This morning, I woke up early, the result of a nightmare. I haven’t had a dream that I can remember for months now, but there was a grizzly bear in my early morning REM, pointed out to me by the bobcat that was in my house. I hate waking up in fear. It makes it that much harder to roll over and go back to sleep, so to ward off the boogey men (and bears), I turned on the light, put on my glasses, and fired up my iPhone so I could read the news.
As if the news would make me feel better. Yesterday morning, I read about two little boys who were squeezed to death in their sleep by an escaped python. I hoped things would be better this morning. And they were. On NBC.com (still listed in my favorites bar as MSNBC), is a story about how difficult it is for same sex couples to get divorced.
Normally, divorce isn’t cause for celebration, but this article warmed me to my very core because it validates my story and the reason I’ve been working on my memoir. For years now, my writing coach, mentor, and friend has been telling me that I was a pioneer, Daniel-Fucking-Boone is how she put it, and here is proof, validation from others inside the struggle, that indeed, I was a pioneer and that as a matter of fact, gays and lesbians who want to get divorced are STILL pioneers all these years later. Which makes my story, though it is 16 years old, relevant.
One of my biggest fears in writing my story about my lesbian divorce and custody battle was that I’d be a big old caution sign on the road to same sex marriage equality. Don’t get me wrong—I think it is high time that gays and lesbians who want to get married finally get the same rights and protections as straight couples. But I also know from experience that just because we have those rights suddenly conferred upon us, the legal system isn’t going to automatically know what to do with us when we want to get a same sex divorce.
I know because 16 years ago, I tried. Obviously, I wasn’t legally married to my lesbian partner 16 years ago, but I was the legal adoptive parent of two children and had been in a relationship with the co-parent of said children for 10 years. Neither of us was the biological mother of either girl. We both had equal rights as parents, or so I thought. We both had been able to adopt because, as more than one lawyer or adoption specialist said there weren’t any laws against it.
Same sex couples were not explicitly banned from adopting in Washington State as they were in other states in the 1990s, but that did not mean that the legal system had any idea what to do when two mommies split up and needed a custody arrangement. We bounced around from lawyer to lawyer, burned through multiple family therapists, mediators, and a guardian ad litem and depleted our savings accounts (or at least I did), before settling on a less-than-optimal parenting plan just to end the pain.
As Susan Sommer from Lambda Legal points out in the nbc.com article, same sex couples who are getting divorced, are pioneers, alone and without a map in this new wilderness. And while we may have embarked on our domestic adventures all starry eyed and idealistic, that idealism can fade fast when one is suddenly homeless and without access to her children. Add to that the financial woes involved (the costs of same sex divorce are currently double that of heterosexual divorces, and triple the cost if children are involved, according the nbc.com article), and same sex couples with children certainly need to start thinking realistically about their futures and the futures of their children.
It shouldn’t be a stretch. We have had to find our own paths to where we are now, many of us without the support of family or the legal system, and even now, when we might like to think the legal system has finally caught up, it hasn’t. We need to protect ourselves and our children. We can continue to learn from one another, as we have for most of history.
I am going to start thinking of my story as an important road marker rather than as a caution sign. We don’t have to all find our own ways—there are trails and maps in this wilderness if we share our stories and go into the unknown aware of the dangers. As Elizabeth Schwartz, a Miami attorney who works with gay and lesbian families, says in the nbc.com article, “sometimes divorce is the beginning of a bright new chapter for people.”
I have a confession to make. I am not what I seem. You have known me, Dear Reader, only on the surface for the past 25 years. I’ve been keeping this burning secret at the very bottom of my soul, trying to keep people out, away from the real me.
I know, I know.How many coming outs can a gal have in a lifetime? I’ve had two official ones so far: once at 16 when my parents stumbled quite accidently upon my very first lesbian affair and took me to be exorcised (in their defense, lesbians were a lot more frightening in the very early 80s—mullets, flannel, white sneakers), and once in my early 20s when I renounced god and embraced Sappho once and for all.
But really, as I type, it occurs to me that pretty much every day is a coming out if I want to live as authentically as possible. Every day I come out when I don’t censor myself: at the bank, the grocery store, the staff luncheon. I come out when I refuse to change the pronoun when I’m talking about my wife. I come out when anyone sees and asks me about my wedding ring. I come out when I talk about my memoir. It’s getting easier. But I’m not completely comfortable doing it. You’d think, after 34 years I’d be better at it. So, yeah, I may have had two official coming stories, but it’s a lifelong adventure.
I still think twice about it too—I don’t make any overtly lesbian gestures or comments without first thinking about it. Checking the crowd. Weighing the dangers. The Dangers: alienating co-workers—which could make the largest part of my day hellish. Being judged by wait staff, which might result in something bad happening to my food. Being denied service. Being kicked out of a cab. What might the danger be? If I can ascertain a good amount of safety, I will, say, grab my wife’s hand as we walk in our neighborhood. Even grocery shopping together feels like exposure and vulnerability.
I know I’m not supposed to, but I really do care what people think. I’m trying to get over it, though. And tonight, as a step in that direction, I am coming out again, as something else.
Tomorrow is the beginning of something amazing. Tomorrow is the end of my life as I’ve known it for the past 25 years. Tomorrow, I become a stay-at-home writer, full time. Fully supported by My SugarMama (formerly known as The Little Woman).
It’s a whole new kind of coming out—and I have been emphatically undecided about telling people about this new me. I’ve been afraid of what people will think: Career suicide. Poverty. She’ll ask for money. She can’t hack it. She’s nuts.
Shocking isn’t it? I’ve quit my job. I have said no to the man. Life is too fucking short to spend most of my time on earth miserable. I tried, but I could not just decide to be happy. No more than I could decide to be straight. I am not cut out for this shit. And neither are most people if this article is even remotely accurate (and I’d say this guy is absolutely right on).And like being a lesbian, choosing happiness over misery is absolutely no reflection on anyone I work with (well, except on maybe one person). It’s all about me (My SugarMama will concur). What makes me whole.
Clearly, I would not be doing this without my best supporter and best friend, best lover and wonderful wife Nancy. I’m a lucky woman. And for that I thank her.
I have a confession to make. I am not what I seem. You have known me, Dear Reader, only on the surface for the past 25 years. I’ve been keeping this burning secret at the very bottom of my soul, trying to keep people out, away from the real me.
I know, I know. How many coming outs can a gal have in a lifetime? I’ve had two official ones so far: once at 16 when my parents stumbled quite accidently upon my very first lesbian affair and took me to be exorcised (in their defense, lesbians were a lot more frightening in the very early 80s—mullets, flannel, white sneakers), and once in my early 20s when I renounced god and embraced Sappho once and for all.
But really, as I type, it occurs to me that pretty much every day is a coming out if I want to live as authentically as possible. Every day I come out when I don’t censor myself: at the bank, the grocery store, the staff luncheon. I come out when I refuse to change the pronoun when I’m talking about my wife. I come out when anyone sees and asks me about my wedding ring. I come out when I talk about my memoir. It’s getting easier. But I’m not completely comfortable doing it. You’d think, after 34 years I’d be better at it. So, yeah, I may have had two official coming stories, but it’s a lifelong adventure.
I still think twice about it too—I don’t make any overtly lesbian gestures or comments without first thinking about it. Checking the crowd. Weighing the dangers. The Dangers: alienating co-workers—which could make the largest part of my day hellish. Being judged by wait staff, which might result in something bad happening to my food. Being denied service. Being kicked out of a cab. What might the danger be? If I can ascertain a good amount of safety, I will, say, grab my wife’s hand as we walk in our neighborhood. Even grocery shopping together feels like exposure and vulnerability.
I know I’m not supposed to, but I really do care what people think. I’m trying to get over it, though. And tonight, as a step in that direction, I am coming out again, as something else.
Tomorrow is the beginning of something amazing. Tomorrow is the end of my life as I’ve known it for the past 25 years. Tomorrow, I become a stay-at-home writer, full time. Fully supported by My SugarMama (formerly known as The Little Woman).
It’s a whole new kind of coming out—and I have been emphatically undecided about telling people about this new me. I’ve been afraid of what people will think: Career suicide. Poverty. She’ll ask for money. She can’t hack it. She’s nuts.
Shocking isn’t it? I’ve quit my job. I have said no to the man. Life is too fucking short to spend most of my time on earth miserable. I tried, but I could not just decide to be happy. No more than I could decide to be straight. I am not cut out for this shit. And neither are most people if this article is even remotely accurate (and I’d say this guy is absolutely right on). And like being a lesbian, choosing happiness over misery is absolutely no reflection on anyone I work with (well, except on maybe one person). It’s all about me (My SugarMama will concur). What makes me whole.
Clearly, I would not be doing this without my best supporter and best friend, best lover and wonderful wife Nancy. I’m a lucky woman. And for that I thank her.
I feel like I just returned from four days on the moon instead of from four days at a writer’s conference at the Sea-Tac Hilton, so completely was I transported out of my daily existence. Even though I joined the Pacific Northwest Writers Association a few months ago with an eye toward the conference, I signed up at the last minute, still unsure if I was ready, unconvinced I could learn anything new about writing. But a small voice niggled in the back of my mind, and I’ve been working on listening to the voice instead of dismissing it as I’ve done most of my life.
I’m so glad I listened. I could not have imagined a richer four days. The workshops were all excellent—each one exceeded my expectations. The other writers were open and supportive, friendly, and talkative—all of which surprised me, I guess because writers are notoriously introverted (well, at least I am), and since there were NY agents and editors at this conference, I expected a sense of competitiveness. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I sat down at the table with the Memoir sign and within 10 minutes I was joined by three other women. We took turns sharing our stories and giving each other feedback, all instant compatriots linked by our love of words, all of us with four incredibly different stories.
I sat in a workshop called “First Page” in which attendees submitted the first page of their book to be read aloud by a volunteer. As she read, the panel of judges (5 agents/editors) were to raise their hand at the point where they would stop reading (this to give the writers in the room a sense of what catches an agent or editor’s attention or makes them hate one’s work). Once three hands were up, the volunteer stopped reading and the panel members told the audience what made them stop reading. The first handful of first pages didn’t get very far before the hands shot up. Common complaints from the panel included confusing openings, too much narrative, too much tell and not enough show. I began to regret handing over my first page—I wasn’t sure I could handle my work being judged like this. But then, a couple of pages got read all the way to the end and the panel had kind words. I started feeling better.
And then. Then I saw the volunteer reader holding my page (I could tell—it was double-sided). I started sweating (beyond the “normal” hot flashes I’ve been experiencing of late), my heart pounding. I entered that out of body orbit and I tried to pay attention as the volunteer read my first page. She got through the first paragraph and one hand was up, but the other panel members seemed engaged. Second paragraph—the one hand that was up seemed to flag a little (and honestly, this panel member didn’t seem to like much of anything). Other panel members were still listening, smiling even. And at the end, everyone applauded. The panel members complimented me on my clear writing, crisp language, and engaging story. The one male member of the panel said he wanted to know what happened to that little girl and felt for her and her dilemma.
Validation. I floated out of that workshop. What had been a casual decision to attend it at all turned into the most critical moment of the conference for me. People liked my story! Visions of publication danced in my head. Editors and agents will beg to represent me, I thought. And, in fact, all of the agents and editors I pitched to later that day invited me to submit my work to them for consideration, and I have since my return on Sunday.
But a few of the agents/editors I spoke with wondered what my “hook” was and how my story was relevant, and this question has me deep in thought as I work to finish my memoir which, for those who are wondering, is tentatively titled Co-Parent: How I Became a Divorced Lesbian Mother of Two Adopted Multi-Racial Girls in the Not So Gay 90s. I thought my hook was evident: same sex marriage is all over the headlines. What’s more relevant than a story about same sex divorce and custody? Still, a couple of these women asked why anyone would want to read my story, when it happened so long ago. Which makes me wonder . . . why do we read history? And how can I make my history more relevant?
Interestingly, the agents/editors who asked these questions were all of my generation—late 40s to late 50s—and those who were more enthusiastic were younger. And this disparity also has me wondering if those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s, no matter how liberal we might be, still carry traces of homophobia with us in spite of recent cultural advances.
So, I’ve decided to crowd-source my “hook“—what will make my story appealing to readers outside of the narrow “divorced adoptive lesbian mothers” demographic?
I was heartened to find this Doonesbury cartoon in the Sunday paper—it made me feel that my story was indeed relevant, but I’m no Gary Trudeau. I need to convince agents and editors to take a chance on unknown me.
I recently came across this piece I wrote some 17 years ago. I didn’t have any way of publishing this then, there were no blogs in 1996, but I strongly believe it is still relevant today. I don’t think adoption has changed much in the past two decades for birth mothers. I am pretty sure making the choice to place a child for adoption is not any easier now than it was then. I know that adoptees still cannot access their records if they were adopted before open adoption became commonplace. I know gays and lesbians still cannot adopt children in many states. I appreciate how fortunate I was to be able to adopt my daughters in the early 1990s. I am no longer in a relationship with my partner and co-parent–we split up in late 1996, just a few months after I wrote this.
Mother’s Day 1996
As we celebrate Mother’s Day at our house, we also celebrate our youngest daughter’s second birthday. The irony is, that two years ago on Mother’s Day, we didn’t yet know that she would even be a part of our lives. Two years ago, her birthmother was in the hospital alone, making a decision to place her fourth child for adoption.
As I look forward to celebrating my sixth year as a mother, I cannot help but think of several mothers who have made such an impact on my mothering. I would not be a mother at all were it not for Deidre and Cheryl. I would not be a sister except for a woman who made an unselfish choice nearly thirty years ago. Much in my life would be different if it were not for a woman whose last name is Wilmuth who chose not to parent her daughter, my mother. I may not be a good mother or a mother in such fortunate circumstances had it not been for my biological grandmother.
In essence, much of my life is the culmination of the decisions of several mothers whom I do not know, women who gave life and gave life away, trusting more than I know I could, in the kindness of strangers to do what they themselves, for whatever reason, could not do at the time. While I know the circumstances and a bit about the women who gave birth to my daughters, I know very little about the women who bore my brother and my mother. And if I as a daughter and a sister feel this void on Mother’s Day, what must my mother and my brother live with every day? What will my children grow to feel and believe about their birth mothers? And what can I do to facilitate their questioning and understanding of their adoptions and families of origin?
This year these questions seem particularly poignant as Mother’s Day comes on the heels of major adoption law reforms: tax credits for families who adopt, removal of racial barriers in adoption. These laws, like so much about adoption, fall short of doing justice for those who really make adoption possible—the birth mothers. As so often happens, the lawmakers are approaching the issue sideways, at an awkward angle, seemingly unconcerned about the birth mothers and where they will go and what they will do after placing their children for adoption. With the noble intention of placing as many kids as possible in permanent families out of the chaos that is foster care, our leaders have inadvertently promoted adoptive parents as saviors worthy of reward and blatantly disregarded birthparents, especially in cases of transracial adoptions. I often hear from people how lucky my kids are to have us as parents, read these kids are so much better off with us than they would be with someone whom they could only imagine as an impoverished, unemployed, welfare-scamming, drug abusing, teenaged illiterates.
Well, maybe and maybe not. We cannot place a value on knowing our families of origin, of knowing where we came from, where we got our eyes, our funny feet, and our predilection for taking risk in whatever form it comes.
I rarely pause to consider my mannerisms and preferences because I know exactly from which parent I acquired each personality quirk and physical characteristic. From my mother and my father both a love of reading, from my mother my brown eyes and auburn hair, thin wrists, and a tendency to sometimes overreact. From my father a disdain for the mundane, my spelling and writing abilities, a preternatural aversion to authority in all forms, and naturally curly hair. Sure, my kids may learn to love to read because I do, and they may become avid gardeners because my partner is, but in the battle for control of the self, nature wins out over nurture 70% of the time. Where will my kids turn for answers when they excel in science or develop a completely un-nurtured talent for music, or a dangerous attraction to alcohol?
How will my kids cope, not just with unanswered medical history questions, but with the color of their skin, the kinks in their hair, the rich and painful history of their (unknown) ancestors? The partial understanding of their backgrounds, maybe the knowledge that their birthfathers abandoned them, their birthmothers kept some of their siblings but not them? I hope that an open adoption and an ongoing communication with my children’s birthmothers will facilitate an increased understanding for each of my kids of where they came from, from whom they got their talents.
But who is going to make sure that the birth mothers survive, grow up, get their lives together? If we are going to reform adoption law, we had better start with nurturing the connections between birth mother and adoptee, we had better start honoring the difficult, no wrenching, decisions birth parents make when they plan an adoption for their child. We had better put out a safety net for those who can’t pull themselves up and carry on. We had better think about offering something to the women who can’t afford to keep their children rather than to adoptive parents who have the wherewithal and resources to negotiate the adoption process and to afford agency and lawyer fees.
Just yesterday we received our first ever communication from our two-year old’s birth mother. For two years we have been sending letters and pictures off into space, an act of faith that imbues the postal service with godlike qualities. Yesterday came the confirmation that our faith was well placed. Yesterday too came a whole new conundrum and set of questions when we received two letters: one was very sweet, telling us how much she enjoyed the pictures we have been sending, how she is still glad she chose us to raise her baby, that she and our daughter will talk one day, that she is a good mother. The other letter asked for money so she wouldn’t lose her house.
Great reflection on what religion has to do with sex and the dysfunction that results. If you haven’t ordered your copy yet of Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme religion, do it now! Twenty six amazing stories from women from all walks of life and religions. Fascinating. Oh, and also, yours truly has an essay in it as well.
Fifteen years ago this week, I picked my eldest up from school. She arrived at my car sobbing, clutching what could only be a Mother’s Day art project, a gift wrapped with lots of construction paper, held together with even more scotch tape. When I asked her what was wrong, she explained between tears and hiccups that she only had time to make the one present. “But I have two mommies!” She whimpered. My heart broke into a million pieces. Gently, I took the gift from her hands and unwrapped it. It was a book. This was a problem easily solved. When I explained we could make a color copy, the relief on her face broke my heart all over again. We drove directly to Kinko’s. “See,” I said, holding up an exact replica, “One for me. One for Mommy M.”
Mommy Pam’s Hair and Necklace; Mommy M’s Eyes and Earmuffs
Seventeen years ago, I sat weeping in my therapist’s office, terrified that I had made the biggest mistake of my life, certain that my life as a mother was over. I had just left my children, my partner and co-parent—my children’s other mother—had just moved out of our family home and into a tiny apartment, taking only my clothes, a CD player, and my 1964 Dodge pickup truck with its rusted out floorboards and no seatbelts. In a fit of youthful optimism I’d taken a job that would allow me to spend more time with our girls, keeping them out of daycare, a move that did not go over well with my co-parent. Long story short, she asked me to move out of the house, her house, launching us all into a long and painful custody battle. A war in which there would be no winners.
As I wept in that office, overwhelmed with despair, I could not visualize a way forward. I could not imagine life without my daughters, then six and two years old. We’d adopted both the girls as infants, first as single parents, then as a couple. We stood before the judge in the King County courthouse among family and friends and promised to be a forever family. Our names graced the birth certificates. Our little family seemed solid. I thought my decision to take job with more flexibility was the right one. My diminished salary would be made up in what we saved on daycare for our youngest and after school care for the oldest. We had worked so long and so hard to adopt the girls, had spent so many years dreaming this family into existence, it made no sense to me that we both worked full time and put the girls in daycare.
Full of bravado, and in spite of stern warnings from my partner, I had to follow my instincts as a mother. I had to do what I saw as the Right Thing. What did it get me? No house. No relationship. No kids. I thought, naively it turns out, that being a legal mother of both girls would grant me the right to be a parent, at least half time. Not so. While heterosexual divorced couples with children automatically get kicked into a custody process, “divorced” lesbian mothers, at least in 1996, got nothing. There was no divorce because there had been no marriage. Our commitment ceremony, while a fun little ritual, had no legal ramifications. Really, all that seemed relevant at the time was the fact that I did not have my name on that house title. I had to move out. Having no legal access to the house meant I had no access to my kids. I had no idea when I left that my soon-to-be ex would bar me from seeing our kids, that once I was gone, she would attempt to erase me from their lives.
My mom works at Village Books. Her favorite food is spagetti and meatballs. She is very fun to be around. she’s tall and her hair is maroon color. She is very nice because she buys me ice cream.
My days suddenly silent, my nights stretched out empty, I spiraled into a deep depression. My identity as a mother slipped away. No diapers to change. No breakfast to make. No lunches to pack. What was I, if I wasn’t a mother? Everything I had been, I’d given up in our pursuit to adopt our girls, to be in this relationship, to become a family. One social worker along the way even commended me for giving up on being a writer and getting a real job. I’d sold my bookstore. I had become a Mother, and I loved being a Mother so much that I wanted to spend more time with the girls. That love had led me to here. To nothing, it seemed. If I couldn’t be a mother, then maybe I shouldn’t be at all. I thought about moving away, just leaving town. I flirted with razor blades and alcohol. My therapist reminded me regularly and forcefully of the damage done to those left behind.
I decided to stay. In town and on the planet. I upped my antidepressants. I got a lawyer. I worked three jobs and went back to school. I found two housemates, asked my grandmother for an advance on my inheritance, and bought a house. I made a home. I fought to remain relevant in my daughters’ lives. Not one part of this journey was easy. Co-parenting with someone who would rather I just disappear, with someone who had to be court-ordered to share custody sucked, but it sucked so much less than not parenting at all. My legal and therapy bills grew enormous. When I cried and railed against the unfairness of my situation, my therapist told me how fortunate my children were to have me in their lives. When I couldn’t breathe because the initial child support payments I had to make were more than half my meager monthly salary, she helped me strategize a solution. When I despaired that I would have no meaning in, no impact on my daughters’ lives, she reminded me that they would come back to me, they would be in my life, maybe not the next week or the next month, but in a few years, when they were out of school, in their late teens and early twenties. Mothering meant showing up and reaching out, even when I didn’t think it would matter, even when no one reached back. Even when the next week, let alone the next decade, seemed impossibly far away.
But I did it. I showed up. At games. At concerts. At parent teacher conferences. Doctor’s appointments. Most of the time, I felt awkward because the teachers, the doctors, the other parents didn’t know I even existed. I had to show up at the school with the Parenting Plan in hand to get my name on my kids’ emergency contact list. I had to request I be added to the PTA’s little booklet with the kids’ and parents’ names, phone numbers, and addresses. Every year. I had to introduce myself to coaches, principals, other parents. Sometimes, I missed events because I found out about them too late or was too embarrassed to call other parents to ask. The last time I called the pediatrician’s office to get information about my daughter’s medications they hung up on me, refusing to give me information even though my youngest was still a minor, even though I had the paperwork granting me joint medical custody. I had to take the parenting plan to the pharmacy to find out what medicine my child was taking. Often, I felt like a fraud, an imposter. So many times I wanted to give up, to crawl away in shame. The depression and suicidal thoughts stayed with me for years.
Getting Ice Cream at The Colophon Cafe
Still, I pressed through the fog and darkness. Even when I had to take a job 80 miles from home—I drove back three days a week, arriving in time to pick the kids up from school. I finagled time off. I found a way to be there. I got a MySpace Page. I got a Facebook page. I texted. I emailed. I called. I found a way. I made Easter baskets and bought Halloween treats, Valentines Day cards, swallowed my pride and left them on their front porch if I had to. And if my ex made other plans for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, I had presents and stockings and dinner with the girls on December 23rd. Because what day we spent together didn’t matter. First day of school? I showed up. The day my eldest left for college, I packed my mother in the car with me and we went along too. I refused to be erased.
And you know what? That decade passed and my girls are in my life. They finished high school. My eldest finished college. The youngest just started this year. These are the days my therapist promised. These are the days I couldn’t even imagine.
These days as I work on my memoir, I’m writing about shopping for baby clothes, writing about the days when I’d throw baby Anna in the front pack and walk to a nearby children’s clothing consignment store. I loved to look at those tiny little jeans, the impossibly small shirts and sweatshirts, miniature jean jackets. As a lesbian mom I was determined to dress my daughters in gender-neutral colors and clothes, but I was also very aware that as a lesbian parent, whatever I chose to dress my kids in would be scrutinized closely. Evaluated for any hint of agenda. Judged as too masculine, too political, or god forbid, too dyke-y. Too much an extension of my own taste in clothing.
I don’t think I was prepared for the politics of clothing when I first became a mom. I certainly wasn’t aware of the enormous gulf between boys and girls clothes, even for kids who were not yet walking. Who knew toddler wear could be sexualized? And as much as I wanted to put baby Anna in those tiny blue jeans and a miniature grey sweatshirt, I resisted the urge, unwilling to open myself up to whatever criticism might come my way. Really, my dilemma only lasted until Anna could express a preference, which happened by the time she was two and demanded to wear only clothes that bore a picture from The Lion King, preferably Simba or Nala. What I wanted her to wear mattered not one whit after that. I felt fortunate if I could get her to swap the Nala dress for the Simba tshirt once a week for washing.
As I wrote about my experiences with Anna, I wondered if my mom worried what people would think about the clothes I wore as a kid? From the time I could walk, I preferred cowboy boots and buckskin jackets (thanks Grandpa) to Mary Janes and more lady like outerwear. I ached to wear my cowboy hat and checkered cowboy shirt with the pearl snaps. My mom still mostly dressed me in dresses if we left the house and until I was in the third grade I had to wear dresses to school. Granted, the year was, well, the year was sometime in the early 1970s, but feminism was taking hold by then, though the ERA would not be defeated for a few more years. I remember my parents lamenting the droves of hippies that had invaded our small town: men with long hair and women without bras. Gender lines were being crossed already, so I was not so much of a pioneer, though I had begun to stage my own little revolution.
On the days that I had Bluebirds and had to wear the insidious blue and red uniform dress, the saving grace was that I also wore a white blouse under the uniform so I could smuggle jeans to school in my lunch box and change once I got to school. I’m not sure how my mother missed the great bulge in my little tin lunchbox, the red and yellow plaid pattern straining at its edges. I loved the way I felt in my jeans, saddle shoes (not so much), and white shirt. I felt free. Boys couldn’t look up my skirt when I climbed on the monkey bars. I could properly propel myself out of the swings without worrying about skinned knees or my dress hiking up around my waist. I could play kickball and kick my hardest without worrying that my dress would fly up and reveal my little girl panties to the entire outfield.
By the time third grade rolled around, my mom and I struck a deal: I could wear pants three days a week. I was still in Bluebirds, still smuggling my jeans on Bluebirds day, so realistically, this meant only one day of dresses a week for me. This meant shopping for jeans when we went to Sears for Back-to-School shopping, and by jeans I mean shopping for boys’ clothes in the boys’ department. I would not be satisfied with some girly version of jeans; no side zippers, nor zippers up the back; no wussie zippers that might break should I slide into home plate during kickball. No. I insisted on Sears Toughskins, reinforced knees and all. And while we were in the boys’ department, why not some practical t-shirts as well in some good colors, like blue and green and red. I had no use for ruffles and pastels. I despised the scoop neck t-shirts and peter pan collars reserved for little girls. In fact, I would have been over the moon with super hero pajamas and some tightie whities as well, but Mom had to draw the line somewhere.
Happy? Comfortable?
I saved my most vociferous arguing for the shoe department, however. I had enough of the saddle shoes—which it turns out were my mother’s own leftover fantasy from her childhood, seeing as how her mother forbid her to wear saddle shoes—what I wanted now were Waffle Stompers. Anybody remember Waffle Stompers, named for the shape of their tread, with padding around the ankles and sliver triangle eyelets? They came in dark blue, maroon, or green, and I loved them. Back in the days before Merrells and Salomons became ubiquitous, before tennis shoes/sneakers were limited to PE class, before Nike was anything but a winged Greek goddess, Waffle Stompers offered a little budding lesbian like me a sensible shoe option of which my mother was hard pressed to disapprove. For reasons that still escape me, we (and by we, I mean all children of the time) had to have dress shoes and play shoes (just as we had school clothes and play clothes). Heaven forbid the two should ever be confused. No one could wear a pair of Chuck Taylors or those insipid Keds when in school clothes. But Waffle Stompers! Waffle Stompers offered a much needed middle ground—they weren’t tennis shoes, they weren’t dress shoes. They were sturdy and leather, and they definitely did not go with dresses. I had to get me some of those. And I would not relent. I finally got my Waffle Stompers. I wore my mother down.
But what, I wonder now, did Mom make of my tomboyish ways, my insistence that I dress like a boy? With my short carrot top hair and my Toughskins and Waffle Stompers, did I give anyone pause? Did anyone pull her aside and accuse her of having an agenda? (A sales clerk did object to my father buying me a toy rifle for Christmas one year, but that’s a different blog).
It’s interesting, the politics of clothing. Still, after roughly 43 years of dressing myself and choosing my own clothes, I struggle with what to wear, with how I want to look, how I want to be seen. What I am comfortable in. Except for a brief adolescent period, from roughly the ages of 13 to 16, I’ve always felt more comfortable in decidedly unfeminine clothes. Dressing up for me has mostly meant putting on pants that aren’t jeans, a shirt/pullover combination, or a polo shirt when it’s warm enough, and something on my feet besides sneakers or hiking shoes (though recently I’ve taken to wearing my red Chuck Taylor’s as dress up shoes).
Do the shoes make the woman?
I’m such a casual dresser that even my doctor made a note of it in my chart one time: Neatly dressed. Extremely casual. At Christmas gatherings when I was in college and in my early 20s, my grandmother used to say “Pam, you look like a boy!” I always took that as a compliment, as confirmation that I was slender and fit. Now when I get called “Sir,” and I do, regularly—just a couple of weeks ago, at the LA airport, dressed in my very womanly Izod golf shorts, not to mention my more obvious and, increasingly matronly, girl parts—I just look, like “Dude? Really?” More often than not, people are appropriately mortified. But I have to wonder, what are they seeing when they look at me?
(I do realize I’m laying myself wide open here) It has to be the clothes and my short hair—I think we’ve gotten to the point that women’s clothing is so drastically different than men’s clothing that most people don’t bother to look beyond clothes to determine someone’s gender. No visible cleavage? Guy. No floral patterns or ruffles? Guy. Short hair? Guy. Not pastels? Guy (though if you’ve been to a Ralph Lauren store lately, you know that the men are wearing a lot of pink, green, and yellow these days). Last summer, I was out and about town in a tshirt, a pair of cargo shorts, and flip flops. As I was locking my bicycle to a parking meter near the Saturday Market, a woman behind me kept saying, “Sir!” “Sir!” She got mad at me for not responding and when she found out I wasn’t a Sir! she was still mad at me. I thought that was rude. And especially now that I am a woman of a certain age, I think a certain amount of invisibility is inevitable.
Early in my professional career, I put a fair effort into dressing nicely, but in my very classically tailored clothes I was often addressed as “Sir.” I shopped exclusively in the women’s sections at Nordstrom’s and Macy’s (which was then The Bon Marche) and a gal could get shirts sans floral patterns and ruffles; I wore women’s Bass Weejuns with tassels, and (tragically) a woman’s London Fog raincoat. I even occasionally wore panty hose and a dress, and sometimes tights and professional shorts, and blazers (remember that bad 80s trend?). Eventually I tailored my career choices so I wouldn’t have to ever wear panty hose again, and these days I feel dressed up if I put on a pair of worn cords and a polo shirt for work. Most days I show up in saggy-assed Levis, a gray hoodie, and my black Converse. How I dress has no bearing on how I perform at work, except that less formal makes me happier and happier workers are better workers.
So, to bring it all back around to where I started . . . maybe what’s really important about clothing is that it makes us comfortable, because when we are comfortable, we are confident. If we are confident, we are happy. If we are happy, we are better learners, players, workers, partners, lovers, parents, children, and friends. Choosing our clothes, dressing our kids—these are political acts, not just across gender, but also across class and race (different blogs altogether). Being comfortable in my own skin, let alone in what I’m wearing? Judging one another according to what we wear? I don’t have any illusions this will change, ever. I just wish I could get over it, myself.
Pamela Helberg 