Fun Formalities...

I was aware the nightmare that attaining official papers can be before going to the passport office.  So I did a first practice run before the real thing.  I was told I had to have everyone present, including my oldest 5 year old in a fill length leg cast.
2nd visit to Passport Office - both kids and Ema in car outside, waiting:
I hand in all my papers.
[Starts handing everything back to me] You need an original birth certificate.  This one is a copy.  'Oh yeah, the new "original" I'd ordered.' "Here."  It had taken me 4 1/2 years to finally get an accurate "original" but that's another post.
[Reluctantly, she peruses more papers]. "What is this... Takoda?"
"He's my son."
[Starts handing everything back to me] "You cannot do this without both parents present."
"We are both present.  She's in the car with the boys."
"She?  Where's the father?"
"His other mother is in the car with him.  He's not in here right now because he has a full length leg caste on right now.  Your coworker said you wouldn't mind going out to him so he wouldn't have to climb in and out of his wheelchair just to be looked at."
"There's no father?"
"No, there's not."
[Starts handing everything back to me] "Can't do it without the father here."
"Not there is mo father here.  There is no father.  He has two mothers.  We're legally married and have been since before he was born.  Look, see?  Here is the marruage livence and we're both on the birth certificate."
"It says 'father.'"
"It says 'father/parent.'"
"Ahhh..."
Only from here on in, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and stopped handing me back all my papers.

Anniversary Post

There was a time in our lives when we were always side by side.  Amy and I woke up together, went to school together, took the same classes, worked the same jobs, laughed with the same people, and returned to the same home.  It was, for some who I've expressed this sentiment to, a marital nightmare.
For us it was bliss.
The only problem was that joining of strengths and weaknesses that happens in marriage which left me two weeks late to the first class I had to take in my own major.  16 years later however, she's still my superior in the details - and my have they grown!  Homework, Little League, Tae Kwon Doe, report cards, permission slips, lesson plans, feedback, PTA, UFT, OMG!  I feel inundated with nonsense no ethics and social philosophy major should ever face critical to the ones I love who I'm responsible for.
Thank God I have her here to blame for most of it (the true virtue of marriage!)

I'm superior in something else.
I can remember that exact moment 16 years ago - tomorrow - when I'd just returned home from a short trip.  We weren't together yet, but we were communicating and we'd left off that it was over.  It wasn't going to happen.  She was gonna go her way/I was gonna go mine, and that was gonna be it.
I can remember that exact feeling in my gut that forced my hand to that phone, dialed her number and blurted a few words that basically amounted to "Come here."
I can remember the feeling of relief and other things when I turned around and she was at my door.
   I couldn't tell you who kissed who.  I can't even tell you in all honesty that was our first kiss.  And I really can't tell you much about what happened right after that.

But I can tell you it was the right decision.

Happy "Real" Anniversary Love!  I think we both totally missed the marriage one.

"One More Tomorrow"

My Pop-pops used to stay up all night and nap all day.  I knew him mostly on vacations, when I'd sleep over my Granny's house or be staying in her country place upstate during the summer.  - Different times - off times, when being up at night could be part of the norm.  My most vivid personal memory is of his waking me in the middle of the night to go see a skunk that was passing by outside.  He was urgent about it, excited.  Even then I giggled at the absurdity - but I got up!  And I marveled at that skunk.  ...Come to think of it, I think it was the first I'd ever seen.
   We lost my Pop-pops during a time in my life when death almost seemed the norm.  It was a bad run, - my mom, my 20 year old aunt, cars, freak crimes and tragedies, etc.  The day my step-mother told me my Pop-pop died, I remember one tear and a kind of "...is-what-it-is..." thought bouncing around my tired vacant 9-year-old brain.
   Now I think back to the kind of man he was.  Surrounded by women, (one wife, two daughters) smiling all the time.  The kind of man who's family actually owned "Granny's" country house  - who'd worked it his whole life.  The kind of guy who would be told by his women that two eggs a day was not good for him, just before he walked down to the bar (2 miles away) for his 5 o'clock daily martini especially when they got on their kicks about not giving him the keys.
   To this day cigar smoke triggers a familiar vivacity, an occasional burst of energy - a force that wakes me in the middle of the night to go outside and see what's there.
   I can relate to Pop pops.  I even have the Graves disease probably in through his side of the family.  I'm not skinny like he was (because the other side apparently taught me how to eat!) but the hyperthyroidism wakes you.  It can make you anxious.  And tired.  And sad.
   Of all the people I've lost I feel him the most.  He had haunts.  He had loves.  All of them I share.
   My wife and I have a song - one I played for my Granny today and told her I'd always wished she could really hear the words.  (Granny's hearing is not what it once was).  Granny related the title of a song Pop pops had said was their song.  It was an obscure song that never made it big, so she usually can't remember the title.  Earlier this week, she said she looked up and said 'Oh come on Zip [Pop pops] and help me out to remember' and that's when it occurred to her.  She's told me the story before and I'd looked up the title she'd given but somehow couldn't find it.  Tonight however, I did find it.  And I was able to play it for her and order her the record.  It was 1946 "One More Tomorrow" by Frankie Carle and his orchestra - with a woman singing?  There we sat head-to-head, ears and hearing aids, arched around my iPhone playing a You Tube video sporting a pic of a red 78 vinyl, tears running down both our faces.  It was dark.  Didn't matter.  Kids laughing and playing all around us were not even aware the different kind of moment we were experiencing.  So much goes by so quick if you don't stop.  And tonight I'm up, listening to it again… kind of even looking for a skunk.  

Don Juan not Dona Juana!

Then you have these moments where the little teach the big volumes.
So Kody is approached by a cute little girl who playfully asks him his name.  I was surprised when he responds with a mumble.  (He's usually so responsive to this approach.)  This happens a few times until she eventually gives up.  A few minutes later, I'm alone with him.  I could tell he wanted to play with her.
"You gotta look her in the eye and tell her your name Bud.  Otherwise, she'll think you don't like her.  You like her though, right?"
"Oh.  Yeah."  So he runs back to her and tries to announce his name over giggling and playful swinging on this mass swing-boat thing.  It doesn't work.  I yank him back.
"No Bud.  Try this: Just hang out around her, and if she says anything else to you, just be ready this time and tell her your name."
So he did.  He went back, got right in the middle of things, worked the proximity, but she wandered off before our big moment.
One thing leads to another he winds up in the swing-boat with another girl.  I figure this is good for him and push until they're both laughing and giggling happily.
She comes back.
He's giddy, but dumbstruck.  He really is different with this girl.  I swear, it's too funny to watch.
But he's getting nowhere.  I step in again.
"Kody, give the lady a turn."  He does.  She promptly steps into the swing-boat.  "Push her" I nudge.  He does.  So do two other guys.
He's never pushed another person in a swing before, but I'm impressed by how he's doing and how motivated he is to learn.  I kinda quietly teach/demonstrated how to push and get out of the way.
We do this a while and it works.  Some conversation is started, a little laughter is exchanged.  I leave him to it until I begin to think he's hanging on to his hat too much.
"Kody, gimmie the hat.  Walking around holding your hat to your head is too much.  If it blows off here, it's no big deal.  [He'd lost another hat on a boat in Lake George.]  You're better off giving it to me to hold."
He doesn't.  He expresses some kind of loss of "Kody" if the hat comes off.
"It won't make a difference.  [Doesn't budge]. What's the matter?  Don't you trust me?"
"No Mom.  Sometimes when you do these things that means that you don't trust me."
Boing!  Dumbstruck.  Duh Mom.  I back off.  The two happily play and he later has two girls plying for his attention.
Touché my boy, touché!
What did I ever really know about women anyway!

Role Confusion, Shifting Paths, and the Speed of Progress

It's an easy issue to succumb to in our world.  I remember dealing with the "Other" mother role.  On one hand, I was not the person giving birth to our child.  On the other, I'm a woman.  I wanted control over every aspect of our child's initiation to this world: from his genetic make up to his independent sleeping rituals.  More important than my gender identification, was my title.  I was (and still am) a mom, not a dad.
Dad's can be aloof.  They can find comfort in being second.  It's part of their role.
So that was fine.  We did it "my" way inseminating with my uncle (so that I was genetically connected) and I co-breastfed and surprisingly often felt like "first" in his life, but 4 years later he still sleeps with us.  (You negotiate these things in a same sex household.)
Then I became "not other" mother.  I'm "first" with one but solidly "second" now with the other.  I lost it in a torrid of tears the other day in a separate room after he casually mentioned how he loves Ema more.  I think the dependency of our second on my breast milk hurt the first and now, well the bed is really crowded now.  It's not always easy to really connect with the first.  I think Ema will still be primarily "first" as long as I'm primarily "first" with our second.
Someone referred to me as "the butch" the other day, and I think it's because they, a fellow "other" mother, felt like a butch.  My high school students refer to "butches" as "Aggs" (short for "Aggressives") and refer to me as such if I wear comfortable clothing.  If my shirt has a low neck line however, or a couple sparkly touches, I've noticed I instantly lose my "Agg" status.
How ridiculous, right?  My role, my status, my very personality changed by whether or not the laundry is done?  I'd utterly reject these roles as a heterosexual if that were my plight and I was keen enough to notice them, but we don't.  It took me a lifetime to become aware of how all encompassing my life was affected due entirely to the fact of my being born a woman, let alone the additional years it took to compartmentalize my life as a queer (although that happened quicker). Now we add family dynamics to the mix.
It makes you worry.  Like when the notion that because we have two boys, we'll "lose" them when they grow up and marry.  This notion reduced me to tears when I found out the sex of my second!  But now, I imagine Niky as a female and can't see how he'd really be any different than he is.  And the way attitudes are changing - like how I read a blog off Facebook about an overheard conversation between two heterosexual dads on a subway as they discussed their gay sons.  When one asks what they "do" now (that they've discovered they both have gay boys) the other says “We don’t do anything. We let em be gay and if some kid calls em a faggot we go to their house and raise hell with the parents like normal.” - This seems normal to me, like it shifts a lot of nonsense around until the path becomes simply obvious.
Maybe that's the way it's going to be with us.  It bothers me when Kody refers to me as a "dad" of sorts, or expresses discomfort with male/female genderized dichotomies but he knows I'm the one who softens the consequences his Ema imparts on him, and I'm the one who makes him his chocolate chip pancakes.  I daresay the differences between the roles of "mom" and "dad" are less and less important as we move away in time from the initial difference of who gave birth.  I think breast feeding perpetuates the mom's role as "first".  How is he going to negotiate all these expectations as he grows to humanhood under our care?  Will it matter much to him?  Will he even notice the differences?
My guess is no, at least not right away.  Until then, at least the speed of progress appears to be increasing.

Our Bright Future

I could see it.  I know the look now.  It's a look that transpires from the thought 'They're lesbians.'
   "So who's his mother?" a friend's young daughter asks one summer evening at a BBQ.
   My wife was ready.  "I'm his mother" she says pointing to our oldest.  "...and I'm his mother" she said pointing to our youngest.
   After a slight pause, this was understood.  But apparently questions remained.  "Then who's her kid?" she added nodding toward me.
   "I'm his mother" I said pointing to our oldest.  "...and I'm his mother"  I said.  "We're both their mothers."
   And then, it was all perfectly acceptable.  Remarkably simple and sweet.

Dear New York Vital Records,

Four years ago my wife gave birth to our first son, Takoda.  The hospital did not have the proper birth certificate form with a space for two mothers available.  They told me you would send me the proper records within a few months.  

The end of January, you sent me back a birth certificate listing me as the father.  I returned it with a note, the proper forms, and requested that you fix the problem.  

You then sent me back a new birth certificate listing me as the mother - but male.  I sent this back again with the proper forms - again - including a copy of my birth certificate, and a note assuring you that my sexuality had little affect on my gender.

Since then we have had copies of these (albeit inaccurate) records held up in a lawyer's office while my official adopting of my son took place.  (We didn't want to wait on that any longer.). The adoption has just recently concluded.

I understand it is your policy to make parents pay for records beyond a certain date of the birth, however, since much of this delay is due to extremely insulting "errors" on the part of your office, perhaps you would see to it that I receive a proper birth certificate from you finally for free of these erroneous charges and perhaps even with some haste and diligence to get it right this time?

Thank you kindly for your ownership.

Alison -------, Mother (FEMALE)