Parenting

Growing up with a K-Pop Kid

~ Randy Blazak ~ Leave a comment

October 2, 2025

Fifty years ago, I was 11 years old and somewhere between my Elton John phase and my Kiss phase. All the girls in my class were in their Bay City Rollers phase. Now I have an 11-year-old and she’s firmly in her K-Pop phase. Yeah, there’s a new Taylor Swift album out tomorrow but that pales in comparison to having every single incarnation of the new album by Stray Kids (available at Target). I know, because I’ve had to drive her there to get each version. “I’m spending my own money, Dad!” I laugh because I was right there, spending my chore money on Kiss posters.

Three thoughts.

Thought One: I love the evolution of music. If you would have asked me in 1975 what the pop music of 2025 might sound like, I never would have guessed the post-modern electro-clash of South Korean K-Pop groups. It’s like music from another planet. Just blast “Ceremony” by Stray Kids and tell me what you are listening to. But it’s infectious. Is it “noise” (Get out my yard, kids!) or a brilliant innovation of the pop music genre? The rock and roll ethic is youth music is supposed to set the younger generation apart from the older generation. My Dad’s parents hated Elvis and my dad hated Run DMC. I’m supposed to hate this music but I’m fascinated by it. Sorry, Cozy. I’m in.

Thought Two: I used to lecture about “teenybopper” culture in my Sociology of Youth Subculture class. About how research shows that the “culture of the bedroom” allows pre-teen girls to experiment with heterosexual norms of dating. I’m from the seventies, so their were a lot of girls buying Tiger Beat for the pin-ups of Leif Garret and Shaun Cassidy. Cozy’s Stray Kids box sets come with similar swag that ends up on her bedroom wall. Her and her friend screamed yesterday as they pulled out the pictures of the members of the boy band, including Hyunjin, who she declared was her “husband.” Classic teenybopper. How many women my age were sure they would marry Donny Osmond?

Thought Three: Music is such a great way to bond with your kid. Some families have sports, or religion, or animal husbandry. Our house has always been filled with an unhealthy obsession with music. Taking Cozy to see Taylor Swift last year was something we will both talk about for the rest of our days. Being present for her present K-Pop obsession is a great gift and she knows I appreciate it because I was in a similar spot. (There is more than one picture of me in Kiss make-up.) Andi and I took Cozy to see the film Demon Hunter at the theater and she sang every world. On the fourth of July, Cozy and her girl squad were crammed into my Subaru and they put “Gnarly” by KATSEYE on repeat and full volume and sang at the top of their lungs while they threw Snap n Pops at pedestrians. It was bliss.

Thanks to Facebook routinely reminding me, I am often lamenting over pics of Cozy the Toddler. Or Cozy the Second Grader. I posted a lot of pictures of her and that was a great part of her and my life. Cozy the Middle Schooler has all kinds of new joys to offer. Yeah, I want her to get off her phone and clean up her room (That’s another conflicting conflict to explore), but there is so much for me and this kid to learn about each other. Me at 11 was on my bike, her a 11 is on TikTok. We’re different people in different times. Me at 11 was obsessed with Watergate and my first trip to Washington, DC. Cozy is more than aware that Trump is threatening her country and her city, in particular, but she distances herself because her father is so invested in it, often asking why I spend so much time on the protest front line.

So the music connects us. The night she was born, I held her in my arms and sang, “Yellow Submarine.” I can imagine myself on my deathbed with her singing me some K-Pop tune from the 2020s. I asked her yesterday, “What do you think the music of 2075 will sound like, because you’ll be there?” She said, “Like robots.” I said, “That’s what I said 50 years ago.” We’re both right.

Raising a Daughter in Epstein’s America: Cozy Turns 11

~ Randy Blazak ~ Leave a comment

August 17, 2025

Eleven years ago today, I was driving west on the Sunset Highway like a bat out of hell. Andi was in labor and we had to find some place to have this baby. We had planned a natural birth in a bathtub birthing center, but our daughter Cozy had started to poke her head out and said, “Nope!” and was retreating back into the security of the womb. The nearest hospital had no room at the maternity inn, so my barely mobile wife, her mother, and the midwife hopped in the Prius and headed west. St. Vincent hospital was on the very edge of town and I was assured that it was still in Portland. This child would be born in Stumptown.

Fortunately, Cozette was born at 9:25 pm in Portland, Oregon, not Beaverton, during the second term of Barrack Obama. That night seemed like the most perfect exhausting evening on earth. Our daughter was here and the world was hers. Little did we know what was ahead.

I had hoped for a girl because I want to help put strong women into this world, who aren’t saddled with the marginalizing messages girls have typically gotten from their dads growing up. This was a feminist household. But easier said than done. We are always working against our patriarchal programing. And then came Donald Trump to make everything so much worse.

Cozy turned two during Trump’s first campaign for the White House. She was too young to hear the reports of the man who would be king bragging about grabbing women, “by the pussy,” and all the credible reports of sexual assaults by the alleged billionaire. (He still hasn’t released his taxes.) She never heard how he talked to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Although, she did put the ballot in the box for me and shouted, “Hillary!”)

Cozy was in first grade on January 6th and already knew Donald Trump was a very bad man. But it was his second term that made things the most challenging. The constant news coverage of Trump and his pedophile ring has just filled the air with the most disturbing sex talk. I can’t even listen to NPR with her in the car. But she already knows it all.

At 10, I got my puberty memo, so I knew Cozy was already in the zone. I bought a supply of menstrual pads for when it officially gets here, but the fact that the style among her and her friends is the visible bra strap means we’re fully in it. I knew it was coming, just not this soon. And now the normal relatively innocent adolescent sex chat has been colonized by the flood of chat about Epstein’s rape of underage girls and the protection of those fellow child rapists by the President of the United States.

I keep flashing back to the days when the GOP was the “party of values” and rich Republican ladies would clutch their pearls over the lyrics in rap music. Now the GOP has become the Guardians of Predators and I’m doing everything I can think of to protect my child from them. We’ve hit the point where children are safer with priests than they are with Republicans. It’s a race to the bottom with Trump, and the old man is in a full on sprint.

Maybe the whole “innocence of youth” thing is a myth. There are kids shooting up schools, after all. But I had a naive hope that I could save my daughter from the reality of our sick culture that elevates rapists and refuses to punish wealthy white sex predators for a few more years. She knows she’s a target. There’s no way in hell I would leave my daughter alone in a room with the President or any of his uber creepy MAGA cult. (Many of Trump’s white nationalist following believes the age of consent should be 14 so men can marry children, so there’s that.)

If there’s any silver lining to this disgusting state of affairs, is that Trump’s rape culture has forced us to talk to our daughter about sexual safety early and often. And Cozy is clear on her boundaries. She’s already shut a classmate down who sent an inappropriate text. It’s horrible at age 10 she had to but she knows how to protect herself. But the other side is the non-stop sexual content she must see as she endlessly scrolls through her TikTok. I want to believe it’s all Taylor Swift but I know it’s mostly Sabrina Carpenter. Our baby is surfing in a sea of sexual messages, and not all are affirming.

Tonight, Cozy will celebrate her birthday with a big overnight party. They will want to keep me and any other adult at arms length. May they all be safe, happy, healthy and live with ease. Welcome to adolescence, Cozette. I am still here to protect you, but I’m going to let you start to lead.

Winding Down Elementary School: Gender Check-In

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

May 15, 2025

As fifth grade starts to wind down and the complex reality of middle school looms, I’m reminded of how this blog began. November 2014, I was a stay at home dad, spending my days with Baby Cozy, wondering how I was going to raise a girl in a culture that still devalued half the population. The idea of a blog charting the challenges of “feminist fatherhood” seemed like a good way to share the struggle. Over ten years later, while the the world burns, protecting her gendered journey is still the priority.

The experience of elementary schools has seen the predicted emergence of pre-teen gender rolls. As discussed in Carol Gilligan’s pioneering 1982 study, In a Different Voice, the primary grades, 1 – 3, saw boys and girls as a fairly homogenous blob of “kids.” Half of Cozy’s friends were made of snips, snails and puppy-dogs’ tails. But by 4th, each team peeled off. In fourth grade, Cozy found her tribe of Swifties and boys became the object of much gossip and wonder. “Does he like me?”

Gilligan wrote about how 13 was the age of the great gender divide in which girls start to realize their value is based on how boys view them and their self-esteem plummets. But 2025 is not 1982, for better or for worse. For worse, kids are hitting puberty earlier now. In the 1970s, the average of the first menstruation was 13 and it’s down to 12 now. The beauty industry is targeting younger and younger girls. Cozy has been experimenting with make up but tells me it’s just for fun. On the better side, Gen Alpha kids have been raised by parents who mostly accept the basic tenants of feminism that girls and women are human beings. Boys seem less creepy and girls seem less concerned with their opinion.

We’ll see if that holds up in sixth grade.

This week I got a little tour of the middle school Cozy will attending in the fall. Parents had fun sharing their fond memories of middle school. I don’t know if it’s a “Deep South” thing, but we didn’t have middle schools where I grew up. Elementary went to seventh grade and eighth grade was high school, where you were a “sub-freshman,” the dreaded “Subbie.” Being in seventh meant you were the very big fish in the pond, but the year was also spent full of horror stories about what awaited the little subbies, destined to be terrorized by giant (and practically adult) high school kids. “They’ll force you to do heroin in the bathroom!”

I’ve gathered that middle school is the crucible of adolescent drama. Take 300 kids going through puberty and lock them in a building together for 5 days a week and see what happens. I’m guessing the gendered game of attracting boys is part of that. I’m hoping Cozy’s internal compass is rooted in enough self-efficacy that she won’t be knocked off track by that monstrous norm. But I’ll be on the look out for anything that looks like the surrendering of self that happens to girls in that patriarchal zone, including eating disorders. I think her girl squad will provide a buffer to that traditional pull.

When this blog started, my primary rants were about gendered baby toys and the lack of TV commercials that show men doing housework. Now we’re getting into the real stuff, from body image to sexual safety. This is where the feminist fatherhood business either pays dividends or goes into crisis mode. I have faith in my daughter. The rest of the world, populated by MAGA incels and Carl’s Jr. ads, I’m on guard against. What will happen?

Watching Coach Walz and the Painfully Fragile Masculinity of MAGA

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

August 24, 2024

It seems like there is a widespread consensus that the highlight of this week’s Democratic National Convention was the reaction of Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s son to his nomination to the vice president slot under Kamala Harris. We’ve all see the clip of 17-year-old Gus Walz overcome with emotions, in tears, shouting, “That’s my dad!” I burst into tears watching it as did millions of fellow dads, moms, sons, and other normal human beings. Gus immediately became a meme, celebrating joy, pride, and a love of a child for their parent.

That was among normal people.

As is my habit, I flipped over to check on the dark side. Fox News commenters said the young Walz was faking it, overly feminine, and “retarded.” Some said this is the kind of “sissy boys” that liberal men raise and another made an image of Tim Walz breastfeeding his teenage son. Seriously damaged commentator Ann Coulter decried that the teenager’s display of emotion was “weird.” And it just got worse from there. “We need to raise men who can defend their country, not blubber like babies. This proves that communism destroys masculinity,” one poster wrote. Others pointed to the teenager as proof that “liberals have turned boys into girls and girls into boys.”

This is par for the course for the right. They’ve tried to emasculate Democratic men for supporting a female presidential candidate. (Numerous memes assert that liberal men are all gay.) That includes National Guard veteran and former high school football coach Tim Walz (who, I’m quite sure, is a better gun shot than any of them). MAGA men want “trad wives,” not “boss ladies.” And while they feminize Democratic men, they turn Trump into a hyper-masculine Rambo, giving the elderly obese junk food fan a six-pack and bulging muscles, dodging bullets and taking down communists. It’s perfectly homo-erotic.

This is the tried and true tactic of the schoolyard bully. I co-authored a book with Wayne Wooden in 2001, in the wake of the rash of school shootings that peaked with Columbine in 1999. It was called Renegades Kids, Suburban Outlaws and in it I examined a wide range of school shooting cases, often digging into court transcripts. The common denominator was that the shooters were typically bullied with feminizing language, like “fag” and “pussy.” The bullies tried to take these young men’s masculinity away. The bullies also helped define masculinity as the opposite of femininity, after all, “opposite sexes.” Anything coded as feminine, including showing emotion and not supporting violence, was “unmasculine” and “weak,” threatening the masculine/feminine boundary, deserving of punishment.

I dealt with this in 10th grade when I quit the football team and became a punk rocker. The attacks were relentless. I can still hear Ted, the bully of Martin Road. “Hey Gayzak, you like that fag music!” One afternoon he stopped me after school and said, “Hey Gayzak, you’re a pussy!” And I replied, “Well Ted, I guess you are what you eat, you dick.” He punched me in the face.

For the school shooters in my book, when bullied, they attempted to reclaim their masculinity in the only way they knew how, with murderous gun violence. They took the old macho adage “die on your feet or live on your knees” literally. They went out like “men.”

Fortunately there’s a new version of masculinity in town and it’s not the John Wayne, strong, silent, and violent model that gets men and boys killed. It’s not defined by dominating women, girls, and all things feminine. It’s strong, free with emotions, and embraces women and girls as equals, not bodies to be dominated. We’ve traded in John Wayne for Tim Walz and, boy, are the fragile “alpha” men of MAGA triggered. If Trump men don’t have domain over women and their bodies, what do they have?

We’ve been here before. Right-wing men called Barack Obama a “pussy” and his wife a “man.” But it’s not 2008 anymore. The majority of the workforce is now female and women are not going back. The looming reality of a female president has fragile MAGA men apoplectic. If the president is female, what is left of their “God-given” authority?

But there is a way out of this quicksand of toxic masculinity. Those men can talk to the women in their lives and, by “talk,” I mean listen. Ask those women what they really want to see in the world and I guessing what they will hear is that the women and girls they love want men to enable them, not disable them. Or they can just ask, what would Coach Walz do? #WWCWD

The Secret Life of Fourth Grade Girls

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

June 7, 2024

As Cozy approaches the end of her stint as a fourth grader, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the evolution of peer culture for a 9-year-old. The difference between third grade (which is technically “primary school”) and fourth have been like night and day, and the primary shift is all about who she wants to hang out with. I’m still Daddy and get plenty of time and love, but her friend group is now her preferred time occupier. There’s a new sheriff in town and it’s a passel of pre-tween girls.

In her seminal 1982 piece of feminist scholarship, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Carol Gilligan charted how children generally play in mixed-sex groups through primary school. Cozy certainly had as many male friends as female friends. But then, as children begin to approach adolescence, they split up along gender lines; boys on one side of the playground and girls on the other. As a parent who is both at drop off and pick up, I’ve watched this phenomenon evolve over the school year. It’s like watching the formation of competing gangs.

We know that puberty is starting earlier for kids over recent decades. Every decade that passes, the average age of the onset of puberty moves up three months, according to recent research. This due to a number of factors including lack of exercise and changing diet. Researchers also think COVID accelerated precocious puberty, so there’s that. The bottom line is I was not ready for my child to be launched into adolescence quite yet, but here we are. Cozy has a bra.

At the moment, the gender split has a decidedly childlike element. It’s not about dating or harassment. It’s about bikes. That’s right, Cozy is in a biker gang. It’s a regular occurrence now that three or four girls on bikes show up in front of our house and holler, “Hey, Cozy! Come out and ride with us!” I encourage her to watch out for cars and then advise her to do a good job terrorizing the neighborhood. While her male counterparts are playing video games, the girls of Sabin Elementary are owning the streets and it’s glorious.

I spent a large part of my fourth grade year riding bikes with my friends, so I trust her as she rides out of view. In my time, boys ruled the streets while girls stayed home and learned how to fold clothes. If there’s any “domestic apprenticeship” in this house, it’s me telling Cozy to pick up her clothes before she ding dong ditches the boys on the next block. The girl bike gang is a revolution on wheels. I can only imagine what they talk about when they ride to the park to lay on the fourth grade gossip and pop culture obsessions.

The dark side of the peer bonding has been some actions that drift into the bullying zone. Cozy’s both flirted with it and been the subject of it. We’ve taken away her phone twice because of reports of chats that tease and exclude. I can’t police her interactions, 24-7, but I can limit her access to screens where impulsive actions are a lot easier. But the bright side is seeing Cozy’s peer group engage in pop culture separate from their parents. Her squad is firmly in the Swiftie camp and they will sing Taylor’s songs at full volume (including in the back of my car). It must be like what was like 60 years ago when The Beatles took over America. I love it.

Gilligan’s 1982 book offered a darker picture of this period. Gilligan found that when girls and boys peel away from each other, girls start to evaluate themselves by how well they can attract boys’ attention, not by how smart or athletic they are. She discussed that girls’ self-esteem plummeted around age 13 as they are repeatedly told that their worth is in their looks, forcing them to compete with each for the middle school Prince Charming. “Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.”

I’m hoping none of this patriarchal hell lands on my daughter. I can’t change 8000 years of male dominated culture, but I can hope, a) things have changed a lot since 1982, and b) she’s a lesbian. For now, she’s rolling with her girlfriends, having sleepovers, and evaluating clues in Taylor Swift songs (mostly clues about a guy named Joe). Unlike Gilligan’s 13-year-olds, Cozy is bonding with her diverse pool of girl power classmates. (In 1998, I presented a paper on how the Spice Girls were positively impacting girls ability to bond.) As they ride off into the summer, I’m going to support their freedom and close friendships. They’re gonna need it.

DWM: Dating While Married

~ Randy Blazak ~ 5 Comments

June 30, 2023

What are the rules of being separated? Nobody sent me the manual. Also, is there a handy guidebook to diagram the complexity of romantic love? I’m in the weeds out here.

The day A moved out the fall of 2021, I thought it would be a short term break while I figured my shit out. I was just at the beginning of understanding how my experience of childhood abuse had been controlling my brain. Therapy, some good reading, and quiet reflection, and we’d be fixed in a few months. A week after she moved out she told me she was “dating” someone (well, that wasn’t exactly the word she used) and that person quickly became her boyfriend, which didn’t help my intention to calmly become a better person.

In fact, it did the opposite. It unleashed my inner redneck. I’d go the bar that he frequented, order a double bourbon and imagine kicking his ass. Not exactly the practice of someone who leads workshops on mindfulness. Gradually, I came to accept her choice and focused back on my own work. If she’s happy, I’m happy. Blah, blah, blah. We were talking about divorce, but it always seemed to be on the back burner. And every time she’d breakup with this guy, she was back in my arms.

But by the end of 2022, I thought I should try this dating thing. I missed having a partner in crime. Someone to get out of the house with. Also, I was still angry my wife was spending all her free time with this guy. A friend suggested I go on the Bumble dating site. So I set up a profile and met some really great women; a flight attendant, an artist, and a movie producer, who I went to NYC to stay with for a week and is one of the most accomplished women I’ve ever met. But I felt like I was a performing a role; A and our fantasized reunion always on my mind. It just seemed like a hoax. So I cancelled Bumble and focused on winning her back.

Then all that changed.

Two weeks ago, I was feeling aggrieved because I felt like A was routinely disregarding me and I was all in my head about it. It was Friday and the start of her week with Cozy (and the end of her week with her boyfriend) and my Pisces brain was going to claim I had a date with a beautiful lawyer just to drive a splinter in. Then I took a left turn.

According to Facebook, I have over 2,800 friends. Some folks go way back to high school, some I don’t know how I know, and a whole bunch are dead. But there was someone in my feed who I didn’t know how I knew, I just knew she owned a Portland dress shop and was stunning. I found myself exploring her pictures, with her dogs, her family and friends, and travels. So I took a chance and messaged her.

Me: You’re always in my feed so I thought I should say hey!

Her: How are you doing? I’m rarely on Fb and miss a lot of messages so if I ignore you, I swear it’s nothing personal.

Me: Was just looking for some live music tonight. I need tunes.

Her: Ooh did you find anything good?!

Me: Usually I go to No Fun on Hawthorne for random bands. You should come out!

Her: Sounds fun! I’m down

And that’s how my relationship with Jaime started. She walked into a favorite SE Portland joint of mine, a bar called No Fun, and it was like a brand new chapter was about to unfold. We immediately clicked, like nothing I’d experienced before, while the band played TLC and Britney Spears songs. Sitting at the bar, we began to plan a trip to Paris and I said, “I’m going to kiss you tonight.” Then we ended up on the dance floor at Goodfoot, another local bar, for Soul Night, and by the second song we were already a couple.

I can’t explain what happened to my brain. All that bandwidth that had been taken up by my obsession with A, winning her back and/or hating that she was with this guy who I detested, just vanished. What did it mean? Was I not in love with her? My love for her had defined every day of my life for the past ten years. But my love for her was often about “my love” and not about her as a person. I was unable to repair that disconnect to lure her back. But now all I could think about was Jaime. It was like a channel had switched.

At first I felt the need to keep this new relationship on the down low. I didn’t know how to “frame” it. But after the April car crash that Cozy and I had been in (that totaled the RAV) and the cancer scare earlier this month, I know every second in this life matters.

Jaime and I quickly became connected at the hip. I wanted to learn everything about her. I wanted to not make the mistakes of the past. In a few days I was convinced that I could build something with her and finally release A from the crushing weight of being tied to my project. A seemed relieved that I had found someone, which was both nice and annoying. A week after our first meeting, A OK’d Jaime and I taking Cozy to a Portland Thorns soccer game. Seeing how wonderful she was with my daughter sealed the deal and I asked her to be my girlfriend.

I truly don’t understand the nature of love. My ten years with A, including the year and half separation, still carry a real meaning to me. She’s the mother of my child, but she has a boyfriend who I know she loves. I know there have been people rooting for us to reunite (and others who haven’t). When she told me a year ago, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you,” I laughed it off as the standard doldrums of marriage. But now I feel the same way.

All I know is that my heart has been kidnapped by someone I want to be with as much as possible. Cozy loves her madly and so do I. It came from out of the blue, but I know it’s real because she has me listening to Taylor Swift and thinking about my words before I say them. It may just be a summer affair or it may be something with some staying power. I don’t know and I don’t care and it feels damn good.

It’s nice not to worry about what people think. I just want to put all these lessons to work to keep this magic moment going that started on a Friday night in a bar called No Fun. As Taylor sang, “A string that pulled me, out of all the wrong arms, right into that dive bar. ” There is a golden string that now connects me to her and I can’t help but just say, “Yeah, well, it’s divine intervention.”

Tonight at 8:30 will be our two-week anniversary and it feels like I’ve known this person for a lifetime. Two weeks from now, I might be saying, “What the hell was THAT?” I have a feeling that we’ll be doing just fine. Love is a beautiful thing.

NOTE: I let Jaime read this before posting it. If she’s good, I’m good.

My last hours of 57, when I grew up.

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

February 19, 2022

When you grow up in the South, age 33 is supposed to be the transformative year. After all, that’s the year that Jesus got his shit together to fulfill the prophecy of getting himself executed. Southern wisdom is that if you’re not married by 33, maybe with a kid but definitely with your economic house in order, you’re are letting Ol’ Jesus down. For me, 17 was the year I got out of the house and figured out I was going become an academic instead of dentist. Thank Jesus. That was a year my sense of self felt like it was really coming together.

This is my last day as a 57-year-old and that brace-faced teenager seems light years away (and so does the 33-year-old). The past 12 months have been more transformative than anything I’ve ever encountered. When I look back at February 2021 me, I barely recognize the guy. Somethings are sadly the same. I’m still lobbying for a job in the Biden Administration and there still isn’t a fully functioning kitchen in this house, but the person in this spot has shed that skin. 2021 me looked like a lost boy, bouncing in the glee of the moment, but taking everything around him for granted.

If there was any year I wish I could have a do-over it would be 57. Previously it was 16 (so I could go to New York and save John Lennon) and then it was 21 (just because it was so incredibly awesome). But 57 was a year of stupid mistakes, like beginner blunders on a chess board. Beside forgetting Andi and my wedding anniversary for the second year in the row, I had fairly spectacular meltdowns in New Orleans and at the final night of Mary’s Club that had her questioning my sanity. In between those, I uncovered my history of child sexual abuse but not before I further sabotaged her trust in me. The new year began with me back on the proverbial cliff, contemplating non-existence. It was a hard year. Hard on my family.

The good news is I got back on the anti-depressants and found a therapist who really helped me get to the root issues, leading to what feels like a complete rebirth from the troubled narcissist I was. My journey in therapy began in 1998 when I was forced to confront some of those issues around depression. It generated a good book on the subject (that I’m proud of and everyone should buy), but it never really got to the starting point of my tendency to shoot myself in the foot over and over again. Thanks to Andi encouraging me to read more on my issues, I picked up a few books on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and then found a somatic therapist who specialized in hypo-therapy. It was time to go deep. This is the year my Saturn is in return, so big change is inevitable.

The time spent in therapy has been revelatory. The first time she put me into a relaxed state where I could actually talk to that 4-year-old boy who had been abused changed my whole way of being. I began to let go of my constant anger (which I visualized as the Incredible Hulk) that I laid on anyone in my radius, including my family and my wife. Developing skills to be mindful of my emotions reminded me that I can center other people and not be dangerously vulnerable. And being safely vulnerable is actually a good thing. (Yeah, I now know all about Brené Brown. She’s a rock star.) I can finally breathe. It’s going to be alright.

Today, our daughter asked if Andi was going to move back home. On the weeks Andi has Cozy, I spend as much time in her apartment as I do in our house, often laying next to her in bed in the early morning minutes before the alarm clock goes off, watching her sleep and thinking about how I used to complain about her snoring. I am in love with that snore. Old Randy might have asked his daughter to play some Jedi mind tricks on Mom, but I just said, “I hope she does, but I don’t really know. It’s up to her but whatever she chooses, we want her to be happy.”

There was a moment in this process where I saw a truth that Andi had long known, that when you truly love someone, you live to serve them, not your ego. I am here to serve her and our daughter, in whatever capacity the universe allows. My journey through the challenge of self-work this year highlighted that our complacency with our selves and our relationships is our biggest threat to our happiness. It’s too easy to be lazy in our culture, scrolling through life. We’re not done. There’s work unfinished. At least there is for me.

I turn 58 tomorrow. That used to seem so old. But I feel like I just grew up.

I was 5 once, too!

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

November 27, 2019

Cozy and I were sitting at home last week, watching the impeachment hearings. I had to wait until age 9 for my first live impeachment proceedings. (I was glued to the Watergate hearings.) Cozy’s getting a jumpstart on her political awakening. She stopped and said, “I don’t like Donald Trump because he wants to cut down all the trees.” I don’t know if that’s true, but it captures the feeling that Trump is a one-man apocalypse for her generation. I wondered if she will remember any of this when she’s having a beer with her friends in college, reflecting on when America went off the rails.

Some people don’t have a lot of memories from before the age of 5. Others, perhaps due to intense psychotherapy, remember the formative years with crystal clarity. For me, age three was when my little brother came home from the hospital. I can see my mother carrying him past the birch trees in front of our house. Four was nursery school and a cubby whole of my very own. The rest is a swirl of real and imagined.  I assume Cozy might not remember her early days, but perhaps they have all been logged somewhere in her subconscious. Meeting Minnie Mouse on her third birthday may appear in dreams 30 years from now, but probably will never be a clear memory. All the experiences we’ve been giving her are meant to shape her personality, not necessarily give her fond memories. That’s why God invented Instagram. #cozyblazak

But 5 is different. These moments will last. Not all of them, but enough. She will remember many of her kindergarten friends, and being dragged to my meetings, and art projects with her mom, and trips to visit family in Mexico. I can’t find a single picture of  me at 5, but there’s a cloud full of thousands of pictures of her if she ever needs her memory jogged.

secret-squirrel-secret-squirrel-5-05

Five was a big year for me. So much of it seems clear as day. For Halloween, I had a Secret Squirrel costume with a plastic mask that scratched my face. My best friend was a neighbor named Cheryl. I’d call her to play by doing a Tarzan yell over the back fence, and she’d climb over like soldier scaling a wall in boot camp. Our kindergarten class had an incubator and we anxiously waited for chicken eggs to hatch. My mom told me today that one of my classmates was a bully who delighted in slamming kids’ hands in the door. I’ve blocked that one out. But I do remember her buying my corrective shoes at a Stride Rite store (next to Mayfair’s) that had ducks in the window. Candy button strips and a friend with a pet turtle. A new Blue Bird school bus and realizing I could swallow Spaghetti-O’s without chewing.

I was 5 in 1969, so there were my first flirts with sixties pop culture, most memorable was the first episode of Sesame Street (November 11, 1969). I still have the album (and can sing “Rubber Duckie”). I cut out Archies records from the back of Honeycomb cereal boxes. I knew most of the words to “Spinning Wheel” by Blood, Sweat & Tears, and got a few of the jokes on Laugh-In (“Very interesting.”) And, of course, I stared at the moon, hoping to see Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong bouncing on it.

Screen Shot 2019-11-26 at 10.39.18 PM

I also processed some of the turmoil at the end of the decade. Our white middle class parents made fun of hippies and warned of the “dangerous jungle” in the city. That gave me plenty to rebel against later. But it was all lodged in my brain. The implicit bias I now hope to purge was being formed inside the mind of that kid 50 years ago.

72957570_10158892885839307_3403006956326092800_n

I don’t know what Cozy will carry with her from her vast experiences in 2019. We’ve worked hard to block messages of inequity, taking her to sold-out women’s soccer matches and exposing her to her wonderful family south of the border. She is as at home with the music of John Coltrane as she is the soundtrack of Frozen 2. She might not log every single trip to the ice cream shop or cool outfit, but hopefully she’ll remember how much she was loved in all those moments. And she can save the Trump thing for her therapist.

Gender – Nature vs. Nurture 7: Baby – Toddler – Girl

~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

January 25, 2018

It’s a common refrain around here – “Where did the baby go?” She’s just grown up so fast (said pretty much every family ever). Besides becoming a full on person, somewhere this past year, she became a full on girl. As a sociologist, for decades I’ve harped on the mantra that we are products of our environment and that gender is social construct. So I’m not quite sure how this happened. Is it my fault?

Screen Shot 2018-01-25 at 11.14.16 AM

We really worked on the gender neutral thing from day one, including dressing her in “boy” clothes, but the girl just loves all things pink. She’s had her stay-at-home dad as her primary caretaker but she’d still rather put on make-up with mom. And it’s not that her working mom is the most girly-girl. (Mexican women seem to have a bad-ass streak woven into them, but you didn’t hear that from me.) All our plans to dominate her nurture seem to have been thwarted by her nature.

Or have they?

katy-perry-at-minnie-mouse-honored-with-star-on-hollywood-walk-of-fame-ceremony-01-22-2018-6

I’ve said it before. You don’t raise children in a vacuum. Cozy is not a lab project. She has countless influences outside of mom and dad, including little friends, teachers, grandmas and tias, and, of course, the media. All play a part in the nurturing of her gender cues. I blame Minnie Mouse. I think that was her first role model. Minnie, who just got her star on Hollywood Boulevard last week (40 years after Mickey), is not exactly an action hero. She’s come a long way, baby, but she still plays her cute card. Just watch where her knees go (in) compared to Mickey’s (out). Is Minnie a virgin to Mickey’s playa? We love Minnie Mouse around here but I’m betting that rodent has her own #metoo story. (I’m looking at you, Harvey Weinstein.)

ns-paw-patrol-landing-downloads

Cozy’s moved off Disney (maybe because we lost our Disney Channel connection) and on to the Paw Patrol. I don’t quite know what to make of this cartoon that has been mass marketed beyond belief. (Yes, she is wearing Paw Patrol undies today.) I like the positive go get ‘em attitude – “No job is too big, no pup is too small! – but it’s not like they are taking all that canine energy to improve access to the treehouse for dogs with disabilities or out defending the Paw Pussy Cats from being grabbed by the evil Drumpf. The gang is mostly male but there are two females (don’t call them bitches) named Skye and Everest. And Cozy is obsessed with them. She named her cat Skye and she has Everest socks. The patrol is led by a male (Chase), so we’re going to have to have a little Paw Patrol talk. “Wouldn’t the Patrol get more done if Skye took over?”

lefotif-03

She recently discovered the Little Einstein cartoon series. It’s another gang led by a (white) boy. These four kids fly around in their rocket, and have adventures based in famous works of art and classical music. It’s pretty cool, actually. There’s an episode based on on Strauss’ “Blue Danube Waltz” and Warhol’s Fish painting. My kid is humming Bizet and talking about Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Her favorite character is June, the dancer, and Cozy will dance to some Edvard Grieg like she was auditioning for the Bolshoi. I love my classical music-loving kid!

25442902_10156872943319307_2913918804066795517_n

I think seeing the Nutcracker last month was a turning point in her gendered idea of herself. It wasn’t the Nutcracker, or the Rat King that ignited her. It was the Sugar Plum Fairy. She just started glowing when the SPF tiptoed onto the stage. It reminded me of when I saw Elvis Presley in concert at age 9. “That looks like a good job,” I remember thinking. Cozy got to meet the ballerina who performed the role after the show and she was hooked. Now she is constantly dancing in her own ballet for one in a way that’s making us think she might actually be a natural at this. It’s feminine and flowing. How did this happen and how much are ballet lessons? And can she be a ballet dancer and community organizer at the same time?

I recently asked Cozy if she thought there was a difference between boys and girls. She told me that girls can jump higher and then started talking about the difference between kids and grown-ups. I think that’s still the main binary in her head. She still mixes up “she” and “he,” and I purposely don’t correct her. She’s “gender-fluid” on her own but suddenly really cares about being “beautiful.” Maybe it’s just a phase and by this summer she’ll want to be a basketball player. But at the moment, there is very pretty ballerina dancing in our living room.

SPFairy

Dad Love 10: We Become Gendered

GENDER – Nature vs. Nurture 6: Fierce Fashionistia in a Fiercer World

GENDER – Nature vs. Nurture 5: Elmo is queer

GENDER – Nature vs. Nurture 4: She’s gotta be free

GENDER – Nature vs. Nurture 3: How babies queer gender

GENDER – Nature vs. Nurture 2: Ain’t I a black girl?

GENDER – Nature vs. Nurture: Round 1

Dad Love: The Wonder of Parenthood

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

November 30, 2017

Cozy was at her abuela’s for Thanksgiving weekend so Andrea and I used the rare child-free time to reconnect as “just us.” You know, like before everything became endless kid clutter and whose turn in was put the girl to bed. We’re talking wine bars, non-wine bars, a lot of making out in the car, sleeping in, and going to the movies. I didn’t dare to suggest The Justice League, because I knew Andrea wanted to see Wonder. It’s not a prequel to The Justice League (that’s Wonder Woman), but Julia Robert’s new film about a cute kid with a facial disfigurement. (How often have you heard that tag line?) If we thought we were briefly, “child free,” that film quashed that illusion.

spider_man_2_train

I blame my tendency to cry in films on my being a Pisces. That scene in Spiderman 2 when Spiderman (Tobey McGuire, dammit) is fighting Doctor Octopus and ends up on the commuter train with his mask ripped off. You know the scene? When the commuters realize he’s “just a kid.” Every time I lose it. (Even writing this I want to weep for Spiderman.) So Wonder was hard. I did not bring tissues. (Note: There are no spoilers in this post other than the fact the goddamn dog dies.)

wonder__2017___fanmade__by_mintmovi3-dbebhsj

Wonder, directed by newbie Stephen Chbosky, follows the Pullman family who has a kid named Auggie with Treachers Collins Syndrome that makes him look a little like the Mole Man in Fantastic Four #1. (There are already way too many superhero references in this post.) The very first scene was the birth. Mom (Julia Roberts) and Dad (Owen Wilson and his beautiful nose) are filled with excitement as their second child pops out. You see the horrified faces of the young doctor and nurses as they rush the baby out of the room. Julia and Owen don’t know what’s wrong, but we do because we’ve seen the previews. And let the sobbing begin. Two minutes into the film.

Those of us who have had babies or who have held the right knee of our spouse while she gave birth know how emotional that moment is. It’s not just the nine months of anticipation. It’s the lifetime of wondering if you’ll ever have kids and what those kids will be like. Will they be healthy? Will they have all their parts? Will they have a few extra parts that will give them super powers? (Sorry.) In the birth video of  Cozy’s arrival you can hear my voice go into some range that doesn’t actually exists for humans. I was so happy she was finally with us after a crazy detour in her trip to be born. That moment is us at both our most mammalian and most human. All the hopes in dreams placed on our lineage are in that moment. We are the dreams of our ancestors and those dreams are now placed on this tiny baby. Bam.

We were so lucky that, even though Cozy was seriously late, she was completely healthy. That’s not the case for the Pullmans in Wonder. Little Auggie is facing countless surgeries that would have broken our hearts. So many parents go through this hell, but they do it without question, and often without much help. Their lives become consumed with surgeries, appointments, and special needs. Their lives, as well as their other children’s lives, orbit around the sick life of their child, losing much of their own identity in the process. That’s kind of the set up in Wonder when rejoin the family about ten years later.

The rest of the film is about how Auggie, who has been homeschooled by Pretty Woman, is starting middle school and likes to where a space helmet to hide his funky face. So that means cruel kids, bullies, inspiring teachers, Saul from Homeland, asshole parents of bullies, sweet kids, supportive siblings, the dog dying, Mom’s dreams deferred, cool dads, and, finally, acceptance. There’s a lot of tropes found in such films. (Will the bully be redeemed?) Ebert & Siskel might have felt a bit manipulated. But as a parent, I fucking bawled through the whole movie, and so did Andrea. In fact, my throat physically hurt from trying to choke back the tears for two hours. Thank God there was a bar nearby.

Space

Here’s why. You experience life differently as a parent. The young people in the theater (and there plenty of kids in the audience) must have had no idea how all of us parents were seeing this movie. I would have loved to interview them. “It was funny, not sad. Why were all these people crying?” But a switch is flicked when you become a parent. I felt it the first time we heard Cozy’s heartbeat. It’s not about you. It’s about them. You’re sole mission is to protect them so they will be ready to live without you. If this wasn’t true, women would give birth to 18-year-olds who who climb out of the womb and head straight to college. We have one job. And that job is 24-7 and does not get Thanksgiving weekends off.

I kept thinking that while watching the movie. What other job is 24-7 with no time off? I think we could do a better job of letting teenagers who think getting knocked up means a show on MTV in on this truth. It’s just not your time. (“My mom will help with the baby.”) It’s your mind. I’m never more than two thoughts away from Cozy. Right now I’m sitting in a Portland coffee shop and I know that Cozy is in daycare 9 blocks in front of me and one block to the left. She’s having her lunch and then a nap. I will pick her up at five o’clock and fall to my knees, knowing she’s had a fun, supportive day and is telling me all about it while I wrap my arms around her.

BLAH

The Sunday before Thanksgiving we were at the packed grocery store getting supplies. I was trying to get some Tillamook cheese out of the case, along with a few other shoppers. When I turned around, Cozy was gone. Just like that. Gone. Did she wander off? Was she abducted? Did I even bring her with me? My first thought was to find her but my second thought was my wife was going to kill me. “Oh, we’ll find her. I have to go back tomorrow. I forgot the almond milk.” So I’m yelling for my three-year-old. Who cares what people think? I don’t care about their judgment at this point. What am I going to do? Before I can grab an employee and order an immediate lockdown, I hear “Daddy!” Cozy was three isles away playing with some colorful soap she had found. In those 30 seconds there was the entire range of emotion, from sheer panic to an endorphin blast of picking her up again.

As a criminologist, I know that kids that don’t have close emotional bonds with their parents are more at-risk of becoming delinquent. The clearest example of this is the research on kids who are in foster care. They may have a roof over their heads and hopefully non-abusive guardians, but it’s not the same as an emotionally invested parent (biological or not) who has made that child’s well-being their priority above absolutely everything else. Someone needs to tell Kylie Jenner that her kid will take precedence over her Instagram account and make-up supply. It also makes me wonder about abusive parents. Do they have some genetic abnormality” To hurt my child seems contrary to every cell in my body. Every time I pick her up, I immediately think, “Don’t you dare drop her.”

I might just be neurotic. That’s also a Pisces thing. I’m still more than a parent. I’m still a sociologist and vinyl junkie. Andrea is still an artist and an immigrant. But our identities have been formalized by being Cozy’s parents. My being is shaped by this primary duty. “What do you do for a living?” “I make sure my kid is OK.” It’s a wonder we ever get to exhale.

Decade3

SaveSave