My Son's Best Friend Lives 400 miles Away

Shortly after I found out I was pregnant with my son, one of my cousins in another state called to tell me that she too was pregnant.  Our due dates were within just two weeks of each other, so we enjoyed comparing our pregnancies via emails and phone calls, and after I delivered my son a little early, I was eager to call and share my birth story. After she delivered her daughter, we of course talked again, and I was ready to head out and visit as soon as she was willing to have visitors, so our new little family packed seemingly half the house and set out on our first road trip as a family when my baby boy was just six weeks old.  The 400+ mile drive was a bit tough, but worth the bonding.  My cousin and I spent the weekend comparing breastfeeding woes,  shamelessly enjoying the hot tub and lamenting the loss of any pre-baby body confidence we'd previously had.  We set our babies down on blankets side-by-side. Despite being four weeks apart, they were practically the same size, and we thought that was just hysterical. At that point, they didn't really seem terribly aware of each other... but that didn't last long.

By the time we met up again when the babies were six months old, they were able to play with each other. I know they say babies at that age only parallel play, and that they don't really play with each other, and that was true for my kiddo with every other baby, but not his cousin. He seemed to really play with his cousin.

Over the years, the two have grown very close. It has never mattered to my cousin's daughter that her male playmate enjoys playing with her dolls as much as she did. Or that he enjoys putting on her princess clothes. These things have always just been okay. The two of them seem gender blind in their fun. It's like how childhood should be.

As the years have gone on, my cousin's daughter has gained many close friends, all girls, with whom she is very close. My son is involved in a ton of stuff, and enjoys the company of many children, but he only has a handful of friends, and he isn't very close with them.

It's hard for him at home. He figured out very early on (like.... in kindergarten), that the boys were supposed to hang out with the boys and the girls were supposed to hang out with the girls. I'd love to say that he's this renegade who rejects this societal pressure, but he isn't. He pretty much just likes to go with the flow and not make waves, so he just tries to find the boys he gets along with the best in any given situation. He'd probably be happier and have closer friends if he just tried to hang out with the girls, but he doesn't.

But his cousin is a permanent friend. She's a built in friend. And the two adore each other. When they were younger, they'd cry for like an hour when we'd separate them to drive home.  I'm pretty sure that she really is his best friend.

This summer, the one little girl who lives in our neighborhood moved away. My son really enjoyed playing with her, so this was kind of a devastating blow.  So, when it worked out this past week that I had the opportunity to take my kids along on a family member's trip out of state, my son got to see his cousin for a couple of days, and just a few days later, we had a big family reunion scheduled here in our state, so they actually came here to stay with us this weekend.

It's been a great week of reconnecting for the two of them, and they are two peas in a pod, as usual.

Loving My Dad and Loving My Kid

     When you read stories about other people's families, and they talk about hurtful things their family members say about or to their kids, it is easy to think, "If that was my family, I'd put them in their place! I'd never let them say that kind of thing to my kid!"

     But then it is your family, and it is your kid, and you realize how much more complicated it all is. But even a few words can do a lot of damage. My son is pretty secure in his gender identity, but he's always liked bling.  A few years ago, when my son was 6 years old, we were out shopping together, and she asked for a plastic princess crown at a 99 cent store. I went ahead and bought it for her.  We then went to pick up my son, and he was incredibly jealous. He wanted to know why I hadn't bought one for him too.  He dwelled on it for several days until finally, I just went back and bought him one too. He was delighted. He wore it all over for several days. We went to dinner at my parents' house one night, and my dad made a comment about it.

"Why are you wearing a princess crown?" he asks, "You aren't a princess." 

"I like it," my son said, very simply, as if that was enough, and it should have been.

"Dad, come on," I urged, "Let it go. He likes it, and he wanted it, so I let him have it. It's just a toy."

"But, like, he should wear a king's crown or something. He's a boy," my dad muttered.

     That was that. He didn't take it further, and he didn't say it in an angry voice, and my son seemed to barely notice or care. But later than night, my son came in and handed me the crown.

     "Here," he says, "You can take this back to the store or get rid of it. It makes grandpa sad."

     My heart broke.  I love my dad. I adore my dad. He is a great dad, and he really has never been a misogynist or anything. When I was growing up, he didn't care if I wanted to wear t-shirts and baseball caps, and he was glad I wanted to go fishing with him, and he pushed me to follow my dreams. He never acted like I should be prioritizing motherhood or childbirth (if anything, my mother pressed my buttons on that one) over my career and education. He wanted me to have the best education, and a great job, and it was always clear that he completely believed in me, and he wanted me to be a strong woman.

     And he's not even a stereotypical macho guy.  He is really artsy, and he didn't really play sports as a kid. From all of the stories I've heard about his childhood days in Boy Scouts, he basically hated all the roughing it, survival-type stuff. We glamped when I was a kid, and my mom is actually a little more rugged than he is.  My dad also knows how to cook, perhaps better than my mom. I wasn't raised with stereotypes.

     But there they were. Rearing their ugly head and hurting my son.

     I didn't know what to do. I really didn't. Part of me wanted to call my dad and tell him that he needed to apologize and tell my son that it is absolutely fine to have a princess crown. But I know my dad doesn't really think that. And I can't make my dad someone else. Just like I can't make my son someone else. I don't think my dad has ever thought about his preconceived notions of what is appropriate for each gender, or why we have those notions, or where they come from, and how illogical they are.  I am fairly certain that my dad, in his odd way, is trying to protect his grandson.  My dad was made fun of for being small and for being artsy, and he knows how hard it can be to be that kid.

So, I didn't call my dad. I just let my son pick out a king's crown online and ordered it. 

     Years later, recently, my son was telling my dad one day, casually, "When I grow up, my husband and I are gonna...."

     "Your husband?" 

     "Yeah. I want to marry a boy."

     "What? How could you know that now? There is no way you could possibly know that now."

     I wasn't there. So I don't know what happened after that, but I think it pretty much just dropped there.  My son doesn't like confrontation, so he avoids it when he can. Several days later though, he told me about it, and he was pretty upset. "Why would grandpa say that? What does he mean I don't know that? Of course I know what I want!"

     By now, my son is old enough to understand a lot more about people and life.  So we had a good long talk about it and my husband and I explained. "Grandpa just doesn't understand. He is not gay, he is straight, and he has never had to think about this stuff. And he knows that he was a lot like you as a kid, and he liked acting and dancing, and people made fun of him for it, and they probably called him gay. He knows that he wasn't, and he probably is afraid that you are just somehow making this assumption based on what people have said about you or something. He's just worried that people will make fun of you and make your life harder.  He loves you.

     Of course, my son thought that it was ridiculous that he would be getting this idea from other people.  But he understood that Grandpa loves him. Because Grandpa really does truly love him. He just doesn't understand.

     But it hurts being in the middle. I love my dad. I don't want to hide things from my dad. I don't want to tell my dad what he can and can't say to my son. But I also really, really don't want to see my son hurt.

    All I can do is believe that my dad's love for my son will prevail, and that he will grow to understand over time.

The Perfect Book

     When my son first "came out," (a term I hate using, but do for lack of a better term) his declaration was not about someone he liked or sexual feelings (no way, for heaven's sake, he was SEVEN). He expressed concern that he would not be able to have kids, because deep down inside, he knew he wanted to spend his life with another male, and he was old enough to know that men don't get pregnant, and that's about all he knew of where babies come from -- they come from ladies' bellies.

    Faced with difficult circumstances, people in my family, we don't talk about these things (at first). We don't look for movies about these things. We search for the perfect book. Because books have all the answers.  No, Google does not have all the answers, but Amazon... on Amazon, I can buy the perfect book. The perfect book will have all the answers. Then we can talk. About the book. And other stuff.

     When I asked my mom about sex when I was nine years old, my mom's answer was, "I saw something on the Today show... a book. I'll order it for you." And so it was that I learned the vast majority of what I know about sex from Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

    Thus, I was certain that the perfect book existed for this situation. I'd heard about these books. Sadly, I had heard about them because they occasionally make a media appearance when some crazy parents think that banning them from school libraries or public libraries is the key to making sure their kids don't end up gay. (News flash - Books don't make kids gay.  Biology does. But books do help those who are to not feel so alone in this great big hetero world).

     After lots of online research and reviews, I decided on And Tango Makes Three. It's about two male penguins in the Central Park Zoo who keep trying to raise a rock, but it never hatches, and so eventually, the zookeepers save an abandoned egg and give it to these male penguins. My son's first favorite movie was Madagascar, so I thought that the familiarity of the Central Park Zoo, and the fact that it was a true story, might really connect with my son.

     Gosh, was I right. When it arrived, we cuddled up together, and I read the book to him.  He was beaming from ear to ear. "Is this a real story?" he asked.

     "Yes, it sure is," I answered.

      Later that night, he wanted Daddy to read it to him at bedtime too. So he did.  And they bonded. And that made him happy.

     And the next day, he asked if he could bring the book to school to read during silent reading time.

    My heart kind of skipped a beat.  I wasn't sure what to say. Would the other kids ask about it? Would it start unnecessary drama? Would the teacher suddenly know we are those liberal parents that let their kids read this kind of stuff and suddenly treat our son differently?  (We live in a very conservative town, albeit in an otherwise liberal state).

     I tried to deter him with, "That one? But you've read it twice."  Sigh. That line didn't work with Belle in Beauty and the Beast, and it clearly wasn't going to work here either. I gave in and hoped for the best.

     That night, I got an email from my son's teacher.

     He'd asked to take a reading quiz on the book in their schools computerized reading system. He got 100%. It was the first time he had ever got a 100% on a book quiz before. The teacher could said she could tell that he really liked that book, and he was really proud of himself for that A+.

     As the rest of the year went on, this teacher proved to truly be a gift from God. He could not have had a more perfect teacher during this interesting time for our family.

We Could Play Rock, Paper, Scissors!

For the first few weeks and months after my son told me he wanted to marry a boy some day, life continued pretty much as normal, but suddenly he just seemed like such an open, talkative kid, when he'd been a quiet, keep-to-himself kind of kid for several months prior.  There were all kinds of questions, some of which we had answers to and some which we did not.

Meanwhile, my husband and I talked about other slightly more complicated matters. Like... how do we deal with the fact that several of our family members are way anti-gay? With our son, we'd taken the route of acting as if this was the most normal thing in the world, just another piece of information and something about who he is, which is how we truly feel about it in the bottom of our hearts, but we didn't want to let on that we were scared about how family members would react. We didn't want to tell him not to say anything to those family members. It's like... if he never really was "IN" a closet of any kind, we don't want to create unnecessary fear by giving him reason to believe that some family members may not take the news quite so well.  Since he'd been shy about telling us (and even had asked me initially not to tell Daddy, but changed his mind with much reassurance), we were pretty sure he wouldn't say anything to other family members, so we figured we'd cross that bridge when we came to it.

In the meantime though, relieved to be able to ask his questions, gay marriage and gay families became a frequent topic of family discussion. Since we are a crazy busy family,  we don't get a lot of time together during the week, and often when we do, it is by squeezing in dinner at a restaurant located centrally among our various activities.

I remember that we were sitting at a restaurant waiting for our food when he brought up an interesting conversation. "When girls get married, they change their last names to the man's last name," he commented, "So what do gay people do when they get married?"

This was an excellent question, and one which I hadn't really considered all that much. We know many gay and lesbian couples, but gay marriage had been legal in our state for less than a year, so most of them weren't legally married.  "Well, it's up to the couple," I explained, "Sometimes they just leave their names the same. Other times, they pick one of the two names."

My son's logic for how this was done was great. "I wonder how my husband and I someday will decide," he mused, "Hmmm. I know!  Maybe we could play rock, paper, scissors to decide!"

As we chuckled at the childlike playfulness of such a sweet comment, my husband chimed in, "Well, I bet sometimes they hyphenate the names. Even male female couples do that sometimes."

"Huh?"

"Like with a dash between the two last names," I explained, while drawing the dash in the air with my finger.

"Oh, I get it," so like "Blah blah DASH Blah blah. Yeah, some kids at my school have last names like that. If I marry someone who already has a last name like that, it would be a very long last name."

I smiled, taking in this moment, thinking about how crazy it is that my young son is growing up in a day and age when, knowing he is gay, he can actually think about his future in terms of family, much like any little kid does when they play house and imagine the future. Rock, paper, scissors. It's just so cute.

Some day, when my son does get married, I know exactly what to give them as an engagement present. I am going to box up and wrap up a very nice pair of scissors, a beautiful decorative rock, and a piece of paper that says, "Hopefully these things will help you make some important decisions."

Saved by Neil Patrick Harris

     My first kiss was technically a girl.  I was like eleven, and she was one of my first best friends, and my mom caught us "practicing" with each other.  My mom didn't ask if I was a lesbian. She didn't have to. I had been pretty much boy crazy since I was about six years old. My first crush was on a really cute little boy in my first grade class, and I told my mom everything, so of course she knew. She thought it was cute.  My mom was really active at my school, typical PTA mom, so she tried to set up for us to get together after school to play. (I suppose nowadays we'd call that a "playdate," but nobody used that term back then). I don't remember exactly what happened, but his parents I guess weren't into him playing with girls, because he never came over to play.

     But it wasn't just him.  In second grade, I pined over the same five boys as every other girl in 1989: the five boys in New Kids on the Block.  For my seventh birthday, I got NKOTB everything -- a set with sheets and a pillowcase and comforter (so they were literally close to my heart each night as I drifted off to dreamland), a sleeping bag, the dolls, videos of their concerts. My parents really made me the coolest kid on my block though when they somehow got me an autographed 8x10 glossy for Christmas. Not a print. The signatures were real, in silver and gold sharpie. I wonder where that photo is. I think I still have it in a box somewhere.

     And then, when I was ten, my dad's best friend started dating this divorcee with a really cute son. He had that surfer dude thing going on. He was almost two years older than me, which was cool right there, but the messy blonde hair and that "Dude!  Bro!" surfer talk. I was smitten, and I wasn't shy about showing it either.

       Mom didn't need to ask if I was into boys.  Clearly, we were just practicing. But she put an end to that.

      When I kissed the t.v. screen while Donnie and Jordan were "Hangin' Tough," not one person whispered, "Gosh, I wonder how she knows she likes boys at such a young age!" As I claimed that I would someday marry Joey McIntyre, no one gasped and talked awkwardly about how I knew about such things and could have such feelings at just seven years old.

      But when my seven-year-old son declared that he would someday marry a man, most of the few people I told responded, "How could he possibly know that at his age?"

      Because he knows. Because he has always known.  Because, we as people, are wired the way we are, and "sexual" orientation is really not primarily sexual. No, he didn't know what sex was at seven years old. Neither did I. But I knew, before I knew what sex was, that the boys on the covers of Bop and Tiger Beat gave me butterflies in my stomach, the good kind.

      And my son knew, at seven, that he would marry a boy. And I found out one evening when he burst into tears in my bedroom. It had been a really hard month, for no obvious reason. There were moments of near breakdown where he had an anxiety attack and wouldn't get out of the car to go to dance class (even though he loves dancing), or most frighteningly, where he was smashing his head against the wall and saying he wished he'd never been born.

     As I dried his tears and looked deep into his eyes I asked, "Sweetie, what is going on? What is wrong?" I did not expect the answer I got:

    "I'm just really glad I have a sister."

     Yeah, they are close, but not that close.

     "Why is that?"

     "Because at least someday she will probably have kids, so I will get to be an uncle."

I couldn't help but giggle. "Why wouldn't you have your own kids?" I chuckled.

     "Because I am going to marry a boy and only girls can have babies."

     No parenting book, magazine, or blog had ever prepared me for that moment or that response at that particular time. Although there had been little clues (like his "crush" on his day camp counselor), I'd wondered if perhaps someday when he was like 13, he might sit down with me at Starbucks and I'd be like, "So, how's it going?" and he'd be like, "Good. By the way, I'm gay," and by then, I'd of course be ready and know exactly what to say.

     But in that moment, completely unprepared, I said the first thing that came to mind, "Neil Patrick Harris and his husband have babies!"  An avid theatre fan, he of course knows who NPH is, and in that moment, Mr. Neil Patrick Harris kind of saved me. My son dried his tears, "Really? How? I thought men couldn't grow babies in their stomachs?"

From UsWeekly, "Celebrities Dress Their Kids for Halloween"

    "Well, they can't, I explained," and suddenly panicked with the realization that I was WAY not ready to explain the logistics behind where babies come from. I went for simple and hoped it would suffice, "Some very nice ladies helped them," I explained, and hoped browsing Google image photos of their adorably infamous family Halloween costumes would be a sufficient distraction. It was. 


   After further reassuring my son that someday he'd make a great dad, he let me tuck him into sleep, seeming calmer and less anxious than he had in weeks.

     But me on the other hand... well, I was a mess.

     I scoured the internet, which had seldom disappointed me in moments of parenting distress.  "Help, my seven year old just told me he is gay" didn't seem to be turning up many hits. Nothing really did. I'd somehow never felt so alone. Surely, I couldn't be the only one in this boat? Right?