The Perfect Summer

As I type this, the children are sitting in time out. Andrew is doing a repeated sigh, I can only assume he’d like me to know that he does not enjoy time out. Jordan is sobbing, because it’s not fair to have a time out for choking Andrew when Andrew deserved to be choked.

We’ve entered the hazy, lazy days of summer vacation. The ice cold drinks in the sun are punctuated only by the joyful sounds of children. No, wait. That’s not joy, it’s the sound of two little boys choking each other.

In summer, one day blends slowly into the next. It’s hard to say when one day ends and the next begins, as we sit in the endless twilight, enjoying the company of beloved family.

No.

No, it’s 3:17 in the afternoon, which means that we’ve been on summer vacation for three and a half hours. Three hours and twenty minutes, if you only count from the time the children got off the school bus.

Here’s what I’ve done on my summer vacation:

11:45 AM

I put on my hat and walk to the end of the driveway, waiting for Jordan’s bus. It’s beautiful out. I scroll through twitter on my phone while I sit on the retaining wall at the edge of the driveway.

11:55 AM

Jordan arrives home. His bus driver, who adores him, wishes him a wonderful summer.

11:56 AM

Jordan is on the floor, sobbing. He wanted to drive to New Jersey to visit my in-laws. Today. Because it’s summer vacation now, isn’t it? Our trip to visit them at the end of May was too long ago, and “also it was boring because it was too short and short trips don’t count as trips and I don’t love Bubbe and Zayde anymore anyway and I do not want to see them. EVER. AGAIN.”

12:01 PM

Jordan has calmed down, and would like a snack. I explain that we’ll be having lunch in about five minutes, as soon as Andrew’s bus drops him off. Jordan sobs again.

12:03 PM

Jordan curls up on the couch with his stuffed cat. I go to meet Andrew’s bus.

12:05 PM

Andrew’s bus arrives.

12:12 PM

Andrew hates lunch, but he’s glad we’re eating outside on the new patio. Jordan spilled his milk, and he “hates lunch even though I ate it all and if you make the same thing again I will not eat it and I will not eat lunch outside again. NOT. EVER. AGAIN.”

12:24 PM

All of the boys’ toys are boring, and the only way they will have any fun this summer is if I take them out to buy new toys or let them play on the Wii U.

12:47 PM

Andrew tickles Jordan. Jordan chokes Andrew.

1:06 PM

Andrew takes the Lego pieces Jordan was playing with. Jordan slaps Andrew.

1:18 PM

Andrew would like to do some homework. So he does.

2:00 PM

One hour of Mario. No one hits, no one bites, no one screams, no one scratches.

3:00 PM

The hour is over. Jordan is on the floor, sobbing.

3:17 PM

We’re in time out again, because we can’t stop fighting.

 

ENDLESS SUMMER.

Four More Years

Thumpety-thumpety-thumpety thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Thumpety-thumpety-thumpety thump.

“Boys,” I yell, “what’s going on up there? You sound like a herd of elephants.”

Silence.

“It’s not my fault, Daddy!” calls Jordan. “Andrew made me do it.”

“I did NOT,” says Andrew, indignant. “You wanted to do it.”

“Do what?” I ask.

Jordan has come down to the kitchen by now, and he says, “Andrew was timing me, to see how fast I could go up and down the stairs.”

Now Andrew comes into the room, holding up one of those little sand timers you find in a board game. “I was just timing him, he was the one running on the stairs,” he says. Then he adds, “But I don’t know how long it took him, because this timer doesn’t really even tell you.”

“The rule is that we don’t run inside the house, guys,” I say. “Especially not on the stairs.”

We live in an old house, and the stairs are awful. Really awful. They’re steep. Steep enough that adults often put a hand out in front of themselves when ascending. They go around corners. Even just carrying a laundry basket up the stairs requires you to lift the basket practically above your head in order to fit. These are advanced stairs for advanced stair users. When I use the stairs in other homes, I get a little jealous.

“Oh, your stairs are so comfortable to use!” is a thing that I have actually said, out loud, to other people.

So I’m a little annoyed that Andrew would convince his little brother to run up and down our stairs. Jordan works with a physical therapist and an occupational therapist every week, and stairs have always been a challenge for him. Especially our awful stairs.

Secretly, though? I’m proud of Jordan for running up and down those stairs. That’s a big deal. He may not run like the other kids, but he’s getting closer and closer. And he’s worked really hard to get there.

Andrew has worked really hard, too. When he was four, no one could understand what he was saying. He had lived with us for months before I was able to understand his speech with any regularity. He used to have to repeat himself so many times to be understood. We used to work on using different words to say the same thing, on the theory that if you said, “Can we go to the park?” and “I’d like to visit the playground,” you were increasing the odds that someone would be able to puzzle out what you were saying. And that’s a tough skill for a four-year-old; they have a hard enough time coming up with just one way to turn their thoughts into coherent sentences.

I remember the week that Andrew’s speech therapist told him a story to teach him how to make the K sound and the G sound. She told a story about a little boy whose necktie was on too tight, nearly choking him, and all that came out was a coughing “K-k-k-k-k-k-k!” sound. Then, once he took the necktie off, he gulped down a giant glass of water, swallowing so much so quickly that it went, “Guh-guh-guh-guh-guh-guh!” down his throat.

Andrew came home from that appointment and worked on nothing but G and K for the next 48 hours. Finally, he managed to choke out the word cat. He was shocked. I was shocked. His therapist was shocked when he showed up for his appointment the next week and said, “Hi … Katherine!”

I ran into Katherine last week, and it made me realize just how long ago Andrew’s struggle to be understood seems. Everyone understands him now. No one who meets Andrew today has any idea that he was ever hard to understand. Just a couple of weeks ago, his teacher was talking about his “remarkable vocabulary,” just casually mentioning that he really knows an awful lot of words for a second grader.

Next week, it will be the fourth anniversary of The Day The Boys Moved In. It’s an interesting combination of “I can’t believe it’s been four years,” and “Really? It’s only been four years?”

I guess it’s time to get going on the next four years. I’ll get out a big sand timer.

Would Your Kid Feel Safe Coming Out?

There’s this video making the rounds on facebook and twitter. It’s a gay couple’s wedding video, and it’s being shared because people are moved by the speech that one of the men’s fathers gives to his son and his new son-in-law. It’s actually pretty standard wedding fare, as far as I can see, but we don’t hear that often enough in the context of gay people getting married. I’m sure the fact that the dad is in the military is also part of its appeal — I guess people don’t expect a man in uniform to give a loving speech at his gay son’s wedding.

It’s not the speech that I’d like to talk about today, but a moment that comes just before that speech. You can watch the video below. The bit I’ll be discussing begins around the 4:45 mark, if you’d like to skip ahead.

Before I talk about the moment that made me uncomfortable, I feel like I should offer a disclaimer. This is a wedding video, and it’s very obvious the dad loves his son a great deal. I don’t want to sound like I’m criticizing this family. I’m just using this video as an example because it has a moment that I can point out. The problem is pretty universal.

I was scared to tell my dad that I was gay. I was scared to come out to my dad. I was just so down, and he was like, “What’s wrong with you?” … And he looked at me and he said, “What did I do to fail you? What did I do to fail in raising you to trust me?” and I said, “Dad, what are you talking about?” and he says, “Why can’t you tell me that you’re gay?”

So let’s talk about the ways that straight parents fail their LGBT kids. Let’s talk about why a kid might be afraid to tell their parents that they’re gay. This applies to parents of kids anywhere on the sexual orientation or gender spectrum, for a couple of reasons. First, you may or may not know if your kid is LGBT, so you need to apply this advice regardless. Second, even if your kid is straight, if you want things to get better for LGBT kids in general, you need to create an environment where all kids learn that LGBT people are just as good as anyone else, and just as deserving of love, family, friends, community, and respect.

For the purposes of this conversation, I’m going to assume you’re a parent who would want your kid to feel safe enough to come out to you, and that you would want to know if you were falling short of that goal.

First, take a look at yourself.

Are LGBT people ever a topic of conversation in your home? When an LGBT rights issue is in the news, is it likely to be discussed? Think about the last time you said anything about LGBT people. What would the takeaway have been for your kid? Do you ever make jokes about LGBT people, even ironically? Do you feel comfortable discussing LGBT people, or does your voice get a little quieter, like when people are afraid to say “cancer?” A lot of LGBT kids are gender nonconforming. If your son asks for a doll, do you get a pained look on your face, even just for a moment? Did you dress him up in one of those awful “Ladies’ Man” t-shirts, sending the message that you’ve already decided what his sexual orientation is? Do you tell your daughter that there are certain events to which she simply has to wear a dress? Do you talk about your child’s future in a way that makes it sound like you’ve got a specific vision for what that future looks like? If you do, you’re setting the stage for your kid to feel like they will be disappointing you if they aren’t able to provide exactly that picture. If you treat being straight or conforming to gender roles as the default, you’re contributing to an environment where an LGBT child won’t be sure if they can trust you.

If you want your kid to feel safe telling you that they’re LGBT, show your kid that it is safe to tell you. Show them that you don’t have negative opinions of LGBT people. Don’t sit your kid down for an awkward chat and say, “It’s fine with me if you’re gay.” Show them. Show them by the way you live your life. If I asked your kid to tell me what you think about LGBT people, what would they say? If they wouldn’t be sure of their answer, you can be sure that they will not feel safe.

Next, take a look at your family.

No one’s family is perfect, and you can’t control what your family says and does. You can, however, control your response. If your kid hears negative messages about LGBT people at family gatherings, you need to be certain that your kid hears that you disagree with those messages, that you consider those messages to be unacceptable regardless of who is saying them, and that those messages are never again to be repeated in front of you or your kid. If you have a family member who cannot or will not agree to that request, you need to think very carefully about what message you are sending to your kid. Allowing your kid to be subjected to negative remarks about LGBT people — even if you are not the one making those remarks — will tell your kid that you are willing to compromise on issues as fundamental as who your kid is.

What about your friends?

When your kid looks at the people with whom you choose to spend your time, what do they see? Are there any LGBT people among your friends or family? If your kid is LGBT, and when they look around, they don’t see any other LGBT people, how lonely do you think they will feel? If they were to consider coming out, would they be the only LGBT person around? Kids look to adults for models of what adulthood is and what they can be. Without living, breathing LGBT people, your kid is left only with the extremely limited LGBT representation we see in the media. When you went to high school, was it a lot like the high school in Glee? For an LGBT kid, Glee might be the primary example they see of LGBT people. I can promise you that the LGBT characters on Glee are as divorced from the reality of LGBT people as the rest of the characters are divorced from the reality of everyday people.

I’m not saying that you should go out and try to find a new Gay Best Friend. Actually, please do not go out and try to find a new Gay Best Friend. But if you look at your social circle and it seems somehow limited, you need to consider that your social circle might, in fact, be limited. And you may need to ask yourself some difficult questions about why that is the case.

Everything that I said about families applies to your friends, perhaps even more so. You may not be able to choose your family, but you’ve chosen your friends, so their attitudes about LGBT people will tell your kid a great deal.

A limited view of LGBT people — making assumptions about who is or isn’t LGBT based on behavior or appearance, spending time speculating about who is or isn’t LGBT — will tell an LGBT kid that your view of them, your view of their life and their future, is limited.

Take a look at your community.

Do you bring your kid to a church? What does your church say about LGBT people? Are there LGBT people in your church community? If so, are the LGBT people in your church community full participants in all the same rituals and ceremonies as everyone else? Are LGBT members of your church community able to be married in your church? If you expect your kid to participate in a church community that doesn’t seem them as an equal to everyone else, you are telling your kid that you don’t view them as a equal to everyone else. A kid who knows that their parents don’t think LGBT people are worthy of equal treatment is going to be afraid of what will happen if they come out as LGBT.

What is the climate for LGBT kids in your school district? I can promise you that your LGBT middle school or high school student hears the word “gay” used as an insult, probably every day. It may not be directed at your kid, but it is part of their environment. What kind of protections are in place for LGBT students, who are more likely to be on the receiving end of bullying than their peers? Is there a Gay-Straight Alliance or similar organization at your local high school and middle school? You can work to improve the climate for LGBT kids in your school district before your kid is even there. Change takes time, so if you wait until your kid needs the resources of a Gay-Straight Alliance or a non-discrimination policy, you may be too late to provide them. If it takes a year to get the Gay-Straight Alliance up and running, that’s a year that your LGBT kid went without. If you want your kid’s school environment to be a safe one, you may need to make it a safe environment.

You can keep extending this examination outward, in ever larger circles. What is the climate for LGBT people in your town? In your state? What are the priorities of LGBT activists and organizations in your area? In what ways can you help those priorities become reality? Every hard-won victory will slowly improve conditions for LGBT kids.

But you have to start at home. Even if you can’t get your extended family to stop saying negative things about LGBT people, you can make sure your kid knows that you disagree. Even if bigots on the school committee block adoption of a non-discrimination policy, you can show your kid that you were fighting on the right side of a moral issue.

Finally, we need to acknowledge that even if you do all of these things, your LGBT kid still might not feel safe coming out to you. And it may not have anything to do with you. Coming out is a deeply personal decision, and it will happen in the context of your kid’s whole environment — family, friends, peers, community, media, and politics all play a role — and you are just one part of that puzzle. When your LGBT kid does decide to come out, don’t make it about you. It’s not.

Why Neil Patrick Harris Is Just the Worst

I don’t spend very much time thinking about celebrities, really. I don’t read People or US Weekly. Even in a waiting room, I’m more likely to pick up a news magazine or, heck, even Better Homes and Gardens, although I need to be clear, neither my home nor my garden is what anyone would describe as “better.” So the only time I look at People is when my alternatives are Sports Illustrated and Field and Stream. Though really, in the years since I got a smartphone, I’m more likely to be looking at that than at a magazine.

Usually the only times I read about celebrities are when they have committed a crime and ended up in the regular news, or they have said something about gay people. When the latter is the case, the rainbow unicorn flashes in the sky like the bat signal, and I need to know what they’re saying. “Gay people on television!” still makes me run for the TiVo remote.

My brushes with fame are few and far between. When I was in college, Audra McDonald and I knocked each other over on the stairs at a studio in New York. She was hurrying down, I was hurrying up, and bam! We both said “excuse me” and she was polite enough to act like it was just as much her fault as it was mine, which is really unlikely, but it was very nice of her to pretend. And now your life has been enriched by that thrilling tale of fame.

It’s worth noting, though, that in all of my blog posts, the one where I yelled at Rupert Everett is the one that has received far and away the most views.

I’ve never really compared my life to depictions of celebrities and found myself wanting, though. I mean, sure, fancy events with interesting people look great, but I’d be just as awkward at an opening night gala as I am at the damned grocery store. Even more so, because I am truly, truly awkward and out of my element at large parties. Heck, last week I introduced myself to one of the dads at Jordan’s summer school because I’d had a nice conversation with his wife (and because I’ve seen him every morning for two years and we still haven’t said hello) and I managed to stumble over good morning pretty spectacularly. And that was just a party of two! You should see what I can do when there are dozens of strangers!

And then along came Neil Patrick Harris.

Before Neil Patrick Harris came out, got a gorgeous and talented partner, and had kids, there weren’t any really widely known models of gay dadhood for people to assume that I would be like. Sure, there are plenty of other gay dads out there, but very few of them are household names, and most of those household names have only become fathers in the last five years or so.

The list of really famous gay dads is still pretty short. It’s basically Ricky Martin, Elton John, and Neil Patrick Harris. Right off the bat, we can eliminate Ricky Martin. Not a single person on this earth has ever, for even a fleeting moment, wondered if my life might be anything like Ricky Martin’s. And I don’t think anyone has ever wondered if there is anyone out there who has a life like Elton John’s. Too ridiculous to contemplate.

But if the only three gay dads you’ve ever heard of are Ricky Martin, Elton John, and Neil Patrick Harris, you might start to wonder if maybe Neil Patrick Harris is kind of, sort of like me.

In the broadest strokes, Neil Patrick Harris and I might seem like vaguely similar sorts of people. We’re about the same age. (He’s five years older than I am, but I look five years older than he does, so I guess that’s a wash!) He’s an actor. I … have acted, and I studied theatre in college, and worked in theatre before I decided to stay at home with the boys. (Spoiler alert: Managing a theatrical box office is not in any way similar to acting.) We have similar body types, I guess, though his would best be described as well-cared for, and mine, well … not. We both have kind of corny, punny senses of humor. (The difference is that when Neil Patrick Harris makes a joke, people laugh, and when I make a joke, people smile, nod, and take a few steps back. The summer I worked at the GAP, my boss told me that customers might find my sense of humor off-putting. That was a big confidence booster!) The primary similarities, though, are that we’re both gay men and we both have two kids.

I have taken my children to playdates, only to witness the palpable, growing disappointment of the other parents when they realize that we are not, in fact, the Harris-Burtka family. (How sweetly their names hyphenate. Now try hyphenating Vigorito-Horowitz with a straight face. Can’t. Be. Done.) They start out excited. Maybe they’ll have new, exciting gay best friends! Then they find out how boring we are and how poorly my children behave. Oh, you thought maybe I’d show you a new place to go antiquing and put on a puppet show while the kids snack on these amazing kale popsicles I made? Sorry, we’re going to sit here and smile awkwardly at each other while my son tantrums because most playdates just have too many transitions for him to handle. Bonus! You can judge my parenting because hugging your kids when they’re upset helps them feel better, and hugging mine when he’s upset just turns a disaster into a catastrophe.

Neil Patrick Harris makes parenting sound amazing, all the time. Just look at this interview he did, where he makes kids spitting up on the carpet sound … cute and refreshing! “They’ll do something that blows your mind and then they’ll spit all their food out on the carpet.” Maybe I’m just doing it wrong, but I have a hard time imagining that he’s ever knelt, crying and trying not to retch, cleaning poopy footprints and handprints out of the carpet when one of his children decided that what was inside their diaper really belonged on the floor. No one who has had to do that ever truly looks happy again. Not that happy.

Also, if we’re being honest, I’m maybe a little jealous. My husband is (not very) secretly in love with Neil Patrick Harris. It started out innocently enough, but then Neil Patrick Harris helped make his dreams come true.

Flashback:

About seven years ago, Austin and one of his friends decided to go watch a taping of The Price Is Right while Bob Barker was still hosting.

“Do you want to come?” he asked.

“Sure, why not?” I said.

“Great, it’ll mean sleeping on the sidewalk outside the studio so we’re at the front of the line! Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

No. No, in fact, sleeping on a sidewalk in LA sounds much closer to my vision of Hell on Earth than it does like fun. So I waved and smiled, and stayed home to take care of the dog. I didn’t know I was sending my husband off into the arms of another man. Neil Patrick Harris, of course. (In case you decided to start reading at this paragraph.)

So Austin and his friend sleep on the sidewalk, and they get to watch a taping of The Price Is Right. Neither of them is picked as a contestant, but they have a great time. And then something ridiculous happens.

An episode of How I Met Your Mother is taping a segment on the set of The Price Is Right. So in addition to being in the audience for a real episode of The Price Is Right, they’re in the fictional audience for Barney Stinson’s appearance on The Price Is Right. And they’re sitting right behind Neil Patrick Harris. They pat him on the shoulders and cheer when he’s chosen as a contestant. (Season Two, Episode Twenty. Whatever.)

He comes home, and there’s a twinkle in his eye when he tells me, “Neil Patrick Harris is even more beautiful in person than he is on tv.”

Great.

So if someday Neil Patrick Harris is seeking a new husband, Austin won’t hesitate. And really, who could blame him? I mean, if we’re running the numbers on this, Neil Patrick Harris is the clearly superior choice in literally every way. I don’t think I could even be mad about it.

I liked it better before Neil Patrick Harris was showing us all up all the time.

The Pain of Others

Please be aware that this post contains discussion of bullying, violence and suicide.

It’s easy to recognize our own pain. We live it. We feel it. We own it. We know it.

I think it’s perhaps easiest to recognize someone else’s pain when we see a reflection of our own pain. I’m sure that’s why reports of gay teens committing suicide resonate so powerfully for so many gay and lesbian adults, myself included. When I read about a gay teenager taking his own life, my heart races. I can feel my pulse in my ears. My hands and feet start to tingle. It’s the fight-or-flight response, two decades later, because my body still remembers the threat to my survival. Just reading about another kid in that situation, my body prepares. It is telling me to survive, and it takes every step it can to help me survive a physical threat.

Writing the previous paragraph was more challenging than I would have anticipated. It’s the middle of a heat wave, but my hands are ice cold. They are an unnatural color, like a corpse on a crime drama. My nail beds, usually pink, are purple. I took breaks. I took in deep breaths through my nose and let them out slowly from my mouth. I went up and down the stairs for no reason. I got an iced tea . I finished it. I pestered my husband, interrupting the episode of Deadliest Catch he is watching. I stuck my fingers down the back of his neck, declaring, “Free air conditioning!” I got the look. You know, that one. I replaced the iced tea with a real drink.

But it was my choice. I knew what writing about this was going to do. This, by the way, is one reason trigger warnings exist. These physical responses aren’t fun, so it’s a kindness to warn others when we can. I’m the kind of person who blissfully ignores those warnings and is then surprised to find myself saying, “Oh, I really shouldn’t have read that!” But, again, that’s my choice.

I’ve experienced this feeling, to varying degrees, a few times in the last week or so. Once, when I read about the suicide of Carlos Vigil, a 17-year-old boy in New Mexico. Again while writing this post. In between those two, where I anticipated the feeling, I was surprised to find myself reacting the same way to an episode of The Fosters on ABC Family. The youngest member of the family, described by ABC as “a sensitive boy,” was excited to be making a new friend at school. It was a sweet scene, but for me the stakes were too high. I know too well what happens when sensitive pre-teen boys get excited about making new friends. We make fools of ourselves, and end up even lonelier than we started. I can only hope that it’s gotten better in the twenty-three years since I was a pre-teen boy.

What I really want to talk about, though, is what happens when the connection to someone else’s pain isn’t quite so visceral. What happens when we decide that their pain isn’t quite the same as our pain?

At the most extreme end, we get atrocities like the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. The jurors were somehow unable to connect Trayvon Martin’s murder to their own experiences, or their own fears about what might happen to their children. Instead, they connected with their fears of black teenage boys. Some of the jurors were parents, and I’m sure that at some point they’ve lost sleep worrying about their own children. And yet, in this case, they found themselves identifying more with a man who stalked a child, provoked a confrontation with that child, and then shot that child dead in the street while the child screamed and begged for his life.

If only Trayvon Martin’s murder and George Zimmerman’s acquittal were unique.

There’s a mountain of evidence that our criminal justice system fails black people. Perhaps the clearest data is the conviction disparity between blacks and whites. It’s difficult to discuss productively, though, for a few main reasons. The first is simple racial animus — maybe black people are just more likely to commit crimes? Next, you have to compete with the basic belief that our courts are fair. This seems quite obviously incorrect — in the last thirty days, our courts have decided to dismantle the Voting Rights Act and give George Zimmerman free reign to walk the streets of Florida murdering black children. But for white people, the courts are pretty fair. It’s hard to get people to see that their own experience does not necessarily extrapolate. (Just look at how many people roll their eyes and say, “Pfft, global warming,” when they’re shoveling a foot of snow from the driveway.) Finally, we have a tendency to venerate juries, making their conclusions somehow sacrosanct, as if jurors are magically able to leave behind their prejudices when they enter the deliberation room.

“But I don’t do that!” is a common reaction from white people when there’s talk about racism. Maybe that’s true. I suspect that if you took the Harvard Implicit Associations Test for race, you would be surprised by the result. You’d be correct, though, that overt expressions of racial animus are less socially acceptable today than they used to be. (Well, sometimes. The Washington Post still lets Richard Cohen write columns.)

Most people, though, do believe in basic fairness, so they are able to identify the most overt displays of discrimination and describe them as unfair. The problem is that employers rarely say, “Jim, I’m firing you because you are black.” Juries don’t come back from deliberation and say, “We find the defendant guilty, Your Honor, because he is black.” We’re all supposed to take great pride in that, declare that we live in a post-racial society, and ignore displays of racism that are any more covert because people might disagree.

When I was adopting, there were hundreds of questions about potential children. What ages would we accept? What gender? What race? How many? There was a multiple page list of disabilities, and we were asked to rank our comfort level with each of them — Can Definitely Accept, Can Definitely Not Accept, Need Specific Information. We zipped through the beginning: infant through age six, any gender, any race, either one child or a sibling pair. We spent a lot more time evaluating the range and severity of disabilities, as strange as that seemed, since you can never really know. Health and disability can change in the blink of an eye. Regardless, we filled out the form as best we could.

And then we had dinner with my parents.

We were casually discussing the paperwork, and talking about how strange it was to fill it out. My mother’s response was coded, barely, but her view was clear: she hoped we would have a white child.

My heart started to race. My fingers went numb. I could hear my pulse in my ears.

I’ve heard racist stories and jokes, infrequently, over the years at family parties. Never from my parents. From my grandfather and my uncles. My dad would sit in silence, and my mother’s face made her disapproval clear. But they never said anything. No one ever said, “Stop telling that disgusting story. We’re leaving.”

Driving home from dinner at my parents’ house, I replayed every discussion of race I’d ever had with my mother. It was easy, because there were so few. I recalled the times she had dismissed her own mother’s racism as “a product of another age,” saying that my grandmother “didn’t really mean it.” I always had a mouth on me, and I remember saying, “Really? Because Nana usually means what she says.”

I started looking at my own childhood, and the shame I felt when I didn’t conform to my mother’s ideas about what a little boy should be. She may have hand-knit a poncho for my Barbie doll, but a few years later I would feel the sting of rejection when I said or did things that embarrassed her.

Would my family love my children less if they were not white? Was I prepared to find out? I sought advice from our social worker. Her recommendation was clear, and we changed the form from “any race” to “white.” What did it say that we felt prepared for a whole range of developmental challenges, but we weren’t sure if we were appropriately prepared to raise a black child? Autism was fine, but a black child wasn’t?

Hearing Melissa Harris-Perry’s voice break while she described her relief at learning she was having a girl made me remember that decision. I had put it in the back of my mind in the panic and rush of actually being matched with children, and the dawn to exhaustion marathon that has followed. I don’t know if the decision changed anything. We were matched with our sons so quickly after we were approved, primarily because we said we would take two children and because the social workers were ecstatic that I was going to be home with the kids.

Is this a story about my racism? I don’t know. But it’s something I haven’t really talked about, which is a pretty good sign that it’s a problem. I talk about everything. When I read Kelly Wickham’s piece calling out those who have remained silent, I decided to write about it.

I don’t know if this story is helpful, but I know that there’s a problem, and that too many people are silent about it.

Race Relations

“Why don’t you take the kids out to the car, and I’ll be out in just a minute,” I said to Austin. I looked at the clock. It’s later than I intended to be getting into the car, but we’re not late late yet. No big deal.

I fumble around the kitchen for my phone, put on my coat, and hop into the passenger seat. I turn back to confirm that the kids are buckled up, and notice tears on Jordan’s cheeks.

“What’s wrong, buddy?” I ask.

“It was Andrew!” he shouts.

Andrew is sitting behind me, so I twist around further in order to face him. “What’s going on?”

Andrew is quiet for a moment, and looks embarrassed. When he speaks, it’s in his very quiet I-know-I-did-something-wrong voice.

“I said some things to Jordan that were racist.”

I do a doubletake, and sputter, “What? You did what?”

I turn to Austin and say, more quietly, “You heard that, right? That wasn’t my imagination?”

“He must have meant something else,” says Austin, “but I heard it, too.”

“Andrew, what did you mean?” I ask.

“I said some things to Jordan that were racist, but they really weren’t racist,” he answers.

Austin and I exchange a look. Yeah, that’s really what he just said. They had talked about Martin Luther King Jr. at school, and Andrew had asked me some questions a few days earlier. But what could he have possibly said? And really, what racist comment could he have made that would upset Jordan?

“Like what?” I ask.

“Well, like, I told him that it was a race to see who could buckle up first, but it really wasn’t.”

Oh.

“Well, it’s not nice to tease Jordan. You know he needs help to buckle up.”

Andrew said some things to Jordan that were races, but they really weren’t races.

An Open Letter to Matt Moore

By now, you’ve probably seen the story about Matt Moore, a Christian blogger who was spotted on the gay hookup app Grindr after he wrote about his choice to no longer engage in sexual behavior because he believes sexual behavior between two people of the same sex is sinful. Much of the coverage has been focused on the hypocrisy of his public writing versus his private actions, and I think some of that coverage has been unfair. Mostly he’s been identified as a member of the “ex-gay” movement, which seems at least factually incorrect. If you’d like to read up on this story, I suggest beginning with Zinnia Jones’ piece about it, since that’s where the recent story begins.

Dear Matt,

I’m not sure exactly where to begin. I don’t want this letter to seem hurtful. Honestly, I watched the video you posted to youtube last night, and looked at your twitter feed, and my impression is that you’re a person who’s hurting an awful lot right now. I don’t want to add to that, but there’s some more that needs to be said, and I don’t see a lot of people saying it. I prefer getting the harder stuff out of the way first, so that’s where I’ll begin. If you read this, the stuff at the end is more pleasant than the beginning. So at least there’s that.

I’m glad that you’ve spoken out about being mislabeled as an “ex-gay.” You, and I, and just about everyone out there knows that’s just a hurtful fiction. It’s snake oil, and it’s being pushed on vulnerable kids and young adults, sold to their scared families. It makes their lives more difficult, and every year it drives some gay kids to take their own lives before they’ve even begun.

Here’s the tough part, though. What you’re doing is just as hurtful. Unlike the “ex-gay” folks, you aren’t lying about it. And I don’t think you intend to hurt them, so if we’re comparing morality, you’re a lot better than the “ex-gay” charlatans. But the dead teenagers are just as dead, Matt. And your writing contributes to a social structure that devalues those kids, tells them they are less than everyone else. This is why some of the coverage of your story has seemed gleeful — lots of folks feel that by discrediting you, young lives are saved. A confused mother who reads your writing isn’t going to understand the nuanced difference between “not acting on homosexual feelings” and “not being gay anymore.” She’s going to read your posts and decide that if her gay kid just works hard enough, just loves God enough, he can live the life she wants him to live. And that kid loves his mother, and he probably loves his church, and being gay is cloaked in mystery and fear for him, so he’s going to try his hardest. And he’s going to fail. Of course he’s going to fail! You’re telling him that he needs to live his entire life alone, that he must never know love. And it’s going to make him feel like the reason he failed is because he just didn’t love God enough. And if he just doesn’t love God enough, doesn’t that reflect on his value as a person, within a social/religious structure that places loving God at the very top of its priorities? It’s like Cinderella going to the ball. Her sisters get to go, and so does she. She just has to pick all of those lentils out of the ashes first. An impossible task, designed to let her know how much less value she has as a person. But gay teenagers can’t talk to birds, so they have to do it all alone.

Unavoidable in all this talk is the idea that love is sin. That somehow, the very best of us is the very worst. I’m not religious anymore, but I try to be a good person. I have varying degrees of success, like anyone else. My ten-year relationship with my husband, though filled with compromises (like any relationship), is not a compromise. It is the very best of me. My marriage and my children are what I have to show for my life, really. They aren’t asterisks — “Mark is a great guy. Too bad about that gay marriage and the children he and his husband raised in sin together.” But that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?

All right. If you’ve gotten this far, I’m done with the tough part, and can move onto the pleasant part.

I’d like to invite you to come to Massachusetts and spend a day with my family. You certainly won’t see a perfect family. I’ll try to clean up, but my house will still look like a mess. I’ll vacuum, but you’ll be brushing dog hair off your clothes for days after you visit. My kids are sweet, but they will cry about ridiculous things, and probably fight with each other, and each of them will have at least one tantrum. They can’t put on a show for guests. We are who we are. I’ll make dinner, and it’ll be fine, but it won’t win any awards. What it lacks in quality, I’ll at least try to make up for in quantity. You won’t go hungry.

After dinner, you’ll finally get a moment of peace. Austin and I will put the kids to bed — there will almost certainly be some more screaming at this point — and then the house will be quiet. We can go into the living room — I suggest keeping your shoes on, because legos are hazardous — and have a chat. Austin and I are pretty much open books, and we’d be happy to tell you just about anything you’d like to know about our life. We’ve had plenty of practice talking about our lives with relative strangers during the adoption process.

When you leave, I’d like you to take some time to think about my family. Once you’ve done that, I’d ask you to identify the parts of my life that you think make God unhappy, and the parts of my life — if you can find any — that you think make God happy. No tricks, no gotcha.

It’s an open invitation, Matt. No time limit. I can probably even convince Austin to use some of his frequent flier miles for you, if you need. We don’t use them for very much these days.

Sincerely,

Mark

Comfort Food

On Saturday morning, the boys had waffles for breakfast. Andrew really likes pancakes and waffles, in part because we let him practice using a knife. Neither of the boys has great fine motor control, so practicing with a knife is a lot of work for him, and it just doesn’t always go the way he wants.

This was especially the case with his waffles.

I’m not entirely sure how it happened. I know that I couldn’t reproduce it if you gave me a hundred waffles on which to try. Before Andrew managed to take a single bite of his waffle, before any portion of it was cut from the whole, his waffle was somehow airborne. It flipped end over end, almost in slow motion, and plummeted toward the floor.

It did not hit the floor, of course, because the world’s happiest dog caught it and swallowed it in one triumphant gulp. She waits under the table at every meal, because she is no fool. She knows where food falls. But a whole waffle? This was no accident. Buffy was certain that Andrew had given her the greatest gift a child can give to a dog.

So the humans are all silent for a moment, taken aback by the sight of a flying waffle. But Buffy knows what you do when someone does something nice for you, so she trots over to Andrew to thank him. Her tail is wagging so far from side to side that her entire back half is waving with it, and she rests her head on his lap.

Part of Andrew knows that this is funny. But another part of him is certain that he has LOST HIS WAFFLE FOREVER. He’s trying to hold back his tears, but it’s a struggle. There’s a sharp intake of air after every word.

“I <gasp!> know <gasp!> that <gasp!> you <gasp!> didn’t <gasp!> mean <gasp!> to <gasp!> take <gasp!> my <gasp!> waffle, <gasp!> Buffy! But <gasp!> I <gasp!> really <gasp!> wanted <gasp!> to <gasp!> eat <gasp!> that.”

Once Austin and I were able to stop laughing long enough to reassure Andrew that we would replace the waffle, everything returned to normal pretty quickly. But Buffy, who usually thinks Jordan is a more reliable source of food, has been standing a lot closer to Andrew at meals now.

Food can still be sort of fraught for my kids. It’s better now than it used to be. Usually it’s safe to mention food in front of Jordan these days. A couple of years ago, if you mentioned food outside of mealtime — “I think I’ll make spaghetti for supper today” or “What’s your favorite food?” — it was likely to trigger epic crying and screaming. The idea of food was just too much. Too powerful.

It still holds a certain power. Last week, I had a call from the psychologist at Andrew’s school. He had been late getting to class a couple of days in a row, because he was in the cafeteria eating breakfast.

A few times this year, Andrew has taken it upon himself to buy breakfast after I take him to school. His lunch money is on an account with the school, so if he buys two meals instead of one, we won’t notice until he runs out of money sooner than we expect.

The first time he started buying breakfast, it was a conversation.

“Are you hungry when you get to school? You have breakfast at home every morning, and you bring a snack to have in the morning.”

No, not hungry.

“Would you rather have breakfast at school instead of at home?”

No, he hates the idea of waiting until he’s at school to eat.

“Ok, so then you’ll eat breakfast at home, and not at school. You really don’t need to buy breakfast at school.”

The second time he started eating breakfast at school, we had the same conversation. Not hungry, not willing to wait for breakfast. Great, then stop buying breakfast. We eat when we’re hungry. If you’re hungry, let me know, and we’ll get you more food.

The third time he started buying breakfast, he realized he could eat slowly, and then saunter into class fifteen minutes late. It’s hard to blame the teachers in the cafeteria for letting him be late. They assume, and I suspect it’s usually a good assumption, that kids who are buying breakfast probably need that breakfast.

So this time I spoke to the teachers in the cafeteria. They had suspected something was unusual — most kids buy breakfast more regularly than my son, and most of them don’t wait until their parents are out of sight to buy it. I had kind of hoped that it was something he’d be able to manage — Dad told me not to buy breakfast, so I won’t buy breakfast. — but it looks like he needs some adult assistance to stop himself.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to a Bar Mitzvah for one of Austin’s cousins. We had a good time, and it’s always nice to see Austin’s extended family, who are fantastic. But despite warnings that it was almost time to leave, both kids were in tears as we went out the doors. Jordan was crying because … well, because there was a transition, and we always cry at transitions.

Andrew, though, was upset about two things:

1. Austin and I were irresponsible parents, and we had let him eat too much, and now his tummy hurt.
2. Austin and I also were mean parents, and would not let him have any more ice cream.

I tried to explain that those were really mutually exclusive things to be upset about, but you can imagine that kind of argument doesn’t have much weight.

Raising a Redditor

Andrew’s class earned themselves a Pajama Day. I’m not sure exactly how this prize is unlocked, but apparently it has something to do with filling a jar with marbles. “Ten marbles to Hufflepuff for correctly spelling SITS! Twelve marbles to Slytherin for deciding not to eat the paste today!”

Andrew thinks that Pajama Day is one of three major holidays. Christmas, Halloween, and Pajama Day. Thanksgiving? Yeah, it’s fine, but it’s clearly second-tier to Pajama Day.

I knew we were going to have a problem when he came downstairs in his baseball pajamas. They’re cute. Blue flannel pants printed with baseballs and bats. An orange jersey that says … oh, geez, does it really say that? An orange jersey that says, “Boys Rule the World Phys. Ed. Dept.” How had I not noticed that before?

I’ve considered myself a feminist for as long as I’ve known the word. Growing up, my best friend was a girl, and I always had a basic awareness that there seemed to be different standards for boys and girls, a different set of rules. And I knew that was stupid.

Adulthood has made the different sets of rules even more clear, and there’s little that’s been as personally frustrating and infuriating to me as watching my friend pushed out of a job when she had a child. The systematic way in which she was undermined so that she’d have to wonder, “Was this my failing? Did that really just happen?” was truly disgusting.

Gay men often seem to have difficulty with the concept of feminism and sexism. There’s this casual idea that if you’re gay, you just can’t be sexist, so when you say and do sexist things, you don’t really mean them that way. It’s just a joke. I’m constantly disappointed when gay men fail to understand that homophobia is a subset of sexism and misogyny. Homophobia only exists because people believe in these fundamental differences between the genders and try to enforce them.

So I’m not sure how Andrew has worn that shirt to bed so many times without my seeing the message. But this morning, I had this image of him wearing it where other people would see it, and I was horrified. I checked with Austin.

“So … Andrew’s shirt. I’m not imagining that, am I?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “Not imagining. He can’t wear that to school.”

It was almost time for school, so there was no way to switch shirts without a conversation. We brought down a new shirt, one with a baseball on it, so he could still wear it with his pajama pants. He wasn’t happy about it.

Austin tried to explain that the message on the first shirt kind of says that boys are better than girls, and that doesn’t seem like a very nice thing to say. Andrew sulked, but he gave in and switched shirts. But not without a parting shot:

“I don’t know why you care. The girls would all know it’s just a joke.”

I explained to him that some of the girls might not think it was a funny joke, that it seemed more like a mean joke to me.

And then I whispered to Austin, “Dear god, we’re raising a redditor.”

(Secret Spirit Day Bonus: His t-ball shirt is purple!)

Schrodinger’s School

The other day, I joked to Austin that “first grade is like the black box on an airplane. We’ll only find out what’s inside when it crashes.”

In some ways, I think no news is good news. I’ve had very brief conversations with the school psychologist and with the special education teacher who supervises Andrew’s classroom. It sounds like there’s not much to say because the things going on are the things we expect. But I’ve found myself missing the daily communication that came with preschool and kindergarten.

When I pick up Jordan from preschool, his teacher always lets me know how his day was, even if it’s just a quick “great day today, buddy!” directed at my son. When it’s a more complicated day, she tells me about the specifics.

This week, though, I had one of those phone calls that I was a little surprised I hadn’t received in the last six weeks. Andrew’s gym teacher called me.

“I just want to start by saying that Andrew is fine. He hasn’t been injured. Parents are always worried when I call,” she began.

Her list of concerns about Andrew’s behavior in her class was exactly what I would expect. He fails to follow directions, doesn’t attend to tasks, and can’t keep his hands to himself.

“Yes,” I said, “those are definitely the kind of challenges Andrew has in a classroom.”

It’s why he has an aide in his classroom, but it sounds like the gym teacher isn’t really kept in the loop on that. Actually, it sounds a little like she’s left in the lurch with no assistance.

I couldn’t help feeling that she expected me to have a solution for her, something I would say that would fix the problem. It’s something my best friend and I had talked about just the other day, too, that we’re just not shocked enough when teachers call us.

“I swear to god,” she said, “the next time his teacher calls me, I’m just going to say, ‘My son is autistic?!?! I had no idea!'”

It’s hard not to feel like you’re falling short as a parent when people keep looking to you for solutions that you don’t have.