From All the Women Caught in a Flaring Light :: Gay Lesbian

From All the Women Caught in a Flaring LightImagine a big room of women doing anything,playing cards, having a meeting, the rattleof topic or coffee cups or chairs pushed back,the loud and quiet murmur of their voices,women leaning their heads together. If we leaned in at the door and I said, Those women be mothers, you wouldnt be surprised, notwithstanding at me for pointing out the obvious fact.Women are mothers, arent they? So obvious. For My Daughter Who Is Not MineWhen all the women in my life are mothers, what else can I aspire to be? Arent motherhood and womanhood so intricately interwoven so as to run into ane other, to become one another? What kind of woman are you if you cant add to the discussions in the doctor office waiting rooms about nursing this shaver or that through this malady or that? What kind of woman are you if you cant re-tell the story of labor and delivery, recounting the hours, the pain, the excess or lack of your childs hairiness over a church picnic while eating cold fried chicken and coleslaw? What kind of woman are you if you cant feel the contradiction in the midst of the satisfaction of a job well done and the sorrow at a loss for universe necessary when your child moves away from home? What else could I be entirely a mother? So, I am a mother, and yet am as well not one, because I can tell these stories about my child with only partial knowledge. I am a non-biological mother of a child with two mothers, making my position ambiguous when I share my parenting stories publicly though, at home, when Aedin calls out Momma, Im all too happy to be the one shes calling.The most common question we hear in public is whos the mother? as people look back and forth between Rachel and me, obviously confused. Its been asked matter-of-factly by doctors for their charts, shyly by new acquaintances out of curiosity, brazenly by total strangers out of nosiness, and sometimes not even spoken, but implied by a wide range of people knitti ng their brows in our direction in public places. When Im out alone with Aedin, no one asks this question Im sure Rachel has the same experience. Now that Aedin is verbal, she answers based upon how the person asks it since Im her Momma and Rachel is her Mommy, she answers accordingly, but she only looks at them with confusion if they use an ambiguous word such as Mom or Mother.