Cast of Thousands, Chapter 1
Jessica Pullman
Social Studies Period 4
Ms. Woods
10/8/02
My Family
We are a pretty normal family with two parents and one kid (girl) and one cat (tabby). We live in a house together and do normal family stuff like go on vacations and to the library and grocery shopping.
Everybody's family is different, even the "normal" ones. Some families you only like their dad and some families the mom is nicer. Some families have a lot of pets and some have a lot of rules. There are three big things that are different about my family:
1. It has two moms.
2. One of my moms is really a lot of different people so really it has a bunch of different moms.
3. It has me in it!
Most families with two moms have trouble deciding what the moms are going to be called. Some families decide they should just both be Mom, or Mommy, or one of each. Some of them use their names, like Mommy Beth and Mommy Mabel, or just have their kids call them by their first names. (Mabel and Beth.)
In our family it was easy. They both liked "Mom" because it sounded so normal so they picked Mom for my regular one-person mom and Moms for my mom who is lots of people. When I was litle I added my own name for both of them which was Momomms. I wanted to say Mom-or-moms but it was too hard to say fast. Sometimes I call them "my one mom" and "my many moms."
The fancy explanation for my many moms is that "my mom has MPD" which is multiple personality disorder. But Moms says that is like saying "My two mothers have homosexuality," because it's not a disease that needs to be fixed, it's just a word for what people are. Like lesbian or gay. So instead of saying "I am a homosexual with MPD" she says "I am multiple and lesbian." And then we get to go to the Gay Pride Picnic every year and stuff!
Plus our family gets to be bigger than it looks. I get lots of moms, and friends who play with me. Some people in her system are even like my sisters.
It confuses people sometimes. They see that a kid my age is there instead of a mom and they think Moms is weird for acting like a kid or that I'm lucky to have a mom who will play with me. Sometimes I call people in there by different names because they have their own names, like Kitten, who is little and bouncy, or Jack, who taught me how to ride a bike, and that makes people REALLY confused. But I think it's more important to treat them like themselves and be who I am with them than to worry about what other people think. Even though that's hard sometimes.
I guess most people would think that it would be really different and hard to have two moms and no dad. I know it's supposed to be totally scary and I'm supposed to get made fun of so much for it, but we live in Davis.
It's not like I've never heard kids calling each other "lesbo" or "fag." But I had pretty much the same friends in my class all through elementary school so by the time they were old enough to think it was weird they knew all about it already and were totally used to it.
So I have a pretty ordinary life. My mom takes me on big shopping trips in Sacramento, or around the bookstores downtown, and lets me help her build the furniture that she sells sometimes. Kitten and I play with makeup and dress-up games and dolls. Kelly is the everyday person that I call Moms, and she makes special holiday food (even though Mom does most of the cooking) and worries about me and helps out with my Girl Scout troop and makes sure I'm okay. Dorian is another mom who's more laid-back. She is a really good guitar player and she is going to teach me how to play. She even writes her own songs. Uncle Jack doesn't visit very much but he taught me how to ride a bike and he is very nice to be around. Gail is older than me but I'm catching up to her! I think I am pretty lucky to actually be able to catch up to my big sister. Tommy is four and he likes fire trucks and Moms says I am so good with him that I should get to start babysitting soon even though she doesn't know how she'll explain how I got all my experience!
That is the people I see most of the time in my family and what it is like to be in my family. I hope it seems as nice to you as it does to me.
Next: Chocolate Chip Pancakes, where the story really begins