Out in the Mountains

by Patrica J .

After spending my vacation with a les-
bian couple and their 8 year—old Indian
daughter, I'm once again rethinking what
family means. I do that often these
days...when my married brother is always
referred to as having a family andl am not;
when I meet a young woman with an infant
at her shoulder and later meet her partner,
the biological mother of this child they've
chosen to have and raise together; when an
aging gay man sits beside the bed of his
dying partner; when I see and hear us -
gays, lesbians, and bisexuals - referring to
the home we came from as "family" but too
seldom the one we're in; when a gay man
introduces me to his teenage son. The list
goes on and on.

Identifying oneself as gay, lesbian, or
bisexual often brings with it a stereotype of
being anti-family, of being "only in the re-
lationship foryourself." Because many of
us are single or present that appearance, we
often feel excluded where "families"
gather and too often in our own families of

 

 
  
      
        

  

      
     
      
 
    
   
  

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A Different Life: Family

origin we my excluded. If this doesn't hap-
pen deliberately, it happens subtly - for
example, when the conversation and fam-
ily celebrations focus on married children
and grandchildren as though we have noth-
ing in our lives worth inquiring about or
celebrating.

Gay and lesbian couples who decide
on parenting have new and often difficult
trails to blaze, and I hope the time comes
soon when we're able as a society to see
who they are and to witness the love and
commitment they're sharing.

My friends‘ daughter has grown 6" in
her year with them. She speaks English
fluently now, having known only a few
words when they brought her home. She's
received medical treatment that will proba-
bly allow her to live a longer and more in-
dependent life than in the crowded orphan-
age in India. What impressed me most after
seeing a video of her a year ago and being
with her now is the vivaciousness of her
spirit, the blossoming of a weak, depressed
child into a daring and engaging one.

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As the two women told hospital sto-
ries, explaining their co-parent role and the
coming-out it required so that the child
wouldn't be deprived of either of them, or
they of her, I saw that some things are
changing...that when we believe in who we
are, in the power of the love we have to
share, and then dare to present that to our
world, words take on new meanings. We
who seem not to fit into the traditional
definition of "family" still know only too
well what family mm mean. We know
because we've often had to create it for
ourselves -- when we commit ourselves
with a partner to a shared way of life, when
we discover that the feelings and support
among us are stronger than any "family"
has offered, when we decide alone or with
another to parent children because we
know that what a child needs most is love.

We may not look like "family" and we
may feel ostracized or merely tolerated in
the one from which we came, but we also
are creators of new families where love and
acceptance and growth are once again ours.

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