The emotional aftermath of the California Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, at least for me, has been unexpected. I have vacillated from feeling utter shock, to muted disbelief, to pride, and later still discomfort at the resussitation of an old, long-since buried vulnerability. Not at all what I would have expected.
All of this is mixed with unexpected sorrow that this milestone — my legal marriage today, on my eleventh commitment ceremony anniversary — will not be witnessed by my mother, not even known about by her. We got only so far down the path together, my mother and I, of her understanding this part of me. Her feeling okay about it. I can’t think that seeing this wouldn’t have shifted something in her, helped her to feel that maybe it might just be okay. I mean, really. Okay.
Scar tissue that has spent decades covering over a wound has been opened up. The wound it covered over — the sting of a seminal, fundamental, society-wide exclusion, no parental hand there to soothe it while it stung the worst — all that, oddly, is now laid bare, and all these years later, I am able to take its measure. Rather than elation that the source of that wound has been so fundamentally altered now, much of what I am feeling is: Wow. It has been that painful, for that long. Who knew.
Trolling for insight on the MommyBlogging question
Take five minutes and let me know what you think! Okay, seven!
There is o so much to the topic of “MommyBlogging,” which the astute readers among you will notice I have a hard time not placing gently in quotation marks. The more I read about it all, the more the topic splits into bits, some large, others eensy teensy; some obvious, others bracingly illuminating; some disheartening and disillusioning, others refreshing and redeeming. I am going to continue to read and ruminate a bit more, before I make an arse out of myself in print — in fact, the making of the self an arse in front of one’s peers seems to be one of the special privileges of a tight community, and I’m getting the sneaking sense that yes indeedy “MommyBloggers” are a community. I figure in the first hours of the jam-packed BlogHer conference next week in San Francisco, this inkling will be decisively confirmed.
What I’ve been wondering is where exactly a lesbian parent blogger gal such as myself fits into this scene. My uncertainty stems from the fact that (a) I consider myself more a parent than a mommy; hell, I think I’ve never ever used that word in reference to myself, maybe maybe ”mom.” But no, come to think of it, “mom” has really only come from others, and I answer to it as a concession, on the fly, to another’s innocent address. And also (b) I read far fewer other blogs than I’d like to, simply because I’m knee deep in diapers, still, and with not nearly enough leisure time. (Then again, when will I ever have enough leisure time? When I had it, I had no clue. Now I have the clue but no longer the leisure. A tragedy right up there with Youth is Wasted On the Young.)
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