My Kaiser general practitioner was casual while taking the telederm photos of my face. "You will probably hear from dermatology sometime next week, maybe by Wednesday." I had gone to her for a look-see at a stubborn, anodyne spot above my eyebrow that won't heal. Not thirty minutes later, on a Friday afternoon mind you, the call came in from dermatology's kind-but-clearly-death-message-carrying RN: "We'd like to see you to biopsy it first thing Monday morning." She went right up to the edge of augured and urgent yet ... pleasant.

My first thought in that moment: I'm 50 and dying. My second thought: that motherfucker. 

Not the Kaiser RN, my lily-livered birth father. 

One of the few things I know about him is that he died from a "rare facial cancer" a few years after I reached out to him only to be rebuffed. Twice. His sister (my aunt—one of two I have not met, but not the writer aunt who lives in the East Bay) could not recall if his illness was related to his skin or his mouth or what but she remembers "rare" and "face." He had quit smoking "in the '70s" like everyone else. That's all she could recount on the cause of his death during our singular, stilted conversation. I shared a few things with her too. Like the fact that he was married when he knocked up my then seventeen-year-old birth mother (who didn't know he was married). He didn't help her out, nor did he tell his family about me (I almost wrote "his illegitimate child" there but I hate that phrase as all children, it turns out, are legitimate ... so no ... not using it). Needless to say, I spent an inordinate amount of time online researching melanoma, longing for any data point, any sliver of information connected to him ... and me. This much I learned: it's hereditary. Thanks, dad. 

I had a lot of reasons to be angry at him, even posthumously, but on the aforementioned recent Friday afternoon, I had a new one: because of him, I'd be dead at 50, leaving three daughters, one financée and one dog behind.

The weekend was, in a word, edifying. Would I quit my job(s) and take trips with loved ones to see more loved ones, keeping a journal along the way with words of wisdom for said loved ones? Would I move to Glen Ellen and start a nonprofit for the underserved? Would I curl up in a fetal position and watch The People v. OJ Simpson during the day? Would I try (again) to look certain people in the eye and apologize for my mistakes? Would I cook for the girls around the clock, safe at my stove station?  Would I sell it all and homeschool them near the Amalfi Coast?

To wit, would I finally reframe the saccharine question: What would you do if you weren't afraid?, to the trenchant question: What would you do if you were dying?

A half dozen distaff friends and family members with breast cancer are grappling with similar inquiries. On this particular weekend, I would join them. Thoughts awhirl, perspectives disrupted. 

By Sunday night, my home was reordered, re-filed, recycled, re-labled. Drawer contents were perfect. I tend to move my hands when my heart is exploding. 

Come Monday at 9:50a the Kaiser dermatologist strolled into the exam room, took one look at my forehead and declaimed: "Melanoma is not on the menu."

Six words. 

"Join the biggest club in Marin—the basal cell carcinoma club. Again." I had one removed from my chest last year; should have been my first clue.

"Thank you," I exhaled, understanding in full that this close call was the best thing that could have happened to this 50 year old. 

"Cheapest new lease I've ever signed," I quipped, hiding the Kleenex I was clutching.

"You're welcome," said the good doctor. 

In a cart-before-horse world ...

Open letter to POTUS

* Disclaimer: I use "he" herein meaning supporting spouse. Women often earn more than men. Here, I'm generalizing. 

Dear Hils, 

Now that you're POTUS, I have a couple pressing inequities I would like you to remedy. Yet another disclaimer: As a white woman with a doctorate degree, I understand that I'm privileged. And to be clear: I'm not a victim, but I am an equal. So take care of the big stuff first: immigration reform, race relations, climate change. But once you dispense with those quagmires, please consider a disadvantaged group that deserves a little attention and legal protection: divorced mothers (hereinafter: "D-Moms").

I'm one of them. But this is not (just) about me. It's about my friends, my past and present paying and pro bono clients, women from all walks of life confronted with the same endemic, lack-of-parity-shot-through-a-fossilizzed-biased system. 

​So many hyphens, so little time.

I can't point to one branch of government here. All three have failed D-Moms. 

Here's the rub, Hils. As you know, most D-Moms were the primary caregivers when our children were young. We chose to stay home to mold and hold them when they were zero-to-three because we read Brazelton and Co. and understood (or were guilted into believing) that the first few years were make or break. We leapt off our lucrative career tracks carrying infants in Bjorns, family debt on credit cards, pounds on hips. We knew it would be worth it, because our kids were worth it. Meanwhile, our significant others (aka the secondary / weekend caregivers; let's call them, collectively, Fun Daddies!) thrived in the Paid Workplace. Their careers flourished as they scaffolded their way to polished métier perfection. (I'm tipping my hand here.) We, au contraire, moved a la somnambulist from pediatrician appointment to park district facility. We hosted playdates (aka spit-up-poop-out-"learn"-to-share nightmares). We stuffed goldfish-filled tupperware into unfashionable totes. We withered, intellectually and socially, donning mismatched socks and scrunchies in our hair. We did so with bells on, in the name of Family because we loved them.

We remembered (faintly) sex. 

We looked up a decade later and were still under- or unemployed. Because although our children (probably gifted by now for sure, see e.g., maternal sacrifice) were attachment-imprinted and safely ensconsed in the Great American Classroom, that same classroom required our presence in a volunteer capacity once a week for 1.5-2 hours, not including the seasonal and annual fundraisers, aka unpaid indenture—way to go, state legislators! If only. Except the reality was that most of us had two or three classrooms that needed our help, thank you very much. Unpaid part-time job. No question. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when serving up 15 meal portions a day (sans help, Hils, try to picture it) was not optional, paid work outside the home—on top of the unpaid work inside the home and the classroom—was often a tall order.

When we could exhale BECAUSE MOMMY NEEDS THE BATHROOM RIGHT NOW FOR FOUR MINUTES OF PERSONAL HYGIENE THIS WEEK we focused our gaze only to behold ... love lost, careers defunct, flames extinguished. Superior-subordinate roles seemingly fixed. When our divorces were final* (*meaning the therapists, mediators and consulting attorneys were paid, the co-parenting plans were in place) and the dust settled, we were dismayed to learn the following: 

Rub #1. Our earning capacity was irreversibly suppressed. Our kids' tutors would be earning more than us for quite some time. 

​Rub #2. If we were to move on with our lives, in the form of another relationship, and actually move in with a new lifemate (in lieu of the more treacly soulmate; lifemate is harder/better/more realistic), our family support decreases. By a lot. This is true even if a D-mom's new live-in has his own "first family" to support, which he usually does because D-moms gravitate to age-appropriate partners. 

By contrast, if Fun Daddy!--who is earning five-to-six times more than us D-moms because, ya know, he didn't take several-to-ten years to wipe asses, curate citizens, hone the highly specialized skill that is sibling conflict management--moves in with someone, guess what? NOTHING happens to support. This is true, Hils, even if he moves in with a billionaire or a post-acquisition windfall recipient. Hypothetically, of course.

It's incumbent upon me to point out, pointedly, that this disparity is patently unfair and wrong. Why is the D-Mom penalized for having chosen her kids over her career when it mattered most? Can we fix this? Can we simply have the people living together at any point in time add up their net AGI—a crucial number to anyone who has survived the emotional armageddon that is divorce—and proceed accordingly and objectively unrelated to gender? After all, the ex's new lifemate might be (usually is, who are we kidding?) younger and/or pre-career gap. She might still be making bank. Or an heiress. Whatever the circumstance, why does her $$ NOT count when it comes to calculating support but the D-Mom's lifemate's $$ does?  

How about the following legislative initiatives? I know you know people, Hils: 

1. Inoculate support levels from modification based on the supported spouse's living situation and/or marital status (for that matter) UNLESS the supporting spouse agrees, by way of the MSA (marital settlement agreement to the uninitiated), to increase support commensurately should he move in with someone or change his marital status. 

2. Require employers of supporting spouses to continue to provide health insurance coverage to the supported spouse as a primary insured as long as the supporting spouse is so employed and for the duration of the support period UNLESS the supported spouse opts out, presumably because she lands—by some act of divine intervention or nepotism which I'm sure happens 3% of the time—a full-time job that provides comparable coverage. One thing we know for certain, Hils: COBRA is a joke for D-Moms. It's laughably exorbitant; no one can afford it. Mine would have been $700/month plus $67 for dental; my ex pays $268 pre-tax for his coverage, which also covers our kids. And, btw, why should I have to rely on his coverage for our kids? I do all the admin on All Things Insurance for hours on end in any event; why not allow me to continue as a primary insured?

In a nutshell, New Enlightened POTUS Of a Certain Gender, it would be G.R.E.A.T. if D-Moms could get on with their lives without adverse and disparate pecuniary penalty.

Can you make that happen? 

We paid our dues in kind, you see, and our kids are statistically better off for it.

Rebuilding our lives is hard enough.

Why not level the scales of justice? 





* But it's never really final, is it?