such a mother and daughter they were not
Date: May 22, 2015 08:41AM
Recently, while taking a break, standing on the sidelines at a local outside event, I watched for a minute the parade of people. There were others on the sideline with me - some sitting, some standing. As I was taking it all in, I caught in the corner of my eye a young girl run up and jump into her mother’s lap and hug her. Sweet. I kept scanning the scene when something caught my eye that caused me to look back at the mother and child. In another quick glance, I noticed they were not of the same race. So what, I didn’t care. I went back to taking it all in. Then something inside me told me I missed something. That I didn’t get it right. So, I looked back again at the mother and child and noticed the mother kissing the child a bit too eagerly and still! I turned back to my original posture of scanning the scene but I was not scanning any longer. I was contemplating what I saw. The moment of jump, hug and kiss had passed. I would not let myself reason away what my “red flag” was trying to tell me: I turned back to get a better look. Indeed, this was an older, white -maybe American- dyke with a young Asian girl as her “girl friend” slobbering it up openly at a family event. Swallowing hard, I looked around at all the families and began to imagine our world in a few years (as we continue to pass these laws condoning such social behaviors.)
My thoughts raced as I remembered the older woman’s chill when I stepped to the sideline and was prepared to greet her with a smile and a “how do you do?” but she stayed to herself. At the time, I didn’t give it another thought. Now I am. Perhaps she was a vendor and not from this area and maybe what she was selling was not even what was in the exhibit booth but rather she came here, to our community, to exhibit her behavior to force us to “get used to it”. My next thought: “isn’t it illegal for anyone, even heterosexuals, to conduct themselves in such a manner out in public? If so, hopefully that law will make a comeback. And with that, I thought what would happen if I admonished their behavior publicly? Not for being two women but for sexual conduct in public. Then I decided against it because these women probably were hoping for such a reaction and with all the mindless people that live in NoVA, I figured I’d be slam-blasted and I was ready for that. I may have ended up stoned to death, who knows. Such a tolerant people we be.