Ahavia Lavana’s Facebook page states: “I am the Mother of all things and all things should wear a sweater in winter and sunscreen in summer. ” She’s a Jewish Quaker lesbian mother with musical tastes that run from folk-duo Trout Fishing in America to rapper Eminem, with a life story that could be a best-selling book.
PGN: From the beginning? AL: I was born in 1945 in Northampton, Pa. My father was from Czechoslovakia and a survivor of the Holocaust and my mother was Lithuanian. We were one of two Jewish families in Northampton, which was not easy. My father lived in Spain for a while and since his Spanish was good, after he came to the States he spent a lot of time in South America looking for Nazis. I grew up around a lot of people who were activists fighting for statehood of Israel and other causes. A number of them were communists, which gave me a different view of the world than most kids my age. I remember sitting around the radio as we listened to the news when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed as communist spies. A few of the people knew them and were very upset and scared. In third grade, I remember a teacher hitting me with a Bible saying she did it because the Jews killed Christ. I didn’t even know who Christ was; I just felt, I’m just a kid, I didn’t kill anybody! I also got in trouble because somewhere along the way I decided to stop saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I’d seen too much going on in the world.
PGN: You were a little rebel! AL: Yeah, it scared my parents. They were afraid I was going to say something that would get me in real trouble. One time I got into it with a teacher and he turned around and wrote “respect” on the board. Instead of backing down, I told him, “You don’t just get respect, you have to earn it just like I do.” The other kids liked it when I spoke up because it distracted the teacher from giving tests and things.
PGN: What was your father’s work when he wasn’t chasing bad guys? AL: My family had a grocery store and apartments. Both of my grandfathers were rabbis. The family was ultra-orthodox. As a result, I never learned about Christmas. In kindergarten, I remember the kids being excited because Santa was coming. They said that if you were good, Santa would bring you lots of toys. So Christmas Day, I came downstairs and of course there was nothing there. I started crying because I realized that I must be bad. I told my mother and she explained that we didn’t celebrate Christmas.
PGN: I understand you were a young mother. AL: Yes, in high school I had a boyfriend and got pregnant before I graduated. We got married and I had my oldest son, Ron. The marriage didn’t last and shortly after that, I got involved with the civil-rights movement and joined the NAACP. I got involved with the head of the local chapter and had my second son with him. Hunter was born with spina bifida and clubfeet and had a series of surgeries starting when he was two days old. My parents had helped with my first son, but they didn’t welcome a child of color in their house, so he ended up in foster care. It took me a while to get him back.
PGN: How did you feel having parents who were fighting injustice on one front and then not accepting your mixed child? AL: They were fighting Jewish causes and they felt that aligning yourself with an even more oppressed group didn’t make sense. It made you even more of an enemy to the powers that be. There was a cross burned by the KKK not far from where we lived, so they were afraid people would stop coming into the store if they associated us with black causes. So I went back to school and studied nursing. I ended up at a state hospital, where I saw one of the head nurses abusing patients. I reported her and I got fired! I switched to a nursing home and, in my depression, started taking antidepressants, which I got addicted to. At that time, I was dating another nurse who was addicted to speed. She had a whole bowl full of pills, probably stolen, in the home. I realized that it wasn’t a good situation and got into a drug rehab center. There I met a man who was visiting his sister. He was in the Marines and gay, but in the closet, so we got together. He was a Quaker and introduced me to the Friends. We married and he adopted my sons. I found out after we got married that he came from a family with money. We were able to buy, restore and flip old houses. I also went back to college again while we were together.
PGN: How old were you then? AL: This was in my 20s.
PGN: Wow, that’s a lot packed into two decades! AL: [Laughs.] I know. At that time the feminist movement was starting and I began speaking at events. I gave a speech at the Revolutionary People’s Convention here in Philadelphia. I gave a talk about the use of hallucinogenic drugs. I never took them and we instructed people not to use them during revolutionary acts, because you might accidentally blow up something! I met a lot of lesbians in the movement, but I was married and had my kids back and lived in a nice house, so I didn’t want to compromise that. I’d become a drug and alcohol counselor, and I also started doing social research. It was funny: I noticed the closer you get to the computer and the farther away you got from actual clients, the more money you made, so I started learning computers. I began getting jobs in information technology. This was back when we were still using Hollerith cards and binary numbers. I learned assembly language, the basic computer language that all other computer languages are based on even now, so it has been very helpful.
PGN: It sounds like Latin for computers. AL: Exactly. I became a systems analyst and really took to it. I left social work as a job but I was volunteering with the youth services bureau in Montgomery County, and we were getting a lot of young women coming in who had been raped. So I took a course with Women Organized Against Rape (WOAR) and we started a local chapter, which is now the Victims’ Service Center of Montgomery County. I’m proud to say it’s still very active and every year they do an awards ceremony and give away the Matty Muir awards, which is my other name.
PGN: How many names do you have? AL: I was born Mindle Nebel, then when I went to school I was called Madaline, then I married and I became Madaline Magliane. After we divorced and I remarried, I became Madaline Muir. Friends started calling me Maddy, but I changed it to Matty because I didn’t want to be “Mad.” Later I became involved with someone who spoke Hebrew and we came up with Ahavia Lavana, which means “beautiful moon.”
PGN: That’s lovely. AL: Thank you. Unfortunately after I got divorced, my second husband went to court to get legal custody of my sons. At the time, if you were a drug addict or a prostitute or a criminal, a negative effect on the children wasn’t assumed. But if you were lesbian, it was automatically assumed that it would hurt the children. I couldn’t out him as gay because then they would have taken the kids from both of us and put them in foster care. One day I got a call from the school social worker saying that the kids were coming to school in dirty clothes and she was concerned. My ex husband had started drinking and wasn’t taking care of the kids. When she asked why I didn’t have custody, I told her it was because I was a lesbian. She paused and said, “I’m a member of Sisterspace.” She gave me the name of a woman, Rosalie Davies, who ran a group called Custody Action for Lesbian Mothers (CALM). I got my children back and became a board member of CALM for many years.
PGN: What was coming out like? AL: I had a friend Peggy who I knew since we were toddlers. Our parents used to put us in a playpen together. When I got older, I remember meeting some people who I at first thought were men and then realized that they were very butch women and thought, Oh, I like that idea! I fell in lust with one of them and told Peggy about it. She lived 45 minutes away and was at my house in 30. She thought she was gay too and was always afraid to tell me. So we explored the lesbian community together and then became lovers. The only problem was that back then you had to be butch and femme, so since she looked like a mini Dolly Parton, I became the butch one. It was a role I didn’t really take to and after a while it wore thin. I had to be just me.
PGN: How did you meet Inspira? AL: Well, even while I was married, I was involved with a Quaker group called Committee for Concerns. [Laughs.] It was basically a gay group, but we left what we were concerned about out of the name. After I got divorced, I met a child psychologist named Inspira at one of the conferences. She was a 6-foot tall beautiful black woman. Because of the custody battle, we weren’t able to live together. In fact, with the first judge, I was ordered to give my ex, a man who had inherited millions of dollars, a quarter of my salary and was told I was lucky he let me see my kids at all. I never got legal custody: I just took my youngest son, but my husband decided not to fight me as long as I signed over any rights to his money. I jokingly called my son my $2-million baby. I met Inspira 26 years ago and we were together until recently. While we were together, we took in foster kids. One child, two-and-a-half months old, was in the hospital with shaken baby syndrome, a broken collarbone and fetal alcohol poisoning. We took her in and eventually adopted her, and so I have one daughter, Shante. She’s now all grown up.
PGN: Tell me a funny mother story. AL: It’s funny: Years ago at the Friends Meeting House, we were having a discussion as to whether or not we should allow gay ceremonies to be held. One of the fellows got up and said, “If this is allowed to go on, there won’t be any more children!” At the time I was in the back holding Shante along with a number of lesbian mothers, some who had birthed their kids, some adopted. We all stood and held up our kids and said, “Trust us, we won’t run out of babies. We will continue to have them, get them, take care of them, one way or another.” My sister is also a lesbian with two children. She’s been with her partner for a while and when her second child was born, my mother said, “Oh, the baby has Betty’s eyes and Diana’s chin.” We all just looked at each other and said, “Sure, Mom.”
PGN: I read a paper you wrote called “Helping and Healing.” AL: Yes, that was for Hunter. He died of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 25. He was a beautiful gay boy and very much an LGBT activist. He was involved with a gay youth group in Philly and was a filmmaker and movie critic. He loved people and they loved him back. The night my son told me he had AIDS, I felt my blood run cold. Fortunately, my nursing background allowed me to take care of him. I was able to dress bandages and flush lines, etc. He was the only patient in his hospital that didn’t get an infection because I was able to stay on top of it. People always told me, “You took such good care of him,” but he died, so I didn’t find much solace in that. I was glad for the time we got to spend together.
PGN: What was helpful? AL: One friend sent over a giant box of food. There was a whole meal, a beautiful tablecloth, candles — and a Mozart tape! It was fantastic. Her idea was to feed the soul and the body. Several Friends sent over casseroles and tried to think themselves of things that they could do, not putting another burden on me by asking, “What can we do to help?” That was very helpful. What was not was people asking me how he got the disease. What did that matter? It just meant somebody else was sick, and it’s irrelevant. But for the most part, people were kind and helpful — from the friend who sent $10 to buy vitamins to the pharmacist who made sure to order medicine three days before so my son wouldn’t run out. I found there is more lovingness and more kindness than not.
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