Eight years of struggle (how my mother came to terms)

Mom absolutely hated the fact that I was into women. I told her when I was sixteen. At first she said: "Oh, it's just a phase, you'll get over it." After a while she asked: "Are you still a lesbian?" When I said "yes", she flew into a rage. "Why does this have to happen to me, my daughter being a lesbian." She pulled at her hair and disappeared to her sister's house for a few days. My aunt and my cousin told her she had to accept me for who I was, but she just couldn't. We had terrible, recurring arguments about it. She had always said: "Mar, you shouldn't care about what others think, just live your own life." She also used to say: "You must never laugh at people like Albert Mol, they can't help it." But this was a bridge too far for her—her own daughter. It was completely alien to her. She criticized my girlfriends so harshly that I had to do my best not to buy into it.

"Look what a strange little neck she has," she'd say, and suddenly I would see it too, no matter how infatuated I was.

After eight years, she wrote a poem about it. My father responded by saying: "Oh, as long as you're happy. I already figured as much from the way you button up your coat." I never did understand how I button up my coat.

The COC organized a mother-daughter evening, and lo and behold, she came along. My father did too, because they went everywhere together, but he wasn't allowed inside. It was the heart of Amsterdam; my father never went to pubs, and he spent the entire evening waiting out in the hallway.

My mother held court there as well and started reading her poem out loud. I was dying of embarrassment and hid under the bar. Everyone thought it was beautiful and she received a round of applause. After that, we started dancing. A woman walked up to my mother and asked her to dance. 'Oh God, here we go,' I thought.
My mother stood up, looked at me with an expression that said: "I won't let them get the better of me," and danced a quickstep with the woman, both wrestling over who was taking the lead. She refused to give it up, and neither did the other woman. My mother and I got pretty tipsy, and the night became more and more fun. When it ended, we walked into the hallway, and there was my father, faithfully waiting. Together they walked back to Bos en Lommer. I realize now that I didn't even bring him a drink.

The poem was published in the COC newsletter. I had lost it, but to my great surprise, someone managed to dig it up. Back then I thought it was awful, but now I am so proud of her.

“Mom, I am a lesbian,” your child will say.
Into a labyrinth you are cast away.
For years your child kept it bottled up inside.
Homosexuals have always had to hide.
In the year 1972 it was never spoken of,
that is why you feel broken in terms of love.
When your child says: I am homosexual,
the blow to your soul is painful and actual.
In later years you begin to see,
as your grief subsides gradually,
that your child had to put up a fight
for her feelings and for her right.
And that your child helps fight the fight,
so another person's child gets their right.
So another won't have to struggle or toll,
and can calmly say from the depth of their soul:
“Mom and dad, I am homosexual.”
Because you teach your child to be true,
and when they honestly accept their feelings, it hurts you.
That is just completely insane.
And that is why we hope it is plain
that in the future people no longer have to hide,
or bottle up the feelings they have inside.
And that all homosexuals fight for their right.
So that in the year two thousand,
a parent won't despair when a child says: I am homosexual.
The parents can then be happy and whole in their soul.

Mrs. Ruijterman

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