It is a time-honoured role in families that are not up-their-own-cabooses: the gay uncle or lesbian auntie. If you are lucky enough to be one, and I am, then you will know that our nieces and nephews (n&ns) notice more than we may realise; unless, of course, we remember our own childhood and adolescence. Our aunts and uncles gave us alternative possibilities for our future through their choices, even as we recognised familial characteristics only once-removed from our parents' versions. Children may not want to be raised by their whiskey-drinking, blues-singing auntie who smokes Havana cigars and gives their father hell; but you can bet that they have filed away her sassiness and uncompromising wit as traits that they may legitimately adopt someday. Uncles and aunts are to parents as Warhol was to the Queen: while our sisters and brothers try to be traditional role models for their children, we silkscreen the family archetypes in acid green and lipstick pink.And you never know what will stick. On one of her earliest visits with us in New York, my oldest niece, R, now in her twenties, brought a friend along to celebrate her eleventh birthday. We still remember how much we laughed as I taught them "weird is good" in response to the friend calling New Yorkers weird for the umpteenth time. "Weird is good" gave us humorous shorthand for dealing with their first experiences of rough-sleepers; 9th Avenue working girls; panhandling saxophonists; and anything or anyone that they would not normally come across in their day-to-day lives in Virginia - including, for the friend, R's gay uncle and his partner. By coining "weird is good" I hoped that the friend would take R's uncles in stride and not view us as something that made R weird, in a bad way. Fortunately, all went well, and more than a decade later, our family still wears the motto "weird is good" as a badge of honour. (Before someone comments, I know that weird is not always good in NYC; take Donald Trump's hair - need I say more.)
Like most rainbow uncles and aunties, I have worried, at times, about my n&ns and the knocks they may take for loving me. I would like to shield them from the excesses of others' prejudices, but that is neither possible nor prudent. When we love someone, and they have loved us well, then there is no finer place to learn that the amount of courage we bring to loving them is a defining quality of our character. A key adolescent rite of passage is accomplished when we decide that the possibility of teasing from our peers is less important than our refusal to be embarrassed for loving our touchstone people. Reader, when my partner and I had our wedding in New York in 1997 (long before it was legally recognised) one of my warmest memories is of dancing with R during the reception. She had chosen to stand with us as our ring-bearer during the blessing. And as much as I was moved by my parents' participation and that of other friends and family, there was a specialness in seeing the next generation choosing to be courageous in love - a lesson colourful families have been teaching one another for a long, long time.
Glad you are there,
P
Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say.
They would observe that stringing string beans is universal.
-Gertrude Stein
