I have some more rambling thoughts about family tonight, especially in relation to the kids. This may be scattered.
The kids are starting to learn about family relation language. They have books with pictures of mom, dad, grampa, grandma, aunt, uncle, etc. They are learning the signs for these words as well. There is a song in the "Baby Signing Time" DVD that they like that goes, "Mom has a mom and she's my grandma" and then goes through Dad has a dad, etc to all the family relationship names. This song actually made me sad at first, but I'm getting past that. They are picking up on some of them, and I think are confused about others. For me this is the very beginning of having to decide how to work with and present our family to them. They do have aunts and uncles and grandmas and grampas, but none of which are in their everyday lives (except my father part of the year.) It is causing me to do a bit of inventory on how to approach everything in a healthy way.
"MOM"
My kids don't call me mom, mommy, momma, or any type of word like that yet. They can say and sign "mom" and they can point to the mom in a picture of a woman and a baby. But when D asks them who I am, they kind of give him a blank stare. Here is my theory on this. Don't know if I'm right or if I'm just making this up. I don't think they see a disconnect between us yet. I am with these kids ALL THE TIME. I'm sure there are other women out there in my position, but I have yet to meet anyone else who spends the amount of time I do with my kids. I'm not talking hours per day exactly, I'm talking caregiving time. I have no one to pass the kids off to, even when D or my father is here, I do all the caregiving. I'm sure other single moms are in the same boat. But I am the hand that feeds the mouth, kisses the owie, changes the diaper, rocks the cradle. I am the center of their world, and I don't think they spend enough time having other people care for them to see me as a separate entity. I'm working on this, they do quite well in the gym daycare. And I'm starting to be able to leave the room for short periods when D is here with them, so I'm not worried that eventually they will figure it out. But right now, they seem to have no clue that I have a name, too, and its MOMMY!
"DAD"
They call D "Dad" and sign it on a regular basis. They look forward to him coming over and Naim and I have gotten into the habit of saying "Night Night" to Daddy down the street on the nights he is not here. We look out the window and wave.
The fact that they have two fathers is actually one of the more uncomplicated aspects for me when considering all this family relation business. I've already started to tell them the story of the "donor" who helped mom and dad have them. Just to make it natural and get it into their lexicon. We will continue to call him "donor" unless the kids decide otherwise. Whether they call him "donor," "Biological father," "other father" or "Sergei" which was my code name for him when we had to discuss the issue in public and it kind of stuck for us, is entirely up to them. At some point, after I have told them a billion times that the donor gave us sperm to help make them, they are going to ask me if that means he is their biological father, and it will click for them and we will work through it from there.
"Brothers and Sisters"
They seem to be starting to understand the word "brother" in relation to each other. I think they are just starting to see themselves as separate entities from each other. This is an interesting aspect of twins. They are together so much, leading such similar lives at this point, that I know they don't really realize where they begin and the other one ends. They are just starting to interact with each other as two separate people. It is kind of cute. They pretend to feed each other and wash each other's hair in the bathtub. They have their own "toss the stuffed animals back and forth in the crib" game that they play. I'm starting to ask them "where is your brother?" and they look for each other.
They also have three donor brothers and one donor sister that I know of. My plan right now is to maintain yearly contact (or more if the other parents wish) until all the kids are old enough to decide whether they want to meet or not and whether they want to call each other 'brother' or 'sister' or not.
Grampa Fred
They like Grampa Fred (my father) a lot and seem to remember him when he comes and look for him for a couple of days when he leaves. Grampa Fred is probably going to be the fun, roughhousing grandpa. Grampa Fred also has a temper and can be a bully and I'm working on that with him. He loves the kids though, even if he gets ridiculously cranky about toys in the living room and cheerios on the floor. There is an element of walking on eggshells around Grampa Fred sometimes that causes more stress than is called for. I'm hoping that this will get better with time. I worry that Grampa Fred's temper and unrealistic expectations will be harmful to the kids sometimes. He pisses D off something awful sometimes when he goes off on how there are too many children's books in the living room, etc. My policy is that I'm not going to take away someone who loves them, even if that love isn't perfect. I'm hoping for some gradual change by example. Every time grampa Fred comes, we have a talk where I remind him that there are many people in this house and not a lot of space. No one is better or higher than anyone else. We all have stuff we need and stuff that gets on other people's nerves. We have to work it out for all of us. No one is more or less important here. The house rules are 1) Respect yourself; 2) Respect others; 3) Respect the earth and the gifts that it gives us.
Grampa B.
I really like D's father. And I say that having overcome a lot to like him. Which says a lot about him, not me. There is the whole hoo-rah Marine business, the coddling D business, and some of his 'gentle prejudices' that grate on my nerves. A funny little story when I met him was that I knew him for several weeks as this quiet gentle man who was D's father. Meanwhile, I was hooked into a bunch of civil rights folks at KU. Once, these KU folks were just livid about a certain government official who had a job in civil rights that I'm not going to get into here. They talked about him as if he were a horrible, clueless bigot. It wasn't for a couple of months that I figures out that this was the same man. I saw some of the things they said as true, but I also saw how villainized someone can be made out to be in the name of a cause. Half truths and suspicions without any real evidence avalanche to serve someone's political agenda. Anyway, I'm sure he could say I do plenty of things that grate on his nerves as well, like that whole radical feminist, disablist, socialist bitchy freak thing I do like always counting exactly half the housework and cooking hours I did as attendant hours when D and I used to live together. I'm no June freakin' Cleaver, you know. I know he'd much rather me be some kind of sweet, passive nursemaid type who lives to serve D and I've never come close to fitting that bill. But we do our best to work with each other's strengths, I think.
I know that Grampa B. loves the boys and they really enjoy spending time with him. I wish I could make it easier for him to spend time with them. It all seems to need to be arranged through D, and D is not the best with social arrangements sometimes. And when he does arrange something, he always gives me 15 minutes notice that his father is coming over, and always on the days when I am just running around the house trying to catch up on housework and I'm not even wearing a bra. He used to do this when we lived together, too. Six days in a row I could be up and dressed and alert and not sweaty from mopping the floors all day and have prepared a decent dinner. D will wait till I haven't called him or gone over there or anything because I'm having a wastoid day here and say that him and his dad are coming over. The new rule is that his father can come over anytime as long as I have one day's notice. I wish I could just call him up and invite him over myself, or make him feel like he could stop by. But I'm not sure how to do this.
Grandma Diane
I tell the kids stories about my mother, Grandma Diane, but I know that she is just going to be this abstract concept to them, made real only by the picture in my office. I find myself saying that Grandma Diane is in "heaven" even though that is not entirely comfortable for me to say, but it doesn't seem like I can look at there faces at this age and say "Your Grandma Diane is DEAD." Or maybe I just don't want to say it. When I tell them stories, I imagine what it would be like if she were here right now with them. How she would absolutely be nutty in love with them and spoiling them. I feel like I want to share some of that with them somehow, but I'm not sure how. I have my mother's words, actions and being drilled into every pore of my brain, so it is somewhat easy for me to imagine her as their living grandmother, but that is not going to make it any more real for them. I don't like "heaven" in the traditional sense because I don't really believe in the whole God as a behaviorist and earth is a skinner box philosophy of Christianity. Behavior A leads to Consequence Box called heaven and behavior B leads to the consequence box called hell. But heaven as an abstract term for an afterlife doesn't bother me so much. I think "heaven" is a word we will use now and work it out as we go along. It means nothing to them now, and soon they will wonder if "Heaven" is the building down by the grocery store or somewhere near Dayton, Ohio. They will have to work it out for themselves as they grow up. But for now, I think it is okay for my mom to be in heaven.
My mother used to say, "Just wait until you have kids..." So I've been thinking of that now that I have kids. I still plan to do several things differently than the way I was raised, but I think I realize now that she did really, really love me. Many times I had serious doubts, and my missing my mother started long before she died. It happened even when she was in the same room. Roseanne (as in Barr, Arnold, Conner, whatever) said once that our job as parents is to improve our kids lives by at least 50% over our own. However you manage to measure 50%, I think my mother accomplished this and then some. We always had a stable home with food, clothing, everything we needed. We were safe and never hit or abused. We learned the power of self sufficiency and independence and always were taught to prioritize education and responsibility. We didn't get away with too much. This is a vast improvement over the life my mother lived as a child where food was scarce and booze and violence was plentiful. But that tragic upbringing left my mother in a survival mode that she couldn't escape. She kept us so tightly on the path of survival; the towing the line from a very specific and predetermined point A to point B with absolutely no diversions that we missed out on some of the tapestry of life. She was so afraid of us failing or going off course that there was little room for experimentation, imagination, and learning from mistakes. Home was safe physically, but sometimes very unforgiving and unaccepting and very unsafe emotionally. How I want to improve my kid's lives is by giving them opportunities to weave that tapestry. To try a sport and fail or succeed, to appreciate and pursue things that aren't necessarily the direct path to A Steady Job(tm) like art and music, to prioritize relationships and have a social life, to be a goofball just for the sake of it, to have a spiritual life, to have family traditions and hugs and I love yous on a daily basis. To have a life beyond work and school and making money. To make home safe emotionally. I don't want my kids to ever be somewhere, depressed and alone and hurting and think that they can't call home and have a safe, supportive conversation. I want them to know that there is always a place where they belong and are accepted.
Grandma D.
D's mom is a bit harder to know what to do with. It is almost easier to tell them that Grandma Diane went to Heaven. I've sort of turned her over to D as far as the kids go. I don't feel like I hold any animosity over her at all. It is just something that is out of my hands. There was a window of opportunity when I thought that I would make every effort to give her access to the kids even if it meant I hired her a babysitter to go over there with them so she could see them without me. But then D's sister told me she didn't want a relationship with them, and that was kind of it for me. I got angry at her for a long time. But now I'm just...not angry. Yet no longer feel like there is anything I can do about it. I have felt for a long time that she has some kind of mental illness, like severe depression or something, but I'm too much of a lay person to diagnose what it is. It is just that she is a person that wreaks of insecurity. I actually have a lot of respect for her in some ways. I'm sympathetic to all that she has been through and I think she might work very hard to manage whatever it is emotionally that she deals with. Sometimes I think the best thing I can do is to stay away. Sometimes I am not the best person to be around a very insecure person. Its not that I want to make them feel insecure, its just that I kind of assume people can take care of their own self worth/image whatever and I don't see the opportunities where they need me to boost them up. Whenever I have been around her for a long period, I've just felt completely drained, like she has sucked the life out of me. It is sort of a constant having to reassure her. I always walk away knowing that I've probably inadvertantly insulted her 23 ways past Sunday without knowing it by doing something like not putting the dishes away right or by just saying "Let's do this" rather than going around and asking her 45 times if she's ok with my plan. I am a person who forgets birthdays and social protocol and runs around trying to get things done in the most efficient way possible without bothering to build consensus and make everyone feel warm and fuzzy and all that. I'm impatient. I expect people to either take care of themselves and/or tell me what they want or need from me. No games. No passive aggressive shit. I know that is totally unrealistic. I try much harder with people who try hard to understand me. We've just never clicked. And I think that I was OK with that. I mean, not everyone can like everyone else. But I think I didn't realize that she was not okay with that. I don't know. Or maybe she just thinks I'm a sinner going straight to hell because I had catholic banned fertility treatments and I somehow am responsible for cutting D's foot off in her weird reality. I swear to you, I haven't a clue what her major beef with me is from month to month.
Sometimes I think I'm being a bit selfish or lazy and enjoying the rejection just a little too much. D says to me, "Well maybe I'll just say that if you aren't invited, I'm not coming!" And I'm like, "oh, but then they might actually go and invite me!!! Uummmm, no. Just go." It is a bit of a relief to not be expected to do the family gatherings anymore. It's not that they were torture or anything, but they were also not very enjoyable for me either. Unless we have other things planned, I'm perfectly happy sending D off on his own to that stuff.
So the kids, where do they fit in? I told D that he needs to handle telling the kids about his mom. And all I hear about her is the bad stuff from his childhood. I have been trying lately to remind him to think of the good things he remembers of his mom. Because my mother died, I really have been trying to impress upon him the notion that "well, she's your mom and she isn't going to be around forever." He needs to come to whatever terms with her. He has thought of and told me some nice stories about her lately, so I know he can do it. My mother told me only bad stories about my grandmother. And my cousins don't seem to know any of these stories. They also had a relationship with my grandmother and I did not. Which is better? I wouldn't have wanted my mother to lie to me. I'm glad we knew the truth. But I always wondered what my cousins saw in her. I only ever saw her drinking and smoking in the kitchen and not giving me the time of day. I also knew, even if I was never explicitly told this, that any act of interest or kindness towards my grandmother would be a sign of disloyalty towards my mother. So I never bothered to try to have a relationship with her, whereas perhaps my cousins did.
There will be none of that here though. There will be no disloyalty to me or D if the kids decide they want to pursue a relationship with her. We will try to answer their questions honestly and also try to look at the good in her. We will possibly have to warn them that they may be rejected by her and it is not their fault, but I'm not going to disallow them to pursue a relationship with her. I am actually thinking that when they get old enough to go off with D without me that the three of them can go over to family gatherings together.
Aunts and Uncles
D's brothers and sisters and in-laws are kind of lumped into the above sentiment. I'm not sure where they are in their thinking about the kids being their nephews. D's sister is wonderful and I really like her. I think she will be great with the kids. I'm not sure how much she likes me, but I think she is reasonable enough that we will always be okay in social situations. D has a sister in law that I have nothing in common with, but have always really liked her because she did always make an attempt to understand me. I think she is kind of feeling a loyalty to D's mom, and that is fine, but I always think the door is open for her. D's brothers? Two live far away, and as far as I know, we are all good there. The one that lives here I think pretty much wouldn't shed a tear if I got hit by a bus. He is also in the "You-ruined-D's-life-by-having-babies-and-thus-got-his-foot-cut-off" camp. And he doesn't raise other people's children, of course. So, D is going to have to take care of that, if anything. I'm staying out of it. (Like I would be any help anyway.) There are several likable things about each of them, even the one who wants me to be run over by a bus ASAP. He is energetic and I have seen him have fun playing with the other neices and nephews and is really knowledgeable about camping and outdoor survival stuff. He could teach the kids a lot and they could probably have a lot of fun with him. But I'm not sure I see that happening anytime soon. D's brother, Q, who I sorta used to date way back is wonderful with kids. He could be a complete doofus but then I would see him around kids and fall all silly in love with him back in the day.
So, that's up to D. But I strongly suspect the kids are going to be on the Big Brother waiting list when they hit age 5 or 6.
Aunt L.
Finally, we get to my sister, who has actually been on my mind lately. My sister has not met my kids yet. Part of this is logistical as she is always traveling for her job, and part of this is unknown to me. She didn't discuss my kids for a very long time, and I just let it go. She now will ask about them and she did send them a Christmas present this year. I was just thinking lately that it would be really cool for her to see the kids now because they are so much fun and I was wondering when she might ever meet them. Then my dad told me that she might come here over labor day weekend.
So I think this is good. I hope. I think she will like them, although I'm afraid she won't be able to handle their mess. I honestly think one of the reasons my sister has chosen not to have kids is because of the mess! She doesn't like to put up Christmas decorations or have thanksgiving dinner because of the mess. So I think having three meals and a snack a day with toddlers might send her right over the edge.
My sister has many good qualities and I actually like her a lot. She and I have sharply different views on many topics though. She is a CPA and has an MBA in something like accounting and/or economics. She is very capitalist and utilitarian, two philosophies that go right out the window when disabled people are involved. Well, unless you want to kill us off. There is a story from our childhood that pretty much defines the conflict in our relationship:
When my sister was about 11, I think, she wanted a new ten speed bike to replace her old banana seat bike. So she went to Richmond Gordman's and put a bike on layaway that I think costed about $100. Then, she cleaned our house one day a week for the entire summer for $5 a week. she would go to RG's every week and pay her $5 for the bike. By the end of the summer, she paid off the bike. Now, I forget the chronology of this exactly, but I think it was that school year sometime after she got the bike that my banana seat bike was stolen. It was kind of my fault because I left it out in the driveway next door. In our neighborhood, having a bike was pretty much having a social life. We rode our bikes. That's all we did practically. And (this is pathetic) after my bike was stolen, I had to just run along side all the kids with bikes and try to keep up. So I asked my mom if I could buy a bike from RG's as well. But my sister was still cleaning the house for $5 a week. I asked my mom if I could have a paper route. I asked her if I could mow the lawn. I asked her if I could clean the house. All were no, no, no. Or maybe later. I was 9 or 10 at the time, and the only job in town, cleaning my mom's house, was my sisters. So I kept begging her and begging her either for a bike or a job. In may of that year, I had eye surgery. I had it on a day I was going to miss out on some end of the year stuff at school and I was upset about it. Also, my birthday was coming up in June. So when I rode home from the hospital, we got to my house and my parents put the garage door up and there was my new bike. It was a hospital/early birthday present. Well, this pissed off my sister something awful, and she still talks about it today. She had to work all summer for a bike and I got mine for nothing just because I had eye surgery.
So it has always been like that. She gets the jobs easily, and I struggle with employment and get charity. She is resentful, and I feel like she thinks I'm a big loser charity case. When I was at KU doing research in the SPED department, there was a doc student who was doing research on siblings of disabled children. And this exact story appeared over and over again. The nondisabled kid resents the disabled kid and gets stuck doing more work while the disabled kids gets more "perks"and attention, yet the nondisabled kid can't complain about it because the parents will make them feel guilty for being nondisabled and complaining. I think my mom did her best here, but probably a better solution would have been to split the housecleaning job in half or pay half for each bike or something. In any case, there wasn't much I could do about it at the time, and there is only so much I can do about it now.
I have always worked, literally almost always since I was 12 years old. But my jobs have been pieced together, were part-time, or have sprung from volunteer work, or low-pay, or have come and gone based on my medical situation and technology. But I think my sister thinks that I have more control over it that I actually do. I used to think I had more control over it than I actually do, and I've learned to just try my best but accept that I can't convince everyone to give me an equal shot. Once I heard my sister talking to my aunt about finding work again after my mother died. She had stayed home for about ten months while my mother was sick. She was talking about the difficulty of having to explain her gap in employment and the awkwardness of mentioning her mother's death in interviews. I remember just looking at her incredulously and realizing how we are on two different planets as far as employment goes. Try the awkwardness of walking into an interview with a guide dog and having the employer yell at you for wasting his time before you've even got your hand extended for the handshake. Try prepping and arranging for readers and accommodations for some kind of job entrance test and then when you get there the test is "lost" and no, they don't have any idea when it will be found again. Try having to keep your mouth shut about how it is against the law for this person to sit here and tell you they can't hire you because you will get them sued the first time you "crack a kid's head open". You know if you bring up the law, you're out anyway. Try having to answer to someone who wonders how you think the other employees morale will be affected if they find that a blind person can do their job. Try being told while on the job which meetings they need you to show up at as disability window dressing and which meetings you can't show up at because your presence there would be "too political." Try even getting to an interview in a suit and heals with a shedding guide dog on two buses and a train and having to show up sweaty and hairy.
It's not that I want her to feel sorry for me or think she has it so much better off or anything. I just want her to quit resenting me and to try to understand me. I only have this life I've been given. I'm only trying to be as useful as I can and make the best of it. Having children has allowed me to, for perhaps the first time, use my full potential and all my skills for something really, really good without people's ideas of what I can and can't do holding me back. I feel like for once I'm not being wasted.
I don't know if she realizes how much I defend her, despite all the times I hear from our relatives that she has put me down. People ask me all the time, why doesn't she date? why hasn't she ever had a boyfriend? why doesn't she have children? why doesn't she ever go out and drink and party? And I defend her. Those are her choices. It is no more bazaar or normal than any other lifestyle choice.
I actually don't know the answers to those questions, just that you have to accept that that is how she has chosen to live her life. Sometimes I think she is living her life as a spectator rather than a participant. She likes to sit back and observe and analyze. Classifying people into simplistic categories such as "normal' and " weird." (I'm weird by the way, but we already knew that.) It is easy to put other people down for their choices when you have taken no risks of your own.
But...that was a big digression. She has things that she could share with the boys. She is very disciplined, hard working, responsible and reliable. She is extremely efficient, a multitasker, she get get things done. She can be funny and has a dry wit. She can talk politics and has opinions on a wide range of topics. She is my only real connection to my mother. She has a perfectly flat stomach, which I didn't even have when I weighed 115. Despite her fiscal conservativeness, she does volunteer for the Democratic party, which is something. There are things she could share with the kids, and things the kids could offer her. A little bit of participation in the tapestry of life.
I hope she will come and see them. I hope she will come and SEE them. SEE them for the little wonderful creatures that they are and enjoy their little personalities. I hope she doesn't spend her time here sitting back and observing them. A running commentary on which one is "normal" and which one has perceived language problems or cries too much or slobbers too much or whatever. I hope she respects them as little people and doesn't just demand that they entertain her like she used to demand that my guide dog perform commands for her amusement. I hope she sees that there is so much more to life that they will inherit from all of us than just the fact that they are not going to necessarily have a huge college savings account and thus be doomed. I hope she finds herself a role as an aunt. A fully engaged aunt who is part of a relationship and not just a closed-off observer sitting high on her pedestal of fear.
I hope I can teach the kids the word "sister" and show her as my example.
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For my part of all this, I know I have to work to make this house a comfortable place for everyone to be. I have long since gotten over having to feel responsible for making everyone comfortable with D and I and our disabilities, lifestyles and choices. But I'm going to have to just be comfortable with their uncomfortable-ness, I guess. Part of the definition of living in the minority culture is that you have to know the majority culture even though they are not expected to learn about yours. Where we see different ways of doing things, they see only their way and assume it is the right way. This is not necessarily their fault, as it is impossible to know what you don't see. D's dad may never be able to understand, for example, how insulting the "Honorary Marine" award was that D got as a replacement for any hope of a military career due to rampant discrimination in the military. In addition to the complexities that psuedo-allow D to be a member of the all important "Marine" identity of his family based on that all-too-flimsy piece of paper. But, while D is expected to understand that the award was given with good intentions, his family is not expected and may never be able to understand how it was not, at least as far as the marines were concerned. This is what makes it so hard for disabled people and their biological families. They are sometimes the minority in their own home. Even though my kids are white males, they are going to have to learn to be comfortable in both/all worlds. D and I are going to have to model that for them.We need to work harder on this instead of just blowing the families off, which we have a tendency to do. The removal and displacement that D and I feel from our families at times is complex and is not just a gimp culture vs. nondisabled thing. At least it shouldn't have to be. My sister's bike story, for example, could and does happen in any family and there are the usual family complexities to work out. But for starters, to me it seems like just admitting that there is a power, socioeconomic and cultural divide that separates us and recognize that it does affect family relationships is a much needed dialogue to have.
But, in any case, the kids are also going to get to see the rich life of the 'chosen family' where you become a welcome member of a club called disability, or queer culture, or interracial culture or wherever their paths take them. They will get an opportunity to see some different cultures and have relationships with different people who may not be biologically related, but are more 'family' than their own extended family. They will be able to define for themselves who fits into their definition of family. I am just going to strive to find opportunities to set up welcoming situations for them to do so.
