So last week we packed up the turtles and drove 400 miles to visit with S’s extended family. It was the boys first trip up there and their “debut” in the land of S’s birth. We spent most of the week schlepping them from place to place and random relative to random relative. It was not a baby-friendly trip and there wasn’t much in it for an 11-month old, but our guys were total troopers about it and the trip was mostly a success.
S’s very beloved grandfather, who passed away in 2004, was a twin. In fact, he was not only a twin, but he had a twin brother. So the fact that one of his four grandchildren went on to have twin boys has been very significant in S’s family. Last week we had a big dinner in which that whole side of the family was together. S’s mom and her sister (the two children of her late grandfather), all four of their kids (S., S’s brother, S’s two cousins), their spouses, and all of the next generation of kids.
Prominent on this guest list was S’s aunt. (Her mom’s sister, her grandfather’s oldest daughter.) Said aunt had a MAJOR falling out with the family almost ten years ago over (among many other things) our wedding and the general gayness factor. After informing us, via letter, in no uncertain terms, that she would NOT be attending our “commitment ceremony” (she refused to call it a wedding) she basically stopped talking to either of us for about 7 years. She would act like a child and refuse to acknowledge my presence or say hello to me whenever we were in the same place. She refused to mention my name to anyone in the family. She behaved like a total asshole. It wasn’t pretty.
Things were basically at that standstill (perhaps marginal improvement had been made) when we announced the pregnancy. And S. and I held our breath while we waited for her reaction. I fully expected it to be even more of her bullshit. Which would have meant that we could NEVER have these family gatherings again. Because there was no way in HELL we would allow her to treat our children that way. But instead, she shocked the hell out of us and accepted the pregnancy. Hell, more than that, she embraced it. She started emailing S. and facebooking her and asking about how I was doing and how the boys were. She sent us a card ADDRESSED TO BOTH OF US when the boys were born. (That may sound like a small thing but for her it astronomical.)
Part of us goes–well–babies are magic and thank GOD she stopped behaving like such a bigoted ass and thank GOD she loves our boys. Part of us.
But there’s another part of me that is bugged by her about-face. And I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t this whole biological connection (she knows the boys were created via S’s eggs) and the whole “next generation of twin boys in the family” thing that has made her acceptance possible. That would have been withheld had the boys come from my ovaries.
When she showed up at the dinner, she had gifts for the boys. (Another shocker.) But she also had printed a series of old, old photos of S’s grandfather and his twin when they were babies that she gave to S. (She often comments on FB photos about how one of the boys looks like S’s grandfather.) And then she spent a lot of the evening trying to take one of the turtles out of my arms and parade him around.
It just bothered me. As much as I don’t want to go looking into the mouth of this particular horse, it makes me miffed to find that suddenly, now that I’ve produced S’s genetic kids, I’m OKAY in her book. I’m back in the family.
All of this was part of a larger aspect to the week which was the focus on S’s clan. Everyone we spent time with (even the octogenarian relatives) seemed to understand how the boys were conceived and want to raise/reinforce the genetic tie to their family. As much as most of it was harmless and unintentional, it often made me, and my role as the turtles’ mother, marginalized. I spent a lot of the week feeling like more of an outsider than I usually do around S’s family. Feeling insecure about my relationship to the boys and feeling slighted every time someone wanted to play the “who does this baby resemble in our family?” game.
It made me want to hold the boys even closer to me. To constantly display (hence this post’s title) my mothering role. I’ll admit I was happy we were on this trip in the middle of “stranger anxiety” phase, because both turtles are currently slow to warm up around new people and eager to reach for me (and S., but more often me) when feeling overwhelmed in new settings. I felt this annoying need to constantly PROVE my bond to them and desire to stake my claim. I’ve found, even when around my family (although here only my parents participate in this) that people are eager to try and claim our boys as theirs. As part of THEIR family. That was very true all last week. And I’m VERY glad to be home where we are a family of four and I don’t have to share them with anyone.
