This is what pride means to me. Sitting around my dining table three weeks ago, with the smell of bacon still in the air, and the remnants of an extravagant Mother’s day brunch all around me, I gaze across the room. On the couch, one of my dearest friends, Anya, sits with her wife Tara, and they hold their three-month-old son, Caleb, between them. My daughter, Mattea, bounces on the couch beside them, extolling her love for her new “brother.”
Since Caleb’s birth, Mattea regularly jumps around asking me questions like:
“Why don’t I have two mommies?”
“Two vulvas can’t make a baby, right?”
Or saying things like:
“When I grow up I want to marry a girl too, like Anya.”
“I changed my mind, I think I want to marry a boy.”
I reflect on a long journey which has brought us here to this moment.
I met Anya not long before I entered Occupational Therapy school. I was immediately captivated by her Ukrainian accent, love of literature, her honesty and her humour. We became study pals and were thrilled when we both got into O.T. school at the same time. Anya’s own story seemed like an epic work of fiction to me – with Anya figuring as the heroine who defies all odds or stereotypes. Having taught herself English as a teen immigrant to Canada, fought to leave an abusive marriage, struggled to get accepted to University, financially put herself through school, and then got accepted to Occupational Therapy school on her first try, she mesmerized me with her tenacity.
In my final year of O.T. school, I arranged a placement in Uganda, East Africa. My soon to become fiancé, Jacob, came with me for the first few weeks. By then the three of us were close friends. One day Jacob went into town to one of three small internet cafes and returned to tell me that Anya had sent us an e-mail, coming out, and apologizing to us if this was shocking. In the same breath she wrote that we were in fact the first people she had told. We were honoured.
When we returned from Uganda, Anya was undergoing the painful process of moving out from the apartment she shared with her long-time boyfriend, getting settled in a new place, and beginning to enter the lesbian dating scene. Somehow this transitional phase in Anya’s life brought us all closer and we enjoyed weekly dinners at our new condo together at least once a week, evenings filled with decadent meals (cooked by Jacob), lots of wine on our small patio overlooking the St. Lawrence Market and city skyline, comedic television watching, and perhaps most importantly, trips to the McDonald’s downstairs for hot fudge sundaes with extra fudge.
Within a year, Anya had met someone she had hit it off with. When we had this woman - Tara, over for the first time to join one of our weekly dinners, it was not only obvious how much Tara adored Anya, but what a perfect addition she made to our dinner parties. Tara and Jacob talked tirelessly about politics and cooking, while Anya and I rolled our eyes and went off on our own to talk about our O.T. work, our families, books, and knitting. Tara and Jacob were alike in their effusive expressions of love and devotion to us. Anya and I were alike in the comfort we took from being doted on and loved unconditionally.
Our bonds to each other have served us through many major milestones in the past five years – two weddings, two pregnancies, two births, and one parental death. Anya and Tara are Godparents to Mattea. My mother and I were holding Anya’s legs as she pushed Caleb into the world this past February. The image of Tara’s face, choked with emotion and joy, as Caleb slipped out and was placed on Anya’s chest for the first time is one I will never forget.
As I glance across the room at this new family unit celebrating mother’s day for the first time, a wave of deep gratitude comes over me that we live in a city and country that has allowed these three people, whom I adore, to choose each other and to love each other, as they are meant to. I then look at my daughter, who, in great part due to Anya and Tara, has fluid ideas about love, family, sexual orientation, and choice. And my heart swells with pride. When it comes to LGBTQ rights, we may have a long way to go, but I am infinitely grateful for how far we have already come.
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