She was the best mother I knew, which made what I found out that much more shocking. I had been teaching for seventeen years and hadn't yet encountered a parent so dedicated to her children's well-being, to their education, to their sense of self. As many parents did, Barbara came to help in the classroom every other week. She would do whatever I asked, from the most mundane filing task to reading with kids. I had her daughter Liz in class. Barbara, who had given up her executive position with a Fortune 500 company to spend more time with her children, would ask probing questions about Liz's progress: not of the
my-daughter-is-brilliant-are-you-challenging-her-enough, nor of the
my-daughter's-test-scores-are-below-average-what-aren't-you-doing-right variety. No her questions were more along the lines of
I-know-my-daughter-is-unique-how-can-I-foster-that-uniqueness? Luckily, like her mother, Liz was brilliant, unique and charming.
But when Barbara showed up at school one morning, her eyes swollen with lack of sleep, she didn't want to discuss her daughter. It was Steven, Liz's older brother that was on her mind. She wanted to ask my advice.
Now, I was out to the entire school, parents included. Still, Barbara only discovered I was gay when she invited me to a party to introduce me to a woman friend, I found out later, and I showed up with my then-boyfriend, now-husband, John. She still didn't get it. As she tells it, it only clicked later when after extolling my charms (and they are many, let me tell you, most pretty well hidden) her friend said, "Yes, I think he's very nice. But I think he's gay. And I think that man he is with is his partner."
The fact that I was a gay fourth grade teacher, teaching her daughter was not a bit of a problem for Barbara. I discovered why that morning when I walked to my room, an hour before school started to find Barbara pacing outside my door, hugging herself. It seems that she had caught Steven, a seventh grade student, looking at gay male porn on the Internet...for the second time. And...
"Well, uh... you're the only gay man I know."
We had a good talk that morning and subsequent mornings about the fluid sexuality of thirteen year old boys, about the many resources available to families through PFLAG, etc, about the challenges of being a gay teenager... I was impressed with her knowledge beforehand and with the extent to which she went to inform herself. She had done Internet searches, called social workers and visited a gay coffee shop. She had even joined a gay chat room and corresponded with a gay man across the country, starting the conversation with, "I'm probably not what you are looking for but I have a few questions."
Barbara's greatest concern was that, if Steven was gay, that he love himself, be comfortable with himself and know that he was loved. Her openness and acceptance floored me. I last saw her and her family when she invited me and John to a family dinner before we moved out of town two years later. She said that it was a goodbye dinner for us, but confessed that she also wanted to show Steven and her other children what a happy, "normal" gay couple looked like. When we left I told her that Steven and the others were lucky to have such a mother.
Several years have passed. I have since been told that Barbara had been accused of physically abusing Steven. That she confessed to hitting him on repeated occasions and had sought therapy.
I have often wondered what happened. I still wonder which mother Steven will remember.
A glance.
He wants to walk the woods and know the names of the trees growing there.
