Sally: Full Interview

TRANSCRIPT

Sally
Interviewer by Deirdre Quill
8th June 2015

Hi I’m [Sally]. This is the 8th June 2015 and I’m being interviewed as a lesbian mother for Queer Stories.

I came out as a lesbian in about 1986 – oh no, before that, when I was 21 anyway. A long time ago. I’m now 53. I have two children, both boys, one’s twelve – born in 2002 – and one’s eight – born in 2006 – so the oldest is now at high school, just started high school, and the youngest is in the local primary school.

When I moved to Leeds 30 years go, and the year after that I got involved with a woman who had three children under five. We didn’t live together but I was very involved, so I wasn’t ever a co-parent but I did lots and lots, more fun stuff, played with them, they used to stay at my house once every… overnight every weekend, often with the two children that they lived with, so I’d have five children in my house as a 25 year old every weekend and I loved it.

And I think – I was really into her – but I was really into the kids; I think the kids were kind of a really big reason that I was in that relationship and I still see them. The youngest is about to have a baby so that’s really lovely, really, really, lovely; it’s a really important relationship to me. They’re now in their early thirties obviously. The little one particularly, because she was two when I first met her, felt like my baby so it was a real turning point for me in terms of thinking, ‘Well, I could do this. I want to do this’, but it took me, you know, a lot more years to percolate that really and when I met my current partner – so we’ve been together 21 years – we were talking and I was nearly there. I was nearly at the point where I wanted to start trying to have a child so that was quite a lot for her to deal with in a very new relationship: this woman saying, ‘this is what I want to be doing and I want to do it now really’. So I did start trying quite soon into that relationship but I only had like two periods a year for years and years and years so that was a clue really that my fertility wasn’t that brilliant so…

There was an informal network of women helping women to get pregnant within the area at that time so I was using that, but my cycle wasn’t predictable enough for that to be any good really so then I started going to hospital: kind of quite intrusive invasive expensive process – still nothing was happening – so I tried for, it felt like a really long time – probably getting on for two years – and it wasn’t going to happen. I decided I would have one more go.

We were really, really, sad and we had a long holiday in America and that helped and kind of cheered us up because my partner was really – she’d got really involved in it all by then and was as sad as me, I think. So we went to America, came back and I ended up going to Crisis Centre because I was so poorly with it all by then I’d lost weight which is something I never ever do [laughs]; not something I like to do but I was really badly affected by it. I went to Crisis Centre and this was all leading up to me having one last go but it didn’t work but I was able to let it go then I think – I did some pretty good closure on it but it was so sad, so so so sad. And she was. So we thought about adopting and I think we went to a meeting but we really weren’t ready and they wouldn’t have wanted us at that point anyway. We were just grieving.

So we decided to do something completely different; we thought we’ll just have an adventure. So we moved to Dublin and had four years in Dublin: really, really, really lovely time. Exciting, very scary, lonely but really exciting time and made some amazing friends and were able to kind of not be these sad people, you know we could re-invent ourselves a bit and not tell... everybody knew in Leeds and it was hard; everybody was really kind but you don’t… nobody wants to be the object of pity for more than about two days so we just went and had different people doing different things. After about two years she said, ‘oh well, maybe I’ll have a go’. She really, really wanted me to have children; she didn’t want to be pregnant; it was quite clear she didn’t want to be pregnant but she decided she’d have a go and got pregnant first time so I think she was more shocked than me really.

Yeah, so he was born in Dublin and then we came back when he was quite little – seven months old – but he’s Irish, our little Irish boy, so that was brilliant. And for a bit, I think until she was feeling really sick and really horrible, for a bit I was really envious and jealous; and that was hard. But I think that all went. Certainly being there at the birth was amazing, it was very frightening and very exciting. Yeah! Just a really amazing experience.

It’s nice, they were both born in late November so kind of August/September you’re leading up to this time; so every year I still feel like – September is always exciting anyway because its new starts and new terms – so from September onwards you have this thing. It’s still that thing: ‘oh our baby’s going to be born in late November,’ so it’s a really special time of year. Yes I think that’s that bit.

Yes so with my first partner with those children I was kind of used to being the – they used to call me the ‘spare mummy’ – so used to being around but not the mother of the children but that was much more acute when you’re there with a brand new baby so I’m out on my own with a fairly new baby and people are asking me about the birth and things, like people do, you know, so you’re instantly out. You’re out. I mean when we went to hospital in Dublin to sign up the computer crashed. It couldn’t cope with what we were telling them and the woman who did the ultrasound, you know the first scan, the dating scan, she was a student and there was somebody else there and she kept going on and on about contraception and the woman was trying to shush her and say, ‘you really don’t need to talk about that’, and she’d got this list and she had to go through these questions. So that was a learning curve for the hospital in that respect but they were brilliant, really, really, really respectful and they talked to me as if I was a parent. Although I was there one night and this old-school matron-type person came in and said: ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ with this baby in the nursery and all the other nurses said, ‘it’s alright; she’s allowed to stay’, you know; ‘she’s the mother’s partner, blah blah blah’, so that was good.

So yeah, explaining to people… So I’ve always been out – maybe not to the person on the bus anymore; because I can’t always be bothered. And I have been, on bad days, been thought to be [name]’s grandma so they were particularly bad days, but it’s only by one woman, this one woman. I have met her in various different contexts and each time she thought I was his grandma but I think she had her kids very young so… I mean that’s been one of the biggest issues for me is being 40 when one was born and 44 when the next one was born and just feeling like an older mother and a lot of the time that’s a bigger issue for me than being a lesbian mother; really struggling with that because if I’d got pregnant when I started I would have had a 19 year old now. So kind of watching my friends who did get pregnant and their children growing up and me still not got off the starting blocks, you know, I just do feel a bit silly sometimes, a bit strange – as an older parent not a lesbian parent.

We tried to find other women in the same position and it was really hard. So we know two or three lesbian couples. We came back to Leeds and went to Pride and kind of looked for people and, well, they were very friendly but they’d just done it in a really different way and they knew the donor whereas we didn’t know the donor of either of the boys. The first one was community network thing, the second one was through the hospital – oh with the second one – because that took a while, it wasn’t instant – and it was all through the hospital because by then the community network didn’t exist anymore so, again you’re into more expense; you’re into more medical intervention which my partner didn’t really need so we ended up with minimal; we kind of worked out what we needed and just went in to literally just to get the sperm, not have any chemical intervention or tracking in the end because that was the cheapest option as well but they changed the law with the second one that… around anonymous donations. They changed the law and then you got one more year and after that the donor would be identifiable and we really didn’t want that. We wanted them to be in the same position as each other – very important to us – so it was the very last month before… that she got pregnant with him… you know, before the law would have changed. So that was good. I’m not fatalistic about much, but I am about children but they just do seem to come, you know they seem to come into your lives. I suppose I wouldn’t be saying that if I was a 53 year old straight woman with no kids and it is a really good about being a lesbian you got two goes. I got a second chance at motherhood. I’ve completely lost my train of thought now.

So these other two lesbian couples knew the donor and called them ‘dad’ so that was really not going to be that helpful to our kids so what I’ve done is I’ve spent a lot of time with a lesbian couple who adopted a boy. They adopted a child from another country who was actually born the same day as our youngest and the politics and the feel of the adoptive parents is much more like me really so I am very comfortable with that stuff of that, you know, not being biologically related to my children but having had a massive influence on my children obviously and them on me, so it’s that whole nurture nature thing. I used to think it was almost entirely nurture but now I think it’s almost entirely nature, but that might just be because I don’t want to be blamed for anything [laughs] – any character defects – and I had that with the other kids as well. I did influence them and they do say things that I used to say and that’s really nice and obviously much more so with mine because I’m there all the time.

I mean the little one at the minute does this whole thing about, ‘you’re not my real mum; you’re an adopted mum‘, and that’s very, very, hurtful, but hopefully he’ll grow out of that. And they do know, they understand really well about the whole process and my older child got the best marks in science when they did reproduction because he said: ‘I know that whatever I ask you, you will answer’, you know. I don’t think school had done our kind of reproduction but at least he knows about it. But I heard the younger one explaining to his friend really carefully and clearly about what happened: ‘this really kind man gave us some seed – except he calls them beans. [laughs] So he was going to live with his friends – this girl had told him she was going to marry him – he was going to marry her but also live with his boy/male friends and he was going to have four beans and do all the cooking and the beans were going to be boys. So that was going to be his little set-up.
So yeah, we’ve always told them, at whatever age they could deal with it, but it’s usually like, you know: ‘why haven’t I got a dad? what’s for dinner?’ It’s on that level quite often so we’ve always told them and been out in school… health visitors… we had the most amazing health visitor actually. She was really, really, supportive and never had any problems. I don’t think we’ve had any problems. We’ve been involved in the medical profession a lot because the youngest ones got a really bad skin condition so we’ve been in and out of hospital a lot and I think if you tell people and it’s normal. I sometimes forget it’s an issue for people get a really positive response I think.

My family were really positive. There’s only mum and dad and my sister, and my dad’s now died. My mum always thought I was a lesbian, but I wish she’d told me because it took me a really long time to work it out and then tell her and it was a massive deal telling her. And when I told her she laughed which I cannot bear being laughed at and said, ‘Oh well. I’ve always known’, or something. So you do need to give people clues really, better clues than she’d given me. But like about a week later she said, ’well you can still have children, can’t you?’ so I don’t think that was ever going to be a problem for her. Her and my dad had different views about anonymous donors/known donors because we were trying, we did try to get a known donor both times, but there were just too many difficulties really.

When I was first trying – it’s another diversion – when I was first trying two or three straight friends said: ‘oh well you can use my bloke’, without asking them… It was really, really, interesting. ‘There’s lots of sperm here, have some…’ you know. And one of the men said if he had a son he might have done but he’d only had daughters and he really wanted a son and he knew if I had a son by him he would want to be involved. So at least he was really honest.

In Ireland we were looking again for known donors. I don’t know how we did it but we were looking online anyway, but it was a fairly basic system then, but there was somebody wanted to be quite involved, but we knew we were moving back so that wasn’t going to work. There was one man who was deaf and that was hard, really, really, hard, so there was a whole thing of having a deaf child which is a bit ironic because my hearing’s rubbish now. So we didn’t in the end with either time of trying; we didn’t go for known donors in the end. But it is very, very, different and I didn’t want – certainly with my partner being the birth mother – I didn’t want anybody else involved. I really wanted to be the other parent and I had lots of fears about how that would be.

So back to family: my sister’s always been really supportive and is a brilliant aunty. She hasn’t got kids. Brilliant aunty. My dad loved the first grandson and didn’t see the second one. But yeah, my mum, I don’t think she has an issue with it. She’s not very nice to my partner but I think she would have been like that with a bloke anyway. Actually she is much more jealous because I have female partners. Yeah, so that’s quite interesting. I think she wants… expects to be the closest female to her daughter and she isn’t and she’s not dealt well with that but she’s alright with the kids.

And friends: I don’t know, most of our – all our support – comes from friends with kids the same age who are virtually all straight except for this lesbian couple that adopted a boy otherwise they’re all straight and that’s cos who’s in school – you know kindergarten then school. Just some really, really, good friends but we just don’t feel like… we’re not really lesbian any more, more mums, that kind of shift. Not that much in the community any more.

The kids were in… they went to Steiner Kindergarten for two years then they went into mainstream. We used it as a preschool, we’re not very Steiner-ish but it was a really lovely preschool, then we whipped them out and straight into mainstream and I just really like the idea of being part of, really really part of the local community.

There had been another lesbian couple through school so we knew school was alright. And we were just very out from the beginning and there has been so little problem in primary school and the older one’s off at high school now and, touch wood, he seems to be absolutely fine. One of the 6th formers did a whole thing on LGBT history month assembly so he was really pleased about that. And there’s stuff up in school. And I think it’s going to be alright. But certainly primary school was pretty good. They did a whole thing about weddings which was pretty straight. I wish they’d stop doing that topic. They did families and we took a book in – The Family Book by Todd Parr – and they read that in class and they were really positive and gave us lots of feedback on that . And I got a pack from Stonewall about curricula stuff they could do but I never took it in in the end. I think because I just felt alright, it felt fine.

Something happened with the older ones. Something happened in, oh, he was in Year 5, and some Year 6 girls were just sitting quizzing him about everything, about not having a dad and things. I think one-on-one it would have been fine. I think he just felt a bit under the microscope and a bit embarrassed but of course he didn’t want us to do anything. I mentioned it, you know, fairly low key to his teacher and school acted like it was the biggest hate crime of the year. They went completely overboard and I didn’t want them to do that and so we got them to tone it down and that I would be really happy to chat with these girls but not to kind of quiz him really. But I think, I think otherwise it’s been fine unless they’re just not telling me, but it feels really positive.

But this changes, just changes all the time. When [name] was… I don’t know… when he was about seven/eight he brought aa friend home who said: ‘oh it’s not fair because he hasn’t got a dad’, and I was a bit cross and I didn’t know if that was what my son had thought or what this friend had thought. And they have both…. I think the older one is sad about it. He’s very fond of his friends’ dads and I think he would quite like a dad person.
But… oh and they did a father’s day card when he was in nursery – because he went to my college nursery as well for a bit – they did father’s day cards and they came out and said ‘Oh sorry, they did Father’s Day card because the T.A. didn’t know’, and they said: ’can he give it to his granddad?’ and I was so cross I said; ‘oh well his grandad’s just died!’ [laughs] you know, ‘you shouldn’t have done it!’. So Father’s Day’s always a bit… I don’t know. I just worry for them on Father’s Day really but that’s the way it is isn’t it? They’ve got friends with… actually they’ve got very few friends who don’t have a mum or dad… which is a bit ironic, kind of get some friends with broken families, or whatever…

Between us, my partner and I, we do fulfil a lot of the roles. She’s ended up running the rugby team. I take him to cornet lessons. We do gardening, we do DIY, we do our own decorating, you know, so in terms of, I don’t know, role models and things, they’ve got teachers at school, male teachers, some male relatives, but they’re not really around in Leeds, and the guys that we know in the families we know, so they’ve got a choice of male role models so in an ideal world yes there might be a dad figure around but there isn’t. It’s just the way it is so… I don’t know how they’ll be in future about that but that’s their family and they know they’re loved but maybe not by the people they want to be loved by at the minute. This morning the little one said: ‘oh I wish I’d got a dad’, and it’s the first time he said that. The older one did talk about it more.

The younger one has taken a really long time to sort out gender and I still don’t think he’s sorted out gender and I think things dawn on him in different ways and at different times. Anyway…

I think if we’d stayed in Dublin it might have… people aren’t as out, so I’ve got friends in Dublin who still aren’t out to their mums. And they’re in a choir and they can’t go on the [unclear] because they don’t want their mums in Galway to know… Even though their mum’s probably do know. It’s that whole thing. The flip side of that is we got an incredible amount of support. We joined a swimming group and we joined the lesbian and gay choir because people were used to supporting each other because they still felt there was a lot of hostility around. I don’t know if that’s all going to change now because they’ve got same-sex marriage which has just happened in Ireland…

But here in Leeds I’ve felt very safe, very respected. And if I did need to talk to people in the same situation I could do that. And what I’ve done recently actually, I’ve started going to these meet-ups – there’s a lesbian and gay parenting group – I think its national but there’ s a Yorkshire bit, and then there’s a West Yorkshire bit. So we go to Roundhay Park on a Sunday morning occasionally. But they’re all little, the oldest is eight. Lots of babies; lots of unconceived babies; so there’s women there who haven’t got babies yet and want them. It’s great for the little one but not very useful for the older one.

So I set up a meeting for older children, older children and teenagers of lesbian and gay parents. And nobody came to the first one; it was a café in town one tea-time, one weekday tea-time. But the second one was a brunch, a Sunday brunch in this really cool retro café in town and we got three other people. So it was a couple from work with children from her marriage. So two boys. Then a boy with his mums from York. So that was nice so we’re going to carry on doing that. That was very lucky. Just so that they know there’s somebody else there. They didn’t talk about having lesbian mothers at all. But we all talked to each other. The mums talked to each other, the boys talked to each other, went on their devices and just to know that they’re there. Somebody’s there if they want. They all wanted to meet up again because I said, ’well, it’s up to you I’m not going to take it away now’, so that was really nice, really positive. I know that older children have done that but there’s not really much happening at the minute for that age group. The younger one has got this boy born the same day as him and they will be at the same high school I think so that’s really nice.

I think the most important thing is that you are solid about your choices. If your identity is secure then that’s a really important place to start. Because its hard… being a parent is really, really, hard work. And if you’re also thinking, ‘well maybe I’m a bit illegitimate; I don’t have a right to do this because I’m a dyke’, then that could be much harder. Mine has definitely been about being older; mine has been about being an older mum rather than being a lesbian mother and I have struggled with that, because I teach… mature students... I’ve had some very interesting discussions with students and all but a very tiny minority have been really respectful and really supportive. The ones that haven’t have been the evangelical Christians to the extent that one guy said, ‘you shouldn’t be allowed to have children’. He said that to me in my class to my face. But he’s got his own demons really; I’m not going to take that on board. Just, I don’t know, being positive about who you are really. And that I’m a good mum.

When I was with my first partner that had children I took them all to Scarborough; we went… it was a lesbian mothers’ day out – when there was a really, really, strong lesbian mothers group in Leeds – so loads of kids that age. And we went to Scarborough for the day. It was very cold and wet I think. I had a very good friend at the time who’d come out so her child was the same age. Of course they never got on. That’s the other thing. You always think, ‘Oh this’ll be great. I’ll get support from these people’, but the children hate each other [laughs]. Have children will do. And the people they really like you don’t get on with, the parents of. So yeah, we had a day out in Scarborough.

We did other things; we did things locally as well so that was nice, but there isn’t a big group now really. Lots of people say, ‘well if that’s all you’ve got in common’, and I suppose it is that, if that’s all you’ve got in common is your sexuality and the fact that you’re a parent, then that’s a bit thin. Oh I did go to one. I went to a meeting sort of Wakefield way with these women who’ve adopted and they said: ‘Oh it’s lesbian and gay parents support group’, so we went to that and they kept asking me when I got them and I said, ‘when they were born’, you know, and it turned out they were all adopters and my friend had forgotten to tell me they were all adopters except me. They all had dogs which she really liked cos she’s got a big dog so they talked more about dogs than about their kids really. So that was nice. We met some gay dads. So our first gay dads I’d said to my boys from them being really little: ‘Some people have two mummies; some people have one mummy; some people have a mummy and a daddy. And some people have two dads’. And we never met any dads, gay dads, ever, ever. So I think they thought I made it up. But we met two gay dads who’d adopted some children so that was great. Our token gay dads.

I remember when I first came to Leeds, I had a friend who was trying to get pregnant and she was one of the first women I’d been around who was trying to get pregnant and really, really, didn’t want a boy so she ate a lot of bananas. And we had a special ceremony the night that she was inseminating we all sat around and chanted and things. Some of us fairly half-heartedly it must be said. Anyway she didn’t get pregnant that time and when she did get pregnant it was a boy, of course.

But I was really clear that I didn’t want a girl because my relationship with my mum- it’s much, much, better now – but it used to be really intense – not brilliant. And I just thought if I have a girl it’s going to be way too intense. The irony is my relationship with my first-born is the most intense... you know we clash I love him to bits; I love him beyond measure and we clash violently a lot of the time – maybe a little bit less so at the minute – but its ridiculously intense so it’s obviously got nothing to do with gender. It might be to do with the first-born, you know, I’d spent so many years waiting to have a child so it was a massive, massive, massive deal and I had all this stuff ready for this poor child and he was on his own for four years He didn’t get a brother to come and help him share it all out for four years. He does operate very much like an only child because he was on his own for those four key years. Around adults who adored him so he’s just happy with adults. So he struggles with his brother sometimes.

I think I was really lucky because in my second year at uni I moved into a house, to share a house with a friend – that was about ’83, 1983 – the women in the house were very involved in stuff in the community and they were virtually running the Rape Crisis Centre from the house; it was the time of Greenham Common, it was the time of the Miners’ Strike and nearly everybody I knew came out, then lots of people went back in but I stayed out because it suited me. But I’m not sure if I’d been in a different set of circumstances I would have come out so soon and I think I probably am bisexual because I was fairly happy with men but this was more exciting, this was more me, but I‘m definitely not ‘born gay, always gay’, you know I really feel that. I think ironically if I’d been with a man I probably would have conceived if I’d been around, you know, male hormones for all that time. It’s a bit ironic being a lesbian stopped me being able to have my own children but also gave me a second go at having children.

I had a friend who was five years older than me – oh this was the woman who ended up with the three children – and I just think: had it been a bit later on then she wouldn’t have felt the same pressure to get married and have children and how much harder that was for her to come out. So I think I was very lucky to be there where I was when I was and feel almost peer pressure to come out, which is what I needed I think to come out because otherwise it would have taken me a long time. I think it would have taken me a long time otherwise. So yes very lucky.

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