Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?: Confessions of a Gay Dad (25 page)

“Right!” I laughed. “Of course. Midge is just a doll.”

“And we grew in her womb. Babies grow in a
womb
. Not in your tummy.” Eliza was proud to have so many answers. I was flustered and feeling a little feverish. Maybe playing Birth Mom Barbie wasn’t such a great idea after all. I started having second thoughts about introducing the word “adoption” so aggressively. I wisely decided I was in over my head and put the dolls away for the day.

Finally it came up organically when the children were watching the animated film
Rio
(about two dozen times) in which there’s a young Brazilian boy, Fernando, who has no family. Amazing how many of my parenting lessons seem to come from cartoons. At the end of the film (spoiler alert)
the Brazilian scientist Tulio falls in love with the midwestern macaw-owner Linda, and they adopt Fernando and live in Rio happily ever after. And my kids
love
that part. Out of the blue, sometimes they’ll just tell me that Fernando didn’t have a family but then Tulio and Linda adopted him and now they’re a family.

“That’s right! Isn’t that so lucky for Fernando? And super lucky for Linda and Tulio!” I may be a tad overenthusiastic. “Who else was so lucky to be adopted?” And both kids smile and shout out their names. It’s cute. And I know it’ll get tired and old really soon, so I enjoy it while I can.

I started mentioning the
A
word everywhere I could. Like in
And Tango Makes Three
, that fabulous children’s book that tells the real story of two male penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo who became mates and nurtured an abandoned egg until they hatched a baby penguin they raised as their daughter, Tango. Of course the idea of adoption will take on more complexity as the kids grow up and start understanding about sex and birth control and wine coolers and rock concerts and reclining car seats. It will be messy for them and possibly even painful. Don and I wonder how it’s going to resolve itself. What happens when they’re twelve or fifteen or twenty? Will they struggle with a feeling of loss or abandonment as they empathize more with Monica and who she was when she was nineteen or twenty-one, when they were born? Having been through the experience twice now, we know it’s never a woman’s first choice to get pregnant and then make an adoption plan. It’s a solution. Which implies a problem. That’s just a fact. As is the reality of that moment at the hospital when the baby
goes from the arms of the birth mother into the arms of the adoptive parents:
the happiest moment in one couple’s lives is quite possibly the saddest in that mother’s
. Even if she knows it was the only and most loving choice she could make. That’s why you don’t really bring balloons and Mariachi bands into the hospital room with an open adoption. Because the harsh truth is that our blessing was due to our birth mom’s misfortune. Makes you wonder, really, about fate or the universe or the existence of God. If there is a God, why would He have allowed her to be in this predicament? Was God only watching over us—to have brought us such happiness? Or, perhaps, it’s how one explains what brought us all together in the first place. I’m not sure what I believe. Though I feel certain we wound up with the family we were meant to have.

Monica has always said she felt proud of her adoption decision. She found solace in the knowledge that she was helping create a family for a couple that couldn’t naturally. Not only that, Monica would only ever place her child with two guys in a same-sex relationship. She is a real supporter of gay rights and loves feeling like she is helping our cause. But there might have been another layer to it, as well. Many of the birth mothers in open adoption, our lawyer told us, prefer gay men as potential parents as it sort of ensures they will forever be seen as the only “mother.” Maybe. Who knows, in Monica’s case? Her motives and reasons were her own; we may never know or understand them.

•   •   •

Jonah recently celebrated his fourth birthday. As we do each year, we got a call from Monica. Jonah grabbed the phone
from my hand to say hello to her. He doesn’t remember her but knows exactly what role she played in his life. At least as well as a four-year-old knows anything.

“Hi, Monica!” he shouted into the phone. He answered
yes
to a bunch of questions that came after that. Then he started to describe his birthday cake and a few of his presents. And then, after a long silence, Jonah sang out, in his high little-boy voice, “Thank you for carrying me in your womb!”

He handed me back the phone with a swagger, as if to say,
That’s how it’s done!
Then he returned to his Lego fire truck. And you know what? He meant it. He turned to one of the friends he invited to his birthday party and announced proudly, “I’m adopted. Just like Fernando in
Rio
!”

I smile at Don, so glad the kids were able to embrace the idea in a sweet, uncomplicated way. But then as I look around at the other parents, I wonder if they think I oversimplified the concept. I laugh, nervously, as I suddenly feel the need to explain.

“That’s right, Jonah, but you and Eliza were never without a family. You were always wanted, right from the beginning. Actually, Fernando was wanted too. By his family. Before he lost them.” Jonah looks up at me, confused. I’m getting tongue-tied.

“No. No. It’s okay,” I try and reassure him. “After his parents died, maybe Fernando was left without . . . he didn’t have anyplace to go.” The kids stare at me, frozen. What had I done? Don went to get the cake. So I was on my own to dig the foot out of my mouth.

“Oh, it’s a
nice
story. Because he wasn’t living in the streets very long. At all. I mean, sure, he did turn to crime.
And he was thin, but not really starving or sick like a lot of homeless kids—” Jonah actually starts to cry. Eliza isn’t far behind him.

“Kids! It’s a happy ending because Linda and Tulio adopted Fernando . . .” It’s no use. The kids don’t like the word pictures I’ve created. At long last, I let it go and announce, “Time for cake, everyone!”

I thought about Ken, his partner Biff, and Birth Mom Barbie. Maybe I was the one who needed them all along. Because as is often the case, the kids know better than the parents. While the story is complicated, the truth is quite simple: “Thank you, Monica, for carrying them in your womb.”

I
’m Jewish. And I have the big hair and subsequent flatiron scars to prove it. And of course the embarrassing Bar Mitzvah pictures with me in a brown, three-piece Pierre Cardin suit surrounded by a gaggle of pubescent girls in braces and beige gauchos towering over my squat four-eleven frame. My bar mitzvah was an important milestone in my life. Not because I read from the Torah for the first time or was seen as a “man” in the eyes of my people. It was a huge party with dance games, a cake in the shape of the classic theater masks (hello?), and the first time I was able to get Joe DeCarlo and Eric Stempler to show up to one of my parties. They were the most popular guys at school. That felt really good.

My Jewishness also included celebrating the major holidays when I was growing up: Chanukah, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur. We never fasted, but it was still a tough day, as my dad would sequester himself in the den and cry, remembering his parents, both of whom died when he was in his early thirties. We’d go to temple for the Kol Nidre service and I would count the lightbulbs in the synagogue
while some lady played the Kol Nidre prayer on a cello. There was never a dry eye in the house. Although
my
tears were from boredom.

Like most Jewish Americans, we were in it for the cultural experience rather than the religious significance. Like Tevye in
Fiddler on the Roof
, it was all about
tradition
and the connection these rituals seemed to have to those who came before us, especially for all those who perished in the Holocaust. It was not about God.

We never talked about God. In fact, when it came up, both my parents made it pretty clear they were atheists. Actually, my dad was more of an agnostic, as he’d often concede that we’d never really know about the existence of God but he believed in “something”—maybe a fourth dimension or what he’d describe as “the unknown.” Despite their skepticism about religion and the existence of God, my parents did send me to Hebrew school where I learned a few songs, some unlikely biblical stories, and how to sneak out of a bathroom window.

As an adult, once I moved to Los Angeles I continued to celebrate the holidays in my own way. I’d surround myself with others who’d grown up as I did and occasionally crash a temple service for the High Holidays. It’s something I’ve struggled to maintain, especially once I was in a relationship with a Catholic, albeit a lapsed one. Don, more than anything, is a devout atheist who recoils at the thought of any organized religion. It’s gotten so bad lately that Don roots against any reality show competitors, regardless of their dance abilities or swimmers’ bodies, who invoke the name of God in the outcome of their game. Oh, how he relishes
his Schadenfreude when they are eliminated—laughing as they explain away their misfortune as “His will.” Needless to say, the notion of raising my kids as strictly Jewish was off the table. But while Don would happily avoid the whole area of religion altogether, he’s been cooperative in helping integrate into our lives the traditions most important to me.

Since the first year we met, we’ve always celebrated Passover. The first year, I was only twenty-eight and used the seder as an opportunity to come out of the closet to some of the extended family and friends that still didn’t know. That particular seder went down in family lore as the “gayder.” For over twenty-five years I’d sat at the Passover table, only now I had my boyfriend next to me. I was a nervous wreck, convinced the pink elephant in the room had upstaged the story of our people being freed. I was representing a different “people” that night and my stomach was doing backflips. Finally, I mustered my courage and pulled my aunt aside before dinner to tell her I was gay. I thought the worst was over, but the actual meal was torture. Why was this night different from all other nights? Gee, I don’t know, let me think. Maybe it’s because all my relatives are imagining me with a penis in my mouth!

It got easier as the years progressed. Don joined me as a regular at the table and now we continue to travel east for the holiday with the kids. And now that my father is no longer with us, my sister, her husband, and I run the seder as a team.

The kids and I also celebrate Chanukah every year, lighting a menorah on most of the eight nights. I say the prayer and the kids love having an extra holiday and extra presents!
Make no mistake, I love Christmas. I love getting a tree, trimming it, putting up stockings and all those gorgeous twinkling lights. When I was a kid, I tried to contain my enthusiasm and sell the Chanukah bush idea to my parents with a minimalist design, only silver and blue balls, white lights, and a simple Star of David on top. But once I married a goy I went hog wild (I know, not kosher) with the multicolored lights, elaborate ornaments, and inflatable Santas in every window! There is nothing quite like the fervor of a Jew celebrating Christmas. We get to throw all our neurotic and obsessive attention to detail into a holiday that was kept from us as kids. And now with small kids, I get right in there with the Santa hat, the plate of cookies for him, the caroling, and the stockings hung by the chimney with care.

At no point has the question of God ever come up with the kids. They haven’t asked and we haven’t been in any hurry to explain it. Don would undoubtedly call it “mumbo jumbo,” which would probably call into question other childhood myths. Neither of us ever wanted to lie to them. But we realized that cheating them out of the stories of Santa and the Easter bunny and the Tooth Fairy would also be cheating ourselves out of their wide-eyed wonder when they’d talk about them. Their imaginations run wild with possibilities of how they enter the house and leave treats for the kids while they sleep. Our children believe with an enviable commitment. It makes me want to believe like that—in something. Things got a little tricky when the pets died. “Where are they?” the kids asked. We told them they were dead. But “dead” isn’t an easy concept for children when they’re so little. We swallowed hard and said, gently, “We
don’t know. They stopped living and now they aren’t here anymore. That’s what ‘dead’ is.” It would have been convenient to talk about God and Heaven and angels, but that wasn’t going to happen in our house. At all. And the kids were fine.

So this year when I had the opportunity to bring the kids to a friend’s temple for a very sweet, family service for Rosh Hashanah, I thought it might be a nice way to introduce them to a tradition from their daddy’s childhood. Understandably Don didn’t want to go but was very open to my taking the kids: “Have fun getting into tight pants to expose our kids to black magic!”

Within a few minutes of our arrival, the congregation began singing a familiar Hebrew prayer and I found myself singing along. In fact, I knew most of the songs. And while the Hebrew meant nothing to me in a literal sense, something about knowing the words and melodies made me feel a sense of belonging not just to the rest of the congregation and to my family but to hundreds of years of tradition that came before me. I looked over at my kids. Eliza was listening and mouthing the words she pretended to know. Jonah had his yarmulke over his face. I used to do that. For a second, it even looked like he was counting lightbulbs. I wanted to remember this moment forever. I was overcome with an enormous wave of humility and gratitude. Gratitude to whom or to what? That’s a bigger question.

For the moment, let’s put aside all the debates over how or what we teach the kids—how much we compromise on TV viewing, how much sugar to give them, and how it all impacts whether they become crack whores or not. Put aside
my petty preoccupations over whether to straighten my hair before the parent/teacher conference or whether the skinny jeans I just bought are age-inappropriate. Notwithstanding all that, I do know this: I love Don enough to respect his refusal to believe in a force great enough to create if that same force is cruel enough to destroy. And Don loves me enough to respect my belief in some inexplicable force that gives us the strength and courage to take on the greatest of life’s challenges: from the very decision to start a family by making an adoption plan, to the treatment of a congenital heart defect, to the challenge of keeping our kids’ fingers out of every orifice of their bodies with love and without shame. Add to that all the daily triumphs and defeats that come with being a human being on a planet with children who all at once make us feel immortal and remind us that we aren’t.