My spouse Helen and I recently celebrated our 30th anniversary. At a time when the LGBTQ community is being attacked on all sides, this personal milestone also reminded me that despite the many challenges for LGBTQ folks right now, progress can happen and queer joy is real.
While 30 years is not a record-breaking number, we’ve nevertheless experienced many changes in both our relationship and in society during our three decades together. In 1993, when we started dating, LGBTQ parents were far less visible than today. Helen, who had always wanted to have kids someday, thought she would have to give up that dream when she started dating a woman. For my part, I was a few years younger and the idea of kids wasn’t on my radar screen as I focused on the transition from graduate school to gainful employment.
Two things shifted my perspective. The first was when my brother-in-law and his wife became parents and I got an up-close look at what early parenthood could be. The second was 9/11. I had been working on the top floor of the World Financial Center, right next to the World Trade Center, until two business days before that date, when I took a new position in the company’s New Jersey office. Instead of being on the commuter train under WTC at 8:46 a.m. when the first plane hit, however, I was driving into a suburban parking lot. I realized suddenly just how short our time in this life could be, and knew I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to be a parent.
I suspected Helen and I would be a good parenting team. We agreed on the core values and skills we wanted to teach our child, but we each brought different things to the table. I grew up on the East Coast; she on the West. She’s an engineer; I’m a literature and history geek. I’m an athlete who’s been competitive in several sports; she prefers to get her exercise gardening or building things. (We’re both always up for a good hike in the woods, though.) We figured we could expose our child to a variety of activities and experiences and he would find his own path among (or beyond) them. (Spoiler: He has.)
When Helen and I began our journey to parenthood via reciprocal in vitro fertilization (my egg, her womb), no state had yet enacted marriage equality. We knew we would need to take steps to secure my legal parentage (something still recommended today even for nongestational or nongenetic parents in married same-sex couples, unfortunately). A lawyer helped us become only the second RIVF couple to get a pre-birth parentage order in the state—the first had gotten theirs just a month before. We were happy to be part of a burgeoning trend.
We were hardly pioneers, though. Out LGBTQ parents had been known since the time of World War II, mostly in the context of cases that denied them child custody after divorce from different-sex spouses. The 1970s saw more two-mom couples and single women, and even some queer dads, starting their families together. And three years before we started dating, a Newsweek article contained what seems like the first documented instance of the term “gayby boom.”
By sheer coincidence, our time as parents has paralleled a spike in rights and visibility for queer couples and families. The year our son was born, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to declare that same-sex couples had the right to marry. Initially, only in-state couples could do so, however, and we lived elsewhere.
Then, while I was staying home with our son, Helen got a job in Massachusetts. Her new company no longer offered health insurance for unmarried partners, post-marriage equality, so we had to marry for me to be covered. We therefore planned for and had our wedding in the span of two weeks—and like to joke about our “shotgun wedding” after 13 years together. By total coincidence, the day we chose was November 18, three years to the day after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision that made it legal. Now, we always have a small celebration in November, too (because it’s an excuse for more cake), but our April anniversary is our real one.
Today, too, LGBTQ families and individuals across the LGBTQ spectrum are far more visible in real life, in the media, and in children’s books and television. I envy today’s families that have such resources, though I know they have new challenges as well.
Helen and I have been together half our lives, through six interstate moves and several career changes for each of us. We’ve supported each other through the deaths of all four of our parents. We met as graduate students and now have a son in college.
If there’s a secret to having a relationship last this long, I’m not sure what it is. I think we started with a good foundation of both common interests and complementary differences. We delight in each other’s company but also do things separately. Yes, we argue sometimes, but after this many years, we know that storms will blow over. And I think we’ve never forgotten that ineffable something that drew us to each other in the first place.
Although LGBTQ rights are under renewed attack right now, I’m heartened by thinking back on all the change we’ve seen and know is possible. And thinking of the love we have, I know why I want to keep fighting.
Originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.
