Strange Days

As I’ve said, Max is on our quaran-team. She’s an essential service worker here in the city and lives a few hours away, and the hotels and air bnb’s she usually relies on when she’s working long hours are obviously closed. So she will crash here after overnights when necessary and the blessing of that is I get to see and smooch her.

Having her welcome here, and feel welcome here, as part of our household during a disaster is a huge beautiful breakthrough and it’s given me a lot of hope.

My husband is slow to warm up to new folks in general. I’m the bubbly welcome wagon and he takes his time. People earn his trust. Or they don’t. My ex (cub/mr.j for tumblr folks) was someone my husband never really trusted or felt comfortable with. And time after time Mr.J proved him right. When the final straw in our relationship happened two years ago it was a hurtful and harmful deceit that had ripple effects through our polycule. It was more than implied that my judgment wasn’t great. This recent history didn’t make it any easier for my husband to let Max in.

Max is shy, quiet, and new to ethical non monogamy in all of it’s forms. It’s all a bit intimidating for her, so she’s been slow to warm up too. I didn’t push, her and hubs didn’t need to be besties, and she would meet my kids when it was time, no reason to rush those things.

But. He my husband understood the urgency of her need, and was gracious in agreeing it was a risk worth mitigating to help her out. Because that’s what we do in a crisis. We help our loved ones out. So this week she met the kids. And they think she’s really great (of course). And she made the choice to make the effort on her own, without me asking or pushing. And it’s been really heartening to see them start to build their own little relationships with her.

(Ms.O, my husband’s partner, has been a part of our lives for more than 3 years now and my kids adore her. She’s the bubbly lady who brings them fancy cupcakes and takes our wild puppy’s side even when she’s very naughty.) (If Ms.O reads this she will definitely read that and think “the puppy’s not naughty!” even though indeed, she is.) (One more little anecdote, my youngest kiddo is learning Russian on duolingo during quarantine so he can talk to Ms.O in her mother tongue. That’s the kind of relationship she has with my family. It’s really really nice. And in my opinion, ideal.)

I could feel the moment when Mister and Max started to thaw a bit. She showed up in her big old work truck and there was a problem, without hesitation she crawled under the truck and took a look. I saw him watching her, and I swear I felt something shift. He called out to her, she explained that a long piece of plastic blew on the highway and wrapped around the exhaust. “Do you want a knife or something?” he asked. “Nah,” she emerged from underneath the truck with her own knife in one hand and several feet of plastic in the other. And for the first time they were cool. I can’t exactly say why but they were. Just like that progress was made.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to bring people together.

(I would also like to say that my husband was the MVP for watching the kids so Max and I could spend a few oh-so needed hours fucking and giggling together in her truck later on too. Like yes. Poly people making it work in these wild times.) (And also yes to sitting on her fucking face in the backseat.)