I have had to calm down a bit to write this. So about two weeks ago, Noah talked to me about his friend K., who is the rough-child-we-wish-Noah-wasn’t-so-fascinate-with who had apparently taken treats out of other kids’ lunchboxes. (They line up all the lunchboxes in the hallway.) I had not one but two conversations with Noah covering: did he participate? This is called stealing. What to do if a friend is doing something wrong (step one: tell the friend it’s wrong and please stop. Step 2, involve an adult on the scene.)

I asked after a couple of days and Noah reported that he had told K. it was stealing and K. had stopped. All good. Until Tuesday morning when I noticed the agenda had the little ticky-box ticked for a note in the front of the agenda, but no note.

You can start anticipating now.

So the note was from the principal because Noah, K., and W. had been caught, yes, stealing from other kids’ lunches. The note made clear that Noah was considered an accomplice not a plotter, had a bit of a “boys will be boys” feel to it but also outlined that this was serious and the boys would be losing recess for a couple of days.

So to review, my kid:
-stole
-asked about it
-lied
-continued it
-got hauled into the principal’s office, and at the tender age of 6
-did not come home crying
-hid the note

And when I talked to him about it, let’s just say he didn’t exactly crumple into despair and guilt at the start.

Sigh.

Carl was working a crazy schedule so I ended up the parent on the ground. Before the Internet errupts into judgment let me make clear: Noah heard very strongly that stealing, lying and concealing are wrong. He lost treats for a week, and is spending his allowance for the food bank (his plan; it was originally for his class but the teacher said no to that plan.)

Anyways, theoretically I know that we learn via making mistakes, and that Noah has now had a very direct lesson in peer pressure (everyone agrees that Noah was going along to be friends, which makes sense ’cause Noah doesn’t even like the stuff they were taking). But AUGH!

In a strange twist, Lynn talked to Noah about how you distinguish your conscience talking to you. I wasn’t aware Lynn was burdened with such things, but maybe that’s why she was into it. She introduced more-or-less the idea of a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, and that seems to have hooked Noah more than any other of the discussions on the topic…that he should have listened to his err, spirit guide.

(Let’s hope no spirit guides throw out his music collection.)

The lying and not sharing with his parents is also developmentally appropriate and we’ll have to look at what we’re doing to help support lines of communication (yes I know, the taking away of treats probably isn’t the best thing but people, I was desperate! Next time I will say I am thinking about it.) But wow, does that kind of hurt. Carl is lead on taking that up with Noah, since I was the heavy on the stealing.

Anyways…I’m glad we are dealing with this now and not 13, although we very may well be again. But I have a whole new appreciation for “little kids, little problems…big kids, big problems.”

It is weird putting this up too; I’m not so much worried about Noah’s privacy — it was the stealing that was shameful not the talking about it, and it really is within normal although the amount of deception is crazy — but because without knowing Noah and us except via blog it’s easy to get judgey and I feel a bit icky. But then…a) I wouldn’t mind hearing (in a gentle way, if possible) what people think or experience with this stuff and b) it seems like this kind of thing, for good reason, falls off the momblog stuff and well, this is our experience in a poor choice our kid made.

But.

Today I found someone who has written about her grief better than I think I ever could. Which probably wouldn’t stop me, but today I just say: Crap. This woman. She writes circles around most people and what she describes, while her own, is totally what I would write. And in a way she describes some of that start, with Lohr.

You should start here, which will make you cry and possibly laugh. But this one, this one talking about banging out a first draft of a new life…this one reminds me so much of that late summer when Carl was in Ottawa and I was flirting with scotch.

Did Time go for shock value? Mnnn yes I think that’s fair to say. It worked pretty well too. I realize this is the cynical media and truthfully, some days I am among them. I spend a goodly part of my day looking at what people click on (vs. what they say they want to click on) and trying to figure out how to make good, complex articles on real issues bypass the single weight loss article I have published in the last 5 years in popularity. (Soon to be joined by #2.)

The current discussion about AP fascinates me though. I will say first that I still really believe in our family practices, for us. I’m still breastfeeding Liam in the evening and the morning. I breastfed Noah until he was just over 3, a fact that still kind of surprises me but it was what felt right at the time until it didn’t. (I do think Liam and I will end sooner, in part because he just is a different kid, and in part because I think I will need my body back a bit earlier…poor guy.) We co-sleep on and off (although I couldn’t get into it with small babies as it freaked me out) and last night we ended up with everyone in the bed. I am so, so grateful for my one year Canadian mat leave.

At the same time I do find some AP proselytizing, as I said recently, disturbing. The most disturbing example I can think of was a couple of years ago on MDC where an argument recycled a few times about carseats and babies/toddlers crying in carseats, and how this was “crying it out” and would DAMAGE THEIR BRAINS and CAUSE OBESITY and the end message was, to a couple of mums I swear had PPD, just don’t go anywhere. Ever. And since as a nursing pair they couldn’t leave the baby with someone else to go somewhere, it was really, really clear that the advice meant exactly that. For two years it is cruel to go anywhere.

I just couldn’t get behind that. And I watched women dogpile on this question of crying in the carseat in a pretty scary way.

For me parenting is a relationship and just like any relationship, an individual families has so many factors and personalities involved that it is going to be very personal. And yet you can still say a relationship is one which respects — within the very real needs of infants, babies, toddlers, and children — all its members. Mums may need or want to work. Dads may need or want to stay home. Nursing may or may not work (I do think it’s good to try, but I was a formula baby as I have said) etc.

I do think AP has gone off the deep end in some areas. Just like anything can.

I think it is a legitimate discussion to have. Not to blame women but to ask what the pressures are on women. Is feminism compatible with motherhood? (Yes. No thanks to NYT.) How we raise our kids does, I think, matter. We can look at it without having to castigate each other, but we also don’t have to pretend every single element of everything is without its costs and benefits.

Right now I think there is a cost to a particular mode of AP and it is just fine with me if families want to pay that cost but let’s not pretend it doesn’t exist. When you have Mayim Bialik saying in the NYT “We object to routine inductions with pitocin and interventions during labor because of the risks to the mother and the baby. We believe that breast milk is biologically and nutritionally superior to anything formula manufacturers tell you is equal to it, and that sleeping next to your baby releases positive hormones that facilitate bonding,” well something is going on.

(My baby DIED for lack of intervention. I am not just a foot soldier in the Mommy Wars.)

(Co-sleeping does not work for everyone and I do not think it wrecks bonding.)

And…I think this nursing pair is really attractive. Sure he’s a big kid, but he’s not a model faking it and neither is she. If it’s shocking to see a preschooler nurse, then to me that’s a bit on the beholder. I don’t love this kind of cover and the tag line was definitely designed to be controversial.

But I guess…I don’t believe this is manufactured controversy. I’ve seen it.

I do wonder a bit if he’ll be embarrassed by the cover later but I would guess in two years, no one is going to remember it.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Edited to add:It’s been interesting reading the “blogger backlash” to this story. Here’s what I don’t quite get: I read bloggers where I have seen them, for example, quit their job to stay home, sink down the economic ladder to being on the brink of losing their home and being without health insurance, and then struggle to cobble together freelance work in order to be at home.

Let me be clear: I think this is entirely legitimate decision-making. But the same person is mad at Time for asking the question? In fact, it seems to be that people are mostly mad at Time for making money. If this were the cover of the now-defunct Mothering would anyone be up in arms?

Now I do think this cover was designed to make money, and I think it’s good to be suspicious of that, but I don’t think the substance is terrible. They did pick the most provocative shot, but that’s a real mom.

I actually am much more cynical about Bialik’s Do This book. [ETA: Here's a stellar quote from her Today show (Today!) blog: "The vigilance a new mother has for her baby is programmed into our DNA. Mammals sleep with other mammals; we are supposed to do it. You don’t sleep alone, why should babies and children?"

We are supposed to do it is pretty crazy judgemental prescriptive language to me! ]

Sometimes I really despair about discourse around motherhood, feminism, tradeoffs, family life vs. public sphere, etc. I don’t have any answers; I’m just musing on the questions.

When I see someone talking smack about a former partner or complaining about a current one, I find myself thinking that I would have serious trouble developing a close relationship with this person. Because how could I trust that, should we ever reach a parting of the ways, my trust wouldn’t be completely violated? Trust is easy when everything is lightness and roses. But when things get tough? Can I really rely on this person to still respect me, even if they no longer like me?

Because that’s what it comes down to: respect. Respect for the privacy of someone who you once cared for, even if you don’t have those feelings any longer. Barring behavior that is dangerous to others a breakup should *never* be considered as freedom to destroy the contract of trust between two people.

This is a quote from Zoethe’s Livejournal; she’s Ferrett’s wife.

I left a comment on her post because…I think she’s right.

I have to say I don’t think it’s quite as clear-cut for me as her ethical stance is for her in that I pretty highly value authenticity, and in blogging I also value immediacy — that’s what I kind of like about personal blogs; they tend to be (not always) about what people are experiencing now — and I’m not sure I would always say that a relationship contract must or should including not talking about the difficulties.

Because part of my frustration with media in general and the blog community as well is that — it’s such a tough balance that you can end up with a kind of women’s magazine (*cough*) lifestyle everywhere, and people then think their less-sunny experiences are completely abnormal, and sometimes it’s really, really hard to check in with even close friends about this stuff. And your close friends may not be where you are, anyway, in their lives; fresh in the bloom of new love, for example, it can be hard to remember how painful, deeply, the ending of things is.

And as Carl discovered and mostly worked out in our first 6 months of marriage when I sold a piece about us cross stitching together (ahem. Must have been Karen.) and then he got teased at work, he married a writer and while there are all kinds of ways to be an ethical writer, there is a certain line of hazard that either your writer-partner will write about you, or people will think that they have.

So I’m not prepared to take a position that I will never talk about things that were/are hard or sub-optimal or not write about disagreements, even sometimes right in the throes of them. I don’t write everything here, but I try to write enough that it is neither all angst or all shiny. Dark and light, rolling about together!

I also have used my blog as safe space, which, coming from a family where the slightest miscommunication could result in a days-long vendetta (true story) is super important to me. And finally as a multiple — I have a post about honesty coming up, when you do not technically exist as a person in the minds of most people — I kind of feel like showing how Big Things And Small actually go down — not upon sober reflection — might help, well, the multiple community, in the way that someone writing about how a baby shower hurt her right then helps the infertile community, even if it may make for awkward discussions if the baby shower’s guest of honour finds out.

And yet, I think Zoethe hits on a pretty core argument, basically: Would you rather be kind, or would you rather be right? I mean by that – for me there are actually two ethical values here, not ethical and completely non-ethical, but you do have to choose which one. (Vis a vis someone who once commanded your love and respect.)

Nicholas, in a very related and similar discussion (what can I say? It sometimes takes a few blows to crack my thinking :)) put it this way: What do you think is the higher value, justice or mercy?

As an editor I sometimes do send piece back to people with comments about whether they really really want to say something, or to check in about how they have handled other people in the story. As my own editor, that’s a hard thing to see.

I have tried, over the whole past 1.5 years, to maintain some respect for Ell. Not to call names, belittle, or tear down, while still respecting my own hurt and anger. Not to betray confidence while still providing some detail and not just vague statements that really would just mean stirring up emotion rather than really looking at stuff. I think I’m within the grey area of my own ethical boundaries – but only the grey.

I can’t say that I said to myself “Nope, my ethics are not to do the public-breakup-ranty-thing” and held to it. Well, I didn’t even have that formulated.

But what it comes down to is that particularly as the sort of gloss of the relationship I thought I had had wore off, I didn’t always choose kindness or discretion. I’m not going to weep a lot over it, to be honest, but I am sitting in the realization that in a sense, I didn’t think about it that way, not full-fledged. I let things written about me get under my skin. I leaned on one value without considering the other. Also, maybe I should work this second value — which I have applied while in my relationships — and its applicability afterwards.

On the BPD Family site there are always threads about why breakups with people with BPD seem to be worse for people, even if they have had breakups in their lives before, and there seems to be a consensus that in part it’s because it’s somewhat unique to realize (and again I’m not saying Sass/Ell has BPD but I do think that this was a part of the dynamic) that the thinking of the other person — the reason for the breakup, or the total change in personality, or the amount of ire (emotion) vs. the actual events — create a cognitive dissonance that makes it harder (but not impossible) to get a sense of what happened and to move on. So I’ll give me that but…again, it doesn’t make things super right.

And also, I negated the original relationship of trust, as Zoethe put it. Not in as extreme a way (I still feel the need to say) as Ell did…but that still does not make it right on any planet.

So I resolve to do better. I’ll still write about stuff but I think I will stay away from public in-the-moment letters to exes. :)

Kind of a heavy Friday!

P.S. But this is why I love blogs. She writes this stuff, I read it. I change. :)

I really enjoyed that work dinner and it’s pretty rare right now for me to be out in the evenings, save the after-bedtime wine night. But I will admit that yesterday and today I feel like the balance was shifted off a bit, the away-from-kids time-with-kids balance. That’s sort of how precarious it feels to me. So today I cut out from work a little early to just be around all evening and it was nice.

~~

Lynn has been listening to Sweeney Todd, and now I have it in my head and although it’s not that I hate it or anything, it’s not what I would like as the soundtrack in my head. It was also a big Li/Lynn movie, that one, and I wonder if it relates at all to Mags’ sort of downturn…she’s not terrible or anything but it seems a bit like she’s in pjs eating ice cream. Which, for Magdalynn, is unusual. Highs and lows, yes. Lying on the couch in a kind of haze of media consumption, not so much. Although the “media consumption” is mostly mental.

I don’t know if most people can play entire movies in their minds, but we can if we’ve seen them a couple of times or if we have the soundtrack. This is a skill that, weirdly, I remember developing…we had just gotten our family’s first VCR and we only really owned one movie, Star Wars. So I decided that I would watch it 100 times. While doing homework and building models and whatever else. So I did. And then my friend got the book with the script in it and she tested me and I missed 6 words. And then at camp around then – it must have been a couple of years later – I had a bunch of 11 year olds on a trip that turned miserable due to weather, but we were at least at a campsite with a cabin. So we spent the days marooned at that campsite acting out Star Wars, because I had the script in my head.

I was Head of Drama after all. In retrospect what a nice title. :)

~~

I’m going to assume this won’t out me any worse than you can do from this direction (hopefully from the other direction, starting from my legal identity, it’s harder to find stuff here. I still am making choices but I do like the status quo.) I have to host a Twitter party tomorrow. On the one hand I am like oh GOD seriously. It’s actually because we are having a real party at work for a milestone and dumb me, I decided we should include our online audience. Sometimes these ideas go the other way, the tail wagging the dog, but this time I just kind of was like: Oh! Sadly the room has limits! Well let’s TWEET!

(God.)

And on the other I am really laughing and in good spirits, because for years hosting virtual parties – Hatchings blah blah blah – was what I did in my spare time, as Weyrwoman. And now it’s no longer a geeky roleplaying thing to do, to have a virtual party; it’s a geek thing to make fun of the virtual parties, I think, and a vaguely marketing-ish thing to do. And here I am still doing it. I am going to try to bring the spirit of the original into it.

~~~

The juxtaposition of all this is amusing me, but there it is. Let’s be clear: I spent 200 hours of my adolescence memorizing Star Wars: A New Hope. You cannot get much nerdier (although, my friends, I did.) And now I am up worrying a little bit about being around um, well, let’s say, media and fashion personalities and trying to convey the experience virtually.

This is what happened to me and some of my cohort: We were geeky, therefore we were on the web early when it was not mainstream. In my case this has meant I have ended up in a vastly more mainstream role than I think could have happened before or since.* Which, I have to say, I really do like although I do not like all of it. (In the last couple of weeks I have learned quite a bit more than I ever wanted to know about herbs as they pertain to skin care products.)

I think I had better go lie down and get some rest. :)

* Some day I will rant about how there is not the distinction it appears there is, that it is kind of vestigial School, but today is not that day.

However, the first activity of the evening was bowling (at the ballroom.ca if anyone is wanting an actually super nice place to bowl that has yummy, yummy food). 10 pin. I think I’ve bowled 10 pin about 3 times in my life, although I did have a vague memory of going with my maternal grandmother, which seems horribly wrong and I am going to ask my mother about it when she gets back from her latest trip.

Anyways, Miri and Bree shoved everyone else out of the way and bowled. Out of 11 people we came second and my work colleagues have seen a whole…new…bouncier…somewhat competitive side of me (ok, they’d seen that, but not physically). They bowled. They cheered everyone on very affably; it was friendly competition. And…(hushed voice) they did happy dances on the lane…way or whatever you call it.

God they had fun. Now I am scared I will end up in a bowling league. (And suck. Bowlers, the lot of us are not.)

The rest of the crew had fun at the actual meal part and we had (I know you are breathless with anticipation) a veggie burger despite this place having four kinds of poutine, chicken with smashed potatoes, and mac-and-cheese that you can add stuff into like chorizo. But Avalon is on a vegetarian kick. She and Lyr are petitioning Carl. Carl (um…somewhat rightly) has identified David as a possible common thread between this and the last time we were vegetarian for 5 years. Although I think it’s more that with an ally, Lyr is all ready to go for it again.

It was a really good one; nothing frozen about it, chickpea and lentil based with cumin in it.

My girls were pretty disgusted and had decamped by then.

But I don’t really think that was the critical issue; I think abuse, rape and bullying in school all impacted much more not to mention the crazy up-and-down of the emotional atmosphere at my house, even allowing for my teenage experience of it.

Whatever the core issue, I think I do have some heightened feelings around abandonment and attachment when it comes to Carl, Nicholas, select other friends and in the past, Lohr&. How that plays out can be different ways but how I experience it is anxiety and fear on the one hand; on the other if that gets to be too much I kind of go into shut down mode and decide no man is an island, but I could be! A wonderful tropical paradise of self-sufficiency!

~~~

So in that atmosphere we generally overall chose attachment parenting. (Carl actually is more the AP parent in that he has always been the first to try the sling, to bring the baby into bed, etc.)

You can read a ton of stuff about What That Means, ranging from “respond to your child whenever possible” (sensible) to “never ever let your kid cry even if it means never going out of the house for 2 years” (only slightly exaggerated; I have seen arguments on forums that if your child cries in the carseat you should just stay home until s/he does not.)

For me it means:

1. The relationship between parents/siblings/family/caregivers and child is the core thing. More than a feeding schedule or a social schedule or any number of things, it is about being together listening and responding. Mostly on the side of the parent, the responding, although I have thoughts on this too.

2. For my family and newborns and two sets of Canadian mat leaves, this has meant a lot of physical proximity – crib next to the bed/cosleeping after SIDS risk went down, baby wearing, holding, eating with kids on laps, etc. And breastfeeding not because I think that’s essential but because we could and it fit in well with that lifestyle. And observing and listening.

3. A general belief that kids are born wired to socialize, both as need and drive. There are obviously shades of meaning in that and kids on the spectrum or with other challenges are not, and some of us are more oblivious than others. But I guess this informs my decisions in that a) I think kids generally want to be with their parents/significant people and b) while I think parents do need to stop things from getting too Lord of the Flies and that good behaviour is both modelled and taught, I usually think of kids behaving badly as a situational problem to be solved rather than a problem with the child.

4. I do believe newborns, while they don’t care as much as you think and for god sake’s if you can (this is a general you) just let someone hold the baby while you shower — because soon enough that baby will be following you into the bathroom and insisting he gets to hand you the toilet paper and your 6 year old who has learned about privacy decides that because the tot is in there he no longer has to regard that rule as anything but a mere guideline walks in to demand help deciphering the meaning of the word “decipher”, NOT THAT THIS HAS EVER HAPPENED ahem — do have feelings and need to be treated with respect. So if you are going to end up in hospital away from your kid for weeks, pick then, because they may not care, but also have competent and loving caregivers. I did. I don’t think that was the critical thing.

Let’s also get out of the way here: Any parenting path is rife with failure. There have been times I have put a baby in a crib and stepped away to cry or calm down — not a ton, but there have been. There have been times I have decided non-nutritive sucking time at the breast is like, very over now. There have been times I have not been watching and responding to my kids ’cause I was cooking, bathing or horror of horrors, checking email. They have been short periods of time, but they have been periods of time.

Also, I work and I went back full-time when Noah was 23 months old.

Here’s how it’s working for us so far: Really well. Yes, Noah has struggled in school but he is generally a pretty helpful, caring kid with interests and friends and who is engaged and – I don’t know – he’s just a pretty solid guy. I think Noah does have some anxiety too, part of which is because he’s the kind of kid who is thinking three steps ahead — “but when I get to Timbuktu, how will I know which room is mine?” — and some of which may be related to how much anxiety we had during his first few years. And he has had some harsh experiences, especially the appendicitis.

Also, Noah is so inherently private about some things, I think if we didn’t lie down with him at night still most nights or if we hadn’t established this, we might never ever know anything important. And I do think that’s the cause/effect link; I could be wrong and we could have smothered him or something. But I think this is true. Not just because Carl is that way and…so’s Lynn, in many ways. Okay fine, me too: I can get very shut down and non-verbal when dealing with Big Stuff. It may be genetic.

With Liam well, he’s a baby still but even though I have cruelly left him with a caring and thoughtful nanny, he exhibits all the signs of solid attachment: He doesn’t love it when we leave, is able to function without us, is happy to see us when we’re back but then re-engages and all that good stuff. He also attached to V. which is a really good sign in my books.

(Also, although he’s crazy inconsistent, I’m pretty sure he’s starting to refer to himself as “Meemam” which is just so. cute. I had to put it in here.)

But here’s the downside: I think AP in some circles is pretty fear-based and a bit absolutist. The idea that you can break the baby, that you cannot work (Martha Sears, looking at you), that the dad can be a bit disenfranchised over the breastfeeding thing, that there’s only co-sleeping which may drive some of the adults batty, etc….this does not work for me.

I feel a bit like those aspects were ascendant during Noah’s babyhood and toddlerhood, that I was really, really scared of things that in the end…were fine. And my friends who didn’t worry about them…their kids, believe it or not…are fine. (So far. Knock wood for us all.)

In a way I think my own fears and issues came through and with Noah I was the parent equivalent of walking around saying “do you love me? Really? Are you tired of me? No? Are you sure?” in that I was constantly on the alert for what was going wrong rather than seeing what was going right.

With Liam, I worried a bit — to be honest, still do a little — that I would go off the other end in that – there are two kids, I had to go back to work at one year to keep my job this time, I am older and maybe I would ease up too much and not worry enough about staying in tune and connected. On the other hand, for the baby period when I was home I was actually so much better at the actual breastfeeding/baby wearing/cuddling bits that physically, anyway, he got the better deal.

There is no “but” “and so” etc. here. The jury is out for 18 years.

But I will say, part of my being happier is because I am not policing my moves to the same extent, and I suspect Liam will end up less anxious because his family is calmer. We’ll see. Noah is getting calmer about some things, like Liam’s health, as we do.

~~~

So into this steps the whole Elisabeth Badinter/The Conflict/The NY Times crazy section I have not read yet because the title — “Motherhood vs. Feminism” has me wanting to tear my eyeballs out in despair…really. REALLY this is your title?? Because those are the options in 2012???? — stuff around the web the last few weeks. I was very disappointed in Slate’s attempt to cover it and that’s sort of set the tone.

I think Badinter’s questioning is very good. If I think only of the arguing I have seen online about AP/NFL practices I’m going to have to agree with her, because man, there are some crazy ideas about what women and families have to do to keep kids happy.

Also I think what I understand from a pretty quick skim of her stuff, which is that mostly she’s concerned about The Perfect Mother and how this interacts with our understanding of feminist principles and I agree. Trying to be a perfect mother is a recipe for disaster, not just for Women Everywhere but in the home. Home is where you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be your connected and caring self doing your best without going nuts. (Or else, you are in therapy working on it.)

But if I think of the vast majority of parents I know who have self-identified as AP in some way, they’re pretty normal and Badinter is out of her tree to go after them over any other parenting group.

And what I am about to connect the dots about, why I wanted to write this is:

My belief that it is the relationship with my kids that is supreme, and not the exact configuration of the hours of our day, who works when what, who ate what went how, etc. is the core of my AP beliefs.

In other words, I believe if we are all paying attention to each other as a family, with appropriate understanding that kids are small and wee and cognitively where they are need to be cared for and protected and taught and structured and blah blah blah, and we are attached, we will figure it out well enough. There is room for my desire to work as well as my kids’ needs for good caregivers and loads of parental time and attention.

And well enough will be enough…it had better be.

Just as I don’t believe you have to slap a child’s hands to get them to toe the line at 12 months so that they are a proper servant of God at 18 and stay chaste and heterosexual (this is an actual parenting belief system out there), I don’t believe we, yes us also children of life, oh mothers, have to be perfect never-cry parents at 1, 2, 3 years into it in order to have a family that supports our kids in being the best, happiest, successful people they hopefully can be.

That’s me trying to find the middle ground.

Let’s not get me going on homeschooling.

And when Avalon and David got together to date it was a little odd just in that you know, if Avalon and Marai were outside children and David weren’t the ages he is there would be some serious boundary issues on a number of levels, but with multiples I think intent matters more than about anything, and everyone seemed to be clear on everyone’s intentions and no one was fussed so, ehn. But in terms of personalities, it did seem almost eerily appropriate. And with Ahren and um, Ahren’s friend, there is a certain sense of ditto-ness although it is an inverted feeling in a way; Avalon and David feel like each other’s roots, but Ahren’s friend is rooted and it feels more like wings, if that makes sense.

But all those things happen, for me, with a vague sense of arm’s length decision-making. I could decide to get in and see how effectively I could intervene, if I thought those relationships were bad for any other relationships. And other people’s polyamorous feelings never really bother me because well, they’re theirs and who am I to say how they should feel about things? I include Carl’s love for others, including Lyria, in that, even though it’s fuzzy.

But then there are my own. I am definitely poly in that I totally feel feelings for people simultaneously. I do feel however, selective about it. I don’t fall in love with all my friends and I don’t have the err…violent response to monogamy that Lyr does.

(If you are someone who just does not get, except in the most theoretical way, how people can love/emote with/sleep with more than one person at a time, then just flip it around to being someone who just cannot get why you would try to conserve a completely natural and wholesome way for adults to care for each other, and you will arrive at Lyria’s views. She does contain them, but only because Carl explained it to her in words of one syllable many times enough that she gets a) he would be hurt and b) he would be hurt.)

Anyhow, me. So I feel a bit on the cusp on this one in that I am multigamous: I will emotionally admit a select few to my heart’s inner chamber, a door that works mostly one way as far as my heart is concerned. I might have passing crushes and lusts on top of that but those are no big deal in any direction: I wouldn’t follow through unless I were single. I am not emotionally monogamous, although as per my marital agreement I certainly am physically monogamous, and I am pretty good with this tightrope as it is strung, and it’s not casual, traditional, or simple.

So it feels harder to talk about in the present, where things feel precious, and may yet be screwed up as opposed to having been screwed up.

All of which is to say:

If this were Facebook, Nicholas and I would be Facebook-official.

(ETA:Not “it’s complicated” but “in a relationship with”)