Tag: same-sex marriage

Single at 52. Further Thoughts on Same-Sex Marriage and Divorce

Published on by Pam13 Comments

Today’s the day. Ninety days ago I signed my divorce decree, and now we can get divorced. I simply have to go to the lawyer’s office to sign the final paperwork. I didn’t know going into this divorce that the 90 days is a “cooling off” period. I just thought it took that long for the paperwork to make its way through the court system. My lawyer corrected my misperception. I said, “You mean to tell me it only takes 3 days to get married but 90 to get divorced? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” She nodded sagely. I suppose there’s some sort of job security for her in it working this way.

I don’t know. I imagine I’d still be in the same place even if I’d had an extra 90 days to contemplate getting married. In fact, we did wait an entire year between the time I proposed and the day we finally married (to read more about that, click here). We were unraveling at that point anyway. Earlier this week I received an email letting me know that the lawyers had drafted the final decree dissolving our marriage. The past few mornings have been a miasma of mixed feelings. Yesterday I woke up with an outsized case of anxiety, and this morning I am not feeling any better.

A divorce is a death, a loss, an end. And in the hours since I received the lawyer’s notice, the past fifteen years have been flashing before my eyes as I understand happens before any death experience. The good, the bad, the ugly. The beginning, the middle, the end. Not that there’s necessarily a correlation—these things have a way of spiraling and weaving. There were signs of our eventual demise early on, had I been more aware, and we experienced moments of grace toward the end, even as recently as last week when we had dinner with my brother and his family in Seattle.

On our first date, we attended an Indigo Girls concert on the Pier in Seattle. Cliché? Maybe. I still remember what I wore that warm July night. I was on my way to her house a few months later when Al Gore lost (was robbed of) the election to (by) George W. Bush. On September 11 almost a year later, we awoke to a phone call from her sister-in-law on the east coast, telling us to turn on the television, that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. Together we watched astounded and in disbelief from her bed as the airplane careened into the second tower, which then crumbled. I told her how Aaron Brown, whose presence on CNN that day I found so stabilizing in a world come apart, had once been a local news anchor.

We attended at least two family weddings as a couple before we had our pre-legal same sex marriage commitment ceremony in September 2003. We dubbed it our Silly Ceremony. In retrospect, I wonder if perhaps we made a mistake calling it that. If perhaps we did not take ourselves or our union seriously enough from the beginning. We called it that because at my father’s wedding in April 2001, one of my relatives pulled me aside to congratulate me on my new relationship, to tell me how much she loved my new love, and then, almost as an aside said “But, you two aren’t going to have one of those silly ceremonies are you?” Of course. We had to after that.

I worked for the Catholics when we had the Silly Ceremony. I’d only been in my position there a few months, but still felt comfortable enough to invite a few of the friends I’d made in that time. My parents, by then divorced, came. My kids. Her sister. My brother and his family. Our neighbors. Her good friend, the holiest person we knew, officiated. We partied epically. People danced on the tables.

The temptation is to pick through the remnants, parsing out the good from the bad, categorizing events into a sort of giant, fifteen-year tally sheet. We spent many summer days playing Scrabble on our deck. And we kept score. One of the things that attracted me was her ability to string a sentence together, to spell. We fell in love online and spent our first few months there before we met in real time, exchanging instant messages and emails. She knew how to punctuate, a skill akin to tantric sex for a writer.

Even though we’ve essentially lived apart these past two years, and even though she officially moved her belongings out for good in mid-February, I am still sad to have finally completed this one last act.

We’ve been circling around the issue for a couple of years, been to couples’ counseling with two different therapists. Said the D word then reconciled again, deciding to give it one last go, at least twice. So, when I signed the decree 90 days ago, I guess it felt like anything was possible. Three months stretched out ahead in a sort of eternity. I still had 90 days worth of health insurance. We settled into a sort of amicable truce. She came up to see the cats. I stayed at her new place on my way to and from the airport. We had a few dinners, spent Easter with my family. Celebrated our birthdays in June with a lovely dinner on the Bellingham waterfront.

But this week, once we got the email from our attorneys letting us know that the final FINAL papers were ready, that we could sign them on August 21? Then I realized that this is it. The end. I know. I know. I didn’t want to get married in the first place. Marriage is a patriarchal institution. But I started thinking about having a fixed date for the demise of our relationship. In previous relationships we just sort of came apart in fits and starts. There were no hard and fast dates and times to affix to the ending. No “on thus and such a date we officially broke up.” At least not one recorded in the annals of time for all of perpetuity.

From here forward, August 21 will be complicated. One part heartbreak, one part freedom. One part new adventure. One part wistfulness. It’s particularly metaphorical that the eastern half of the state is currently on fire. We spent one of our happiest road trips in recent memory exploring the Methow and the Okanagon a couple of summers ago. We set out in the jeep one weekend and just kept driving until we reached Conconully. We drove up Hart’s Pass where I wanted to camp even though it was 32 degrees up there. I guess if I wanted to read something into the fires, I could. I was sitting in a friend’s house in Winthrop the first time she suggested (offered?) divorce, in an email. I’ve always joked about having a scorched earth policy when leaving jobs and relationships. It’s a policy I have worked to change in recent years. I would like the end of this relationship to be different. Gentler.

I’m trying to resist the urge to get sentimental, but finding resistance futile. Scenes. Memories. Events. Dates. In the course of those 15 years my children grew into adults. I forged a new career, realized my dream of becoming a published writer, changed careers, returned to school. Had a job with a Fortune 150 company. Became a runner. I found myself and so doing became many things I never expected to be, including single at 52.

Daniel F**king Boone, Lesbian Pioneer

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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.”

Unpacking the PNWA Experience

Published on by Pam11 Comments

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.

Christmas 1994 or Why Gay Marriage Means So Much

Published on by Pam2 Comments
Christmas 1997
Christmas 1997

Christmas Eve always provokes anxiety in me.  For all of the 1960s and well into the 70s, I was the sole granddaughter amongst many grandsons and as such the only target for girly gifts from my well-meaning Mema: dolls, dresses, and purses.  While my cousins and younger brother gleefully tore through the wrapping paper to discover footballs, cowboy hats, cap pistols, and baseball gloves, I opened my gifts cautiously, always hopeful that my true wishes would be granted, that my grandmother would see me for the tomboy I was, not as the girly girl she wanted me to be.  As the Barbies, ballet slippers, tea sets, and girly frou-frou piled up over the years, I knew better than to be expressively disappointed. Growing up in a conservative Christian household, I learned early that it is better to give than to receive, to be thankful for what I had, and to put others ahead of myself, so I pasted on a smile and gave my thanks with as much authenticity as I could muster.

As the years wore on and the family expanded, my girl cousins finally came along, gleeful recipients of all things sugar and spice and everything nice, and I could ignore my gifts and slip away to play with my boy cousins and their superior toys.  They would share their bounty with me, and for many happy hours I wore the cowboy hat and shot the cap guns, threw the footballs around the basement.   Still, an uneasiness always settled over me as the holidays drew near, and as much as I looked forward to Christmas Eve at Mema’s, a genuinely fun and spirited occasion where the alcohol flowed freely and everyone sang and acted out a verse in The Twelve Days of Christmas, where we all wore colored paper hats from the Christmas crackers, I dreaded going because I didn’t feel like I belonged.

A sense of Other became my Christmas cloak:  fundamentalist Christian amongst fun loving Catholics; country bumpkin cousin among my sophisticated Seattle cousins; and something deeper that I sensed about myself, something I knew set me apart in ways I wouldn’t understand for many years.

So, no surprise then that those familiar pangs rushed back as I navigated our red late-model Volvo into Mema’s driveway for Christmas Eve in 1994.  Even though I was 31 and had a family, the anxiety dogged me.  I let out the breath I’d been holding during our hour and a half drive south from where I lived with my partner and our two daughters.  I pulled on my wide-brimmed purple felt hat that matched my paisley purple dress and smiled through the rear view mirror at the girls, Anna four and a half, and Taylor six months old.  They were ready to be sprung from their car seats, their holiday dresses hidden beneath their matching Christmas coats from Nordstrom.  I squeezed Sweetie’s hand, both for comfort and for strength, and admired her stylish red wool coat and her fine black leather gloves.  I allowed a small satisfaction and confidence to creep upon me.  We looked so normal that no one could possibly know from first glance that we were lesbians with two children.  I drew comfort from our appearance as we wrested the girls out of the car and arranged ourselves into presentability—straightening rumpled tights, buckling Mary Janes, wiping the spit up from Taylor’s chin and removing her bib, making sure Anna had a firm grasp on Blankie.  We each carried a child and marched to the front door to ring the bell.

We knew better than to wait for someone to answer before letting ourselves in.  The bell served only to announce our presence before we walked into the sounds and smells of Christmas tradition:  cracked crab, singed spaghetti sauce, bourbon, scotch, laughter and conversation, the burble of children’s voices and laughter.  Aunts and uncles yelled out greetings or raised their glasses to us as we entered.  My mother came to coo over her granddaughters.  We collected hugs and kisses as we waded deeper into the gathering, and because we were women, we all finally came to a stop in the kitchen.

“Merry Christmas!” My aunt Betsy said, “You guys look great.  I love your dress Pam.”

“Where did you get that hat?” Mema sipped her vodka, the ice tinkling.  “I love it!”

“Sweetie!” Uncle David stepped towards us, a glass of red wine in his hand.  “Merry Christmas!”  He gave her a sideways hug and a peck on the cheek.  “How are the girls?”

“Hey David,” Sweetie matched his enthusiasm. “They are great.  Thanks for asking! Your girls must be getting big, too!”

I began unbundling the girls, removing their coats, checking Taylor’s diapers for any obvious odors.  They both looked amazing, their brown skin glowing against the red velvet dresses, their white tights gleaming, their Mary Janes shiny.  Anna’s eyes took on the pensiveness of being in a strange situation, and Taylor’s eyes grew wide, her Surprise Baby look we called it.  Since we’d only just adopted her in May, many of my relatives had yet to meet her.

“She’s so tiny! How old is she, again?”

“She’s so dark!”

“Well, yes, she’s African American,” I explained.  “She’s just a bit over seven months old.”

“Anna, you’ve gotten so big!”

“Anna!  How do you like being a big sister?”

Anna buries her face in the pleats of Sweetie’s red skirt.

“She’s still adjusting,” I say.

“Hey, Pamalamala!” My uncle Mike approaches, the funny guy in the family. “What can I get you to drink? You’re still drinking, right?” He nods at Taylor in my arms. “You’re not nursing are you?”

“Scotch on the rocks sounds fabulous,” I say, happy at that moment to be an adoptive parent, no breastfeeding required.

Anna peaks inquisitively from Sweetie’s skirt.  “Pamalamala?” She laughs.  “That’s funny Mommy!”

“That’s what I called myself when I was your age,” I explain.  “I couldn’t say Pamela, so I said Pamalamala whenever someone wanted to know my name.”

Anna’s brown eyes light up, and some of the anxiety disappears.  I want nothing more than for her to be free of the anxiety.  Mike hands me my scotch and I relax, happy to be among family on this holiday, grateful for the acceptance from nearly everyone, and even thankful for the forbearance of those who might still disapprove.  I am aware they might be masking their disdain with holiday cheer and copious amounts of alcohol.  I don’t mind.

Before long, the girls and their cousins hear the prancing of reindeer feet on the roof and the ringing of sleigh bells.  The little ones who are old enough to walk, rush to the window hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa.  I hold Taylor as she wiggles and babbles excitedly and points to her big sister, eyes wide with anticipation.

“HO! HO! HO!”  Santa opens the front door, a pillowcase bursting with presents slung over his shoulder.  “I hear there are children here who have been very good this year!

“Sit over here, Santa,” one of my younger cousins points to a wing-backed chair between the fireplace and the lavishly decorated tree.  Over the course of the next hour, each child under 18 sits on Santa’s lap and assures him they’ve been nice and not at all naughty during the year.  Santa digs in his bag and presents each child with a present, and as they unwrap their gifts, they hold them up as cameras snap and flash.  The adults grin conspiratorially at one another, remembering Christmases not that long ago when they did the same.  I’ve chosen Anna and Taylor’s gifts carefully, the sting of disappointment still fresh on me.

Once the spaghetti and crab have been devoured, once the platters of cookies have been depleted, once the children have succumbed to the rush of sugar and the excitement of Santa and fallen asleep about the living room, once the adults have exchanged gifts, and had a final glass of holiday cheer, we begin to gather our newly acquired belongings, our coats, the diaper bag, Anna’s Blankie.  We whisper our good-byes and carry our sleeping babies to the car and tuck them in to their car seats.  After several more forays between house and car, more hugs and kisses, I put the Volvo in reverse and head north, letting out the breath I’d been holding the past several hours.

We had navigated through a family Christmas Eve, our little family of four breaking new ground, the four of us presenting as just another family in spite of our differences.  No one else in my extended family had ventured quite this far outside of the norm:  being a “married” lesbian mother of adopted multi-ethnic children broke some new family ground and gained not just tolerance, but acceptance.  Still, my anxiety and self doubt colored my experience and I believed that the love and welcomes came because we worked so hard to be a normal family, we wore dresses and feminine shoes; we bought thoughtful and not inexpensive gifts; we were fortunate to have beautiful children and dressed them in dresses and lace.  We drove a Volvo.  I believed that acceptance required stringent adherence to heterosexual norms.  I thought that if we were going to be a successful lesbian family, we were going to have to be as non-threatening and as normal as possible.

I was so busy hiding who I was, I didn’t even try to be myself.  It didn’t occur to me that my family would love me anyway, and I spent another 10 years figuring it out.