Hot Gluing My Way Through the Holidays

Beren deMotier * writer * artist * human

Hot Gluing My Way Through the Holidays

Last night, at midnight, long after the kids were in bed and I should have folded myself in either my wife’s sleepy embrace or the pages of a good novel, I found myself hot gluing teeny tiny pinecones to a Styrofoam cone. And though my glue gun felt good in my hand, weighty, like a hammer for the tool-impaired, I had to wonder, how did it ever get this crazy?

When I look around our home, I see the detritus of children. It is parenthood, not the Marines, that makes you be all that you can be. Parenthood isn’t only the ultimate endurance sport, it’s the ultimate horizon expander, and my horizon needed some serious expansion before I had kids.

Once upon a time we were these young lesbians who fell in love and lived in a cozy roach infested apartment a stone’s throw from the local lesbian hangout, and Boom! twelve years pass and we’re cutting down Christmas trees with two awe-struck children standing by and hot-gluing at midnight.

It’s amazing really, you take one child-phobic, highly dysfunctional disco queen, cross her with an extremely mainstream military brat with conformity issues (or rather issues with not conforming), and presto, with what kind of strange magic do you get a happy marriage and two lovely kids?

And here I am gluing pinecones that were gathered by my wife’s grandmother twenty years ago. And twenty years from now will probably find our children up at midnight working on the same bag of cones. And they, in turn, will wonder how it ever got so crazy.

And so it goes, the circle of life. It’s good to be part of it.

Goodness knows we are. And while some conservatives might be yahooing all over about “family values”, we, like many gay men and lesbians these days, are so brimming with family values we’re drowning in them. You can’t slog through our homes without tripping over educational toys, pint-sized sports equipment or religious paraphernalia (because it seems every lesbian parent we know is going through a back to church phase). Our family seems modeled on some Leave It To Beaver mutation where Ward comes home from his work as a cyber jock to find June baking cranberry bread in a worn pair of Levi’s and black Doc Marten’s.

Something I’d pay good money to see.

Generally speaking, we go through our day to day existence confidant that our family is respected, and our life joyfully unexceptional. And then when you pick up a newspaper and see your family portrayed by a politician as some cheap dimestore novelette of a life, it is a shock. We are bonded by the same loves, the same trials and tribulations, the same families of origin, that other families are. Why is that not obvious?

Will our kids need braces, acne medicine, therapy? Do we have enough medical insurance, life

insurance, homeowners insurance, have we knocked enough wood lately to keep up safe? Will our kids be tormented

on the playground because they are skinny, heavy, black, white, adopted- you fill in the blank (and our blank is a

pretty major one).

Like anyone else we fight to keep our marriage alive because even lesbians and gay men can fall out of love, and do so all too frequently. And unlike straight couples, who have pledged their troth, signed their names on the dotted line and have said they will love, honor, obey or whatever it is they get the option of dithering about in front of a legion of supporters, we haven’t. And can’t, under the law. We have to fight for our relationships in the face of a society that claims they will fail, and amid a subculture that has yet to recognize that a lifelong relationship is a desirable and possible option.

And while every traditional family has its ups and downs with the in-laws, we deal with a modern version of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. Some are lucky, and feel the embrace of their partner’s family, and know their acceptance and love. But not all are so lucky. There is nothing so cutting as knowing you are truly not wanted, and that even after years of coming to the holiday feast, you are still about as welcome as a side dish of e-coli tainted beef.

As much as we’d like to deny their power, those families of origin are a force to be reckoned with. Especially at these special times of year, when memories are made, and Grandparents have the chance to prove themselves to a new generation, and the new generation has a chance to show what love has brought into the world.

And whether we celebrate Christmas, or any other holiday tradition, or choose to make our own special occasions based on season, or whim, or emotional need, we build on these with our chosen family each year. For all the Thanksgivings we drive up to spend with the in-laws, there are the annual potluck dinners with friends. We are building community based on similar values, goals in life, gratitude that we’ve found each other and are growing brave children in a frightening world and that we are all defying the rules that say you can’t be both happy and gay.