More on Michelle and Lucy (see my post here):  The Columbus Dispatch quotes Lucy as saying:

In one heart-wrenching recording, confused little Lucy struggles to explain to Hobbs that her ex-partner Mullen no longer wants her to call Hobbs “momma.” Lucy is heard to say, “Mommy says don’t call momma ‘momma’… mommy says ‘momma’s not momma, momma’s Michele’ but I say ‘no mommy, she’s momma.’”

We Live in Fear of Losing Our Kids, Part 2; or: I Meet My Nightmare

Today was Monday, so Susan had the day off.  We each did errands in the morning, she got a massage, I took the kids to the doctor, to The Container store to get a thermal yogurt container for Dylan’s new school lunches, and then to Biggs.  When we got home at 2 pm, late and hungry, everyone except Susan was grumpy.  She fed us, and slowly we recouped.  We had to be back home by 5:30, since it was our date night tonight, and we really really needed to talk about money, plus we weren’t getting along too well.  It was close to three by the time lunch was over and we almost didn’t go to the pool at all, but once we got in the water I was shocked we’d ever questioned it.  Dylan and Rylie were showing Susan all their latest moves they’d just learned in swim class, and were talking over each other in their eagerness to show Susan how they could dive in the five-foot and swim--well they thought, barely I thought--to the rope.

Suddenly I realized that instead of joining us in the water, Susan had sat down close to a woman, two women really, she had nodded at a minute before.  But it was clear that one woman was the center, the other lay back, beautiful, blond, and thin, in a black strapless bathing suit, a bit removed under big sunglasses.  She looked straight, model-straight.  The other one I didn’t immediately recognize, but could tell by the intensity of Susan’s and her exchange, and by the kind, pitying slope of Susan’s back, that it was Michelle Hobbs.  (Michelle had just lost custody of her daughter to her former lesbian partner see my post about it from just a few days ago.)  We had never seen Michelle at the pool before, didn’t know she’d joined, in fact I hadn’t seen her in years, though Susan, Dylan and Rylie had seen her and her girlfriend when they stopped in at Michelle’s new pet store at Findlay Market to get fresh produce on Sundays.  They talked for a long while then when we came out of the water for kids time-out, I tried but couldn’t keep Ry away from the huddle, from Susan, so we all went over, tragedy was only four lounge chairs away.  Even though I was wet, I gave her an immediate hug, “You’re Michelle aren’t you.  I’m so sorry.”

She acknowledged both things, and we introduced our kids.  Soon Susan left, pulled away by Rylie and Dylan.  I stayed to talk. Michelle’s ex had won on appeal in the Ohio court, and she had sent out the email from a week ago, asking for any help anyone had to offer, because the ex had denied her the right to see her child ever again, since she was not the bio-mom.  They had broken up maybe three years ago, when Lucy was three.  She told me about three sets of signed documents she had, listing her as a “complete and full” co-parent in every way.  She told me about the judge who’d recused herself without explanation after a year and a half on the case, who’d already ruled once in Michelle’s favor and had found her ex “not a credible witness” as she lied about never having wanted Michelle a co-parent, despite the signed documents and the emails addressed to “Mama” and having her pick the sperm donor and being present throughout the process and at the birth and fully raising the child together for a while.  The judge had recused herself and was replaced by a judge who was certainly a friend of her ex’s family, with extensive links, who in two weeks ruled against Michelle and inserted into the record six statements saying that the ex “had never considered Michelle to be a parent at any time” that had no basis in the interviews or other records of the case, but as Michelle sadly but insistently told me (as she told anyone, anyone might be *the* person who could help her) would now be part of the official record. 

“It —this whole thing—has really,” she glanced at her girlfriend, trying to mitigate but be honest, “affected our relationship too…” —she gestured with her hands “—see even now hear I am talking about it instead of——” 

“It’s okay honey, it’s fine,” says Amanda, still leaning back, not talking but watching both of us, paying attention to the conversation.

“This place,” says Michelle, meaning the swimming pool.  “It was a lot, too much, for us to buy the membership really, but we bought it for Lucy.  We knew this would be a great place for the summer for her, for us.”  She looks right at me, she takes off her sunglasses, and I try to look her in the eyes with care and without crying.  “This is where we came, last Sunday, for our last time together.  Right here.  That”—she points to an elevated porch where we had Dylan’s birthday party last year—is where we are supposed to have Lucy’s birthday party.”  I am crying now, tension deep in my throat.  Trying to honor her loss with my presence, with my tears, by staying, even though it’s hard.  I am a nonbiological mother.  I am crying again right now. 

Not that breakups happen, but that children lose their mothers entirely, and mothers lose their children, through the homophobia of their partners, through the homophobia of our government.

We Live in Fear of Losing Our Kids

I got this email via a friend who is good friends with this mom, who is also an acquaintance of mine, who has lost/is losing her child as a result of the breakup of her relationship to her former partner, the "bio mom."

I had a nightmare about losing the kids the night after reading this. 

From: "'Chele"
Date: July 14, 2011 12:29:08 PM EDT
 
Please read this and forward to anyone you think could help.

I am reaching out to whomever and wherever I can, to try and keep my fight for Lucy alive. Mullen's attorney commented to the press that "this case will be going straight to the US Supreme Court". No one seems to know why he said that, but if there is any way possible that my chance of fighting for Lucy is not over, I want it. I know you are busy, but if you could take the time to read this opinion, and help me uncover the slightest error or words that opens the door for us to at least FILE with the US Supreme court and pray for an audience and most importantly get my visitation reinstated through the process it would be worth the world to me. Even if it took them 2 years to reject it, we could possibly get my visitation returned during the process. Please, please, please...try and find something, anything that would give me some hope. Share this with anyone you can....Lisa Meeks knows I am begging for help...she is still trying to find a way as well. Lucy is going to be 6 years old in two weeks. I do not know which feeling is more powerful right now; the fear and loneliness of never seeing Lucy again, or the anger and outrage I have over a judicial system that could allow a lie to destroy the future of my little girl and me. Go to the link below and click on the slide show (volume on) of the first years of me and Lucy. The song was written by my friends; The Wild Mountain Berrys, it will break your heart. Too often lawyers must put their feelings and emotions aside, but I believe when it comes to family matters, you should do just the opposite. In my situation you are fighting for someone who can't, a little girl who is not allowed to have a voice. NONE. Because I have been denied any rights, Lucy will NEVER be able to speak to what matters to her. I won’t be allowed to reach out to her until she is an adult at 18, and by that time the truth will cause more harm than good I'm afraid. PLEASE try and help. Fresh and eager minds always bring new ideas and hope. Pass this on to colleagues, law students, professors, anyone who might be able to salvage this case…my life and the future of my family. Thank you...with my all my heart....thank you for your help and understanding.
 ‘Chele & Lucy

Photo show of me and Lucy:  www.TruthforLucy.com  (you can also view Ohio SUPCO hearing here)
Slip Opinion: http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2011/2011-Ohio-3361.pdf

I still haven't looked at the slideshow.  Couldn't bear it.

Gay Pride Parade 2011

Santa Cruz Trip

I sit on the plane heading into San Francisco and look out at the snow-blessed mountains and think:  am I tainted by now?  Am I still as free from homophobia and prejudice as when I left here?   The physical traces indicate problems.  I shave my legs now, just shaved them last night, at 1:30 in the morning.  My hair was short and cute & dykely when I lived here, now is it Cincinnati-fied?—it’s long and thick and held high and back in a ponytail.  I have spent over a year depressed about that most heterosexual female obsession, weight loss.  Ry has called herself fat many times this year, and Dylan proudly calls herself thin in response.  This despite the most feminist household I can conjure.  And all those sweet kind Waldorf moms, my real and good friends—I just wish there were also dykes there.  I thirst for Santa Cruz and most lesbians I know in Cincinnati don't even know what they are missing.  

The Month I Became Straight ...

Yesterday I turned to look at myself and realized I was almost completely utterly a straight woman.  In her stereotypical form.  I had two kids that I doted on.  I was a stay-at-home mom.  I had long hair and shaved my legs.  Most of my friends, at least those I talked with daily, were straight, having somehow found decent, kind, loving and liberal husbands.  My grad school experience had been so the opposite, an immersion in a pro-gay world, with my first ever openly gay professor, who was world-famous at that, world famous due to her brilliance.  She invented the term “queer theory” for goddess’s sake.  She was hot.  Most of my friends were gay or actively pro-gay or more progressive politically than I was.  But no more.  We’d found a real home in the Waldorf community, an easy way to self-select for liberal allies.  It was a wonderful relief to be less pro-biotic, less vegan, and less concerned about some progressive or new age cause than a certain percentage of the population there.  It's nice not to be carving out your space every second.

And over the past two years I’d added to my repertoire the kickers,  the internal signifiers of heterosexuality:   I thought more about fashion than I ever had—though I'd never thought about it a lot.  Mostly I thought more about how I dressed, instead of just putting on something comfortable and asexual.  And I began to think too much about weight.  I’d always been thin, or at least fine, I’d always been athletic and hadn’t thought much more about it.  I was happy, satisfied, and didn’t know what all the fuss was about with other girls’ obsessions with weight loss. Then in the two years of trying to get pregnant, of obsession with trying to get pregnant, the books told me weight gain was a good sign.  And with my tendency to eat to relieve stress, I gained weight even before I got pregnant with Dylan.  Then at my pregnant height I was 208 pounds.  And not worried about it.  But after a certain number of pounds lost after she was born I couldn’t take any more off. 

Who knew?  I know that apparently the whole straight white female world knows this, but I didn’t know.  My need for relief from stress through chocolate was high, especially when the kids were little.  It was hard to work out, hard to find the time for myself.  It sounds trite but that’s how it was. 

The weird thing is that I felt thinking about weight was a straight girl issue—for me it really was.  So that I was somehow giving in, or being traitorous, to care about weight.  It was not my conception of dykedom to care about weight.  Especially to care about calories.  I of course had no money or no desire for Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers—that was beneath the athletic carefree me and not something a self-respecting dyke paid attention to.  So when a few months ago I sneaked onto the online site Calorie Counter, and actually found it useful, I felt illicit, and guilty, and … straight.  My athleticism and my dykedom have always and are still related for me.  I am strong, athletic, like having muscles, dykely.  It’s a way of loving myself, my body.  I know there are plenty of Olympic athletes who are straight.  But there is also Martina Navratilova, and Billy Jean King, two of the earliest celebrities to come out when I was young. 

Here I was mired mostly happily in the home, with my 2.3 kids (almost) and my dog (well two) and instead of a white picket fence a dilapidated urban fence with too much glass on the sidewalk.  Definitely culturally straight, and straight if you watched me coming into the playground or into the grocery store.  I had a silver wedding band on instead of gold one, sure.  I had the HRC sticker on my car but so many don’t know what that means.  So my reluctance to act ‘straight’ by losing weight—such a girly girl thing—helped make me stuck feeling bad.  But I realized I had caught myself on the horns of the dichotomy:  If dykedom were defined in opposition to straight girlhood, then the binary oppositions lined up like this:

Gay                    Straight
_____________________
Casual               Dressed up
Athlete              wimpy non-muscular girl
No make up       makeup
No fashion         fashion
Rebellious          conforming
Athlete               sorority girl
Self-defined       societally defined
Self-initiating     defined by others (men or peer competition)


But also, to my detriment, like this:

Gay                    Straight
_______________________________
Fat                      thin
No kids               mom
Works                 stay at home
Doesn’t care       Obsesses about
 about appearance      appearance

Then I went bra shopping.  I don’t know why my mom had failed to give me this experience.  Perhaps it was mercy.  I only know that bras were something I rarely bought, and rarely thought about, pre-kids.  When pregnant my breasts blossomed, and afterwards I nursed for many years, so I knew something about nursing bras.  During and after that my breasts stayed huge (for me).  And while I realized an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with my bras I was too busy to pay attention.  Then Susan had a wedding to go to, and her bootcamp friends decided to help her find a great outfit.  All well and good, but then they went bra shopping, and I went along.  I mean really went bra shopping, we had the name in hand of the best customer attendant at Nordstroms at the Kenwood Mall, and we went in a group, and I was completely out of my element.  I’d gone once before, to a bra fitter at Macy’s when I was pregnant and huge…but that was a focused, desperate experiment and I’d gotten only wire-free bras.

In the end, I went three times before I got one underwire I liked, and spent two months studying the HerRoom site online before buying seven bras from them, all but one of which I returned, an athletic bra without wires.  How much work being heterosexual is!  I did very much like how my breasts looked supported, having never thought about it that much before, since before my breasts were much smaller or I was nursing.  Now I was a double D!  I felt that if each article of clothing was going to be two months worth of full time work, then I’d never really become well dressed.  Susan’s straight friends, on the other hand, her bootcamp buds, spent all day helping her shop for a little black dress—Susan’s first dress in a very long time—three people shopping a bit for themselves but mainly for the fourth, and coming back successful, only to say:  well now it’s time to get a bra, and then shoes, and then accessories.  So much work, I found it ridiculous, even as I loved the finished look.

All of which is to say that binary oppositions are best challenged and messed with, as Derrida tells us.  But that it was hard in such a straight, conservative location to give up even any signs of gayness.  If I’d been in San Francisco or Santa Cruz, where multiple representations of lesbiandom, dykedom, femmedom, queerdom, and bisexuality blossomed, then playing with my self image would not have been so hard.  Here I felt less free, less able to enjoy the pleasures of my own possible images, perhaps like some black people who choose not to dress down because they think that it will (and it often does) make whites perceive them more negatively.  I often felt invisible, and certainly not affirmed in my gayness,much less my gay momdom.  What I would have given to have just one other gay parent at our school.  So I need to complicate my own relations with my self-image, and de-dichotomize,  I suppose.  Working on it.

On My Kids Configuring My Heterosexual(ish) Privilege

I’ve felt this over the years, at various levels of intensity, but it must be said:  Kids make me more legitimate in this culture’s eyes.  This Cincinnati conservative world.   I can feel myself tense as I say the word “partner,”  though I do say it, over and over again, refusing to closet myself.  I don’t know how anyone does it, frankly—I mean, I do know why and can feel why they do it, at least in part—but there’s so much of my life that is bound up with Susan’s life.  How would I refuse to talk about so much of it to my work colleagues?  How do I refuse to say “my partner” to the secretary at the doctor’s office, even though I could care less about her and her relationship to gay rights?  How can I not say to the nurse “my partner was sick for a while, and then Rylie, and now I think Dylan might have the sinus infection too?”  I am gearing myself up to say “wife” now that Rylie said it referring to Susan on my behalf.  I want to say that for the kids, also for legitimacy reasons.  But it’s more likely to elicit a reaction of confusion, I fear, and possible homophobia.  Also in front of the kids.

If I say “partner” with kids in tow, or if I say “my partner” while discussing my kids, I can feel the pull of legitimacy they bring to any occasion. Kids puts us on the heterosexual, normative map.  It’s true.   And that is a reassuring feeling, whether I want it to be or not.  Judith Halberstam talks about and celebrates queers living out a prolonged adolescence in her work, mainly because of the lack of children.  I therefore must become less queer, and more adult, for having had the kids, in the cultural view.  I don’t mind the “more adult” part, having never been into all the bars and dancing that is supposedly part of a prolonged adolescence.  And I am fifty years old, dammit, surely an adult.  But the less queer?  I don’t like the binary opposition that makes me less queer.  And yet, and yet, what I want to talk about today is the relief it sometimes brings me.  I walked into the garage of the hospital today, after we watched Susan give her talk at her Point of Care Scholar graduation, and they’d given our car a ticket because they thought an employee—Susan—had parked in visitor parking.  I had to talk to three people about it—it was a $75 ticket—and it solved nothing in the end.  However, I had kids in tow as I said the words “my partner works here” or I mentioned my kids somehow as I talked on the phone.  The little snail trail of legitimacy…two little girls.  No nothing wrong with them.  They dress very femininely, they are obedient or seem well mannered for the most part, are acceptably cute.  They are like carrying an American flag around everywhere, for a Muslim:  I belong, I may seem as if a part of me doesn’t, but I do belong.  And it works.  The family configuration registers on people’s faces. 

That increasing legitimacy makes me feel like Cherrie Moraga does when she says she will use her white skin privilege, again and again, if it helps get her and her lover out of bad situations.  On the other hand I also have long hair now, and I shave my legs.  It used to be I had a more dykely hairdo.  But there’s the guilt as well, for passing.  And fury, at how rigid people’s expectations are. 

The thing is, I feel this I notice this every day I am out in the world with the kids, or even am on the phone making an appointment for one of them.  That is an empowering—no not empowering—but legitimizing, a soothing of the ego, a reassurance that I won’t have to fight one more time—it’s shitty, really isn’t it?  Think how often the kids legitimize me without me even being aware of it.  It separates me from all those ‘adolescent’ gay folk, those rebellious fuck-you queers.  And it feels good.  Even as I hate the whole dichotomy, and part of me hates being mistaken for straight, especially by people I suspect and hope are gay.  Lee Edelman, queer theorist extraordinaire, argues to the extreme, in essence:  around the dichotomy, the binary opposition, of gay vs. straight:  Well if straight means having kids and gay is its opposite, then gays should be anti-child, be pro-death, to strengthen the dichotomy and alter the valuation of it, to value our side of it.  Which is of course absurd, and offensive, but at least it’s powerful, and it’s a direct attack on this invisible—and false—legitimacy I gain just by having children.

More to say…

The Trouble with Peggy Orenstein's book Cinderella Ate My Daughter

I love this feminist author and journalist, and have taught her in class.  I still remember the complete, loaded silence that greeted Peggy Orenstein’s research in Flux that showed that every teenage girl interviewed in the article we’d just read had felt not sure about what gave her sexual pleasure, except for one, who had gotten a vibrator from her aunt.  Then Orenstein came out with Cinderella Ate My Daughter…  and I gobbled it up.  Most mothering books don’t have such an explicit feminist view or pedigree, and I was excited to see what Orenstein would do with the media’s effect on young girls.  Her book about her long journey to have a child, Waiting for Daisy, was one I cherished in my own journey and had been a New York Times bestseller.  I liked her.

The book generated lots of interest among the school moms and even in our lesbian moms group, and it took a while for it to become available from the library.  Peggy Orenstein talks about the recently increasing gender segregation of toys by color as a company-driven phenomenon, so that each family might have to buy two of each toy.  She talks about the enormity of the onslaught on our kids by sophisticated marketing strategies, and does a helpful and elucidating riff on Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus and other girls in the Disney factory, and their frequent and worrisome morphing from super good girl-role model to celebrity who uses sex in the most pedestrian and depressing of fashions, as dominant in her persona.  But solutions?  Analysis?—not so much. 

At the end of the book, after traveling through American Girl Dolls, the Disney girls, the Disney Princesses as marketing ploy, and many other good things she notices, her ultimate critique is next to nothing, namely:

"Daisy's mix-up gave me the opening I needed to talk with her ("with" being the operative word) about the way the film had presented girls and women, to solicit her own ideas about it.  That, in the end, is the best weapon we parents have, short of enrolling our daughters in one of those schools where kids knit all day (or moving to Sweden; marketing to children under twelve there is actually *illegal*--can you believe it?).  We have only so much control over the images and products to which they are exposed, and even that will diminish over time.  It is strategic then, --absolutely vital--to think through our own values and limits early, to consider what we approve or disapprove of and why.  I can't say what others' personal threshhold ought to be:  That depends on one's child, one's parenting style, one's judgment, one's own personal experience.  It would be disingenuous to claim that Disney Princess diapers or Ty Girlz or *Hannah Montana* or *Twilight* or the latest Shakira video or a Facebook account is inherently harmful.  Each is, however a moment in the round-the clock-all-pervasive media machine aimed at out daughter--and at us--from womb-to-tomb; one that, again and again, presents femininity as performance, sexuality as performance, identity as performance, and each of those traits as available for a price.  It tells girls that how you look is more important than how you feel...." (p. 182)

And that’s it.  That’s the height of a books’ worth of marshaling of the argument through facts and anecdotes. After this she winds down the book for a few pages and it’s over.  For my money, this is a cynical ploy on Orenstein’s part to be mainstream enough, to not be perceived as a screaming, overly political kind of feminist.  And it’s worked, this book too is a bestseller.  But American Girl Dolls, the Disney girls, the Disney Princesses as marketing ploy, and many other good things she notices, get diminished as she pulls her punches at the end here.

I was furious with her:  the main answer to being stuck in this culture is to talk to your daughter about what she sees?  After so much work?  Individualize the solution?  That’s not a legitimate answer.  An easy step she doesn’t even take is to say “write your congressperson or join a women’s/mom’s group in advocating for no advertising to kids under 12”.  She seems to take advertiser’s right to try to brainwash our kids as their Jefferson-given right to free speech.
 
And, speaking as a Waldorf parent, I like our school’s emphasis on knitting—and I presume there is a silent dig there at Waldorf’s attempts to have their schoolchildren be media-free. 

Dylan as I write is still experiencing the worst sleep anxiety of her life, because she and Rylie saw Disney’s Jungle Book.  At the time she said she was fine, the movie wasn’t scary, and for a few days afterwards she was fine.  But then —and she is six and a half not a toddler anymore—she became scared.  Every night it’s been the same thing:  I’m scared of that snake Mommy.  That snake can’t really do that can it Mommy?  That snake can’t come here can it Mommy?  I wish I’d never seen that video Mommy.  I can’t stop thinking about that snake.  Poor thing.  I saw half of it with them, even.  It’s known for its songs and as the last work that Disney worked on himself.  And I admit I didn’t really see the scary snake.  But seeing it through her eyes the movie is just a bunch of chances for Mowgli to get killed or hurt, and how he protects himself or is protected by two father figures. 

Peggy:  Seriously?  Writing your congressperson is too political for you? 

My answer:   Yes put out a law forbidding advertising to kids under 12.  In our family there is flexibility on media.  For example, we allow dvds every Sunday morning these days, so the moms can sleep in.  But  I see how each video becomes part of my kids' vocabulary.
 
More to say…

A "Do You Want a Dad" Conversation

I am almost asleep in our co-sleeping bed.  I am wishing I were asleep and pretty tired.  Susan is in the bathroom doing something useful.  I am lying in bed with my eyes closed.  And suddenly I hear, from D&R sitting close to me on the bed playing, they’ve been playing for a while:

“Do you wish we had a dad?”

“I don’t know do you wish we had a dad?”

Dylan:  “Yah…no…”  A pause.  “Dads tell jokes.”  A little wistfully, like that part would be fun, but also like that is the main dad role as far as they’ve discovered that is different from what they already have.  I am deeply amused, feel unfunny for a while there. 

Then our usual day starts.

On Schnozz-Kissing and Girls with Short Hair

We are getting out of the car I after picked up Dylan and Rylie at school.  Dylan is telling a story.  She said she invented schnozz kissing.  Schnozz kissing is when a boy takes his schnozz and touches a girl’s face with it.  “That’s a schnozz kiss, and I invented it Mommy,”  she says. 

Oh, I say, great.  Then as I close the car door and we head for the stairs I say oh so casually, and what about two girls, can they schnozz-kiss too? 

And she says, “Yes but one of them has to have short hair.”  Which is as close to talking about butch/femme (or Susan’s short hair versus my long hair) as we’re ever likely to come for a good long while. 

Ry's Class on Gay Moms

I was in Rylie’s classroom, visiting, because I had been taking photos for Dylan’s class photobook, and felt obliged to spend some time with Rylie as well.  Two things happened that I wanted to mention:

First, everything is so peaceful in the room, Miss Cathy, sitting in the rocking chair, focused on the kids, some kids in a “house” right in front of her made of playstands, some kids fingerknitting, some kids playing on the margins, Miss Cathy clearly at the center, holding everything.  Rylie is so happy to see me we are playing, she and Jack and Sayeeda are showing off their fingerknitting to me, Akmal too, Ry gives me two to put on my wrists right then.  Then Jack says, happily, “Rylie, come on, I’ll race you in fingerknitting!”   Even though Ry says no, my pleasure in the moment is not less:  racing in fingerknitting???!!!

Second, I am sitting next to Rylie, my back to the half of the class at the other table, at snack.  There is an argument going on behind me and I don’t catch it all, but I catch someone (a boy’s voice) saying “Yes two girls can too marry… Rylie’s moms are married.”  And then a jumble and then another boy says, in our general direction, “ My two uncles are married.”  Or something which implies a gay male partnership.  I let it slide, I get to let it slide.  Our presence here, my presence here, Ry’s presence here, is enough to change the dynamics.

Nightmare

So we saw Lisa Meeks, the lesbian and pro-lesbian lawyer, last Monday morning at 9:30 after Susan dropped the kids at school.  It felt normal and like about time.  I had forced us to do it because of two things:  First, last August when Dylan had sprung open her chin on Amanda and Jenn’s pool, the people at Children’s were so kind but immediately it was all about who was the “mom,” who was the guardian, and we were terrified.  Even though we were both there and it would be all right.  We were terrified.  We must have signed “responsibility’ signatures about six times over the course of the visit.  It was the biggest WHAT IF ever, what if I hadn’t been there, what if next time it was Rylie and Susan couldn’t be there.  We sort of had powers of attorney, but didn’t carry them…. It turned out on looking we never did one for Rylie at all.

In any case.  The one that put me over the edge was Karen, at Waldorf, asking for “proof” that Rylie lived in the house with me (who could show proof of residency) or Susan (who couldn’t at first because all the utilities were in my name).  This was in order to get the EdChoice scholarship from the state that makes it possible for our kids to go to Waldorf.   If Ry lived in the house then why was Susan listed as her Mom.  Etc etc.  All to say, we found the mortgage statement that Susan is on, and that was good enough.  Karen said it wasn’t prejudice there were so many people trying to game the system that they just had to follow their rules.  Karen didn’t know that second female parents couldn’t adopt in Ohio.  Didn’t know.  I walked out trying to contain my sudden fury and fear.

So we saw Lisa Meeks on Monday.  And at first it seemed so normal and then after about five minutes I got so choked up that I was close to tears the whole rest of the hour and 15 min we were there.  So fearful, so angry that some rules challenged our family and someone felt the right to.  So frustrating.  And that was before the very last thing, I showed her the contract Susan had signed as egg donor with the infertility clinic, and she ended up saying that according to Ohio law, if there’s a known egg donor then the child rightfully belongs to that parent, so that Dylan is Susan’s and not mine, despite my name on the birth certificate and my having given birth to her.  Lisa went so far as to say, “Some judges might decide to go back and change that birth certificate.”  I was beyond shell-shocked.

So last night I dreamed that my ex and I had broken up, and that I had to share the kids with her, fifty-fifty.  And something about it seemed fair, but something else about it seemed so unfair.  I’ve blocked a lot of the dream already, but on waking I thought it was about the Lisa Meeks thing, and having no rights to my own children and being so scared and angry about that.  I think the feeling, the screaming feeling in the dream, was about loss of the kids, and how awful that felt.  Nightmare.

Rainbow Families CampOut May 2011

All of us!