Love, Ellen: A Mother/Daughter Journey (2 page)

When El became famous, interviewers would often ask her, “Were you funny as a child?”

“Well, no,” she would answer, “I was an accountant.”

In fact, Ellen was always funny, talented, and creative. And she was sensitive, serious, and even shy at times, too.

So, to the question I’ve been asked countless times—”Did you have any idea your daughter was going to grow up to be a famous comedienne and actress?”—I’ve had to answer no. If I had known she was going to grow up to be Ellen DeGeneres, I would have taken more pictures.

As our second-born, Ellen has always felt we were so tired after all the photographs we took of Vance that she got short-changed. Ooops. She’s right. Now, with cameras always following her wherever she goes, maybe she’s making up for it.

One of the things I did know about Ellen, long before she was famous, was that whatever path she chose to pursue, she certainly had the talent, energy, intelligence, honesty, courage, and love to be great at it—and to be a great human being.

The big surprise was the fact that, after her own personal coming out, Ellen would later risk her fame and fortune to go through a second coming out process on a much different, much more public scale. If anyone had told me back in those long-ago days that El would one day be one of the most famous lesbians in the world and an activist fighting in the battle for equal gay rights, I don’t think I would have believed it. And if anyone had predicted that I would be playing my own part in that battle, I
know
I wouldn’t have believed it.

For that matter, if anyone had told me as recently as a year ago that within a few months I would be starting the most exciting, rewarding work of my life, I wouldn’t have believed that either. I was almost sixty-seven years old, single, and recently retired after a decade of working as a speech pathologist. I’d always thought this was supposed to be a time for slowing down, spending leisure-filled hours on the golf course, perhaps even catching up on my reading. Fat chance.

In the fall of 1997, not long after Ellen made history by coming out to the world and portraying the first openly gay leading character in a TV sitcom, I jumped into the fray. I was offered the opportunity to become the first non-gay spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign’s Coming Out Project, and I simply could not say no.

What a year it has been! I have had the pleasure of meeting so many gay men and women who have generously shared their stories with me and who really feel very special. They do feel “different,” and they’re proud of their differentness. They celebrate who they are, as well they should. They’re leading happy, successful, fulfilled lives under far less than optimum conditions. Sadly, sometimes those conditions include having been rejected by their family and kicked out of their home—the one place in the world where we should all feel safe.

One of the funniest and most poignant moments in Ellen’s television coming out was an exchange between her character, Ellen Morgan, and a therapist played by Oprah Winfrey. Ellen bemoans the fact that when people come out of the closet, no one gives them a party or a cake that says, “Good for you, you’re gay!”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we did? If I had it to do over again, knowing what I now know, I would. I wish I could have done that for my daughter in 1978.

Coming out has been described as an earthquake that shakes the world not only of the person coming out but of everyone around him or her. It has also been described as less a declaration of sexuality to the rest of the world than a personal act of self-love. It is, without a doubt, a discovery of self and a rite of passage that should be celebrated—not only because your daughter or son has taken this courageous step toward being her or his own person, but because you are being given an opportunity to do the same.

Coming out is a gift.

I
N THE EARTHQUAKE
of Ellen’s public coming out in 1997, one more unexpected opportunity came my way—an offer for me to write a book about my work for HRC, and about my experiences as a woman, a mother, and now an activist. Again, I couldn’t say no. I had only to think of how many times in my travels across the country young people have approached me to say how wonderful it would be if only I would write a book they could give to their parents. I have also received many letters to that effect from people of all ages. Here’s one:

So, at one of my speaking engagements, when a reporter asked, “Is it true you are writing a book about homosexuality?” I answered, “No. I’m writing a book about love and acceptance.” I smiled and added, “And about me and my kids.” I was referring to all my kids—not only to my own children, but to all the people, young and old, who have become part of my extended family.

Under that umbrella, I intend to cover a lot of ground here, providing many stories: bits and pieces of this and that; a poem here and there; other people’s stories; letters; even a recipe. Because I have an important message, I think it’s only fair that you know something about the messenger—me. So, as we get to know each other, I’ll be pulling a few things out of the old memory trunk, just for fun, or to make (to quote my famous daughter) “my point … and I do have one.”

As you will come to see, I believe that we all have the power to make a difference in each other’s lives and in our own lives. That was a lesson that took me a long time to learn, and it too is a part of my story.

Still, at its heart this book is all about love—specifically, about loving our children,
all
of our children. You might think that such a book should not be needed. What could be more natural, more innate, than loving your children?

You take care of them from the time they are born, or, if adopted, from the time they are yours; you help them to grow into the very best persons they can be. And then, one day, one or more of your children may come to you, as a loving parent, with their own self-discovery—the news that they are gay or lesbian. You can rest assured that they haven’t come to this decision lightly. Because of society’s negative messages, they may have been struggling with this realization for years. When they finally work up the courage to be honest with you about who they are, it’s because they need your love and support more than ever. They need to know that your love is pure and unconditional. Such love is something they are not likely to get from anyone else in the world—only from a mother or father.

I’m not saying it’s easy. That’s why I want to tell you more about the struggle and the subsequent growth process I went through after Ellen came out to me as a lesbian. I want to share with you all the wonderful stories of acceptance I hear as I travel back and forth across the country. But lest we imagine there is no battle left to fight, I must also tell you some very tragic stories of rejection.

I hope our collective stories will be helpful to parents, grandparents, siblings, spouses, and offspring—-in fact, all family members and friends—to better understand and accept their gay family members. I also hope this book will be helpful to gay men and women to better understand how their non-gay relatives feel, the not-so-easy process they may go through. I hope it will serve as a reminder that we all need to give each other time—time to adjust, to assimilate new information, to grow more comfortable with each other.

On a broader level, another aim of this book is to educate the general public about the immeasurable value and worth of our gay family members. For those parents and other relatives who are just beginning the process of understanding, or who are still struggling with new information about a gay loved one, I know that the concerns about “what will people think” are very real. I remember having to agonize over who to tell—or whether or not to tell at all. I want you, like me, to be able to be proud of your gay sons and daughters in a society where they can be judged on their own merits.

After all, when people meet me, and like or dislike me, it’s because of what they get from my personality or demeanor, not because I’m heterosexual. The same should be true if they meet someone who’s gay. That’s just extra information about the person. And we shouldn’t have to say that’s information others don’t need to know. They need to know precisely so that it won’t matter anymore, so that we can allow our gay sons and daughters, gay relatives, and gay friends to be their full, complete selves and not to have to pretend they’re like “us” so we won’t feel uncomfortable.

It is my great wish that through education we can achieve equal rights for all our gay citizens. As I write this, only ten states have antidiscrimination laws based on sexual orientation. Fifty states should have these laws. A person who’s doing good work should not be fired simply because he or she is gay, or evicted from his or her home for the same reason. And we should make sure that Congress passes and enforces the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

The conservative William Bennett has referred to equal rights for gay citizens as the next frontier for liberal Democrats. I think that’s ludicrous. It may surprise him to learn that I was a Republican most of my life, and I came from a conservative, traditional background. Equal rights for gay citizens is the next frontier for all fair-minded people. Some argue that these are special rights, but that’s a smokescreen for bigotry and prejudice. Until our gay sons and daughters have basic equal rights under the law, they are treated as second-class citizens. And we don’t have any of those in the United States of America.

Whether you agree with me, disagree, or aren’t really sure, I hope you’ll let this book open your heart and your mind, maybe even allow it to change you. Above all, I hope that you will come away with a feeling of complete acceptance—for your gay children, family members, and friends. Please don’t allow yourself to miss out on so much joy and love.

PART I

1930–1978

1

The Importance of Being Different

F
IRST OF ALL, WHEN
you think about It, we’re all stuck here on this planet while it hurtles through space in its orbit. If you imagine yourself free of gravity and floating off in the distance, you get a whole different perspective on us. I imagine us all looking exactly the same—like little ants, but full of self-importance. We’re pretty good at dividing. And we’re not bad at multiplying, either. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that. I am Ellen’s mom, after all.)

How laughable we would seem from that far-off vantage point—self-obsessed busy-bodies divided by turf and custom and color and you name it. We’re divided by everything from what we eat to whom we worship as God and what name we call Him/Her. We’re not just divided by our religious differences: we’ve gone to war because of them; we’ve actually killed in the name of God. I’m certain that’s not what He/She intended when we were first created and put on this good earth to live and thrive together.

When it comes to embracing diversity, I tend to think of myself as a relatively “average,” “regular” person, not endowed with traits that would make me any more accepting than you or your neighbors. There wasn’t anything in my upbringing that caused me to be more tolerant than the next person. If anything shaped that inclination, it is the fact that I became a mother. But I’m certainly not supermom. Rather, I’m probably more of an Everymom, with the same dream that most parents have for their kids—a live-and-let-live world where all the ants can celebrate individuality and diversity, yet still recognize each other as part of a larger family.

There’s nothing new or radical about this image of ants. In fact, it’s really just a spin on what is more commonly called the golden rule, something I was taught at the beginning of my education as Everygirl.

That part of my story starts in the depths of the Great Depression: on May 20, 1930, when I was born Betty Jane Pfeffer at home in a rented half of a double house on Dante Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. Despite the Depression and their own poverty, my parents—my father, William Dick Pfeffer, of German descent; and my mother, Mildred Morrill Pfeffer, of Irish descent—were happily anticipating my arrival and were planning for me to be the first of their three children to be born in a hospital. But I came too soon, and Mother gave birth at home, as she had with my sister Helen, seven years my senior, and my sister Audrey, five years my senior. So much for that plan. I’ve often wondered if it was my early entrance into the world that set the pattern of impulsiveness in my life, a pattern that has persisted to this day.

In any event, I am quite sure that being the third-born and the baby of the family shaped my early personality. Where Helen, the eldest, was serious, intelligent, and always thoughtful, and Audrey in the middle was fun-loving and vivacious, I was known as the “littlest,” and—with my thick golden curls and my apple-red cheeks—I was spoiled rotten, and notorious for never taking no for an answer. I was tenacious. Still am. I consider tenacity one of my great strengths and one of my great weaknesses.

My earliest memories are from about the age of four. What I remember most about myself was how irrepressibly curious I was about everything. By now we were living in a slightly larger rental, not far from where I was born, a raised half of a double on Apricot Street. This house had a tiny backyard with a dirt plot maybe three feet by six feet. To this day, I can still see myself planting nasturtium seeds there and—with time passing ever so slowly, as it does for the very young—watching the green stalks inch from the ground, the flowers eventually bursting into bloom.

Some years later, being an impulsive and curious child, when I saw an ad on a bus for cotton seeds, I wrote down the address and sent for them.

A month later, as we were sitting down to dinner one night, Helen and Audrey began to laugh. Mother and Daddy asked them what was so funny.

Audrey began, “Have you seen the backyard? She …”

“She? Who is she?” Mother said sternly. Mother thought it was extremely rude to refer to someone present as “she” or “her.” Otherwise, Mother said, Audrey could have been referring to the cat—or the cat’s grandmother. We were taught to refer to company present by name.

Audrey continued, “Betty Jane is growing cotton in the backyard.”

That was correct. When the seeds arrived I had planted them on my own, per instructions, and I soon had a small but nice cotton crop.

Mother and Daddy must have thought it a little unusual. But they acted proud. That’s how they were whenever I tried new things. The lesson was simple—it’s OK to be curious. Over the years, this quality has endured and may be why I’ve always had quite a collection of hobbies and creative pursuits. And, even more relevant to the work I do now, being naturally curious has always made me open to meeting different kinds of people.

Of course, growing up in New Orleans—a real melting pot—meant that there were many kinds of people to meet. In later years, everyone started calling my hometown “the Big Easy,” to contrast it with the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple and to emphasize its slow southern charm. As I recall, there was genuine ease in the way that the many ethnic groups—including French, Italian, German, Irish, Cajun, Creole, black, and white communities—lived together.

People had pride in their own culture and individuality, and pride in the city itself New Orleans has a distinctive kind of beauty, with its streets lined by huge, moss-draped live oaks. When I was little we used to pretend the moss was silver fox fur and drape it over our shoulders. The muddy Mississippi is majestic, and the architecture of the French Quarter and the Garden District is truly distinct and wonderful.

The place was easier and the pace was easier. We
bad
to take it slow and easy—it was so hot and humid most of the time. Goodness. Looking back, I don’t know how we managed without air-conditioning, but we did. The house on Apricot Street had a sleeping porch as the last room, and every afternoon in the summer we had to take a nap, or at least lie down and rest. Afterward, we’d have a bath and put on fresh clothes and sit out on the front steps waiting for Daddy to come home from work.

Many evenings Mother would have a picnic supper prepared, and when Daddy got home we’d all go to Lake Pontchartrain for a swim. Then we’d drive to City Park and have our supper there, sometimes meeting other family members or friends. What I remember most about those picnics was Mother’s iced tea, with lots of sugar, lemon, and ice—the best in the world.

Many years later, after my move to California, after my retirement, I took a poetry course and paid homage to those times with the following, one of my first efforts:

Back then, there didn’t seem to be so much meanness in the world. Maybe it was the times I grew up in. Maybe we really were kinder and gentler.

Or maybe we were the same divisive ants that we seem to have become today. It’s hard to know how much we have really changed. What I do know is that our current divisiveness does not become us. Instead of embracing those who are different from us as part of our human family, more and more we regard them with suspicion, fear, even hate. These divisions only weaken all of us. And what’s more, I believe, they don’t reflect what most commonsense, fair-minded people actually believe—that at our core, we’re all the same; that no human is inferior and no human is superior.

So where does all the suspicion come from?

Somewhere along the way, we were taught that being different was a bad and fearsome thing. Now it’s got to be our job to teach a different lesson—that intolerance is unacceptable.

I got my first lesson about that from Mother when I was five years old.

Around the corner from our house was a little mom-and-pop grocery owned by Mr. and Mrs. Blanda, Italian-Americans and neighborhood acquaintances who had kids of about our ages. The family lived next door in rooms attached to the store. Every now and then, Mother would let me go to the store by myself for bread or some other item she needed. I’d always see Mrs. Blanda at the cash register in the front and Mr. Blanda in the back, where he ran the meat market.

One afternoon I was out playing when a few of my little friends dared me to run to the grocery store, put my head in the screen door, and yell out a certain derogatory name for people of Italian descent. It sounded like a reasonable dare to me. Obviously I was not a very bright child.

I took off, rounded the corner to the Blandas’ store, threw open the screen door, and stuck my golden, curly head in, and yelled, “You old dagos!”

As I ran away, all I could think about was how impressed my little friends were going to be. Oh, and they were.

But my glory was short-lived. Mrs. Blanda did the right thing—she promptly went to Mother and told her what had happened. And very soon, I caught hell. Mother let me know that what I had done was shameful and stupid. The spanking wasn’t the worst of it. The hardest part was having to go to the store and apologize.

I never forgot that lesson and never repeated a verbal act of intolerance. Mother taught me very young: Derogatory names are unacceptable. That is something we don’t do.

M
ILDRED
M
ORRILL
P
FEFFER
was right sixty-three years ago, and she would be right today. If more and more parents made the conscious choice to teach their children to accept diversity, I can foresee a day when discrimination and prejudice will be made extinct.

Mother’s lesson is not a sophisticated superprogressive notion. It’s simple. It’s what the Bible teaches us: Love thy neighbor.

And yet, these days, when it comes to loving our gay neighbors, we hear derision and hate from some people who claim to follow the Bible. They say things like, “I don’t hate gay people; I hate their lifestyle.” To me, that’s only semantics. Hate is hate.

I will never forget a heartbreaking story I heard when I spoke to a university group in Ohio. After the speech there was a reception and, to my amazement, more than three hundred students lined up to have me sign their programs or have their picture taken with me. Then it was the turn of a young man who had waited patiently in line. He said simply, “I don’t want an autograph and I don’t want a picture. I want a hug.” Of course, he got one. He explained, “My mom rejected me when I told her I was gay. Now, I’m HIV-positive, and she says I got what I deserve.” Then he got another long, long hug.

What on earth could have made that mother so hateful? How could she have commited such an act of hatred toward her own child?

Others do not express their hatred so bluntly. They say, “You have the right to be gay, but I don’t want to know about it.” What they’re saying is, “Stay in the closet.” That message, in effect, was the one I saw being given to Ellen over the years that she was developing her career. Hide the truth, she was told, cover up, pretend you’re someone else. What is it about being gay that is so threatening that others would have a whole segment of society live in hiding? It’s the same thing as telling African-Americans to hide their blackness or telling ethnic and religious minorities not to be who they are. Can you imagine anybody telling the Blandas to deny their Italian heritage?

Of course, at the time when I was growing up, gays and lesbians were in the closet so much that I had no idea they even existed until I went off to college. And even then, my exposure was limited to innuendo and rumor. So although I was not predisposed to be prejudiced, I was totally ignorant. That’s why, years later, Ellen wrote to me in her anguished letter, “I know you can’t understand—you probably never will. … You were brought up totally different-—lifestyle, generation, surroundings, people, environment.”

Well, El was wrong in saying I would never understand. But she was right to recognize how those various aspects of my upbringing would make my process of understanding more difficult.

The Pfeffer household was almost textbook conservative—white, Christian, working-class, traditional all the way.

Daddy was the typical male role model who went on to become a working-class American success story. He was the son of a businessman who lost his hardware store to drink. Handsome and hardy, young Dick Pfeffer—he was known to everyone as Dick, never William—started out as a stenographer at Pan American Life Insurance Company and worked there forty-seven and a half years, ultimately rising through the ranks to become a vice president.

As if it were yesterday, I can still see Daddy sitting alone during the Depression years and later World War II at our big dining room table at night after dinner, with his record books and bills spread out before him, deciding how to make ends meet. I marvel to this day that with his salary stretched as far as it could go, he was able to raise three daughters and later send us all to college.

Daddy’s girl that I was, I also remember doing my version of ballet in the living room while he was paying bills—to get his attention and to cheer him up, but also to avoid Mother’s call from the kitchen, “Bets, it’s your turn to help with the dishes.’’

Then I thought of another ruse: “But, Mother, I have to practice the piano.”

What a scam artist I was! It generally worked—except for a time when Helen brought home some popular sheet music and I taught myself to play and sing a song called “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie.” Mother was horrified. She didn’t want me playing it because of the words “sin” and “lie.”

While my father exemplified the male role of being the one and only breadwinner and head of the house, Mother was very much a woman of her time: a homemaker and caretaker, proficiently doing everything possible to economize and run the house on what was most certainly a meager budget. Somehow she managed to turn our limited food supplies into meals that, though not fancy, were ample and filling.