I'm a misogynist...

I have always described myself as a feminist. I'm a little reactionary in some of my politics and I have an abiding passion for Edmund Burke that makes me susceptible to the rhetoric of tea partiers, Fox commentators, and anyone else who quotes him with abandon - but I can juxtapose Wollstonecraft against Burke and find just as much to agree with even though they were mortal enemies. I'm a working mother - an executive - and I know how much I owe to the women in the generation before me who shrugged off their shackles and beat a path for me to follow. I'm pro-choice. I read Gertrude Stein and Gloria Steinem.  If you would have asked me yesterday, I would have called myself a socially-liberal feminist.

But I'm not.

And here's how I know - I forgive him more than I forgive her. It's misogyny. A woman should care about her children. A woman should love her children enough to fight for them, or at least to keep from having multiple kids and giving them away. A woman shouldn't walk away. A man, though - well, shouldn't we just be grateful that he was there, that he talked to us in utero, that he cared for her when she was pregnant, that he didn't drive her to the abortion clinic or drive away. That he went to the hospital, signed the paternity papers, and signed away his rights. He stuck around long enough to give me away, so he - he can be forgiven almost anything. Her? Not so much.

I don't agree with these feelings. I think they're sentiments that Sarah Palin would agree with, and that terrifies me. The reasoning is specious - but this isn't reason. It's just feelings, and that's what I feel. She should have tried harder. She isn't much of a mother.

She did it three times.  I have another half-sibling somewhere out in the world, not his, but hers - and she gave that one up as well. Four children, and she kept one. I don't know that I can forgive her.

I've forgiven him everything. And I hate myself for that.

Family History

I met my aunt, in person. She's the only one who lives in the same metro area that I was raised in, and that's just coincidence. We had dinner - my husband, my son, her husband, and us. My aunt takes after a side of the family that I don't, so we don't look alike. We have the same sense of humor, though, and that was wonderful. I'm glad that I met her first - it was less charged, and I feel better prepared for some of the upcoming reunions that will involve my immediate family.

Anyway, she gave me a photo album. It contains pictures of my father's family going back to the 1840's, when photography was new. It's amazing to trace them down through the years, as their resemblance to me grows stronger and stronger. It's amazing to look at someone born a hundred years ago and think, "I have her chin"...these are things that I knew, intellectually, were missing from my life. But having them - oh, that's another thing entirely. More than any other photo, I keep going back to the one taken shortly after my birth. My grandmother stands with her children; my uncle, my aunt and her first husband, and my father. And my mother. His hand is on her shoulder, and he's looking over the top of her head. They're staring into the camera. I'm the only grandchild at that point in time. And I'm missing. I'm a thousand miles away, I'm toddling out behind the barn, watching the horses, playing with my dog. I'm not there - but I'm in the world. I have a life unfolding, but all I see in that picture is my not-there-ness, a space in her arms where I should have been. So - gifts. That come wrapped in the pain of knowing that the picture is incomplete.

Is it wrong to think about photoshopping myself in? I'm tempted, just to see what it would have looked like if they had, you know...kept me.

It does hurt.