Sound familiar? Maybe you have said it about some woman after you witnessed her behavior. Maybe you have thought it but not said it out loud. Maybe you hear this all too often directed at you. I am here to offer some thoughts...
I had an experience not too long ago on an airplane that brought this very line of discourse and attitude up. I wouldn't have thought of it as a lesson at the time but teachers and lessons show up in the strangest places and in the smallest of ways if we are open to learning.
The Experience
We were boarding a plane from Dallas to Detroit. As we walked toward the back of the plane (we end up here often with three kids), I saw the following scene. A man was sitting with two little girls in the seats next to him. They were adorable and twins-I have no proof of this except that I have twins and I just know. There was a woman across the isle from him sitting by herself, she is his wife. They are speaking to their children in two languages and I'm not sure what the language that wasn't English was, but it doesn't matter. I am always jealous when I hear families talking two languages, so I liked them already. The girls were around two or three, again I have no proof of this, but I'm a teacher/mom and I just know. I can tell that they are spirited by the way that they are yelling loudly and climbing the seats. I like spirited kids who aren't afraid to play and yell and climb, so I liked them already.
I always feel a connection to other families flying with children. I have empathy for those with young children because I remember those days and it is hard, and I have excitement watching parents with older children fly because I can see how it gets better and easier. So I can't explain it, except that I feel tuned into other families on airplanes. I hear them. I watch them. I pay attention. Maybe it is weird but I can't help myself. I study people.
So the plane is about to take off. The girls sit down in the seats next to the dad and the mom is across the aisle. Seat belts are on, the family is chanting "I wanna go to Detroit" together, it is cute, and there is excitement for take off. My family is zoning out, and settling in, ready for the last flight of the day.
Before the fastened seat belt sign goes off, and we reach our cruising altitude, all hell breaks loose. It is a hell that will last the entire flight and follow us to the baggage claim. If you were a passenger on this plane who was anywhere in eye or ear shot of this couple and their children here is what you would have witnessed:
multiple trips to the bathroom sometimes physically pushing themselves in front of others in line
spilled drinks
yells to stop hitting
yells to stop taking snacks from their sister
children running the aisles
children climbing over chairs
children standing on seats and refusing to wear seatbelts
a mother yelling repeatedly at her children and them not listening to her
a mother and a father bribing with promises of iced coffee treats for children in exchange for good behavior and threatening to take it away for bad behavior
screaming
crying
a frantic mother and a desperate father
a giving up and letting the children shred to pieces the safety booklets, barf bags, and flight magazines
upset and angry passengers passing judgement on these children and their parents
children placing their hands on the baggage claim system with their parents not even close to them to see what was happening
children running around the baggage claim, pushing others, grabbing at luggage, and trying to climb on the luggage carousel and other passengers looking around to see who the parents were and physically grabbing the children to keep them from getting hurt
Y'all, it was stressful. I heard so many people commenting about, "Where was their mother?" and why wasn't she watching her children. I heard people call the mother crazy, I heard them say she was a bad mom and had no control over her children. I heard a few grumblings about them as a couple, but mostly the mom. She was also pregnant, if I forgot to mention that part. So I heard whispers of how is she going to handle another baby also. She was loud, she was frantic, she was emotional, she was crazy! Or so it seemed.
The Truth
I'm sure if you have flown before you realize that sometimes you hear a little more than you would like from the people sitting directly in front of or behind you. It is like people forget they are so close to people and are fooled into thinking that everyone around them is wearing noise canceling headphones. My seat was in front of the mother of the two girls on this flight. I came off of that flight frazzled, stressed out, drained and triggered. Not because of the behavior of the little girls, or the mother really, but because of the husband. I'll tell you why.
As soon as the plane was in the air, he turned to his wife and told her that because he was a doctor, he was going to have to apply for his fellowship soon. I did not go to medical school so I'm not sure, but I think that this is the optional part of being a doctor after your residency where you can pursue a specialty. I could be wrong. This was a surprise to the wife. She kept saying "What? Why are you telling me this now? What does this mean? I thought you were done. Seven years, seven years I have given up for this and now you are telling me there is more?" He has no reaction to her except to start telling her that they will have to move for this. He starts telling her the options. Miami, Philly, San Diego, etc. and she is in disbelief. From what I gathered by what I could hear, she had the understanding that they were moving back home, which I assume was in New York or New Jersey since I kept hearing her ask about possibilities near there.
As he is telling her places, she is getting more and more distraught. He told her they were going home, she has given up so much for his career already, what if she wanted to work too? He basically tells her she is being silly and there is no choice in this if he is going to go after his goals. He laughs at her suggestion of working, asks her what on earth she could do that could make the money they need to support their lifestyle. She starts to clam up.
He then suggests that they live apart for the year or so of this fellowship. He picks what sounds best for him and he will come visit her on weekends maybe. She shuts down. She starts to agree with him. She gets sad, I can hear it in her voice. He doesn't notice.
All the while, the kids are running wild. They are sitting next to the husband but he is ignoring them. He has no games, no food, no activities or things for them to do. He ignores them completely as he talks to his wife and reads from his phone to her possible places he would want to go. The mom yells at the children from her seat across the aisle and shouts bribes, threats, and handles all misbehavior. Her yelling gets louder the more he presses her on where he wants to go for his fellowship and by the time he has beaten her down with his suggestion that he just move away and do his thing, she is all out crazy sounding when it comes to her children. She goes back and forth between irrational threats and yelling, and letting them do whatever they want because she has given up.
The husband occasionally tries to reign the girls in but usually only when the flight attendant is around to witness. He comes off looking like the calm, cool and collected one while the mom looks crazy and out of control.
Two men in front of me discuss how bad of a mother she is and how she is making their flight miserable. They even turn to me at one point and say that they haven't heard my children at all like it was a compliment to my skills as a mother. They said nothing to my husband about his parenting skills.
When we were landing (early I might add), the man leaned over to the woman and told her that they better get off the plane and get their bags quick because he had to get to work. Ummm...you didn't know you had to work? You scheduled a flight that would make you late for work? I was confused. As I stood to get off the plane, the woman pushed her way in front of me and my family to get off the plane first. My husband and others were pissed at her for doing that. Then at baggage claim, she was frantically circling the luggage carousel looking for their bags. The husband stood and looked at his phone while the two little girls ran amok. I heard him say to his wife as we waited (our luggage was late on the carousel because we landed early) that if the luggage didn't come soon, he was going to have to leave to go to work. She looked at him and said, "What am I supposed to do I don't have the stroller, I will have the girls and all the luggage?" He basically told her tough shit. She starts her circling again at a frantic pace.
In the meantime, her girls remind her that she promised them iced coffee treats. So she leaves to go get the coffee, leaving her husband with the kids. He does not watch them. They leave after getting the luggage and I hear people talking about them. How could she give her kids coffee, why was she not watching them close, can't watch your kids but make sure you get your iced coffee, reward bad behavior with treats etc.
Impact on me
This window into another person's world rocked mine. I could have easily explained it all away with it was just a bad flight, it was just upsetting to watch, but it was more than that. I needed to see this. there was something all too familiar in this for me, there was a truth in this for me as a woman.
There is a saying in recovery circles that basically says how do you know someone is an addict or alcoholic? Look at their family, look at those closest to them. They will appear crazy. Their behaviors in reaction to the alcoholic are irrational, desperate, crazy, and often louder and more noticeable than even that of the alcoholic. So the person with the problem, comes off looking normal, and they act like the person who is reacting to them is crazy, over reacting, and overly emotional.
I'll give you an example. When I was younger I worked with my ex-husband at the same nursing facility. At work one time my husband borrowed a cigarette from a coworker on our lunch break. I got extremely upset and tried to knock the cigarette out of his hand. I yelled at him and the person who gave it to him and stormed off fuming. I heard all of the talk about me from friends. I was angry, I was crazy, I was a bitch, I was controlling, etc. Nobody knew that he had drank too much the night before and then woke up feeling bad and took it out on me. I was verbally and emotionally assaulted all morning and afternoon until we got out of the vehicle for work. I had heard promises of quitting drinking and smoking all the way to work. This happened regularly. But no one knew any of that. They just saw me act out. I acted it out. All that we had been through the night before, the hours before, the days, weeks, months, and years before was acted out by me in that moment, and I was labeled crazy, bitchy, controlling, and he was labeled victim.
This man on the plane spent the entire flight contributing to this woman's breakdown and she was leaving with the crazy label. She was judged. She would be remembered. He would be pitied for having to put up with such a crazy wife. You know what is crazy? A man waiting until he is thousands of miles above the Earth in an enclosed space with a whole lot of strangers, to tell his wife they have to move for his next career move that he forgot to inform her of. Crazy is breaking the agreement that you will make decisions together for the best of both of you instead of running full steam ahead with your plans while asking your pregnant wife of twins to sacrifice everything for you and not have any thoughts or feelings about it. You know what is crazy? A man sitting next to his children and staring at his phone and ignoring them while his wife, who is not sitting with them, has to yell over him to try to keep her children safe on a plane. Crazy is telling your pregnant wife with twin girls that you will abandon them in the airport if your luggage doesn't get there in time to work the shift that you scheduled too close to your flight arrival.
I started to be reminded in the weeks following this airport scene that this is how society is set up. Since forever men in power have been telling women that they do not have a right to make decisions about their own bodies. They do this with laws, with societal expectations, with media and film, they do this with medical degrees and they do this from the pulpit. Women are expected to quietly agree with this agenda, with these expectations, and if they could do that nicely with a smile on their face, that would be great. But have a woman stand up and say no, maybe with a protest sign or a lawyer, or a megaphone and they will point. They will judge. They will say, look at her, she is hysterical. She is crazy, she is an ungrateful bitch, she should be judged or silenced. Do you know how much we women have usually taken in and given up behind the scenes before we are mad enough to grab that megaphone? Do you know how many years of quiet pushing and taking, and expectation, and trauma and dealing with the poor choices of men in power that we have to endure to get mad enough to feel like we have nothing to lose anyway? I'll tell you it is a lot. It was a lot for me and I'm a white woman. Yes I have years of oppression by men in a power position in every generation of my family but it is nothing compared to what women of color go through and have gone through. I cannot imagine the restraint it must take for a woman of color to hold back the reactions she would like to have toward men in power (that means white).
If you don't believe me, you can just read recent happening in the news. Just this week Ben Sasse, a republican senator, said that the hysteria of protesters at the Kavanaugh hearings was unfounded. Really, we shouldn't be upset that men have been telling us what to do with our bodies for centuries? (After centuries, of having someone take a basic human right away from you-you can tend to get a little upset). Or look at Serena Williams being portrayed as a crazy black woman after she expressed her frustration at being told she got coaching when she didn't think she did at the U.S. Open final. One of the first things she said if you listen to the video is that she always has problems at the U.S. Open. This was a result of being quiet for too long while people in power told her what she could or could not do as a black woman athlete. Really, I'm not even a tennis fan and I remember men tennis players yelling and throwing things and it not being a thing that we passed judgement on them for. It was just a boys will be boys kind of thing. People will not point to the man in the chair in power over her and talk about the crazy things he did to create the situation and probably many before, instead we will look to the familiar scapegoat: the crazy woman.
I have often sat in judgement on women in relationships of the people I know. I will see her acting like a wreck, yelling, acting insecure, trying to control everything. He is all too quick to roll his eyes as she yells at the kids, or to act the victim when she gets upset at him in public, or appears to try to control him or his behavior. On more than one occasion my eyes have later been opened to the reality. It isn't always as it seems. Sometimes behind closed doors he is emotionally or physically abusive to her and she knows what will happen if the kids upset him, so she looks like a crazy person trying to keep them in line so they or she doesn't pay the price later in private. She complains about the him wanting to buy concert tickets and have a night out with the guys. Maybe at home he is hiding an addiction that is destroying his finances and job, and family life, and she feels hopeless but tries to control anyway. You see the control, not the ravages on their home and marriage that addiction behind closed doors can have. Or woman is a push over and is always so meek and quiet, even when it comes to her children. They ignore her and do not behave in public, then dad steps in, says one word and they fall in line. We think she is a wreck as a parent and he has it figured out, well maybe he has beat her down in front of her children and they don't respect her, but they fear him. I wish I was making these stories up. I'm not, I'm pulling from my real life experiences with people I've known. Sometimes it was me.
From now on when I want to judge a woman about her parenting, her appearance, her behavior, her choices, I'm going to pause. I'm going to resist and I'm going to remind myself of "airplane guy". I'm going to remind myself that I could be seeing the outward manifestation of an internal problem. I'm going to look at the surrounding people and try to determine if it is possible that they are in fact the problem and the other person is just acting it out. I am going to do the same with my own life. Instead of just taking people's judgments about me and taking them to be my character defects that I need to change and work on, I'm going to take a good long look at the before action circumstances. The "how did I get to this" part. I want to know and see if there are any "airplane guys" in my life and start to correct that quickly.
The last thing that I want to say about this lesson I'm learning is this, sometimes we give our power away as women. No one forced that woman to marry that guy. No one forced her to have three kids and give up her career to raise them while he went to medical school. She just slowly became less important in their daily lives by giving away pieces at a time, until there she was, on a plane looking like a crazy person while her husband suggested he leave her to raise his three kids alone while he chased his dreams of success like that was a normal everyday thing people do. Society tells her to stand by her man, to be nice, to value the lifestyle and income being married to a doctor can bring over her own desires. Society will tell us to give our pieces away as women, they don't tell this to men. They tell them to grab and demand the pieces.
The reason I was on that plane and saw and heard what I did was because I've lost pieces for years. Not because they were all stolen from me, but because most I willingly let go, thinking I wasn't being nice, or a good mom, or wife, or employee, or friend, if I didn't. I gave away until I was the one looking crazy, looking controlling, looking unreasonable or weak. I have seen the mirror and I hope that maybe I've held one up for others now. Once you see it, you know it and you cannot unsee or unknow. In the words of Oprah Winfrey "When you know better, you do better". Here is to better, for me, for you, for airplane woman and airplane man and their family. Just better. Having a right to my pieces and to demand them back. To say what I'm feeling, what I need, to tell the truth even if it makes someone else look bad, and to never ever believe that I am a victim of someone else's bad choices. I want to be more powerful than that. I want to box up some of that power and send it to that woman on that plane. If I could give her words it would be this, "No". No to all of it. No to you first me last. No to blaming me. No to giving me all the responsibility and all the judgement. No to you calling me crazy for having a reaction to your imposition on me. No to apologizing for having emotions and feelings and anger. Just no.
