Free Oy Vey My Daughter's Gay by Sandra McCay Page B

of respite from Lee’s
various sibling tortures as she tried (unsuccessfully) to learn from Julia how
to get the better of a younger brother. I remember the two girls happily
ensconced in the branch of a huge old almond tree in Julia’s garden,
delightedly pelting poor Lee with almonds whenever he tried to join them.
    When Lila was forced into spending time with her brother by
herself, or was feeling altruistic or just really bored, she would overlook the
schemes he routinely concocted to annoy her and entertain him with her aptitude
for storytelling and games.  She often combined these into long, complicated
role play scenarios to which she ascribed some disconcerting names.
    It was with a healthy amount of trepidation that I asked
the now eight-year-old Lila to explain their current favourite game, ‘Who Cares
about Sex?’. Apparently when they referred to ‘sex’, they meant ‘gender’. Phew
− crisis averted! The game was set in a girls’ orphanage.  Lila
played the orphan who didn’t fit in with the stereotypical ‘girly’ girls and
would sneak away from ballet classes to play stereotypically boyish games with
the wild boy (Lee). I later wondered if there had been any deeper meaning for
Lila in this particular game, even although Lila was such a ‘girly’ girl in
real life and not at all a tomboy.
    Playing with her friends was more complicated. When Lila
told me she needed a costume for her school Carnival, I conjured up an image of
Halloween costumes. I forgot all about it until she reminded me the night
before. Searching around desperately for inspiration, Lee’s oversized
inflatable banana water toy caught my eye. I hastily constructed a gorilla
costume consisting of a homemade cardboard mask; my old fur jacket and her
Brownies hat. I was pretty pleased with my efforts− until she arrived
home after the Carnival. Through gritted teeth she relayed her embarrassment as
she had walked next to her friends in the Carnival parade.
    I witnessed it for myself a few weeks later at her
theatre-themed party. Her friends floated in, trailing professional-looking
zip-up bags and boxes containing outfits that wouldn’t have looked out of place
in a London West End production. They were, in fact, the same fabulous outfits
that the girls had previously worn for Carnival and on which their mothers had
spent months lovingly and skilfully crafting and bedecking with feathers and
spangles. Sadly, I didn’t realise the significance of Spanish Carnival back
then. (Think Rio, but on a slightly smaller scale.) Oops! I can see now why the
gorilla costume didn’t quite cut it. That episode is high on her ‘Bad Mum’
list, ahead of the one where I failed miserably to construct a successful bun
(hair, not food) for ballet class.
    Sadly I didn’t learn from my mistakes.  After another
last-minute dash the following year, Lila found herself heading off to school
wearing a beach outfit and a witch’s hat, earnestly trying to explain to
everyone that she was in fact a ‘sandwich’.
    I redeemed myself with her Tooth Party. For months Lila had
had only one adult front tooth and an unsightly gap where its partner should
have been. She was so happy when it finally grew in that I decided it called
for a celebration. I hastily (there’s that key word again) constructed a
face-shaped cake with Chiclets chewing gum pieces for teeth. Happily, tooth
parties weren’t a general celebration in Spain, so I had no competition this
time. Lila and her friends were duly impressed.
    These were formative years for Lila. I’m so glad she
experienced them in a setting where she found that being different could be
okay: a setting of sun, sea, sand and ‘Who Cares about Sex?’ before we decided
to move back to Scotland for her high school years.

Chapter 13
    “I
said to my mother-in-law, ‘My house is your house’. She said, ‘Get the hell off
my property.’ ” – Joan Rivers
     
    John made it clear, early on, that he had