It's Not You, It's Us

Remember dating? And that most awkward of moments, the end of an evening when it was clear not everyone had enjoyed the experience equally?

Your date would ask the question, "What are you doing next weekend?" And, instead of saying "avoiding you," you'd stay pleasantly vague. "Ooh, sorry. I think I'm busy." For that matter, you'd be busy the weekend after that, too. Suddenly, your calendar was just packed.

Marriage is supposed to put all that behind you, right? Not if you have children. For every time your kid makes a new friend, you end up doing the getting-to-know-you-waltz all over again with a new set of parents. It's a little like having a 40-inch yenta stubbornly pushing you toward an endless series of blind dates. And if you think chemistry is hard to predict between two people, just try making it work with four...





Continue reading here at Parentdish.com

Fathers' Day--the Plural form

On Sunday, my household will observe a holiday that is somehow universal and statistically rare all at once: Fathers' Day. Note the location of the apostrophe, indicating the plural possessive form, which is to say two dads but only one day.

We've been celebrating (and punctuating) this way for six years now, since Diva was a peanut small enough to rest comfortably in the space between my palm and elbow. In the years since, we've gotten quite an education about what society thinks a father is and is not. Based on my not-especially-scientific reading of all the relevant cultural indicators -- commercials, sitcoms, and the greeting card aisle at CVS -- we've become aware of the following definitions.

Father (noun, singular)

1. Parent who does all or most of the following: throws a ball; plays golf; farts copiously; watches sports; thinks he's a stud if he can make pancakes; uses tools to fix (or claim to fix) broken things; buys women jewelry at the last second before a birthday, anniversary or holiday; and says "ask your mother" without interrupting what he is doing.

2. Parent who cannot do any of the following: sew; dance without embarrassing all parties present; cook a meal not involving pancakes; choose a decent outfit from the current decade to save his life; please the woman he bought the jewelry for; or understand why he has not pleased that same woman.

By this definition, Diva might as well be fatherless...

Read the rest HERE at Parentdish.Com

Meant to Be: A Letter to My Daughter on Her Birthday

Long ago, before there was you, when Daddy was not yet Daddy and I was not yet Papa, he and I promised each other that someday we would be parents. We had a wedding and bought a house, but then let more than a decade pass while we waited to be "ready" for a child. (We didn't realize there is no ready, only willing.)

In the early fall of our 11th year together, Daddy's beloved Nana passed away, one week after deciding it was her time to go. But first, she'd called her children and their children to her bedside, sharing her love one last time and commanding us all to live full, happy lives.

When Nana died, Daddy and I both felt something stirring inside, a clear impulse that it was time to move forward with our plans to adopt a baby, adding a new life to the now smaller family. Many of the people who would become your relatives, godmothers and aunties were thrilled when we announced this decision.

But my own mother didn't think God approved of two men raising a child, an opinion also shared by the governor of our home state and some of the most prominent men in the land. The doubters didn't stop us: Our course was set...

Read the rest here at AOL's ParentDish.com, in The Family Gaytriarch's, the nation's first mainstream media same-sex parenting column.

A Piece of Unsolicited Advice: Don't Offer Any

My friend Gwen was taking a stroll, her sleeping 1-year-old daughter Lola pressed to her chest in a baby sling. It was a lovely day, the nicest so far in a too-late spring, and Gwen was thrilled to be out of the house. A Friendly Stranger rolled up alongside her on his bicycle, cooing over Lola before asking, "How old is she?"

When Gwen answered, Friendly Stranger asked if he could "say something." He was already "saying something," so the phrase was just a euphemism for his real intention. Like a preacher at a revival, he lectured Gwen.

"Your problem is that your daughter is facing the wrong way. She has to face out at this age."

Until that moment, Gwen had been unaware that she had any "problem" or that this wasn't a casual chat. But she played it cool.

"Lola likes to sleep this way."

The cyclist's voice rose. "But she's too OLD! You CAN'T let her do that any more!"

Gwen's a writer and a lawyer -- she could have verbally sliced up the Less-Friendly Stranger, but instead she tried to de-escalate the situation.

"I'm aware there are a lot of opinions on this, but I'm comfortable that she'll be fine."

"You're going to DEFORM her! Her neck will be TWISTED!"

Gwen's jaw tightened. "OK. You've shared your opinion. Move along."

The decidedly Un-Friendly Stranger did roll off, but not before shouting: "This is ABUSE! They should TAKE THAT CHILD AWAY FROM YOU." And thus ended Gwen's lovely morning.

Is there anything your average parent wants less than unsolicited advice? And, yet, we all get it...

You can read the rest here at AOL's ParentDish.com in The Family Gaytriarchs, the nation's first mainstream media same-sex parenting column.

The Men in the Mirror: Modern Family & Me

Question: Where can I find the following family?

Two gay dads -- one slender and uncomfortable offering public displays of affection, the other hefty and prone to flamboyant gestures. Add one adopted daughter of another race, the youngest member of an extended family whose senior patriarch is remarried to a younger woman, which makes him now the parent of a child close in age to his grandchildren. Need a hint? Their wacky adventures are broadcast on Wednesdays.

Answer: I just have to look in the mirror.

You can read the rest here at AOL's ParentDish.com in The Family Gaytriarchs, the nation's first mainstream media same-sex parenting column.

Where babies--and tongue-tied papas--come from

"How do babies get out of a mommy's tummy?"

Like so many incredibly loaded topics, this question arrived over dinner. Diva was then 4, a preschooler whose primary understanding of adult female anatomy came from Barbie. We'd been joined for supper by Diva's Auntie Mikey, to whom she addressed the question, but since we hadn't been talking about either uteruses or Angelina Jolie, Mikey's jaw fell open in surprise.

Our general philosophy is to tell the truth in the simplest terms. We'd long ago settled on the idea that, when the time came, we'd neither stigmatize nor aggrandize the subject of sex. We just didn't expect to that moment to arrive while our daughter was still watching "Sesame Street"...

Read the rest at AOL ParentDish, in The Family Gaytriarchs blog, the nation's first mainstream media same-sex parenting column.

Roy & Silo & Me: The Shocking Truth About America's Most Banned Book

My life doesn’t seem very radical most days: I teach my students how to write, come home for family dinner around the table, put my daughter to bed, and then start picking up the abandoned Barbies, empty water glasses, and half-read magazines that comprise the domestic detritus of my house. But the American Library Association’s newly released list of “Most Frequently Challenged Books” confirms that I am a rebel--I’m the proud owner of the single most banned book in America last year: And Tango Makes Three, a children’s book about penguins.

Of course, Roy and Silo, the true-life leads of this troublesome tome, are not just any penguins. Like me, they’re gay, and that makes them dangerous. Their very existence threatens the sanctity of the arctic pool—other penguins, good penguins, might find their own feathers bent, if they don’t watch out.

Also like me and my husband, Roy and Silo became parents, which makes them rare. When word spread about the new family at New York’s Central Park Zoo, crowds gathered around for a look at Roy, Silo, and Tango, the kind of novelty you just can’t see at Six Flags every weekend. As gay dads, The Hubby and I know the feeling of being an unusual species—two-dad households account for slightly less than 3 of every 1,000 families. This does make us something of an object of fascination. My family has never been on exhibit formally, but we have, more than once, been stopped so that well-intended strangers could gush about how much they support us, or at least have no problem with us, or once had a gay cousin. (Maybe we know him?)

Family-structure uniqueness landed Roy and Silo a book deal—and, actually, it landed me one, too. But no one protested my book, Homo Domesticus, because it was a grown-up book, the sort of thing you’d actually have to purchase yourself, and the word “Homo” was a dead giveaway to its contents. You couldn’t accidentally read a few chapters and only then discover that the missing bride was never ever going to show up.

But And Tango Makes Three is a children’s book, which means it must be meant to recruit innocents, or at very least to inure them to the vagaries of penguin affections. Worse, the title doesn’t shout “gay” in any way, so that you might think you were getting a book about dancing or counting or both. The cover illustration shows three penguins but with no helpful genitalia to distinguish their genders and thus reveal the awful hidden truth.

You must actually open the book and read it to discover the deviance lurking within. And it’s pretty sick: there’s rudeness (the boys ignore female penguins), mental delusion (they think a rock is an egg), and child abandonment (another penguin has too many eggs to care for). Such dark themes for a children’s book!

But it’s the positive themes that rile critics: the boys find love, they want a stable family, and they nurture a child. What is objectionable is that this teaches children that gay people can be loving, healthy, and well. Even if families like mine live out this truth every single day, what the fevered critics of this book—and of us—really want is to only allow for representations of the gay lives that they imagine. If a childless Roy and Silo went clubbing, took ecstasy, and made bitchy comments about puffins while redecorating their expensive nookery, the book might not only fall off the banned list—it might well become a key fundraising tool for a certain stripe of politician not long on intellectual gifts.

Instead, the book tells what actually happened in that zoo, and does so in language even a child can understand. That’s the real problem: sometimes, the simple truth is uncomfortable for grown-ups who’d rather all our children stick to made-up stories about magical worlds that none of us (including them) live in.

Childrenfreude--Why I Take Pleasure in Other Parents' Pain and You Should, Too!

My daughter, Diva, and I were at a friend's house for a playdate and Rose, her buddy, was in fine form. Just before we got there, Rose's mom had given her one explicit instruction: Stay out of the hair care products in the bathroom, which Rose had been treating like playthings.

Naturally, Rose disappeared with Diva the instant we arrived, returning moments later to show that they had frozen their tresses into sticky Aquanet sculptures. This set the tone for a day which included explicit disobedience, tantrum-throwing, a bold-face lie or two and weeping when criticized for any of the above.

I have to admit my immediate reaction was this: Oh, thank God! My daughter's not the only one! Indeed, the whole thing warmed my heart with what I'll call childrenfreude: the secret pleasure of watching bad kids happen to good parents.

Read the rest here at AOL ParentDish.

Diva goes national--AOL ParentDish features my tale of our Chicken-turned-Princess

I'm thrilled to be the first gay dad ever writing a same-sex parenting column for a national mainstream media outlet. Alternating weeks with lesbian mom Valerie Rhodes, I'll be chronicling adventures with my diva at ParentDish.com, an AOL site. The first column is up and begins below. Follow the link for the whole read.

When my daughter was not quite 3, she told my husband and me that she wanted to be a chicken for an upcoming costume party.

We thought this was hilarious and I found myself snootily proud of her choice. See, my kid's no joiner. Let every other girl be Cinderella; mine is going to be a chicken. I did what any self-respecting gay dad would do next: I bought feathers -- lots of them -- and began sewing the bantam costume of her dreams. But then, the unthinkable happened: She came home the next day saying she wanted to be a princess, instead. How did this happen?!

She'd gotten the idea from day care, though it was never clear whether the mastermind had been a teacher or playmate -- toddlers can be so vague! Either way, I was outraged and disappointed that she'd been led away from her perfectly original first idea and steered down the conformist path. So, as excited as she was about her new choice, I didn't exactly run to a fabric store to make her a fabulous ball gown.

We live in the liberal Northeast and move in circles where princess culture is viewed with deep suspicion, as the embodiment of old school sexism mixed with naked consumerism. My husband and I boasted that our daughter wouldn't be the princess type -- we were raising a strong girl with independence and spunk, not a damsel in distress waiting to be saved.

So, I put off her costume request, hoping it would go the way of the chicken, soon replaced by something else. Instead, she dug in deeper -- and so did I.

My husband broke the stalemate. He pointed out that if we'd had a son who wanted to dress like a princess, we'd have said yes in a heartbeat, proud of ourselves for supporting his self-expression. Yet, we had trouble supporting a girl who wanted the very same thing. What sense did it make for gay dads to tell their daughter she couldn't be whatever she wanted?

Read MORE HERE

Coming Clean

“Who’s coming over?” My daughter asked this question innocently enough, and when I answered that we weren’t expecting anyone, her reply was telling: “Then why are you cleaning the house?”

It does not seem like a good sign that my daughter believes one never cleans if guests are not imminent. But she’s displaying a clear sense of cause and effect: if Papa’s hands are seen clasping a broom handle or dustpan, 95% of the time this means our doorbell will be ringing with a few hours.  If Daddy busts out the vacuum, too, the odds increase to 100%. And if the kitchen floor gets mopped? Well, that’s as good as writing “Grandmother coming” on the calendar.

In between visits, when we’re fairly certain no will see how we live, the various cleaning tools languish locked away in the closet. Magazines pile up haphazardly like glossy stalagmites, rice from Chinese take-out forms a floor-level halo beneath Diva’s dining room chair, and kitchen counters disappear under the detritus of family life: lunch boxes and drawings and mittens and phone chargers and Japanese erasers and 0% interest offers.

Let me assure you: we’re not actually rolling about in naked filth; no will ever walk in and find houseflies buzzing around a sink full of mold-encrusted dishes or walls smeared with dog poo. But should a Cheez-It fall out of Diva’s lunch box, or an errant grape escape the fruit bowl, it’s not impossible that the fallen item could enjoy a few days liberty before I ever get it swept up—and I’ll only notice it then because I’m preemptively seeing the floor through the eyes of whatever person is arriving later.

Growing up in my grandmother’s house, I enjoyed the pleasures of clean living despite doing little to help keep things that way. In preparation for every Sabbath, Grammy engaged in an hours-long  top-to-bottom sweeping-dusting-vacuuming ritual. During the week, she mostly concentrated on her continual fight against clutter—never letting me or my brother leave toys, clothes, or books just lying around the living room or dining room, the places company might see.  

When it came to our shared bedroom, all bets were off.  My brother and I didn’t have a lot of toys, but those we did have—a plastic octopus, for instance, or a train that made real whistle noises—ended up on the floor because we had no shelves or bureaus. We didn’t ever make our beds—they were as rumpled when we crawled into them at night as when we crawled out of them in the morning. This was only allowed because our room was upstairs, a part of the house that guests never saw. I believe my grandmother’s exact words were: “If you want to live in a sty, you go right ahead, but I’m not gonna.”

She meant for this statement to express disapproval of our slovenly behaviors, but she inadvertently sent a different message: The dirt no one can see won’t hurt anyone. I so internalized this maxim that, as a grown-up, I instinctively fill the little-used porch with random junk, pile objects on the hidden-away stairs leading up to the second level of our condo, and generally turn our bedroom into a free-for-all of clothing items I don’t feel like putting away. Indeed, the entire house becomes fair game in this logic: on any day that no one but us comes through the front door, then everything inside qualifies as unseen, and can thus be a mess.

Fortunately, all of us in my little family are social creatures—which means people are coming over a lot. The steady stream of arrivals gives me impetus for cleaning and keeps me from sinking beneath the clutter most of the time. Truly, having friends saves us from our own worst impulses. But in that rare week when no one is expected and our housekeeping slowly devolves, even I—a guy who worries as much about the illusion of being clean as actually being clean— can reach my limit. When all countertops are lost to view like sidewalks under this year’s snowdrifts and the couch looks like a doll version of the Jonestown massacre, I sometimes do the unthinkable: I clean just for us.

That’s what got Diva so confused: she caught me sweeping for no obvious reason. I explained that, despite how it sometimes seems, I do actually believe that it’s healthier to live in a clean house. I wasn’t talking about epidemiology so much as mental health. I confessed that when our house is too messy for too long, it makes me feel a little crazy.

Only after the words were out did I consider what lesson I’d just taught my daughter. Having already demonstrated that the primary reason for cleaning is to fool others, I’d now told her that housekeeping is something you save until you’re on the brink of insanity.

So you can imagine my surprise when one of her old teachers told me that Diva was the neatest kid in the room, often goading her classmates to pick up the play area. “My daughter?” I asked, eyes wide—and the teacher assured me that yes, Diva was a bit of a nudge when it came time to clean up. I was grateful, relieved, and baffled all at once. And then I considered that her school persona was the public antidote to one more lesson she’d learned in private: Home is where the mess is.