I’m in fifth grade, and my Friday nights are spent at sleepovers with friends or wedged on the couch between mom and dad with a Disney movie and a cheese pizza. I’m annoyed when my older sister, Anna, starts ditching the family fun for “middle school things” like dances and football games. I fall asleep to a prayer sung by Mom, and I wake up early on Sunday mornings for cartoons and cinnamon rolls left on the counter by Dad on his way to prepare for church.
One day, my parents announce a family meeting. I roll my eyes with Anna — what would it be this time? We forgot to replace the empty toilet paper roll? A new rotation for our chores schedule? Or maybe, Dad got a bonus from performing all of the funerals there had been lately (the odd life of a pastor’s kid) and we’ll finally be able to afford a trip to Disney World? We can dream.
Mom sits in the comfy chair, a box of Kleenex by her side. She opens her mouth and within seconds my visions of roller coasters and pictures with Mickey and Minnie fade out of view. Mom is gay. She is in love with a woman. Mom and dad are getting a divorce.
Dad is sitting on the steps behind her — he’s already rehearsed his role. He does a lot of nodding and clasping his hands, and sometimes he chirps out a shaky, “we love you very much.”
Mom clings to a ball of Kleenex, her voice wavering the whole way through. She tells us it’s not something she can change. But she keeps apologizing to us, again and again, she’s so sorry, so sorry, and I’m lost, seeing her fall apart.
This was 2005, a year after Proposal Two passed in Michigan, where we lived. The amendment established the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and made it unconstitutional for the state to recognize or perform same-sex marriage. It wasn’t that long ago, but the times were very different. In my hometown, known for a “church on every corner,” my mom — and her new partner — were at risk of losing their jobs if word got out. My parents had just secured the tuition assistance grant they needed to afford private Christian school for my sister and I, and while they feared we could be kicked out if the news became public, they didn’t want to upend our lives further by pulling us out. So my younger self learned to keep secrets to keep herself safe.
A month later, I pass around slips of paper to my friends at lunch. Each contains a simple sentence: “meet me after school on the hill!” The final bell rings and our math teacher prays to close the day as always. Half the class has one eye peeking open, feet tapping, restless and ready to go home. With an “amen,” we are released.
My stomach churns as my friends make their way up the hill. I call the group to order and launch into a brief, extremely censored synopsis: my mom and dad love each other very much, but they have come to realize that they are not the right people for each other and that it just isn’t going to work. So they are going to get divorced. And if you have any more questions you can ask me. That’s what comes out of my mouth. In my head, there’s a lot more — something like: and also my mom is gay, and there is a woman moving into our house, but none of you can know that because you believe in a God who you think would tell you not to love us if you knew that. But it makes no sense — because she is my mom!
Eventually, my dad moves out, and my mom’s partner, Sally, moves in. Gradually, I begin to enjoy Sally’s magic touch with hot chocolate, her new title as “LQ” (the Laundry Queen — no stain too gruesome for her to get out), the way she remembers I like my PB&J with creamy peanut butter, not crunchy. When she drives, she lets me play the Jonas Brothers, and we harmonize together, doubled over in fits of giggles. Slowly, we shift.
Years pass. I hate going through the house looking for frames that need to be hidden before friends come over. I hate 9th grade government class, loathe it actually, because on gay marriage debate day, the musical football player who everyone wants to date starts talking about “homosexuals” as if they aren’t even humans, as if they have absolutely no control over their apparently raging sex drives. I hate that he tries to use evidence from the Bible, a book of love, to spew hate. I hate my classmates’ lazy nods of agreement. They are talking about my mom. My beautiful, wise, silly, mom. Little do they know that the monster of two people who love each other and have the same genitals are drinking decaf in my living room.
It’s springtime, senior year. I’ve scoped out the perfect booth at our usual afterschool spot, and I’m pretending to text while I wait for two of my best friends to show up. They walk in laughing and plop their backpacks under the table. I’m over-smiley, and my palms are sweaty, and my answers to their questions are a second too late every time, my mind elsewhere, but I successfully order my chicken tacos, and we sit down to eat.
Finally, the words are there. I’ve rehearsed this in my head all day long, sitting in AP Stats chanting, “there’s something I need to tell you…” over and over, but still I’m already crying by the second sentence. They both reach for my hand. I snot and sniffle and sigh and laugh through the whole ordeal, and they nod and sigh and “wow” right along with me. The first thing they say after my monologue is, “when can we meet Sally?!” Our hands are locked in and through and on each other’s, soft and firm and intertwined. Both grounded, and light. To know and be with is to love.
Sophomore year of college. We’re in the foreign land of Iowa — the closest state they can legally marry. Only four of their siblings are here, out of nine. It’s raining, sort of. More like drizzling, or icing, or a mix between the two. Whatever it is, it’s unpleasant. But they have cardigans, and umbrellas, and we wait by the car until it’s time. A small group of people who love us — all of us — sit on benches in the rain, waiting to be witnesses to something beautiful.
I sit and watch my mother marry the love of her life, and it’s kind of a miracle, how two people look at each other like that. Despite all that is broken, there is much more love.
I always cry at weddings.
Image by Polina Tankilevitch on pexels.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Telling Secrets - December 3, 2024