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Summary
Summary
Nuanced and poignant, heartrending and funny, Michelle Theall's thoughtful memoir is a universal story about our quest for unconditional love from our parents, our children, and most importantly, from ourselves.
Nuanced and poignant, heartrending and funny, Michelle Theall's thoughtful memoir is a universal story about our quest for unconditional love from our parents, our children, and most important, from ourselves.
Even when society, friends, the legal system, and the Pope himself swing toward acceptance of the once unacceptable, Michelle Theall still waits for the one blessing that has always mattered to her the most: her mother's. Michelle grew up in the conservative Texas Bible Belt, bullied by her classmates and abandoned by her evangelical best friend before she'd ever even held a girl's hand. She was often at odds with her volatile, overly dramatic, and depressed mother, who had strict ideas about how girls should act. Yet they both clung tightly to their devout Catholic faith--the unifying grace that all but shattered their relationship when Michelle finally admitted she was gay.
Years later at age forty-two, Michelle has made delicate peace with her mother and is living her life openly with her partner of ten years and their adopted son in the liberal haven of Boulder, Colorado. But when her four-year-old's Catholic school decides to expel all children of gay parents, Michelle tiptoes into a controversy that exposes her to long-buried shame, which leads to a public battle with the Church and a private one with her parents. In the end she realizes that in order to be a good mother, she may have to be a bad daughter.
Michelle writes with wry wit and bald honesty about her life, seamlessly weaving her past and her present into a touching commentary on all the love, pain, and redemption that families inspire. Teaching the Cat to Sit makes us each reflect on our sense of humanity, our connection to religion, and our struggles to accept ourselves--and each other--as we are.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A gay journalist living in Boulder, Colo., with her longtime partner and adopted child, Theall picks relentlessly at the baggage from her Texas Catholic upbringing, determined to free herself from the oppressive effects of silence and shame. Theall and her partner, Jill, agreed to have their almost-four-year-old son, Connor, baptized in a quiet, "closet" ceremony at their local Catholic church, yet were appalled to be notified untactfully by the pastor that a homosexual lifestyle was not accepted, prompting the couple to withdraw Connor from the church's nursery school and provoking all kinds of trouble with Theall's pious, disapproving parents. Born in 1966, and diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2003, Theall had wrestled with issues of shame and acceptance her entire life; at age 11 she was raped by her best friend's father and never told her parents because she knew her mother would be mortified and denounce her. The pattern of silence and denial was entrenched throughout her childhood, torturing her emotionally, and even after Theall came out to her parents, she felt keenly the residual effects of her mother's displeasure, especially her inability to bring Jill into the family. Theall's tightly wrought account, first prompted by the journalistic outcry over leaving her church and then shaped into a long article in a Denver magazine about becoming gay that shocked and enraged her parents, serves as a powerful testimony to the healing power of language. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A travel and fitness journalist's account of her struggles to reconcile strong Catholic beliefs with both homosexuality and motherhood. In a narrative that deftly moves between past and present, Theall tells the moving story of how she found self-acceptance as a lesbian mother of faith. The black sheep in a strict Roman Catholic household, she knew that "God had made [her] a girl," but that didn't stop her from arm-wrestling the boys in school and wishing that she could be like her Happy Days hero, the Fonz. Living in small-town Texas didn't help matters. Neither did living near her best friend's father, a man who raped her when she was 11. So when the family moved to Dallas, she was thrilled. But she was still an outsider, even in the big city. To escape the pain of being different, Theall joined the track team and bonded with a coach she later discovered was lesbian. She knew that Catholicism condemned all forms of homosexual love, but she also realized that the coach and her partner were "a refuge." Despite the experience of a lesbian relationship in college, Theall remained conflicted about her sexual identity until she was nearly 30. Acceptance from her family, especially her mother, remained incomplete and came with great difficulty. But the greatest challenge would come later, after she had settled down with her partner to raise an adopted son. The same church that had caused her to feel so much shame tried to force her child out of the Catholic-run school due to her lesbianism. In the journey away from Catholicism and the need for maternal approval that followed, Theall eventually found peace. She also came to understand that the "raging love" between her and her mother was part of what made them "something more." A searingly honest memoir of faith, sexuality and motherhood.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Theall's unusually moving memoir of alienation and discrimination alternates between the past and present as she recounts her experiences growing up gay in a strict, Catholic Texas family and her adult life. Throughout her adolescent turmoil and atrocious coming out to her parents, who banished her from their house and their lives, Theall's driving need for church-certified acceptance persisted, affecting her relationships with her partner and their adopted, biracial son as well as her sense of self. The Catholic Church, despite years of ignoring the pedophilia of a priest she knew in her youth and then expelling her son and other same-sex parented children from its school, remains a huge force in her life as she longs to be a part of a community that loves God, but would love me, too. Standing up to an ultrareligious mother and equally unyielding God is more than doubly challenging. Theall's heartbreaking and heart-affirming coming-of-age, respect-seeking, and truth-telling tale ultimately demonstrates that openness is all.--Scott, Whitney Copyright 2010 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
Teaching the Cat to Sit CHAPTER ONE JULY 27, 2009: BOULDER, COLORADO "RAIN IS GOD'S SPIT," Connor tells his grandmother through my iPhone. He turns his head sideways and puts his right eye close to the screen, as if she might be trapped inside it. "God spits. He really does." My mom's sandpaper ex-smoker's laugh bursts through the speaker like a spray of gravel from a semitruck. With equal parts amusement and disapproval, she says, "Oh, Connor, I'm sure God doesn't spit." Connor flinches. Before Grandy can get out another word, he drops the phone on the kitchen counter, tucks his chin to his chest, and bolts from the kitchen. At almost four years old, he's already learning to navigate her sharp corners. He may even be better at it than I am. My mother will be here in five days for Connor's baptism, and I'm too afraid to tell her it's been canceled. As I retrieve the phone, my partner, Jill, edges by me with Connor's plate of pancakes in one hand and his sippy cup in the other, calls our son to the table, and taps her watch at me--a reminder that we're going to be late for school. I nod to her and shrug, mouthing the words, I know but . . . "I can't wait to see that little booger," my mom says. "Where on earth did he learn that? The rain is God's spit, honestly." "Where else?" I laugh. "Catholic school." I pour two to-go thermoses of coffee. "So, did you get him the shoes like I told you?" my mother asks. "They have to be summer white to match his outfit." Because Connor is too old to fit into a traditional Catholic christening gown for infants, Jill and I planned to dress him in a coat and tie. Hearing this, my mom opted for something a bit more sacred: a baptismal suit she won after bidding aggressively for it on eBay. "Yes, I got him the shoes," I respond. I open my mouth to confess about the baptism being called off and then close it just as quickly. Like a kid hiding a bad report card, I think if I don't tell her, the problem won't exist. A woman with more courage would already have told her mom that Father Bill has refused to baptize our son, perhaps before my mom bid on the suit or started buying holy items for Connor and having them blessed by their bishop in San Marcos. If not then, certainly before she and my dad drive two days and five hundred miles in the minivan and pull up into our driveway. And maybe I would have if the Catholic Church wasn't the paper clip holding our relationship together. Also, I like the grandmotherly doting and fussing. It's one of the few things helping me forget that nothing about our situation is normal, as much as I might want it to be. "Michelle, are you listening? He can't wear Batman underwear because the black wings will show through the white pants." There's a thud, followed by my father swearing in the background. "Al, what in the Sam Hill?" I shake my head and smile. "No Batman undies, got it." In between her instructions about Connor's shoes and underwear, Mom yells at my father as he packs their suitcases, "No, Al. Honestly. The Purell goes in the outside pocket." Before she hangs up she says to me, "Make sure you get his hair cut. We want him to look good in the photos. Love you, sweetie, see you this weekend." At the back kitchen door, I lift Connor into my arms and Jill yanks his rain hood up over his head before we dash to separate cars to rush him to school. I'll be staying at Sacred Heart for a meeting with Father Bill in a final attempt to make him change his mind about us. I buckle Connor into his seat and back out from the garage where the sound of thunder rattles our steel cocoon. "You think He's mad?" Connor asks. "Who, God?" I look over my shoulder. "No, little man." He puts his hand against the window and nods. "Well, something's going on with Him." He traces a drop of rain with his fingertip as if he can stop its momentum. "You'd never let me spit like that without a really good reason." FIVE MINUTES LATER, JILL and I stand with Connor in the doorway of the Teddy Bear room at Sacred Heart of Jesus School, waiting for his classmates to finish morning prayers before we step inside. Beyond the glass-paneled door, a paint-chipped Virgin Mary cradles baby Jesus in her arms and candlelight flickers across the toddlers kneeling on their square ABC mats. Hands touch bellies and ears and noses in no particular order, in an attempt to make the sign of the cross that looks like baseball coaches calling plays from the dugout. After a chorus of amens, the teacher motions for us to come inside. I flick on the lights and settle Connor at a table with some other kids. Jill helps the teacher distribute packets of crayons before she bends over and kisses the top of Connor's head. She walks toward me and places a hand on my shoulder. "Let me know what Father Bill says today." She taps a finger along my collarbone to make sure I really hear her. "I know you're angry, but this isn't about you." "You could go with me," I say. "Sure. We could hold hands, because that would make it better." "The whole thing's ridiculous. I asked all the right questions ahead of time." "Think of it this way, would you rather be right and have to explain to your mom that the baptism's been canceled? Or be wrong and have your mom standing with us at the altar next to our son in his little white eBay suit?" She gives my shoulder a squeeze, our equivalent of a good-bye kiss in public, and she is out the door, walking to her car. I am leaning over to say good-bye to Connor too when the girl sitting next to my son asks me, "Why does Connor have two mommies?" Heat rises to my cheeks. Of course I expected this moment to happen at some point, but I'm still unprepared for it. How can I explain to her that I sometimes do my own double take? At home, I stare at our family photo above the fireplace--the one we took at Disney World--and I see two white, middle-aged women with their half-Cambodian son wedged between them and I think: Who are these people? I peer down at this tiny girl in an art smock and striped leggings, terrified that she will judge me. I'm about to answer the girl, whose mother happens to be the school's director, when Connor's teacher, a married woman with five kids of her own, quips, "He has two mommies because he's lucky." Connor takes a thick black crayon in his small fist and starts to color in a picture of hippos and bunnies heading two by two up a ramp onto Noah's ark. "There are lots of different kinds of families," I tell the girl. I'm aware that the teacher is watching me, and a class aide too. I'm still so new to this mommy thing that I don't know if I can pass scrutiny from the real moms, the ones who know how to do this, the women who seem born to it. Plus, I feel like they might think I represent all gay parents, which means I have to get this exactly right. I continue, "Some people have a dad or a mom or both. Some are raised by their grandparents. And some have two mommies or two daddies." "Oh," she says, then wrinkles her brow in confusion. "Well, which one of you does he call Mommy?" "That's a great question. I'm Mama and his other mother is Mommy," I say, knowing full well that as two anxious, newly minted moms, we answer to just about anything: running water, the smell of open markers, items dropped into toilets, and anything that sounds like a head hitting the floor. The girl places her palm over the drawing of Noah in front of her. "My daddy doesn't live with us anymore." She says this without emotion, as if she is explaining to me that Barney the dinosaur is purple. I look at her little hand covering Noah's face and kneel down next to her. She twirls a strand of wavy hair around her finger, which starts to turn white at the tip. I unravel the hair from her hand, replace it with a blue crayon, and resist an overwhelming urge to sit down next to her and color for a few hours. "I'm sure your dad loves you very much," I say, placing my hand on top of her head. I hold on for a few extra seconds, trying to convey all the things I haven't said: You will be okay. You are loved. And whatever is going on with your parents has nothing to do with you or anything you have or haven't done. I look at Connor, coloring intently, and wonder if he wishes he had a dad, if Jill and I will be enough. I give Connor a quick kiss, and we touch noses. "Bye, sweet boy," I say and trail my hand across his bony spine. Even though he drinks a high-calorie PediaSure every morning, his shoulder blades jut from his back like broken bird wings. It's as if all the things he can't or won't say about the family he was born into--before he came to us--are written on his body anyway. How much of his past will determine his future? And, as for the immediate future: What in God's name am I going to say to Father Bill to convince him to baptize my son? Excerpted from Teaching the Cat to Sit: A Memoir by Michelle Theall All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
