Sunday, September 26, 1999
The front of the Bible

My mother came over after Mass this morning with the family Bible under her arm.

If you've been reading since 1996, you know about the Bible. Big and white, lives on the table in her front room, and in the front, in her careful handwriting, the name and birth date of every grandchild. Yolanda's two girls have been in there since the day each one was born. Nicolas has not.

She didn't say anything about it. She sat down at our kitchen table, moved the cereal bowls, put on her reading glasses, took a pen out of her purse, and wrote, under Yolanda's girls: Nicolas, 3 de agosto de 1995. August 3rd, 1995. Then she left a space after "Nicolas," and she said, "For the rest of the name. After the judge."

I asked her, when I could talk, why now. She said, "I was waiting for the papers. Then I thought, Graciela, why are you waiting for the government?" And she closed the Bible and asked Kathy for coffee.

Kathy made the coffee. Mamá said it was too weak. It was perfect.

In other news, Nicolas wants to wear his Batman cape to court. We negotiated. The cape will be worn under the jacket. The judge will never know.

Thursday, September 23, 1999

At bath time Nicolas asked, "Mama, did you do something bad? Why do you have to go to court?" He knows about court from cartoons. In cartoons, court is where the bad guys go.

I said, "No, baby. The judge is going to write down on a paper that I'm your mama, so everybody knows."

He thought about it, blowing bubbles through his fist. Then he said, "Everybody already knows."

Out of the mouths of babes. Kathy is taping the new Friends tonight, which in our house is treated as a religious holiday, so I'm writing this with a pillow over my head.

Monday, September 20, 1999
"and Guest"

My cousin Marisa is getting married in November. The invitation came Saturday, addressed to "Janet Arellano and Guest." Kathy read it over my shoulder and laughed out loud. "Twelve years," she said, "and I'm Guest."

We'll go. We'll dance. Marisa is a sweetheart and the envelope is her mother's doing, I'd bet money. But a few people have written me since the Hawaii vote last year asking whether we'd get married if we could, and whether we're angry, so let me say it here.

We don't expect to marry. Not in California, not in Hawaii, probably not in my lifetime. After Hawaii voted, and after the President signed that marriage act back in '96, I stopped holding my breath. I'm not bitter about it, most days. I'm a math teacher. I work the problem in front of me. And the problem in front of me was never a wedding. It was a four-year-old who needed two legal parents instead of one. On October 14th, if all goes well, that problem gets solved. That's not nothing. That's a lot.

Kathy says if they ever do let us, she wants a cake shaped like the Grape. I've agreed, on the condition that we never have to find out.

Sunday, September 12, 1999

Sunday dinner at Yolanda's. Over the rice, my mother asked me, not looking up, "When is the court?"

I told her. October 14th. She nodded. Then she said, "And after, what is his name?"

We've decided he'll have both. Kathy's last name, a hyphen, and Arellano. I told her that. She repeated it, "Arellano," quietly, like she was trying it on. Then she said, "Can I come?"

Can she come. My mother. To the courthouse. For this.

I said yes. I managed to say it without crying into the rice, which I consider a personal triumph. Yolanda was not so lucky.

Sunday, September 5, 1999

WE HAVE A DATE. Ms. B. called Friday afternoon: the social worker's report is in, and she said, "It's a very good report, Janet." The hearing is Thursday, October 14th, in the morning, in front of a judge who has granted these before.

I put in for a personal day at school before I'd even hung up the phone. Kathy put it on the calendar in red marker and drew a heart around it and then, because she is Kathy, wrote "bring parking money."

Wednesday, September 1, 1999

Back to school with the teachers this week; the students come after Labor Day. The big news in the faculty lounge is that the Beanie Babies are all being retired at the end of the year. Our office secretary has a whole shelf of them in plastic cases and she looked like somebody had died. I didn't say anything. I'm a math teacher. I know about supply and demand.

Thursday, August 19, 1999
Father's name: ______

Kathy switched to days at the hospital in July, so this fall Nicolas is leaving the co-op for a full-day pre-K near her work. We loved the co-op. We're going to miss that pepper tree.

The enrollment forms for the new place came today. Child's name. Date of birth. Allergies (none, except bedtime). And then: Father's name. Father's occupation. Father's work phone. Mother's name. Mother's occupation. Mother's work phone.

I sat at the kitchen table with the pen for a long time. Then I crossed out "Father" in all three places and wrote "Mother" above it, very neatly, the way I tell my students to show their work. Kathy on one side, me on the other. Two Mothers. Nicolas added a drawing of the cat in the margin, which I did not ask him to do and did not stop.

When we dropped the forms off, the director read them standing at the counter and turned pink. She called me that evening to apologize. She said the forms were from the national office and she'd been meaning to ask about changing them, and could she show ours to the office as a model. I said sure. I offered to type up a new one for her. I have a computer and too much free time in August.

That's the thing. Most people aren't against us. They just never thought about us. It's our job to be thought about, I guess, one form at a time.

Sunday, August 8, 1999
Four

Nicolas turned four on Tuesday, and yesterday was the party: dinosaurs, eleven preschoolers, one tired cat hiding under our bed. And Tony Gwynn got his 3,000th hit on Friday night, in Montreal, of all places, so Kathy decorated the cake with a little plastic baseball next to the plastic T. rex. Nicolas thinks the hit was for him. We have not corrected him.

My mother came. She brought a piñata shaped like a star, and she'd filled it herself, with the good candy, the tamarind ones and the little chili lollipops the kids here have never seen. She stayed through the piñata, through the cake, through the presents. She stayed to help clean up. She was wiping down the table when Kathy came in with the trash bag, and Mamá said, "Gracias, mija." Thank you, my daughter.

She says "mija" to every woman under sixty; I know that. Kathy knows that too. Kathy went out to the curb with the trash and stood there for a while anyway.

Wednesday, July 21, 1999
The home visit

The social worker came yesterday at ten on the dot. She was younger than her voice on the phone, with sensible shoes and a clipboard and a very large purse.

She looked at everything. Nicolas's room. The smoke detectors (Kathy had tested them twice that morning). The latches on the cabinet under the sink. The gate to the back yard. She opened our refrigerator, which I had not expected, and which I had luckily cleaned, and which contained, among other things, eleven juice boxes and one sad cucumber.

Then she sat with us at the kitchen table for almost two hours. How we met. How we divide the work. How we handle discipline. (Time-outs. The chancla stayed in my mother's generation.) How we'll talk to Nicolas about the donor when he's older. What would happen if Kathy and I ever split up. That question stopped my breath for a second, and then I said, "He'd still be my son. That's why we're doing this," and she wrote something down and nodded.

Nicolas, meanwhile, was an angel for about ten minutes and then a four-year-old. He brought her his rock collection one rock at a time. He introduced everybody: "That's my mama, and that's my mommy, and that's Chuy, he's a cat." He offered her a crayon. At one point she was sitting on the living room floor in her sensible shoes, helping him build a tower out of blocks.

At the door she said, "You have a lovely family." She didn't say it on the clipboard. She said it on the porch. I'm taking it.

Saturday, July 17, 1999

Three days until the home visit. Kathy is cleaning the grout in the bathroom with a toothbrush. I have cleaned the inside of the oven, which nobody in history has ever looked in.

Tonight we had our one real disagreement. In the hall there's a framed photo of the three of us at the Pride parade last summer, Nicolas on Kathy's shoulders waving a little rainbow flag bigger than he is. Kathy asked, quietly, if we should take it down for Tuesday.

I said no. We're not hiding anything. That's the whole point of this. She'll be here to see our family, and that's our family. Kathy thought about it and said, "You're right," and then she dusted the frame.

Sunday, July 11, 1999

The U.S. women won the World Cup yesterday up at the Rose Bowl, on penalty kicks against China, and Kathy and I screamed so loud our neighbor Hector came over to make sure nobody was being murdered. He stayed for the celebration. Nicolas spent the rest of the afternoon kicking a ball against the garage door and falling down on purpose, the way he saw them do on TV.

Summer is going fast. The home visit is a week from Tuesday. I'm trying not to think about it, which means I think about nothing else.

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