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act with no benefits no mat leave and no tuition benefit for my spouse the e i we d receive on my meagre part time salary was laughable no way we could live on that for a year without going into serious debt okay we were heading into the red anyway but with me back at work and amanda receiving parental leave while she was at school there d at least be a wee bit more money trickling in during that awkward radio silence on the phone i had a horrible sinking feeling that the e i woman s words were going to come back to haunt me and sure enough that afternoon as i plod up and down the greenway with the stroller my face streaked with rain and tears i am already wishing i d been able to make a different choice i wish i was staying home for the year like all the other moms in my mom baby group so i could join them for coffee and regular walks at the park sign up for stroller fit do infant story time at the library and complain about how i bored i was and how many long hours there are in the day to fill with baby so i could be fully present and enjoy my son on my so called days off instead of worrying about the manuscripts i need to read and the lectures i need to write and the student comments i need to complete before i teach later in the week where my biggest dilemma of the day would be do we get ready and go out to kindergym or do we stay in our pyjamas and hang out at home rather than how do i get him the fuck to sleep so i can post i wish money didn t matter somehow i made it to the end of term my mfa students were incredibly patient with me for the most part although someone wrote on my teaching evaluation the instructor seemed a bit distracted and preoccupied this semester gee ya think i felt bad for letting my students down but i didn t take the comment to heart i knew there would be other terms other classes other students i would get childcare for the fall semester get back on my game but it breaks my heart to know that there won t be a next time with my young son that those precious early months are gone forever and i was only half there back in my own mfa days as i slogged through a playwriting thesis i had an image of the bard pinned above my computer so i haven t written much lately the post card proclaimed so what neither has shakespeare it helped me hang on to my sense of humour and stopped me from beating up on myself those days or weeks when the writing wasn t flowing or when the demands of my various part time jobs were keeping me away from the page this corny slogan pops back into mind as i find myself compelled to explain my seven month hiatus from this blog and no the dog didn t eat my homework so i won t bore you with mundane excuses but i will say this as i often tell my students there s a time for writing and sometimes there s a time just for living we literary types can get so preoccupied with the writing we re doing or stressing about the writing we re not doing that we forget sometimes to take a step away from the page and breathe in new experiences how can there possibly be anything fresh to write about if you don t get your head out of the computer once in a while and let yourself live a little bit this past school year i have done just that full day kindergarten is looming large this coming september how did we get here so fast and after endless visits to that same fertility clinic with drugs and escalating interventions and my feet back up in stirrups too many times to count it has become painfully evident that there is going to be no second baby no sibling for our sweet boy no second chance to re do my botched mat leave to spend quality time with both kids before my son starts school it s been a harsh wake up call this is it our son s childhood is not a dress rehearsal and i need to be as fully present as a parent as i possibly can i knew if i didn t somehow take back what we d lost during that frazzled first year i was going to regret it and worse resent it forever and so i have taken a hiatus from my classes and am simply supervising a half dozen thesis and special project students so that i can spend quality time with my son instead of showing up at my computer to teach i ve been going to park with my boy letting go of my inhibitions and singing loudly and joyously with him at our music together class watching his antics at dress up drama delighted there s yet another thespian in the family i ve been helping build elaborate train tracks and marble runs and remembering how good it feels to squeeze play doh through my fingers or to cover my entire hands in finger paint snuggling in close and reading thomas the tank engine and captain underpants and showing my son how you can make your own books by stapling a series of drawings together and penciling on your own story and while these intimate shared experiences can never completely replace what the two of us missed during those early months i do feel that we re making up for lost time my son has never been happier and more settled i m happy too although it s bittersweet even as i throw myself in one hundred percent with my boy i m also aware that i m deeply grieving the second child we so wanted but will never have i hadn t actually planned on taking a hiatus from my writing as well i d blithely assumed i d fit it in somehow juggling things as i ve always done this time during stolen moments at starbucks three mornings a week while my son is in preschool down the street i d figured two mornings for my thesis folks and one morning to show up at the page which worked for about the first month until october when the entire family got flattened by a bad bout of bronchitis sinusitis forcing me to spend the rest of the academic year playing catch up that and the fear that writing about the infertility would make it all too real that putting it into words would somehow jinx our last ditch attempts to get 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 a...
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