Monday, December 28, 1998

Christmas Eve tamalada at Mamá's. Year three for Kathy. She has been practicing. I'm not kidding: she made a batch at our house in November, alone, with a video from the library, so she wouldn't embarrass herself.

Mamá stood behind her for a long minute, watching her spread, and then she said, "Better." Just the one word. Kathy kept her eyes on the husk and her face turned bright red all the way to her ears, and my sister Yolanda kicked me under the table.

Nicolas, who is three and a half and in charge of olives again, announced to the whole kitchen, "My mama and my mommy are getting a paper that says I'm theirs." We had talked about the adoption in front of him, in simple words, not thinking he'd repeat it at a tamalada. Silence. Every tía stopped spreading. And my mother said, without looking up, "You already are theirs, mijo. Pass me the olives."

I had to go stand in the bathroom for a minute.

Our first appointment with the lawyer is January 12th. Meanwhile the House impeached the President the week before Christmas, and the Senate will have its trial in the new year, and every adult in my family had an opinion about it over the tamales. Nicolas's opinion was that he wanted another olive.

Sunday, November 22, 1998
What if

Kathy and I stayed up until two last night talking about the thing we never talk about. What if something happens to her?

Here is the truth of it. Legally, I am nobody to Nicolas. Kathy is his mother. I am, in the eyes of the State of California, a woman who lives in the house. If Kathy were in a car accident tomorrow, I could not sign a form at the hospital for him. I could not enroll him in kindergarten without her signature. If her family wanted to (they wouldn't, her mother loves me, but if) they could take him, and I would have to go to court and beg to see my own son. Kathy's will names me as his guardian. Our friend who is a lawyer says a will is a request, not a guarantee.

There is a thing called a second-parent adoption. It lets me adopt Nicolas without Kathy giving up anything. Some judges in California have been granting them for years now, case by case. There's no law that says they have to. It depends on the judge, and on the social worker's report, and a little bit on luck. Our friend says in San Diego it's been going well lately.

At two in the morning Kathy said, "Do it. Let's just do it." And I said, "It'll cost a fortune and they'll go through our underwear drawers." And she said, "I'll fold the underwear."

So we're doing it.

Wednesday, November 4, 1998
Hawaii

Hawaii voted yesterday to let their legislature keep marriage for a man and a woman. It wasn't close.

For five years, ever since that court case over there, people have been saying Hawaii might be the first place in the country where two women could get married. We had friends who talked about flying over. Kathy and I never really believed it. We'd talk about it sometimes over dinner, half as a joke: a wedding on a beach, Nicolas in a little flowered shirt with the rings. Now it's done, and I feel stupid for how much it stings.

I don't expect to ever marry Kathy. I want to say that plainly so nobody writes me to cheer me up. We've been together eleven years. We have promised each other everything there is to promise, in our kitchen, without a license. Nobody is going to hand us one in my lifetime, and I have mostly made my peace with that.

But lying awake last night I realized there's a smaller piece of paper that I can maybe get. Not for me and Kathy. For me and Nicolas. More on that when I've thought it through.

Thursday, October 22, 1998

The Padres got swept. Four straight. The Yankees finished it last night, right here in San Diego, and Kathy, who was born in Minnesota and did not care about baseball until she met me, sat on the floor in front of the TV in her Padres cap and said, "I can't believe it," about forty times.

Still. What a year. The whole city in Padres caps for a month. Nicolas learned to say "Tony Gwynn" before he could say his own address. He thinks every baseball player is named Tony Gwynn.

Wednesday, September 9, 1998
First day

Nicolas started preschool yesterday. Three mornings a week at the co-op, which means every parent works in the classroom one morning a month, which means Kathy and I will both get to see him in his natural habitat.

He walked in, found the sand table, and did not look back. I stood in the doorway for five minutes waiting for him to need me. He did not need me. Kathy had to take my elbow and walk me to the Grape like I was the one starting school.

The enrollment form said "Parent/Guardian" and "Parent/Guardian" with two lines each. I nearly wept at a form. That's where I am.

Sunday, July 26, 1998

Kathy's mother flew out from Minnesota for ten days. She's seventy, Lutheran, and she knits like it's a competitive sport. She walked off the plane and the very first thing she said, before hello, was "There's my grandson!"

She has always been like that. The first time Kathy brought me home to St. Paul, her mother set a place for me at the table and asked me to call her Ruth. That was ten years ago and she's never once made me feel like a guest.

I love her. And every time she calls him "my grandson" in that easy voice, I feel a little stab, because I want to hear it in Spanish, from my own mother, and I don't know if I ever will. I didn't say that to anybody. I'm saying it here.

Sunday, April 26, 1998

We picked a preschool! It's a little parent co-op in an old house with a big pepper tree in the yard. The director is a round, calm woman in her sixties with reading glasses on her head and paint on her sleeves. When we told her Nicolas has two moms, she said, "Good. He'll have company. We've got a boy with two dads and a girl being raised by her grandpa." Then she went right on explaining the snack rotation.

That was it. That was the whole thing. Kathy and I got into the car and just sat there for a minute before she started it.

Friday, March 13, 1998
The preschool tour circuit

We have now toured three preschools. A report:

School #1: Beautiful building, waiting list of two years. Nicolas would get in at age five, which is to say, never.

School #2: Nice teachers, smelled like crayons and bleach, which I count as a plus. The director walked us through, turned to me, and said, "And you're the aunt?" I said, "I'm his other mother." She said "Oh!" in a high voice and then said "Oh!" two more times. At the end she asked, "And will his father be involved?" Nicolas doesn't have a father. He has a donor, which is a different thing, and none of her business besides.

School #3: Too far. We'd spend our lives on the 805.

Two more on the list. Kathy is keeping a chart. Kathy always keeps a chart.

Monday, February 9, 1998
El Niño, and new clothes for the page

New look! Kathy found the clouds background and a palm tree picture in the clip art library. I think we look like a bank now. A nice bank. A bank with a minivan.

It has not stopped raining in a week. El Niño, the TV weather people keep saying, like it's a houseguest who won't leave. Our kitchen ceiling has a brown spot the shape of Texas, and there's a pot under it that goes plink all night. My classroom is in a portable and the roof leaks there too, so I have a pot under that one also. My seventh graders have named theirs. It's called Kevin.

Nicolas, of course, thinks this is the greatest thing that has ever happened. We bought him yellow rain boots and he stomps every puddle between the front door and the Grape, and he says "Splash!" each time, as if the puddle needs to be informed.

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