Teaching little kids about LGBTQ+ issues
Long before the kids really understood what we were saying, we told them they could grow up and love anyone they wanted. Marry a girl, marry a boy, marry anybody they’d like! Two moms, two dads — it’s all good.
For a long time, our daughter insisted she wanted to marry my sister’s best friend and a family friend who is about 50-odd years older than her. I told her that was fine, as long as they were both OK with it.
Our son went back and forth between his best buddy and a special friend from preschool. Sometimes he said he didn’t want to get married, ever, and just wanted to live with me and Daddy forever. That’s totally cool, I reassured him.
After years of peacefully agreeing that “anybody can marry anybody,” I wasn’t pleased when my son came home from school announcing that “a boy can’t marry a boy.” Someone in his class had said so — and, yes, you could see the smoke rushing out of my ears.
Luckily not everything he picked up in Primary stuck, and he resumed believing that people are free to marry anyone they’d like. Now, at ages six and four, the kids are able to understand more about the LGBTQ+ community — the plus sign was added to include Questioning, Intersex, Pansexual, Two-Spirit, Asexaul and Allies, since “LGBTQQIP2SAA” is a mouthful.
When we were making our rainbow outfits for our town’s very first Pride parade earlier this month, I had to explain “Pride” to the kids — and it was harder than I thought. Why was there a rainbow flag at Town Hall? What did rainbows have to do with it?
“You know how anyone can marry anyone?” I started. “Well, there’s more to it. Anyone can be anyone, too. Sometimes people are born in the wrong bodies. If a girl feels like a boy, she can be a boy. If a boy feels like a girl, he can be a girl. Some people don’t feel like a boy or a girl and that’s fine, too.”
“Oh. But I want to be a boy,” my son said immediately as he played with the rainbow-printed fabric we’d picked out.
“Sure. This parade is all about celebrating that people should do what makes them happy. Aren’t rainbows a nice way to celebrate that?”
“Yeah!”
I hesitated before going on. Did I really want to tell them that not everyone feels this way?
“The parade is kind of a big deal for our town, actually,” I continued slowly. “For a long time, people said ‘Boys can only marry girls’ and ‘If you’re born a girl, you have to stay a girl no matter what,’ and it made a lot of people sad.”
He perked up in surprise. “Are those people gonna be at the parade? Are they gonna be mad?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But it doesn’t matter because there are so, so, so many people who are going to be celebrating, and only a few people who might not think that way. We’re not going to let them stop us, are we?”
“NO!”
The next day, we were cleaning out our craft supply cabinets and sorting through bags and boxes of materials. I found a little wooden jewellery box I’d painted gold, years ago, and tossed it into a bin so the kids could repaint it if they wanted.
“Can I have that box?” my son asked immediately.
“Sure,” I told him. “I’ve had it for ages. What do you want to do with it?”
He examined the little gold latch and flipped it open to look at the inside. Then he look up, delighted, and announced “I’m going to give it to my wife someday. She can keep things in it!”
“Awesome.”
“Or my husband,” he continued. “I don’t know who I’m going to marry yet.”
“Absolutely,” I answered, sorting through a bag of foam craft pieces. “You can marry anyone you want, and you’ve got lots of time to decide.”
Oversized ironing board tutorial
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| Ye olde ironing board (super sturdy and stolen from my mom) |
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| I sprayed it (well, the parts that would be visible) with Krylon’s Blue Ocean Breeze. |
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| I snagged a leftover piece of melamine countertop-y board (from my DIY desk) and traced the ironing board onto it with a pencil. |
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| I marked the spots where screws could fit through the grates and pre-drilled holes. (Apologies for the dark photos — this was a spur-of-the-moment DIY conducted late at night.) |
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| I spread fabric out on the floor (“Beautiful Garden Girl” by Studio E fabrics from Atlantic Fabrics — also used for my daughter’s bucket hat), added two layers of quilt batting, and set the board on top to make sure it would fit. |
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| Then I bolted the ironing board to the white board, set the whole (HEAVY) thing back down on the batting, and got to work wrapping and stapling the edges. |
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| When I was done stapling, here’s how it looked from underneath (not so pretty, but who cares about the bottom?) |
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| Oh, but wait! I had a weird end jutting out. Hmm, I guess the board wasn’t long enough? What’s a DIY-er to do? … |
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| A shelf! I can add a shelf! (Another stolen chunk of a wood from a scrap pile, screwed through the grates of the ironing board). |
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| I slapped on a couple of coats of glam gold paint (Fusion Mineral Paint) … |
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| … and then Mod Podged-on a little gold glitter for extra bling! (Notice the Christmas lights in the background? I told you this was a seriously old DIY.) |
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| The finished ironing board is HUGE and I can easily iron a yard/metre of fabric without having to shift it around a million times. It’s also amazing when I’m quilting. |
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| And even though it’s huge, it still folds down when I’m not using it just like a regular ironing board. |
Tell me this doesn’t make you want a GIGANTIC ironing board. Imagine the hair (fabric) you could iron on this sucker!
xo
Mom confessions from mid-July
I’m trying to feel grateful that I don’t have to pack school lunches at the moment, but honestly I do miss school. A lot. (Also, I’m still MAKING just as many lunches — I’m just not making them at 6:45 a.m.)
I’m trying to be patient with them. It’s hard.
I’m trying to remind myself that it’s nice not to be missing my oldest from 7:30 a.m. until just after 2 p.m. every weekday, but I also wish he’d leave me alone occasionally. The youngest, too, while we’re at it.
I’m trying to embrace the flexibility — the freedom! — of “summer vacation,” but mostly I’m just aching for the routine that comes with the school year. I’m a creative of habit and structure is my game. I *like* getting to places early, with everyone dressed and coiffed. I *like* having a set schedule to our days. I’m *good* at that!
I’m trying not to twitch when they ask me for the 426th snack in a single morning. I’m really failing.
I’m trying not to wish the summer away — or this time when my kids are young and cute — because I know the days are long but the years are short. But let’s face it: the days can be really longggggggg.
I’m trying not to feel jealous of my teacher friends and SAHM/SAHD friends who don’t need to work amidst the shrieks and banging coming from overhead.
I’m trying not to feel guilty when I have to work, but it’s much easier said than done when the kids are around constantly. My work can’t stop because they’re off, and yet I feel guilty. They tell me they don’t want to go to day camp (!!!) even though I was counting on it (!!!) and now I’m like $%&#!
I’m trying not to feel sad when everyone is hanging out in the backyard with the neighbours and I really want to join them but I have to work. (There’s currently a random groundhog, too, and I want to be out there pointing and taking pictures of it, dammit!)
I’m trying not to beat myself up because I’m not revelling in summer fun and excitement. Nobody wants to be the lame nerd who *misses* the routine of the school year! But, you know, I am who I am.
I’m trying not to —– SERIOUSLY, YOU JUST HAD BREAKFAST! You don’t need a snack yet! Go back outside! Mommy’s working! Aughhhhh!
"Mommy doesn’t go under water."
Mommy doesn’t go under water, I explained to the kids when they asked me to jump off the diving board. Mommy doesn’t like getting her hair wet.
I hadn’t been under water for a decade at least, except for the few times I went down the Victoria Park waterslide and accidentally slipped under — cursing myself for soaking my hair days before it was due to be washed.
I spent the first few days of our vacation reading by my dad and stepmom’s pool and casually dog-paddling — my hair safely gathered up in a tight bun. On the third day, I decided to borrow my six-year-old’s new mask and snorkel for a minute. I loosened it, wrestled it over my gigantic head of hair and slipped down into the pool.
I couldn’t breathe for a second, but it had nothing to do with the cheap plastic snorkel.
It was startlingly familiar down there. The slope from the shallow end to the deep end. The rounded curves of the scalloped edges near the diving board. The drain, the depth, the jets — everything was exactly as I’d remembered it. It was like, “Oh, hello. You’re still here. You’re just the way I left you.”
This is what I’d done, day after day, for more summers than I could remember. I had a black rubber mask, snorkel and fins that would get too hot if I left them baking in the southern Ontario sun. As a kid who refused to open her eyes underwater — I still never have, actually — that mask was everything. I could escape the sun (and my little sister) by sinking down in the cool water where I couldn’t hear anything or anyone.
While my kids ran around on the pool deck with my husband, the water filled up my ears with a lulling silence. I didn’t even kick my feet. I just floated, face-down, listening to myself breathe in and out. I could feel the sun on the back of my head, but I couldn’t see anything but the deep blue pattern of the new liner — more interesting than the pale blue one we had back then. I looked the way my hands and toes were covered with tiny bubbles as I moved them. I watched tendrils of my hair float out in front of me.
Eventually I had to give the mask and snorkel back (darn kids wanting their own possessions), so I drove back to Walmart the next morning and bought an adult-sized set. Flippers, too. I used to love my flippers but they were lost or broken somewhere along the way, after I stopped caring. I bought a swim cap so I could go in whenever I wanted without fretting about getting my hair wet. I dropped $100 at the register for the second time in two days, happily.
It took two of us to yank the swim cap down over my head and clip the mask over it so it didn’t pop off and the flippers needed a lot of adjusting. But soon I was blissfully floating around in my own little world.
I had an underwater view as our youngest kicked her way around the shallow end and our oldest bravely jumped off the diving board for the first time. I quietly swam up behind my husband and tried to pants him — darn that tightly-tied drawstring — and discovered I could still do underwater handstands and somersaults. I delighted the kids by doing the “pretend you’re walking along the diving board and suddenly you fall in” gag.
When I bought our son that child-sized mask and snorkel, on a whim, I never thought I’d end up buying my own the very next day. I never thought I’d rediscover the peace of slipping below the surface and listening to myself breathe. Floating, all alone. And even getting my hair wet.
DIY rainbow organization for craft supplies
The thing about having a hefty hoard of craft supplies and fabric is that even though everything will used to make some beautiful, it doesn’t always look good when it’s in the “ingredients” stage.
For the past couple of years, I’ve tried to tame my stash and organize it in a way that looked decent, but it never lasted. I thought it was brilliant to fold and stack my fabric on a bookcase in rainbow order … until it morphed into sloppy piles of kinda-folded, kinda-balled-up lengths of cotton and knit. Other supplies — like ribbon and embroidery thread — were hidden away in bins, all of the colours jumbled together in a sad little tangle.
As my handy husband, Michael, was busy extending my L-shaped desk into a giant U-shape desk, I came to a realization: some things are worth hiding, and other things are worth displaying beautifully — even if they’re not something you use on a regular basis.
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
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| Here’s what I was starting with. Completely untidied, obvi. The bookcase was NOT working and I was staring at a yucky mess day in and day out. I needed a prettier view, stat! |
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
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