Letter to a Friend about Fear, Love and Coming Out

We all experience some loss of the "untrue" friends but the community you gain is such a payoff of the most beautifully diverse and unique culture that I've always been so grateful to be gay.  

Another thing - and this may take a while - but you need to hear it:  I used to be so ashamed until I really came out.  In college, Amy and I really came out - joining all the clubs, marching-the-streets type stuff. We had this truck we inherited from her homophobic conservative brother.  We "Gayed" that car up as much as we could short of painting it rainbow.  It had like a hundred pro gay, pro choice, pro liberal, bumper stickers all around it.  Scared me really, as we were going to school in North Country, where I read that some psycho had shot and killed a lesbian couple camping one night because he felt they were mocking him.  But the only responses we ever got for our efforts were 150% positive.  Notes, smiles, thumbs up, - one time our car was written about in the newspaper!  

But, when it came time that we went on our first trip together, both our families spent all Christmas vacation begging us not to ride the "Dykemobile" south. They told us the world was different there and people are crazy and we were gonna get shot and this and that was going to happen.  It got to the point where I felt like a smoker facing lung cancer (if it all did go down I'd just feel stupid for not heeding the warnings).  In short, we went with a gay flag hanging out the back window.  And we saw other gay flags waved back to us all over the country!

My point is that yeah, there was one time on the interstate where a couple kids wrote a note "thanking" us for AIDS.  But when we got close enough to them later (to videotape their asses) they cowered and turned off the highway.  (Maybe by that point they'd Goggled that lesbians get HIV less than any other "group" tested?)  We've often seen a head scratched over our "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" sticker.  But it's like an education.  Sometimes, it takes a minute.  In the mean time, I used to stuff notes left on our windshield thanking us for our "courage" in the armrest and eventually the glove compartment (because there was no more room).  I met and spoke to hundreds of people in pleasant exchanges based on mutual beliefs.  I am as out as I can be and rarely do I experience anything but love this way.  In short everything good in my life I got from being gay between opportunities, to enduring and incredible friendships, to the love of my life and two beautiful children I've been so proud to design.  It's a worthy trade off.  Trust me.

So - don't be scared.  I'm not saying there aren't people out there who'll want to hurt you for it, but I am saying there are a lot more on your side than you'll ever know if ya don't.

"Love, Marriage, and Ringing Bells" (Speech given in favor of Marriage Equality at Pentecostal Church April, 2011)

The truth is I’m a lot like you.  I grew up in a small, Irish-Catholic neighborhood in Queens.  We’d go to church every Sunday, and for a while every week my faith was tested and reconfirmed during one particular part of the mass.  Our priest would lift the Eucharist up to God to ask for a blessing, and every week during that part of the mass, I would hear bells ring.  I would wait for this moment the whole mass, and it would happen – every week and in every church we ever wound up in.

  I’d look around marvel at these grown-ups around me who would take this miracle in such stride.  No wonder they acted like they knew everything all the time!  This was such a gift because during this part of my life, I understood every “good” person completely and pitied every “bad."  There was no doubt in my mind that I would spend every waking moment of my adult life living for this God everybody was talking about, and would for sure read that giant book of rules he sent down because what’s one lifetime in the blink of eternity - even to a six year old?  I even figured I’d grow up to be a priest.  (It hadn’t dawned on me yet that a women priest might be unlikely.)

  Then one week we got there late and had to sit right in front; and that was it.  That was the day I watched in horror as some altar boy casually rang bells underneath an indecently short altar skirt.  My faith plunged.  I felt real doubt for the first time.  I literally remember sweating!  I looked at that book and decided right then and there that when I grew up, I was going to read every word of that book and figure out for myself exactly what I should be doing before eternity.

  Doubt has since been a tremendous force in my life, but I’ve managed to keep it under control. 

  The universe is an inconceivably big place, and it seems now as though we actually live in a multiverse.  There is no doubt in my mind anymore that in the end we’ll all find out that in many ways we were all right the whole time, and realizing my sexuality really put this quest on the very top of my priority list.  I am so blessed that I was given my perspective in life because it’s helped shape everything I love about life, about God, and about me.

  And I mean it wasn’t easy, and for a long time I was your typical Irish-Catholic homophobic lesbian.  Then I met my wife, and everything about everything changed.  We all must have something that teaches us which way we should follow.  It’s what keeps us going because once you’ve glimpsed true happiness, there’s no turning back.

  My wife lived a “straight” life before she met and fell in love with me, but she knew how to live. 

  She didn’t go through that long self-hating homophobic period because she didn’t doubt her own heart the way I did, and the way many do.  She’d kiss me in the middle of town and show me how many folks really cared one way or another.  She taught me to stop worrying about them, to experience the moment.  And then she made those moments amazing.  She taught me how to let my spirit encompass my own skin, and I will never be able to thank her enough for that.

  Thirteen years later, if it wasn’t for prejudice and discrimination, my life would be absolutely perfect.  But these things are complicated and persuasive, and they weave their way into our minds in very seductive and manipulative ways.  There are things I can’t even talk about here due to their increasing power against me but I will do my best to try.  Simply put, since meeting my wife I have known no other way to live but honestly, and that has left me vulnerable.  Happy, but vulnerable.

  We’re not here to try to change anyone’s religion or lifestyle and there is no malevolent agenda.  We’re here because it seems as though only ignorance of these issues keeps them sustained.  Only fear can fuel the illusion of control that leads people to believe that my sexuality could be somehow “caught” by my students.  Only misunderstanding leads people to think that my right to marry in my church has anything to do with your right to marry in yours.

  Eight years ago I gave my wife the most valuable thing I had.  My mother had left me her diamond engagement ring.  When I asked Amy to marry me, it was a request of my spirit and not my brain, because my brain would have never predicted that I would be anywhere close to up here right now with you.  I grew up in the age of the almost same-sex Melrose Place kiss, - where the closest thing I ever saw to my desires reflected on TV was Roseanne Barr letting a woman kiss her just before wiping her mouth off all over the woman’s shirt as they hugged.  None of that had anything to do with my self-realization.  I promise you, it’s much more likely one can be influenced straight than influenced gay.

  And as silly as we’re often made out to be through insensitive jokes or the media, I hear nightmares about the injustices allowed to occur.  A woman just like me on vacation in Florida with her kids wasn’t allowed to be there at her wife’s deathbed, because that state doesn’t consider her “family”.  Parents have tenuous rights at best over their children because someone thinks we’re out to “destroy” marriage.  There are well over a thousand benefits, rights, and privileges married couples are entitled to in this country, and although some may be ridiculous, only five are offered to couples with Civil Unions.  It’s not about a label of “marriage”; it’s about the time and efforts it takes for individual people to see the problems and the effects this segregation has on our lives.  I can’t even get the state to issue me my son’s birth certificate with my sex intact.  The state does make mother-mother birth certificates, but someone in the New York City Health Department doesn’t believe me when I tell them I’m female.  I am currently on our copy listed as my son’s male mother.  It’s been three tries and sixteen months since my son was born and this is still not (if you’ll pardon the pun) “straightened” out!

  I met New York State’s Senator Shirley Huntley a couple years ago, an African-American women in partial control over my right to parent my son, and to all these arguments she told me to that I could come back when my people had suffered 400 years of oppression and slavery, and then I could complain to her.  The fact that gays have been around forever, and that we’ve been so oppressed as to scarcely be identified, and incidentally, that my wife happens to be Jewish; all of this was lost on this woman.  But this is what we have to deal with.[UPDATE: A few years after this post was published Senator Shirley Huntley was one of the three NYS Senators to switch sides and vote in favor of Marriage Equality!  Thank you Senator Shirley Huntley for your brave ability to evolve!]

  Yet listen, I’m really not complaining.  I love my wife more every day, and every moment of injustice is worth having her next to me through it.  My son was the first thing I’d prayed to God for in years and that was the very day we conceived.  We are having so much fun with the first we knew we wanted a second, but childbirth is the single most dangerous thing a woman can to for this society, so I wasn’t going to make her do that twice.  It was more expensive for me to conceive because there was nobody in her family who we could ask to be a donor like we did with Takoda.  I knew I’d be paying $500-1000 dollars each try.  Knowing it took us four years to make Takoda, I just prayed that this time that we’d get pregnant as soon as possible and wouldn’t you know - we got pregnant on our very first try that time?

  So now we have to navigate this second path – Do we spend another $3000 dollars for her legal adoption of the child that I birth? (- which would be free if our marriage were legal in New York City by the way!)  Should we have Amy’s blood tests sent over to the hospital prior to my labor so that the staff there doesn’t claim her breastfeeding him will be a risk to “their” patient’s life, since she is not the “real” mother (as they did me)?

  It’s funny because I understand some of the objections.  In another universe where I’m straight and probably a priest or a nun or in the very least an avid church attendee, I’m just like these people.  Instead of feeling lucky, there was a time I actually felt betrayed by my father when he told me his only concern about my sexuality was that my life would be more difficult.  I felt that if he believed all the things he’d exposed me to, if he really was a Christian that is, that he must not love me enough to worry about my afterlife if “converting” me wasn’t even on his agenda.  I could hardly deal with the implications my sexuality had on my afterlife, but as a parent – why wasn’t he flipping out?

  The truth is there are so many different people out there and so many different beliefs and expectations about those things we just can’t all know.  I’d like to think that eventually, once I’d lived long enough, I’d have met some of them and learned to understand the ones I’d pitied. 

  We’re not asking for any “special” privileges here and it’s got nothing to do with how far it can go – like how polygamists would benefit or how other people would try to marry animals.  This is a group of people who have gone through a plethora of extra challenges just to come to the point of being able to experience love.  Just like so many others, these are two consenting adults who want to share the true love they’ve found with their children and make a better world to live in. 

  Society must take some responsibility to recognize and protect that love, the way it recognizes and protects the love between men and woman of all other different kinds of races, and religions, without prejudice and without discrimination.  I believe society owes this to me, and to my wife and my son and our community, for all the years it took for us to recognize ourselves, face those challenges, and finally learn to live the life God gave us fully, happily, and without shame or regret.

  Once you understand what we’re really asking for, you realize it’s not your responsibility to condemn or condone anything.  Marriage is a right that our society uses too protect children and families.  Those children and families are here whether you like it or not.  Your responsibility for Marriage Equality is secular, and not religious.  We’re asking for our spiritual and religious leaders to have the right to marry us, just like your spiritual and religious leaders have that right to marry you. 

"When Love, Pride and Youth Collide"

"I think women who kiss women are weird."

I should have heard that coming. It seemed to come out of nowhere, but while sometimes you can emerge yourself in one world, you forget there are many.

I know it was like that for my wife, Amy too.

We'd just had a great day. We'd gotten Crystal, my niece, met our CBST Temple friends and their families on the Pier, hung out at a waterpark with them all day, then packed up to find parking just in front of Washington Square Park on 5th Avenue perfectly poised to watch the dykes come marching in. It was NYC Pride - our first with our newborn son, and our second with my niece in tow. Afterwards, Crystal (not completely dried off and in her last change of clothes) was one to the first to dive into the fountain for a refreshing casting off of conformity. I'd expected this conversation at some point but was surprised, unprepared, and, let's face it, a little disappointed, to actually be having it during Pride.

But I mean, she's six.

"Do you think it's weird when guys and girls kiss?" I asked a second before Amy's arm gently but firmly me - crossed over me.

"Yeah." I felt such relief that this might turn out to just be a kids aversion to sex thing. "I mean, - no, no" she adds.  "I thought you said when guys kiss guys." Then she gathered her thoughts together in perfect succession with the Republican Majority, and spoke with the finality of absolute measured, systematic authority: "I think it's weird when girls kiss girls and guys kiss guys."

Kids don't think about things for long. They've got too much to learn. They're too busy growing, stumbling. I just felt like she'd just stumbled a sucker punch right into my gut.  Or maybe that was Amy's arm?

The car ride home was uneventful, but it was strangely quiet. The dinner after was too. My poor mother-in-law met us for pizza all happy on the warmth of summer and Merlot. She wasn't even aware of how Amy's uncharacteristic snap at Crystal's straw flick (in all fairness, Amy didn't know it was accidental at the time) was fully loaded with the pain of lingering unprocessed resentment. I took Crystal outside when I saw the tear in her eye.  I knew she was playing up the drama, but what's childhood for if not to try out a few personas?  We sat propped up on my truck, kicking our feet and looking at the sky.  We talked a little about her and her life - nothing too serious. But something had changed. She'd grown, and grown beyond my control. I needed to deal with this. But how?

Later that night, we got the baby into his crib, Crystal tucked into her away-bed, and as usual Amy and I went into each other's arms - a little more restless for the wear this time.

After a long talk about hurt, pain, betrayal, teaching philosophies, childhood memories and circumstances, parenting plans, the state of the world and the future of our family; we finally fell asleep with a plan. I was proud of us as a couple this night.

The next morning, I woke Crystal up. (This is very unusual.)

"We have to start getting ready if I'm to take you home before Amy, Kody, and I go to the parade."

She was still rubbing her eyes before delivering the usual. "Can't I stay with you?"

I stopped, and sighed. "Well, if you want to come we'll have to have a talk about something first."

She leaned back, a little resigned but attentive.

"Amy and I didn't think you'd want to come to the parade today, because of what you said yesterday." She looked confused. "You remember? - about girls who kiss girls and guys who kiss guys?" I paused and waited for recognition. I got it, but I don't think she'd suspected this had affected us at all. "You know how people kiss people they love?" I got nods. "Well, there may be more guys who kiss girls in the world, and that may make it seem like the others are strange or even wrong, but the people you called `weird' are often called worse. And sometimes they are even really hurt for this. But no matter what, - no matter what people do or say, they love themselves and each other anyway. That's what pride is. It's when you face something difficult and come out better for it. People who don't go through it, can't always understand. Sometimes these people celebrate that love, like when they march together in a parade. That's the parade we're going to today. You know our rainbow flag? You'll see a lot of them. That rainbow flag is every color because it's for everybody.  Everybody has a right to love and be loved.  This what that flag is about."

"That's what that means?" I know I blushed.

"Yes. It's for girls who love girls, and guys who love guys, and all the people who love and feel proud of those people for loving who they want to love. Now, I know you know Amy and I have been together since before you were born. But I don't think you realized when you called girls who kiss girls `weird,' that you were also talking about me and Amy." I don't know how, but she looked genuinely surprised at this point. I guess Amy and I are less demonstrative around her than I'd thought. "Married people love and sometimes kiss each other. I know you don't see us kiss too often, but you have seen us kiss. It's just that you're used to us being together, just like most people are used to guys and girls kissing each other. They just see that more often."
She was wide-eyed and nodding at this point.

"To be honest, I think you hurt Amy's feelings a little yesterday. Me, I don't care because I am weird in many ways and proud of them," (she laughed) "...but I think Amy felt very hurt by what you said even though she loves you no matter what. And this is what we really need to talk about. Did you mean to hurt Amy's feelings?"

She shook her head vehemently. "No."

"So what do we do when we accidentally hurt some one's feelings?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't really know you guys kiss."

"It's okay. Maybe you can tell her you're sorry when she wakes up. That will make her feel a little better."

Of course, I knew Amy was listening at the door.

At this point, I put her on my lap. "I want you to know that you can think whatever you want. We will always love you." I paused, because I really wanted her to know this. But I felt the need to clarify things I hadn't realized needed clarifying. "Remember how we went to the picnic earlier?" She nodded. "And the water park?" She nodded again. "And how we played with those babies last week in the room with all those mommies? And marched with our friends on the island the week before that?" She recalled all of these. "All those families are like me and Amy. They are all woman who love women, or men who love men." I didn't expect her to comprehend every significance, but what could it hurt? "You know Tia Viviana and Tia Esmerelda?"

"Yes."

"They love each other and are married just like me and Amy."

"They are?"

"Yes. So are all those ladies we were with last week, and all the people we were with yesterday. See, I don't mind you thinking whatever you want to think, but this is a big part of my life. It's a big part that I can't share with you if you are going to call these people `weird.' While I love you, I just don't want their feelings to be hurt. They go through enough."

She was quietly digesting all this.

"Listen honey, you're growing up and have to start making choices about who you're going to be. Remember, you can think anything you want, and the people who call those of us who love each other `weird' can also think - and even say - anything they want as long as they don't hurt anybody. Sometimes people think they are doing the right thing when they say what's on their mind, and I'm not worried about how they feel because I understand. There was a time I felt the same way. It was only after really thinking about it that I was able to realize how much I love Amy. And those people may never feel the same way I do and that's fine. I know that for some of them, their actions stem from love. They may love me, and mean well. They may even someday change their mind about what they think. That's up to them and entirely their business. They just can't march in our parade."

She apologized to Amy when Amy came out, but didn't want any more rainbow tattoos. I took this as fitting and fair enough. She begged us to still come to the parade. After about an hour of hanging out on the back of a parade float off 5th Avenue and Madison soaking up the light and color and atmosphere though, she suddenly turned and begged me for a white baseball cap a vendor was selling on the corner with two women symbols "...like you and Amy" she said

- and the symbols were in rainbow.

I'm not sure I'd ever been as proud as I was that day.

Silence Stalls Evolution

You know what sucks about being gay? - Being edited. I know that I should look at my life against a backdrop of my historically oppressed social location and be grateful. But, with marriage headed for the Supreme Court at the same time children are hanging themselves in their closets; it's just no longer acceptable to allow our voices to be edited.

I've read that while in some ways being the child of a same sex couple can be a burden because of the possibility of bullying; I've also read that another by product is a feeling of being special. That's nice and in some ways, and I can relate to that. My experience is limited: I was the only child of a loving couple, the child of a widow, the step child and step sibling, a child in a single-parent divorcée, and finally, one of many step children in a kind of Brady Bunch sort of thing. I've never however, been the child of a same sex couple. I imagine however, that it's kind of like what we go through as lesbians. I've often felt my culture is more a blessing to me than a burden. Taking the good out of what can be a burden, is powerful.

So, truth be known, I love being gay. I love the discomfort I had to face when my heart didn't mirror what I saw on TV; I love the past angst that made me who I am; I love my wife; I even love our rainbow towel set. What I don't love is when I get edited out of life because of I'm gay.

Not too long ago, my wife and I were on a Delta Airlines Plane on our honeymoon when we heard the pilot announce his congratulations to another honeymooning couple. The whole cabin smiled and clapped as that couple smiled and was served champagne. My wife, a rather demonstrative woman new to what I'd call the "gay" life, enthusiastically called the stewardess over to share our circumstances as well. Turns out, we weren't even the only ones to do that. Before the stewardess even got over to us, two other couples were being publicly congratulated and served my favorite drink - sweet champagne with strawberries. But here I was, cringing as the love of my life was leaning over to wave at the happy couples while summoning the stewardess to come faster over to us.

The stewardess tried to feign a smile and said she'd see what she could do. Now, I love my wife and would defend her to my death, but it's a shame that in a situation like this what should be a euphoric time span of our lives can get interrupted with all kinds of feelings, like embarrassment or even anger. Of course, the stewardess returned with some excuse about how they couldn't announce our engagement due to their "reluctance to be too political". I think they eventually did offer us a couple of complimentary glasses of some very cheap, dry sparkling wine, but the moment had certainly passed.

Too political? No fair! It's only political when they stop joyous announcements like that and blame us for "ruining marriage".

This again happened recently to me in a way that ticked me off.

I'm not a reality TV watcher or anything but apparently Kim Kardashian recently had some kind of encounter with her sister about Co-Breastfeeding. My wife and I happened to be big advocates on the subject, so when the Long Island Newsday called my friend Donna Kimick, IBC Lacation Consultant for a statement on the subject, she suggested my name as a further source for the article's resources.

Co-Breastfeeding is geographically and historically common, but fairly rare in the United States. However, why would lesbian parents be more apt to perform this locally rare activity? More breasts perhaps? This reporter, Jenny Berger, took my statement about how I'd induced lactation for our first born which my wife birthed, and how my wife was able to sustain our second while I recouped from an emergency C section. She thanked me for my contribution, and I walked away - feeling a little special. The article looked good and fair and short and sweet, and I felt good that our unique experience might enliven a discussion on the topic. I felt good, that is, until the article I saw got chopped!

I got edited out entirely. At first, I thought there must have just been a spacing issue. In hindsight though Donna pointed out that it may have been considered by some to be "too political" for Long Island's Newsday. It's bad enough that we can't even vacation certain places, and that I still have to struggle with labels and pronouns sometimes with students or having to decide if it's safer to just tell this cab driver that "Yes, my husband is home waiting for me." But when I am living my life and someone else edits me to save their status quo? I want to vomit. This is how we wound up here. There's nothing fair about saving the peace of mind of the ignorant, insecure, and bigoted who might be bothered by lesbian tits. What I want to know is how we are to gain our independence if we are dismissed and silenced by complacency? This editing is not political. It's oppressive. Even little things can make big ripples but they have to be thrown out there in the first place, ya know what I mean?

What Would You Do?

 All I did was say "Bye!"  I said it emphatically and dismissively as in 'You won't be missed.'  But what could I have done?  Oh the possibilities!

   It happened at the beach campfire picnic - the pinnacle of my summer plan.  We'd happened upon the Family Equality Council's Family Week in P Town a few years ago when Kody was just an infant.  We hadn't been able to join then, as it was too late, and hadn't been able to find boarding during that week any year since as we booked our P town plans.

   This year I was feeling without culture.  DOMA was derailed.  Prop 8 was finally a thing of the past.  All of this due in no small way to Family Equality Counsel and the efforts of our kids to express the intricacies of growing up "gay" so to speak.  It's a rapidly changing world, but as my community celebrated Pride this year in NYC, we couldn't justify dragging our two young boys out in that 5th Avenue madness.  Little by little our annual Pride month events that had once filled the calendar had dwindled off into a five minute Long Island Pride march and an occasional moms spray park event or zoo trip.  Every parent knows, family changes things.  There's a lot less spur-or-the-moment celebrating and a lot more plans including naps!

   So this year I booked our favorite place early.  I invited friends, and made sure we could at least catch a few events including the beach picnic and campfire (which is very special in Massachusetts.)

   We had such a good time - scouring the shops, owning the street, laughing over lunch with good friends and laughing over dinner and drinks with new acquaintances.  There were introductions, babysitting and everywhere people are happy and smiling.  It's the middle of summer.  The weather has been perfect.  There is just the right balance of time to chill here and time to explore new things and meet new people.

  I was alone in the beach when it happened - abandoned by my son.  Trying to make our flat triangular kite take flight was not working for me at that moment.  I'd been so happy to find a rainbow kite (You know real red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple rainbow - not the rearranged-for-homophobia varieties scattered all over the place these days?) Conditions for flight were ideal; but I was competing with giant dragonflies, flapping bird kites and UFOs!  Gay families seem to go all out on everything.

   My son had lost interest my measly diving kite bomb and had run off to join his Ema and brother on the blanket playing in the sand with our friends.  Tylenol had donated sand pails and shovels to all the families, and light-up bracelets for all the kids.  There were glow sticks, and Hershey's chocolate, graham crackers and marshmallows from Stop-n-Shop.  And everywhere you looked in either direction there were families.  The entire beach was filled with little tribes of two moms or two dads.  Never have I seen a more beautiful mix of races and colors and accents - people of all ages together - never as outsiders but as real honest-to-God legal families!  

   That's when this man with a pout/scowl, a little boy on his shoulders, and a young girl by his side emerges pointedly up to me.  "Excuse me, excuse me..."  I look up from winding up my kite cord.

   "Yes?"  I manage wrestling with a knot in my kite string.

   "What is all this... these bracelets and glow sticks?"  

   "Family Equality Council."  I look up.  No recognition.  I do hesitate, but I mean this is P Town, right?  "It's a gay family picnic."

   There was a pause.  Then he let out a tuft of air and rolled his eyes.  "Let's get out of here" he said to the young girl at his side.  

   This is the moment I want back.

   I mean, I lied - I do miss him.  Can you imagine the absurdity of a moment like that?  There I was, angered as usual, but for once surrounded by a majority!  I mean there were thousands of us on that beach at that moment.  My friends had just shared how some idiot yelled "faggot" out the window of his passing car at their toddler, and how a fleeting moment for that insecure guy turned into a daylong contemplation for the two of them.  I could have yelled back at this one.  I could have turned around and announced to the crowd how he'd just reacted.  I could have escorted him back to the parking lot announcing to everyone what he just did!  And why shouldn't I?  Nobody outside understands.  I marvel at the conversations I'd just had even with people I just met about similar absurdities like parents not attending their own child's wedding, or the new arguments for the expiration of affirmative action from those so caught up in privilege they can't imagine giving up any of it.  I'm on Facebook trying to explain the consequences and dynamics of Zimmerman's racism to a guy I went to Catholic elementary school with who thinks the way to end gun violence is with more guns, and is updating a "speedy recovery" for George W. Bush's heart surgery as we speak.  I had my wife, my old friends, my new friends, - I had a mob on my side!  This was an opportunity!

   But, no.  I did nothing.  I looked around all these beautiful happy faces, smiled a good bye and let it go.  And I'm ok with that now.  I just needed to write this blog.  What would you have done?

Spare Pair

It was a difficult night.  After spending 3 weeks sifting through Kody's poop with plastic bags and nose clips (Serious Mother's Day guilt being stored up from this!) it turns out the dime he may have swallowed had not just "come out the other end" intact as hoped - or even as five pennies and a nickel (as my wife suggested might be fun).  Still we weren't prepared to be ushered into a medical laboratory today, (we thought we were just getting bug bites looked at) but our doc had suddenly deemed this immediate.  So this impromptu trip to the doctor's office had lead us here to get X rays "before closing."  

This was not a kid-friendly space and we were not prepared with kid-friendly amusements.

Already getting reprimanded for "letting" them run down the hall near radiation, and two hours of defensive blocking later, we were in overdrive trying to keep them cornered in this little 6x6 space meant to house one or maybe two X-ray patients before they get their "pictures" taken, but there were about 8 -10 people waiting, no door and lots of corners!  We were beyond obliviously exhausted at this point so we were unprepared to assess the meaning behind the disapproving glances of strangers.

Finally, Kody was at least called in for his shot.  My wife went in with him while I "relaxed" and waited outside to contained our little one, Niky.  At least we knew the end of this long night was near.

   This woman who had been eyeing my wife and I since she first spotted us co-feeding the boys (interchangeably) in the first waiting room sat very strategically between us and the view of the teenage boy she seemed to want to protect.  We'd been together a long time by now but I hadn't had room to entertain any thoughts about it.  But I guess with my wife gone a moment of uncomfortable silence had descended upon us.  She broke the silence "Do you mind telling me what's the relationship?"

I wasn't sure at first whose relationship she was questioning.  I actually assumed she meant the boys.  "They're brothers."  I exclaimed proudly.  

   "Yours?  Or..." She motioned to the next room where Amy and Kody were getting the X rays.

   "Ours."  I finally realized the difficulty as she tried to nod but couldn't seem to muster it convincingly.       

   "We're married." I explained and hoped that would land decently.

I caught the foreboding glance she shot at the tall awkward teenage boy suddenly flushed and standing next to her even though I didn't have a breast out anymore for him to hide from.  

   "He swallowed a dime" I confessed for no reason in particular.  Her face opened into an oval of concern.  (One thing all mothers have in common, is children.)  "It never came out the other end."  I continued.  "My wife thought this X ray was unnecessary but the doctor had said the word 'surgery' so I we weren't taking any chances.  I hate second guessing my wife though."  (We were a bit upset at having to get an X ray for a toddler.)

   "I'm sorry, you... co-feed?"

   Clearly, we both had our own agendas here.

   "Well yeah,” I said getting up to lift Niky over my shoulder for the umpteenth time.  "She gave birth to that one, and I gave birth to this one, but they both breastfeed."

   I felt comfortable enough now to look at them.  The teen was definitely her son.  I think I remembered her starting to block his line of sight when I was breastfeeding one of the boys.  "Did you breastfeed?"  I felt our relationship had progressed enough to warrant the question. 

   "Yes" she said.  I guessed not on demand.

   "We're trying to keep it up as long as they need."

   "Yes," she nodded.  "They do say that's best."  

   Then she added almost as an afterthought, "It's very unusual" and she motioned to us.

   "How long we're you able to keep it up?" I asked trying to bring us back to commonalities.

   "Four months" she said.  Then she appeared to go some particular place in her mind.  "I would have liked to have done more."

   "It's easier with a spare pair."  I said.    

   She looked at me, relaxed, and laughed genuinely for the first time.

I still wonder if she felt better or worse off for having spoken to me.

Other than "Other" Mother Breastfeeding

Making the commitment to breastfeed is the most difficult commitment I've ever had to make.  And that's true for me despite it being easier for me than most.  But in the end, it's worth it; it's probably the most worthy effort I've ever put forth.

When Kody was born everything was easy.  It was a vaginal birth (5 pushes and he was out!)  He was a healthy baby boy all swollen and crying, - we even managed to gather his cord blood.  They took him only a couple feet away for a moment just to weigh him, and then they handed him back for an hour or two of straight cuddling.  When they placed him skin-to-skin on me, he immediately quieted and I think I have never been happier than I was at that moment of my life.

Of course, I didn't give birth to Kody.

And while I did breastfeed him, I was never the main course, - just appetizer and dessert as my lactation coach and friend, Donna, would say.

My recent birthing experience with Niky, our second, was very different. 

We were shooting for a natural birth again - I wanted a "natural" everything, so when he didn't want to come out two weeks overdue, I didn't want to induce.  I was 2-3 centimeters dilated for a couple of weeks.  Everyone told me it would be soon if I took the stairs, ate spicy foods, drank Cod Liver Oil, walked and performed other various physical activities.  I did most of those things, but to no avail.  Staring at a bottle of Cod Liver Oil had become a new nighttime mediation.

Finally, I just sat down to read Kody a bedtime story one night, and my water broke.  We called her mother to babysit, and my step-mother to drive, and we went to the hospital and waited.
The next morning, I was still only 2-3 centimeters dilated.  (1 centimeter by one doctor's estimation)! But my contractions had started and they were becoming unbearable.  I finally agreed to the epidural.  I was fine after that for a couple of rounds when suddenly the door busts open, and my doctor came in telling some nurse that she saw "it".  The next thing I knew my room was filled with a dozen people carrying me out and across the hall to an operating room.  I was off the monitors for one minute.  It took them less than ten minutes to rip Niky out.  I spent more time waiting for the X-rays they needed to make sure they didn't leave any tools inside me.  (They hadn't gotten the chance to count them!)

I thank god for my blessings however - namely my wife, Amy.  They would not take me down to Niky in the NICU as long as I couldn't walk, and right away the nurses began discussing the possibility of formula.  Amy, or Ema as we now call her, would hear nothing of it.  She was down there in a flash pumping her own milk so that his first taste was nature's perfect cure-all.  He may not have gotten hours of cuddling like his brother had, but in this family he would get breast milk! 

He had only gotten a mere glimpse of me in the operating room, a flash of his Ema in NICU but he now faced 48 hours of heat lamps, IVs, monitors, and nurses he'd never meet again.  I wasn't even able to hold him after the couple hours it took for me to wiggle feeling back into my legs and get down there.  Then it took another hour or so for the nurses to succumb to my partner's demands that I be able to hold him despite all the tubes and wires.

The next two days passed like a long dream.  I was down in that NICU every two hours for the next two days trying to get him to latch on and drink.  I was all alone at night.  They made Amy go home.  I wasn't making any milk yet but the nurses insisted that if I didn't try once every two hours, they were going to give him the formula.  They also insisted he stay there until the antibiotic ran its course.  Apparently, he'd been born with some extra fluid but this is a likely side effect of a C-section. I still hadn't gotten a straight answer as to what "it" was that my doctor had seen which caused them to rip him out of me in the first place.

In addition to all his problems, my body had just been assaulted.  My milk was just not coming in yet.  It was a very nerve-wracking time.

When the antibiotic had finished, and they finally gave him over to me, they said he was beginning to show signs of jaundice.  That's when they were really pushing for formula.  My pediatrician took charge and held them off, but she was concerned that he learn to nurse off me (as opposed to Ema's bottled breast milk) or else I might never initiate production.  I now had one night to try to make him drink enough to get his color back.

I remembered how a friend of mine had been unable to bring her little one home before she was released due to a bout of jaundice.  She'd looked defeated the night we took her home.  She'd said it was a terrible feeling to leave the hospital without your baby. 

I wasn't going to let that happen.  He'd already been through enough.

So despite practically zero sleep for four straight days, I finally had him back in my hospital room and set up to feed him all night.  I had an ounce of Ema's milk and an eye dropper that I used to entice him to my nipple.  It was a euphoric reprieve for both of us.  We were finally alone in a nice quiet room together.  He nursed; I talked.  I remember that night as rare perfection, holding him to me for warmth, feeling him calm for the first time in his life.  He knew my voice.  He'd look up at me at times while I spoke to him in ways that made me feel our future together.  We got a kind of late start but that night we found each other again.  Niky learned to nurse, and I learned the endurance it takes to be dinner!  We were released the next day and I began the long process of my own recovery and, thankfully, milk production.  Of course, the poor little guy kept sucking with part of his mouth to the side for the next week and a half looking for Ema's more-plentifully supplied eye dropper!  But we eventually found the rhythm. 

As it turns out, the difference between mother and "other-mother" breastfeeding isn't much. The little guys sometimes do have preferences but their preferences vary, and at least I always have somebody else to take over if I need to go to the bathroom.

As for all you breastfeeding other mothers without "Other Mothers?"  I don't know how you do it.  I have to say, I highly recommend always having a spare pair.  But I'm certainly proud to be a part of your club, (even if I do sort of cheat!)

"Other" Mother Breastfeeding

Here's a thought for anyone who cares: I spend $100s, invested hours, almost ruined two small, delicate but very important and valuable parts of my own body, - just to breastfeed.  As it turns out, the best I can do is offer him a little colostrum, and a lot of comfort. 

It's still valuable, but in truth I may have been able to offer it before the $100s and hours.  Then again, maybe not.  I took the Fenugreek (pills and liquid), "More Milk" (liquid), drank organic Mother's Milk tea (yuck!), purchased Domperidone (which is illegal in the States), endured headaches and sleepiness each of the first two weeks I'd use it to restimulate, ate oatmeal and pumped - goodness did I pump - every day, in bed, at home, at work - sometimes trekking all the way to a dirty closet in the basement of the school I work in on my 35 minute prep period to set up and pump 10 minutes, unpack and trek back up. Sometimes I'd pump hours, 3-11 times in a single day.  Watching a single drop of colostrum grow was thrilling, and to be honest, all I ever really wanted was to be able to offer him the extra antibodies.  I stopped, though, when the next step was a SRS machine which feeds him while he works to get me to make milk.  I didn't really need it anyway.  He comfort sucks any time if I'm there and he doesn't start off too hungry.
But the other day when Amy asked me how I felt about breastfeeding in public, I think she was surprised when I said "I hate it" without-missing a beat. 

Amy was not looking forward to public displays of breastfeeding.  I, on the other hand, the usual "shy-er" one, did not anticipate hesitation at all.  I don't normally think twice where only my pride is at stake.

But "other" mother breastfeeding is not only physically challenging, it's socially intricate.  I mean there is the usual gambit of men and women who seem partially limited in visual scope the minute that baby goes under the cape (Why?  I mean, there's a cape!), yet still, one might worry if they encounter those more eager stares.  But most in our presence know that Amy was Kody's birth mother, and if they don't know before, they soon learn in our presence, that she's the primary breast feeder.  At home, I've come to learn that the comfort suck can be just as important for Kody as the feed-suck.  The kid won't take a pacifier, and he never tires!  (It's such a shame more men don't engage their children on this level. Men can pretty much do everything that I did.  I'm more than sure that "Honey, he wants his mommy" thing would dissipate and a little more responsibility would kick in.  Wouldn't that be a nice evolution for the sexes?)

But when a baby goes first on a boob (before they really learn how), I've noticed they have this way of bobbing and thrusting their head toward it in such a way that thwarts all of your gentle guidances and usually serves to frustrate them.  In the end, nobody gets to relax until the kid at least begins to cry and mom can utilize that opportunity to smoosh his face square on the nipple and hold it there until he latches properly.

But when that happens to me in public, I feel like such a weird-o.  How could I possibly expect men to give in and let their children breastfeed (or at least comfort suck) from them if I can't even handle a few strangers wondering why I'm thrusting my boob into this other woman's baby's mouth?

"Daddy" (published in Gay Parenting Magazine Online Blog, June 2013)

 ...comes flying out of my 3 year old boy's mouth this year like a dirty word he must have picked up on the street.  My wife and I joke that we don't know where he "picks up that kind of language" but the sting for me goes deeper than our fleeting sarcasm reveals.  Of course, it's directed at me - the bigger, bulkier but-not-so-much-butchier one I guess with the insecurity chip on her shoulders.  Why am I the "Daddy"?  I'm the one who does the dishes.  I'm the one who gets flowers on Valentine's Day.  It was such a catharsis in my life the day my wife asked me to marry her with a beautiful diamond engagement ring complete with a rainbow of precious stones around the band.  She gave me back something that day I didn't realize I'd lost - my sexuality - and boy do I fill the part!  I'm the one who wants to stay up all night when we fight if we have to in order to "talk things out."  I'm the milder disciplinarian. They ask me when they want lollipops for breakfast, and they occasionally get it!  My wife?  She's the breadwinner.  She makes the big decisions.  It's Ema who charts the family's course through this world.  So why does he look up and curiously decide to call me "Daddy"?  She probably wouldn't mind.  This just goes against the narrative of us that I'd designed.

I'm calm though.  I'm a New York City public high school teacher - I can handle anything!  I ignore it.  I ignore it the second time - the third - the fourth. We call this "Planned ignoring".  Anyone know how to make God laugh?  The first day I survive.  The second is when I start losing some sleep.  By the third, I'm consulting Facebook lesbian mommies and our MTM group (Modern Tribal Momas) for advice.  Has anybody experienced this before?  Has everybody survived? What are the causes?  What are the cures?  I don't get too far.  God blessed this lesbian couple quickly ahead of all our friends with not one but two ...boys.  Here I am yet again adrift in a sea of uncharted waters.  This is not unlike my whole adolescence!

One night, it dawns on me to explore his reading library that we began back when we had the luxury of such time and idealism in college.  I'm all too quick to pass up "Heather Has Two Mommies" falsely dismissing it due to the stereotypically butchie carpenter mom and feeling averse to bring linked with that association.  My insecurity already steers me away from the other mother's role of "Doctor".  I find another title in our diversity collection: "Do I have a Daddy?" and wind up in a pinch reading that to my son.  While his eyes were wide with interest and we read together with wild presence we were both disappointed by that mother 's loose retort to her son's inquiry about why Daddy just left them. The only wisdom that mom had to offer my son and I was that she "didn't know" but that she loved him and that was all that mattered blah, blah, blah...

It turns out that a mixture of i-g-n-o-r-e, another look at (and nightly ritual read) of "Heather Has Two Mommies", and some genuine one-on-one chats have thankfully nudged this "Daddy" stage into a phase of the past.  I'm not sure that I went about this the proper way, and there is plenty to be said about the need for some quality children's literature on this subject, but I can tell you that I am "Mom" again. This was compounded just the other day when a song about moms was being sung on television.  I snuggled up around him and he leaned back against me in such a way that I felt we'd successfully settled the issue, and he's been waking me up with a special smile and a "Good morning Mom" that is truly the best part of my waking up!  Each time he says the word "Mom" now it seems to be with renewed conviction.  I know the subject will once again arise in our lives and as they get older they'll demand deeper and deeper explanations of all sorts of issues, but for now I feel pride in the fact that I've dealt with our first direct same-sex parenting issue and survived to tell the tale.  Thank God I managed to navigate this one with my natural genitals intacked.  Who knows what could be threatened next time!
http://blog.gayparentmag.com/guest-bloggers/daddy