Yeah, stepping away from the World of Warcraft diaries for a moment.
It's no secret that things have been, well, interesting lately. Chinese-curse interesting.
But my wife and I have always had a partnership - neither one of us "wears the pants" in the family, but we reach decisions through consensus. Personally, the stereotypical masculine-dominated household has no appeal to me - I got married to have someone to fight at my back, not be an additional burden upon it.
So understand that when I say "my wife asked my permission" for something, this is something that, in the near two decades of our marriage, I can count on one hand with fingers left over.
But, for this, my wife asked permission.
She's started to look for work again and our local Planned Parenthood has an opening in their childcare. No, I'm not going to be specific, and no, I don't have a problem with my wife working for Planned Parenthood. I know that less than two percent of what they do is abortion and that, being a guy, it's really not my place to say whether or not they do so. I also know that many people, women and men, rely on Planned Parenthood for desperately needed healthcare, and with my work the way it is, we could easily be among them.
I also know that we homeschool, and either we put the Little into public school and latchkey her, or she accompanies her mother to work. I suppose she could accompany me, but with me working temp jobs, I won't know from one week to the next whether that would be possible.
And I know there are threats. Even here, in what is laughably called "blue-state California", there are wingnuts and extremists and ours are extra bad to compensate. Do I want those signs shoved in my wife's and daughter's faces when they go in to help take care of children? Do I want them on the spot if (though a part of me, and not a small part says "when") there's an attack or a bombing or a shooting? Will some slope-browed fanatic decide to kill my loved ones to send them to Jesus?
I said yes. It was not easy for me, as it's my job to put myself where there is danger that they might be safe. But I know that, being a Moody Loner, I tend to exaggerate the dangers, and odds are I worry over nothing.
But what does it say about us, in 2011, thirty-eight years after Roe v. Wade, that my wife has to ask my permission to apply to work at a women's health clinic, and I have to ponder the danger to her?