Tests

It was July 2006 that a daughter got married. My wife and I tried to make believe that all was well – I mean we were still sharing a bed, still imagining some miracle land where I would not be gay, where someone would click the ruby slippers. Of course that was silly and I suppose I have ended up wearing those slippers. Looming on the horizon was the next wedding – October 2006 and approaching fast. Well that was postponed and it was not until April 2008 that another knot was tied. Of course any illusion for me and the Mom was long shattered, but still it was a day of being together and being apart.

While the balancing was successful, moments together, but primarily a parallel existence of visiting friends and family, that was not the main event for me. You see the bride is technically my step-daughter, one who I raised from age eight, one who has absorbed my sensibilities, humor, and general view of the world. Her biological father, long remarried, is still in the picture and she has always tried to do right by him. But after twenty years, most under the same roof, she is much more mine than his.

I have reflected on this of late: a conversation with someone in similar circumstances telling me that they just cannot feel the same towards their step-son as their biological daughter. And on the other end, a friendship with a man whose children were adopted at birth – a fact I only learned in passing, a fact one would never know watching the interactions. For me it is easy – my daughter of twenty years is my daughter, same as my flesh and blood.

Of course weddings of blended families have issues unique to the circumstances and I am anything but stupid. My daughter has been planning the walk down the aisle for months – permutations worthy of a mathematician, compromises reminiscent of a diplomat. I have taken a back seat, an unusually passive role for I realize the difficulties inherent in it all. When she was first engaged I even told her of my agreeability, my desire not to create more issues than there already were. So when I learned I was going to walk her halfway down – never sure of which half – I was pleased.

Twenty four hours to go and her mother takes me aside: the biological father is not thrilled but worse the step-mom is freaking. It seems that this woman equates her step mom role of maybe a weekly dinner visit (with bad cooking to boot, or so I am told) with my step dad role of providing a roof and all that goes with it for decades on end. My daughter is devastated, her mom incensed but there is a choice here, a family war or my taking a back seat and walking down the aisle with the step mom on my arm.

The choice was obvious – no choice one might say. And I realize how far I have come for I think that four or five years ago, I would have been very hurt by how it all played out. But I am not hurt in the least for I realize that I was given an opportunity to be the true parent, the one who would forego for themselves for the sake of their children. And while this has nothing to do with the gayness, I cannot help but suspect that my accepting of myself has again helped me accept so much more.