I think most people take modesty for granted as a basic human right. There’s something hard to describe about having parents that don’t conform to the normal rules like wearing clothes, and who tell dirty jokes to children or discuss their sex life in intimate detail with them. Couple that with a stepmother who yelled at gas station attendants when she thought the prices are too high—“I don’t appreciate your price gouging!”—and once stood up in the middle of a movie and yelled at the screen, “This sucks! It’s not fair that he died! He was supposed to live!” I was permanently off-balance. I didn’t know how I was supposed to act, so I watched other people. I mimicked proper behavior, like I was learning a foreign culture. I felt like a method actor, trying to pass as a normal kid. But having fuzzy boundaries gave me an unstable base, and that meant that I was always on the defensive. Like the lowest wolf in the pack, it seemed like everyone was a potential threat, except my mother. Did I snap and snarl unnecessarily at my brother that day in Gitsis? Was I too reactionary, defensive? It seems so in retrospect. No other boundary incursion occurred after that—accidental or otherwise. He returned to being the one person I was safe with in my family of origin.
It is hard to be thirteen, or sixteen. It’s hard when there are no rules and you have to make them up on your own. It is hard when you aren’t allowed to say that you don’t want your parents to see you naked anymore. I was primed to take offense. What I did know was that I didn’t have words to explain how a glance from my lesbian stepmother felt like a man’s gaze. I wasn’t allowed to suggest that even though my father was a doctor, I did not want to change clothes in front of him. Modesty was not an option either in my mother’s house in New York nor my father’s house in Alaska. Eyes like fingers traveled across my teenaged skin. Constant micro-aggressions kept my nerve endings on high alert. I hyperventilated often, and told people I had asthma, even though my doctor told me it was all in my head.
I did what any sensible kid would do—okay, maybe not what even most sensible kids would do—but I found community with the born-again Christians. The women at church made very clear rules. I was forgiven for my misdeeds and given a blueprint for staying on the right side of appropriate. I was adopted by a new pack, and had a new alpha, but it’s hard to shake off your family of origin. Sure, I could go to the Christian Youth Organization meetings and sing songs about Jesus and try to pretend I didn’t feel dorky, but when they told me that I was sinning by wearing stretch pants to school, I never went back. There was no way I was buying that I was responsible for causing impure thoughts in men. I had too much feminist ingrained in me for that. It seemed belonging to a group was overrated. All I ever wanted was to form a family of my own.
Once I was married and had my own children, I was finally just like everyone else. Then, the differentness of my family was one generation removed. Oh, I still played the pronoun game when talking to strangers. My stepmother’s androgynous name, Pat, made it simple to mislead people, and I did it easily and with a light touch. But I only did it when I didn’t trust someone. Most of the time, I mentioned my parents’ sexuality casually as it came up in conversation, and if acquaintances expressed shock, their discomfort sparked my derision instead of shame. It told me that these new people would never be part of my tribe, and I no longer cared about fitting in with theirs.
It was only complicated when I visited any of my parents. Both of my ex-husbands have seen my stepmother and my father naked on multiple occasions, and as much as my ex-spouses begged me to make my parents wear pants, I had no control over either of them. Stepmother swam in the pond in a white T-shirt and white underpants with a hole showing her crack when my first ex-husband and I visited, and she often gardened in her underwear, even in the front yard. “It looks like a bathing suit!” she said. No one agreed with her. When my father came to visit, he was a fan of giving goodnight hugs in a T-shirt that ended at his navel, his full, blue-headed genitalia swinging in the wind. Neither of my husbands appreciated the “let it all hang out” philosophy.
In my house, children are allowed to remain innocent. I do not watch my ten-year-old change clothes and he is allowed to take as long as he needs in the bathroom. I do not let my youngest child do naked bottom dances in front of his older brother, because it embarrasses him. When my eldest went on an overnight school trip, I allowed him to bring a bathing suit to wear in the shower, as he requested. I teach my boys that no one has a right to look at them without clothing if they don’t want them to. I let my boys wear dresses or camouflage pants or superhero costumes or whatever outfit matches the identity they want to try on that day. I let them visit all of their grandparents, but I don’t let them spend the night with any of them. They are my wolf pups, and I protect them.
the fight
When Girl was seventeen and in her senior year of high
