A Belated Introduction

Did anyone else have days of the week underwear growing up? Every year I buy my partner-lover-sweetheart-wife dishtowels. One year I bought her days of the week dish towels. She has a thing about dish towels. I felt like the stereotypical bad husband, buying my wife dishtowels for Hanukkah Christmas Winter Holiday, except that she wanted them. I swear. And I’m nobody’s husband. This year’s dishtowels were woven by a Mayan women’s cooperative in Guatemala. But before I get to that…

(And did you think you were subversive and daring – wearing Thursday on Tuesday? – come on, fess up?)

…Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Sunday, otherwise known as Art-Sweet. And I’m honored – and a little bit intimidated – to join the fantastic ranks of the six other lesbianfamily.com bloggers. Like J., we don’t have a child yet. But we’re working on it…

Both myself and my partner – to be known as “Pili” ( growlingly Partner unscholarly I Love Intensely) – although she is neither the plural of a hairlike appendage found on the surface of a bacteria nor a nut native to the Phillippines, have wanted a family for a long time. I hesitate to get started on “normal,” because when it comes to relationships, there’s really no such thing. But I will say that even by the accelerated standards of stereotypical lesbian courtship, I don’t know how normal it is to talk about having children on a second date. Which is what we did.

Fast forward through way too many years of long distance relationshiping, a cross-country move together, and two years of infertility treatments, and we find ourselves waiting (probably another six months to go) for our son, a beautiful chubby cheeked wonder, to work his way out from under several tons of paperwork and come join our family through international adoption.

I intend to use my Sunday “column” here at LesbianFamily to talk about lesbian family-building in all of its various forms and flavors, my hopes and anxieties about being mommies to a son, and adopting transracially. I’m also an educator, so anticipate some book reviews and some thoughts about helping schools to welcome and support our diverse families.

And thanks, Liza – for creating this space and giving me this new soapbox opportunity to share thoughts and insights. You can also find my day-to-day thoughts, photographs, and musings on life with chronic illness at http://artsweet.wordpress.com.

P.S. Please send some love and support to Katie and Partner over at Maybe Expectant, whose son was born a month early and is currently in the NICU.