DWM: Dating While Married

June 30, 2023July 2, 2023 ~ 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.

February 20, 2022February 20, 2022 ~ 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!

November 27, 2019November 27, 2019 ~ 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.

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.

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.

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

January 25, 2018January 27, 2018 ~ 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?

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?

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.)

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?”

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!

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.

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

December 1, 2017December 1, 2017 ~ 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.

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, 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.

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.

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.

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And Jill came tumbling after. Why? Purging sexist kids’ stories.

September 22, 2017September 22, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

September 22, 3017

My mother has always been on the verge of serious hoarding. “Don’t throw that away! It might be worth something someday!” I heard that a thousand times. When Cozy was born, I was grateful. Stuff my mom had held onto for 50 years started to come our way, including my 1960s Batman sweatshirt. And a ton of kids books. Each one zapped my brain backwards. I just have to open I Am Bunny, and I’m sitting on my mommy’s lap, fascinated by the artwork and stories. And my mom read to me a lot.

I was excited to introduce Cozy to my love of books (Thanks, Mom!), so I wasted no time reading to my daughter. I took about two seconds to realize that the message that this father was sending to his girl was dramatically different than the one that my mother had sent to her boy. On the one hand it was exciting to see these books sold for only 39 cents when I was little, but on the other side the messages about gender were heartbreaking. From the time when Donald “Dotard” Trump thought America was “great.”

Many of the stories are a continuation of the fairytale traditions from Hans Christian Anderson where some damsel in distress or dainty princess has to be rescued by a dashing prince. So much of the classic Disney filmography is rooted in this sexist trope that has, thankfully, been exploded by Frozen and Moana. These two movies mean so much to Cozy and now I understand why. (Mulan had too much fighting. “I don’t like this, Daddy. Turn it off.”) More of these books followed the domestic dynamic of the mid-century model. There’s mom in the kitchen. A legion of my friends reminded me how messed up the Berenstain Bears books are when you read them through a gendered lens. The same is true for most of the books by Richard Scary and Dr. Seuss. (But I still have a soft spot for Cindy Lou Who.)

Even more books are just male-driven stories. How can my daughter find herself in Where the Wild Things Are? The imbalance really hit me when I was reading Cozy a book called Jumping. It’s about how much boys love to jump. Seriously. I grew up reading the adventures of the Hardy Boys. Will Cozy be left with the Bobbsey Twins? Was Nancy Drew a feminist? Can we get a 21st Century reboot? I do not like green eggs and misogyny.

It became a real struggle to find a book in the boxes that were arriving that had a female character that was somehow equal to the males, let alone in the lead role. Cozy was getting that in her contemporary cartoons, like Disney’s Elena of Avalor and PBS’s Peg + Cat. It was time to update my girl’s library. So we took a walk up to Green Bean Books.

Cozy loves any store that has a “kids’ section.” She appreciates any space that is carved out for “kids not people” (adults are “people” – we have to work on that one). Green Bean is all kids’ section and she loves the feeling that it’s all there for her. (Wait, I’m smelling the seeds of a generation gap.) When I asked for a storybook for a three year-old, the clerk had the perfect recommendation, The Princess in Black. Cozy set down her book about dinosaurs and grabbed the book, plopped down on the little sofa and pretended to start reading.

The Princess in Black is a five-part series by Dean Hale and Shannon Hale. It follows the adventures of prim and proper Princess Magnolia who sneaks into her broom closet to become… The Princess in Black; a superhero who fights monsters. Cozy loves both princesses and superheroes. (Ask her to do her Spiderman imitation.) Seeing her respond to this book was fascinating. It’s 15 short chapters, cleverly crafted, that we’ve read pretty much every night since we got the book. She’s got the whole story memorized and has even picked up on hints that our superhero may get a sidekick in future volumes – the Goat Avenger (aka, the mild mannered Goat Boy).

It was almost like a shock to the system after all these books about male characters, including Richard Scary’s male bunnies, to have a female-driven story. It must have been like women 200 years ago reading a Jane Austen novel for the first time. (I’m not equating The Princess in Black and the Mysterious Playdate to Pride and Prejudice, but I kind of am.) As a male, I could read all these male-driven kids’ stories to Cozy and not notice the impact of it all on her, as girls and women were pushed to the background (and draped in aprons). But three pages in to the PIB and I saw the shift. She has a place in the world of stories.

Of course, there is a debate worth having that this place is in occupying the traditionally male-dominated world of superheroes, which often relies on violence to solve problems. The Princes in Black does open a can of whoop ass on a big blue monster. Sparkle kick! This is at the heart of the debate between liberal and radical feminists. Does gender equality mean that females should want half of the world that patriarchy created. When 50% of serial killers are females can we raise a toast and say, “Equality!” Or are their other ways of organizing ourselves that don’t don’t involve trying to beat men at their own game? As a parent of an evolving girl, I wrestle with this question. A female version of Trump saying she is going to “totally destroy” a nation of millions of people would not be progress.

For now, story time will be about a consistent messaging that Cozy will not be marginalized because she is a girl. Andrea has been reading her Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. My mother sent a new book about Frida Kahlo, Viva Frida by Yuyi Morales, that Cozy fell madly in love with. And I know that there are now tons of others out there. (Please feel free to make any recommendations.) Seeing how my daughter responded to this one book pierced a gaping hole in my male privilege bubble. It might be time to put The Cat in the Hat on the bottom of the stack. What would you do if your mother asked you?

The World of Wonder in the Backyard

July 20, 2017July 20, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

July 20, 2017

When I was little, I know I could look at a three-inch space on the ground or on a brick wall and find a whole world to become enchanted with. My parents had a massive hifi console in our living room. I’d play their records and stare into the blue “On” light on the base and imagine it was the rabbit hole into Alice’s Wonderland. I would plop down in my mom’s rock garden and find magical realms in the cracks and under leafs. Being small gave me a microscopic view of the world I think the adults missed. They were busy thinking about taxes and war and hippies ruining the nation. I was happy staring endlessly at ladybugs and pretending a peanut shell in a puddle was a speedboat.

Once Cozy started walking we began going on strolls in the neighborhood to “see what we could find.” There were lots of stops to smell flowers and look for honeybees. The wall at Little Big Burger she is particularly fond of. (She gives it a little big hug every time we pass it.) Every step is filled with a reason to be amazed. To make it one block it can take an hour. “Daddy, what’s this?”

“It’s a leaf, honey,” Now we include hikes in Forest Park which might as well be the jungles of the Yucatan (where we all were a year ago.) It’s more than father-daughter time. It’s a time to experience the sense of wonder in the mundane. The sacred in the profane. The awesome in the gross.

This summer we’ve been spending a lot of time in our yard. There’s a spider who lives on one of her old boots that we made into a planter. Of course she’s the “Itsy Bitsy” spider of song and legend. There’s a good 30 minutes watching her and the crows on the telephone wire who might want to gobble her up. Our small backyard has a bounty of delicious raspberries, dancing white butterflies, and bees harvesting pollen from our dandelion forrest. “See their legs, Cozy? How yellow they are? They’re going to turn that into honey!”

“Yum, Daddy! Can I go with them?”

At her daycare they go on “nature walks.” It’s a gaggle of 2-year-olds strolling through the neighborhood blocks looking for adventure. St. Andrews church is a “castle” they pass by. I’m sure local front yard gardens offer a thousand lessons. It must require a certain abound of zen to get these kids all headed in the same direction. Every step offers an opportunity to freak out over something the rest of us see as insignificant.

When I was a pre-schooler, my parents felt perfectly fine turning me loose into the woods by myself. I would build damns and collect leaves until Mom rang the dinner bell. Times have changed, but Cozy really doesn’t have to leave my sight to find a magical world under a rock or inside a hole in the porch steps. The big world doesn’t have much bearing on the microcosmos for a toddler.

She’s become fascinated with a Netflix show called Beat Bugs. It’s the adventures of five bugs built around Beatles songs. (Yes, they have a friend who is a blackbird.) Their whole world exists in the backyard of a little girl not much older than Cozy. It’s full of music and mystery. Their joyous theme song is “All You Need Is Love.” I have to think Cozy thinks the same plot lines are playing out behind our house. (We’ve certainly got at least one Walter the Slug who is probably singing “I am the Walrus” as we sit here.) I see the show as a way to turn her on to Beatle music, but I’m starting to think it’s her bonding with other tiny things. We’ve been calling her “Bug” for a few years now so it makes sense that she feels more kinship with the ants on our sidewalk than the G-20 Summit.

The world is so big. A one trillion-ton iceberg just broke off of Antarctica. The President is having secret meetings with a Russian dictator (who may or may not have serious dirt on him) with no Americans present. Your kid’s talking doll might be a spy for the FBI. (Or in Trump’s case, the Kremlin.) A new study just found plastic particles in most brands of Mac & Cheese. There’s just a great weight of it all. It makes sense to take some time and find a small crack in the ground, one you step over every day. It’s actually a massive canyon teaming with life. Maybe it’s the Beat Bugs, or maybe real bugs. Let your mind go just for a minute like you did when you were a kid. If the earth is just a dot in the infinite universe, that crack is as important as we are.

Seeing the world through Cozy’s eyes puts the big picture into perspective. (This blog post didn’t need to be very big.)

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The Need to Work

June 22, 2017June 22, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 9 Comments

June 22, 2017

It was a blessing in disguise. My paternity leave from Portland State University was involuntarily extended thanks to a bizarre collaboration between a clinically psychotic felon and a couple of administrators with a clear agenda. That time away from full-time work has allowed be to help my daughter transition from a baby into a little person. It’s also allowed me to publish a book, teach on a tropical island, write this weekly blog, start a podcast, and “man” the homefront while my wife advances in the work world. And I got to be home with Cozy from the first gurgle to her saying things like “Let’s check it out,” and “I ran like a cheetah.” It’s been a beautiful experience filled with art, adventure, and great love.

And now it’s time for it to end.

The truth is I’ve been looking for work ever since I jumped off the gangplank at PSU. But I had a nice cushion made up of a settlement, savings, some publishing money, and a perfect collection of rare Avengers and Hulk comic books that now (sadly) belong to someone else. A $50,000 loan from my retirement was going to get us through to my next gig. Now, suddenly, I can see the bottom of the well. The money is about gone. Invest the last bucket in Powerball tickets?

Two years ago I thought I could just make a local lateral transition. There was a visiting professorship at Reed College (they wanted a quantitative methods teacher and I’m a qualitative schmoe) and a tenure-track gig at the University of Portland (they could have me but only with my tenure). I was sad but not shocked when those didn’t pan out. (They must not have known how awesome I was.) So I branched out and got an interview at CUNY in Manhattan and then a second interview with the provost. (I must have asked for too much money for that one.) What seemed like it would be a relatively smooth “mid-career” move looked increasingly more and more difficult. On top of the fact that universities are replacing tenure-line professorships with the academic slave-labor known as “adjuncts” and “on-line education,” the person that was applying was me, and, according the rumor mill, I have baggage.

What started off as a few disheartening roadblocks became dozens of rejections. Some positions I was a stretch to qualify for. (I would have made an awesome dean at Eastern Oregon University.) Some positions I was definitely an over-qualified candidate. (After my great interview, nobody could tell me why I didn’t get the job teaching Intro Sociology at Green River Community College.) Some jobs would have pushed me out of my comfort zone. (Oh, how I wanted to be the new executive director of Caldera Arts.) And some jobs were tailor-made for my experience and skills. (Whoever ends up being the new Diversity Program Specialist for the Portland Police, I challenge you to an equity duel.)

Why am I not getting these jobs? You’d think people would want an award-winning professor, published in his field, with a long record of community service, who is likely quoted in your copy of the New York Times or making points on CNN while you’re on the treadmill. Are all the other candidates that much better? Or is something else going on?

I left PSU under a cloud of suspicion. It’s no secret that there were a few higher-ups that had it in for me. They were fueled by the rumor and innuendo that I was some type of campus playboy. A old bogus post on an internet gossip site that had a picture of me with my girlfriend of almost three years and the assertion that she “slept with me for an A” gave them additional ammo. There was never anything of the sort ever in my academic career. No human can say they got any special treatment in any of my classes for anything. But when gossip rules, you can’t win. (Hillary Clinton, I feel your pain.)

Then a “former racist skinhead” named Steven Stroud decided he was going to try everything he could think of to attack me for some perceived slight that existed in his psychotic mind. He began writing numerous letters from his prison cell to the university, accusing me of everything under the sun. Out of pure luck, he finally hit on one thing these powerful few could use.

My crime: My wife was a former student.

That’s all it took. Forget that Andrea and I were consenting adults. Forget that she was the one who first asked me me out (after the class had ended). That was it. I had signed an agreement five years earlier that I would never date a PSU student after a stalker went all Basic Instinct on me and it was a quick way to resolve the matter. Now the torches were relit. They even traveled out to Eastern Oregon to visit this guy in prison to see if there were any more salacious details he could add to their “case.” They were giddy.

I have zero regrets about my relationship with Andrea. We are incredibly happy and more in love every day. And that love produced our beautiful daughter. Cozy is the sun my little planet was destined to revolve around. She will change history. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. My only regret is that I quickly settled my lawsuit against the university. I had the moral high ground and could have won, especially if I took the story to my colleagues, students, and the general public. But we had a new baby and I was scared I would burn up our nest egg on lawyer fees while they used tuition and taxpayer dollars to fund their highly skilled legal team. I settled and thought I could just leave my academic home of twenty years and move on.

Now over two years later it feels like I have been blacklisted; that the rumor-mongers are still waging their campaign against me. I need to work. The loan has to be repaid, the mortgage is due, and my daughter deserves the life I waited 50 years to give her. (I was one of those people who said, for decades, “I can’t have children, I’m not financially stable enough!”) She is so excited to exist in this world, I should be able to give her some security (although I will be eternally grateful to WIC for making sure my child at least had $8 worth of fruits and vegetables each month). This kid already deserves more than I will be able to give her.

So here’s the deal: I’m a passionate worker with a PhD. from Emory University and a long employment record. My last full time salary was $82,000 for a 9-month contract. I will work for less than that, but it’s gotta cover the bills. And I need benefits. Republicans have made it clear they want to kill the Affordable Care Act which, at the moment, provides health care to my family. We’d like to stay in Portland but for a decent job we’ll move to Arkansas and just annoy the locals by playing Bikini Kill and drawing Hitler mustaches on Trump posters.

I was an awesome professor. There’s plenty of people who will tell you that my classes at Portland State changed lives. I’d like a job that makes the world a better place. If you can convince me that selling vacuum cleaners can do that, I’ll listen. But it’s time for me to get back to work. My family is depending on me.

Please share this with anyone who might be able to help. References and my mother’s secret cheesecake recipe available on request. Email: blazakr@gmail.com

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For the love of God, please eat your dinner

April 27, 2017April 28, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 8 Comments

April 27, 2017

My kid could live on Mac and Cheese and chocolate ice cream. In fact, she’d prefer it. She’d happily go into diabetic shock, with some macaroni falling out her mouth while watching Mickey and the Roadster Racers. But she ain’t going out like that. Not if I can help it.

We’ve entered a new phase where Cozy does not want to eat meals. At two-years and eight-months-old she’s asserting her independence by driving us crazy at dinner time. The other night we were trying to get her to eat some wholesome chicken soup and we got as far as getting a spoonful in her mouth but she refused to swallow it. In fact, she walked right into her time-out corner and stared at us, like Robert De Niro in Cape Fear, soup in mouth. “I can see you, parents.”

She’s programmed for maximum sugar intake. If we go through the bakery section at the grocery store, her eyes swell up like a muppet child. She’d sell her soul to Satan for chocolate pudding and turn her mother over to ICE for a lollipop. I feel like I should just hand her a two-pound bag of sugar and let her max-out. It doesn’t help that we live one block from the famous Salt & Straw Ice Cream shop. Anytime we walk out the front door the creamery GPS kicks in and she takes off for a scoop of fudge brownie. Remember when she couldn’t walk? Now I’m chasing her down the street.

I know she gets her sweet tooth from me. I was raised on pie and Now & Laters. My mom got me to eat my carrots by smothering them in brown sugar and my sweet potatoes by baking them with marshmallows. The healthy stuff I wasn’t interested in as a kid. I would sit at the dinner table for hours, staring at a my beets, acting like Gandhi on a hunger strike. (Now, I can’t get enough of yummy beets.) But I’d eat giant bowls of Apple Jacks and slurp down the orange milk afterwards. There’s something in the book of Genesis about the sins of the father being visited upon the children. Well, they got that one fucking right.

Don’t get me wrong. Cozy likes some healthy foods. Baby carrots, (until recently) peaches, and, I’m sure there’s something else. Vanilla yogurt. She was into strawberries until they started making her itch (or she thinks that they do because we were talking about food allergies one day). I mean there are worse things than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and quesadillas, right? (I just realized that queso + tortilla = quesadilla.) She takes her vitamins and pops a few grapes during the day so I don’t think she’s gonna need UNICEF to save her but it’s got mom and dad kinda concerned.

The online research helps. Apparently many toddlers have a dip in calorie intake after the explosion of growth their first two years. And they won’t starve to death, they’re more like grazing college kids than three-meal-a-day adults. But my daughter is pretty sophisticated otherwise, so is it wrong for me to want her to already have a favorite sushi roll instead of demanding another cheese stick and handful of goldfish crackers? I’d be happy if she just ate spaghetti. What kid doesn’t like spaghetti? Mine.

I called my mom and asked for help. It seems that I wasn’t too different than Cozy at this age. Her solution was to cover the healthy food in pudding. (I don’t know why I’m not 3000 pounds.) I think Cozy would see right through that ruse. “Hey, man, why is there chicken in my chocolate pudding?”

Meal time is starting to become a struggle. “I don’t want apple sauce. I want a chocolate bunny!” I think that since she now acts like a little person, we expect her to eat what we’re eating. I get that this is a developmental phase but I’m ready for her to discover the joys of a nice omelette. This is Oregon, she better be woofing down the chanterelles and chinook salmon on wild rice by age three. At the moment, it’s time out with a spoonful of RiceARoni melting in her mouth.

But it’s getting better. We’re trying to be more laissez-faire at meal time instead of hovering over her. You know, we’re just chilling, eating some tacos. And Andrea got a great recipe for sopa de letras (alphabet soup) from her mom that Cozy’s been gobbling down. She’ll eat spaghetti if I tell her it’s worms and I had similar success getting her to (finally) eat turkey dogs by pretending they were fingers. (OK, our kid is weird.) Maybe a portobello burger is in her near future.

The great thing about parenting is that nobody is the first to do it. There’s a whole bunch of experience floating around out there and good folks who are happy to share their wisdom of what works. So the point of this blog is to get some evidence-based practices that don’t involve coating each meal with chocolate frosting or bribing a child endlessly. (“How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”) How do I go from the meal-time showdown to a happy family happily full of beans? Don’t panic, she won’t starve. Help me please.

An Interview with My Dad about Parenting and Gender

April 5, 2017April 6, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

April 5, 2017

Last week I took a Spring Break from this blog. My father was visiting us in Portland. He had just celebrated his 75th birthday in Hawaii and (for some reason) chose to leave a sunny beach for cold and rainy Oregon. I was happy because it had been over a year since we had seen him and Cozy really wanted to see her Grandpa. He took Cozy and I to see Moana (Cozy loved it, powering through the scary part, and I appreciated Disney utilizing a Goddess tale) and we had a belated birthday dinner at Portland City Grill. It was nice to catch up.

It’s an odd thing being around your parents when you’re a parent. You realize how like them you are, whether you want to be or not. I see so much of my dad in me. We even have similar mannerisms. It kinda freaks me out a bit. There are certainly qualities in this man I greatly admire, and a few I’ve worked to limit. How much like this person am I? I tend to think I turned out pretty good. I didn’t become a serial killer or a military contractor or a wife-beater or a guy who spends all his time playing fantasy football. I went to graduate school instead of Wall Street. Also, I like quiche. (There are a few kinks still to be worked out.) He did a pretty good job on the parenting front it seems.

So I thought, while he was here, we’d sit down and I’d ask him what it was like to be a new father of a boy in the mid-1960s, when the world and gender roles were changing. What I got was a very honest conversation about his struggle to find balance between his home life and his work in sales that often took him away from home, a flash of insight into issues that led to my parents divorce when I was 17, and some useful wisdom about how to be a great parent to my daughter. We sat on the couch in my living room talking and I just wanted to ask good questions but as I transcribed our talk I got a greater appreciation for his own journey as a parent.

Randy: So I was born in February 1964. The world was a little different then. Did you know I was going to be a boy?

Dad: No. We talked about it before you were born, about whether we wanted a boy or a girl and we agreed it doesn’t matter the first time, especially the first child, as long as they’re healthy and have all the fingers and toes. It didn’t really matter to us. In fact, we decorated the nursery in yellow so that it didn’t matter whether it was a boy or girl. We changed the decor after it was born, but we were just happy to have a healthy child.

R: Would you have thought differently if I had been born a girl, knowing girls had fewer opportunities?

D: If it was a boy we would have raised it one way, and if it was a girl, we pretty much would have raised it the same way.

R: Did it help that mom had a job before she got pregnant? She didn’t really work after I was born.

D: She was woking in a business office and we agreed that when she was 6 months pregnant that she would stop working and stay home and make sure that she was healthy. We could live on one income and that’s what we did. The second income was nice but it wasn’t necessary. I was making enough money to take care of the family and I really didn’t want her to work. I wanted her to stay home with the baby. And she did.

R: Did she want to work?

D: Yeah, oh yeah. She was always wanting to help out and work and stay active but she found things to do at home and concentrating to getting to that baby to one year, at least.

R: The mid-60s was really the rise of the feminist movement and women discovering their life outside of the home. What did you think about “women’s lib”? Mom has said she was aware of it, but were you thinking it was a big change?

D: I was open minded about it. If she wanted to work she could work. But we had to consider the babysitter situation. We had an elderly lady upstairs that was a good babysitter and she had some girlfriends that would come over and babysit after that year. But she stayed home for about a year before she went back to work. And she was really bored and anxious to get back to work. She wanted to do more than be just a mother.

R: What did you think about her going back to work then?

D: Back then I wanted her to stay at home and take care of the baby and make dinner and do the laundry and all the stuff that women did then. And I was happy just working and having her be the housewife. Now I think the mother should do whatever they feel comfortable doing. If they wanna work, they should work.

R: OK, lets talk about me. Or just raising a boy. I didn’t really turn out like a typical boy. I wasn’t too obsessed with violence or sports. I’d rather just read. When I was little, did you have a philosophy about how to raise a boy?

D: Like all couples with their first child we didn’t have a clue. We were flying by the seat of our pants. From a philosophy standpoint, we didn’t want you to be a soldier. We wanted you to have a happy childhood. That was really important to us. We tried to do things with you that you’d enjoy. We bought that canoe and we used to take you canoeing when you were little. We went on some camping trips and things like that. We involved you and let you see what the world was like but we didn’t have any ideas of the future of what you were going to be or were going to do. You were always such a good kid we didn’t have to go through the challenge of trying to raise you. You kind of took care of yourself.

R: Did you think boys should be raised differently that girls?

D: We just let you do your own thing. We would keep an eye on you and make sure you didn’t get into anything too violent. We moved from the rental home to a house in Parma Heights, a three bedroom ranch house and I can remember you had your own room. It was a fun place. The backyard was fenced in and it had a playground and swing and you used to go out there and have fun by yourself. We would kind of keep an eye from the house and make sure you were OK.

R: We like to think we’re not raising Cozy as a girl but as a person. She’s gonna have to know about the world and that there’s some inequality she’s going to have to wrestle with, but she’s a person first.

D: Even thought it was 50 years ago we did the same thing. We raised you the same way. We didn’t try to make you macho. You’re your own person. You have respect for both genders and that’s important and you still have that gentleness you had as a kid. You never lost that and that shows up in Cozy.

R: You traveled a lot when I was little. Do you think that impacted how I developed?

D: I think I would have been able to more things with you and teach you more things. I tried when I was home to concentrate on teaching you the basic fundamentals and to get you involved in things, in sports, in life, in outdoors, and swimming. That was a big part of me. Then swim team. I tried to keep you involved. We started out with Indian Guides. You were Little Crow and I was Big Crow. We had a lot of fun with that. I tried to get you and your brother involved with things, but I tried to be there, included and supporting you. I think that created a problem with the marriage, actually, because when I was home I was so involved with you guys, I probably didn’t pay enough attention to Sandy (my mom). I think it created a lot of boredom on her part because a lot of the time she wasn’t working. She was at home taking care of you guys. There has to be a balance there and I didn’t recognize that balance. I was too intent on making as much money as I could so you guys could have a good life. You were always in neighborhoods and homes that were, um, “upscale.” You always had friends, it was safe, you could walk to church. I always tried to have the family in a place that was safe and fun.

R: OK, last question. What’s your general advice to being a parent to someone Cozy’s age.

D: You’ve gotta give them room to grow. Encourage them to do the right thing, of course. And push them in a direction they don’t want to go but pay attention and see what they enjoy and like to do and just kind of guide them in the direction to their future. They’ll tell you. They’ll let you know what they like. Cozy’s got a great start because she’s got an artist mom and a well-educated dad. You guys are in that period where you’re in a transition now. And when you find out what you want to do next it’s going to be good for you and good for the family. When you’re happy the rest of the family is happy.

That’s certainly a good piece of truth. Talking to my dad reminded me of Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, and how my mom must have felt a bit stifled in that home in Parma Heights. Those were times when gender roles in middle class homes were really being re-examined. But it also made me think about how much free reign I had as a little boy, to explore the yard, the neighborhood streets, and the woods. That had to play a role in my sense of independence. And that’s what we’re doing with our daughter. So my father will be a part of her independent spirit.

Postscript: My mother just read this and thinks a lot of it is just wrong. She used words like “male chauvinist” and “doormat.” I’m gonna do a parallel interview with her about this period and get her side of the story. It’s funny how we (re) remember our own lives.

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Watching the Wheels

Feminist Fatherhood

Parenting

DWM: Dating While Married

My last hours of 57, when I grew up.

I was 5 once, too!

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

Dad Love: The Wonder of Parenthood

And Jill came tumbling after. Why? Purging sexist kids’ stories.

The World of Wonder in the Backyard

The Need to Work

For the love of God, please eat your dinner

An Interview with My Dad about Parenting and Gender