So Many Answers (part 1)

I have finally finished writing up my extensive answers to your extensive questions! It's really too much for one post, so I am dividing it all up in to several smaller posts, which will appear over the next two days. If I didn't answer your question specifically, it's either because I am already planning to write a whole post on that topic, or because it's something I've written extensively about in the past. I hope your inner nosiness is satisfied!

ABOUT BEING QUEER

I'm curious if coming out was an issue for you and/or Lena. Or was it something you always knew about yourself? Have either of you had problems with unaccepting family members, if so how have you dealt with it? Did you choose your location based on it's gay friendliness?

I came out when I was 15 years old. It’s funny because now I feel like I was pretty young, but at the time I couldn’t understand why it had taken me so long to figure it out! I was known by my friends as being a bit “boy-crazy,” but had actually never really had a boyfriend (one of my best friends (a boy) from when I was 8 years old and I did have a bit of a sexual relationship, and I loved him very much). I was at summer camp for a month and one of my friends there told me that back home, she was dating a woman. As soon as she said the words, I knew I was gay. It was like the possibility had never occurred to me before. I knew several gay and lesbian adults, but had never met someone my age who identified as queer. As soon as I realized that being gay was an option, I was like, “sign me up!” After my self-realization, it took me a few months to come out to my family, and they were, overall, very accepting (as I had expected them to be). So, in the grand scheme of things, I guess my coming-out experience was relatively easy. Which is not to say that it wasn’t also very intense and difficult for me. The hardest part was feeling like I was losing my dream of growing up to have my own nuclear family, losing the possibility of making babies out of a combination of my partner’s and my genes. I also felt very alone, and had no concept of how big the queer community was. I devoured the “Dykes To Watch Out For” comic books, which gave me hope for the future (and taught me quite a bit!). I also loved listening to The Indigo Girls and Ani Difranco, and felt like they really carried me through my high school years.

Lex, the babydyke (age 16)

Lena also came out to herself in high school (and just for the record, she identifies as bisexual, while I consider myself to be 99.9% homosexual), and to her family when she was dating her first girlfriend (in college). Her family was just as accepting as mine, even her rather religious, Catholic, extended family.

We happened to meet and start our lives together in a very queer-friendly area (it probably has one of the highest per-capita lesbian populations anywhere on the planet), and the queer-friendliness of this place is one of the things that has kept us here. We did consider moving someplace else just for the fun of it (and for a change for Lena, since she grew up here), but we couldn’t find anything comparable. It is very important to us, now that we have kids, to live somewhere where we never really have to think about being queer, and where our kids will never be the only kids in their class with queer parents (currently there are 7 kindergartners in their school who have two moms). Doctors, strangers at the park, cashiers at the grocery store . . . no one around here bats an eye at our regular old two-mom family.



ABOUT OUR MARRIAGE

How do you make time for your relationship with Lena? How do you keep the magic alive? What's the biggest challenge you and Lena have faced as a couple and what got you through it? What is the biggest difference between yourself and Lena (personality, parenting style, etc.)?

One of the main ways in which Lena and I make time for our relationship is by trying to get the kids to bed early—we aim for 7:00 most nights (the book, “The 7:00 bedtime” was very inspirational to me, even though I don’t agree with everything the author writes (namely, she is rather opposed to co-sleeping)). When Luke and Jaz were little (ages 1-3), we used to go on weekly dates. We hired a college student to come from 5:00 to 7:00 one night a week, and I would often pack a picnic for Lena and me to eat since we really couldn’t afford to pay the baby-sitter and buy dinner. But once we got good at the 7:00 bedtime, we no longer felt much of a need to leave the house in order to be alone together. It was like every night became date night! We still do enjoy getting to go out every so often, and will happily take advantage of our extended family members’ offers to watch the kids whenever that happens.

Lena (23) and me (20)

we broke up a couple months later

Lena and I got together when I was 18 and she was 21. After we had been together (pretty joyfully) for two years, I had a bit of a breakdown and we broke up. I think it was because I had never learned how to be alone (having gone from living with my parents to living with Lena), and when Lena started an outdoor education program that took her away from me for days at a time, I started to feel lost. I also wondered if—despite my lifelong dream to just get married ASAP—maybe I was too young to settle down. Our break-up was a big deal. Even though we had only been together for two years, at the time it felt like forever. We were engaged, and we had two dogs and several cats, and lots of shared furniture and household items. Dividing everything up and taking our shared life apart was very painful. While we were separated, we both dated other people, but never gave up on each other, holding out hope that we would be lifelong friends. Six months after we broke up, we ended up getting back together, kind of by surprise to both of us. I was a much stronger person for having had that time learning how to be alone, and Lena was able to forgive me, and we both felt that our relationship was better for the break. Surviving that time made us think that we could survive anything.

our family in 2003

We went through a very difficult time in our marriage when Luke and Jaz were about 18 months old. In all the craziness of raising twin babies (which we did very much enjoy, for the most part), we had lost sight of each other and completely forgotten to nourish our relationship. The kids were at a very challenging age (still the most challenging thus far, in my opinion), and I wasn’t loving being at home with them all day. Lena wasn’t happy in her job (as an earth science teacher for troubled teenagers) either, and our living situation was also not ideal. Everything culminated in a marriage crisis and we really forgot about all of our visions for what our marriage would be. Having had our earlier pre-marriage crisis was helpful in that it gave us faith that we could work through anything. Luckily, neither of us was quick to give up on our family, and we slowly worked to get ourselves into a better place (a process which involved Lena switching jobs and us moving to a completely different type of home in a different town). I think it took a full year for us to feel solid again. We have had many friends get divorced while their kids are little. It is easy to forget to pay attention to your marriage. The fact that Lena and I are both very committed people is probably what saved us along with the fact that we never questioned our love for each other, and were willing to compromise to ensure that neither of us felt trapped.

the summer of 2000

Lena and I are so different in so many ways! We are definitely a case of “opposites attract.” She is outgoing and loud, and I am pretty quiet and shy (less so now than I used to be). She is adventurous and brave, and I am afraid of many things (for instance, I am terrified of flying (I avoid it unless absolutely necessary, which seems to translate to, “unless one of my sisters is getting married on the other side of the country”), whereas Lena thought the experience of jumping out of an airplane (while skydiving) was “anti-climactic”). Lena would love to travel around the world, and I am a total homebody. In school, Lena strives to maintain her 4.0 GPA while I couldn’t care less about grades. Lena cares very much what other people think of her, while the thought of someone else’s perception of me rarely even crosses my mind. Lena is hot all the time, and I am usually freezing. I remember one time when we were driving in the car and Lena was wearing a tank top (typical for her, year-round), and I was wearing a down coat, a hat and a scarf. I was still complaining about being cold, while she was arguing that the temperature in the car was stifling. It was pretty funny.

We are very different sizes. Lena is 5'3" and I am 5'10".

Of course there are plenty of ways in which we are alike too, and those are regarding the things that count. Like how we both love to be spontaneous, love to be social, love to play games and laugh and eat ice cream. We love to be outside, to follow our hearts, to find the fun in any given situation. We are excellent co-parents who respect each other’s right to do things in our own way with the kids while also generally adhering to the same parenting philosophy. We can sense when one or the other of us needs a break, and step in to relieve each other. Usually it works out that one of us is in the mood to stay home and clean the house while the other of us feels like taking the kids out to the park for the day. I think our division of home labor is incredibly balanced, and we each pick the chores that we enjoy which--because we’re so different—don’t really overlap. Lena can’t stand clutter, and I can’t stand dirt. So she might go through the house putting things away, and I follow behind her with the vacuum.

There is definitely magic in our love, but we don't do much to keep it alive besides just being ourselves and enjoying each other. No 10-year (or even 5-year) relationship is going to have the same buzzing intensity of a brand new relationship, and I actually think that what we have (a deep, understanding love and amazing friendship) is more magical than the excitement that comes with new love. Having kids--and thus limited time to be alone together--has helped us to learn to appreciate each other more in the time that we do have. It can feel very exciting to get to cuddle up together on the couch and watch a movie after the kids are in bed. As a rule, we don't bicker. We speak our minds, and don't let things fester. We never go to bed angry, and really can't manage to stay mad at each other for more than an hour or so. Living in harmony is just more fun, so we make a conscious choice to do so. We also have a magical ability to find humor in difficult times. Laughter is a good antidote to most stresses in life and marriage. Often we are faced with a situation that could make us cry, yell, or laugh. Of course, we have to be careful to laugh with each other and not at each other, but in general choosing laughter is a great way to keep the magic alive.

a photo from this afternoon

ABOUT OUR FINANCIAL SITUATION

While I feel rude asking, how do you afford all the great things you do and have going on, especially with Lena in school? As much as we don't want money to stand in the way of the life we dream of, it all seems a bit daunting. . . Can it really be done?!

Lena and I have been living off of income from her job as a research assistant, a small amount of income from my job answering phone calls about car seats and doing installations, and income from a Trust Fund that my grandparents set up for me when I was a baby. The trust fund was created to pay for my education, and was certainly the most amazing material gift anyone has ever given me. It paid for me to go to an independent elementary school and high school, and for the entirety of my college education. When I graduated from college, there was enough money left either to put a down payment on a house OR to supplement our income for a few years so that I could be a stay-at-home mom. I guess it’s obvious which option we chose! It’s looking like the trust money will last for another year or two, hopefully just long enough to cover us until I can get a full-time job. While our total annual income is still rather modest (about $40,000/year), the trust has allowed me to be home with our kids without placing undue pressure on Lena to support our family (thus allowing her to be in grad. school for the past 3 years, getting paid for only 20 hours of work/week). We realize that we are incredibly blessed in this regard. On top of that, my grandparents have been paying for our kids to go to private school, something that we would never be able to afford on our own.

We don’t really have any debt so our monthly essential expenses are limited to rent, utilities (basic phone, electric and gas; we don’t get cable and we mooch the internet from my mom’s wireless, Lena has a cell phone, but I don’t) and groceries. We live in a relatively small house (it actually feels perfectly sized, though), one that many people would probably think was inadequate for a family of six (our landlords thought it was too small for one baby!), but that works wonderfully for us. Because of this our rent and heating expenses are relatively low. Really, nothing about the way we are living is all that expensive. Our favorite things to do with our kids are to be outside and make art, both of which are cheap/free!

We mostly live month to month, without any significant savings. So buying something big (like the bakfiets) required a year of preparation, saving a little each month, selling some things, and unexpected income (like the $1200 stimulus check we got last spring). We also tend to forget about things like our tax refund (I think because for the first few years of having kids—before Lena legally adopted Luke and Jaz—we didn’t get any refund), which means that when it arrives, it’s like free money! This year we took a leap and invested it all in buying the barn and the goats. It’s part of our “live in the moment” philosophy I guess, which does also have negative consequences (like the fact that we don’t yet own a house and have moved 4 times since Luke and Jaz were born . . . but we own a barn!).

I guess one of the drawbacks of having babies at a young age is that we weren’t financially secure yet when we started our family. We didn’t own a house, we hadn’t finished our education, we didn’t have good-paying jobs. I haven’t ever even thought about saving money for the kids’ college funds. These are all things that I think older parents tend to take into consideration before having babies. We were like, “we have a thousand dollars in our savings account! Let’s get pregnant!” But the truth is, that it HAS all worked out in the end. We don’t get to go on fancy family vacations (though our beach camping trips are pretty great), our kids aren’t getting to grow up in OUR house, but rather a series of rental homes, and we certainly do wish for these things. But I definitely don’t regret having kids when we did. I’ve loved being a younger mama, not feeling like I lost any part of myself (or sacrificed my career) in order to be home with the kids, feeling energized and excited about the future. My life has been so much more fulfilling since becoming a mom, and I wouldn’t have wanted to wait a minute longer than we did (as is, I feel like we waited for a long time!).

If you don’t have a lot of money, and you want to start a family, I think it absolutely can be done, you just need to make sacrifices. We could live in an even smaller house if we had to. We could move somewhere where the cost of living was even lower. We could stop buying prepared food all together. We could sell one (or both!) of our cars. Do we "have it all?" No. But we have what matters most (shelter, food, and love).