Inevitable

Inevitable
To my son.
My life has taken on the flavor of inevitability, but never resignation.
Never resignation to the inevitable bigotry, inevitable eyes that see me, but desire to understand nothing, the inevitability of smelling hate bleed into the air because I'm in the wrong place at the right time to receive a little redneck justice for the sole crime of being a woman that is in love with a woman.
I fear none of these things.
What I fear is a question. I fear this singular question asked in ignorance or innocence, curiosity or reflection. Veiled in sarcasm or dripping in overt judgment.
I can see the question swirl in the air in front of people like a heat shimmer as they contemplate the three of us.
Eyes dart between us, the math making them glaze over.
One uterus plus another uterus...does...not...compute.
They compare eye and hair color, bone size and facial structure with the intensity of German geneticists, we can play hopscotch in the punnet squares they've drawn on the floor.
And then it belches out of their mouths, riding on the assumption that they have a right to know, "which one of you is his REAL mother?"
Each word cuts me wide open. Dirty fingers dig through my insides for evidence, my barren womb becomes an exhibit on display, my own body used to color the heat of my shame on my face.
It's amazing how much pain you can feel and process over the span of a few seconds, but it's even more amazing how fast you can recover when love paints your spine in steel.
So, I sew up the wounds with thoughts of you
in one hand and use the other to point to your mother. I say;
"She nourished him from her body. She is his fortress. His safety. She felt him move inside of her, every tiny hiccup was tiny Morse code message between the two of them. The tears as she looked down at her rolling belly made her eyes dance.
It is her.
Unequivocally.
Unabashedly.

BUT

The seconds between him entering the world to tasting his first breath dug themselves into my back, each one agonizingly dragging fingers into my skin, the popping of parting flesh echoing along with my pounding heart. I would have ripped my own pulsing lungs from my chest with a smile and given them to him with his name on my last breath if the silence would've lasted just one more second.
But when he finally added his cry to the world chorus, I realized that who I was was before just became irrelevant and who I was going to become was never more important.
It is me.
Unequivocally.
Unabashedly.

HOWEVER, she looks into her own eyes when she smiles down at him. Her soul lives for his happiness and her caresses are never softer than when she is wiping his tears aways.
So...naturally...it is her.
Unequivocally.
Unabashedly.

BUT, a tiny blonde mohawk sits on my lap blowing bubbles across a neglected street.
A large one chases the wind and dares him to follow.
In the millisecond it takes my hand to close around his shirt, I die a thousand time, my heart flies out of my mouth to prevent my worst nightmare from becoming a reality.
So....maybe it's me?
Unequivocally.
Unabashedly."

So, my son, you will inevitably ask me this question too, probably in anger but I'm hoping for curiosity.
Understand that I've never wanted to be anything more than to simply be your mother. And when you question it, when others question it: remember that when the dream world ceased to be a symphony of wonder and discovery, when the big bad wolf became more than a shadow, you reached out for a heartbeat on your same frequency and that has nothing to do with biology.

We are, unequivocally, unabashedly, a family