pronoia

Universal Acrobatics

When we went on vacation and just afterwards, I was very clear that what I wanted to do, sooner rather than later, was work at home with babies, writing, editing, and other odd jobs. When I came back to work, I started to feel guilty about that.

This organization got me out of academia. It has supported me and trusted me and promoted me and given me all kinds of exciting experience. I like the people I work with (with a notable exception, of course). I like our mission. I like our space and sometimes I even like the work. When I had my performance review with Mr. Burns last week, he praised my work and told me how much I'm appreciated. I felt doubly guilty. How could I leave them in the lurch? Now or later?

So although I wanted to try to make the shift at the first of the year, I mentally pushed it back to April, then to the end of my next contract in August. It would be fine, right?

But the universe just put me back on track. Despite the fact that I'm essentially getting promoted from interim to full director, despite the fact that I took a very messed up situation and made it work, despite the fact that I've made everyone's life easier, despite the fact that I am quite underpaid for the work I'm doing, despite the fact that I'm underpaid in my organization for my level, I'm getting the same across-the-board raise as everyone else, despite asking for what amounts to only $1800 more for the year. I've pushed back and this appears to be the final answer.

I don't have a clear timeline yet. Ms. P and I need to sit down and run the numbers and I need to work on getting consistent freelance work and we need to get some money in the bank. We need to figure out how, if I quit this job, I can get put on Ms. P's insurance. We need to see how the baby plan goes, because that will make a difference. But I not feeling guilty any more for planning to leave.

Meeting Squirt

We were in deepest farm country, visiting SIL and BIL and meeting Squirt, who is just the cutest baby we've seen all season, and given the ways our friends keep procreating, that's saying something. He's fussy but not screamy, he makes great faces, he loves getting patted very firmly on his back, and he much prefers to sit upright. He's three weeks old, and that's about the sum total of what you can say about a three-week old.

SIL and BIL are doing pretty well. They're a little testy, in that way that people who have been through something big and are currently pretty low on sleep can be, and they're facing a month of mostly living apart, which isn't helping their respective moods. But they've got some routines down, and they think Squirt's faces and grunts and little noises are adorable, the breastfeeding is proceeding apace, and the house is not a complete wreck, so they're doing very well, actually.

We didn't do as badly as I feared, but neither did we do as well as I'd hoped. One of the difficulties of this trip was that once we got there, there was be very, very little privacy to have the kind of couple time that helps us manage these things. We slept on the futon in the living room, so BIL or SIL might come downstairs at any point to warm a bottle or get something they needed or whatever. There was no opportunity to run out and do errands for them or anything like that. It was 40 hours of some pretty intense togetherness.

Which meant, of course, that I put on my cheerful face and just kept going. It's what I do in situations like that because my feelings of envy and desire and hopelessness and sadness and rage? Not their problem.

As we drove home I thought maybe we'd kind of escaped the emotional turmoil. I felt pretty centered. Exhausted, because I had taken Squirt from BIL at 5:30 in the morning and sent BIL back to bed for some much-needed rest (if they weren't going to let us actually clean or do laundry or anything like that, the least we could do was let them get some sleep), but centered. So we talked about what kind of baby stuff we would actually get and what we wouldn't bother with, how we would rearrange the bedroom when we got a bigger bed to allow for cosleeping, things like that. You know, cart before the proverbial horse things.

When will I learn?

Centered lasted exactly up to the point at which R declined our invitation for dinner. It wasn't that his declining was unreasonable or anything, and I hadn't been explicit about needing to see him for my emotional equilibrium because I'd seemed, even to myself, to be okay. So he didn't know, because I didn't know. But I. fell. apart.

I wanted an emotional blankie, I think, the kind of there-there attention that only people you're really and truly close to can provide. Ms. P, of course, is usually my blankie, but when it comes to the baby plan she needs some head patting too. And in the end, I didn't want it from anyone but R. It wasn't even that I necessarily wanted to talk. I just wanted to curl up in his general vicinity and feel safe together with my wife. I wanted my family.

We rallied and went to dinner with L&S to distract ourselves, which mostly worked through L needing to cry on our shoulders. Not exactly the plan and not exactly what we needed, but distracting nonetheless.

Since we're planning to start trying again here in a few weeks, I know the next chunk of time is going to be hard. We've been careening through our days, bouncing from one obligation and one friend-needing-support to another, and we need to do some serious nesting so our equilibria are less compromised by the slings and arrows of daily life. Every tarot reading either of us has had done lately has told us quite pointedly to attend to our own spiritual lives, so that's what we're planning to do. Meditation, prayer, journaling, you name it, it's in the plan.

We fall down, we get up again.

Puff Is Too Real

After work we're leaving to drive the 4 hours northwest to visit SIL and BIL and meet Squirt. SIL has been having a hard time--she's sad about her c-section, breastfeeding is difficult and painful, she's been somewhat depressed--so we're prepared to cook and clean and do laundry and water plants and hold the baby so she and BIL can have a little break and maybe even spend a few minutes with each other. Novel idea. But I'm not looking forward to it.

The day after K was born to J&N, we visited the hospital and got to meet him. He was cute and tiny and perfect and N was doing great and J was doing great and we left and had the biggest fight of our relationship. After dinner, on the way home, we sang the songs we plan to sing to K, since J has assured us that he's counting on us to teach his kid about tunes and staying on key, neither of them being J&N's strong suits. We sang "Puff the Magic Dragon" and I told Ms. P that it makes me sad because Puff is Jackie Paper's imaginary friend and Jackie Paper grows up and doesn't visit his imaginary friend anymore and it's sad. And Ms. P burst into tears (which made me cry too, because it was that kind of night) and said, "Puff is too real! You said Puff isn't real!" To which I said, "No! I said he was imaginary! Imaginary doesn't mean not real!" and she said "You said Puff isn't real!" and we cried some more.

For J&N&K, we got to go home. We visited for an hour or two, then we got in our car and fell apart. When we visited them two days later, we stayed for three hours and got in our car and fell apart. This time, we'll be four hours from home, an hour and a half from anyone else we know, and we're staying in their living room. There's no room to fall apart. For two days, we need to support them in every way we can, and we need to put everything else on hold until we leave.

I'm so looking forward to seeing SIL and BIL and to meeting Squirt. His pictures are adorable and they're so happy he's here. But I'm not looking forward to not being able to fall apart when we need to. It's going to make the drive home a very scary prospect.

Notes on Things I Forgot to Tell You

So in all of the hullabaloo of returning from the beach and getting back to work and trying to get our lives in some sort of order, a number of interesting--or at least amusing--developments got lost in the shuffle.

Two Sundays ago, I let the dogs out for their morning romp. It was a quiet, beautiful, crisp morning, so the fact that they didn't request to be let in immediately didn't ring any bells. When Ms. P called them in, they didn't come. She asked if I was sure they were outside. I was. She stepped onto the porch and immediately spotted them next door in the neighbor's yard. She went to the gate and called them, and they came running in (good dogs!). Confused as to how they'd escaped, she turned around to find that an enormous limb had sheared off of the sugar maple in our yard, smashing a four foot hole in the fence. Ah, that would be how! L&S and I cleared the sidewalk the next day, and then on Friday we chainsawed what we could without bringing tree limb on our heads and cleared it out the way. Saturday we fixed the fence, which needed only two 2x4s and three new pickets to be whole and well again. Today I'm calling around to find someone to take the rest of the limb off the tree. Oh, and give us an estimate on taking out the nearly-dead tree that hangs over the street and is entwined with the phone lines. That should be fun.

Two weekends back was the culmination of Pride Week in our fair city. And how did we celebrate this? By going to the straightest family wedding in the history of time. No, really. It was my cousin, and there was not a single personalized element to this wedding. It was a Catholic mass and had 1 Genesis and 1 Corinthians as its readings; the reception was in a reception hall with three other receptions, and the room was beige and high-ceilinged and lit with awful yellow light and there was no real decor. Her dress was a meringue. It was pleasant enough as family weddings go and it was a perfectly respectable way to get some family face-time without making ourselves crazy, but it was a hell of a way to celebrate Pride. So we joined the Radical Faeries and read tarot cards for strangers. It was a lovely antidote.

R is back from the cruise he took with S's family. He had a great time spending time with S, but the family made him a little wild-eyed. I'm just impressed no one--including R--ended up over the railing. I don't so much like cruises.

And that's all the news that's fit to blog this morning. Tomorrow is my meeting with Mr. Burns, and I'm starting property mangagement work today, so there will be more stories a-brewing, I'm sure.

Graduation Grumpies

Yesterday we held graduation for our seniors. It was a joyous, raucous event, with lots of shouting and cheering and clapping. People are proud of these kids for graduating from high school, because in this neighborhood, that in itself is an accomplishment. Better yet, all of the seniors have been accepted to college, and we read off the scholarships they'd won to help them pay for it. Four different students got full rides to some very good, very pricy schools. It's amazing.

And yet, this year, I can't help being a little bit cynical. The first year I attended I was Just. So. Inspired. Last year I was assigned to write a newsletter story on the event, so I was busy taping everything and taking notes. This year, after driving parking passes around the city to our VIPs and rushing to set up banners as people filed into the auditorium, I had to do nothing except sit there and listen.

I've hit the point of being a little cynical about my job. I still think this is a great, amazing school doing what no one else in the city wanted to do: take on the education of the city's poorest and most under-served high school students. The problem is that we haven't been as successful as we claim we've been. We haven't failed, and in many cases the kinks are being worked out so that we will be successful down the road, but these kids aren't leaving for college as prepared as we'd like them to be. They aren't testing as well as we'd like them to, they aren't engaging the world as much as we'd like them to, and we aren't serving the as well as we'd like to.

This time of year is always hard in charter schools. It's June, everyone's exhausted and on edge, there are hurt feelings and conspiracy theories about who's returning and who's not next year, no one knows what next year's structure will look like, and everyone's sick of the sight of one another. Some of this will resolve as people leave, as the rest of us get some quiet time to work, as we aren't dealing with 360 kids every day of the year.

But it's also true that my rose-colored glasses have lost a little bit of their tint. I no longer really trust that Mr. Burns has everything under control and knows what he's doing. I trust that he's doing his best, and that he's trying to do what's best for the school, but I have a greater sense of his foibles and blind spots and problems.

It's hard, then, to hold on to the idealism and inspiration that got me started.

It's Raining Babies

So, SIL and BIL had their baby, S, about a week and a half ago. Several days later, our friends P&C had a little girl placed with them after over a year of trying to get P pregnant and something like eight months in the adoption queue. It's raining babies.

We haven't met S yet, but we went over to meet R yesterday, and she's just the cutest, roundest baby ever. I was afraid meeting her and hanging out with P&C would be really hard, but it wasn't. I can't speak for Ms. P (whose equanimity over the whole other-people's-babies thing was shattered with the birth of S), but this one didn't hurt. It helped that they're lesbians, that they've been through this process, that they know what it feels like to be us and meeting someone else's new baby. They didn't get pregnant or get a baby right away, and somehow that makes it better.

We're only about three weeks from when we can start trying again, so as soon as R returns from his cruise (!), we're going to sit down and talk baby plan. P&C lent us their ovulation monitor, I've got new tracking software, I'm buying a new thermometer (I've never trusted my old one), and the death of my thyroid has created some definite and noticeable and very good changes to my cycle. So there's hope for us yet, despite the way I feel on bad days.

N keeps telling us it's our turn next. We know it's not really our turn next--two more sets of friends are pregnant--but we appreciate the support even as the form of a it grates a little bit. Here's hoping it happens for us soon--I'll keep you posted.

How to Tell I Had a Really Great Vacation

• My fingernails are not bitten off. In fact, they're longer than they've been in a very long time.
• My to-be-read book pile is significantly shorter than it was.
• I'm still a little queasy from all the ice cream.
• Going back to work yesterday was kind of painful.
• I'm itching to get to my freelance work.
• We read tarot and did ritual several times.
• The house is an utter disaster.

Chosen

Family is supposed to be permanent, but one of the things queerness teaches you is that it isn't. People get kicked out of their homes and families every day because they're queer. People get killed every day because they're queer, and sometimes their families have something to do with that. Queer teenagers kill themselves every day because they can't see a way out of families that deny them. Even those of us who are still in contact with our families of origin and on reasonably good terms have seen too much to believe that blood is truly thicker than prejudice.

Family is important. Family is the place you go home to, the people who know you deeply, who get you and your life without having to have the basic context explained. Family gets angry on your behalf, backs you up, holds you up, and kicks you in ass when you need that. If our families of origion can't or won't do that, we create chosen families who will.

But even those of us who are still in contact with our families of origin, even those of us who are close to our families of origin, need our chosen families. The world is changing, but many of us still have to explain over and over again why laws legalizing our marriages are necessary. Many of us still have to explain how we're penalized financially. We have to do our paperwork and hope that, in a crisis, no one in our families of origin decides to challenge our very expensive powers of attorney as a panic-ridden solution to fears of losing us. We have to create language to describe our children's parents, educate the grandparents, provide books for the school library because we're the first alternative family they've worked with.

We have chosen family because we need places where it's not so much work, on a daily basis, to live our lives. We have chosen family so we can lean into shared assumptions. We need chosen family so we have spaces in which we don't have to keep coming out, over and over and over and over again. We need chosen family so we don't have to represent all queers everywhere in our every word, gesture, haircut, and shoe choice.

Ms. P and I are a family, but Ms. P and R and I are also a family. We're the default for holidays, the assumption for birthdays, and you'd better believe they'll both be there if I ever give birth. Our family will never be recognized outside the queer community for what it is, but we are family nonetheless.