Proud to be a family

May 31, 2009 at 11:44 pm | Posted in We are Family | 9 Comments

Ironically, I am writing this post for the (4th annual!) Blogging for LGBT families day as my own family is 3,000 miles away from me on the other side of the country visiting Pili’s family.  P’ito is being Very Two, and poor Pili is ready to come home and turn him over to me for a month few days.

Last year, this cross-country excursion coincided with our local pride fest, and I was seriously bummed out.  All of these years cheering on the families and their cute kids, even walking with our friends and their cute kids… I had this image in my mind of the two of us and our rainbow be-decked offspring marching proudly along.  And now, finally, we had a kid – and he wasn’t there.

This year, we will be there. Rain or shine, I will pull out P’ito’s rainbow tie-dye t-shirt that last year was big on him and now is getting snug, and we will pack up the stroller and several hundred different snack options, and we will be there. Naptime be damned.

So often, in my interactions with the world, it’s just me and P’ito and I inadvertantly pass.  There’s nothing about me, trying to keep P’ito from grabbing candy off the rack at the supermarket or chasing him down the sidewalk, that screams LESBIAN at you.  There’s nothing about the ring on my finger that says, “I’m married to a woman.”

And so, this year, I can’t wait to walk there, to show the world that it’s possible for love to make a family as beautiful as ours.  To perhaps inspire some young woman like me to think: I can do that. I can be who I am – and be a mom.

And I hope that this will be the year that New York State realizes what Vermont, Mass, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine and IOWA have already realized – that the world doesn’t fall apart when our families have the same right to make a commitment to each other as straight people do.