MamaBlogger365 - Mommy Queerest by Kimberly Dark

More Than Marriage

They all met up for dinner – parents and teenage son, along with two of the son’s friends. Nothing unusual about the parents buying dinner, passing off a little advice and extra cash before the kids went to the dance. Nothing unusual except that there was no eye rolling from the boys, no slouched texting as the adults talked, no fidgety ready-to-go behavior. They seemed to me -- new friend of the family -- as polite and jovial as Beaver Cleaver’s family. Really good to each other, kind and interested in each other’s comments. Yes, that’s what set them apart from many modern families.

Oh, and the parents were two women.

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Photo credit: Wedding Rings by Petr Kratochvil

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MamaBlogger365 - Mommy Queerest by Kimberly Dark

“You guys just never modeled any heterosexual double dating, so I’m still figuring it out,” said my son Caleb as he relayed his recent experience with his girlfriend and another male/female couple. And this was no mere dinner-date. The two couples went away for the weekend -- and apparently their destination was the Land of Unexamined Gender Roles.

Especially now that he’s in college, my son offers a perspective on queer parenting that I could never muster on my own. I appreciate his views, and thankfully, he’s not usually crippled by his lack of hetero-socialization. We were quirky in other ways, of course, and quite mainstream in a load of circumstances, too. And, call me optimistic, but I’d like to think that growing up in a queer family was a good thing. I think my son has a broader awareness of possibility than most. After all, not everyone gets to grow up in a family where genders and gender roles are just spread out like a magician’s deck, where the mother wears a big theatrical grin as she cajoles, ‘Come on, pick a card!’

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MamaBlogger365 - Mommy Queerest by Kimberly Dark

Always Let ‘Em See You Cry

My son, like a lot of men, doesn’t cry easily. On rare occasion, he does it though. Things affect him deeply and I’m grateful for that. It’s not big news that by the time a boy becomes a man, the tears don’t come as easy as they do for most women. Crying is not the only way to signal deep feeling, but it’s one way. Letting others see you cry is vulnerable – it can make the pain feel worse to have it witnessed. Sometimes, if we make conscious connections with other openhearted folks, witness eases pain.

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MamaBlogger365 - Mommy Queerest by Kimberly Dark

Butches, Bullies and Community

Little kids take reality as it comes. They know what they feel and something like appearance only becomes a problem when someone makes it one. Until they reach school and the socialization of the big media-world, it doesn’t matter if mom is pretty or if dad is tall or even if the genders match up. It matters that they feel loved and cared for.

I was privileged to attend the Butch Voices (www.butchvoices.com) conference last weekend in Oakland, CA. This event, begun in 2009, celebrates and explores the lives of those who identify themselves as butch, masculine of center, aggressive, boi, dominant, trans – and a host of other terms I may not even know. Individuals seem to use whichever term they first found in a community that cared for them – that varies by time period, race, class, and education. Loads of things affect the language with which we're most comfortable. One of the important things people at this conference seemed to offer one another was an understanding that the dominant culture can be brutal to those who don’t fit it. So they offered each other support and revelry – because being different is also really fantastic. Kindred outsiders have a lot of wisdom to share.

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MamaBlogger365 - Pool Privileges by Kimberly Dark

As I sit writing this column, I have just finished teaching a creativity workshop at a gay-popular retreat. I’ve taught here fairly often over the years. Kalani Honua is not all gay, of course, though the pretty bronzed men parading around the pool naked do seem to be a fixture.

But not today....

There aren’t many places a person can go to witness queer parents congregating en masse. We’re pretty isolated – except in some big cities where support groups and children’s play groups are popping up. When my son was small, a group of parents started a Children’s Garden at the San Diego Pride festival. At first it was cool, and then I wondered what we were doing – other than our sexual orientation (which also varies widely within the category: queer) we don’t have much in common as people and as parents.

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Photo credit: Water by Anna Cervova