(c) David Rae Morris
In early September photojournalist (and friend) David Rae Morris posted a gallery of his images depicting the One Year Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Like all his work, it is perceptive, revealing, striking, intimate. Visit the Common Ground Collective site for a sense of the work still being done, or the Katrina Information Network page.
Pops’ intake form at the orthopaedist’s.
Last week I took my Pops to the orthopaedist’s to figure out what’s the story with his 85-yr-old knee bones.
(Q: And this relates to lesbian fatherhood how? The flip answer: I’m a lesbian; he’s my father. So there. The real answer: What I learn from him has a great deal to do with how I approach life, therefore parenthood.)
We were trying to find the office, and he was plubming the increasingly murky depths of his memory to tell me the location of a nearby landmark, from which we’d get our bearings.
Pops: “It’s right across from the hospital, where the road bends.”
Me: “That’s where it used to be, years ago. But remember when we went there a few months ago? Now it’s down the street, past the next intersection.”
Pops (deadpan): “That’s what I meant.”
If it really is Alzheimer’s, and not some ordinary degradation of memory due to age, it’ll take a long time for us to notice, since he elides so many such slips of memory with humor.
“Pops,” I said, “when there’s nothing left of you but your Cheshire Cat smile, there’ll still be your sense of humor. When it’s 2099, long after the nuclear holocaust, and there’s nothing left on this planet but cockroaches and kudzu, there’ll still be your sense of humor.”
We both smiled for at least two blocks.
After which I got to thinking: I’ll have to crowd “a fertile sense of humor” into that list of top parental qualities I was compiling a week ago. So we now have:
Being just a touch obsessive-compulsive, I am unsettled by the fact that this list is only four items long. Five, or better yet, ten, would round it out nicely, don’t you think? The mike is open.
As seen on a bumper in Berkeley, CA.
Thanks today to Dana, at Mombian, for “Seasonal Thoughts on the Evolving Family.” In it, she (as did Liza at LesbianFamily.org a few days back) ruminates on a number of contemporary reports about evolving family structures, both as a result of LGBT families’ boundary-stretching, and because of changing practices on the part of heterosexual folk — delaying or avoiding marriage, becoming single parents by choice, and more. In her piece Dana reminds us of something she’d written about in late September, stats I think all “non-traditional” family folk should know, that
Less than 25% of all American families consist of a married, opposite-sex couple living with their own (biological or adopted) children—down from 40% in 1970. (Some of the 15% drop is because of a rise in countable same-sex couples, but not all.)
She goes on to say,
There is a point, moreover, at which these trends impact LGBT rights. One of the reasons voters shot down the amendment to ban domestic partnerships and same-sex marriage in Arizona was that opponents of the ban convinced opposite-sex couples of the constraints the ban would impose on their lives. The more cynical among us may wonder why we should even care about rights for opposite-sex couples, when it is LGBT families that lack equality. My answer is that we have a dual responsibility: creating a world that respects our relationships and families, and creating one that respects those of our children and grandchildren, who may take different paths and form different family structures.
So true. This whole anti-nuke thing (“nuke” here meaning married hetero insular “nuclear” family unit) is way bigger than the self-interest of one LGBT generation. Every glance at the history of the American family across decades and across social classes will show that there have been a great many loving ways to shepherd young people into adulthood, a great many loving ways to assemble into, as Dana boils it down, “a group of individuals bound by love and commitment.”
Her piece also alerts the reader to this essay by Jennifer Gruskoff, one of The Huffington Post’s “Fearless Voices” bloggers. It made me particularly warm and runny, probably because her daughter is treading the Spawn of Lesbians path just a few years ahead of our wee monkey. Gruskoff’s daughter makes a natural choice of love over fear, something I so dearly hope we all succeed in cultivating.
(Or Mickey Rourke?) So it’s only olive oil up on there, to help with her cradle cap. But I think she wears the grunge coiff and the paparazzi-friendly attitude quite well.
for
10. The opportunity to awaken, and to help others do so.
9. The reminder of the preciousness of my human birth, by so many gone, so close to me.
8. The opportunity to pass on my mother’s love.
7. My mother’s love, so powerful that it propels me still, a dozen years past her death.
6. My father’s longevity, his love, and his unwillingness to give up on optimism.
5. The fact that my sister and her family continue to persevere.
4. The fact that, here and now, my own immediate family is safe, sound, and full-bellied.
3. The emerging existence of our son, and that he will be a he.
2. My daughter’s existence, illuminated by her remarkable mind and spirit.
1. My beloved: that she found me, that she is all of who she is, that she feels so deeply.
May that for which we are all grateful continue to expand our hearts, and may the gratitude of us all multiply and deepen. For those who are suffering today, I send you love.
Second bananna.
Also ran.
Lesser than.
Opening act.
Not-mama.
Chopped Liver.
Chopped Liver is what I have been so often since this whole parenting journey began that in our household, the words are shortened to a hand signal. The letters “C” and “L” shaped in the air by my thumb and forefinger. My woebegotten, self-pitying face in the background.
This undeniable subordination is probably the most visceral, protracted feature of parenthood that I share with new bio-dads, the thing that reminds me so consistently that whether or not I pee sitting down or standing up, whether or not I have mammaries and enjoy processing my feelings, whatever I choose to call myself, I am Not The Mother.
Again, the caveats: if we both adopted, another set of dynamics would create the delicate fissures that separate our roles and distinguish what our kid(s) want from us. But we have a bio-mommy in the house, an estrogen-pumped, milk-producing, birth-giving marvel of womanhood, inside of whom kid A spent nine months, and kid B has spent seven already, with every intention to spend another two.
Then there’s me. Baba. Lovey-dovey, diaper-changing, bottle-filling, toy-repairing, kiddle-hoisting, Baba.
I note above that I, along with other non-birth mothers partnered with birth moms, share this feeling of lonesome subordination with new bio-dads. It’s important to note the qualifier “new” though, becasue I presume the condition to be distinctly time-bound, in this rosy-fingered dawn when the kid has breastfed as many months of her life as she’s fed herself. Right now, in the kid’s memory, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump back to the good ole, wet cramped dark ole days of the womb, when food and oxygen just got pumped in, no effort, no muss. Inside her body. Mothership connection.
I don’t begrudge this centrality of Mama, though. How could I? It feels quite simply to be the reward (and sometimes, when she needs a break, the curse) for the arduous, Everest-climb of pregnancy and childbirth. Followed by the long, slow descent of breastfeeding. There damn well should be a dramatic distinction between the two of us. For nine months I did not:
… and so on. Many of you all know whereof I enumerate.
A time will come — won’t it? — when the cellular intensity of the mother-child connection will become mixed with the richness of our lived experience. I hope so. Because that will be my dawn. The richness of lived experience: that’s all I have to offer our children. I’m all nurture; no nature. And I need to be patient.
Which is a darn good thing. Because so far as I can tell, abundant patience seems like it’s one of the top three qualities to cultivate for healthy parenthood. Along with unconditional love and a clear sense of one’s role as teacher (as vs. boss, e.g.). It’s a bit of a cheat to list teacherliness, since good teacherliness entails a host of other practices I also find critical to parenthood, most significantly (a) the habit of viewing the world empathetically from the kid’s point of view, the better to understand the motivation behind their behavior, and (b) the conviction that people learn best by doing, by discovering and experiencing their own capacities, all the while believing that failure or error is simply the sign that they are moving out into untested territory.
Good teaching and good parenting seem to share a great deal, but this most of all: that one is honor-bound to create, cultivate, and protect the conditions under which the person — student, kid, whomever — can thrive the most. And then you jump back and get out of the way and let the unstoppable force of learning and growth happen. At its own pace. Because good teachers know that you don’t always see the results on your watch. Often you’re just tilling the soil and planting seeds.
I learned this before I left grad school. I ran into an old student at an on-campus conference. She said something like, “You know, you might not even remember me. I took a class from you a couple of years ago.” (Oops: and I just barely did remember her; of the dozen-plus classes I taught in grad school, one was a large lecture class I collaborated on for three years with a dear friend and colleague; alas, a fleeting recognition of face or name was often the best I could muster.) “I didn’t even do that great in the class,” she went on. “But I want to tell you that even though I didn’t realize it at the time, you guys totally changed the way I think. I just wanted you to know that.”
I smiled and thanked her profusely, and filed that moment away as the priceless lesson it was. Now, when our kid is still a seedling, and I so long to occupy a place as viscerally central to her as her mama, I go back to that lesson in patience. I hunch myself over it, and run my fingers back and forth over the page, mouthing the words silently. Reminding myself. As with so many such things (jealousies, injuries), I suspect that the moment I am no longer wounded about my Chopped Liveriness, the moment I finally have accepted it and no longer pine for more, I will turn to look for it — and it will be gone.
A follow-up to the A.P.B. I put out last Friday, and I’m happy to report, sisters and brothers, that love and reason prevailed. At least this morning they did.
Regular readers of this humble weblog will remember that I passed along the following news: Dr. Nanette Gartrell, principle investigator of the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (the longest-running, most academically robust study of the impact of lesbian family life on kids) would be interviewed on a call-in radio show this Monday. I was worried that the Family Research Council, against whose spokesperson she was to be squared off, would have had their people sermonize against The Gays and their spawn on Sunday, and that the switchboard at GreenStone Radio would have lit up like a Christmas tree and so forth.
But no.
I am proud to say that the only three callers that were on air were pro- The Gays and their spawn. The first was my beloved, bless her, who probably got through because of the overwhelming moral authority she posesses as one who was “raised by lesbians.” Though when she put it that way, it sounded a lot like she was “raised by wolves.” Considering that her mom founded and directed the feminist theater company At The Foot of the Mountain, whose zesty and ribald collective met in her house constantly, she kinda was raised by lesbian she-wolves. Plus also did I mention hippies.
But that’s another story altogether, and a fabulous one. Today’s story is about love and reason prevailing over hate and shoddy research.
So my beloved squeezed out a buncha good points about how she was “raised by lesbians” and she’s a fine, upstanding citizen, and her brother and sister didn’t turn out gay, if that’s what you’re worried about, etc.
Then Lisa, of the blog Lesbian Fatherhood, got through, and she made a buncha good points about how the reasearch that the FRC guy Mr. Sprig (his real name!) was citing confused the effects of divorce with the effects of being raised by two parents of the same sex. And that an intact family which began with two parents is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.
Hey, people, our gal at Lesbian Fatherhood is an ECON PROFESSOR! Don’t try to joust with statistics against an econ professor, Mr. Sprig! You got a Harvard/ UC San Francisco Med School prof on air on the one side of you, and this econ prof on the phone on the other side, dude. That would be DOCTOR Smart Lesbian to you! Back down now, sir, while you still have a shred of dignity intact! (Oops! Forgot: you shed that shred when you became veep for “policy” at FRC!)
Lisa wrote about the show and what he and she brought up on her blog this morning.
Okay, so then the third caller was a 45-year-old woman from Texas who was raised by two daddies, and she was heter-o-sexual, and loved ‘em, and her “husband’s crazy about ‘em.” Etc. A big ole love-fest. She said the only hard part about it was when she’d be teased at school by hateful kids, and she’d come home crying — you can imagine Texas back then, she said — and her daddies were wonderful. Oh, I might mention about now that the radio show host, Rolanda Watts, is an African American woman, and I bet she could imagine Texas back then, pretty vividly. Heck, we don’t have to go back earlier than 1998 and James Byrd.
My esteemed mother-out-law (aforementioned radical lesbian feminist theater legend she-wolf) called in but didn’t make it on air. Here’s why:
GreenStone Radio Call Screener: Hello, what would you like to say?
My mother out-law commences to describe herself as a grandmother, a lesbian, raised three kids, all are healthy & well-adjusted, etc. etc.
Screener: So you’re saying you’re FOR gay parenting.
Mother out-law: Yes, absolutely!
Screener: I’m sorry, we can’t put you on. We have too many other “FOR” people in line in front of you, and no one is calling in to speak against gay parenting.
Mother out-law: Maybe that’s because your guest Mr. Sprig is living in the 1950s, and the rest of us are in the twenty-first century!
Viva Mother Out-Law; Viva Lisa and my beloved and that gal from Texas; Viva Dr. Gartrell. And thank you Rolanda Watts, for gracefully piloting the frothy waters. Shallow though they were, given such a short show. Sure, it woulda played differently if this were on the 700 Club. But we take our moral support wherever and whenever it comes. I still think that in the long run, amor will vincit omnia.
[When the show is archived on GreenStone, I'll put a link to it here.]
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