Mama!

What I want to do here is clue you into something from Harlyn Aizley: Who’s Your Mama? Very much worth reading, as is everything she writes, I’m sure including shopping lists. It’s first appearing at the Beacon Broadside, a blog they run for their authors. Harlyn, of Are You My Mothers? fame, was editor for Confessions of the Other Mother, which Beacon published. (Her other book, Buying Dad: One Woman’s Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor, was published by Alyson Books).

Anybody else write something you like, on the occasion of Mother’s Day? Let us know, in the comments.

Now back to work.

[It’s a month o’ photos; no prose. Words froze due to work woes. Come June, back it flows.]

Chuck’s got nothin’ on her. Okay, so maybe he does, but he has a lot more practice. At least she can accurately identify most of the instruments pictured in the book. Try that, Chuck!

It’s a familiar routine, though. She’s quite well aware how un/underrepresented our family structure and her Baba’s gender are, in most of the media we consume. And she’s also learning first-hand how you re-write whatever it is you’re reading, so as to push yourself from margin to center. Her future English teachers are hereby forewarned: free thinkin’ maverick chick, coming down the pike!

This archival pic’s from last fall’s Halloween Block Party. She’s chilling, you know, in between terrorizing people with her fierce dragon breath or what have you. Slightly (but not that much) more revealing angle of fierce dragon action here. O, what I could do with a costume like that, in the right venue.

Now don’t get me started on my brush with lesbian celebrity I had at that cafe one time in the mid-1990s. Otherwise it would begin to smack of a post, and all this text is in that light colored font, just to remind me that I’m not actually writing a post, but a modest caption. But remind me sometime. I will let on that it includes none other than k.d. lang, and a corn cob. Umm hum, yup.

Lil’ monkey blazes through the sound barrier. Training wheels just out of sight. But not out of mind.

A picture better be worth a thousand words, because that’s looking like all I’ll have time to post over the next several weeks. Pictures, I mean, rather than a thousand words. A month of pictures only, rather than the usual LD mix of words and images. I’ve got a cavalcade of deadlines in my work life this month, whether the work is pro, semi-pro, or amateur. And since this blog does not put the tofu on the table, it has to take the hit when the going gets gnarly.

Hey, don’t blame me, blame Looky, Daddy! He gave me the idea.

The month-long word diet will hurt me more than it will hurt you (sad, I fear, but true). I’ll be looking up from my work, peering over my shoulder periodically at the small herd of posts crowded outside my window, fogging it up with their eager breath. Among those waiting patiently wait ’til June are:

• A report back on the Reader Survey. You people (well, not all of you, but the 5-10% of you who did it) have been so helpful!
• “Waving not drowning,” our write-in blog post title, ever so evocative of the beloved’s and my parental condition now that we’ve staggered past the one year mark with the lil’ peanut. Or should I say dog-paddled past it.
• The two remaining in the nearly forgotten Ten lists of ten series I had going (You thought I forgot, eh? Well, list #9 is working itself up to be Ten ways the second kid knocked us for a loop, man. Therein explaining the precipitous drop-off of those lists around about when the impact hit).
• Some musing (coughing, choking, breathing slowly in through the nose & out through the mouth) about Princess Mania in particular, and Female Trouble in general.
• A little long overdue something about how (and why) I am indeed not chopped liver for the boychild, (see lamentation of long ago, re: second bananna status w/ the girlchild). This experience has caused much chat-worthy reflection and I can’t wait to hear what you all think about the whole business.

And yet. For the Greater Good in my household, I need to go on a strict post diet. Images with captions only! I can do it! I’ll pledge to keep the interest level up at least, by swapping the pictures daily during the week (Sundays off). By my calculations this means nineteen more pictures after today (twenty-two if you count the Weekend bonus shots). I’ll also dangle the fun tidbit that someone, somewhere, is at least contemplating a redesign of LD, and may just get it done in time for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on June 1. You know, or not. One never knows with these things. But, as I tell myself regularly about o so much, Hope Springs Internal.

Now, for those of youse who prefer the words to the pictures here, won’t you please come back as of June? Monday, June 2nd, is the Third Annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day, spearheaded by Dana Rudolph at Mombian, and sponsored this year by the Family Equality Council. It’ll be an auspicious day for the word drought to break.

Speed demon, Berkeley, CA.

Like many of my countryfolk, I lament the hi-jacking of this day of solidarity with our fellows world-wide. (Here’s an account of the origins of the day by the Wobblies; or the Wikis if you prefer to compare/contrast. For neopagan-curious sisters and brothers, I offer up this Wiki page on Beltane, whose extremely low profile I also lament, while I’m at it.)

In a modest gesture of atonement, I want to acknowledge all those whose labor supports my partner and me as parents (what with this blog’s focus on matters parental; lord knows if I acknowledged all those whose labor supported our cushy existence, I’d have to make an interminable series of it). But I often find myself whining, kvetching, or otherwise wringing my hands over this or that childcare inconvenience, possibly leaving the impression that I stagger through my days, from sun up to sun down and beyond, the solitary provider of all my kids’ material and emotional needs. Not so, not so. It’s merely that I’m complaining in spite of the abundance of support I recieve.

Acknowledging the group effort in caring for my kids also helps underscore how very much a group effort all child-rearing is. Bearing in mind that to rear a child, you need to free up the time to earn their keep. At the moment, in our household, we have one full-time worker (the beloved) and one part-time worker (that would be me). Our kids see more of me in any given week than they do of any other single adult, but I am propped on many sides. Herewith, then, props to the proppers, in order of their chronological appearances throughout the week:

• The wise and wonderful women who run our girlie’s preschool, to which she goes three mornings a week. There, she learns all sorts of stuff, does all sorts of stuff, interacts with (and makes friends with? please?) peeps her own age, and we also happen to thin the childcare to one kid, thereby increasing our chances of having time for paying work.
• The mother out-law (that’s as vs. in-law; we both like it that way), aka the beloved’s mum, who twice a week cares for her grandkids for several hours, first one-on-one with her youngest grandson, and then again later in the week with every grandkid she currently has (aided & abetted by her partner, the kids’ GrandBaba).
• The downstairs sister in-law (spouse to the Know-It-All-Brother-In-Law), who makes off with both our kids in the afternoon on an exchange with us (I make off with theirs later in the week).
• The share care nanny, an incredibly kind and compassionate woman whom the both kids adore, and who for a time took care of the girlie along with her across-the-street chum a few afternoons a week. Now, she cares for the little guy one morning a week while the girlchild is in preschool. Double whammie! Care for them both; both parents free to work at the same time!
• A young woman I can only really describe as the diaphanous wood nymph, or some such. Basically a dreamy vision to the girlchild, who is promptly compelled to change her clothing and hairstyle to match this gal’s, upon clapping eyes on her. She comes for the boychild one afternoon a week, and then the both of them for a few hours on Saturday, on a childcare-for-voice lessons work exchange. Barter, gotta love it. Even better: barter with a sweet, thoughtful, kind person your daughter idolizes.
• On alternate weeks, the nice lesbian mom across the street, with whom we have an afternoon gal pal swap. Their girl comes chez nous once a week, ours chez them, and the girlies together spend the afternoon in elaborate play-acting fantasies, periodically exchanging notes about their Babas. What’s not to love.
• Once a week, the Know-It-All-Brother-In-Law and His Spouse, with whom we do a Date Night Swap. They do our kids one night; we do theirs. Without this arrangement, the beloved and I would never know what each others eyes look like.
• Finally, and awe-inspiringly, a trio of my closest chums, who have come and saved my arse over and over again when the beloved has had extended bouts of evenings away at theater rehearsals. The swing shift is the big one, parentally speaking: the child care decathlon, where you have to grab ‘em under your arms and clear hurdle after hurdle and then have ‘em happy and calm enough to be able to fall asleep at the end of it all. Wheew! I know for a fact that we would not be sane parents were it not for one particular super-shero’s unfailing willingness to come help “spot” me when I’m solo parenting in the evening. Like last night, for instance. If ever we make a mint off the lil’ peanut’s Hollywood film career, she’s gonna deserve at least a summer home out of it.

Laborers of love, I thank you all.

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