Cave Canem*

Friends never believe me when I tell them that Mama is often mistaken as my son. It happened the first time in Chicago during the summer of 1997, before we were together. We were in Oak Park, doing the Frank Lloyd Wright thing, and the admissions people at one of the houses sold us an adult ticket and a child ticket, assuming and not asking about our relationship.

Sure, to the casual and unsophisticated onlooker, Mama can look like a boy--short hair, pants and buttoned-down shirt, plus sensible shoes, no make-up, no jewelry (well, there's a wedding ring now), no purse, belt full of gadget (once a Swiss army knife, now a Blackberry and atomic pocket watch), short fingernails--the hallmarks of a butch lesbian. Plus, she's 8" shorter than I am. And, being Chinese, confusedly and perpetually younger-looking than she is (at least she is graying first and faster!). But my son? I'm only 4 years older. And hardly, at least then at the age of 6, old enough to have a 15 year old son!

But I know why they do it. Strangers sense a relationship, a connection, an affection, a tenderness. But just cannot for the life of them place it. And so they figure I'm the mom. I hear tell that many lesbian couples are mistaken for sisters. Well, that has never happened to us, probably because of the Caucasian/Asian thing. Nope, it's an Oedipal thing here.

And it happens ALL THE TIME. It happened when we went to see Titanic the movie in Times Square. It happened when we took a ferry to Mackinac Island. It happened this fall at our church festival, with more than one stranger congratulating me for having such a helpful son and praising my son for being such a helpful older brother to the younger children. That scenario has happened repeatedly--at Old Sturbridge Village, at Target, at the grocery store, at the Bronx Zoo.

And it happened again on Sunday at the American Museum of Natural History. But this time in front of my in-laws, whom I'm pretty sure had never witnessed the phenomenon before. We were standing in line waiting for the auditorium to open for the Chinese theater performance. And the woman behind us had been engaging us in (very inappropriate) conversation about the twins (suffice it to say, she didn't believe me that they were twins because she thought Sis was Chinese and Bud was not. She actually asked repeatedly and then argued with me. I said, and I paraphrase, "Look, lady, I had them. A minute apart. They're both half Chinese and they are twins." F*** off. Of course, that last, unsaid part is neither nonviolent communication nor good parental modeling. I'm still working on dealing with nosy strangers).

When Mama wandered up and began making origami, the woman started praising her skills as if she were a talented child. And wasn't it great that the twins' older brother could make hats and boats out of paper! Mama tried to fix it, subtly, by saying she'd learned from her mother, pointing to Ma not far away, but the stranger didn't get it. So I finally said, "she's not my child. She's my partner. The twins have two mommies."

Silence.

Always.

Believe it.

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*"Cave Canem" is an old joke in my family. Budding high school Latin scholar that I was, I had told my mom that there were "beware of dog" signs in the ruins of Pompeii. And she didn't believe me, about the signs or the translation of the Latin. That is, until we went to Pompeii together when I was in college and I could show her the mosaic. Now we use it as code for "believe me."