A week or two ago-how quickly it disappears in the rearview mirror!-my family went on vacation to Provincetown, the gorgeous seaside town at the at the tip of Cape Cod. Formerly a whaling town, Ptown has for the last century been an arts colony and LGBT haven, which suits my primary interests. After many years of vacationing there, I have my favorite galleries, gardens, beaches, shops, and perches, like everyone else.
Ptown has specialty weeks, formal or informal, targeted to various demographics. On the LGBT side, there's carnival for the insanely creative dress-up and party crowd; bear week for hairy and hefty men and the men who love them; women's week for the ladies who aren't baby dykes any more; and family pride week, when the beaches and streets are packed with two-mom and two-dad families.
Guess which week we went? About a decade ago, when family week was in its infancy, I ended up talking with a young woman in her twenties who'd grown up with two moms before the "gayby boom" took hold. (Her biological mom had come out and left her father; she'd grown up with two female parents, rarely seeing him.) She told me when she first looked out on the beaches swarming with kids, she had nearly gasped with jealousy: She and her brother had been the only kids they'd seen there for so many years! But the jealousy passed quickly into happiness for the next generation of kids who wouldn't be marooned among the adults-they had plenty of other kids to play with, kids with families like theirs.
That's how it was for our nine-year-old. In the group of beachfront condos where we stay, there were several other two-mom families and their kids. Our kids immediately took up playing together, as if they'd seen each other just a week ago instead of three years ago. They ran in and out of each other's places, played catch on the deck, built sand tunnels and collected rocks and shells, and squealed while swimming away from a vicious "shark" (um, that would be me). We didn't mess with any of the formal Family Week activities. It was just wonderful to have one gorgeous, sun-soaked week of not being the minority-of being ordinary for a change. And I'm so glad we could give the kids a week where every other family is like theirs.
