Bonsoir

I grew up in the Southwest, where there was a certain distrust of governmental powers. This was particularly true if there was a Democrat in office. When the men lost their minds, there was a Southwestern flare to it. They would join militias and bury their guns out in the desert because they were convinced the government was coming to take their ammunition away. I would actually see the men do this and I would think to myself, “My God their crazy. Who could be so paranoid?”

I’m a little bit older now and I no longer live in the desert, but I have to say my mistrust of the government has grown exponentially these last few years. I’m not burying guns. I don’t own any. However, I have been learning to speak French. Every Monday night, my friend and I go down to the local Adult Education Center and conjugate French verbs. I’m sure you are thinking that it’s a worthy endeavor and not at all crazy. But I have to tell you the reason why I am doing it is because I have grown convinced that before my life is through, I am going to have to make a run for Canada. I want to speak the language once I get there. I have my passport on me at all times, and I am dismayed that my wife does not have one. I have even been watching Julia Child so that I will be fully acclimated to the local cuisine.

I’m not sure whether or not to give the laundry list of things scare me about this country. I do not like all of the DOMAs that have been passed in the last few years, I do not like the war in Iraq and I do not like these new anti-terrorism bills that tromp all over the constitution.

At first I thought this has nothing to do with being a parent, but it does. Its one thing to feel like you are not safe. It’s a whole another to feel like your child isn’t safe. When I look down at my little boy at night, I feel such love for him its almost too much to bear. Suddenly I feel like I have a lot in common with those guys who buried their guns in the desert. I want protection. I want no harm to ever make its way in from the outside into the nursery room. I want my little guy to always be as peaceful as he is now in his little Halloween sleeper that says “I love my Mummy.” I can’t believe how crazy I feel, but I want a handle on French sentence structure and gun buried nearby.

TLC

It’s been awhile since I have updated this blog, mostly since I am so busy. I am trying to start an at home business and still take care of little guy. I am finding it really challenging working at home and having a baby. I never would have tried to start my own business if I didn’t become a mom. However, I now realize that a new business is kind of like a new baby, and it needs to be fed – a lot. If I had known this, I would have tried to start the business a year or two before having the baby. Instead, I have a real baby and a new business venture.

However, I am not so busy that I ever miss TLC’s Bringing Home Baby. It’s a show where they show a family in the first 36 hours after coming home with a new baby. I like TLC, I do. I like all of their corny baby shows, but I found myself getting a little testy with them. They were just so relentlessly heterosexual. Despite all of the different types of families out there, they never seemed to deviate from the one mother, one father cookie cutter family. Just when I thought all was lost, they feature a gay family on Bringing Home Baby. I was so excited, I blew the chunks of Oreos I was eating all over the floor. The family was a couple of dads and their two twin daughters. I was so pleased, I emailed them. You would think I had all the time in the world.

Brothers and Cousins, or something like that

I was contacted by a woman who had used the same sperm donor as I had. She lived relatively close by and wanted to know if we would like to meet. There is an organic farm with a petting zoo at the halfway point between our homes. I was surprised at how excited I was by all of this, and we agreed to get together.

She was very nice and very friendly, but she made it clear that she didn’t want them referred to as siblings. That was fine by me. I really didn’t know what to make of all of this.

Her son is a few months older than mine. When we met at the farm, I remarked that they looked like cousins, not brothers. There was a resemblance, but they weren’t the spitting image of each other, so I thought. I wanted to know if her son had cowlicks like ours (he didn’t) and if he had sleep issues (no again).

Of course, we weren’t at the farm a half an hour when a nice lady came up and asked if they were brothers. Dead silence. I don’t know what that woman must have thought. Finally, the other guy’s mom said, “They're cousins, sort of.” It was an answer that works, but it kind of bothered me since it wasn’t really the truth. I think I might have been more comfortable just saying they weren’t related at all, but I hadn’t thought this through. We went to a restaurant, and the waitress asked if they were twins! This time we just said no, they are several months apart.

My wife and I had decided to use a sperm donor to avoid emotional complications, but here we were in the thick of another one. They weren’t brothers and they weren’t cousins, there are some other thing that I don’t think has a name yet. The other mother isn’t a gay woman, but a single mom by choice. It is not just gays and lesbians entering this brave new world. This world without proper names for our relationships.