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."