on being bi

Posts that have been fermenting for a while...

News:
1. not dead
2. Still a resident
3. The kids are still cute.




Last fall, I was back in my former large city, ingratiating myself with the powers that be at the job I really wanted the mostest, and trying to psych myself into writing an application for said job.

It felt so good to be back in the town I had spent most of my adult life, in the hospital where I had done so much of my medical training, surrounded by so much that was nostalgic and familiar. Eating the food I liked, bought from local fruiteries and restaurants. Prescribing the drugs that made intuitive sense (Medical culture being just slightly different everywhere, that "obvious" cocktail of Vanco/Timentin or Haldol/Ativan/Benedryl being a "rather unusual choice" somewhere else) and all the while missing my family like crazy.

I have never been good at getting myself to just sit and write. So I took a break from the Grad Skool Appliance process to go get some coffee. I wanted just a big, crappy cup of coffee with enough caffeine that I could then muster the necessary butt-to-chair for writing. (Say whatever you like here about stimulants and ER docs and their/our attendant neurology. I have found. my. people. That is all)

Seeking caffeine, I stepped out into the most vibrant and diverse and familiar neighbourhood in the city of my 20's .... And couldn't find a Tim Horton's anywhere. Lovely little cafe's, all the fanciest espresso drinks and beautiful terraces on which to sip them. Old Italian men watching sports, legions of hipsters behind their macbooks, trendy young parents enjoying the last few months of freedom chatting while breastfeeding their infants. But I just needed a coffee. Preferably cheap. And there was none.



Now I am as annoyed by people (including myself at times) who travel and then eat at McDonald's as the next person. But it wasn't so much homesickness as the sudden feeling of being un-homed. I realized that home was 2 places. That I was both from that lovely and exotic and sophisticated city where I lived for nearly a decade, as well as being from this very much smaller, far less fashionable, uncomfortably WASP, college town where I have grown deep roots in just 3 years. And in that moment, I felt like I was neither. Neither really from here nor really from there. Neither place fit. I didn't fit.

And I was reminded again, that being bi means just that. Both, and neither. Not an identity unto itself usually, but belonging in two places, and not in any. And I was reminded again of how very uncomfortable that can be. How difficult it is to contain multiple selves, how the desire to belong is so strong at times that it is easier to deny a part of ourselves than to continue to be outsiders.

There are good parts too of course. No one doubts the utility of being bilingual, the added perspectives of those are bicultural, the possibilities for relationship and family that emerge from bisexuality, the uniqueness and nuance that are necessary when we are our full and complex selves.

But it isn't always easy, and once I am two (or more) things I can never go back to a simple belonging. Of knowing my place with confidence.




And I am both proud and worried about raising my children in this space between spaces. In my world, my home, my family - where the rules and mutability of gender, sexuality, and religion give them more places to be bi- than to just belong.



I got the job, and now I have to pack up and move.
Again.
So, in a few months, we will all go to the city. Changed forever by the time in this small town, and not at all as the family who left. Our family is larger, messier, older, richer and deeper. For most of us, it will be a "going to" and not at all a "going back."

I try to put the focus on the awesomeness of being both, many, or any. I try to build belonging everywhere. And I am working on celebrating more, giving more things names, marking more occasions. And loving as hard as I can.

We will have our own coffee pot too, and I can look forward to leaving the house each day with the largest cup of coffee that I can carry into the world, caffeinated for whatever may come.

A funny thing happened.

Today was a day filled with strange coincidences. Like it should have been a Very Important Day. It wasn't really; I nursed, I wiped asses, I pretended to be all manner of animals extinct and extant, the usual. It just feels like the world is different somehow, even though I didn't even leave the house. Please let me know if today was a Very Important Day someplace else.

So, I thought I'd share just one of the weird things that happened today.

Stop me if you've heard this one before

One of the few moments last summer when I was happy-pregnant (vs. nauseous-pregnant) was at TO Pride. We'd sat down on the grass in front of the trans stage with a dozen-or-so folks to whom I am queerly related and listened to some wonderful music. LittleE danced, played with his sparkly beads in the grass and was watched closely by folks who loved him and weren't me or MamaM. It is a really fond memory, and makes me all shmuppy about the people who were there and who I wish had been there. I was all gravid, and glowy about the value of chosen family. I pondered how very lucky I am and was dwelling on all sorts of other uncharacteristic sentimentality probably hormonally induced and now perpetuated by sleep-deprivation and isolation from other adults. . .

Point is, today, I found the video. Of the actual moment I was thinking of.



Note small blond head at the very beginning. Also impish redhead in the crowd.

Gives me goosebumps. Especially since I don't even think I know the person who made it.

Siblings

After LittleM was born, she was taken up to the nicu. After I came to and pressed the morphine button 41 times, they wheeled me by her box on my way to my own room on the floor. My very first thought was "shit, I guess that one's mine . . . because she looks just like her brother." Lots of other folks have made similar observations, but it wasn't until I saw these two photos (of them, each at 5 days old) on my MIL's fridge that I realised that I wasn't imagining it.




Her face is longer, her skin is darker, and she has this wary look which I interpret as "any more tubes, needles or boxes and I will smite you all"

But it's otherwise rather eerie right?

And makes for some more queer family brain food around here. We live in a small college town, and people are generally Very Accepting of us as a cute lesbian family. Acquaintances routinely inquire if the kids have the same. . . er, father? dad? sperm donor? and when we nod they invariably grin and say "oh how nice for them!" I'm never sure what to say to that. Is it nice because they share 25% of their genes? As if that makes for guaranteed good relationships. Is it because they think dealing with a single source of paternal genes is really great? Although we think that the Spuncle is pretty fabulous, random person in the park doesn't know him from a frozen dude from Georgia, so I'm not sure why it's so "nice." However, I am both not very creative, and not very funny - so I usually don't have any smart-ass answers on hand for such encounters. I usually just keep with the smiling and nodding.

In some ways, the fact that these kids look alike reinforces our little unit of 4 as somehow more legitimate. And by that I mean closer to the ideal het nuclear family. The children are obviously related and have the same surname. We get praise for this.

At the same time, the fact that these kids look alike makes our differences more explicit. They were not created from the physical union of me and my female lover. Ahem. Their physical resemblance is an announcement that our unit did or does involve more than the 4 of us, and does not fit neatly into the straight family model with the quick switcheroo of another mom for the dad.

i think that second part is more obvious to us than to strangers. Because there are now two, (and one is still little enough that we spend most of the day staring at her in the googley-eyed way folks stare at babies) their relatedness makes our queerness more present. And Queer is a nice break from feeling like a milk factory filled with dino-lore.



Also, it is fortunate that the second kid comes second. Cuz now I have the baby thing a bit more practiced, which is good, since there is an almost 4-year-old to corral as well. And I'm less anxious (most of the time) about breaking the baby, so I let him go near her. Seen above: either baby being eaten by one of several predatory prehistoric marine arthropods or baby being covered with kisses by her big brother so that "she will not be eaten up by any of the extant animals that are still living into their tummies Mum-um-um-um, because animals and monsters don't like to eat kisses"

Ortho

I knew going into this that i didn't want to be a surgeon. Surgery is super-freaking cool, but i like my life. All residents work hard, but surgical residents are expected to graciously surpass most human limitations without really trying. They leave medskool and enter into the fiery furnace, and only emerge five years later. It is awesome to witness, but i cannot sacrifice my family and sell the better part of my 30's to do it.

So, I wanted a chill surgical rotation, and was less than thrilled to be assigned to a tough service in a hospital without digital x-rays.

Despite my expectations, it very much didn't suck. There were ample housestaff; and (impressively) they all shared the scut.

I'm not exactly in love with the OR, so i didn't see the staff very often, but i tried my best to carry my weight on the ward, and to deflect/deal with some of the minor stuff to make the days run well. And i got a lot of teaching in return. Especially on emerg-related topics -- like how to reduce a fracture, open fractures, and (surprisingly), brisk upper GI bleeds. I saw and assisted with a few total hip replacements, and saw a few minor trauma cases. I can see extremity fractures on x-ray, and know how to look for a shoulder dislocation (and got to reduce one of those too!). I can even classify ankle fractures to a certain extent.

And if nothing else, i was reminded of the blood supply to the hip, and the risk of avascular necrosis of the femoral head.

So, educationally it was good. But the most interesting was the gender analysis of it all.

Ortho is a manly-man specialty. There are certainly women in the field, but they still take a lot of crap, and mostly, it's men. And a higher-than-average proportion of very butch men. I don't usually think of myself as having a pronounced gender presentation. I don't identify as butch, and would even be out of place playing lesbian softball. That said, i'm equally out of place at a bridal shower or with a bunch of fags singing along to olivia newton john.

semi-androgynous library-geek maybe?

Anyways, once i'd changed into scrubs, and walked into the residents' lounge, my gender changed instantly. I have not felt so girly since at least high school. The legs i held in the OR were really heavy, i don't follow college football, i don't eat meat, and i really only hold one pint of beer when i'm out with colleagues. wow. I am 6 feet tall, i wear a size 11 shoe, and felt like the princess and the pea.

Until this rotation, i think i had also stopped believing in straight guys. And by "not believing" i'm not invoking some lesbian separatist utopia, more akin to not believing in the tooth fairy. I know a lot of guys who are heterosexual, but none who i would have considered straight -- guys who go to ani difranco concerts, guys who work in preschools, guys who date lesbians, guys who study ecofeminism, guys who change their name when they get married. Although they only sleep with women, they are hardly beholden to extremes of gender stereotypes.

And then i met the resident who i will call the Viking. Who disabused me of my pretentious notion that cis-gendered people could not be thinking folk who had examined their own performative gender AND fall to the extreme end of a gendered continuum (if there were such a thing). duh. I now believe in straight men. And if i ever lose another tooth it's going under my pillow.

(to be fair, i may have been one of the first poly bi-dyke mamas he'd ever met too. Call together was a bit like an intercultural surgical performance art workshop)

if people knew what their doctors were like in real life. . .

My summer vacation

This really should have been a rotation, but repairing relationships that i've virtually ignored for the past year-and-one-week became more important than being careerly competitive.

MamaM, LittleE and I went to pride, we went to toronto, we saw lots of the people whose love and witness make our open-concept circle of intimates meaningful and real. We also went to Cape Breton for a big fun party and a lovely commitment ceremony for our camp pals M&R.

It made me wish that distance weren't so much of a factor. But wishing that Toronto and Montreal were closer together will likely only bring about some extreme suburban sprawl.



We slept in our tent, saw touristy things, and watched the spawn dance until he could no longer stand. Too short.

Navel gazing queers

Really, it's cuter when he's not coached. Next time we'll get out the camera before the 20th or so performance. . . (thanks to M&R for the footage!)

tickets from the gender police

So, these past two months have been rather busy.
I've just finished four weeks in emergency medicine. Which i liked just as much as i had hoped i would. It feels great to have a goal again. Not that it will come as a great surprise to anyone who knows me that i'd love to work in a small-town emergency department. And I'm now happily parked in a hospital dormitory in Shawville, where i will hopefully get to try out the small-town part of that plan.

I was working in a non-trauma hospital emergency department on the day of the shooting at Dawson college. There was much excitement and bustling about, and preparations for an onslaught of injured patients which (fortunately) never materialized. The emergency department was quickly emptied of it's usual inhabitants, and the team preparing for the crisis was dressed up in crisis gear and awaiting ambulances. One fellow was left - on his stretcher and in a johnny shirt, and began gesticulating wildly at me. Since i was one of the few unoccupied medical-looking people I met his eyes, and he waved, yelling "excuse me! excuse me!". I rushed over and asked if i could help, and he looked at me intently and asked: "Are you a boy, or a girl?"
Are you for fucking real? i'm thinking in-my-head-with-my-mouth-closed. "I'm busy, but call me back if you need anything" I said out loud.

My other great gendered moment this month with the was on a trip MamaM, LitteE and i took to ottawa for a night off. We were having breakfast in the hotel restaurant, and LittleE was offering his magnetic smile to all the staff (which often scores him free food when we're out). One of the servers came over and told us what a cute little boy we have. We thanked her, and then she got all flustered in that way that people do when they fear they have mislabeled someone's gender. She apologised, and asked if he was 'really' a boy. We assured her that he is, indeed, a boy (for now). And besides, he is only 18 months old and it's never obvious at that age. She looked at us as if we were in on a secret and said "you never can tell these days." Then she turned to LittleE and said "You want to get some more fruit from your daddy??" I just grinned into my coffee and offered the kid more "ah-puhll, ya."

(I really can't take all the credit for my kid's fruity-ness. . . Nature or nurture, he's getting it from *all* sides)