Finding Friends at the Lake

Written in August 2015

I am desperate for a lesbian family to be lesbian-family-friends with. I adore our circle of friends, but golly I don’t have a peer. I feel more aligned with our male friends who are fathers to their children then to our female friends who are mothers, but I don’t think that they realize that. To them, G has two moms. That’s great, right? What I want, right? To be seen as a full blown “mom” to my son? Yes. And. I didn’t carry him for nine months. I didn’t labor and give birth. I don’t see my genes, and my family’s genes, in his face. I don’t breastfeed him. So many of the things the “moms” in our circle bond over are foreign to me. I could really go for meeting a baba friend about now.

G and I went to the beach. No special reason, it was just summer, and hot, and evening, and I love the water in the late afternoon when it holds itself with more quiet and reserve than it does in the mid-day, when light parades around its surface and small children fill every fistful of the beach.

Just G and I went. As soon as he saw the lake, he started pointing and trying to hurl himself from my arms towards it. I wrangled him into his swim diaper and stripped down to my bathing suit. Set on his feet, he began marching resolutely forward, his hand wrapped firmly around my finger to pull me along.

You know toddlers. Once their intention is set, they are single-mindedly focused on their goal. The lake or bust! Until something else shiny catches their attention. Not halfway to the water, G spotted the elusive and enthralling beast itself: A Big Kid. The Big Kid had maybe a year on G. He was making sand pies with his mom and… his other mom? Damn. It was the elusive and enthralling Lesbian Family. And I was on my own! No love by my side to show that we’re a lesbian family! No obvious indication to this family that “Hey–you’re like us! We’re the same! We should start talking NOW and become best friends!” Either I could dig up enough actual social skills to make a connection, or the elusive and enthralling beast would be gone.

The great thing about toddlers is they stare. Unabashedly. G watched and watched the Big Kid make sand pies. After the point at which it became genuinely awkward that G and I were standing there, staring at their family, I apologized and said that G was still learning not to stare, was still just super curious about the world around him. One of the moms laughed in response and started chatting about life-with-toddlers.

It was easy-going conversation, until I glanced at the other mom. Seemingly a littler older, a little more feminine, and obviously more controlling, she was not glad to have me there chatting with her wife. How could she be so unfair? If she just knew that I was half of a lesbian couple — a lesbian couple parenting a CHILD — wouldn’t she want to be best lesbian-family-friends too? I had to find a way to show her that I was just one mom in a family with two.

Let’s put it this way: there’s often not a slick way to incorporate: “I’m not straight; don’t you want to be my friend?” into your first conversation with someone. Especially when they don’t want to talk to you. I hemmed and hawed internally, finally finding a way to introduce the phrase “my wife” into the discussion.

I learned: their child’s name; they have just the one child, and clearly the friendly one wants more children and the controlling one does not; the friendly one works in town at a medical office; the family had never been to our lake before; the child was hilarious in his pursuit of mud pie perfection.

But the evening grew late and they packed to go home for a special birthday dinner. G and I continued our trek to the water. I kicked myself, wondering “why didn’t I offer my number, saying ‘give us a call if you come by the lake again?’” or at least ask their names?

Back home that night, I excitedly told my love about the sighting. She was eager to hear about potential friends until I explained I didn’t know who they were or have any way of contacting them. I said, “Maybe I could look up the medical practice online, and see if they have photos of people who work there, and if I could recognize the woman I met I could email her through her work email?” to which my love replied: “Stalker?”

Alas, the Lesbian-Family-Best-Friends remain elusive yet.

Remembering The Giver

I still stand by his crib some nights, watching him sleep. If I move softly enough, I can lay my hand across his back without waking him. If I stay still enough, my hand will warm slightly and almost pulse. It’s the same physical sensation I get when meditating sometimes–some rhythm telling me how interconnected we all are.

I stand and watch his breath go in. And out. And in. And out. Belly in. And out. And in. A small, tremoring sigh out.

Tonight I remembered that scene from the children’s novel The Giver, by Lois Lowry, in which the boy who holds the community’s memories calms a crying infant by laying his hand on the infant’s back and remembering a sailboat. As time passes, he can no longer remember the sailboat, the infant calms, and he realizes the infant is now carrying the memory of the boat instead.

I kept my hand on G’s back tonight. I let that connection between palm and back pulse, and thought of all the things from my own memories I would want to give him. The peace and solitude of a week in a log cabin in the midst of snow and sled dogs, the world wrapped in a neutral pallette. Sitting on a bench at the edge of a hill, with a soulmate of a friend, watching the sun setting over the rolling countryside and saying: “We get to LIVE here!” Those loves that lit my fingertips on fire. Floating on my back in Goose Pond, gazing up at the night sky. Hiking down Mount Monadnock in the dark with no flashlight but a hand to hold. Cool night air rolling over me through the open window, as we drove around town with speakers blaring. So many teenage adventures of discovery, expansion, and delight. I want to pass those joys through my pulsing hand to him tonight.

I feel that pulse of how interconnected we are, and I wish him all of it. All of the living. All of the world. All of the tingle echoing down his wrist and to his fingertips. That stretch in his chest of reaching to embed himself in it all.

Sleep well, my child. You will have so much to do in the morning.