Oy Vey My Daughter's Gay
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Authors: Sandra McCay
Oy Vey, M
y Daughter’s Gay
By Sandra McCay
Text Cop
yright
©
Sandra
McCay
All Rights Reserved
Co
ntents
For
Lila...
My quirky, inspirational
daughter and greatest teacher.
“Follow your passion. Stay true to yourself. Never
follow someone else’s path. Unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you
see a path. By all means, you should follow that.” - Ellen DeGeneres
“It’s better to be black than gay,
because when you’re black you don’t have to tell your mother.” - Charles
Pierce.
My daughter Lila tells me she’s always known that she was
gay. Even so, the moment after she came out to us and saw our faces, she
panicked and thought, ‘What have I done? What if I’m not gay after all?’ But
that Christmas, when she was seventeen, we had no warning that her announcement
was looming.
By coincidence, two weeks earlier, my teaching colleague,
Andy, had come out to me at our staff Christmas party. “Dan and I have been
together for a while, but we aren’t out at work yet,” he told me.
“What a shame you couldn’t invite him tonight – I’d love to
meet him,” I smiled.
Moments later Andy sneezed and our school secretary,
concerned he had a cold, piped up, “Have a drink of my whisky, that’ll soon set
you straight.”
“Oh, I think he might need a little more than that,” I
said.
Whilst everyone else remained oblivious to my undertone,
Andy and I collapsed into each other’s arms in laughter. I like to think that
he chose me to confide in because he could tell I was the most open-minded
person in the school.
With the office parties at an end, my husband, John, and I
relaxed into our Christmas holiday. John has always loved Christmas and all its
traditions. The celebrations always commenced the week prior to Christmas, when
he brought home the McCay Family Christmas Tree. Next came the inevitable
family hunt for the videotape of ‘Mickey’s Christmas Carol’ – a collection of
Disney-style Christmas songs. After initially being unable to locate it, John
would always grin triumphantly as he plucked it from a dark corner and dusted
it down for its annual outing. Soon, Donald Duck’s inimitable and classy
rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’, with quacks replacing words, filled the house.
That was the cue for Lila and her younger brother, Lee, to come out of their
rooms moaning, “Come on, Dad. We don’t have to listen to that old thing again,
do we?”
Next, the decorations were ceremoniously dragged out of the
garage, while Lee complained on cue that they didn’t match and could we please
get a classier selection this year. As we untangled the mess of fairy lights,
we would vow yet again that this year we’d put them away properly. These
rituals over, we all dutifully quacked along with Donald Duck as we decorated
the tree. Secretly, though all of us except John groaned, we all relished that
special family evening.
We spent the big day itself, as per family tradition, at
John’s affluent cousin’s house where we were wined and dined in fine style –
which we never quite lived up to. That year we failed yet again when the host
asked John, “What do you think of the wine?”
John, assuming the question to be genuine rather than an
invitation to display how impressed he was with the expensive bottle, helpfully
responded, “Now you mention it, it does have a strange taste. Maybe it’s
corked.” Oops!
With Christmas over and Lila and Lee busy with friends,
John and I sank deep into that week of torpor between Christmas and New Year.
Our Christmas tree was the only active thing in the sitting room. Every so
often we would hear a gentle ‘swoosh’, glance up and notice that another couple
of branches were stripped bare. How did the needles manage to fall off in a
synchronized fashion? I imagined the lead branch commanding,
‘Okay, branch
three. Ready? One, two, three…Drop!’
This mess of needles was the main
reason I repeatedly campaigned for a plastic tree – a pretty fair compromise
for a Jew celebrating Christmas in the first place I pointed out,
sanctimoniously, but to no avail.
We were sprawled on our usual spots on the sofa in a
‘turkey leftovers’ and ‘Quality Street’ chocolate-induced coma, watching
pointless Christmas TV, when the door opened. Lila strode in and announced, “I
need to tell you something. I’m gay.”
We both sat bolt upright, causing an appropriately
rainbow-coloured cascade of Quality Street wrappers to flutter from our bodies
onto the floor. Neither John nor I spoke.
Then Lila added, in a wobbly voice, “I promised myself I
wouldn’t let another year go by without telling you.”
Reality shifted. I felt as though I had moved out of my
body, and was watching the whole scene from somewhere near the ceiling. Voices
emitting from the TV sounded muted, as though I was underwater. Lila stood
there, retaining a modicum of hope for another minute, then slunk out of the
room. The masks of horror that were our faces had clearly said it all.
I was vaguely aware of John getting up and leaving the
house. Eventually my brain unfroze, and a thought formed itself:
That’s
Pandora’s Box opened.
It wasn’t a particularly useful or helpful thought,
but it was the only one I had.
John returned a while later and we went to bed in shocked
silence, each of us tossing and turning all night in our own small island of
confusion, unwilling− or unable− to share our thoughts. For the
first time in our twenty-two year marriage, we were struck dumb.
The next day I started crying. It was as if I’d been frozen
since the night before and then the thaw came. Ranting I would have expected.
Moaning about the injustice of it I would have believed. But crying came as a
complete surprise. Lila and Lee were normally the criers in our house; if I
ever had to reprimand them they’d start sobbing before I could even air my
grievance. I like to think it was remorse, but it was probably just a defence
mechanism. Maybe that was what was happening to me. Strangely, Lee, normally so
sensitive to my moods, didn’t question my distress. Unfortunately, the source
of my tears must have been blindingly obvious to Lila. She told me later that
she’d been devastated, not only about our reaction to her news, but, more so,
about how much she’d obviously hurt and disappointed us.
As I sobbed my way through a value pack of tissues, John
voiced his opinion that it was probably just a phase. Was he kidding me? Didn’t
he know his serious and literal daughter at all? I knew, then, that we wouldn’t
be able to discuss it. I didn’t even try.
Like most couples who’d been married for twenty-something years,
we’d had our share of ups and downs. Living as a family on a remote Scottish
island, then in Spain and then back in Scotland had provided us with plenty of
challenges, but we’d always supported each other in the end. A healthy argument
was always followed by laughter and a conciliatory glass of cheap Spanish wine.
We were best friends, in a perfect marriage (John might want to disagree,
but he wouldn’t dare). In fact, John and I sometimes had to fake our empathy
with friends complaining about the challenges of marriage. We had a perfect
family, sufficient money and good health, kaynahorah
*
. Now that Lila had opened Pandora’s
Box, what other horrors would fly out to destroy our family?
*
Kaynahorah: Yiddish
pronouncement to ward off the evil eye
“When you become a parent for the first
time, there is no transition. You hit the ground diapering!” - Paul Reiser
Maybe it would have been easier if the doctor had
announced it at Lila’s birth: ‘Congratulations, it’s a lesbian!’ Maybe I
wouldn’t have freaked out back then.
High on exhaustion and drugs, maybe I would even have
quipped back light-heartedly:
‘Oy vey!
*
My daughter’s gay?’
John and I had always known we wanted kids, but it had
taken us almost two years to arrive at that moment. I finally got pregnant in
the spring of 1980, immediately before our appointment with a fertility
specialist. We were living on the small Scottish island of Islay where, as a
new teacher, I had secured a teaching post. In fact, I hold this job
responsible for us getting married in the first place.
After three years of dating and after John had already
proposed unsuccessfully several times, I panicked about the prospect of marrying
my first serious boyfriend and broke up with him.
Then I got the job offer. Islay? Where was that on the map?
I have a notoriously bad sense of direction. John thinks it’s a Jewish thing
and probably why Moses and co wandered in the desert for forty years.
He reckons the Promised Land was probably just around the
corner. In my opinion it’s because Moses, being a typical man, wouldn’t ask for
directions. Nevertheless, I knew I’d never find Islay without John. I was also
increasingly aware that I wanted him there with me.
Hey! This must be love!
I realised with a jolt.
No fireworks, no earth moving, just someone I want
to be with for always.
So in the end,
I
proposed to
him
. If there
had been GPS in those days we might never have got married.
Years later, when John came to collect me from a school
night out, one of my younger colleagues joked, “Your husband’s not what I
expected.”
I stunned her into silence by replying, “He’s not what I
expected either.”
It was true. As a teenager I was in awe of my older, hippy,
guitar-playing brother and dreamed of meeting someone exactly like him. John
was his polar opposite: quiet, reserved, a conservative dresser and a trainee
accountant to boot. He was also six foot to my four foot ten and a half. We met
at a folk music club and, to be honest, I fell in love with his car first. It
may have been an old, beat-up Anglia, but it transported my friend and me home
in speedy warmth and comfort − a pleasant alternative to a rain-soaked
wait at the bus stop. From then on, John (or ‘Beast’, which, inexplicably,
became our pet name for each other) just grew on me.
As it says on the cover of my favourite DVD, Crossing
Delancey
1
,
“Every girl knows exactly the kind of man she
isn’t going to marry… and then she falls in love.”
I endured an agonising ten-day wait for the postal results
of the pregnancy test (the one-minute pee-on-a-stick pregnancy test was still a
far-off wonder). But eventually, it arrived. Joy of joys, I was pregnant! I
relished every minute of it, especially our nightly routine of snuggling up
together with Mars Bars and Cadbury’s Hot Chocolate, as the wind whipped round
our remote (but, unromantically, new and insulated) house on the island. This
cosy routine ensured that, by the end of my pregnancy, John’s stomach was
bigger than mine.
It was a little scary being pregnant and so far away from
friends and family, but Islay was wild and beautiful. The white beaches
stretched for miles and there were seldom any other people in sight. An idyllic
spot for newlyweds, except when one half of the couple is Jewish and, in the
words of Woody Allen, “I am [at] two with nature.” It didn’t help that the
nature in question was overgenerous in the serving of wind, rain and merciless
biting insects, called midges, on the rare occasions when the sun did peep out
from the clouds.
Gazing out our kitchen window across the Atlantic Ocean to
our American neighbours, we reflected on how we had as much chance of bonding
with them as with the islanders, who kept mostly to themselves. One of them was
John’s new boss and my first meeting with him ended with me running screaming
into the nearby moors. He was at a loss to understand my behaviour−didn’t
everyone
have half a blood-soaked deer on their bedroom floor? It didn’t
help that I taught in a distillery village and neither John nor I drank whisky.
Essentially, we were not a perfect fit for that little world.
The island didn’t have a maternity hospital and, as per
normal protocol, I was flown to the mainland three weeks before my due date. I
travelled in a hospital plane with an attendant nurse, but, sadly, without John,
who would follow nearer the birth. I did my best to justify the expense the
plane entailed. I was pretty sure I was in labour during the journey, but what
felt distinctly like the size and shape of a baby’s head turned out to be
haemorrhoids.
For three months I had fantasised about my return -
enjoying the bright lights of Glasgow, strolling around my favourite baby shops
choosing tiny sleepsuits… but I hadn’t reckoned on the haemorrhoids. I couldn’t
walk or even stand for more than a couple of minutes. I realise lots of
mothers-to-be fall victim to this particular horror, but how many are admitted
to hospital? And how many mothers-to-be have the doctor remark that he’d like
to photograph said haemorrhoids for the British Medical Journal? How many have a
specialist doctor summoned from another hospital to endeavour to push them back
in? (Lesson: a pretty pointless exercise when a seven-pound baby is pushing
them back out.)
In the end, I was ten days late and had to be induced. In
typical romantic comedy film style, having arrived on the mainland, John’s car
wouldn’t start and it took a team of helpers to fix it and get him to the
hospital. He burst through the hospital doors shouting, “Have I missed it?”
Missed it? He could have walked the twelve miles from my mum’s house to the
hospital and
still
not have missed it.
During my twenty-six hour labour, John practically became
part of the team of medical students I’d recklessly agreed to admit to the
labour suite. He delivered a few babies and performed a caesarean section. I
kid, but he must have picked up a few worthwhile skills in that time, though I
doubt he could have used them. His face turned an interesting shade of puce
when he saw a needle being inserted into my arm and he had to leave the room.
I had spent nine months researching everything and anything
that could − and in all probability, would − go wrong with the pregnancy;
birth, baby and me. (Ironically, I missed out the part about haemorrhoids.)
Sure enough, my epidural only half worked. One side was numb, while the other
side felt perfectly normal − if you can call excruciating pain perfectly
normal. Then I had to have a forceps delivery, which left both Lila and me
exhausted and battle weary. Finally, when Lila was born she didn’t cry and was
rushed away for oxygen. This should have been a pretty traumatic event for any
new mother, let alone a Jewish hypochondriac one, but, floating in a soporific
haze of drugs (me) and exhaustion (all three of us), it didn’t seem to occur to
John or me that we hadn’t even held our new daughter, let alone checked the
number of her fingers and toes. Instead, I calmly sipped my obligatory
post-birth cuppa. “Toast? Why, I don’t mind if I do.” I mused that John looked
kind of sexy in his scrubs, but that might just have been the drugs talking.
Hmm...
Maybe I should have
heeded the pleas of my Jewish mother (or, let’s face
it, every Jewish mother) and married a doctor!
By the time I was wheeled down to the ward, our officially
perfect daughter was waiting for me in her little glass cot. We had agreed on
her name long before her birth, although we didn’t know her sex until she was
born. I’m glad we didn’t have that option in those days. She was a beautiful
surprise.
Of course, poor Lila had a huge bruise on the top of her
pointy head; lovely side effects of a forceps delivery. Bruises, pointy head
and all, we were convinced she was the most beautiful and perfect baby we’d
ever seen. My mother promptly disavowed us of that notion.
“Isn’t she perfect, Mum?” I said.
“Yes, yes. What’s that big bruise on her head?”
“Oh, that’s from the forceps delivery. It’ll soon heal.”
“Why is her head shaped like that?”
“Mum, that’s our daughter.”
“Well there’s nobody in
our
family with a head
shaped like that.”
As I carefully bathed Lila and changed her nappy, I
marvelled at how natural it felt. I wasn’t scared or apprehensive at all. In
typical teacher mode, day-old Lila and I had a lengthy conversation about the
daffodils on the window ledge, much to the other new mothers’ bemusement. Lila’s
big blue eyes opened wider and she showed polite interest. She could already
hold her head up a little by herself and her locket-sized soft brown curls lay
damply across her forehead. I already felt as if I’d known her forever.
Lila was wide awake right from the first day – and night.
She lay in her glass cot staring at me as though she was trying to decide if
this would be a good time to tell me something. From the look on her tiny,
scrunched-up face it was something serious. (Either that, or she was filling
her nappy.) The full responsibility of being a mother suddenly began to dawn on
me and my earlier confidence evaporated. What if I couldn’t do this? It was too
much responsibility and had been thrust on me too quickly. I was exhausted,
physically and mentally. All I wanted to do was sleep, but even that basic need
was now dependent on this other person. I turned on my other side, praying that
when I turned back she’d be sleeping. I turned back. She was looking at me.
“Stop watching me. What do you want from me?”
“Nothing! You do know I’m a lesbian, don’t you?”
“Yeah, the doctor mentioned it,” I said, yawning hugely.
“I’m glad I waited,” she said.
“Waited for what?” I asked, puzzled.
“Until the bill legalising homosexuality in Scotland was
passed. Don’t you read the news?”
“What on earth are you talking about? I’m exhausted. Please
just go to sleep.”
“Hey, coming out of that birth canal was no picnic for me,
either. Have you seen the shape of my head? I’m already getting comments from
the other babies, and that’s before they know I’m a lesbian. And for goodness’
sake take that ridiculous pink doll out of my cot. Stop trying to
gender-stereotype me.”
“Just go to sleep! We’ll talk about this in the morning.”
“Waaaaaa!”
I forced my eyes open and painfully hoisted myself up onto
my elbow. When I looked into Lila’s cot, her eyes were shut and she was
sleeping like a baby. “Those must have been some pretty powerful drugs,” I
mused, as I drifted off into blissful sleep.
The next morning a beautiful bouquet of flowers arrived.
They were from John. The card read: ‘To Mummy Beast and Baby Beast, from Daddy
Beast.’ We were a family of Beasts now.
*Oy Vey: Yiddish expression. Literally, Woe is me!
Used as an exclamation of surprise/shock.