Black Or White
December 28, 2007I was pleasantly surprised at how a cacophonous Nibbles was suddenly calm and content in Big Byte’s arms. Must be a special father-son thing, an unspoken language of trust and love, an…ack! It was the damn TV, in all its brighlty pixelated glory.
NP: “Oye! Are you letting him watch TV? And…wtf! You’re letting him watch that? (glares disapprovingly at satin-stockinged leg beckoning random dude)
BB: “Relax yaar! He’s not watching it; he just likes the light and colors. Besides, it’s not what you think. That leg is Shahrukh Khan’s.”
NP: “What??? That’s worse. Now he’ll be scarred for life.”
BB: “Why worse? I thought you were all for gay rights, supporting sexual choices etc.?”
NP: ” Bu..but – of course I am. It’s just that I, uh…” (greps feverishly for adequately PC response) “Ah screw it! you win.”
It’s true. I’d always said that I’d not only be supportive of my gay child, but encouraging. I’d even offered to adopt the unborn gay children of all my homophobic friends (thankfully, there aren’t too many of them). But now that I’m a parent, are my bigoted, old-fashioned notions that were buried after years of caffeinated all-nighters and deliberate unlearning resurfacing?.
Nibbles is 4 months old today and my idea of parenting is hazy at best. I seem to have strong, stubborn opinions on every topic ranging from Mac Donald’s to pansexuality, but it’s often insubstantiated fluff. I think the problem is that I don’t have guiding principles, an underlying philosophy, a theory of everything. Perhaps it’s a function of my refusal to label anything right/wrong, good/bad, moral/immoral, and my need to constantly mutate my ideals.
How can I teach Nibbles anything when I don’t have the cheat-sheet myself? What if my hypotheses are grave misunderstandings? Are half-baked views better than relying on a child’s – no an infant’s ability to rationalize his way to the right solution? But wait, there’s no right solution. And is a rational conclusion really what matters?
Ah well, the present is now. I may not be sure of much, but I’m defnitely past the point when I can decide if I’m mom-material. That’s one less choice I have to make. So it’s about time I summoned my mommyness and learned to trust my instincts instead of the trinity of Spock, Sears and Google.
Lovely post this.. I think deep inside we all have strong ideals/likes/dislikes as well as ideas of what parenthood and children mean. Sure we’ve unlearned a lot of them as we grew up but ideas imbibed during early upbringing does come back especially when we become parents ourselves.
I don’t think it’s bigoted to want your child to have sexual preferences that are the norm. Look at it this way, if your child does turn out to be gay atleast you will be supportive. In the meanwhile there’s no harm in wanting your child to be mainstream, alternative to anything is a hard path and no parent wants their children to have to suffer their way through society.
NP: I’ve been thinking, and I realized that it is important for me to not want my child to be either mainstream or alternative. What I want most is for him to be able to understand himself and figure out what he wants (I can’t claim to be able to do that myself!). If he is gay and does decide to “come out of the closet” (hopefully, he won’t feel the need to hide in one), then he’s probably undergoing various other identity-squashing phenomena of adolescence at the same time, so yes, it will be tough.
If I’m supportive of his sexual choices and he realizes he’s gay, then I’ll be proud of the fact that he learnt something about himself. I hope I live in a society where certain sexual preferences aren’t the “norm”. The conditioning starts at home e.g. explaining the concept of families and including gay parents, single parents etc.
I personally think that nobody’s completely straight or gay. It’s just a relative placement on the Kinsey scale.