat.  So now I have a wet dog and the wet dog smell in the car and it is making Henry queasy, eye roll.  Dude, I have not showered since I think Monday, smelling like a wet dog is an improvement for me.  I get home with a long list of chores that of course I won’t do.  After blow drying Finn I will lay on the couch for the rest of the day occasionally weeping.  After his blow out he goes outside and under the deck getting muddy all over again.  We are not speaking right now.

I was scrolling through Facebook even though I know I shouldn’t.  I swear it seems the majority of everyone I know has a daughter and then a son.  WTF, was it in the water?  They all have posted great Christmas photos.  Matching PJ’S, fun vacations, and dinners.  For the first time I truly feel jealous so I promise Scott I will cut back my social media use.  Insert eye-roll.  I notice one of my favorite people has posted and he does not do that often.  It is David, my best friend from Junior High.  He lives in London with his awesome partner and their two boys.  It was the second post this week.  The other night he took his oldest son sledding at midnight.  I was so proud of him.  These are the things Hayley and I would do because why not?  If you think of it, do it.  Don’t wait.  Do something out of the ordinary or daring with your kids.  Create memories.  Okay, lecture done.  David had posted a nice remark about Meghan Markle, Harry’s fiance.   He included a speech she had given at a United Nations Women’s meeting in 2015.  I have listen to this speech before.  I related to it, and I found the story charming and inspiring.  I watched it again.  By the time it was done…down the rabbit hole I went, ugly crying along the way.  Looks like the evening xanax shall be taken early today.  Why am I upset about a story about an 11 year old Meghan Markle.  I have never even watched the show Suits.  Then it hit me.  Just like before I related to the story.  I realized that I had worked my ass off to raise a strong, confident, kind, loving young woman and that all of it was a waste.  It was gone in a moment.  All of that work to make sure she understood despite what she might read, see or hear that women were 100% equal to men.  Just like the gorgeous smile it took several years of braces for Dr. Nelson to give her, what a waste of that beautiful smile.  I can remember dozens of teaching moments and lessons that Scott and I taught her.  I can remember they were not always the easy way to parent, but we did it.  When we went to the sex and puberty class at Overlake Hospital in the 4th grade, the pediatrician said the most important indicator of a girl successfully navigating puberty was an involved Father.  So Scott joined us for “the talk”.  Scott was home when she got her period on black Friday and talked her off the ledge, that she didn’t need to call me two dozen times, it was not rocket science, he could handle this.  He stretched the bands of gender roles in parenting when he was a stay at home father.  We shared ALL parenting duties except breast feeding.  Even in that he was supportive.  He was the only man in my Breast Feeding 101 class.  We figured I would forget half of it and he needed to be able to give suggestions based in fact and not guessing that if I just held the baby differently it would eat.  It seriously did not cross our minds that he didn’t go to that class.  We made the baby together, it was our first and we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing so any education was important.  She had to eat.  He changed 90% of all diapers for both kids.  He got up every time they did.  Changed the diaper and brought them to the milk wagon.  When done he took them back to their crib.  He took three months off to care for baby Hayley so she didn’t start daycare until 6 months.  I truly believe these decisions are what made Hayley and Scott so close.

These are just a few of the things we did as parents to show her she was equal, she could do or be anything she wanted.  We tried to show her by our own example.  Was it always easy?  Hell NO!  We live in a community dominated by very stereotypical gender roles.  We live in an affluent community where the positives outweigh the negatives 10 to 1.  In most of the kids classes I would say there was maybe 30% of the Moms that worked outside the home.  We lived in a bubble, a safe place, but with not the most diverse example or at least obvious ones of gender role reversal.  I can remember more than one Dad “friend” at parties or BBQs crack jokes to Scott about being a kept man or his wife being the boss.  I am already the more outgoing and extroverted of the marriage, these comments made him feel less and impacted our marriage negatively.  Scott and I worked together but when business was busy we did the roles that we were best at.  I sell better, not by much, and he changes diapers way better than me, by a lot.  Neither of us can cook though.

Back to 2017, we had just started to see the results of all of our hard and purposeful parenting.  She had wanted to work in law enforcement since 7th grade.  She planned to apply for a Quantico internship Junior year.  She had done a ride along with the only female officer on the WWU force.  She wanted to be like Officer Bianca.  It didn’t surprise us she was choosing a male dominated field.  In fact she probably didn’t even notice.  She had taken classes that had inspired her.  I would say she was developing into a conservative liberal like myself.  She enjoyed her women’s study classes because they made her think and it pissed her off that women made less money than men.  But at the same time she would crack derogatory comments about the radical feminists in her class.  They pissed her off daily.  We both were so excited for the election.  I was confident that my wish for a female president in my daughter’s lifetime was going to come true.  Plus how could Donald Trump actually win.  I saw Hillary’s flaws but was more of an anti Trump and pro woman in the white house fan.  I just felt that what she could accomplish just by having boobs in the white house was going to be extraordinary for my gender.  I will try to add the video of Hayley on election night if I can.  I really would not have had a problem with a republican but it needed to be more John McCain republican.  I am socially liberally all the way left and fiscally conservative more right middle.  That candidate didn’t exist in my opinion.

I said so many times that I wanted to see a female president in my daughter’s lifetime.  It kills me to think that is not even possible now.  My daughter is gone, it can’t happen.  Last night there was a Colbert rerun with Hilary Clinton pushing her book, “What Happen?”.  I remember the first time I saw the interview, I liked her still.   Last night I wanted to reach into the TV and shake her and yell “What the FUCK happen?”.  You ruined it.  You only had to beat Donald Trump, what the fuck.  My daughter is gone and was totally disgusted with our political system when she died.  Jaded at 19.  All because of what?  Is it in your book?  Cause I really want to know.  You short changed my daughter.  All of the parenting work, the women can do anything they want banter of her childhood; all of that was put in a time capsule and either tossed back to 1950 or shoved up Trump’s ass.  Your failure made me look like a liar!

My mom is a feminist, I am a feminist, and Hayley was a feminist.  But we all three have different definitions of that word.  When Hayley was taking a sociology class we looked it up.  Here is the link I thought was the most interesting definition of feminism.  There are multiple answers but it is Vivek’s that I found the easiest to understand.  https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-different-types-of-feminism

So here I am, the only female in my house, well me and Zoey.  As I watched Meghan Markle talk about her 11 year old self.  One that sounded just like my Hayley, I realized it was still Christmas break.  Hayley should be sitting on the couch next to me watching one of her shitty reality shoes while I surfed the internet and worked on my job hunt as planned.  All I could feel was this deep anger starting to bubble to the surface.  MY DAUGHTER SHOULD NOT BE GONE!  She should be giving a speech at the United Nations in the next ten years.  When I was asked as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up I said every single time “a President”.  I would be asked to clarify “President of the United States?”.  Possibly I would say or President and CEO of a very large company.  Most of the time I was not taken seriously and god help anyone that laughed in my mother’s hearing range.  Having gone to a different elementary school each year I would have to reestablish myself as smart for my new teachers, they did not have a previous teacher to ask.  My previous year’s teacher was not sending an email about me to my new teacher.  (for you younger folks, because we didn’t have email)  So not only did I have to work harder than everyone else because I was a girl, but harder because I was the new kid.  I remember in the second grade my teacher wanted to speak to my mother.  The teacher explained that on a group project I was too bossy and wouldn’t let the other kids help.  My mom looked at me and asked me to explain.  I said the other kids did not know how to do the assignment and I didn’t want a bad grade because they were stupid.  (never had a good filter)  My Mom said “I don’t see a problem here” and we left.  In the third grade I was at a school where some of the kids were pulled out one or two days a week for the “gifted” program.  I wanted it bad.  Those kids got to do more math and science!  I was geeking out.  My competition was Lee.  Not only was he smart he was a dick.  A mean kid.  He laughed when I didn’t know what “humping” meant.  I still blame Lee for one of the things that left a scar on my childhood.  When I got home I asked my Mom what humping was.  She proceeded to send my dad to the store for milk and sit down with a book that had graphic pictures.  Some of you seventies and eighties kids might remember it, “When a child is born”.  The real trauma came when she thought the book was lacking in detail and drew pictures for me.  She is not artistic and sometimes I still have nightmares.  Also, I never forgave my Dad for clearly going to milk a cow for that milk.

Back to Lee the Dick.  Lee and I were chosen as boy and girl of the year for the first half of the school year.  It was based on grades and test scores.  The highest boy and the highest girl.  My math and reading scores (see 2nd grade) put me ahead of Lee.  But guess who got chosen as the representative for the gifted program?  Yep Lee the Dick.  I don’t remember the details but I am pretty sure my Mom got involved in this one too.  But in the end it didn’t matter because I switched schools again in the 4th grade and found amazing teachers at Bonney Lake Elementary.  I loved the 4th grade.  We would have long division and multiplication contests weekly.  It was kind of like Math Jeopardy.  Two sides of the board.  Two students.  A problem was given and whomever solved it first stayed up there to challenge the next.  I was rarely beaten.  So my teacher decided to tap into my competitive nature.  It was such a fun game.  She would send me to the 5th grade class, Mr. Waz (Wazleski) and I would challenge the 5th graders.  I was in heaven and I was heart broken to leave those two teachers in the middle of the 5th grade because of my parent’s divorce.

I was so happy when I had a daughter to raise.  I was thrilled when I got a boy and had one of each!  I felt like we were rewarded for not peeking at the ultrasounds both times.  Hayley didn’t have my take no prisoners personality, probably because she didn’t have to always prove herself.  She had the competitiveness and Dance was an amazing outlet for that.  She had strong beliefs and not the best filter.  She didn’t really care about her grades until she realized it might keep her out of WWU.  She was obsessed with doing well in College, she knew this was where the real learning could happen.  Both book and life.  She was so excited to have her new body and to kick off the sophomore year.  She should be sitting with me right now bitching about how half her professors have not entered final grades yet while at the same time watching Housewives of New Jersey.  Instead she is sitting in an urn on the mantle while Donald Trump golfs for the 86th time in one year of his presidency.  All of that parenting, all of that learning, her potential to do great things and change the world.  Gone.  This royally pisses me off and makes me profoundly sad. She was my partner in crime, my best friend, the female love of my life, the missing piece of my heart.