Blog Entry 29
Wow! I have 15 followers. (“What a group of losers”, I thought as I plucked at the keys). I have sold my paintings! In fact, I might be able to say I make a living at it pretty soon. I even had a show with my work as the feature. It was the highlight of my career! I painted Susan. Over and over. Abstract, her sleeping, her hands. Oh, I would change the face, her hair. But my heart, the place where art is born, saw only one.
I wasn’t good at being pregnant. There wasn’t a glow and the weight packed on like I was in a contest. “You have to quit smoking”, Susan declared. It wasn’t a complaint, a request, or an idea. Quitting smoking was what I was going to do. And after the shock of that little tiny “Yes”, I had no trouble putting them down, because that life inside of me started to mean the world to us.
We searched for baby names, decided to not find out the sex, and Susan thought it best for a natural birth. I never said anything in rebuttal, but there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to push a big-fat-baby out a tiny orifice without some heavy medicine.
As it turned out, I had to have a c-section. It was pretty handy. It was a scheduled event because Jasper was so big he never turned. His head remained wedged against my sternum making a heartburn-free-night a thing to dream about.
He was the most beautiful thing we had ever seen. Her legal savvy pushed adoption papers through quickly, and we were both his parents. We felt like trailblazers. Not because we were two women, but because nobody could have slept less, heard more crying, or changed more diapers in the history of parenting. We were sure of it.
Our conversations of a multi-lingual child, who would surely be a genius, were long forgotten. Summers in Italy, traveling the world, showing him different countries, serving him ethnic food: none of that was either realistic or ever going to happen.
We were stumped and hurt when his first word was “dada.” He had blond hair with the largest blue, round eyes ever. But he was really stuck on that word. It was a long time until he added “mommy” to his reservoir of conversation abilities. It was enough for us.
When he was one, we moved him into our bed. I don’t regret it for a second. What I do wish we had done differently, however, was be discreet and private on our parenting decisions. It’s amazing how many childless couples have endless spouts of knowledge.
Nothing pissed me off more than to hear, “When I have a baby, he will never throw a fit like that baby in the supermarket”. It would hurt Susie’s feelings, and it would anger me. But she had this look she started early on that said the following:
“I can see you are angry, but you will not go and tell them off. Clear?”
And when the moon slept right over the house she bought for us, with a studio in the back, we would watch Jasper sleep. We were the luckiest people in the world.
7/05, 4:54PM: Blog Entry 43
“Hello my 24 followers! Today, I received a question about toddlers from one of my readers. (like I have so many). It made me think when our kids were little. I was so excited to tell Susie that Jasper was walking! Oh yeah, and that he had also drank a half of bottle of cologne that very morning. So it was hard to tell if his unsteadiness was due to the virgin voyage, or the intoxication. The kid put everything in his mouth. We practically had our own poison control doctor to ourselves. This was not my proudest parenting day. It started when Susie was at work, so I bought us doughnuts. When I had to tell poison control that he had doughnuts and cologne for breakfast, I felt ok about saying I was Susie. “How could that backfire?”, you ask. Did you know that poison control does followup calls? That day they kept to protocol. When poison control called her back to see how Jasper was feeling after the Calvin Klein and sugar doughnuts, lets just say it caused a stir, ok, a fight. She was grumpier about that than I thought she would be. That was when she told me that she was preggers! So to answer the question about what makes your toddler do crazy things: I have no idea! Never did. You just gotta roll with the punches and have poison control on speed-dial. Have a good week!
Man, was she a trooper. She exercised, put on 11 pounds to my 42, and had our second boy naturally (without anything at all). His name was Elan, meaning life. And again, the adoption went without a hitch, and we were both named as parents.
A vaginal delivery is nothing but horrific to watch. I was trying to be supportive and not let the worry show on my face. But when that head stretched her almost completely in half, I thought something had to be wrong. That didn’t look natural, and it didn’t look like a baby. What the hell was coming out of her?
What came out was a little man with red hair and the longest eyelashes I have ever seen. I secretly wondered if I would feel different about a son that wasn’t biologically mine. If I would love Jasper just a little more - but I didn’t. I would die for either of them without hesitation. It wasn’t who birthed them that mattered. It was the “I love you”s, and wet kisses. We had made a family. Those two were our progeny, and we were healthy and whole.
And that is how we became lesbian mothers. I have never been so thankful that we could never have an oops-baby. Who said same sex families are wrong? You don’t see us getting knocked up accidentally, do you?
6/14, 2:45AM: Blog Entry 102
Hello friends, Jasper is 18! Elan is jealous and we’re sad. Where has the time gone? They both stood up with us at our marriage in New York City. I have never felt elation in my entire life until then. I don’t need a therapist, I am crazy in-love with a wonderful woman who still is in-love with me. I have a following with my work, but boy are we happy that one of us has a real job. The starving-artist thing didn’t work for me. Happy parenting!
The boys know who to go to if they want something, I’m the softy. But Susie keeps us steady both financially and with overall good-sense. She says she loves being with an artist and has been the sole reason I have found success following my dream.
I thought I was pretty sneaky when I smoked pot while I worked. I didn’t think anybody knew. How could they? That was before I realized the air vent designed to keep my brain cells in place around all the paint, was actually hooked directly to the house. So when I exhaled into the vent, it would flow out of a vent directly about the couch in the living room, and whoever was home could smell it.
I found that out when I was in the house and I smelled smoke. “Fire!”, I was reaching for the phone and looking for the boys. When I found them, they were smoking my pot, from my bong, in my studio. I was angry, but that was nothing compared to the look I got from Susan. I wasn’t going to tell her, but the fire trucks were still there when she got home. I took the blame, and thankful we live in a city where my medicinal card makes this a legal drug. For me, that is.
6/19, 12:15PM: Blog Entry 139
Hi! Jasper is graduating today. He is going to college in Boston. I would make this entry longer, but my tears are making it impossible to see. What will I do without him?
We bought him a Jeep Cherokee. Susie made a ridiculous itemized first aid kit that even included his vaccinations. It was sweet watching my wife trying to hold on to being needed by a grown man.
The three of us left the college campus while all holding hands, Jasper not embarrassed about the family’s show of love or the tears that flowed freely from his parents and his brother. I didn’t know for sure, but I would have bet that the reason he left in such a hurry was because he also had tears that he was too proud to let us see. What don’t mothers know?
9/09, 8:12: Blog Entry 178
Susan and I had a hunch that Elan shouldn’t drive until he was a Senior. Well, we were right. He had his license for approximately two hours before he rear-ended an ambulance. An ambulance with a patient inside. He was so scared he killed the guy, we didn’t realize that his arm was broken until we started to see the curve of his forearm. He chose a Dodger-Blue cast, and in my estimate,
he really enjoyed the Vicodin, maybe even a tad too much (I need to watch that).
It was fall, gray and raining, and Susie and I sat in a house that was loud with emptiness. Both of our boys were gone to college. Susie cried very hard about his, I did too. All the plans we had made for this moment seemed so stupid.
I wanted the noise back, the “You’ll never believe what they did now” moments. We walked around the house, taking pause at the two rooms that had little boy nuances and boxes.
We had been together now for many years, a lifetime since the hike around the lake. We had been really excited about the prospect of doing what we want just for us. Why did that feel so awful right now? We went to our favorite Thai place that knew our predictable orders without needing to ask. Dinner didn’t bring comfort or conversation.
When it was over, we walked to the car holding hands, needing the touch of our family that was now half of what it was. But even so, those crazy thoughts of what we would do started to come back into focus.
3/12, 5:30AM: Blog Entry 298
Hello! We are officially empty nesters. Leaving for Europe next month, then swinging through