Lesbian Dad | Monthly Archive

Archive | December, 2006

We really are family

By Lesbian Dad on December 15, 2006 in Baba familias, Go hetero ally go!, Two kinds o' people

Moms group takes a field trip.

All week I have been contemplating what I might put in my heart-rending concession speech, to be published promptly after the polls close on this Weblog Awards whirligig. Then I thought: why wait ’til the end of the night? Because what I was going to say would have been identical regardless of the outcome. Plus I have been studiously unaware of the proceedings for days, anyway.

See, I stopped checking the Weblog Awards “Best New Blog” poll numbers a coupla days back, after the party got really nasty. Don’t get me wrong; I appreciated that some folks stepped up and reigned in their over-zealous party guests who had been hurling epithets and eggs and ad hominem attacks in good-natured fits of enthusiasm. “No offense,” I imagine the freshly chastised party guests saying, “you pathetic little salad muncher.” Tosser. Whatever it is. My Know-It-All Brother-In-Law has intimated that if I watched more late night television or read more Hustler I would know that this not a reference to vegetarianism.

Ah, but the feel of spittle on the face is just gross, and you know, there are two kinds of people. People who haul off and punch someone who spits on them, and people who remove their pressed hankie out of their breast pocket, daub the spit off, carefully re-fold the hanky, return it to the pocket, and then turn and walk away. Which, after leaning over to a friend or two and saying “That was totally gross” and then thanking the civilizing party host over at the blog whence the spittle came, I did.

See, I thought I was standing in line at the carousel. Let me explain. Some other lesbian parent bloggers and I were interested in opening up lines of communication between our rich online community and that of straight parent bloggers. So we encouraged folks to nominate LGBT family blogs for the “Best Parenting” blog category. As an afterthought, I included my blog in “Best New Blog.” What the hell, I thought; more folks will stop by and take a look as they’re idly perusing the nominees.

Imagine my surprise — shock, flabberghastedness, and sure, glee – when I found that this here blog was selected as a finalist. By what process heaven only knows; I’m still convinced it was a typo. (“Thespian Cad?”) But suddenly I was no longer in line for the carousel, chatting with other parents, whose shared guardianship of young people would help us speak to each other in tones we both understood. Now I was lined up for the roller coaster. A really raucous roller coaster, with some nice people onboard (Konagod and Reformed Chicks Blabbing were both quite gracious quite early). But packed in with us in those close quarters were also a handful of chumps capable of sucking the fun out of any roller coaster ride.

This week’s “Best New Blog” voting ride — this relatively inconsequential facet of blogospheric navel-gazing — rapidly became highly polarized between Right vs. Lesbian. And it did so for reasons that I’m convinced have very little to do with the merits or demerits of any finalist blog’s content, or the value it provides to its intended community, or the elegance of its graphic design, user interface, or copy. Which is a pity, because if these factors were the only ones influencing this contest, I suspect we’d see a pretty different voting outcome for all the finalist blogs. I certainly doubt it would have become what has amounted to a protracted, two-blog, arm wrestling match.

But regardless of the content of any of our blogs, they — not to mention the dedication and GOTV acumen of the friendship networks that have propelled their votes — speak to central issues at this cultural moment. The ascendancy of the “gay marriage” movement. The “gayby” boom. The exhaustion a great many people have over the amplification of divisive “values” issues when our nation is engaged in a calamitous war, when the economy and global climatic issues cry out for attention. I believe that it is the collective weight of these larger cultural issues, for which our blogs are mere stand-ins, that have propelled this hundred some-odd-post, single-authored, very narrowly defined niche-market parenting blog into any kind of competitive position against a group-authored, broadly defined political commentary blog.

Whether on a roller coaster or a carousel, what unites our community — and in this case, by this “our” community I mean not just LGBT families, but people who support us, and they are obviously legion — is a very, very strong desire to see to it that the world our children grow up in is more filled with love, less filled with hate. I could be more complicated about it but there’s no need. We work toward this by supporting one another, in person, in groups, at events, and online. And many of us believe that the more other folks know about LGBT families — and the clearer it is that legions support us — the less spittle there’ll be. Not on us queers; we’re frickin’ used to it. I mean on our kids.

Because when people spit on me for being a lesbian, that spit hits my kids. And my kids will watch people spit on me, and they will look at those people, and remember what their faces looked like when they were spitting. My daughter will grow to be a woman one day; my son, not yet born, will grow to be a man. Chances are they will be heterosexual, and I suspect they will not for a moment tolerate a world in which that kind of hatred is tolerable, not for one post, not for one day. At a party, on a rollercoaster, or anywhere.

Until my kids grow up, my job is to squat down next to them, when the situation calls for it, and do a very good job of explaining why anyone might spit on Mama and Baba, essentially because we love each other. I will hazard an analogy. I will try to explain how most people are right-handed, and some people are left-handed, and it’s always been that way. I will try to explain how no one knows how a person acquires “handedness,” but in the past left-handed people have been quite persecuted, and even without outright persecution, the world is organized around the presumption that everyone is a “rightie.”

Now imagine if “right-handedness” was thought to be natural and “left-handedness” unnatural; imagine some thought the one is following God’s plan, the other is a sin; the one deserves full legal rights and protections, the other should be grateful for some variant on Separate But Equal. I will then say, Love, at this moment in history, is like this. Mama and Baba’s love is “left-handed” in a “right-handed” world.

Then after I do a decent job of making hate and fear seem reasonable, I will try to explain to them how critical it is — how very vital it is to the purity of their spirits — that they not do the same. Love the spitter; hate the spit.

At the outset of this week, in reference to the heterogeneity of the various “Best New Blog” finalists, I wrote:

I find the fresh breeze flowing back and forth across heretofore unlikely combinations of authors and readers really interesting. If we were all at the same cocktail party we’d be in opposite corners of the room, either studiously ignoring the others, or maybe even pitching Vienna sausages at The Enemy. Me, I’m a wannabe Bodhisattva, so it is my position to be the Enemy of no one, except perhaps Time. (Though I do think Time started it first.)

Yeah, well it’s all fun and games until somebody puts out an eye. And promptly after I caught a Vienna sausage in mine, I stopped sniffing that fresh breeze. Said to myself: “Woops! I knew there was a reason I never wandered over to that side of the cocktail party.” But I know from another finalist in the “Best of the Rest” category that dialog has continued to one degree or another, and she, for one, has been contributing to a respectful exchange. For which I am infinitely grateful. Because if anything of any real benefit comes of this week’s horse race, it will be some degree of increased mutual respect, maybe even for some, increased compassion. All our children desperately need that to be able to face the real issues of their generation. And that’s the only prize worth fighting for.

Comments { 28 }

Lear goes to lunch

By Lesbian Dad on December 14, 2006 in Go hetero ally go!, Pops, Two kinds o' people

At our family’s dining room-away-from-home.

There are two kinds of lovers of literature: those who savor every word and image, regarding characters like they were old friends and old enemies. Then there are the rank opportunists, shameless scavengers who traipse through Great Books with the sole intention of poaching a random line here and there for later use. Usually out of context. (“Out, vile jelly, where is thy lustre now?”, for example, while scraping the last of the Smucker’s out of the jar.) I must admit to you now that I am among those ignominious readers huddled in the latter camp.

So it was no surprise that as soon as I clapped my eyes on the tragedy of King Lear, back in high school, I was all ready with my shoplifter’s deep-pocketed coat. When Lear said to Albany, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” I knew my sister and I had found our motto. You see, our dad has asked for it in every which-a way, mostly by teasing us relentlessly and having an Olympic sense of humor at the same time. So quite naturally my sister and I have been teasing, taunting, goading, ribbing, and razzing him since we were able to wrap our tiny mouths around our first syllables.

In our family, the Lear statement morphed into many variations, and came to rest at “How sharper than a serpent’s tongue it is to have a toothless child.” Thereafter, we simply referred to my sister’s and my insolence as examples of our being “toothless.” Of course the sweet paradox was that we had access to this joke only because at the root, my sister’s and my love for our father was like that of Cordelia â€“ loyal, honest â€“ not the flattering deception of Goneril and Regan. And even when nerves were frayed and faith was tested, we knew he had a “pass” for life if for no other reason but that our mother loved him. If our mother loved him, well then.

But then of course there has never been “no other reason.” I have reasons aplenty to love my dad, and one of the deepest is that he has always wanted nothing more for my sister and me but that we become fully who we are. Whoever, and whatever that might be. If there’s anything more specific he’d add to that want, it would be that we be as happy as we can possibly be. Nothing special, really. Standard parent stuff.

When for me, self-realization entailed realizing I was a lesbian, my parents paused only momentarily at disappointment, moved fairly briskly through confusion, and strode admirably into self-education, to varying degrees, never once setting unconditional love aside. Their initial misgivings stemmed mostly from a worry that hatred and bigotry would put me at risk of verbal, maybe even physical attack. A reasonable worry. And they also â€“ this was back in the early 1980s â€“ couldn’t imagine how I would be able to experience parenthood, something that so hugely fulfilled each of them.

Toward the end of Lear, Cordelia speaks of her “child-changed father,” referring to how the cruelty of her sisters has broken him. I would call our dad “child-changed,” too. But for the better. Being a father stretched his heart wide open, and his commitment to loving us, whoever we would be, stretched it wider still.

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Holiday carousel

By Lesbian Dad on December 13, 2006 in Seraphim/dakini

The other night we went to the Tilden Park carousel. Every year they doll it up, along with: the building it’s in, the roof on top of the building, the lawn in front, and an enormous, hundred-foot conifer. Lights, lights, lights, everywhere. Santas, snowmen, snowwomen, elves, reindeer, candy canes, and more, illuminated to the point of a major strain on the Northern California power grid. Hot cider is added to the menu at the concession stand.

On the night we were there, Santa his own bad self sat in a nicely decorated little hut, ready to have kids parked on his lap, hoping I’m sure that fewer than 30% would break out crying. Being a sentimental type, the idea of kids crying on Santa’s lap isn’t entertaining to me, but those with a different sense of humor may actually appreciate this feature on The Poop, San Francisco Chronicle’s parenting blog: crying Santa photos.

But back to the heartwarming holiday scene. We had gone to the extravaganza of lights following the purchase of our first family Christmas tree. The fact that it was our first tree is surprising, since the beloved and I have been together for over a dozen years, and cohabitated (true to lesbian form) for most of them. (Q: What does a lesbian wear on the second date? A: A moving truck. Okay I’m sure I got that wrong; I never can remember scripted jokes. Maybe it was “What accessory does a lesbian bring on a second date?” But you get the idea.)

All the previously shared holidays had been large multi-family gatherings held up in some cabin in the mountains, so we hadn’t the occasion to set up our own individual home. This year, though, we have a baby in the hopper, and by the way he’s squirming around in there he may not wait ’til 2007 to come out. No way were we going to be up in the hills, far from our Walking Goddess midwife when the water broke. By all indications (meaning, the last birth) this guy is going to shoot out of the womb with the velocity of a human cannonball at the circus.

Transferring the nexus of holiday celebrations is a huge thing, I suspect, in most families. At some point, the epicenter shifts from one generation to the next, and the transition is bittersweet. So is change. So is the warmth of gathering with beloved family members when you know there’s an empty place-setting at the table, and it’s not just for Elijah.

We were on the carousel, all four of us (three of us on the outside, the next little one kicking around inside his mum), and our little monkey was marveling at the festival of lights whirling past her. Just past the carousel I saw a boy, from behind, a Santa hat pulled low on his head. He was just the height and build that my nephew would have been, were he still alive, and the sight of this shape from behind took my breath away. This boy was with his mom and sisters, playing and romping. I could make him out just in a blur, each time we went by. The last time we passed him he had turned a little, and I thought I made out the eyebrow hair loss so tell-tale of chemotherapy. Or it could be my eyes were playing tricks on me.

By the next turn of the carousel, they were gone.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return, we can only look
behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

[Want the rest of the lyrics to Joni Mitchell's Circle Game? Here.]

Comments { 6 }

Fifteen minutes of flame

By Lesbian Dad on December 13, 2006 in Go hetero ally go!, Mostly a picture

You, too, can “Warholize” your images right ‘chere. The knock-off above came from an image that looked something like this before the Warholizer got to it.

Because our household has enough frayed nerves to duck tape together, what with the pregnant one of us getting pregnanter and pregnanter by the hour (yes, it’s the eighth month marathon), I am very anti-fray. However, Fray Happens, and its dark shadow has passed over the otherwise gleeful and good-spirited Weblog Awards popularity pageant (still ongoing, lord help us, until Friday night, 11:59 EST).

I would dignify, embolden, and otherwise broadcast said fray, were I to repeat it here. But I do want to send a wee Buddhist bow of gratitude in the direction of the folks over at Hertz (this would be Avis over here) for pulling the plug on the abovementioned fray. [Later note: the blog to which I refer as Hertz -- the then front-runner blog in the Awards competition -- wiped their site of all posts relating to the Weblog Awards soon after the voting ended. So the link goes to a dead-end, alas.]

If none of this makes sense because you were watching another channel up until now, never mind. Just click the link up there on the Warholizer thing and play around until your boss walks up behind you and tells you to get back to work.

[Coda: interesting bit putting the blogular impulse in perspective, by that nice young man Andrew Sullivan.]

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Third list of ten: Crisis/grief support

By Lesbian Dad on December 13, 2006 in Miscellaney, Seraphim/dakini, Ten lists of ten

Original photo credit: The Windgrove Center, Tasmania, AU.

In celebration of the 100th post, part three in a ten-part series.

As regular readers of this assemblage of lesbo bon mots will recall, my parenthood is markedly influenced by loss. My inaugural post introduced this theme; I named one of my exceedingly obscure tags “Seraphim/dakini” to note the recurring presence of these spirits in my life and the life of my emerging parenthood; and my gratitude for pretty much everything (yes, everything!) stems directly from knowing too well what I have to lose.

Since a friend just recently found herself in the position of wanting to support someone close to her who’d lost her spouse, and another is currently a pillar to a friend in the latter stages of a terminal illness, I am freshly reminded of the relevance. So I take a deep breath and offer up

Ten helpful things that people can do or say in times of extreme crisis or grief

1. Bring food, without asking. Leave it at the door with a note, if you don’t want to disturb. And bring food that can keep (frozen stuff that can be re-heated can be as good as a warm dish, since they’re not obligated to have an appetite right then and there).

2. Bring food in containers that DON’T NEED TO BE RETURNED. Can’t stress that enough. Otherwise the house will become a veritable Amway Depot of tupperware, pots, etc., each of which represents enormous generosity (which is good) but each of which needs to be returned. Or even stored somewhere. (Which is yet one more stressor or problem to solve.)

3. Step up, or if you can’t, find someone who can step up and organize other people’s generosity on behalf of those you’re supporting. Oddly, as everyone who’s lived through (or, bless you, are currently living through) a huge family crisis will know, a landslide of generosity, while an enormous boon, still needs to be fielded. And if you’re working on trying to save someone’s life, or trying to make out the smokey remains of a world that they just left, figuring out whether or not you need another plate of lasagne can often put you over the edge. Someone else who loves and knows you and your home can and should field the calls on the lasagne for you.

4. Employ the internet to aid in the support. You can find pre-fab sites that enable families to have an online “guestbook” of words of support; more and more, simply starting a family blog can do the trick, especially if its design enables a user’s including additional pages, such as privacy-protected phone lists, calendars to organize who’s bringing what food when, etc.

5. Support the supporters. In other words, look carefully at the sphere of people who are affected by the crisis or loss, identify those who are doing the most work in supporting the key folks, and then support them. If you don’t feel close enough to the affected people, but want to help, rest assured that the helpers are spreading themselves as thin as they can and could use someone to buy them groceries, walk their dog, etc.

6. Unless they’ve asked for no phone calls, call. Leave sweet, short messages; just say you’re thinking of them. You could certainly ask whether they need anything, but that’s almost a formality. It’s the work of loved ones around those in crisis or grief to work really hard to try to figure out those needs. Unless they have superhuman powers, folks in crisis or extreme grief are unlikely to (a) be able to articulate just exactly what they need, and/or (b) be able to return your call for hours, days, weeks, months, maybe years. Take no offense, of course, but also by all means DO THE WORK OF GETTING BACK IN TOUCH WITH THEM, consistently. Even if they don’t have the energy to call back, they still benefit from the reminders of your concern. And when they are up to answering the phone, they will need your love.

7. Attend to the little creatures who may be forgotten or under-tended in the wake of the crisis or grief. Meaning kids, pets, even plants. Anyone who has lived through (or, bless you, is living through) crisis or extreme grief will know that kids show signs of stress and grief differently — differently than adults, and also differently than one another (see some of the links at the bottom of this post for more on this). But don’t think that because they aren’t crying, or talking about their feelings, they don’t feel the distress around them, and/or aren’t in distress themselves. So volunteer to be with them, restore their daily routine, etc.

8. Pay extremely close attention, however, to the changing emotional needs of the folks you are trying to help. These needs can be logical or illogical; predictable or unpredictable. It matters not. Until their world begins to rotate on its axis in the proper direction (and during crisis and in extreme grief it most certainy does not), it is not anyone else’s place to quibble over how to help them. So for example, if taking one of their kids out of the house for an afternoon at Chuck E Cheese’s seems like a good idea to you, and even to the kid, but it destabilizes the parents who need to have all their chicks counted and in the nest, try to think of some way to help divert the kids at the house.

9. When you’re far away and can only send your goodwill in a note or a gift, don’t worry about what to say. Really. Telling them the simplest truth is good enough: You are so sorry. You want to help in any way you can. You will be in touch. Many people may become quite upset if you say “I know just what you’re feeling” unless it’s really, truly, the case. Grief over loss is so, so idiosyncratic. Siblings, probably even identical twins feel differently over the same loss. No loss is the same. Your efforts to try to understand how they feel, and provide love, are good enough.

10. Be patient; indicate that patience to them. Help them to know that months and years from now, you will still be there. The worst thing in the world for a person to hear, when they’re struggling in the wake of a crisis and paddling across an ocean of grief, is “You should be feeling better by now!” As utterly obvious as that might seem to be, bizarrely, too many people hear that message. Either directly or by implication. They’ll be done grieving when they’re done. Meanwhile, help them find ways to live with their phantom limbs; sit with them; listen to their stories; help them feel fine about crying all they need to — if they’re the crying type (and help them feel fine about not crying, if they’re not). Hand them a hanky. Bring them water so they don’t dehydrate. Take a deep breath.

Here are some further resources I’ve found helpful:

The Dougy Center for Grieving Children and Families
Compassionate Friends
Growth House
Kidsaid

[Fourth list of ten: Thanks to those who got out the vote]

Comments { 10 }

Second List of Ten: First words

By Lesbian Dad on December 12, 2006 in Miscellaney, Ten lists of ten

Original photo credit: The Windgrove Center, Tasmania, AU.

In celebration of the 100th post, part two in a ten-part series.

You didn’t think that a doting parent could actually resist the magnetic pull of her child’s first words, did you? Which were uttered over the course of the first hundred posts of this digital paean to parenthood? Yup. So (omitting the obvious Mama and Baba, which did come first), here’s a breezy romp through

My child’s first ten words

1. “eyeball,” Feb 3 (not shitting you. eyeball. she was coached by her cousin.)

2. “Buddha” (pronounced bu-bu, but she was pointing to a statue of the big B), Feb 10

3. “light,” Feb 11

4. “Nonnie” (her across the street chum, technically “Norrie” but why split hairs over a few consonants), Feb 16

5. “yogurt” (pronounced yo-yo), Feb 16

6. “knock knock” (while knocking, mind you. though a joke did not follow, I’m very sorry to report), Feb 17

7. “open it” (pronounced op-it, but I swear it was in reference to opening something), Feb 18

8. “goat” (yahoo! I can’t explain why but I love goats!), Feb 19

9. “cookie,” Feb 20

10. “chimes,” Feb 21

There are oh, so many more. Now she’s wandering around the house critiquing disestablishmentarianism. As apple sauce dribbles down her chin. But this was way back then, in the heady days of her SEVENTEENTH MONTH ON EARTH, people. That would be less than one and a half years (I am so glad she is out of the “months” age range and into the “year + months” age range; I never could keep track). Proud? Yeah, youbetcha. Now I understand why that word is so often coupled with “parent.”

[Third list of ten: Crisis/grief support]

Comments { 3 }

In celebration of the 100th post

By Lesbian Dad on December 11, 2006 in Miscellaney, Ten lists of ten, Two kinds o' people

A hundred stones on a beach in Tasmania, placed and photographed by a blogger (far more imaginative and intrepid than me) to symbolize and celebrate a hundred blog entries (click the photo to link to them).

Warning! Warning! It’s a blog meme. Or at least I think it is. I’m still enough of a blogospheric rookie that I had to Google it to be sure what it was.

Herewith, on the occasion of my hundredth post, Ten Lists of Ten, which I’ll be rolling out throughout the week in fits and starts. And by rolling, I mean the kind of rolling effect you’d see if someone balled up a mastadon and then pushed and pushed. Not the baseball going down a steep paved street, and it’s your turn to get it kind of rolling. I refer us all to my earlier reference to the fact that I am the very opposite of prolific, and am engaging in a high-spirited daily expunging of text &/or image, just to make all this wild wacky Weblog Awards voting seem worth the effort to both of you — you, Dad, and whoever you buttonholed to keep finding fresh wired computers in this and neighboring zip codes, over and over again. Not that I’m paying ANY attention to any of that.

Now back to the matter at hand. With this Ten Lists of Ten thing, I will try to get each list of ten to be reasonably reflective of the kind of patter I usually issue forth with here. And since I am infinitely fascinated by the universal attraction to diametric oppositions, the first List of Ten will be:

Ten pairs of “two kinds of people”

1. People who would dive head first after a ball on the field and people who would never begin to consider such a thing unless a bomb or their child or a lattÃ© were glued to it.

2. People who pause, read, and memorize descriptions on the “lost pet” flyers, and people who don’t.

3. People who knew my mom, and people who didn’t.

4. People who are confronted with a choice like this:

and take the left-hand route up to the street, and people who are confronted with said choice and take the right-hand route. Like me.

5. People who actually wait to hear your answer when they ask “How are you?” and people who, if they happen to listen following the question, are totally surprised if/when you answer truthfully.

6. People who snicker when they hear someone call out “Frau Blucher!” and people who say “Gesundheit.”

7. People who “marry” someone just like their mom, and people who “marry” someone just like their dad. Please note that this also goes for people who have to choose from two parents of the same biological sex, or one parent, or what have you. The magnetic pull to replicate the Parental Unit is undeniable.

8. People who find the humor on the other side of this link funny, and people who don’t, aka me. And that’s something, since one of my favorite “lightbulb” jokes is:

9. People who divide people up into two artificially opposing camps and people who don’t.

10. People who proofread everything they write before hitting “post” and people who

O this is so fun I may just have to add to the list from here to eternity. Stop me if it all starts to make your head hurt.

[Second list of ten: First words]

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