I feel violated this morning. Or rather, I still violated from last night.
It was about 10:30 p.m., and I was standing outside the restaurant where the Hillary faithful had gathered to watch the debate between their woman (experienced, ready to lead on day one, battle-tested) and that lightweight (all flash and no substance, inexperienced, unprepared for the Republican assault) they call Obama.
I am, as I’ve written before, an Obamaniac, but my wife is pro-Hillary, and I wanted to support her, and there seemed something nicely feminist about taking our daughter Jolie to support the woman candidate, so anyway, there we were, outside Guero’s.
The debate had ended about an hour before, and Hillary had just arrived at Guero’s to give a post-debate pep talk to her Austin hardcore supporters. Jess was inside, about ten feet away from the candidate, and Jolie and I were outside, behind the police line and the stern-looking Secret Service men, waiting to catch a glimpse of Hillary when she left the restaurant.
Jolie and I were, as you might imagine, an appealing site at this very girl/woman power event, and already, in the past few minutes, four or five people had come over to coo at Jolie, say nice things about how cute she was, and (metaphorically) pat me on the back for bringing my daughter out to support the woman who could be the first woman president of the United States.
And then (and here’s where things get ugly) a woman in a navy blue coat starts talking to Jolie and me, and for a few seconds it’s like the previous interactions. She even gets a big smile from Jolie, which is a pretty awesome, knee-buckling gift to receive.
Then she squeezes one of Jolie’s feet, and notices that it’s a bit cold (the temperature was in the high 50s), and comments on it. "Oh, her foot’s so cold," she says, and makes a sympathetic noise. And I smile and say, softly, "yeah, but she’s fine." And then the woman says it again. And for the next few minutes (in truth, it was probably just the next minute or two, but it felt like a long time), she kept at it. "Oh, I feel so bad for her, her feet her so cold." "Oh, I’ll rub your feet for you." "Oh, I wish I had some socks to give you."
And so on and so on, interspersed with her rubbing of my daughter’s feet and her bending down a bit to wrap one of Jolie’s feet in her coat. And I’m just steaming, though I’m keeping my anger in check because I’m conflict averse, because I am, in fact, feeling a bit guilty that Jolie doesn’t have socks (I’d thought about going back to the car, earlier, to get them, but didn’t want to miss my glimpse of Hillary and Jolie seemed really happy anyway), and because I’m figuring that sooner or later this woman is going to leave us alone.
Finally, after it became apparent that this woman was going to keep on until I acknowledged the righteousness of her cause and departed to ensconce my daughter’s feet in velvet, I raised my voice a bit, added an edge of annoyance, and said, "Really, she’s fine." And that was the end of it. But oh man, was I pissed. I still am.
At her, of course, for her presumption. I mean, to be justified in telling a parent, in essence, that they’re being neglectful of their child, you’ve got to have more to work with than a slightly cold foot on an overtly happy baby (Jolie was smiling, and making happy gurgling noises).
I’m also angry at myself, for letting it go on so long, for letting somebody else –a frickin’ stranger, no less — step in and judge me for so long without telling her to back the fuck off (as I said, I’m angry). And for still feeling, on some level, that as a man I have to defer to the judgment of women when it comes to parenting.
I realize that from the outside, what happened probably doesn’t seem like so much, but it pushed so many buttons in me. Resentment about the various people in my life who I suspect are judging our parenting. Insecurity about my passivity and my reluctance to assert myself in the world. Anxiety about somehow making parenting mistakes that harm Jolie, Power struggles between Jess and me over the care of Jolie.
In a way, saying that I feel violated is a simplification of that big blob of feelings, but I wonder whether, when people say they feel violated, the big blob is often what they mean. It’s not just that someone wronged them, it’s that the wrong that was done struck them at just the right vector to lay bare all their own insecurities, fears, anxieties, resentments and conflicts.
I’m more angry and hurt now, the day after a moderately obnoxious woman made a scene out of my daughter’s cold feet, than I was the day after that punk punched me in the head in Wilmington.
