My dad called me the other day, which is something that doesn’t happen that often.  My dad and I love each other but there is a distance in our relationship that is there out of respect for each other.  Typically calls are made on birthdays, holidays and maybe three other times during the year as “just because” calls, something we feel a certain obligation to make.  The main points of conversation for my dad and me consist of the weather, the kids, and the latest technology.  I wouldn’t ever call our conversations deep.  The other day when he called, he started out the conversation by talking about books.  I told him what I was reading, recommended some books to him and then there was a lull in the conversation.

 “I have to ask you something,” he said.

 Uh-oh, I thought.  “Am I in trouble?” I quickly reverted back to my twelve-year-old self.

 “No, no…I just have a question,” he said obviously uncomfortable.  I could hear a door shut in the background like he was shutting himself off from the rest of the house.  “I don’t know how to ask you this.”

 “Just ask,” I said trying not to let my voice quaver since I still thought I was in trouble.  I just knew he was going to ask me about my sexual activity while I was still in high school.

 “Is your mother a lesbian?” he blurted.  That one took me by surprise.

 My parents have been divorced for twelve years.  I think I was more relieved than my dad when they split up because they were an unevenly matched pair.  Not uneven like opposites attract, but uneven like there was too big of a clash in personalities for my parents to be truly happy.  My dad has a boisterous, person-loving personality, where as my mom is most in her element when she is with her girl friends, and most specifically one that she’s been quite close to for several years.

 Growing up, I remember my parents telling me how they got together.  I must have been about eight when my sister, who was going through her first crush, asked for the family love story.  My parents met on a blind date that was set up by my mother’s cousin, but my dad had another date lined up for the evening just in case the one with my mother didn’t work out.  When my dad found out who she was, he was intrigued and canceled his other date.  My grandparents knew each other from several years prior to this first date and my dad wanted to see what had happened to my mother’s family.  Apparently, my grandfathers, both salesmen, viewed each other as their rivals.  When my paternal grandfather found out who my father had been out with the night after his date he said, “Huh, I’d like to see where this goes.”  My dad took that as approval from his father and asked my mom out again.

 Several months after the first date, my dad hinted to my mom that he bought her something really special for her birthday.  He invited her over to his parents’ house for supper where he presented her with a small velvet box.  When my mom opened the box, she tried to hide her disappointment because instead of the ring she had been expecting, the box held a pair of opal earrings.  My grandmother saw the disappointment and pulled my dad aside.  “She was expecting an engagement ring,” she told him.  My dad took that statement as a suggestion from his mom.  He thought she was expecting him to marry my mom.  The next day he went out and presented my mom with an engagement ring tied to a long stemmed rose. 

 At first, I thought my parents’ engagement story was sort of romantic because of the whole rose thing.  But then, my eight-year-old self got to thinking.  My dad didn’t want to marry my mom.  He only did it because his mom told him to.  That was like me going over to my least favorite friend’s house because my mom told me to, “Because it’s the nice thing to do,” according to my mom.  My dad did the biggest “nice thing to do”.

 During my recent phone conversation with my dad, he told me that he didn’t want to marry my mom.  I was okay with knowing that because it was something that I had figured out on my own a jillion years ago.  He told me that on his way to the church he had made an agreement with himself that he would give the marriage three years and if he still didn’t want to be in it, he would get out of it.  At the reception following the wedding, my maternal grandfather shook my dad’s hand and pulled him in close to whisper in his ear, “If you screw this up I will get involved.”  There went that three-year trial period.

 Just shy of the three-year mark, my sister was born and I followed just over a year later.  Because of this my dad felt a sense of obligation.  A few years later, my brother came along.  Though my dad loved each of us, he felt trapped.  He didn’t mind my mom’s personality; it was the fact that their sex life left much to be desired.  The conversation with my dad gave me more understanding as to how it was for them.  The gist of it was that their sex life consisted of creating three children and never went beyond that.  He told me that when he and his friends would engage in locker room talk, my dad would walk away too ashamed to admit that he was lacking in the bedroom department.

 To compensate for the lack of love in the bedroom, my dad buried himself in his work and social clubs around town to help promote his business.  He was well liked in the community and well respected.  A divorce at the height of his career would have been the end of his work, or so he felt.  While my dad was out golfing or attending Ducks Unlimited meetings, my mom involved herself (too deeply) in us kids’ lives.  For her social interaction, she had a few friends that we weren’t privy to know what went on.  When my dad got home from where ever he was, he always shared a funny story of something that happened.  My mom, on the other hand, was very secretive about her encounters with her friends.  She would try to pass it off as though she and her friends were talking about Christmas and so that was her way of keeping everything hush-hush.  It was always Christmas, nothing ever varied from her story.  As kids, we accepted that since we knew Christmas talk was off limits and if we pushed, supposedly, we wouldn’t get presents.

 Since my parents’ divorce, my dad has married a woman who is fun and loving in all the ways my dad needs.  My mom, however, has been on just a few dates that she has felt obligated to go on.  One of the men she dated lived a safe two hours away.  She was set up with this guy by both one of her friends and my cousin.  Neither the friend nor my cousin knew that they were trying to set the same man up on a date with the same woman.  To the rest of the world, the match seemed like fate.  To my mom, it spelled doom.  Because of the physical distance, my mom let the relationship go on for a few months.  She would drive the distance to this guy’s house and would have lunch and drive back home before it got too dark.  After what seemed like a decent time to the rest of the world, the guy decided that he was going to sleep over at my mom’s house.  If my mom would have had sex with this guy, I would have been perfectly happy for her since she needed to move on from the divorce.  I knew that she valued this guy’s company; they would have been a great match.  My mom fixed supper and the two of them had drinks.  It was obvious from the conversation afterwards that my mom delayed going to sleep, which for her is odd since she’s the type of person that has lights out by 9:30. 

 Ten o’clock rolled around, then eleven.  Finally at one in the morning, she couldn’t hold her eyes open anymore and suggested sleep.  My mom lead the guy upstairs and showed him where the bathroom was.  She waited outside the door for him to finish brushing his teeth and whatnot and then promptly showed him to the guest room informing him that the sheets were clean.  Since it was so late, the guy slept over.  The next morning at breakfast, he broke up with her.  My mom wasn’t disappointed; she was relieved.

 This is how all of her relationships with men have gone since the divorce.  She claims that she’s just really picky with who she wants to date, but when asked what she looks for in a man, she’ll say, “Oh, I just want a man who has nice teeth and good shoes.”  Hello, how hard is that to find?  I can think of a jillion single men her age in her town that would fit that description.  She’s been on Match.com at the insistence of her married friends.  She’s allowed herself to be hooked up on dates.  She’s emailed several different men but always finds a reason to stop after a couple of weeks.  She always turns to the same single woman who also never is in a relationship with a man.

 My mom and her friend are constantly together.  They go camping in the summers; they’ve been to Alaska, California, and Arizona together.  The have supper together several nights a week.  This woman has slept over at my mom’s house when the woman’s kitchen was being remodeled.  My mom let it slip that they shared the same bed.  She didn’t realize what she said and I let it pass getting some relief and understanding about how my mom is.

 When asked, my mom will tell you how she thinks that people in same sex relationships should have all the rights and privileges of marriage as opposite sex relationships.  She’ll tell you that homosexuality is great and wonderful and that it’s got to be something in the person’s genetic makeup.  She’ll say that when she and her friend go out, she knows that people look at her as being a lesbian, but if she were to go out with a married friend, she knows that people view them as just friends.

 This relationship has been going on for twelve years.  I wish my mom felt comfortable coming out to me.  Because she doesn’t, it feels like there’s a huge elephant in the room that no one will acknowledge.  Everyone just pretends like nothing is going on when all I want is for my mom to be comfortable enough to tell me the truth.  My siblings and I have all discussed this and, for the most part, we agree that my mom is a lesbian and I’m okay with that.  It explains so much of my life, it explains to me who she is as a person and why she was the way that she was to my dad.  My mom married my dad because she felt that was what was right in that time period.  She wanted to be a mother, and she got that too.  But now it’s her turn in life now that all of her kids are grown, married and out on their own.  It’s her turn to be comfortable with who she is.  It’s her turn to be happy.  I just wish she would let us in on her secret because there’s no sense in hiding what we all know to be true.