Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site unisoft.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!zehntel!dual!unisoft!maf
From: maf@unisoft.UUCP (Mary Ann K. Finnerty)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: Holidays for gays
Message-ID: <368@unisoft.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Dec-84 14:48:28 EST
Article-I.D.: unisoft.368
Posted: Thu Dec 13 14:48:28 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Dec-84 01:39:06 EST
References: <1209@bbncca.ARPA>
Organization: UniSoft Corp., Berkeley
Lines: 56

When I came out, January of '77, I told my mom right away.
I tell her everything, though, so it wasn't as big a deal.
(She didn't hear me, though, for a long time.)

This year, since my lover's mother is temporarily living with
us, we will spend Christmas Eve at home - with her, of course,
and then Christmas Day we will all go out to Pleasant Hill to
see my sister and her family and have dinner there.

In general, although I went through a number of years
exclusively dating married women, whenever I have had a lover
that I was serious about, we shared the holidays.  If we
had Christmas at one's family, we had Thanksgiving at the
other's. If we had Thanksgiving home with our friends, then
we would split Christmas Eve and Christmas day - half 'n half.

It is different, of course, being ``out'' to my family.  But
I find that even if the secret is a small one, it separates
me from the person I am keeping it from...the way that emotional
``linking'' happens, it just gets harder to make contact...

My lover and I were having a problem for a while partially
because I was keeping a secret from her
(rationalizing it with ``I am protecting HER...'')
and it lessened the quality of our interaction.

I am finally learning, as 30 approaches, that the idea of protecting
someone else is, not only more egotism than I previously thought,
but usually a way that I avoid confronting my own doubts and fears.
The other person is usually due more credit than I attribute to them.

My mother told me this past summer, when I asked her why at 63 she
had been so ``cool'' about my ``coming out'', and she said that
she would have been sick about it if she thought I was doing something
that I was ashamed of - but that, since I seemed more confident and
happy than she'd previously known me to be, and appeared comfortable
with the choice, she felt comfortable about it, too.
(she did manage to add, to my chagrin, that at least all of my
women friends and lovers looked like ``normal women,'' but that
is her upbringing - just like I end up saying things based on
my background...how different would my attitudes about life be
if I were brought up in Scarsdale instead of the east side of
Bayonne, NJ??)

Well, everyone, as the song says:

		``Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
				Make the yuletide gay!!''

Mary Ann Finnerty
(unisoft!maf)