Sometimes, when i really want to drive myself crazy, i look back and try to figure out where i went wrong with things. All in the name of education, of course; you know, to learn from my mistakes and move on as a better person. But there are some things i never seem to understand.
Like the Don. My lovely first ex and i met in the Green Party; i’d been an environmental artist for a while and was trying to do my little bit to get some law in place around pollution issues. Don had been working with a local NDP politician for a few months and had soured on promises unrendered. The first time i saw him, i thought him the most strikingly handsome man i’d ever seen. Strike one, girls.
He also seemed smitten for some reason; maybe because i was practically the only woman in the room. I must say that for ‘feminist politicians’, the Green party had remarkably few females… and all three of us were pressed into minute taking and office work quite quickly as a matter of course, leaving the males (as usual) to argue over semantics while we served the coffee. But that’s another matter.
As a selfish female, i left the kitchen and fought with the men over sexist structures within the organization. Maybe that was my first mistake – becoming a Frightening Female. And after getting one of the worst ‘users and abusers’ thrown out, the respect that was offered to me was both wary and defensive. Strangely, the guy i ousted was both a roommate and friend of the Don.
You frighten me, he said one day, in the midst of some conflict. i smiled absently, not really listening; the leader had just informally nominated me as the national spokesperson and i was frightened enough, myself, with the responsibility this might carry. But the Don was not to be deterred; he attached himself to me for several months and made himself useful as a research associate and vocal defender. This, combined with his natural charms, was enough to make him my companion.
One morning, shortly after we became involved with each other, Don pushed me awake and demanded breakfast.
I opened one thick eye and husked, Get it yourself. You’re a big boy now.
I turned over while Don fussed a bit, then stomped out of bed and down the stairs. At this point, we were not living together, and so he found himself stranded in an unfamiliar kitchen.
HONEY, i heard wafting up through the floorboards, WHERE’S THE CEREAL?
In the cupboard, i answered, covering my head with a blanket.
If he could find the cereal aisle in the vast complex of a supermarket, surely he could find a box of the stuff somewhere in the four cupboards downstairs, i thought.
Some rustling. Another cry.
WHERE’S THE CHINA?
In the other cupboard, i said, grumpily.
It bears mentioning, here, that I’d been living out on my own for seven years and was largely independent. Don, on the other hand, had only moved from the family home three months prior. To my incredulity, his mom still picked up his laundry in the morning and delivered it, freshly folded and pressed, in the afternoon… ‘just to help out’. He was a twenty-five-year old infant. My child-raising began, not with a child, but with a fully-grown man.
WHERE ARE THE SPOONS? came the next, predictable cry.
In the drawer, i yelled back, growling openly now.
How could anyone be so old, and yet so helpless?
I’d already taken his family to task on the subject of infantilization. It did not make me popular there, either. This was just the way things were done. Once again i was the girl who spouted frogs and snakes whenever she opened her mouth. So i worked, instead, on developing Don’s confidence and self-reliance, with the same skills i’d learned as a life skills worker in a home for mentally handicapped adults.
I waited.
And right on schedule came the cry:
WHERE’S THE MILK?
I told myself not to go. After all, finding the milk is pretty easy for most grown-ups, even when they’re half-awake. This was clearly a ploy, a manipulation to force me into an enabler role.
In the FRIDGE! i shouted, sitting up, all awry.
I CAN’T FIND IT!!
BEHIND THE JUICE! (shoving feet in slippers and waiting)
WHERE!?
Oh, that did it. i went. Gruttering and complaining, but i went. Pointed out where everything was, and even helped him gather together his little bowl of cereal. I should have known better. The entire debacle of the next four years of marriage can be pinned down to this one fatal turning.
Next time, i will remember.
Whenever a stray comes to the door, never, ever feed it, or it will be impossible to get rid of it from that time forth.
And no; i never did become the national spokesperson for the Green Party.
Relatively Speaking 