A Month After Alexander Was Born 


Across the generations in an alternative family. 

It is the morning of January 4, 2005. There is still a Christmas tree in the corner of the room. Alexander has just awakened from his ride in the Fisher-Price Swing that his grandmother bought for him. Stephanie, his mom, is breast feeding him sitting cross-legged on the leather couch. Stephen, the new grandfather, is keeping one eye on this phenomenon and one eye on the tart that is being made on the TV cooking show. Dawn, the other mother, is back to work earning money, although just now she is on the phone with Stephanie. Stephen has just turned down Dawn's offer to go see the football game Saturday night. All attempts to lure him have failed. The ladies have told Stephen that they have a very handsome quarterback, and that the players have cute butts. And Jim, the reluctant other grandfather, is verbally recording this touching family scene.

Little Alexander has been fussing. Stephanie has a very cute kind of "mom talk." "Are you grouchy, Mister?" she asks in a soft, animated tone. Alexander lets out a colossal belch. "You could have said the whole alphabet with that one!" she responds. Last night she was joking with him while she was breast feeding. He had dosed off. "You're not supposed to sleep at the counter!" she said. But just now the mom talk isn't helping much with Alexander's gas problems. Stephanie tells me that he eats so fast that he swallows gas. He is crying up a storm now. So she gets up and walks with him.

He sure is a big little guy, just like it says on his website that I am making for him. This is grandbaby pictures with a vengeance. And it's also kind of a testament to the new family. Dawn, a talented photographer, takes these pictures, attaches them to her email, and then Jim posts them on the net. This afternoon maybe we will go to the Apple store and see if we can upgrade their PowerBook so that a regular Boston—St. Louis AV Chat can take place across the generations.

In the last blog entry, The Night Before Mrs. Andris Died, I reflected on the family events surrounding my birth. These people, still so connected to their European past, had their own struggles. They called my dad "dirty Belgian" and "Greene St. Dirtyneck." They called me "queer" and "faggot." The teacher at St. John's allowed the male students to dominate the discussion in Stephanie's freshman class. So she left, and went to the College of the Atlantic, where they listened to her. What challenges with Alexander face? That he has two moms and two grandmas and three grandpas? Maybe not so much here in Massachusetts, where Stephanie and Dawn are legally married.

Once a long time ago, when I told my mom that I had a daughter, she replied "Oh, but that would be an ersatz daughter." Two days ago she said to me candidly, "I had some struggles with your lifestyle until I realized that it didn't make any difference." But you know what. the hardest struggle that I have is with my own ridiculous presuppositions.

To take just one example, I am beginning to see that genealogy can be very fucked up. A lot of it is all based around patriarchy, lineage. If you are not very careful, when you are a genealogist you may end up tracing DNA instead of devotion, property rights instead of perseverance in the face of challenge. Even if you are one of these genealogists who tries to trace the matriarchal line, you can still miss the point.

Like for example the fact that my grandfather was raised from age four by his mother's half-sister. Ok, so he carried Carolina's DNA and not Elizabeth's. But wait, Elizabeth and Carolina had the same father. So Frank still had his grandfather's DNA. Now if we believe all the Biblical literalists (which I do not), we all carry Adam and Eve's DNA. Paul got the point, we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. At least he got it for his time and age.

But this can all be put a lot more simply. When I see Stephanie feeding little Alexander and Stephen looking on proudly, what I feel is love and commitment. Family is about love and commitment. 

Posted: Wed - January 4, 2006 at 10:00 AM          

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