M*A*S*H // HAVING IT ALL

Taking a Hot Minute to Appreciate My Baby Daddy — a King

A TradBrag

A picture-holder leans against my wall. It is a 90s-era ribbon board with straps that hold physical photos.

When my eyes blink stupidly open for the day, it is often the first thing I see. Like he and I lying in bed on a Saturday morning, the years with my children’s father stretch out. I see Joe with our kids in Christmas card shots — in 2007, impossibly long ago, yet yesterday. And again, there he is — holding his 4th issue in front of a poppy field in the Antelope Valley.

A king.

There is an ultraconservative meme group on Facebook called TradWest. There’s a lot of “Christ is King.” There’s a lot of hypermasculine flexing about having yer woman birth six kids and stay home to homeschool — ideally barefoot, in an Instagrammable flower field, and without shit-else she longs to do.

I read it, I hate-read it. I am amused by the reductionism and also repulsed. And I find that some of the memes resonate, and I feel afraid.

You see, I cannot be this happy in pictures and life. It’s inconceivable for me, a non-tradwife, to feel so fulfilled by my husband and children. I wasn’t supposed to have hands on all of this, besides. Especially not a handsome husband and partner and babydaddy who may as well have stepped out of a spiral-bound notebook’s game of M*A*S*H.

“You will drive a hot pink car;…you and your husband will have…[my friend counts and crosses things off]…six! Kids. HahahaHAHA, six kids. Just think of your vagina, it’s prolly gonna be huge…”

“…You’ll be a writer and a memer and a mom. And you will marry a guy from California.”

Strikethrough the hot pink car, for now. Cross out the vagina joke. But what of the partner’s — the dad’s — occupation, if the M*A*S*Her’s is so vividly foretold? Is it sexist not to care?

Probably. But to me, it does not matter one goddamned bit what else Joe does. Or how or whether he earns, whether he’s religious, if he knows he’s God’s gift (he does not), or whether he looks stacked. His arms wrap around my waist from behind me, and we look from bed to wall at all we have together.

In a minute, he’ll get up and make hot breakfast for the kids.

But for now, my king is here to touch and hold.

Lindy Vogel is a Santa Cruz-based essayist, humorist, and mom of six. Follow her on Instagram, subscribe to her Medium content, and follow Sweary Mommy for more gratuitous gratitudinas.