Busy Half Term With The Boy (blogging for LGBT families)

One of the things I like about my new status of PhD student is the flexibility to stay at home (or actually not at home much!) with my son when it’s the school holiday. I don’t blog too much about The Boy as this is an author blog and I try to stick to publicity stuff and info about writing so don’t talk too much about personal stuff (fnar, okay: I don’t talk about The Boy). The other reason of course is due to the agreement that Alys and I have that his name is never mentioned online and his photo isn’t displayed, hence referring to him as The Boy which is not the postmodern affectation that some may think.

Another very good reason that I haven’t blogged about every little tantrum and trauma that he puts me through is that I respect his privacy. I don’t blog about arguments I’ve had with my lover or friends who’ve dissed me, and I don’t blog about The Boy. I hope that some day when he’s old enough to blog himself (or whatever new wave twittering goes on in the next decade) he’ll offer me the same courtesy.

So a one-time-only special offer blog about The Boy, or at least about the things we’ve done this week and how much I love the little money-drain, is in order for the Blogging for LGBT Families day.

Most of the time I don’t think of myself as a lesbian mother, although this is a label I have used. Most of the time I don’t think of myself as a lesbian or as a mother, although I live the life, I’m not continually conscious of the role. It’s just normal for me. Perhaps it’s because I compartmentalise things so well and think of ‘lesbian’ as being to do with my writing rather than my family. Only when I’m confronted with someone reacting negatively towards me because they think I have no right to existence or if I do then it has to be under a stone with no contact with children or other good citizens, or if I see others being treated like this, do I snap-to and challenge that assumption. What annoys me is that when people think of a lesbian mother, they’re thinking somehow that we’re different to other mothers, that we’d be doing something inappropriate or abusive towards our children.

Ninety-nine percent of my waking life is not thinking of lesbianism, if lesbianism is equated with sex. Contrary to the opinion of people who don’t know lesbians, ninety-nine percent of my life is not about sex, it’s about working, getting things done and mostly about The Boy. Where is he, who’s looking after him, what does he need, when do I need to pick him up, what will he need for tomorrow, is he happy, has he had enough to eat, is he eating his vegetables, is he asleep yet, how much TV has he watched today… et cet. et cet. ad infinit. People who don’t know lesbian mothers act surprised when they realise this – hey, she really is a mother just like us!

We belong to a great lesbian mothers group here in Cardiff which is mainly babies and toddlers so The Boy sometimes feels a bit out of place, but we like to be supportive and Alys being a midwife wants to be involved and we both love babies and all sorts of reasons. Lots more lesbian parents are around now than there used to be, or is it that there is more visibility? When The Boy was a baby, we fell in the gap between the lesbian network of pubs’n’clubs and the mother’n’toddler groups who stared aghast when we turned up together. Two women? But, but which of you is the mum? Not that I’m bitter, I’m more bitter about the fact that our local Tesco started stocking gluten-free products just when he grew out of his allergy (see, that’s my being-a-real-mother thing again). I’m very happy that there are more lesbians, more lesbian parents and more facilities for us. The more the merrier, and the less likely we’ll get those double-takes. And eventually people will stop asking how he was conceived when they finally realise how rude that is and you wouldn’t ask that question of a heterosexual couple you’d just met.

Since we had a civil partnership, he calls me his step-mum which is a lot easier for both us and the people we talk to. Between us, I’m Mummy Josie, or lately MJ which is more cool, but when he talks about me to other people I’m his step-mum. Having a label like that makes people comfortable, because otherwise I was a spare part. As his main carer when Alys was working a lot and I was part-time, I was just accepted as his mother when it was me and him, but then I’d get the questions about the birth and whether I breast fed and stuff, and would have to say actually I didn’t have him. So then I’d get reactions as if I’d deceived them somehow.

Right I’m straying off the point again now, but you see why I don’t usually blog about this stuff as I could keep on going forever. And I’m not an angry dyke. Or at least I am an angry dyke but the things that I’m usually angry about are how I always get the shopping trolley with the dodgy wheel, or how people who attend the church opposite our house (oh yes, welcome to my personal hell) park their cars across my drive and block me in, is that Christian?

So back to the point, this week has been a glut of make’n’do, tadpole care and festival attending as only life with a ten-year-old can be. Tuesday we went to the Urdd (Youth Eisteddfod and for anyone not in Wales that means a music and arts festival) which was good fun but my feet were killing me when I got home. Wednesday was raining fit to flood but we still managed to take the dog down to the river and collect a bucket of pond weed for the tadpoles currently living in a tub under the sink. And fell down the bank and got covered in mud but had the best time. Then we started painting some Australian style pictures, a dragon for The Boy and frogs/tadpoles for me.

Yesterday Alys had to go to work so we cadged a lift to Bristol because The Boy had a free ticket for @Bristol (free so long as I paid full-price). We took the ferry which was ace, I never knew Bristol was that cool! It was like Amsterdam all over again, with the houseboats and everything. I recommend the ferry definitely, you don’t even pay tourist hyped prices, it’s just a few pounds like the bus. The Boy loved the ferry as I knew he would, and loved @Bristol too. He’d been there with school (hence the free ticket) so he could show me around importantly. I’m continually surprised at how much information his head holds as he is a collector of factoids, but I shouldn’t really be as I know who he takes after. Between me and Alys he hasn’t got a hope in hell of being anything but super-genius.

Today we went to the Hay Festival. The Boy and me and Auntie Carole watched a man called Hugh talking about hedgehogs which was excellent fun while Alys went to a very important and clever writing people thing. We saw the Bookchase man again and told him how much we loved the game since we bought it at last year’s Hay Fest and play it all the time. We also went into Hay town for the ace second hand bookshops that are there all year around and the alternative Hay Fest in the castle where the clothes stall that was there last year (and I got my lovely purple trews from) was there again this year. I got two pairs, hurrah for spending sprees! Also a total of 13 books, 5 second hand and only 2 full price. Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger had to be bought and it’s the first book in a long time that I’ve bought in hardback on publication week without even reading the blurb. Hey, it’s Sarah Waters, do I need to say any more?

I would dearly love to go and see Sarah Waters, Steven Fry and many more, but I took The Boy to hedgehogs and then bought him some more Beano annuals for his collection. I keep telling myself that it won’t be many years before he decides he doesn’t want to hang out with me any more and I’ll have all the time to myself to do my own stuff then. I don’t want to ignore him now and then regret it later. I try to write while he’s in school and after he’s gone to bed and the rest of the time we do stuff, even if it’s just watching Spongebob together or playing board games. We do the things that he wants to do. Which lately often involves me crawling through mud for crucial tadpole reasons.

So I think I’ve earned my mummy points pretty much this week. Next week I shall be mostly lying down in a dark room.

Except right now I feel so full of adrenaline. It might be that Hay coffee…

All of a Twitter
Just tagged on the end of this post is my new Twitter thingy. I succumbed at last and set up the account yesterday. http://twitter.com/josie_henley