Goodbye for Now

My deep thanks to anyone who has followed me through my posts. I apologize for the unexplained silence. I just could not get beyond the idea that my honesty could hurt my daughter. But I can’t stop mulling over the many ways our lives have changed, and wondering about the changes to come. So I’m going to keep writing. I’ve started a new blog. Please comment on this post if you would like to receive the name and address of the new blog.

 

 

Writer’s Block

When I met the writer of  talesfromthemotherland at a writing workshop recently, she warned me that in order to write an effective blog, I had to be willing to get naked. The thing about getting naked is that you can be blissfully unaware for a while that the whole process is taking place. It feels good to connect, to play, let it all hang out. But then there you are. Naked. (The only game of strip poker I ever played was on my honeymoon in a tent in Yellowstone National Park. We gambled our combined savings of $500. We both won.)

It was in a pre-naked state of unawares that I first started the blog. I was not doing well, (see “Good Grief”), not sleeping, not talking to family, some days not eating, and worst of all, not writing. Blogging seemed like the perfect answer. I could bleed on the page and reach out to other parents while working on the writer’s “platform,” or “online presence” that agents are so fond of.

I discussed the idea with my family. Liz was a little uneasy but thought I needed to write. She knew I had been stalled for several months, preoccupied by family, disappointed by a novel that hadn’t enticed a buyer (does that sound any less pathetic than a “novel sitting in a drawer”?) I told her I didn’t have secrets, but that I needed to use the blog as a journal of sorts. I wouldn’t feel free to express myself if I had to worry about what she would think. I wanted to put my concerns out to my peers, parents of other gay teens. She agreed not to read my posts. (I hear snickering. Yes, I really am that naïve. If we weren’t raised in the same house, I probably trust you implicitly.)

Since the beginning of this rebirth, my husband has continually expressed concern for our safety as a family. Once he realized I would not be stamping the blog with our address and phone number, he was onboard.

So with my family’s blessing, I plumbed the very shallow depths of my technological know-how and created a home where I could explore the questions that wouldn’t lie down. It was a kind of purging I was ready for after years and years of emotional silence, years of writing in the dark. How wonderful it was to receive instant feedback! Readers sent me beautiful, encouraging emails. The told me their stories, resonated with mine. My husband became my first and best reader, though he has realized he doesn’t like seeing himself in print. He says it reminds him of the Gilligan’s Island episode where the castaways eat seeds that allow them to read each others’ minds. The kids asked daily about how many readers had gone to my blog and what feedback they had left. A cousin to optimism began visiting me in the quiet hours.

But then the unthinkable happened. My daughter read my blog. Aberration. Grief. Oh, what had I done? Why had I veered away from my primary teachings?  Hadn’t I been told never to share my feelings? Now my daughter would have to pay.

Ok, so it wasn’t really unthinkable. It was your first thought—of course your daughter is reading your blog. It’s about her! Your next thought might have been so what. So what if she did? The lie aside, something about knowing that she was reading stopped me cold. It has been the worst kind of writer’s block, the most difficult of conundrums: you must write in order to live; if you write you will kill. My response must seem overly dramatic. She assured me that reading caused more guilt than satisfaction because they were the things we talk about every day. She knew she had violated my privacy and felt horrible for doing so. She assured me that she was merely curious and that nothing she read upset her.

But the blockage was real. I felt paralyzed and only recently have I realized why. It was the same terror that gripped me the minute she told me she was gay. She suddenly seemed so fragile. The one hundred ways I could screw up her life bred in front of me as she spoke. Now there are thousands of ways I can damage this precious child, not to mention the droves of misguided supplicants who are waiting to knock her unconscious with their family values. (Oh, cousin to optimism, come back.)

Maybe I overreacted, but not so long ago, Liz was very fragile. In the weeks after her announcement she hunched inward when she sat, tiptoed when she walked, whispered when she spoke. She scanned our faces constantly for signs that she had broken us. She relayed stories she’d read on the Internet: a mom who’d had a heart attack upon hearing the news that her son was gay, disastrous outings on Christmas Day, children made homeless after their declarations. One day I was irritated and hollering, no doubt the usual haranguing about a messy room. Liz burst into tears. “I caused this. Everything is my fault.” I want to see myself hugging her, but I don’t know if I did. I was irritated, maybe kicking through books and papers on the floor, going crazy over a moldy apple core, confused about what was clean and what was dirty. I remember looking at her matter-of-factly and pointing out that I had been getting irritated for years about certain aspects of my thankless job and would probably continue to do so.

Slowly, she has gained confidence in us. Slowly, we’ve all learned to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. No one is broken. Our joy in each other seems deeper. But this is our new reality: Gay teens commit suicide more often than their straight peers. Gay teens turn to risky behaviors more often and become homeless more often. Gay teens get bullied. Given her membership in this disenfranchisement, can my daughter be anything but fragile? This too, is our reality: We will climb out of our anxiety and confusion only to be sent spirally down again when another aspect of this new life reveals itself.

I convinced myself at one point that I couldn’t do the blog anymore. But we’ve all paid for the decision. Writing requires a mysterious mix of creative energy and intellectual curiosity. When it’s flowing, there is magic. When it’s not, well, it’s gotta go somewhere. My family knows when I’m not writing. I expel my energy through elaborate decoration schemes. Projects involving German glass glitter and a soldering gun spring up overnight. Suddenly every chair needs reupholstering, by me. Someone must need a birthday crown of beads and Victorian ephemera. My mantra becomes “How hard could it be?” In my manic state I order books and supplies, stay up late sketching plans and watching instructional videos on YouTube. Everyone gets exhausted.

Is it any wonder they’ve begged me to return to my desk? “Write. The blog. Another novel. Anything.” So here we are again. Because I need to write. Because fiction doesn’t seem nearly as compelling as every day life right now.  Because I need to hear from other parents. Because I need to know what I think.  Because the house can not take one more bough of holly.

Liebster Blog Award

Thanks so much to talesfromthemotherland for nominating my blog for the Liebster Blog Award! I’m shamelessly stealing your glittery award logo and explanation of the award. Hope that doesn’t cause me to lose the nomination. I’m still trying to figure out who to nominate, other than you, my inspiration for blogging.

 

 

This Award is given to bloggers who have less than 200 followers, all in the spirit of fostering new connections. 

Leibster is German & means ‘dearest’ or ‘beloved’ but it can also mean ‘favorite’ & the idea of the Leibster award is to bring attention to blogs with less than 200 followers & pass the award on to 5 or more bloggers.

The Rules are:

1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks for the award and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Post the award on your blog.
4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the blogsphere – other bloggers.
5. And, best of all – have fun and spread the karma. 

 

 

Dream of a Common Language

Every year on my daughters’ birthdays, I tell the stories of their beautiful beginnings, the dreams I had of them before they were born. For our youngest, it was a message of hope. My last miscarriage occurred in January of 2001. After three such losses, I knew that pregnancy would always carry the possibility of that trauma. It took me months to decide if I could bear another loss. But after September 11, I began to see the risk of miscarriage as a small price to pay for the possibility of a life. Then one night, I saw her in a dream. My niece was lost in the ocean, and my sister and I were swimming all around our boat looking for her, calling out, diving again. Finally, the last time I dove under, I found my niece. She was swimming toward me, grinning, her gold hair fanning out in the water around her face. Behind her, in a band of sunlit water, hundreds of Botticelli babies swam toward me. My second daughter was born 10 months later.

My oldest daughter’s story is less about premonition and more about telepathy. She was already forming inside me when I first dreamed of her. In the dream, she was a preschooler. I couldn’t see her because she wouldn’t come out from underneath my chair. I tried and tried to coax her out so she could play with the other children, but she was too busy contemplating Einstein’s theory of relativity. It wasn’t until she was in grade school and her gifts became apparent that I felt the dream had any significance. Her unusual intelligence, her serious nature, and craving for knowledge have always set her apart from other children her age.

I tell these stories because I want these girls to know, forever, their true value. They are gifts to the world. Before there were diapers and sleepless nights and fussy eaters and tantrums and all the other stories we tell about our job as parents (How many of our stories are really just about them?) there was the simple fact of their humanity. I loved the idea of them before I knew who they were, and I love them now simply because they are.

My last post, “Good Grief,” felt unfinished. I sat and looked at it, willing the last few summary paragraphs to write themselves. Nothing. I finally realized I couldn’t write what I haven’t lived.  My grief is new, confusing, and unfinished. At times, I think it is just about the way the world reacts to gayness, my family of origin included.  I know I am mourning lost trust and safety. Other times, I am wrapped up in assumptions about what it means to be female. And then there is the plain, old, unadulterated self-pity. My world has been rocked, why aren’t people gathering around to soothe me?

But the dream of Liz in a traditional marriage with children is not among the things I’ve lost. She never spoke of those things herself. Perhaps, if she talked about the home she would create, as my younger daughter does, or if she had shown any interest in relationships with boys, as her friends have, perhaps then I would have looked into her future and seen a spouse and babies. What she does talk about are ideas: from the fields of philosophy, history, neuropsychology, poetry, art. So now, as always, in the future I imagine, she is immersed in her ideas, surrounded by like-minded people, debating, writing, researching, creating. This dream for her is organic. The dreams which stem from the people they are can’t be lost. Only replaced as we get a truer, deeper sense of them, as they grow and begin to define themselves. So again, what have I lost if not my dreams for her?

Last night I started an intrusive line of questioning that has been on my mind for months. I warn Liz first, but she still laughs when I ask her about attraction. I know it is none of my business, but it bothers me that I don’t know. I assumed I would be guiding her through the romance process, just as I have guided her through school, and relationships with friends and family. Now it is she who will have to guide me. So I ask again.

I tell her that I know what it is like to walk down the street and see men. All of them carry the possibility of attraction. Sometimes it is there, and in the passing, a look, a feel, a smell, something tells me it is mutual. And then we keep walking. This energy, this possibility is almost a separate life force that swirls continually around us, recharging the ordinary. I go on to say that if all the men who could never be attracted to me (for whatever reason) had red hair, I would register this symbol. Instinct would take over and my energy wouldn’t go there. So what is the world of girls like for her? Teenage boys who are attracted to girls might gawk at anything with curves and long hair. Do all girls have the same affect on her? Is there some symbol so she knows where to send her energy?

If you are picturing a world teeming with red-headed men right now, please don’t email me about it. (50 is just days away. I’m fragile.) You might be appalled that I am having this conversation with my young daughter. I, Queen Overshare, monogamous for 23 years, am surprised myself. But I realize as I plough through that we are tunneling to the center of my grief. It is this: we no longer share a common language in which to discuss our experiences. I have a deep longing to know and to be known, but in this part of her life I’m a foreigner stumbling and bumbling along without maps or translation.

In her answer, she grabs for the non-specific “most people,” before I convince her that I just want to know what she feels. Finally, she says that she knows when she looks at a girl who is tightly constrained by societal expectations that this girl is not for her. (She knows it’s making stereotypical assumptions, but says these are the girls with long ironed hair and clothing that appeals to men.) I know I can dig deeper, but I also know this has stretched her, and I don’t want to break her trust. So I simply say, “thank you. That helps me understand.” And it does. I understand that she is what I’ve assumed her to be: a thoughtful person who will seek a connection of mind first. It’s small but important. Already, today, I feel my grief lifting, the flutter of joy returning. We are on our way to a common language.

“…this is the oppressor’s language/yet I need it to talk to you.”

From the poem “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children,” by Adrienne Rich. The Dream of a Common Language is the title of one of her collections of poems.

Good Grief

Two weeks ago, my doctor looked me in the eye and said, “I can give you some medicine for your stomach pain, and it will feel better immediately. But you’re in mourning, and that won’t go away for some time.”

Why is it harder to ignore the observations of near-strangers? His words forced me to sit with a fact I’ve been resisting for months: I have lost something.

I bristled when a friend first mentioned that this was a turnabout for which I would have to grieve. I resisted because I thought it meant I was not fully accepting of the way my daughter came to me in this world. I resisted because I do accept her: gifts, quirks, pimples (oh, she would love that) and all. How can I grieve when I have a healthy, intelligent, artistic, funny, loving daughter? How can I grieve when she is not sick, not sad, not lonely, not suicidal?

Was this the stoicism of my Norwegian-American family, where compassion comes in the form of politely turned heads? “Tell us when you’re over it and we can look again.” Maybe. Ok, probably. Several years ago I suffered a series of miscarriages. The last one occurred when my husband was in England on business. I was 39 years old and 14 weeks along. When the tiny fetus slipped out in the hospital bathroom, I knew I would never have another child (joy, joy, I was wrong). My husband returned a few days later and I went into our room and shut the door. I stayed for three days. I read, I wrote, I cried, I made new curtains. And then I put it away. I did not share the details of my experience with anyone but my husband until years later. I grieved privately while I pretended to the world outside my door that I was not grieving at all.

I’m sure much of my reaction harkens back to early training, but I’m also guarded against a kind of sideways narcissism I see in parents when it comes to their children. Don’t they reflect us, preferably our best selves, when they launch into the world? My reclamation has occupied me more decades than I care to count. I’m finally beginning to emerge as a full self, responsible for my thoughts, emotions, my work in the world. I don’t want my daughters to have to fight me in order to find themselves.

So you see, this gay thing, it can’t be about me. It belongs to my daughter. Besides, grief is about loss. What can I count as a loss?

I can easily count my daughter’s losses.  In the space of a few months, she joined an oppressed minority. Her “condition” is debated daily in the media. We don’t seek the horror stories, but they find us. She wouldn’t feel safe attending public high school in our town. She quit a musical theatre group she loved after she heard friends there discussing homosexuality as perverse, equal to pedophilia and bestiality. There is the folk dance group we’ve been involved in as a family for nine years. She said she was just done. But the timing was suspicious. Did she, too, fear a backlash from the parents of the other young women she danced with? (There are never enough male partners, so many of the girls are partner in the traditional circle dances.)

Then there is the loss of a peer group. One day I casually asked her if she thought about what dating would look like someday. She gave me the ubiquitous teen eye-roll-head-toss-scoff. “Mom, it’s not like there’s a big pool. I know one other girl who is out in the whole county.” She shares this orientation with approximately half of 10 percent of the population. An interviewer recently asked Rosie O’Donnell if she wasn’t jumping into marriage too soon after her breakup with the mother of her children. Her answer went something like “come on, I’m fifty and I’m gay.” I get it. There are drought conditions in that pool.

But my dear girl takes it all in stride. I asked her if she went through any of the stages we’ve come to associate with grief. “Nope.” “You weren’t ever mad that you didn’t get to choose?” “Nope.”  She gets impatient with my need to turn the world inside out. “Remember? I told you. It was like ‘am I? God no!’ Then ‘am I? God no!’ Then ‘oh, I am. Ok.’ “

My husband is straightforward about his grief. He grieved for her acceptance in the world and for the grandchildren. But he did not lie in bed at night, acid flooding his chest, and complain that he was having a heart attack. No, that was me. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t cry in the shower because he’s a messy crier and I would have heard. No, me again. Supermom, the one who wants to start a support group in her living room, the one who wanted to have a coming out party (I still think that’s a great idea), the one who dreams one day of owning a bed and breakfast with a giant rainbow flag in the window.

So, I am leaving the land of denial, but I’m still not sure what my grief is about.

Thanks so much for the comments and emails. I’ve loved hearing from all of you. If you would like to have new posts sent directly to your email address, please scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen and sign up. When I figure out wordpress I’ll make that button more visible! My goal is to write one new post a week. Thanks for reading! 

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

“In human beings courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible. An assertion of the self, a commitment, is essential if the self is to have a reality.” From The Courage to Create, by Rollo May

When my daughter first came out to us, I searched the Internet desperately for answers. Well, not answers so much as some form of support, a map maybe. Over night, my parenting task morphed into something I didn’t recognize. (I know, I know, I should have had a clue, but I didn’t. That’s a story for another day.) I found many coming out stories from gay people, lots of advice on what to say when your child comes out, but nothing about the days and years that follow.

So when I started writing this blog, I decided it would be about daily life After the Telling. A parenting journal. I wanted to begin where the sites I found left off. But it seems we are stuck in the telling.

At first, it was Liz’s story to tell. She told me, then her father when he returned from a business trip a few days later. He hugged her and told her she would always be his big girl. There were a few very special moments of hugging and crying and quiet blessings. We were so relieved to have bridged the awful silence of the previous months. Then my husband launched into a lecture about how any public declaration made via the Internet could endanger all her future college and job prospects. I sat across from him making swiping motions across my neck. The magic moment passed, the real work began.

We had daily discussions, each one beginning with “Are you sure?” Our patient daughter walked us through all the reasons she was sure. I began to understand when I searched myself for the moment I first decided to like boys. Of course, I had not decided. It was in me from the beginning, just as this has always been in her. Then it made sense that she could “just know,” as I had just known.

Liz was able to convince her father that (for her) the ramifications of staying “in the closet” were far worse than the possibility of being shunned socially. I would like to say that I knew she was right, but I worried late into the night (every night). Who among our friends and family would be accepting and who would not?

In August, she started 10^th grade at a private high school. In September, on an all-school camp-out, she made her declaration. I could see when she returned that she had been right all along. She was lighter. How could we ever have thought to deny her this most basic freedom, that of being known for who she is?

After she told her friends and teachers, it was my turn. Liz wanted the support and love of her extended family, but she didn’t know how to tell them. Despite my best intentions, having a gay daughter had become a daily preoccupation. But keeping it to myself was admitting shame that I did not feel. And it was denying the people I love the opportunity to participate fully in my life. The omission weighed like a lie.

But I worried needlessly; it her seems her father was not the only one who wanted her to hide. I told my sister first, or rather, laid plenty of breadcrumbs. She followed my trail, and then declared that it was not something she would ever need to discuss with my daughter. “I don’t talk about sexuality with any of the other cousins.” I pointed out that yes, she could probably ignore this side of my daughter completely, until Liz decided to get married. “Oh.”

My mother was even more blunt. “You tell her she should just keep it to herself. She doesn’t know who she is at 14 and neither do you!”

Sometimes my family ties seem forged in pretense. I understand their fear that she would be ostracized and “marked” if she revealed the truth. But I didn’t understand their choice to pretend, within the family, that the words had never been spoken. When we returned from a Saturday at Grandma’s, Liz turned to me and said, “I feel that low self-esteem thing creeping in.” She had spent the whole day with people who had known her since the day of her birth, people who eagerly attended every play and piano recital, people who knew about her recent discovery and understood that it would change her life. Yet those same people chose to talk about Halloween cookies and discount sweaters. Liz was confused by the shame she felt after being with them.

I’ve tried to understand their pleas for secrecy. My husband didn’t want Liz to be labeled as “the gay girl.” He wanted her to save her news for friends she knew and trusted, people who could see her as complete, multifaceted person. Others seem reluctant to visit what they see as a matter of sex, perverse sex. For my family of Norwegian descent, of all the affairs never meant to be made public, sex ranks number one.

The astute reader will already be saying to herself, “but it’s not about sex.” This, too, took me awhile to understand, though her counselor kept repeating it. Liz is fourteen. She has never been kissed or held hands. She skips across green lawns. Her cat is her best friend. Two days ago she dressed in costume and went door-to-door for candy. So what is this about, if not sex?

Coming out as a gay teen has given my daughter the chance to name her world. It is about identity and orientation, about understanding, finally, why she is not like any of her friends in the ways that the world normally marks female teens. It is about claiming these growing years as a time of true exploration rather than of lies, secrecy, and shame. And it is about creativity. For Liz, living her truth has meant an explosion in her art and poetry that has stunned her teachers and us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m so thankful she understood this before we did, and could lead us to where we are now. She often raids my bookshelf. Perhaps she already read The Courage to Create.

“If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also you will have betrayed our community in failing to make your contribution to the whole.”  Rollo May

Emancipation

Emancipation

This year, barring accidents and quick terminal illness, I will turn 50. Something about that landmark birthday has made me more determined than ever to live truthfully and to connect with other people. I’m introverted by nature, and writing, too, has driven me further inward. But over the last few years, I’ve come to realize that the whole ride only makes sense in the context of community. Slowly, I’ve allowed myself to open up to a few good people, and in doing so have finally learned how be a friend.

When Liz sat on the piano bench in the living room, her bottom lip quivering, and spoke the words, “Mom, I’m gay,” my newly opened heart opened a little wider to take in her pain and her dignity. How could this quiet, bookish girl, the one who recently wore braids to her waist, summon this courage? Writing about it, I am in awe again. Thankfully, her admission wasn’t totally unexpected. I assured her this side of her would never change my love or support for her, and that I thought her very brave. I also thanked her for letting me in on such a private part of her life.

Now, four months later, she is settled into a school where she seems happy and accepted for who she is. Maybe it’s true, what she has been telling me all along, “It’s different now, mom. It’s not such a big deal.”

Maybe it’s not such a big deal for the average 14-year-old, but I am living my day-to-day with another generation, one for whom it is still a very big deal. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents of her friends. So my need for connection has come smack up against a taboo that begs my silence.

This brings me back to where I started. Turning 50 and opening up to the world. We had a choice to make when Liz came to us with her newly discovered orientation. I think we made the right one. Acceptance was never the question. But there are plenty of other questions. Where do I find a group of parents who are going through the same thing? (No PFLAG in my area.) Who do I ask now about sleepovers and first dates? How do we explain this to our nine-year-old? Where do I turn with my near-obsessive fear that friends and family will shun us? How do I work out all the questions without exhausting the few friends I am comfortable talking to about it? Where do I go in the middle of the night when worry won’t stop shooting adrenalin through me? How do I work toward that day, when, across all sectors of society, it’s not such a big deal?

The answers lie within my daughter. In the months since her disclosure, she has blossomed. She admitted that for years now the girl her friends saw was an imposter. Now she is free to truly be herself. So I’m going to follow her lead and my own instincts. I’m going to be honest about our journey and see what comes back.

Aberration

ab·er·ra·tion

noun

1. the act of departing from the right, normal, or usual course.

2. the act of deviating from the ordinary, usual, or normal type.

3. deviation from truth or moral rectitude.

4. mental irregularity or disorder, especially of a minor or temporary nature; lapse from a sound mental state.

“MOM! MITTENS PUKED IN THE HALL AGAIN. I STEPPED IN IT! EEWWWWW!”

I don’t normally use the word “puke,” but “vomit” doesn’t convey the sense of violation you feel after stepping into a regurgitated pile of frothy cat food and bile before you fully wake up. The fact that it’s a happy shade of orange does nothing to alleviate your disgust.

Mittens was my way of distracting my children from the longest, greyest winter since the Ice Ages. (We will quickly establish that I am not a scientist. I use this term for effect only. Affect? Effect? Oh dear, I don’t know if this blog thing is going to work after all. My inner editor is going crazy.)

Anyway, as I was saying, it rained for many more than 40 days and nights and wasn’t letting up. So I did the only logical thing, adopted a lonely cat from the Humane Society. I am a bit impulsive when it comes to these things, but therein lies the distraction. (We can save the story of the six chicks we bought from the local feed store  and raised in the bathtub because we had neither coop nor barn.)

I should say before I go on with Mittens’ many other crimes against humanity that she is both sweet and beautiful. Captivatingly beautiful. So distractingly soft and lovely that I may even understand now, after all these years, the draw a beautiful woman has for a man. She seems to understand her power. She slinks in front of you, snaking her sexy tail through the air in slow, alluring gestures. She rubs her cheek across your naked ankle. Think Ginger Grant in a boa, Marilyn Monroe in mink. This cat is silk on four legs, compassion without criticism, chocolate without calories. For this writer, she is more distracting than email.

I don’t know how long Mittens was with us before her many anomalies began to show up. Despite easy access to a litter box, she prefers to pee in the shower. She has a runny eye that requires medication. She throws up a third of her meals. She likes to pull the heating vents out and crawl into the ducting. The discovery of each of her problems led to a protracted period of investigative cat psychology and deep cleaning.

But I love this cat.

One day my husband announced that Mittens has started peeing on the garage door instead of in the litter box (the cats sleep in the garage at night).  He walked under the opened door and urine dripped onto his head. Who knew there could be something more violating that puke between your toes?

My practical side took over. My mate of 22 years and I are house-proud. He grew up in a single-wide trailer with five other people. Four of the residents of said trailer were eventually over six feet tall. He deserves a nice home. I enjoy antiques and decorating with vintage finds. We have worked hard for what we have.

I called the Humane Society, leaving a careful message each time my call went unanswered. When I finally talked to a live person, she explained that they were overrun with cats and could not take in another. At first I was angry. Another pet owner knew this cat had problems before they gave her up. A Humane Society caretaker probably knew about these problems before they passed her on to us. What were we to do now? Even if they did have room, could we assign someone else these problems, someone likely to be less patient with them? My husband asked me nearly every day if I had made other arrangements for the cat. I always told him the same thing “I called and left a message.”

What I neglected to say in the beginning, what I had to write my way to, is that this cat play has run all spring and summer under the real drama inside my home, my fourteen-year-old daughter’s discovery that she is gay.

When my mother learned this news about the granddaughter she adores, she repeated over and over (I swear, three times, like some magical incantation to ward off evil), “But it’s an aberration. It’s an aberration. It’s an aberration!”

My daughter is not a cat. My daughter is not sick. My daughter, I’m thrilled to say, doesn’t even seem anxious. She is different, normal but not in the norm. But neither my husband nor I ever thought to blame her or to throw or shut her out. Our love for her has been deepened by her honesty and bravery.

My cat is not my daughter, but when I think about giving Mittens away, the words ring in my head. “Aberration. Aberration. Aberration.” I begin to say out loud “Maybe Mittens will just be a part of our funny family story.” They know me. They know this is my way of telling them I can’t give her up. What they don’t know is that I am ashamed of ever feeling that I could only love and take care of her if she met my expectations, that she be soft and comforting, beautiful and entertaining, completely healthy.

The Humane Society never did call back.