All The Things I Should Have Said

So, in attempt to regain some semblance of a healthy lifestyle, J and I took Ocean to the gym today. After J kicked my butt at racquetball, we picked Ocean up from the gym daycare and all went swimming. Luckily for us, Ocean lives up to her namesake and adores the water.

Upon entering the pool, Ocean was greeted/fawned over by a group of older ladies who assumed that she was a boy. When I mentioned that she is in fact a girl (ohmygod! girl babies can wear board shorts! stop the presses!), they all apologized of course, and then one of them offered this sage advice: "Oh, you just need to get her some barrettes for her hair." Well thanks. I'll get right on that.

Sensing that perhaps this crowd was not quite hip to our genderf*cking ways, we began to slowly edge away into the water. Before we could make our escape however, our helpful friend looked at J, then looked at me and said, "And you're mommy?"

I don't know why this question stopped me in my tracks. But it did. And instead of saying something simple and clarifying like, "Well, she usually calls me 'mama' and my partner 'papa,' actually," I froze up completely and finally muttered, "Uh, yeah." I tried to make up for it afterward by saying to Ocean, "Okay, swim to Papa now," but the moment was past. We moved away from them and had our swim.

After we splashed around, swam some laps, and floated on various inflatables, we all retreated to the hot tub in the locker room to warm up. (Ocean likes to sit just above the water and stick her fingers and toes in the bubbles.) We were soon joined by our now favorite pool companion. She again complimented Ocean on her good looks, and then, without missing a beat, asked me, "So who does she resemble more?"

Again, I was left speechless, this time mainly from confusion. My first thought was that she assumed that J was a bio-guy, and was talking about the two of us. Indeed, people do often comment that J and Ocean look alike. This made no sense though because a) J very rarely passes, and b) we were all sitting in a hot tub in the women's locker room, and she didn't seem to find that at all odd. Then I thought that maybe somehow she'd forgotten that two female-bodied people can't make a baby together without a little extra help. (I sometimes forget this myself.) But finally I realized that she was digging for information about the husband that she assumed I must have tucked away somewhere. This seemed crazy to me, since she'd seen us all interacting together in the pool and the locker room, and I just assumed that she recognized us as a family unit.

So once again, I had the opportunity to say something that would have educated her about our family. And once again, to my great shame, I failed. I simply could not figure out what to say, and so, I just stared at her blankly and we all left shortly thereafter.

I've spent all afternoon thinking about why I failed at this. Part of it, in the second interaction, at least, was my own discomfort around figuring out how to talk about my genderqueer partner with his male pronouns while we were all sitting in a women's locker room. And part of it, I think, is my fear of confusing people and creating awkward situations. Like if I call J "papa" and "he" in front of the old ladies at the pool, they're going to be confused and think that we're weird. But, as J pointed out in the car ride home, PEOPLE ARE ALREADY CONFUSED BY US. THEY ALREADY THINK WE'RE WEIRD. And they seem to manage to create their own awkward situations without any help from me.

So my new resolution is to get better at answering people, to feel more comfortable explaining our family, and to not let people assume that only one of us is Ocean's parent. This sounds so basic, but as I learned today, I clearly need to practice talking about these things, particularly because I don't want Ocean to pick up on and internalize any of my anxiety about it.

So hey, lady in the pool: actually, she looks a lot like both of us.