Happy Halloween

Seems sort of sad that a pumpkin is one of my proudest achievements, but here it is...

Pig of my Heart

Behold my beloved's pig. More than a little influenced by our having just enjoyed Helen Mirren as HRH QEII. As for the Jocelyn Wildenstein reference, search me. Please note also the absence of any tail. Let me assure those readers who bemoaned the absence of tail in their own drawings — and I can do this with categorical certainty — that there is little basis to the conclusion drawn...

And now for something completely different

Some comic relief, but not without illuminating somewhat the condition of humanness...

Draw a pig

Mom

Just got off the phone with Mom. Turns out she hadn't read the e-mail yet (see previous post). Conversation went something like this:

V: So, Mom, there's something I want to tell you that I mentioned in the e-mail I sent, something I've wanted to tell for a while.
M: Well, why don't we just leave it and I'll read the e-mail?
V: Well, no, I want to tell you in person.
M: But, aren't you at work? You probably can't talk right now.
V: I'm in my office; I can talk.
M: OK.

Explanation followed along with some reasons as outlined in previous post. Mom's first reaction to the news was:

M: In May??
V: Yes.
M: Can—you can do that?
V: Yes.
M: Well, as long as you are happy.
V: We are, very, and very excited about the possibility of becoming fathers too. And I know that you can't share in our day-to-day lives, but I really want you to know what's happening in them and hopefully be a part that way.
M: Well, what's important is that you are grown up, you're an adult, if you think you are making the right decisions with your life, you are responsible for your own soul (italics mine), and as your mother all I can do is support you.
V: Even if you disagree?
M: Even if I disagree.
V: Thanks.

Her voice had become very quiet and sort of shaky. My sister and her kids were over, so I'm glad she had someone to debrief with (my sister knew, by the way, further tangling this web). I am really grateful to Yatsu and Corn for your advice; I am glad I did this; I feel better about my part. And still there is that feeling of selfish recklessness that comes everytime I come out of a closet (and I've come out of some, closets built, to my amazement, within other closets), that sense not of empowerment and triumph but of having done a little damage by choosing truth over discretion.

Gay Tidings

I am feeling a creeping sort of dread, and I think I must discuss it: Yesterday I told my mother I got married in May. I did this in an e-mail. I didn't really think much of it at the time, but later when I told T about it, his first reaction was not the glowing smile of pride I expected, but the unguarded exclamation, "In an e-mail?!" My hunch that I may have stepped false has steadily grown since then.

This is complicated territory, and I feel I should present background in my defense. My mother is not of the inclination to rejoice at her son getting hitched to another bloke. She may make a strong effort to impersonate prideful maternalism, and I appreciate it, but it is an unconvincing performance. I feel I know the true nature of her feelings. Also, I had my own misgivings about marriage, for entirely different reasons — antiquated, patriarchal institution co-opted by religion and all that — but with help from T, I overcame them. However, it was not a time in which I felt prepared to have to defend our decision. I wanted only joy in return for joyful news. This was all compounded by the fact that the wedding itself was somewhat precipitate, done when it was for practical reasons. T and I agreed then and continue to feel that, while it was our official wedding, the spiritual event had yet to take place within the circle of our family, chosen and biological. Many of you reading this right now were not told till after the fact, and perhaps felt a twinge of resentment for it at the time, but I hope I pleaded our case well and that you understand the distinction we make between official and spiritual nuptials. In many ways, we felt conflicted about expecting people to get all excited twice over the same event (sort of like those people who insist on having multiple birthday parties in the same period and expect the enthusiasm to remain undiminished at each one), and whether rightly or not, I included my mother in this. If I had allowed that her joy may have been genuine and absolute, I still felt like I would have wanted to preserve that first response for the spiritual event, which she might personally attend, rather than have experienced it vicariously through a telephone line. Clever followers of reason will observe that my actions yesterday in informing her by e-mail would give the lie to this foregoing argument. But I didn't say any of this was logical or right, just that it happened and why.

So, why did I tell her now. A few reasons: it's been on my mind a lot. I had a sense of doing more harm by not telling than by telling. A good friend also called me on the possible fear aspects at work in my behaviour, and certainly that would explain the knee-jerk impulsiveness of my actions. And also I wanted to share the news about our adoption hopes, and it felt like an unusual omission to not mention that we were married. Anyway, it's now been 24 hours since I wrote, not long it must be admitted especially where Third World e-mail reliability is involved. But I cannot shake the picture of my mother shuffling broken-hearted about the house in her slippers and not having the strength to write back. As I say, I have a creeping sense of dread that I have behaved with a monstrous lack of filial feeling, and I'm not sure now how to fix it.

Sugar daddies

Last Tuesday saw our first meeting of the "Daddies and Pappas 2B" course. A weekly gathering of queer gentlemen couples occupies a second floor room at the downtown Y and dicusses the ups and downs, pits and falls of parenting. Queer lady couples meet simultaneously downstairs at the "Dykes & Tykes" class, and though T & I were disappointed not to be integrated with these Sapphic moms, we are both looking forward to the cross-class potluck in a few weeks. Our facilitator is a terribly sweet gentleman, not a parent himself but the product of queer parenting, although he has a facilitating voice that I find sometimes overly conscientious. We are joined in class by a pair of air stewards, two elderly couples, one of which has already parented the biological daughter of one of the members, an enormous refrigerator-like and suspiciously straight-behaving bloke whose partner was "busy", and us. Our first class entailed the screening of a video about queer parents in the San Francisco area. I fully expected to see P, that odd but delightful gentleman Yatsu and I know who adopted two feisty infants some years ago...and so I did, but only in a wordless wave-by. One of his sons was dangling off his arm and P was smiling indulgently down at him. There was another chap I recognized in the video, though I couldn't quite place him. Anyway, it was good to see queer men doing what we think we want to do, but it didn't even begin to answer any of the manifold logistical questions T & I have.

It also brought up a difficult issue for me, and one I sense will come up again in this class: socio-economics. I am my parents' child in this: money matters to me. I don't want to have a child if money is an issue. I want the house, I want the volvo, I want to be able to spend time with a child without being beholden to an employer. This is complicated territory for me: I'd like to think I want all these things for my child, but how much is this me wanting these things for myself? How much is this the drag of parenthood? I mean the outfit, the getup, the external trappings? I grew up very much aware of money; we were not poor, but we were far from wealthy, and yet my parents managed somehow - and by it seems to me a conscious effort - to project an image of wealth. We had the big house, the pool, the two cars, we went abroad once a year. We lived in a relatively upscale neighbourhood, and I went to a private school, so my friends were all boys from privileged homes, and by all appearances, I was one of them. The cost of this effort of impersonation was that my parents could often not afford their chosen lifestyle. They spoke constantly between themselves, and in our earshot, of their lack of resources. One of the most peristent messages I received in my childhood was that any day, any moment, the money could stop, completely dry out, and our life, our image would shatter. I lived in mortal fear of any of my friends discovering the truth. Today my relationship with money is seriously fucked up. It is usually my first and last consideration; I feel like money and I are negatively-charged magnets; when I have it, I pretend it's not there. It sits at the heart of so much of my regret. This is not a thing I want to give to a child. I want my child to have a healthy relationship with money, and whether this means having oodles of it or just being in a position to impart understanding and perspective on it. I mean, given all the above, I consider myself a fairly detached person materialistically, but I can only imagine what sort of monster I would be if I received that messaging in 2006 and in a north American context.

The upshot of all of this is the oldest excuse in the parenting book: I want to be ready. And the irrefutable argument is that while we have the freedom to plan our readiness, biology doesn't always wait, and many children have come into unprepared lives, and fared beautifully. We will be ready when we have to be; I have perfect faith in our combined abilities, if not in my individual pathologies. So, when this class is done, in ten weeks, will we be ready to have a child? No, but we are hoping we'll be closer to a decision.

Fall

Today is lovely and warm, one of those atypical fall days that feel like a happy oversight on the part of the weather gods. And yet there is enough of a bite in the air to remind one of where you are, and enough of that extraordinary golden-coloured light that only happens this time of year. I love it. Yes, I know, soon enough it will be colder than a witch's grommet (in the word's of my reluctant father-in-law) and I will be cursing the long blistering slog of months (see subsequent posts for unhinged rants on the topic), but for now it's perfection. I dream of a land of perpetual fall. Where leaves turn to colour and fall and give way to new leaves, without interruption. A land where the year-round uniform is a light sweater and a jaunty hat.

Where's Vajso?

Where is he, indeed? Sometimes I wonder. Until recently, he was in a car returning from an idyllic three-day cloistering in a cabin on a private lake 100 km west of Ottawa. He is currently to be found trying his damnedest not to slide into a total slump at the reality of being back in this loud, ugly, shit-coloured city...although, to be fair to said loud, ugly, shit-coloured city, I think I would be describing most cities if not all that way right now. I think I have the soul of a country dweller. I know: it's all lovely and serene for a few days, even a few weeks, but living there is quite another thing. Yes, this may be true...but how do I know? How can I know until I try? I've spent my entire adult life living in cities, and yes it's OK, but shouldn't I try the other too? I can't begin to tell you how spectacular this place was: a tiny cabin perched on the edge of Sugar Lake, a private dock with two chairs facing the water, a canoe and two oars for idle jaunts on the water, and everywhere you look, maples and birch trees and sassafras in an absolutely indescribable palette of autumn golds and reds and purples and limes. And quiet. Oh my god, so quiet. T and I sat on the dock listening, I shit you not, to the sound of birdwing 200 feet overhead! We came back to the sounds of streetcars and honking delivery trucks and a tethered dog yelping and the blaring radio of Ali and Ali, shoe-sellers, downstairs. I wanted to run all the way back to Lanark County. This is typical of me, though: this idealizing of vacation locales. I suppose I would go mad if left too long in the country; at the very least, I'd lose my tenuous hold on the social graces. This is a larger problem, I fear, than a simple yearning after arcadia; this goes to the heart of my dissatisfaction with wherever I live. I felt it in L.A., for what seemed to be justifiably mitigating reasons; I feel it here, the set of mitigating circumstances eliminated to make way for a different set. The common denominator is me. Well, me and a city...which leads me to believe in conclusion that maybe I have, after all, the soul of a country dweller. As Hamlet says when asked his thoughts while resting his head in Ophelia's lap: "Country matters."

OK, this is a bit strange: we were there for three dinners and three breakfasts, and we ate nothing but pork products. Hmm, and at Ramadan no less. Not like that should matter to us, but still, we didn't plan an all-pork holiday or anything, it just fell out that way. But did I mention we canoed on Sugar Lake? Well, we did. T did most of the work, I being preoccupied with sitting in such a way as not to capsize us. No, my balance settled itself after a bit, and I pitched in with the rowing. But mostly we just sat on the water, drifting through that perfect silence, watching the skeletons of old trees float by under us.