The Total Femme

Over the summer, Seth started taking trombone lessons. This was completely mercenary on our part, or, as my Magic The Gathering offspring might say, we had a major strategy. Seth would have preferred the saxophone, but everybody plays the sax, and only a few play the trombone, and we have it on good authority that if you play the trombone, you are pretty much guaranteed a spot in the high school jazz band. The high school jazz band is the alpha and the omega, the absolute bees knees, the pinnacle of groovazoid, being run by one seriously suave band director, a really hot Italian number who not only has a facebook page devoted to him by his adoring fans but keeps all the ladies and surely many of the men in a heightened hormonal state when he directs. Those moves! Those shoes!

At the beginning of this school year, I told Seth he should try out for the middle school jazz ensemble (he’s in 8th grade), so he could get in some experience other than the huge, unwieldy school band, but he refused. I mean, he refused quite firmly, probably involving swears, although it has now somewhat faded from my mind. What with fall kicking my ass*, let alone the distinctly unhelpful vibe from my ex, Seth’s other mother (“Ohhh, but….what if he isn’t good enough, I wouldn’t want him to feel bad if he couldn’t keep up with the other kids, blither, blather, blother,” – this about our son for whom competition is life). I reminded him that the whole reason he took up the trombone was to get into the jazz fast track, that they need him, etc., but had to slink off to the tune of his middle finger and deal with the eight billion other fall issues being slung my way.

So here we are in January. In December, there was the all-school winter concert. The huge all-school band wheezed and groaned its way through “Super Heroes R Us” and a few other huge, unwieldy tunes. A young person in the 6th grade chorus swooned in the middle of the token Hannukah song, staggered back to his feet still singing, only to swoon again. And the jazz ensemble tore it the fuck up. They were having fun and kicking out the tunes and were leaving everybody else in the dust.

As we were walking home, Seth said, “I wish I was in the jazz ensemble.”

OH REALLY?? Calmly, casually I asked if he’d like me to email the director, who I happen to know is really nice and is perfectly willing to give my novice trombone player a try, because, they need trombones in the middle school jazz ensemble just the same way they need trombones in the high school jazz band.

“No, Mom,” said Seth. Firmly.

What would you do? This is a child who loves baseball with a burning passion, and yet when Adrienne# set him up with, I believe it was the Tigers, (and I do try to remember this when she is at her most tedious – it was due to Adrienne, not super-un-sporty me, that Seth got on his first ball team), he kicked and screamed and threw fits for quite some time until he finally settled down and started in on his brilliant fielding career.

I emailed the director, and she said, “Sure, come on down.”

But the story doesn’t end there! Seth wasn’t too grumpy with me, as I feared he might be, and he went off to school on the day he was supposed to audition carrying his trombone. And came home and said he forgot to go. I tried not to pop off my head in anger, and while I was trying, asking him mildly what he’d like to do about it, and he, of his own accord composed and sent an email to the director apologizing for not showing up, saying how interested he is in the ensemble and asking for another date and time. She, bless her long-suffering heart, wrote back, telling him to come along to rehearsal today.

This afternoon I was enjoying this really incredible cookie from the health nut store and a cup of Darjeeling tea, perusing the local gay rag, when the doorbell rang. Usually when the doorbell rings on Wednesday it is a certain waif-like lad with the ears of an 80 year old man (seriously pendulous! I am always impressed) who is looking for Owen. Today it was Seth. Carrying his trombone and wanting me to drive him to Adrienne’s (it’s her day today).

We chatted. I said I wanted to finish my tea. Did he want tea? No? Did he have everything? Yes? Ok. I was practically bursting to ask about jazz ensemble, but I held on, and was at last rewarded when he casually said, “So, I guess I’ll be coming to your house to get a ride every Wednesday after jazz ensemble rehearsal because I don’t want to lug this thing all the way to Mom’s.”

Well, I hugged him, gave him five, told him how proud I am of him, that I knew he’d been nervous about it, but he hung in there and did it.

Driving along, we passed a very short boy wheeling a huge case – the tuba player in the jazz ensemble, Seth told me. I said the tuba was practically as big as him, and we both laughed, and Seth said he has a great big personality to match. We laughed again and I had this moment of pure bliss, when the two of us were on the same wave length but completely different people, liking each other, coming together as individuals, no power dynamic, just me and him. I marveled at how mature he’s gotten, how himself he is these days, out in the world.

Then he said,  “Mom, you should have made me try out at the beginning of the year! Why didn’t you? You should have made me, the same way you make me do everything!”

So I pinched him and smacked his arm and gave him hell and we were still both laughing, but back to Mom and kid, but that’s ok. That is always ok.

*see Mommy with a Penis for the penultimate blog entry about fall ass kicking:

http://mommywithapenis.blogspot.com/2010/12/shake-waffle.html

and have I mentioned lately how much I love, nay rely on Mommy with a Penis?? Mwah, Mommy!!

#My ex – she gets a different name every post, usually. Hmm, now that I think about it, this could be interpreted as a nod to her completely impossible, schitzy personality…

When I came home from walking the dog, my Husband was in the kitchen slicing squash and HAVING AN EIGHTIES ATTACK! It was really something! She’d put on her double CD of the Talking Head’s greatest hits and she was SERIOUSLY GETTING DOWN! Air guitar and everything.

The children kindly went about their own business without commenting unduly on their step-parent’s complete loss of era. And then… “Psycho Killer” came on and WE ALL GOT DOWN! Please, join us!

Just now, Seth was downstairs with me, working on math in my study (which adjoins the kitchen). I was getting set up to make turkey pot pie, and I put on a little Henri Dikongue, who I found at the library and have been listening to quite a bit. It’s exactly the kind of French/African cheese I just can’t live without. So after a while, Seth calmly gathered up his stuff and said mildly, “I’m going to do my homework upstairs.” I said, “Oh, I can turn off the music if you want, honey. Is it the music?” And he said, very matter-of-factly and kindly, “No, Mom, that’s ok. It’s your groove. I’ll just be upstairs.” So that’s where he is, probably listening to Jimi Hendrix (who, I must add, I would like to claim as my groove along with M. Dikongue), and the house smells really good and, people, c’est ca, c’est la vie!

Just now, driving home after the mauling that is pilates, I was thinking  how blogging is like being a late night dj – especially blogging about one particular little area, like being a femme mom/wife/ass kicker (as opposed to blogging about politics or whatever – not that being a femme mom/wife/ass kicker isn’t political, because it is). When you’re a late night dj, you’re pretty sure most people are asleep, but you still want to do a good job because if there are some people awake and listening, then you know they damn for sure need what you’re playing.

So here, for those of you who are also femme mom/wife/ass kickers and for those of you who derive sustenance from reading these words, today I post, I post!

I just started reading The Well of Loneliness which, if I’ve ever read it, was a very long time ago and I don’t remember anything. I’ve gotten to the part where Stephan is  14, just got her new racer, Raftery, and said goodbye to her French governess. There’s this extremely well-done sense of how hard her father is working to hold back the forces of doom, push them off for as long as possible, to protect his daughter, to let her be herself as much as she can before the world comes crashing down on her. It’s sad that her mother can’t seem to show her daughter the same kind of understanding nor does she seem to be able to express her love, despite her best intentions; the idea that her own child somehow turns her stomach is a very distressing one. I don’t know much about Radclyffe Hall, like if she had any kids in her life when she was an adult,  but her understanding is spot on of the whole delicate balance between allowing our children to find out who they are by themselves while at the same time guiding and doing one’s best to protect them which is right at the heart of being a parent.

Queer parents or straight, our kids aren’t usually who we’d necessarily like them to be, or who we thought they might be. And you don’t have to be the parent of someone like Stephan to experience deep disappointment and/or worry about the life of your child. In his book-to-which-I-refer-as-if-it-were-the-Bible-as-it-seems-to-have-been-written-expressly-about-Seth, Get Out of My Life But First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall? A Parent’s Guide to the New Teenager by Anthony E. Wolf, he gives us the example of Molly, who is somebody’s daughter. Molly is turning out to be rather a slacker, getting C’s and D’s in school and preferring to hang out with friends more than anything else. Wolf says one of the hard thing about being a parent of a teenager is that we start to see that some of their less edifying traits, excusable when they were children since they were still changing and developing, may be traits that will stay with them into adulthood and we have to deal with it. He says we have to have our own process of grieving our lost hopes and expectations, hopefully in a way that won’t make the teenager feel bad, and then move on, saying to ourselves the equivalent of, “She’s just going to be Molly.”

And accepting and protecting a queer child – why does that have to be so fucking difficult? Why are children still dying? It’s really no different than accepting and protecting any child. I’m not naïve, I know there are hundreds of complicated reasons people damage their own children, not least of which is that they are themselves damaged. But I’m holding out hope, spinning the platters as the clock ticks over to the lonely hour of 3:30 am, just positive that the people listening, however few, are nodding their heads and humming along, and that when day breaks, they’ll take those same tunes out into the life of the world and yes, it will make a difference.

In the break down of chores, I do the laundry, for the most part – I’m doing it right now, in fact – and that is fine, because my Husbutch does other things like right now she’s out in the back yard taking out the pricker bushes (invasives) in order to plant something native, as we are doing what we can to have the best bird/bee/butterfly habitat in our small patch of suburban earth. Our own personal contribution, which is nice to be working on on 10/10/10 (see 350.org for more).

Back to laundry: The other day, a man came to fix the washing machine, which had been leaking deplorably. Very cheerful fellow, turns out his kids go to the same elementary school our kids went to, so we had a nice natter about that – in fact, it was kind of a long natter. Then he got to work and fixed the machine and went cheerfully off with good wishes for the middle school years on both our parts (one of his daughters is the same age as Owen). Later, I went to the basement to get after some whites, and realized that the whole time he was down there, nattering with me and then fixing the machine, a bouquet of about 5 of my bras were hanging to dry on hangers, not 2 feet from his head – and I wear colorful, fun ones, too. I suppose washer/dryer repair people see all kinds of things, but I am embarrassed in retrospect, as it isn’t very decorous. And I don’t want him to have a visual if we run into each other at a school event!

In other news, we’re actually going on a date tonight. I’m about to go rest a little to prepare (I’ve had a cold). It’s a caberet from these folks

http://www.axe2ice.com/events.html

and has the theme of APOCALYPSE, which I hope isn’t too much for my staid Spouse, who hated “Children of Men” so much that she could hardly speak after we saw it. “Apocalypse”…cheery!  Just the thing to offset all this 350.org hullabaloo…And that does it for this very domestic post!

I’m going to go lie down now.

This evening, the air is luscious, almost-fall, smooth as silk, just gorgeous. Earlier, my Hubby was sitting out on the deck with our dog on her lap, both of them with their snouts to the very slight, sensuous breeze.

We’ve been doing paperwork a lot today, figuring out things like life insurance, which I have to have for my parenting agreement with my boys’ other mom. The boys are at her house this weekend (“Happy White Domination Weekend!” a woman up at the dog park said to the gathered dog owners this morning, my Husband reports), so we are on our own. We have planned a date for a long time, a cabaret in Cambridge on Sunday. Then we found out the Femme Show is on for tonight, but we aren’t going. Even though we would like to, and friends of ours will probably be there, and even though we missed it last time, too.

But…I have a sore throat, probably on loan from Seth, who’s been reacting to the changes in weather with various cold symptoms. My Husband wants only to be out in the yard puttering, although it’s dark now. So we stayed home and I made soup and we split a dark beer and later we’re going to watch tv.

You might think that we are boring and old, but I was pretty much like this when I was young, too.

Here’s the soup I made – soup of the evening, beeeeyooootifuuuul soup! Maybe you’ll make it, too.

Autumnal Beet Soup

1 large onion, roughly chopped

4-5 small/medium beets, peeled and chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped and salted

2 celery stalks, chopped

a good hunk of cabbage, chopped biggish

beef broth

bay leaf

pepper

dill

caraway seeds

paprika

soupcon of sage

even smaller soupcon of clove

Fry the onion in olive oil in soup pot until translucent, add everything but the cabbage, fry for a few minutes, add beef broth, cook until veggies are soft-ish, add cabbage, cook another 5-10 minutes.

Serve with squeezes of lemon, dollops of yogurt, bread and goat cheese.

Long ago, when I lived in Japan, as summer faded away and the cooler weather started, people would remark to each other that they had shokuyoku no aki, or autumn appetite – like bears, I used to think, hungry to stock up on sustenance in order to hibernate.

Being the little academic brat that I was (both parents were university professors for over 50 years), my autumn appetite has always been more about the excitement of new projects beginning, new vistas opening, new pens and pencils and notebooks and opportunities as summer ended and the school year began.

This autumn, I am hungry for a little stability. A little plateau of cozy.  A time of settling.

3 years ago, I had major hip surgery. 2 years ago, my butch Beau moved here to live with me and the boys, after we’d sustained a long-distance relationship for more than 5 years. Last year, I slogged through the trenches getting a parenting agreement in place – lawyers and all – with my ex, the other mother of Seth and Owen. Somewhere in there, my mom had her own major hip surgery (and I flew across country to be with her), and, OH YEAH! This summer, my butch Beau became my butch Husband. That’s right, people, she and I are now legally wed, at least in a handful of states. It was a truly fun affair featuring ancient rites, heartfelt vows, merry klezmer music, local food and cake, touching toasts, loving friends and family, and Seth and Owen looking very fine in their ties and jackets. But boy, what a lot of work!

And now, with the changing season, my autumn appetite has kicked in big time. Instead of pushing aside a whole slew of things that I can’t pay attention to because, for example, I’m working overtime with my lawyer to find a way of presenting this parenting agreement to my ex so that she’ll actually agree to it, I’d like to seriously consider, say, joining the church choir. Giving a pilates class a good college try (hey! I have abs!). Having some kind of routine, for heaven’s sake, and maybe even a social life!! and not feel so much like I’m just hanging on by my fingernails and at the mercy of Some Big Thing, even when that Big Thing is as happy as our Wonderful Wedding.

It’s a very, very rainy day here, a day conducive of contemplation, tea, and procrastination. Of taking stock of a thing or two. And of getting used to the idea that, here in the burbs, a Femme Mom and Wife might look around at her life and feel a little less buffeted and a little more able to chart the course in a pleasing manner. What with our meat share, our local produce, and some pretty good neighborhood restaurants, the food is good and golly, the company is just scintillating (more on them in future blog entries), so bring it on, the shokuyoku no aki. I’m all over it.

I kept writing all kinds of posts in my head to restart my blogging, but it turns out I had to figure out a way to show Seth this video  without also bringing up some pornography involving a popular man product marketed heavily to 11-year old children which name I refuse to type (hint: Lizzie Borden had one). What does that have to do with offsides? It must be a slang term with which I am unfamiliar. Not that I’m against pornography per se, but when you’re trying to explain offsides to a 14-year old, it might be extremely distracting to say the least to have a beaver shot right there on the screen as well. So, live and learn about offsides, dear reader!

Hahahahahahahahahahand it didn’t even work! I confess, dear reader, I sometimes have great difficulty navigating this particular lane of the INFORMATION HIGHWAY!!! Oh well, at least the pornography is happy/jolly and everyone looks like they’re having a good time! Seth claims not to have seen that particular ad, but that’s a little hard to believe. Oh well, on to the next event!

Yesterday, Owen came home and got in my lap where I was sitting reading in the big red chair. We had a chat about the evil standardized test that he’d completed that day in school, he told me about the dog-walking extravaganza he’d just gone on with 2 friends from school, their dogs, and our dog. I asked him about his friend, Jason, who he’s been hanging out with a lot. Owen has told us that he’s not allowed to go into Jason’s house after school and that they can only play outside. We found this rather odd, so I asked him if he’d gone into Jason’s house that afternoon. He said he had, and they’d eaten snack: a banana dipped in chocolate, which explained the state of his chin. He said, “It’s fine, Mom, Jason just asks his sister not to tell, and we’re just in there for a little bit to eat snack.”

“Oh, are you not supposed to go in there because there aren’t any parents around?” I inquired, and he allowed as to how that was probably so. We talked about having Jason come over here instead of violating parental decree, and he thought that would be all right.

“What’s his sister like?” I asked. Jason is a bit of a piece of work, and I wondered.

“She’s all right. She’s kind of nice. Only she thinks ‘gay’ is an insult.”

“Really? Did you tell her you have close personal family who’s gay?”

“I was going to, Mom, but Jason did before me. He said, ‘Liam’s mom is gay, and it’s perfectly all right.’ And anyway, if she thinks gay is an insult, she’s gay.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she thinks you’re gay if you like someone of your same gender, so she says me and Jason are gay because we like each other, but she has friends who are girls so by her definition, she must be gay.”

“Oh.”

“She always talks in a British accent, too.”

Right. Meanwhile, Seth is deep in the closet about having gay moms and has asked if my Beau and I could reschedule our wedding so that he could go to a friend’s Bar Mitzvah that’s, alas, on the same day.

Tonight is the annual fifth grade dance and social. Two years ago, I was driving Seth and four of his friends (many of whom are named Sam), to this dance. They were all slicked up and excited, suddenly ready to be in middle school and play boy/girl games. This evening, I was driving Owen and another boy on his soccer team to and from practice, there having been no interest evinced in the dance, and the two of them were talking about how awesome it would be to, say, hide behind a tree until your friend walked by, then jump out and scream, “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!” and then, under cover of your friend’s great surprise at this action, to sneakily pull out your water gun and squirt them with the fart juice you’d previously filled said water gun with.

Two boys, two ways of being in the world. One lucky Mom.

Just now when I was driving home from therapy where the two of us had decided that I’m an ebullient person spreading effulgence in the world (my therapist is as big a word nerd as I am, not to mention someone who puts a positive spin on things), I got a huge honk from the guy behind me. I sort of came to – I was definitely drifting – and saw that he was really right on my ass. I wondered if I’d drifted in front of him and I felt bad and shocked. Then he passed me and gave me the ol’ va fongul (which I don’t actually know how to spell). I waved, a kind of “Shit, I’m sorry!” wave, and then blew him a few kisses. He gave me the finger. I was behind him at the next light and I leaned out the window and apologized. He gave me the finger. I said, “I’m really sorry – did I drift?” He gave me the finger. I said I was sorry again. He gave me the finger. I said, “Really? That’s the way it is? Well, I’m still really sorry.” He gave me the finger, but he also glanced at me quickly in the side view mirror.

So then I felt like crying. And I also took a few deep breaths. And I also tried to let it just pass. And I also started giggling because I had the silly thought that I had actually admired the decisive and sexy way he’d given me va fongul and how his finger-giving was very masterful and handsome. He was a vigorous middle aged white man with a nice tan and a big ring on his left hand. His rude gestures were very beautiful. Then I felt like crying again, because it really hurt my feelings that he wouldn’t accept my apology, plus I was shook up from having spaced out so bad while driving. I turned left and he went straight. I wondered if maybe he was feeling a little remorseful or if he felt satisfied. I wondered if he felt justified for acting that way with me because he’d been so up close and personal with all my queer/alternative/green bumper stickers and those maybe aren’t his views. I wonder if we’ll ever see each other again. Maybe we could laugh about it, especially if I showed him that I wasn’t mad at him or anything. I could say, “Man, I’d really spaced out – you must have been really afraid you were going to ram me!” and he could say, “Yeah – you cut me off really bad and I was already mad because of something else.” That would be really good. But for now I’ll just try to keep letting go of being shocked and upset, remember his sexy arm, and carry the fuck on.