On Meeting the Parents

...or When Your Children Have Two Mommies.

Today, as we speak, Astrid and I are in Atlanta with my kids for a week-plus, celebrating birthdays, carving pumpkins, taking my grandson to the fair, and enjoying autumn in the North Georgia mountains.

Astrid is now the 3rd live-in 'parent' they've met, not counting their father.  Actually, the 4th parent, if you count G.  When Bill and I divorced in 1990, I thought I would be with G the rest of my life.  Seriously.  But her own divorce decree forbade her kids to ever see me if she wanted to retain joint custody.  That meant we could never live together.  Two years later she left me for another woman who was not part of the decree.

Within a month I rebounded and started a 5-year relationship with J.  As they say, hindsight is better than foresight, but the short version is we were from 2 entirely different zipcodes!  I truly believe everybody who knew me, including my kids, was glad when I left her because they didn't see us as a good fit.  However, it was still very hard on my fragile children who were finally getting used to the break-up of their original family while learning to accept their mom in a gay relationship.

When I left J for D (are you confused yet?) and started what was to become a 12-year partnership, I wanted to believe my kids would never have to go through another break-up.  Notice that I said my kids.   How very telling!  Everyone loved D and truly believed we were a match made in heaven.  Because of her I had a dream life of exotic travel all over the world...and enough financial security for 3 lifetimes.  But in the words of my favorite U2 song, I still hadn't found want I was looking for.  We, too, were from 2 different zipcodes.

How do you explain any of this to your kids?  And do you stay in your 'bad marriage' to keep them from bleeding yet again?  A friend years ago had said, "When you do what is right for yourself, it will be right for everyone else concerned."  So it was with fear and trembling that I left D and a year later moved to The Netherlands to become legally married to Astrid, the love of my life.

I have known Astrid for over 3 years now but this is the first time my kids have met her...because they weren't ready.  Can I guarantee to them I will never go through another break-up?  No.  Can I protect them?  No.  I want them to see how she is different from the others.  I want them to experience our love and happiness.  But it takes Time and has to find its own course.  It's part of the quiet pain in being their mother, still learning how to be a parent.

Why am I giving you Way Too Much Information?!  There are gay people all around us whether we know it or not, many living with a lot of pain.  My personal theory is our maturation process is much longer and more complicated than that of  'normal' straight people...because of the proverbial Closet and because we haven't learned to accept ourselves yet.  How then can you?  Or our kids?

Not to make this a band wagon (before midterm elections?), but maybe you can be part of the process that breaks down these barriers?  Maybe you can vote for Astrid to one day be free to move with me to Atlanta as my legal wife so that my kids can get to know her better?  Maybe?! 

Eat, Drink and Be Merry

...for tomorrow we die.
[Ecclesiastes 8:15 and Isaiah 22:13]

Lately I've been trying to pay attention to this thing called Life...and what it means to live, in spite of the economy or my wallet.  Years ago someone told me to live as though there were no tomorrow but to save as though I'd lived forever.  But often to my own shame, I have worked hard on the latter at the expense of the former.

How does this happen?  To have money in the bank but to think twice about spending it on a café coffee while walking out-n-about any weekend afternoon?  That's easy, you say:  it's because of the economy right now or because you came out of a conservative preacher's home.  But not all my brothers and sisters are that way.  Why am I?

Astrid and I live in a senior-living complex here in The Netherlands (minimum entry age is 55) where we are surrounded by residents who are in their sunset years, as we say.  It's not earth-shattering whenever we hear that Mevrouw So-and-So has just died.  It's the reality of this place.  And yet, at the same time, it's nothing for us all to get together once a month and live it up, eating, drinking and having fun.  I LOVE IT.  Watching 60-, 70- and 80-year-olds letting down their hair and laughing a lot.  I sit there trying to catch all the Dutch I can pick up...and laughing right back.

Eons ago when Bill and I were 'missionaries' to college students and had little money, he'd sometimes say, "Let's go out for an ice cream!" I'd immediately say, "Do you think we can afford it?" For God's sake, Ginnie, they only cost 5-cents a scoop back then.  Shouldn't I have asked, "How can we NOT afford it?!"  We always went, of course, because I talked sense into myself, but I'm so ashamed when I think of that memory.

The rare times we took the kids to a restaurant, maybe twice a year on their birthdays, they'd always choose the most expensive entre on the menu.  I got smart and quickly made the policy they could choose anything up to a certain amount (that I had fixed in my head).  WHY?  Since it was a rare thing, why couldn't I just say "To heck with it.  They can have anything they want!  It's their birthday, for God's sake!"  Why didn't I trust the way Life works.  Why didn't I accept the ebb and flow, the give and take, the saving and spending, the living and the dying?  Both and.  Why didn't I talk sense into myself!

While I still have a lot to learn on the subject (surely most of you are way ahead of me!),  in my own way I'm making headway.  The older I get, I don't weigh and measure and calculate every single thing anymore.  I'm more willing to take my chances and trust the outcome.  What is it we say...moderation in everything.  If we're not guilty of the alternative, why worry about tomorrow, which may never come anyway!  Besides, I don't have to leave ALL my money (what I have of it, that is) to the kids.  I can enjoy my own life for a change, right?

So, hang on a sec while I go get a bottle and a couple of glasses.  I can hear you saying "I'll drink to that!"  Please do and PROOST, as we say here in The Netherlands!

Eat, drink and be merry...for tomorrow we diet!
[2001 New Scientist 22/29 Dec. 45]

On What We Collect

Not to be confused with pack-ratting...but have you ever noticed what people collect?  Like vintage fountain pens, maple-tree sap spiles, golf balls, thimbles, spoons, teacup sets, porcelain plates, Lladró figurines, long-play records, etc.

In my past life, our house was full of collectibles.  Two of us lived in enough space for an army (compared to where I live very cozily now) and had almost every nook and cranny filled with something.  For instance, my ex-partner loved Boyd's resins and, once started, couldn't stop collecting them.  Most of them were 1st editions (a whole substratum of collecting) and filled glass cabinets and shelves on all 3 levels of our house.  She also collected baseball caps everywhere we went around the world, hanging them at the ceiling all around our basement.  Together we collected the 50 State Quarter spoons issued over 10 years.  And on and on it went....for a rainy day, for my grandson, for whatever.

My daughter once exclaimed, if ever you have to move, please do NOT ask me to help you!  HA!  So I didn't.  It was exactly a year ago when I was almost totally finished with packing or selling all our collections as we broke house and I prepared for my move to The Netherlands.  I never expected that day to come and therefore never took seriously the implications of all we were collecting.  However, in the end, it all had its place...and good fortune....

Since I was the retired one, I was the one who packed things up for my Ex...close to 1,000 Boyds that had to be repacked into their original boxes (the "more value!" substratum), baseball caps carefully cupped into each other for transport, etc.  When I started the entire project, I perished the thought.  But in the actual process of doing it, I saw satisfying progress every day.

It was another story for me because most of what was mine I was not going to take with me.  Simple.  Not enough room.  But this is where the good fortune comes in:  eBay and Amazon became my best friends, helping me get rid of everything, often at a good price.  I had a personal collection of uncanceled sheets of every USA stamp since the 1940s...hundreds of them in albums.  One by one I scanned and listed them on eBay and one by one they sold, sometimes at $25/sheet.  Old books, DVDs, Quarter spoons, spiles, concert T-shirts, you name it...to the tune of over $15K by the time all was said and done.

My treasure became someone else's treasure.  And no, it did not bother me one whit.  If anything, it seemed planned before the foundation of the world for such a day, since I needed the money for my move.

Now, do I still collect today, you ask?  You can bet your bottom dollar, yes.  BUT I've learned my lesson:  KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!).  Or maybe that's keep it SMALL.  I brought all my pinched/elongated pennies with me and all my official coin medals from around the world.  Simple and small.  Easily transported from here to there.

Which brings me to the above weathervane in Wageningen, Netherlands (in case you were wondering!).  What I collect now is here on my laptop or external hard drive where I have categories:  windmills, water towers, clock towers, weathervanes, spires.  I can't NOT collect them.  They've become part of what I look for and find soulful...each with its own name or character.  Each without a pricetag, free for the taking.  And small.

And you?  What do you collect?  Surely you knew I'd ask! 

Always Look Up

By the end of this, some of you will be rolling your eyes, I guarantee it.  So up front I'm telling you this is the god-honest truth.

Right now we're in the middle of Mercury Retrograde when electronic gadgets (like computers!) go haywire, transportation 'snarls' more than usual, and, to put it bluntly, we all do more stupid things than normal.  It happens 3-4 times a year for 3 weeks at a time.  This stint is from August 20 - September 12.

Please hold that thought.

The older I get, the more I want to find out about my heritage.  Does knowing where I come from help me know where I'm going?  I have no idea.  But take my two grandpas, for instance, both of whom I never met....

Dad's dad, Thomas, was born in 1847 and served in the U.S. Civil War.  He was 70 when Dad was born in 1917.  Dad was 78 when he died in 1995.  So if you do the math, my grandpa served in the Civil War as a teenager...while his own son, my dad, served in no wars because he was a preacher and was thereby exempt.  What was Thomas like, I wonder, and how did that war affect him, Dad...or me?

Mom's dad, Sidney, was born in 1892 and so happened to be one of America's prominent astrologers in his day.  He published under the pen name Wynn and "began Wynn's Astrology Magazine in 1931, and for the next two decades it was one of the most influential in the emerging field. He also contributed a column to the New York Daily News and wrote a number of popular books."

What I knew about my astrology grandpa while growing up in my conservative preacher's home was that I shouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole.  I even felt guilty about reading the horoscope, so I didn't.  But when Bill and I divorced in 1990, I suddenly needed to find out why I wasn't supposed to 'touch' astrology?  Would it kill me or my faith?

Since I had already fallen from grace (my last post), I decided there was nothing left to kill, so with a passion I touch-tackled astrology in every way possible.  A lady at work aided my intrigue and put me in touch with a guru of sorts who taught me much.  I purchased top-of-the-line software to work up natal charts and personality reports, which I continue doing to this day with great pleasure.  One of the things I learned along the way is you can get an astrology quack every bit as dreadful as a Bible interpreter quack.  I began to see my life making connections to my past in ways I never thought possible.  Kinda like criss-crossing grandpas.

Now go back to Mercury Retrograde.  I once tried to jokingly explain to do-not-touch-astrology Dad what MR was and he immediately said, "Oh, you mean like when I drove the car from Virginia to Michigan with my glasses caught in the corner of the luggage rack on top of the car...and I couldn't figure out where I had put them till I got home?!"  Yup!

Okay then.  One more week of this madness and all you need to do is pay attention.  Expect delays and try not to take glitches personally.  Before you know it, life will move into the fast lane and become normal again.

"As in the heavens above, so on earth below."   That's why you should always look up!

Are you rolling your eyes?  But I bet you believe in the effects of the full moon, right!  Now that reminds me of when I worked in assisted living....