who will my son marry?

On Sunday I took my son Leo to his school to play on the playground. During school the playground is separated by grade - the kindergartners have a separate playground, one for first and second graders, and one for 3rd through 6th graders. Since Leo is at the end of second grade (two more days left), he has wanted to play on the "big kids" playground since he was a kindergartner. As we were walking up, he made some negative remark about girls. I told him that he would change in mind about girls and would most likely marry one. He immediately said no, that he was going to marry a boy. I smiled to myself, thinking that he was imitating his own family. And chances are he is heterosexual and will marry a woman. When I mentioned this to my husband David, he said that I shouldn't dismiss Leo's statement so quickly. David said that at Leo's age, 7, that David knew that he was interested in other boys, but without role models in either his life or the media he didn't have an understanding or vocabulary to express it. I guess that is possible, but nothing about Leo has set off my "gaydar." I am curious though - of the people who read this who are gay or lesbian, did you know at age 7 that you were attracted to people of the same sex?

our San Francisco anniversary

Today is Valentine' Day, but for me it's the anniversary of the first time that David and I were married. In February 2004, Gavin Newsome, the mayor of San Francisco, ordered his staff to offer marriage licenses to all couples regardless of their sexual orientation. The first couple married was Del Lyon and Phyllis Martin, who had been advocates for equal rights for lesbians and gays since the 1950s. Then other couples were married. We heard about it on the Thursday before Valentine's Day. We had planned a "date night" for the two of us that Valentine's night, and Millie and Phil were going to babysit Leo. But when the chance to get married came up, I wanted to go for it. David was skeptical regarding the legality of the marriage but went along for me. So Valentine's morning, the three of us plus Millie and Phil drove to San Francisco, which is about 70 miles away.

When we arrived about 10:30, the line was about 3/4 of the way around City Hall. We stood in line from 10:30 until about 3:00, then were finally in the chaos of the clerk's office. The staff volunteered to work on Saturday and were handling huge volumes of marriage applicants. Once we received our license, there were city workers who were deputized (if that's the right word) to perform the ceremonies, and one of Gavin Newsome's assistants married us, with Leo and Millie and Phil watching.

As we came out of City Hall, there were a few UC Berkeley students giving out flowers to the couples. I still have the dried petals from the flowers.

Afterward, we called another gay couple that we knew in San Francisco. We met them though our adoption agency, and they adopted their son about 6 months before Leo was born. They got married on Thursday or Friday. They invited us over to their house and fed the five of us dinner.

As you know, the California Supreme Court later declared the marriages "null and void", but invited people affected to file suit challenging the exclusion of same sex couples from marriage. That led to the decision for marriage equality in 2008, and we were married again in August 2008.

So now we have three anniversaries that we celebrate. The one that we think of as our real anniversary is the day of our first date, which was in July 1991. It was the only date that we celebrated for over a decade. Then we added our San Francisco anniversary on Valentine's Day. Plus we have the date that we were legally married. So we kinda celebrate all three, but mostly our July first date anniversary.

my inlaws are getting married, again

Last night my mother-in-law, who I'll call Millie, called to say that she and my father-in-law, who I'll call Phil, are getting married. This will be their second marriage. The first started in 1966 and apparently ran into trouble quickly. But it produced my husband David in 1970. (Sorry, had to edit out something about David that he didn't want me to share with the world. If you have already read it, pretend that you don't know about it.) They separated in 1978 and divorced in 1981.

By the time I joined the family in 1991, they were back to being each other's best friend. I told David that his parents were the closest divorced couple that I had ever seen. They took vacations together along with many other activities. They moved back in together in 2003, just before our son Leo was born. They expanded the house a few years later to have two master suites, since Phil's CPAP machine for his sleep apnea is too loud for them to sleep in the same room.

Last year they became domestic partners here in California. Phil had wanted them to remarry but Millie was reluctant. Now she's come around and they'll have a small ceremony at their Lutheran church later this month. So married for 15 years, divorced for 29, then remarried. Millie said that she has wanted to wait until David's marriage to me was recognized throughout the United States, but that will take years (I hope that it will happen eventually), and they are in their 60s.