TWO
Okay. For most of the time I have known myself, I have always been a person who is. . .different.
Mostly when other people talk about me being different they want to talk about the fact that I have two moms, which is not super different depending on where you are, but it’s a little different than a lot of the kids I’ve gone to school with.
I’m adopted; both my moms are white and I’m half-Japanese. I am the biological child of my mom Millie’s cousin Susan and was adopted after Susan and my bio dad, Dean, died in a car accident. I was three when this happened, so I mostly only have vague glowy memories of my biological parents. I know my grandma Hana looks like an old female version of Dean. (I have a sum total of four grandmothers, two moms, one grandfather, and one step-grandfather as a result of this family setup, which is either a lot or enough depending on what I need at any given time).
Really, I think the thing that sets me apart from my moms, like if you look at us from a distance, is the fact that when I was ten, I started dying my hair orange because it’s my favorite color and my parents said so long as I didn’t get it all over the bathtub it was okay.
(I totally get it in the bathtub, though.)
Once, when I was twelve, an old lady stopped me in the elevator and told me I shouldn’t dye it. To which I replied, “Maybe YOU should mind your own business.” Lucy said this would have been an acceptable response to the lady’s very rude comment if I hadn’t yelled it super loud into her face.
No one in my household is okay with yelling. Which means you can pretty much say whatever you want if you say it in an even tone. Nothing you say in anything resembling a shout is going to be okay.
Ahem.
Of course, you could also say that everyone’s upbringing and hair is unique and not really worth calling out as “different.” Both of my moms hate the word normal, like as in what is a “normal” family? Like who defines that, right? The patriarchy? Probably.
Unfortunately, a complete discussion of the origins of the so-called normal and why normal is a construct would get us way off course storywise, so let’s say the previously mentioned things are part of who I am and things that have been called out as being different. But really there are just so many other more interesting ways a person can be. . .unusual.
And I am all of them. I think.
Like, I’m pretty sure I don’t think like other people. Aside from the things I see when I’m making art, I bet I spend way more time than most people thinking about things that could exist versus all the things that do exist. Like once I spent a week dreaming about all the different ways an elephant could look. Like what if their ears were softer and covered in fur and stuck up in the air?
When I was six, I had an imaginary friend named Danny, a purple unicorn who was also a lawyer and a model. And I would spend all this time talking to Danny about fashion and my dreams, and my moms would have to remind me that he was imaginary so I would calm down about getting him to his auditions and court appearances on time.
“If Danny’s not there, who else is going to stand up for the little creatures of the magic forest?” I wailed, on a particularly vexing day. “Who will grace the cover of Unicorn Fair?”
“Oh, sweetie,” Lucy cooed, “why do you insist on using your imagination to worry yourself into more problems?”
I had a friend once who was obsessed with knowing which of my moms I was “actually related to.” Which to me was and is just absurd (and I would never tell her, which is why we stopped being friends). Like, honestly, who cares? One, we’re a family; two, they both have to look after me—it’s not like biology changes that; and three, I am so clearly the result of both of their influences and obsessions. Like how Lucy likes to learn as many new things as possible. For example, the whole reason I learned how to roller-skate was because she saw a movie about roller-skating and then she wanted to learn how and teach me how.
The gift that keeps on giving.
And Millie is the artist who likes to try to look at things from as many different angles as possible. Like how she takes pictures of people from a camera mounted over their heads or at their feet, which is the series she started working on before we moved to Greenville.
As moms, sometimes I think Lucy has more patience for my stuff because she’s a teacher. But I think Millie gets me more because she’s an artist. Like, I think Millie gets why I need to make a thing because it’s in my head and I want to see it in the world. Even if the trip from my head to the world can be. . .rocky.
(Side note: Millie and Lucy are both kind of athletic and wear what I would describe as sensible shoes. I can almost immediately tell whether someone else is queer by whether they think Millie and Lucy are sisters or partners. Like sisters? Are you for real? Look at their matching sensible shoulder bags!)
Actually one of my first performances was a tribute to mothers, created for Lucy’s grandmother’s ninetieth birthday when I was seven. (Originally it was supposed to be a ninety-minute performance, but I was told I had six minutes, max—a time allowance I know Lucy fought for.)
It was a dance, not to “Funkytown,” but a song Grandma Shirley liked, “Sing Sing Sing (with a Swing)” originally written by Louis Prima and covered by Benny Goodman. I made tap shoes and decorated my leotard so I would look like what in my mind was an old-timey dancer.
Halfway through the dance, Lucy’s cousin Herbert ran up and pulled me off the stage because he said I was up there “shaking my hips in my underwear” and it was disgusting.
The first abrupt end to one of my performances.
But not the last.
Not everyone gets it. Or almost no one gets it.
I know that.
And sometimes, the not getting it can be louder than disco.
Oh. Also, I go off on what Millie calls “epic tangents.” Which are (almost) always relevant. And eventually connect back to the story.