November 23, 2009 - 12:46 pm
“You’re not my real mother,” Hannah says to me in her matter-of-fact way as I am taking her to school. I have been expecting this, sooner or later. Hannah has known for years, of course, that Jane is her birth mother and that I adopted her. We have shown her the pictures from the adoption, her little two-month-old self held in my arms and then in the arms of the judge. She knows her adoption story.
I am, by legal decree, her real mother. I carry in my wallet a piece of paper verifying this. I think about taking it out and showing it to her.
“I’m not?” I say.
“Nope,” she says happily. “Mommy is. She’s the one who had me inside her.”
“So, what am I?” I ask.
“You’re her helper.”
Her helper????? She couldn’t have chosen partner? Friend? Even Dad? But helper? I feel like Alice on The Brady Bunch.
“Hmmm,” I say, as a truck passes in the next lane. “I’m pretty sure I’m your Mama.”
There is a pause as Hannah looks out the window and picks at the High School Musical stickers she has pasted on the glass.
“Tell me a story,” she says. She wants the next installment of Makena and Her Pet Unicorns, an endless tale that involves fairies and invisible castles and lots of pregnancies and an army of mice. I oblige, because that is what she wants. I suppose, that is what helpers do. And it’s definitely what Mamas do.
November 12, 2009 - 5:18 am
Years of research have concluded that children of GLBT parents are, surprise, surprise, pretty much like children of heterosexual parents. With a couple of exceptions: they tend to be more open to non-traditional relationships, and they tend to be more willing to accept some fluidity in gender roles.
Except my kid. Which could be because she’s six or it could be because I’ve failed. I’m not sure.
Hannah brings a book home from school every night for reading practice, little 16-page paperbacks about Jordan and his soccer team, or Sally, who plants beans in the garden with her mother and watches them grow. Or Sarah, who is afraid of the barking dog she has to pass on the way to school.
“Where’s Sarah?” Hannah asks, looking at the pages.
“Right there,” I say, pointing. And there she is, little Sarah, dressed in a striped shirt and what can only be described as dungarees. Little baby dyke Sarah.
“That’s not Sarah,” Hannah says. “That’s a boy.”
“No, honey,” I say in my explain-the-world voice. “That’s Sarah.”
“She looks like a boy.”
Well, she does, I have to admit. But she also looks a lot like many girls used to, before 6-year-olds began dressing like 16-year-olds.
“That’s kind of how girls used to dress,” I say. “We just wore regular shirts and jeans.”
Hannah considers the picture, mentally weighing her capacity to tolerate gender fluidity.
“I’m calling her Sam,” she says.
