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t pregnant but now as the university term comes to a close and i proudly watch my thesis students graduate it s time once again for me to write time to recount the many stories and experiences i ve gathered during this year of just living just living and grieving and being with my son posted in career conception grief and loss parenting secondary infertility teaching uncategorized work life balance writing process tagged lesbian conception on line teaching queer parenting secondary infertility work life balance 6 comments i do posted on july 29 2011 by queermommy who needs marriage i was in safeway last november my young son perched in the front of my grocery cart as we waited in the checkout line as i casually scanned the news rack the usual sea of sensational tabloid headlines and glossy gossip rags touting the latest celebrity scandals the cover of time magazine caught my eye who needs marriage it asked or rather proclaimed queers do was my knee jerk reaction how easy it is to ruminate on the relevance of modern marriage when you re straight and take the institution for granted i fumed when you ve never been denied the basic right to marry your beloved at closer look i discovered that belinda luscombe s time article was in fact a thoughtful well researched although hetero normative analysis of the changing institution nevertheless the headline got my back up as did amy o brian s series of columns that ran in the vancouver sun in the days leading up to my same sex wedding basically arguing that marriage is becoming an increasingly unnecessary institution if marriage has truly become unnecessary and insignificant i asked myself at the time then why are certain powerful factions still fighting so fiercely to ban same sex marriage that said i recognize there are people in the queer community who would agree with o brian who see marriage as an archaic patriarchal institution and want no part in replicating or reinforcing it the way i see it queers should at least have the right to choose whether they want to get married or not a choice that s assumed a given in luscombe and o brian s hetero takes on the subject amanda and i met less than a year after the first same sex marriages were performed here in bc it was the first time either of us had been with a partner where marriage was an actual possibility in the past i d often quipped that i was always the bridesmaid never the bride on three separate occasions i d squeezed myself into a froufrou gown and sported a ridiculous up do to serve in the bridal party for one of my closest straight girlfriends as honoured as i was to be there for these women on their special days i always felt as though i was in drag a queer interloper into this age old rite of passage while i wholeheartedly supported and celebrated the unions of my friends i silently resented and grieved the fact that my own relationship with a life partner should i ever be lucky enough to meet the one would never be recognized in this way even though i ve had crushes on other girls since kindergarten i grew up like most of my peers assuming that one day i would get married that s what people did i never had childhood bridal fantasies per se but i was fascinated by my parents wedding photos and the 60s era bridal dress my mom kept stored in a box at the back of her closet when i first came out in my early twenties i had to let go of any notions of marriage the idea that same sex unions could be legalized during my lifetime was unfathomable i found myself inexplicably flooded with grief as i kissed goodbye some mainstream hetero white picket fence image of marriage and family an image that had never really fit to begin with i didn t meet amanda until my early thirties but i knew early on that our relationship was special i fell for her harder and faster and more deeply than anyone i d ever been with we d been together just a little over a month which is after all well over a year in dyke time when we had our first conversation about marriage the first of many that led to our wedding two and a half years later we wanted to get married for a whole host of reasons because we were crazy in love because we wanted to grow old together because we wanted to throw a great party because we could at long last because we knew this relationship was for keeps because we wanted to shout it from the rooftops because we are out and proud and wanted to stand up and be counted as a queer married couple but most importantly we were planning to have a baby together some day we wanted our future child to know without a doubt that his or her family is like any other a family who came together in love true you 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 thou...
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