Sitting there with mom's new boyfriend. I was 10 years old when she dated John, 12 when she dated Gene, and 15 when she dated Alex.
No one in liberal Brookline Massachusetts, 1970's and 80's, thought to say to mom, "should your daughter really be there trying to make a good impression on your latest boyfriend?" Liberals make plenty of off-handed comments about other topics, but not about the subtleties of needed boundaries - called "TZNEE-iss" in Yiddish, "Tzni-OOT" in Hebrew.
So I had to make a good impression, I had to smile and chat - with a man, a man who may make all of mom's dreams come true, maybe they would marry and we would have a house and a yard again, social standing, a pension.
Dad's death, when I was seven years old and my brother five, meant the loss of a beloved father, husband, and community leader.
It also meant a serious change in our finances.
We moved from house and yard to rent-controlled apartment. Our social standing altered, mom had to ingratiate herself into people's lives to get invited to Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas day, Hannukah celebrations, and Passover seders (blended-faith family here).
When I met the fundamentalist Christians at Middlebury College, late 1980's, although they do not have Law, they do have heart, and I would hear their boundary-conscious sub-texts in their decidedly different off-handed comments than the counter-intuitive comments that the liberal-left like to make: "in our church, a woman got remarried, and some thought she should not wear a white wedding dress but the pastor said if it makes her feel good, then it is fine." "Cheryl does not drink alcohol or dance, but at our church we can dance at weddings, after all, it is a sacred occasion, during daylight hours." "Christina is adopted and although her father relates to her in the love of Christ as a true daughter, one she became a teenager, he stopped hugging her. But this was not church policy."
They actually - um - thought about boundaries, about modesty.
Then I met the orthodox Jews. Bearing The Law, boundaries were everywhere. Men and women worlds apart - finally I could breathe.
I had found my way home.
And I started to realize that the position I had been in - let's go to a restaurant with John, with Gene, with Alex - was immodest for me. I should not have been there. It damaged my sense of boundaries, put me under pressure to ingratiate, and this pressure meant a diminishing sense of self because making-someone-like-me was more important than being in touch with my feelings of boundaries, of whether this is a good person to be around, of my sense of self. It diminished me, I said later to a counselor, "I feel like I have holes in my energy field", and we explored what I must mean by that, years later I connected the dots - I was not raised TZNEE-iss.
TZNEE-iss is so much more than not having sex. It is simply strong, sane boundaries. It is strengthening your sense of self, your ability to figure out what feels right, not being put in situations that were not age-appropriate.
A single mom dating? No problem, just for the sake of your daughter's mental health, leave your daughter out of it.
(Another topic - the exploitation that is inherent in the non-marital relationship: do not have sex if you are vulnerable. The sexual revolution was for elitists. Sex outside marriage harms the vulnerable. Heed this well, I am witness. My mom sold herself cheap.)
My father a"h is portrayed in a chapter in the following book, but I will refrain from mentioning dad's name for now, too painful:
Raised in a very liberal Jewish home and in college when The Pill came out, I became observant in 1980 because it was the only way I knew that I could protect myself from the "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll" society of the time.
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