My husband Roy and I are having dinner with friends. We begin talking about our kids, who all are in their mid-20s. Eben, our best friend's son, lives in Brooklyn and works nights at a wine bar in Tribeca so he can go on auditions during the day. He's already been in a movie. Sarah, the daughter of other close friends, works for an Internet design firm and lives in Soho. Her brother Adam is doing well as a journalist. My daughter Ali, who sometimes refers to herself as a "small dyke cop," has just received a check from her grandmother so she can buy a bulletproof vest.
We all laugh. We don't know what else to do. None of us have great memories of the police. When I was a kid, the cops in my Brooklyn neighborhood hung out in the candy store. They seemed more menacing than the neighborhood criminals, who were far too busy running numbers games to offer any threat to regular people.
Police were the brutes at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Everyone at the table is old enough to remember that. Police stood at the edges of demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, just waiting for someone to provoke them. Most of my friends took part in those demonstrations. If I press for the image of a noble officer, only Serpico comes to mind, and what mother wants to think about her daughter being set up by fellow cops and getting shot in the face -- even if the experience did yield a book and a movie deal?
Learning that Ali was gay was nothing compared to hearing that she was abandoning a liberal arts education to enroll in a criminal justice program with the hope of eventually attending the police academy. People have died at the police academy. Really. Just a few years ago a recruit died of kidney failure because the drill instructor wouldn't let him drink enough water. Three or four others ended up in the hospital.
Ali took yoga as a winter sport. She's always hated authority. ("Yes, but" is her favorite answer in any argument.) Yet she went to the academy and did better than simply surviving the physical and psychological challenges of her training. She earned the award for academic achievement, made me cry at her graduation and now she's a cop in a blue uniform and black boots. She wears a gun on her hip and handcuffs hang from her belt -- along with a special-issue flashlight, a huge key ring, a baton and other things I can't remember. The belt is heavy enough to bruise her slim hips. The bulletproof vest is stiff and hot, but because she made a promise to her grandmother, she wears it, even in 90-degree heat.
At dinner I tell my friends about the women's self-defense course Ali teaches. Roy talks about her community policing efforts. Our friends tell us that we are wonderful parents. I accept the compliments. I don't tell them that I am jealous because their kids are safer than my kid and because their kids will probably earn more money over their lifetimes, enjoy more autonomy at work and never have to say, "Yes sir, no sir, whatever you say sir."
Jealousy such as this is an unattractive fact of motherhood. It's the way I felt when Ali was 2 and wouldn't eat anything but raisins and Cheerios while my best friend's daughter ate everything, even liver and fish. I could practically see Amanda's little brain cells developing, and sometimes I thought it wouldn't hurt her to miss a meal or two. Sometimes I wanted to grab the spoon from her chubby little fist. But instead I smiled at my friend Lydia and told her Amanda was certainly a great eater and, by the way, did she ever worry about those permanent fat cells that develop early -- you know, the kind that live in your thighs forever?
Ali is doing better than many of her friends from college who are flipping burgers while they pursue advanced degrees in fields where there are no jobs. Ali has work that she loves, respect from her colleagues and tremendous confidence. To her, conforming to a paramilitary organizational structure seems like a small price to pay for the chance to make people safe. In fact, she likes the discipline. To me it seems like awfully hard work.
She had the night shift for more than a year. Finally, she managed to get some days by juggling her schedule so that now she never has two days off in a row. She works on holidays. She goes to court on her days off. Because she's the only woman on her force and the sensitive crimes investigator, she gets called in the middle of the night to handle rape cases, even when she's not on duty. She routinely puts in 10 or more hours of overtime each week. She deals with many men who do not think that women belong on the force, let alone gay women. And she's not yet 25.
My friends and I move the conversation away from our kids. We talk about vitamins and Andrew Weil; technology stocks, vacations and the cost of furniture. We drink a lot of red wine and talk about our parents. Our fathers went away in suits to work at jobs we knew nothing about. We all lied to our mothers almost as soon as we learned to talk. Had to. Everything fun was against the rules.
I don't think Ali lies to me about any of the important things. In fact, sometimes she tells me too much. For instance, I didn't need to hear the story about the man who tried to assault her at a highway rest stop. She went straight for his crotch with the grab-twist-and-pull maneuver she had learned in RAD (Rape Aggressive Defense) training and left the guy moaning on the ground. I tell my friends about that. Eyes go wide. Nobody laughs.
How did I raise a young woman with such courage? I am a wimp who hates to be yelled at or hurt. If I stub my toe I start to cry. Ali routinely walks into dark and lonely places where anything could happen. I am so glad she has the vest. While my mother's gift helps keep her safe, I am quietly calculating our home equity -- just in case she decides that she wants to get the bad guys by going to law school.
