I was contacted by Sean to write a review for his upcoming
book “Which one of you is the Mother” the other day, and after reading the
hilarious and moving book, I realized we had finally met our dadelgängers in
Sean and Todd. Seriously. We have yet to meet these two, but I found myself
looking over my shoulder for surveillance cameras as I read about their
exploits and adventures with their two boys.
This is the review I wrote for the
book:
Sean Michael O’Donnell and his husband Todd gave up their
lives of endless clubbing, leather chaps, and glow sticks to become parents.
The party bus is now a minivan, the chaps have been replaced by #dadbod
appropriate jeans and t-shirts and the endless clubbing is now an endless quest
for a clean house and a decent night’s sleep.
I don't like to think of us as boring, just profoundly
unremarkable…, writes O’Donnell in the first chapter, but I beg to differ.
Their story of starting their relationship to adopting their children is
remarkable, considering all they had to go through as a gay male couple. Their
story is one for anyone, a story of true love, commitment and what it means to
be a family in the US in 2015.
Upon reading “Which one of you is the Mother?” I realized
that my husband Tod and have our own dadelgängers in Sean and his husband Todd.
There may be one less D, but their story is remarkably similar to our journey
to parenthood. We’re just older and have cuter kids.
O’Donnell is a natural story teller who puts the reader
front and center in their daily lives. It’s a story of hope, a story of
compassion, and a story for anyone who has ever wondered what those Club Kids
from the nineties are up to these days.
A synopsis of the book here:
After fifteen years of up-all-night gay disco dance parties,
Sean O'Donnell and his longtime partner Todd decided to trade in their leather
chaps for mom jeans and start a family. In August 2012 the not-so ambiguously
gay duo walked into a Pittsburgh-based adoption agency and said, "We'd
like a child, please." For the next several months they attended parenting
classes, subjected themselves to probing FBI background checks, and completed
enough paperwork to reforest the whole of the Amazon River basin. Despite
lacking a magical baby-making vagina the pair successfully made omelets without
eggs when in July 2013 they flew to Oregon to meet their seven-year-old son for
the first time. No longer Sean and Todd they would now be forever known as Dad
and Papa to the observant boy ("So that's how you sleep.") with a
million questions (“Do you have a girlfriend?”, “Where do babies come from?”,
“What’s gay?”) No sooner had they settled into their new roles when the stork
returned the following year, delivering another boy who quickly proved that
five-year-olds were basically talking babies who could use the toilet. Which
One of You is the Mother? is the story of how two gay guys finally met the two
kids who were always meant to be their sons. This is a book that celebrates a
different kind of family who just happens to be like every other family on the
block. Only gayer. And funnier.
 |
| Sean and Todd and their boys. |
You can follow media-whore Sean here: http://seansbiggayblog.com/
and here: https://twitter.com/seansbiggayblog
I’d give you his phone number, but he didn’t share that with me.
And yeah, his Amazon page is here: http://www.amazon.com/Sean-Michael-ODonnell/e/B0127GQY40
After you buy my book, scrape together some change and buy
his.
