Happy Ho-Hum Families Day

6/1/2017

Today is LGBTQ Families Day, a day which one celebrates by having a day just like any other. Over at Mombian, there’s a list of blog posts written in celebration of this day, and it seems to me that, taken as a whole, the point is very humdrum: LGBTQ families are just like any other kind of family. I don’t mean this in a sweeping, romantic, love-is-love sort of way. I mean this in a much more mundane way. My kid is LGBTQ, but that’s much less pressing than her being a kid. She necessitates getting up at six every morning, planning and executing a gajillion meals and snacks every day, doing a gajillion loads of laundry every week, making a gajillion trips to the grocery store/library/playground/park, fighting over math homework, fighting over dessert, undergoing relentless interrogation, and deleting without even reading emails about last-minute saver fares to Reykjavic and Hawaii. This is what having an eight-year-old is like for everyone who has an eight-year-old. That she’s also trans is usually secondary. Kids are kids first: you’re desperately in love with them and also constantly wondering why they must be such a pain in the ass. This would be weird if they weren’t a) kids and b) yours. Since they’re both, that odd balance is perfectly ordinary.

Never mind anger, never mind fairness, never mind notions of rightness and equality, what I find most endlessly puzzling about movements to deny LGBTQ rights is simply this: Why???? Every day, my family is nothing so much as utterly, boringly, wonderfully, maddeningly exactly like yours. I’d write more, but I have to go fold laundry now.

4 Comments

About The Author

Laurie Frankel writes novels (reads novels, teaches other people to write novels, raises a small person who reads and would like someday to write novels) in Seattle, Washington where she lives on a nearly vertical hill from which she can watch three different bridges while she's staring out her windows between words. She's originally from Maryland and makes good soup.

Dana link

6/1/2017 09:57:12 am

Thanks for participating in Blogging for LGBTQ Families Day and sharing your story! (I am also, no joke, doing laundry as I monitor and share all the posts coming in.)

Janelle Sills

7/13/2017 01:47:34 pm

Laurie
A few days ago, I picked up a copy of your newest book, This is How it Always Is, at the library, To be perfectly honest, I was surprised to find your book available at a public library in a community that has no claim to open minds.I confess that I'm only 58 pages into it, but have to say that, so far, I'm inspired to finally discover a book written by someone who is not trans which captures what our lives are like. I was Claude as a child and didn't get acceptance, or unconditional love. Instead of blossoming into a happy human, I spent 65 years of torture, enduring bullying and abuse even from those I loved most. Rather than wallowing in self-pity, I've decided that it is time to accept myself and truly live for once. It's perhaps too late to find comfort in my own skin, but to yourself and others like you who deeply love their children, be they trans or gay or whatever, I wish to say that you restore my faith that people can be inherently good. That, in the absence of collective stupidity, we can see the wisdom of allowing our children to tell us who they are, and what they need to feel whole. Thanks so much for writing this book. Even without having reached the end, I know that you have reached out a helping and nurturing hand to other parents struggling to accept their transgender child.

Karen McConaughey link

9/18/2017 09:36:37 am

Even as I type these letters, doubt creeps in that they will not be able to convey my thoughts. finished the book last night. as a lifelong reader of literally thousands of books, TIHIAI may just be my favorite book. i instantly feel in love with the story. back up for a moment. i purposely DID NOT read the book description as everything i had heard said it would not do it justice. Point taken. The description, while well written in the literary sense does not even come close to the experience between the covers. The words, the characters, the meaning just makes you fall in love. It's like meeting someone and instantly connecting. Wanting to be more like them or just be with them every free moment. That's how this story and characters made me feel. It made me realize that we all, in addition to all "groups" have our secrets. How we think we are keeping them but really they are keeping us. How in the beginning, middle and even the end it all comes down to love. Listening to you speak on the MMD bookclub now I had an "a-ha" moment. As small as it seems, your reply to the book cover made me realize that at times we can be so sure of "something." that we have this idea for a cover, title and it just makes perfect sense to us. however, with the right mindset and people around us, that "something" can change completely and end up being exactly what it was meant to be. i do not have a transgender personal experience. i do have a friend whom i have known for most of my "adult" life. have no other relationship like the one i have had with her. like soul sisters. another lady came into her world who was a lesbian, has been her whole life. over the course of a year, we all three became inseparable. hardest i have ever laughed in my life was with these two. my husband and kids, their kids all got along so well. one day i walked in to find them in bed together. it traumatized me. i couldn't even begin to process. i was numb. i couldn't even talk to anyone about it as i wasn't even sure what to say. i pushed everyone away and isolated it. reading this story helped me in so many ways process that event that now was over a year ago. while the friendship isn't the same, i still keep in touch via random texts. i am just typing all this from my heart, when in reality I should probably process it, organize it. but if i do that it may end of up now being as raw and truthful and i think that's what your book was to the world. raw, honest, truthful, smart, full of love. thank you! thank you! my heart sings your praise for writing this story.

Greg Lawrie

10/12/2017 06:26:18 pm

Laurie, all I can say This Is How It Always Is, is to me the best ever that I have read in one heck of a long reading life.My emotions where on a roller coaster ride and at the end I could not hold back the tears of love, joy, sadness an more all wrapped up together. It has all PLUS more as to what you have written. Once more I THANK YOU for the Bestest (if I can make that a word) book ever published (that's my opinion n I'll stick to it). I now look forward to reading more of your books. Living On Vital Energy (the Essence of Life) Greg

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