AUTHOR: M. DATE: 10:10:00 PM ----- BODY:

Ready for a good rant? I am sick to death of certain people who insist on making certain issues about them. I've had it with announcing major life decisions to people who are very important to me and having the response be somewhere on the scale between lukewarm and downright negative. Just once in my adult life I'd like to hit a major milestone and have all the important people in my life say "hooray!" No processing. No working through issues. No guilt trips or need for explanations. Just unadulterated, uncomplicated joy (if there such a thing). Apparently, it doesn't work like that. The choices I've made and paths I've taken in my life don't always follow the lines of things people dream of for their kids and grandkids. But I like - no, I LOVE - where I've gone. It's working for me. So come with me or don't. I know, logically, that real life and relationships don't work that way. But a little unconditional support from the people you count on most doesn't seem like it would be so much to ask. Even as I'm writing that I'm actually thinking: yes it does. But I can still be self-righteous... and anyway, I am lucky enough to have more than a few people who are unconditionally supportive of the way we've chosen to build our family. So I know it can be done.

I'm feeling terribly disloyal even putting this out in the blogosphere, but not many people in my real life read this, so here it is.

Tonight I got a big old fat guilt trip from my grandmother. An I'm-so-depressed, this-isn't-happening-the-way-I-wanted-it-to guilt trip. The words "transracial adoption" were not spoken in this conversation, but they didn't need to be. She was in the hospital last week, and has been dragging since then. I've been calling her and hearing her not sound so good, but thought it was still about her recovering. Tonight she announced to me that her illness was over and done with - it was all the other stuff ("you know what I'm talking about, don't play games with me, M.") that was dragging her down. Big sigh. Another big sigh. Now I should also say that we just got tickets to spend 64 hours round trip on Amtrak next month to go see her. After the last time I saw her, when I broke the news that we were planning to do adopt and she responded by telling me that my baby would not be welcome in her house (this following the "you're doing WHAT? You're adopting a WHAT?" conversation), I think I should get a few points for going back for another weekend of haranguing (though if anyone is a candidate for sainthood in this scenario, it's I. for coming with me). My aunt said recently, in another context entirely, that when a relationship is hung up in strife, if you want to heal it you have to do "the next right thing." My aunt is a smart lady. I'm trying to do the next right thing by going down there before we have a baby and trying to work it out with Nana. I'm trying to give her a break for not living in the happy little racially-integrated, queer-friendly world I live in. And she'll be 89 this winter - I don't want to waste time screwing around and being stubborn. But this. is. exhausting. Make that fucking exhausting.

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Away2me COMMENT-DATE:9:04 AM COMMENT-BODY:I'm sorry for you. Family always has a way of making the best times really good or really bad. -------- COMMENT-AUTHOR:

wenders COMMENT-DATE:4:49 PM COMMENT-BODY:I am so glad that I found your blog through FemiknitMafia. One of the things my mom said when I came out to her was that I clearly had been thinking/working/processing all of this stuff for at least a year (at LEAST!) and that it might take her as long to get through her own stuff - possibly because she didn't know she had 'stuff' to get through to begin with.

So hang in there. I am wicked impressed you have a Nana that you could even contemplate having this discussion with at all.

:) --------