It started snowing for real this week. I can no longer peel out the door in the morning, papers in my teeth, and run up the street in hopes of making it on time. My cardio workout has now been replaced by the on-ice "leg muscle shuffle" leaving me even later than usual.
I was sliding down the hill one afternoon with a classmate who enthusiastically commented on the snow and the approach of christmas. Without a thought to curb my bitchiness, i blurted out that i hate both snow and christmas.
She shot me a 'mock shocked' look which *i* took to mean that unless i 'didn't celebrate' christmas i just have a poisonous negative attitude problem. She further suggested that the holidays were a time to appreciate 'family' as an adult.
I wish i'd had a better response at the time, but my aversion to the christian holiday onslaught is more visceral than logical - so i blamed my distaste on the fact that december was bad weather for travelling.
She smiled a smile that said 'grinchmuch?'
I walked home fuming.
Christmas is a loaded time. If it were just the religious parts, i could even get into it. I like the mary and jesus story some of the time. I like the idea of this girl with no realistic hope for a decent life who, after getting knocked up, believes that her baby is going to change the world. Unmarried and then unmarriageable, pregnant, poor, living under an occupation, no chance of a safe, legal abortion... I can admire her for clinging to hope by thinking that her kid was special, when everyone else probably thought she was trash.
I also like the idea that babies can provoke radical change. All parents know this. Pregnant people get told all the time that "your life will never be the same". Babies can't be controlled by the conventions and 'shoulds' that keep the rest of us from fucking up power structures most of the time. Babies help mess with the status quo just by being, and they can do this in love, milk, joy & poop. So much of my activism is fuelled by rage, babies remind me that radical change can be more playful and fun. And last year, when MamaM was pregnant with littleE, the whole thing felt so much closer to life. In one of my most memorable moments in lesbian theatre, MamaM got to play Mary in the church pagent. She declared to the whole congregation that "no man has touched me" and we got to make lots of "virgin birth" jokes for the whole season.
But christmas isn't just about the theological bits... Most people i know are emphatically not religious about it. In addition to the absurd cultural superiority implied in closing all major social and cultural institutions for a christian religious holiday....The part that i dislike is the
Family. The rest of the year, my 'family' just *is*. I live in an apartment with love, children & community/ies of a sort. I try to keep in touch, call, write. And i try to think up names and roles that describe the important people in my life with various degrees of success.
2 female parents:
- mommy/mama
- mom/meema
- mama/momo
- mommyName/mommyName
- Mom/Dad
- Mom/a word for mother in a language neither of us speak ?????)
Not that my situation is particularly complicated, just Queer, and there aren't enough words for us in common parlance.
littleE's sperm donor is:- donor
- uncle
- super-uncle
- sire?
Not that i have a horrible relationship with my bio-family either. I just resent the heteronormativity of the season in general. The rest of the year i can get away with not having to name anything outright, but at christmas, i'm supposed to be "spending time with my Family". And i'm forced to make a declaration, to say who is Family and who is "just friends". It's generally assumed that bio-family (and in these enlightened times it's also my 'legal' family) will be who i spend this time with, thereby announcing to the world that they are "real family", the people who count. My straight relations can be comfortable in the fact that things are 'normal' - especially now that we *could* get married -- we're just like a straight couple with infertility.
the girls who spend weekends at our place are: - neices
- foster kids
- littleE's cousins?
This may get increasingly complicated as littleE gets older, and i'd like to have a plan now, so that he's not forced to defend his relationships.... His legal family and biological family are not all the same, and i don't want to force everyone to agree on how
Family they all are to one another
MamaM's brother is "Uncle" to littleE, that's easy cuz legal AND biological, his partner is:... ? His partner's other lovers are...? His other lovers are...?I like the ambiguity of my family. It's not finished yet, and i don't want to name it one thing before it has had a chance to grow into what it might become. I want to have the freedom to spend christmas with whomever it feels right to spend the time with. Whether it's
Family or people who may be "just friends". I want the freedom to invent some new traditions that work for the people around me, without making people travel ridiculous distances in terrible weather, and without implying that the folks i'm spending time with are my "real family". "real family" gets built through *relationships*, which may or may not be related to DNA, legal documents, or spending one dinner a year together. And who got to decide that christmas was the time to name real family anyway?
If the old story of it is worth much, that first christmas was spent by mary with her lover, a 'donor-conceived' newborn, some distant relations of the Joseph-guy, and lots of complete strangers who came through for them with all the things that "real family" is supposed to be doing. If it weren't tied up in a whole lot of capitalist christian hegemony, I think it could be a great queer/chosen-family holiday!
But my bio/legal family are nice people, i don't want to start a fight. They are 'tolerant', we should therefore want to spend holidays there (after all, lots of queers aren't welcome at christmas dinners). Most of the other important people in my life also have nice bio/legal families, and they aren't going to start fights either.
Nobody likes a grinch. The lights are pretty and people are being nice to one another. It's only a few days. It'll make the grannies happy. I should be grateful...
...
So let's get it bloody well over with and and wait for the weather to warm the heck up so that i can go back to running to school in 30 minutes or less.
---(after i finished this post i came across another Queer perspective on the holidays...though i found "orphaned" and "assimilated" to be equally depressing choices. More Turkey anyone?)
http://www.xtra.ca/public/viewstory.aspx?SessionId=51340c44-b20c-499e-b3ff-aad4b3254ef3&AFF_TYPE=3&STORY_ID=1145&PUB_TEMPLATE_ID=7
Here's a cute and current shot of littleE...
