Teaching the Cat to Sit: A Memoir

A gay journalist living in Boulder, Colo., with her longtime partner and adopted child, Theall picks relentlessly at the baggage from her Texas Catholic upbringing, determined to free herself from the oppressive effects of silence and shame. Theall and her partner, Jill, agreed to have their almost-four-year-old son, Connor, baptized in a quiet, “closet” ceremony at their local Catholic church, yet were appalled to be notified untactfully by the pastor that a homosexual lifestyle was not accepted, prompting the couple to withdraw Connor from the church’s nursery school and provoking all kinds of trouble with Theall’s pious, disapproving parents. Born in 1966, and diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2003, Theall had wrestled with issues of shame and acceptance her entire life; at age 11 she was raped by her best friend’s father and never told her parents because she knew her mother would be mortified and denounce her. The pattern of silence and denial was entrenched throughout her childhood, torturing her emotionally, and even after Theall came out to her parents, she felt keenly the residual effects of her mother’s displeasure, especially her inability to bring Jill into the family. Theall’s tightly wrought account, first prompted by the journalistic outcry over leaving her church and then shaped into a long article in a Denver magazine about becoming gay that shocked and enraged her parents, serves as a powerful testimony to the healing power of language. (Feb.)