gratefulness

I often take for granted that so many people in my life enthusiastically and unhesitatingly accept my relationship with HB. About a year ago we both started feeling like we were outgrowing the term "girlfriend" as an accurate way to refer to each other. We outgrew "girlfriend" not only because it started feeling too juvenile (especially during the time I was grasping at everything I could to project myself as Adult to validate my role as a facilitator for several groups of teens) but also because so many people hear "girlfriend" and split it, destroying its synergy: girl - friend. HB is neither my casual friend nor described well by binary gender tags. So gradually we weaned ourselves off the term "girlfriend" and replaced it with "partner." It fits us better: the longevity of our relationship, the adultness of it, the consensual equity of it, the queerness and genderqueerness of it.

And, astoundingly, virtually everyone in my life embraces that. Not only do people love and celebrate HB and me, as individuals and as a unit, but for the most part, our friends and family echo our language. When our "girlfriends" started fading out and our "partners" filtered in, we fielded a few questions here and there, but for the most part, people just picked it up and went with it. Even HB's mother, whose cultural context influences her tendency to introduce me as HB's "friend" most of the time, tacitly accepts our relationship and has recently started deliberately including me when collectively referring to her "kids and their significant others."

I am so used to people getting it that I can be completely blindsided and downright hurt when someone casually redefines our relationship by a simple substitution of a single word.

Today when Sasha and Ezra's dad came home, he asked for recommendations of other people who could act as kid care backup if I'm ever unavailable. I suggested my partner, who I mentioned to him last week in a different context, both times with "she" pronouns attached.

Sasha had been dancing around, only half-listening, and she asked who we were talking about. Without missing a beat, Sasha's dad said, "Her roommate."

And yeah, that hurt.

If I had said "husband," would he have translated it to Sasha as "roommate" or "friend"? What if I had said boyfriend? Wife? Girlfriend?

I have no way of knowing how deliberate that translation was. Was it to avoid a potentially awkward talk with Sasha about gender and sexuality and relationships? Was it an unconscious sleight of brain, a mistaken mistranslation? I doubt it was intended to offend me. I doubt he realized that it would sting, that it would feel like invalidation, rejection, refusal to support -- let alone acknowledge -- the reality and legitimacy of who I am and who my partner is and who we are together.

As I biked home, I cycled through a bitter inner soliloquy about gratefulness and ungratefulness. A lot of it sounded like: "I spend eight hours a day three days a week raising your children. I am teaching Sasha to read and to explore and to be kinder. I feed, nap, bathe, and carry Ezra around on my chest. I kiss his cheeks and tickle his belly and sing him every lullaby I know. I make sure the dog gets a walk, and I clean it up when she vomits on the rug. Even though you have never asked me to and have never thanked me for it, I wash all the dishes in the sink. And then with one casual word I feel like my family doesn't matter to you."

But now that I have put a few hours and a solid venting session between myself and that incident, perspective is sliding back into place. Regardless of what, if anything, Sasha's dad meant by editing my words, HB is still my partner and my family. And my life is -- miraculously and wonderfully -- filled with people who know that and who reserve wide open spaces for us, together, in their hearts.

Hugs,
-MP

in honor of the election...

Here is a piece of art Sasha made a couple of weeks ago. She told me she was "definitely voting for Obama" and that she and one of her friends were going to hold a demonstration and march in their neighborhood to "make everyone vote for Obama."

it's a "balloon" duct taped to a stick

On a more personal note, I tend to lean toward Emma Goldman's philosophies about voting -- primarily that it's a bullshit system whereby we are pacified into believing that voting is equivalent to making actual change. The notion that we exercise agency because we get to choose who and what to vote for reminds me a lot of offering a preschooler the red shirt or the blue shirt when you're just trying to get out the door to get more diapers. Yes, it's a choice, but it's a limited and coerced choice, designed primarily to placate one's desire for autonomy and control, and not to actually allow full participation in decision-making processes.

That said, I also recognize that a lot of folks in this country who are affected by who is in office and what policies are put into place do not have the privilege of voting. I also recognize that if I, as an individual, simply abstained from voting to protest the screwed up, coercive political system in the US, it wouldn't change anything. A president will still be elected. Local officials will still be sworn into office. Ballot measures will still become law or not become law. Taxes will still be levied. The only thing abstaining from voting would do would be to exclude me from having any say at all. It would mean someone else picks the red or blue shirt for me because I'm still at the mercy of people with more power than me, and their agenda includes getting diapers and by god we're not doing it shirtless.

So even though our democratic election process invokes patriotic rhetoric about "freedom" and "change" that's more stormclouds than actual deluge, at least my infinitesimally small opinion has been requested. It ain't much, but a vote for Obama is one itty bitty squeak closer to avoiding a Romney/Ryan presidency. At least under the Obama/Biden administration I have a chance of seeing people in the White House acknowledge that trans* and gender non-conforming folks like my partner exist and matter. We have a president who publically recognizes and supports all marriages, not just heterosexual ones, and who has a pretty solid track record of making this a better country in which to be LGBTQ, at least legally. That's a pretty stark contrast from Romney's "I didn't know you [gay people] had families" comment. Yes we do. We have families, both families of origin and chosen/created families. And we, like all people, deserve recognition, respect, and equitable access to resources.

Excuse me while I sign off to spend some quality time alternating between trying to plan Harry Potter themed activities to fill Sasha's two upcoming no-school days, and agonizing over news coverage of the election results.

In hopes of high fives,
-MP

the art of coming out without tripping over things

Now that I've been employed long enough to receive my first checks from my two regular families, I've been contemplating if, how, and when to tell these families about my family. Specifically, that I'm a big ol' queermo and that I share a bedroom and a cat with a person I usually refer to as my partner. I fly pretty silent on most people's queerdar since I have the double whammy of fairly feminine mannerisms and a fairly feminine physical presentation. (I even currently have long-ish hair that is neither a buzz cut nor a pixie cut, my two rotating constants over the past six or seven years.) So it's not like these families would look at me and just know, or even suspect that I'm, you know, "of the gay." (Unless they saw my Yeti legs, which I always cover during interviews with new people anyway because preschool teaching effectively ruined my body hair self-confidence in childcare settings.)

With Jaden's mom, I knew her from her blogging presence on the internet, so I had absolutely no doubts about coming out. Within minutes of meeting her I had casually dropped the "my partner" bit, and not only was she instantly receptive ("your partner is welcome to hang out too, Jaden loves people!") but her kid was obviously acquainted with the term partner because he immediately asked in his adorable three-year-old lisp, "Does yo' pawtnah wike kids?" like an old pro. I gave him a mental high five.

My first day with Sasha and Ezra, I picked up a baby board book off the couch and upon my second or third reading to Ezra, I had it well enough memorized to start looking at the pictures that accompanied the text. It's a book called Everywhere Babies and even though it rhymes, it's the least obnoxious rhyming board book I have yet come across. I was surprised and delighted to see that even though the gist of the story was "babies are everywhere and they all sleep, play, and poop" it actually featured a very diverse cast of characters. Not only did it have what were pretty obviously same-sex couples, but it also showed grandparent-aged caretakers and caretakers who looked different from the babies (presumably fostering or adoptive families).

This was my sign.

This family is probably gay-okay and won't fire me upon revealing my true rainbow sparkle colors.

The next time I showed up at Sasha and Ezra's house, as their mom gave me my morning orientation, I saw my window and I plunged for it. It wasn't even really a window, but was shaped enough like one that I was pretty sure I could make it into a window. It went like this:

The Mom: "Sorry about all the noise, the workers should be done pulling off the roof after today. Ezra really needs a nap but he won't sleep through the noise so you'll have to put him in the stroller."
Me: "Yeah, I wouldn't be able to sleep through that noise either."
The Mom: "It's hard to sleep through sudden loud noises, like when they hammer or drop something big."
Me: "For sure. Last night somebody was going through our glass recycling out front and the noise of the bottles banging around woke us up. My partner got really worried that whoever it was would come in and steal her bike. But the type of person who bothers sorting through the recycling for bottles to deposit for a nickle each is probably not the same type of person who will then break into your basement and steal your bike."
The Mom: "Yeah, those people usually consider it their little job, and go from house to house on recycling day. Your bikes are probably safe in the basement."

Did you see that? She didn't even blink at the casual "my partner, she" bomb.

Of course, my partner sometimes goes by "they" pronouns, but one step of coming out at a time.

I would like to high five the people who illustrated Everywhere Babies, as it is now one of the very few board books that I don't despise on sight, but that I actively like. Good job on the passive diversity education front, Everywhere Babies.

Hugs,
-MP