What I did on my ...

The thing about blogging is that when you miss a week or two it’s hard to figure out how to ease your way back in. We’ve been gone for 16 days, arrived home late Sunday night.

(We weren’t supposed to arrive home “late” Sunday night, but that’s what happens when circumstances that are all largely within your control collude so that you miss your first scheduled flight and end up on the 8:10 PM version thereof, oddly grateful that the stern woman behind the desk at the airline finally agreed to waive the $600 change fee when you whined and complained and begged and cajoled the way you might if you were, say, eight years old and your parents had just taken away all your screen time for the day for making some poor behavioural choices. That’s what happens — and thank God for the near-to-the-airport friends on whom we descended after a volley of desperate texting to hang out for our newly unscheduled afternoon, and who fed us dinner and plied us with chocolate and tea and Manhattans, and set up our kids in front of their television. All in all an entirely pleasant way to spend an afternoon, other circumstances aside.)

But. We arrived home late Sunday night after 16 days away, in Toronto and in Florida, and it feels somehow disingenuous to jump right in to the present moment and gloss over those days, as though I am supposed to provide a “what I did on my winter vacation” summary for you all. At the same time, the idea of providing such a summary — not that anyone has asked me to — seems as tedious and unappealing as I imagine it must be for the many schoolchildren being asked to perform that precise task right now.

Memory is a funny thing — what did we do and did we have a good time? We did so many things: played tourist in Toronto with visits to the CN Tower, Casa Loma, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Science Centre. We saw movies, visited with friends and family, had Christmas dinner with my cousin and her family at Lee Garden on Spadina (“Was it worth the wait?” I later asked my kids about the trade-off of standing in line for an hour versus the food — oh god the food — and the camaraderie. “Yes,” said Rowan, unequivocally. Isaac, who nearly fell asleep in Rachel’s lap after copious bowls of wonton soup, was less sure: “I like the restaurant where you get your food right away,” he said, in reference to the buffet his grandparents took them to in Florida, where there were hotdogs and matzah ball soup and shrimp and ice cream for the taking, no lineup required.) (Also: “Were we this terrible?” I asked my cousin, as our collective five children shoved and pinched and bickered and kicked at each other on the sidewalk as we waited. “We were worse,” she assured me. And I think she might’ve been right.)

(Also: Of course, my children, like countless generations of children before them and countless generations of children to come, laughed and laughed at the name “Spadina.” “Like vagina, Mom,” Isaac told me, “like, on a girl’s body!” Just, you know, in case I might not have known where to look.)

In Florida, we played by the pool and mini-golfed and built sand castles. My dad took Rowan to the driving range and both kids picked up tennis racquets for the first time. We saw different sets of cousins, met new babies and new boyfriends, saw old friends and new movies. We ate ice cream and went to the zoo and played solitaire and Pokémon (some things you don’t get a break from) and took advantage of grandparental babysitting and generally managed quite well, even in the absence of the notable breaks provided by school and day care.

This list is not exhaustive.

Memory is such a funny thing: What did we do and we have a good time? We sat around the swimming pool late one afternoon in Florida, after some glorious outing or other that had been bracketed by children who resisted going and then resisted leaving (this is an ongoing theme, apparently…). And we were feeling, perhaps, tired. Put upon. The kids were being loud, making fart jokes and living on the razor’s edge between torment and pleasure in each other’s company. We were trying to let them be kids take to the extent that we could, always cognizant of the few other people around the pool with us — in this case, a man and a woman who must’ve been in their 70s, give or take.

Having anyone watch you as you parent can be stressful, but having people my parents’ age watch me parent is its own kind of stressful. You know? You know. But these people were fine, were lovely. The man in particular watched my kids and their antics with a grin on his face.

“You’re lucky,” he said to me and Rachel in passing.

And we both paused for a moment, and then, just like that, we were. Lucky.

The man went back to his condo after a while, and his wife packed up her towel shortly afterwards. And I debated with myself for half a second before getting up to speak with her before she disappeared.

“I just wanted to ask you to thank your husband for what he said to us,” I told her. “You know when you have those days or moments when maybe you’re not feeling so lucky? And then you realize you are?”

She smiled at me, quite seriously. “I’ll tell him,” she told me.

And then she asked The Question: “So, whose is whose?”

And I said, “Oh, they’re both ours. We’re partners, and they’re our kids.”

“Oh!” The smile that broke across her face was dazzling, wiping away any trace of seriousness. “That’s wonderful!”

And, in that moment, it was.

“Is he yours?”

I've just read the Crib Sheet for LGBT parents of newborns by Dana of Mombian. As always, she provides spot-on advice and tips for LGBTQ+ families (and their allies). It's funny: now that I have “big kids” (ages eight and five), so much of what we do as queer parents just seems old hat. Our friends know us; our neighbours know us; the school knows us; the pharmacists and the waitresses at our local diner and the soccer coaches and even the bank tellers know us. So it’s rare that we have to explain ourselves to our larger world. But I remember a time when it felt like we were constantly explaining and how tiring and often frustrating that was.

Read and print out Mombian's Crib Sheet for being the LGBT parent of a newborn now.

Mombian makes a great point on her Crib Sheet about handling parenting conversations with other adults: "A little preparation can help you sound comfortable with yourself." I agree. My best advice (I hope) to aspiring or new queer parents is this: Think through your responses to questions in advance, so that you can be smoother than I was. And remember that sometimes even the insensitive questions are meant kindly.

* * *

When my sons were babies, we used to spend most Saturday mornings at the local farmers market. It was a godsend for parents of little kids: open early (a bonus, since we tended to be awake by 6 AM most days and were desperate to be out of the house by eight); warm and dry even during the coldest winter months; and full of friendly people who didn’t bat an eye when our toddler, Rowan, monopolized the free samples of chorizo or locally made Gouda. Plus, they served coffee and a great breakfast.

During one such morning, my partner and I had snagged one of the coveted breakfast tables and were waiting for our food. Despite my four-months-pregnant belly, there was still room on my lap for Rowan, and he climbed onto it. A woman we knew in passing asked if she could join us, and we said, "Yes, of course," because that's the etiquette of the farmers market: You make room. You share. We made a bit of small talk, and then she turned to me and gestured toward Rowan, who was plowing his way through a pile of cheese curds.

“Is he yours?” she asked. 

I wasn’t ready for the question. The sheer wrongness of it spiraled in so many different directions that I felt scattered, unable to even begin to answer her. I mean, it’s not the kind of thing that straight women sitting next to their male partners get asked about the toddlers in their laps: “Is he yours?”

 

Of course, Rowan was mine; to the extent that any adult could lay claim to a child, this child belonged to me. But he also belonged equally and passionately to Rachel, his other mother, the woman who had, with me, planned for him and cared about and for him since his conception, who loved him fiercely and protectively, and to whom he was equally passionately attached. And that question, those three words, negated the value of all of that.

Of course, what the woman at our table had actually meant was, “Did you give birth to him?”

 

But again, wording it like that would scarcely have made a difference. You may find that people will randomly, casually, ask you which -- if either -- of you gave birth to your own children. Often, "Who gave birth?" is code for "Who’s the real mother (and, by process of elimination, the illegitimate one)?" or "I’m uncomfortable with how your family works and need to understand it according to my own terms." Decide beforehand how much of that information you want to share and when you want to share it.

Of course, one question often leads to another, and we also received questions about the "father." Be prepared. "Do you know the father?" or "Is the father involved?" or "Does he have a dad?"

Be prepared to be asked about your kids’ father, even when they have two mothers, sitting right there. Clearly, we must have done a certain amount of important work to have got to the place we were at right then: at the farmers market with our toddler on a cold Saturday morning. Clearly, we had put a lot of effort into this situation, to have figured out how to procure a real live tiny human in a relationship where ovaries tend to dominate. It was frustrating, then, when we'd been up every morning at 6 AM for the past year and a half and our kid only started sleeping through the night three months earlier, and we spent our days cutting grapes in half and following babies up and down flights of stairs so that they wouldn't bash their skulls in, to have people just so interested in the “father.”

For some lesbian moms, that “father” is a scant teaspoonful of genetic material, no name or face attached. For some families, that genetic material came from someone they know: a friend or relative or acquaintance who donated said material, and who in the grand scheme of things has very little to do with the ensuing children. In these cases, the correct word is usually “donor” -- not “father” or “dad.”

In some cases, like my family’s, our donor, Rob, started out as a donor and has, over the years, morphed into a dad. His “dadness” is specific to our family, though: he lives in a different city, visits a few times a year, has started staying with the kids while Rachel and I take a much-needed annual vacation as well as some shorter getaways. He plays games with the kids (now eight and five years old) over the computer. He is a cherished and important member of our extended family, and we love him dearly. But Rachel and I are the ones who live with the kids and do 99% of the actual parenting. And we’d like to take most of the credit for that, thanks.

But without thinking through my answer beforehand, when that woman asked me, “Is he yours?” I blew it.

I panicked, and instead of taking a deep breath and pausing and thinking about just how I might respond, I stammered out, “Um, yeah.”

I felt flustered, and like a jerk, and Rachel felt doubly wounded -- at the question in the first place and then at my response to it. It took us some time to regain our equilibrium that day. We managed to do it, to work our way through the guilt and the hurt and the defensiveness and the pain, by coming to a mutual understanding that our first responsibility as queer parents and partners was to our family. We needed to plan in advance for the intrusive questions of strangers and acquaintances and come up with responses that we both felt comfortable with and that respected our unique family -- not someone else’s preconceived notion of what families look like, or ought to.

Sometimes, that means that we have to remind ourselves that we don’t have to accommodate other people’s questions just because they ask. A simple, “I’m sorry, but that’s private information” is well within our rights as parents. And sometimes it means that we have to do the work of acting as ambassadors for our family, of seeing the openness and the genuine support behind what might be misguided questions and gently redirecting them, even if it means moving slightly beyond our comfort zones. Because that is how you build community and make it more diverse.

If I could go back in time to that morning at the farmer’s market, I would have taken a deep breath and reached for Rachel’s hand. And then I would have looked that woman in the eye and smiled and said, “He’s ours.”

But then I would have added, “Why do you ask?” And I would have made an effort to have a real conversation, move the dialogue forward. Because, in my opinion, that’s the etiquette of these kinds of things: wherever possible, try to make room. Try to share.

* * *

What were your thoughts on the crib sheet? Any pearls of wisdom or tips for queer parents looking to navigate the world with their rainbow sippy cups in tow? How do you handle questions that feel intrusive? How do you balance wanting to expand knowledge about your family while maintaining your privacy?

This post is part of the BlogHer Absolute Beginners editorial series. Our advertisers do not produce or review editorial content. This post is made possible by Pampers and BlogHer.

Writing, with children

“Can I just sit here and watch you when you write?”

“No, honey. You can’t.”

“I’ll be quiet. I won’t say a word. I’ll just sit here.”

“No.”

“Can I turn out the lights? So I can sit here in the dark? While you write?”

“Isaac: no.”

“I’ll just sit on your lap, okay?”

“Isaac—”

“And I’ll use this pen…”

* * *

Every so often — less often, these days, now that my kids are school age — I meet someone who hears that I’m a writer and work from home and assumes that I somehow write around the children. Like I just squeeze in space between making yummy snacks and waging Pokémon battles.

Um, no.

There is writing about children. There is writing about parenting. But there is, for me, no writing with actual children present, unless you count dashed-off notes to be used for later, when I have room to breathe and think and dictate. There is no writing with naked five-year-old boys sitting Gollum-like on the floor next to my desk (in the dark). (Or in the light.) There is no writing that happens while I am asked eleventy thousand questions about my writing and have to protect my hoard of Pentel RSVP fine-point black ballpoint pens from those who would repurpose them for weapons.

“The next book you write, Mama, can it be a book for kids?” Rowan asks me about this regularly. And it’s a hard question to answer. I mean, on the one hand, I adore his optimism and his faith that there will be not only this book, but another and another, and that I can write in any damn genre I please. And, who knows? Maybe the muse will strike and I will find myself the proud author of a kidlit or young adult novel. But chances are slim. And, given my current pace, it’s unlikely that either of my children will actually be kids should I manage to pull off that one. Still, it feels a bit mean to say no, over and over, to try to make him understand that that’s simply not what I do. That I love my kids, and love kids’ books, but have no urge to write a book for them — even if it’s no big deal to simply lay out a few thousand words in the right order, right?

“Can I have copies of all your books?” Sure. If and when that novel is ever published, you can have a copy of it, and I will trust that you will skip right over those sex scenes to the parts where the gravely ill mom fights with her teenage daughter. Better you should read that book on life insurance that I ghostwrote, or that parenting book I managed to squeeze out before I had squeezed out any of my own children.

“Can you put our names in your books? Like at the front?” What he means by this is that he wants me to dedicate a book to him. This, I can do. Assuming there are future books, I would be more than happy to dedicate them to him. And his brother. In fact, given my druthers, I will probably dedicate my books to something namby-pamby like “my family” and be done with it, which may not be exactly what he has in mind. I think he wants to see his name in print, and not just a pseudonym.

“Are you writing about me? Are you telling a story about me?” Yes, I am. Often, I am. I hope that’s okay with you. I mean, of course I stick with the adage that I am writing about me every time I write about you, but you’re still there, still playing a role. And for that I thank you.

“Are you famous? Because I told my teacher that you’re a famous writer.” Oh, Rowan: I’m so sorry that I laughed out loud when you asked me this at dinner. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, or — even worse — sully your high hopes for my fame. I certainly didn’t mean to ridicule you, but, honey, no. I am not famous. Not even on the Internet.

(PS: That said, I may be slightly more famous on the Internet than I was on Sunday: check out my HuffPo debut mention here.)