Hi Mom

Dear Mom,

It's only been about 12 hours since I sent you the url of this blog.  During that time, I've checked my email about 20 times to see if you've written back.  Boy, was it hard to send that.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe I'm afraid you won't like my writing, or that you won't like the topics, or that the whole "butch" thing will weird you out.  I mentioned this to a friend, who suggested I write a letter to you on the blog.  I thought it was an awesome idea, so here I am. 

I hope you weren't upset about that last post (or any of the others).  Reading over it, it occurred to me that sometimes we like to talk about the challenging parts of our upbringing.  Being (semi-)confident adults, it's interesting to look back and ponder the ways we didn't fit in as a kid.  I think it helps us make sense of who we are, and how we got here.  But sometimes the negative or neutral stuff is so elucidating that we don't focus as much on the positive stuff.  I've been thinking about that positive stuff a lot today, and wanted to thank you for a bunch of things, including the following:

1. Thank you for never telling me that baseball cards--or anything else--were just for boys.
2. Thank you for encouraging my writing, and for teaching me that you don't get to choose whether or not you're a writer.
3. Thank you for telling me, "We are always in a state of becoming."  I think back to that all the time.  It helps give me the courage to change.
4. Thank you for telling me that you loved me no matter what when I came out to you tearfully in the middle of a very crowded Chinese restaurant four years ago.
5. Thank you for being such a great role model, and showing me that women can be incredibly strong.
6. Thank you for talking to me on the phone when I'm having a crappy day and I call you in a lousy mood.  Somehow, I always feel better after we talk.  
7. Thank you for making my high school prom dress, which was so much more awesome than all the other prom dresses, and made me feel comfortable because it wasn't ridiculously low cut.
8. Thank you for indulging and encouraging my intellectual interests, whether I was a first-grader obsessed with stegosauruses or a grad student obsessed with Haruki Murakami.
9. Thank you for being so welcoming and loving to my DGF, and being so supportive of our relationship.
10. Thank you for instilling the confidence to figure out who I am.  I would not have had the courage to come out, or to start this blog, or anything else, if it wasn't for you.
    

There's more, of course, but lists should always have a nice round number of items.  What if I'd written a list with 6 items?  Or worse, 13?  Preposterous.

Anyhow, Mom, this Butch Wonders thing is going pretty well.  It's been up for only a few months, and I'm getting at least 300 readers every day, and growing.  Yesterday was 642.  Kate Clinton (a famous lesbian comedian) recently endorsed me on her Facebook page, and I also got an invitation to do a radio interview in October.  Not bad, eh?  I'm really enjoying it.  I get to hear from readers (gay, straight, male, female) from all over the place.  The best part is when I learn that something I wrote affected them: helped them come out to their parents, resolve a conflict with their girlfriend, or even figure out what to wear to a wedding.  It's really amazing to feel like I'm making a difference (especially since my day job can, as you know, be pretty abstract). 

I hope to hear back from you soon, and I hope you don't mind hundreds of strangers reading my note to you.

Love,
"BW"