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u can most certainly be a loving family without the piece of paper a child s health and well being aren t necessarily tied to their parents marital status but in a straight world that doesn t always smile kindly on queers a society which still regards marriage as sacrosanct as the ultimate expression of love and family we knew that this piece of paper would reinforce our legitimacy as parents the one thing neither of us could have predicted however was how powerful and affirming it would feel to say our vows in front of our gathered families and friends and how this would profoundly transform our relationship with our respective parents none of whom had initially welcomed our queerness with open arms this week kicked off with hundreds of new york gays and lesbians lining up to get married on the first day of legal same sex marriage in their state and will culminate here on the west coast with vancouver s gay pride celebrations this same week also marks five years since amanda and i walked down the aisle and said i do we have no regrets married life has been good to us i wear my wedding ring with pride and take pleasure in calling amanda my wife the euphoria of the honeymoon phase is long over but our underlying love for one another grows deeper and more intimate with each passing year we continue to ride out the highs and lows of our relationship as does any long term couple knowing that we re both on board for the long haul and ever loved and supported by a community of family and friends our son the baby we were dreaming about in those early conversations about marriage arrived just over a year after we tied the knot now three he takes delight in the triptych of wedding photos that are prominently displayed in our living room i want to get married too he tells us to whom we ask playing along to mommy sara and mama manda he announces gleefully still at that age where he can imagine no other than his two moms we all laugh and hug truly a family built on love posted in extended family pride relationships same sex marriage uncategorized tagged queer parenting same sex marriage 1 comment mama daddy posted on june 3 2011 by queermommy on mama s shoulders at pride my three year old was splashing in the tub playing with his new sea learn bath shapes gleefully counting all the good things that come in twos he d started with the bath toys pairs of letters and numbers and sea creatures and then moved on to his body which i was busy soaping with a washcloth two eyes two ears two hands two feet he was now revving up to the important stuff i ve got two moms he proclaimed and two pugs and two teachers yes you do i smiled and one daddy he quickly added one daddy make no mistake our son was conceived with the help of an anonymous sperm donor something he won t know about until he s a little older one daddy i reflected back curious to know more and who s your daddy mama manda he announced i couldn t help but smile but of course amanda the dyke daddy they d recently done a unit on the family at preschool my son had proudly made a collage depicting his parents two women cut out of a clothing catalogue and pasted together creating the consummate dyke couple on green construction paper les mamans one of his teachers had titled it in red marker which translates literally as the moms we were incredibly touched when he brought it home although we had to laugh the same femmy model is featured in both images looking a lot like me times two and not at all like amanda we look alike we dress alike we act alike amanda laughed in a sing song voice after our son had gone to bed textbook case of lesbian merging there was also a bristol board poster prominently displayed in my son s classroom with family photos of each of the kids in the class the photo we d sent to school the three of us in our matchy matchy canadian olympic hoodies waving flags on the drive after canada s gold medal hockey win was featured front and centre the kids poured over the poster at circle time as the teachers led a discussion about each child s unique family make up it was wonderfully heart warming and validating after all my initial fears about sending my son out into the big straight world on his own for the first time our family unit was being accepted and included by his school as a matter of course having heard countless stories over the years about other queer parents tirelessly educating their kids teachers and daycare workers we realized yet again how fortunate we are a to live in a large urban centre in 2011 with a sizeable visible queer community and b to have found a progressive preschool where diversity is recognized and celebrated interestingly it was thanks to these preschool discussions about family that my son first became obsessed with the notion of dads after months of substituting mama for the father figures in his picture books see papa bear he was now spotting daddies everywhere that s henry s daddy he d now announce whenever we re visited the potty book for boys still a favourite even though he d been toilet trained for months that s trixie s daddy he d remind me as we worked our way through the knuffle bunny trilogy that s christopher s daddy he clarified as we laughed through robert munsch that s jillian s daddy he d point out at preschool drop off and rose s daddy on one occasion adding i want a daddy too here we go i thought his first sense of being other i imagined my mother cringing her words from years earlier coming back to haunt me children need both a mother and father figure she d opined long before she knew she was going to be a grandmother to a boy with dyke mommies this from a liberal minded united church going woman the same message we get ad nauseam from the family values crowd as i crossed the school parking lot clutching my son s little hand his simple yet oh so complicated want still ringing in my ears i could picture the entire christian right wagging their righteous fingers at amanda and me proclaiming we told you so i momentarily kicked myself we d had the best intentions to surround my son with positive male role models pseudo daddy figures but had been sorely falling short we re a bunch of dykes after all there are not a lot of men in our close inner circle my son s grandfather and uncles live so far away and we ve fallen hopelessly out of touch with our closest gay friends all of whom are childless then i quickly got a grip my son s got two loving parents and a supportive nurturing home he s growing up just fine that said the daddy issue was bound to come up sooner or later and in our case much sooner than we d anticipated when i was a kid i d often felt other because my parents are both immigrants and a good ten years older than the parents of most of my peers i went through a period in elementary school where i longed for parents who were normal i e younger and more canadian but my son s only three and he s already starting to figure out that his family is not like the others and he s already identified the key difference the daddy factor there s a huge gap between seeing your family accepted and included by the school and seeing your family reflected back at school as the norm amanda reminds me as we talk about it later she points out that other than that one off daddy comment my son seems perfectly happy with his family just the way it is likely he s just trying to figure out how we fit into the images of family that he s seen at school images that he s bombarded with in fact everywhere every single day pictures that don t quite match his reality just like his mommies who will religiously watch the latest dyke flick or devour the latest lesbo novel even if it got panned by the critics our son too is starved for queer content that reflects his experience of the world back at him he can see for himself that he s the only one in his class who made a collage with two moms and that most of the other kids have a mom and a dad at home that day in the school parking lot i gently reminded him yet again that there are all kinds of families that he has two moms just like his buddies hannah and charles have two moms and isaac has two moms plus one step mom but i want a daddy and now he s claimed mama manda as his daddy having grown up a tomboy one who always snagged the role of dad in childhood games of mums and dads amanda is secretly thrilled she recognizes that this new designation is more about the role she plays in our family as the butchy other mother as opposed to me the femmy tummy mummy than about our son wishing she were an actual man and bona fide dad although that may well come later a few weeks after counting twos in the bath my son was in his bedroom playing trains as he loaded imaginary passengers into the cars he nattered away about his two moms and his daddy all in the same breath so mama manda s one of your two moms i asked still struggling to clarify and a daddy yes he retorted as though it were obvious a mama daddy posted in father figures non biological lesbian mother out in the world preschool roles uncategorized tagged non biological lesbian mother queer parenting 9 comments raising a voter posted on april 28 2011 by queermommy mommy why do we have an orange sign my three year old inquires as we head out the front gate to walk the pugs unbeknownst to my son he s just asked his first ever political question nothing slips by him unnoticed these days he d spotted the election sign the moment it had appeared on our front lawn only days into the federal campaign he d since pointed out similar signs lining the main roads on our way to preschool some orange like ours some red and some blue what he really wants to know is why don t we have a blue one not that he has a clue about stephen harper or what an election is but because blue is his favourite colour in spite of our efforts to avoid perpetuating age old gender stereotypes he himself has gravitated towards blue blue is the colour of thomas the tank engine after all who in my son s esteem is far more important than the likes of stephen harper michael ignatieff jack layton and elizabeth may put together on those rare occasions where parliamentary affairs pre empt his morning dose of kids cbc he comes crying to me to fix the tv so how to explain to our little guy that even though we too like blue we categorically don t want a blue sign on our lawn that we feel quite strongly about having a bright orange one in its place at least until may 2 how to even begin to describe the electoral process to a three year old who has no concept of government and democracy as far as he s concerned his two moms are his entire world the ones who cuddle and care for him shape his days set limits and offer him structured choices he knows he lives in a place called canada but this in his mind has stronger associations with his red olympics hoodie and the go canada go chants from the 2010 winter games than with our federal government and the boring parliamentary debate that sometimes overrides the doodlebops as for ottawa it s the place we travel every summer in a big big airplane to visit grandma and opa government aside how to explain voting in age appropriate terms other than to say pick the one that you like best and why in this case that translates to orange see how our sign has letters on it i hastily improvise my son s at that stage where he s obsessed by the alphabet so i seize upon this as an opening it s somebody s name oh yeah he exclaims pausing to trace the largest letters with his fingers d a v i e s yes i say davies libby davies libby davies he parrots indeed we have thrown our support behind the long standing ndp incumbent in our east vancouver riding the first and so far only openly lesbian mp to serve in the house of commons we ve put up libby s orange sign because she s the one we want to pick i explain why because she s the one we like best i answer cheerfully inwardly cringing at how lame this sounds she s done a good job at looking after all the families in our neighbourhood for a long long time i continue and libby and her orange team are really nice to families like ours families with two moms like mommy sara and mama manda he asks you ve got it it s a gross oversimplification of course but it ll have to do i leave out the part about the blue team not being so nice to families like ours and the nasty hateful things they said about people like his moms as we fought for our right to marry a few short years before he came into the world never mind the fighter jets and the american style tough justice along with the building of massive prisons with my hard earned tax dollars and the secrecy and corruption and proroguing of parliament or that our family like many others got screwed over when the conservatives axed the national child care program our monthly uccb payment from the feds barely covers a day of child care while i teach part time my son oblivious to these complex adult concerns runs ahead down the sidewalk in his blue thomas boots splashing in puddles he takes it upon himself to count all the other orange signs on our way to the park keeping track on his stubby fingers nine mommy nary a red or a blue one in sight our real discussions about politics are sure to come later when he s a bit older however this unexpected test run has given me pause how do you raise a voter without imposing your own political agenda on your kid i have flashes of the mock federal election staged in grade five during the trudeau era each and every kid voted for the party favoured by their parents pierre won by a landslide then again how can you not our political views are inherently shaped by our morals and values after all the same morals and values that we impart to our children on a daily basis as a queer family simply being out in the world is a political act one my son didn t choose for himself but that will undoubtedly shape his world view he ll either grow up to be open minded and accepting of differences perhaps even a champion of social justice issues or he ll rebel by becoming the most ultra conservative anti gay person imaginable my own brother became a political junkie at the tender age of eight when he knocked on doors with my mother in support of a mayoralty candidate who attended our family s church whether or not my brother would vote for this same guy in the present tense is a moot point his engagement in the electoral process from an early age has made him not only a conscientious voter but a career political scientist now the father of two small children my brother reminds me that the best way to raise a voter is to let the message come organically from my own practice to take my son with me when i go to the polls and let him watch me mark my ballot with an x just like our own parents did when we were kids to keep on talking about that sign on our lawn and the other ones that line the streets and as my son grows older to explain my practice and my political v...
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