When is it ok to be ordinary? The pack animal likes to be ordinary because it is hard for a predator to pick out an individual from a herd that looks the same. There's a comfort for humans too in knowing that you just fit in, that no one could easily pick you out from the crowd.
It's a curse too because we are all different. Some wear it on their sleeves but even the most conformist harbours something that they think no one else shares. In the ideal situation we celebrate our common ground but are proud of our difference. More likely we try to over emphasise our common ground and hide our little differences, our kinks, our otherness.
I want to fit in despite what my public persona of indifference might suggest, but let's face it fitting in is not something we can do easily. Our family is not ordinary because there are not many like us.
But today was different and today we ran with the herd. We went to Castro Dads, a group we follow on Facebook, that meets weekly in the Castro area of San Francisco. At this meeting there were three other other families and our story was almost banal. It's such an unusual experience to keep saying 'yes that's what we found too' whether about the surrogacy itself, people's reactions to it all or the subsequent family relations.
Take a thousand people and you can predict that a certain percentage will do this that or the other. Statistically it's very accurate but for an individual it is worthless - the variance is too high. It's a question of scale.
I am proud that we are different and doing something special. It hasn't been easy and I think it is to the credit of us all - J, Harriet and me, and to our family and friends. But today it was a blessed relief to sit down in San Francisco with the Castro Dads and be ordinary'
