A Tree Grows in Driftwood Hills

Recently Riley has taken to telling stories about her birth mother. At first it was a bit alarming causing us to pause for a moment and question if we somehow were not giving Riley everything she needed. Then we found out that the neighbor girls who are also adopted are doing something very similar in talking about their own birth parents. The alarm bells quieted a bit since those girls have both an adoptive mom and dad.

Mother's day just passed and this year made it especially poignant with the tales she has been spinning of things that have happened with both her birth mother and now recently her birth father. We talk with her and give her what little information we have and feel that is appropriate to share. Robbie's sister is adopted as well so we do have some reference sources right in the family on how to handle the questions and stories.

Her school experience has  been extremely wonderful and for Mother's Day this year she brought home handmade cards for both of her daddies as well as one she made for her birth mother that she placed in the mailbox. Our letter carrier has been a real gem over the years, taking in the pieces of hand made art that Riley places there and even leaving a personal thank you several times. But this time the card for her birth mother made me think hard about our and Riley's situation. I had Robbie retrieve the card and together with a personal note from us and a photo of Riley they will be sent to the Adoption Link to go into a file in case Riley's birth mother decided she wants to know more about the little girl she left in our care 6 years ago.

6 years. Six. Our little girl is six years old now and it just seems like yesterday that I was holding her in my arms for the first time and weeping at the pure joy of finally being a father. I think I cried for a good 15 -20 minutes as I was giving her a bottle while sitting in that huge rocking recliner on the second floor offices of the adoption agency. Riley never took her eyes off me the entire time. There have been two times in my life that I've been absolutely sure I was doing the right thing. One is the day that I married Robbie (yeah, not legal but still a marriage) and the second was the first moment I held my daughter in my arms.

But now with her birth mother stories I have doubts. Doubts that we will be able to give Riley everything she needs. I read all day Sunday of the wonderful tributes people paid to the mothers and women in their lives that have helped shape who they have become. Those stories only increased my worry (have I mentioned that if worrying were an Olympic sport I would take the gold every 4 years?) So I did the exact opposite of what I wanted to do - I talked to Riley with Robbie about her birth mother, how her mother loved her very much, wanted us to have her as our own daughter and to take care of her because she wasn't able to.

We then asked Riley if she would like to pick out a tree or rose bush of some kind to plant in honor of the women who gave her life and she thought that was a great idea. We have a local garden shop fairly close to our home and we drove over to find just the right plant. After wandering around for a while looking at various trees and plants Riley seemed a little overwhelmed. That's when I remembered the Eastern Redbud  They are native to this area and are covered in lavender blooms every spring before the leaves come out. Heart shaped leaves. Once I pointed those leaves out to Riley she was very excited and wanted to get that one to plant in honor of her birth mother. I hope this is a way for her to connect with her birth mother since we don't know where she is other than somewhere in Chicago.

The stories have grown more elaborate over the past few months and I've been reassured that this is very normal for adopted children but part of me still worries that she is going to feel somehow cheated out of growing up with a mother around. We try to compensate by having as many women in her life as we possibly can - hopefully that and our love will be enough.

Polishing up the Daddy Skills

Dark purple. More exactly it's Plaza Plumberry from New York Color. Yes, that is my nail. No, I'm not going goth one nail at a time. Yes, it was a whim. No, it didn't spread beyond the one nail. I only kept the color on for a few days only removing it when my doctor expressed some alarm with either a) I had smashed my finger in a door or b) I had melanoma in my nail bed. It never occurred to him that it was just nail polish. Would you expect a man looking squarely down the barrel of 52 to wear nail polish on one finger who isn't in a rock band? Yeah, he didn't either.

A few weekends ago, Riley was stuck inside and bored. It had been raining for eons and it was cold outside. We had played board games (or is that bored?) and watched several movies. She was done with all that and asked for me to paint her nails. In several colors - one per nail. I said no and compromised by painting all her nails with three colors layering pink then purple and then topped them off with a clear coat with sparkles. In between coats I thought I'd have some fun and paint one of mine with the purple. (I've already experienced the clear with sparkles while on a beach vacation - too many margaritas. Different story for a different day.)

Riley thought it was hilarious that a boy would have nail polish on even if it was just one finger. When I asked her if she liked it she said no, that boys aren't supposed to wear polish and to take it off. I told her teasingly that I liked it. "Dad! You have to take it off. You work people make fun of you." Well that stopped me right in my tracks. Is this what our daughter was really concerned about? That I would be made fun of? Now it's a life lesson.

"Oh sweetie. The people I work with aren't going to laugh at me. They're my friends. Friends don't make fun of each other."
"Dad! They gonna laugh at you!"
"No honey, they won't."
"Daddy! You have to take off the polish!"

Keep in mind that she is laughing the entire time, rolling her eyes and generally just thinking how silly I am. But Riley is adamant that she doesn't want anyone to make fun of me. I had to reassure her that people wouldn't laugh and that if they did it didn't bother me. It was their issue to deal with.

That was not entirely true.

Part of me was a bit worried about walking into work the next day with one dark purple nail. Then I realized that I had a doctor's appointment right after work - in fact I had to leave work a little early and wouldn't have  time to stop by home and remove it. Anxiety set in. I debated removing it after Riley went to bed. I couldn't do it though - I really felt like I needed to show her that it's okay to be your own person, do your own thing,  and not worry (too much) about what other people think.

I awoke the next day thinking what are people at work going to think? Will anybody say anything? What am I going to tell them. I decided to make an experiment with it and just go about my business to see what reactions I got. Challenge the people I work with and just go about my day. Honestly it was really difficult at first and I kept catching myself curling that hand under so people wouldn't be able to see the purple nail. Then something happened. Or rather nothing happened. It got closer and closer for me to leave and no one said anything. So I did what any attention monger would do and started pointing it out while relaying Riley's concerns and how I felt it was an important lesson to teach her. I would say that it was also an important lesson for me to learn, but I am the one who bleached his hair platinum blond 13 years ago just to see how it looked.

It Could Happen, But Let's Make Sure It Doesn't

Twice a year we participate in a parenting panel at the University of Indianapolis. It's for a class on gender roles in parenting and Robbie and I participate along with another couple who are straight but are big GLBTQ allies. Somehow though the discussion brings up our coming out stories and this time was no different. The class though was not as inquisitive as past classes have been so we did a lot of talking off the cuff. We talked about what it's like to raise an African American girl when we quite obviously neither. Questions were asked about prejudices and if we've experienced anything negative which I'm quite pleased to say has only happened once.

The other couple have a lesbian daughter who came out to them while she was in college. She is now a big advocate for anti-bullying campaigns even though she herself never experienced any. Bullying is something though that I experienced at school quite often. Many instances were witnessed by teachers who chose to look the other way. One particular instance has remained with me all these years and that was when two "star" athletes wanted in front of me for the lunch line. My t-shirt ended up being ripped off one shoulder and I spent the rest of the day with it barely held up by a safety pin. Nothing happened to the athletes.

But this story isn't about bullying. One of the topics brought up by the other couple was about marriage equality: how not having it is causing an intellectual drain on this country when other countries around us allow it. Robbie and I spoke about the economic and legal ramifications of the not being allowed to be legally married. We have to have a stack of legal documents an inch thick. Financial matters have to be thought out carefully. For instance we didn't realize that because we are not related by blood or marriage that our 401 retirement accounts would be subjected to a 50% tax from the Federal government. We found that out during the DOMA hearings before the Supreme Court. We quickly changed the beneficiary to Riley to take advantage of the lower inheritance tax rate and felt we had everything covered.

Yesterday that all changed. I follow George Takei on Facebook. You should as well. He has the most funny and sometimes profound posts of any celebrity I've read on there. Yesterday he posted a link to a movie trailer simply called "Bridegroom" which is being featured at this years TriBeCa film festival. (click on Bridegroom to see the trailer). Watching it reminded me that I had just talked about this very couple in the gender class the other night. I talked about how last fall i had watched a YouTube video someone had posted on Facebook about these two guys who lived in California. They had been a couple for 6 years, one from a small town in Montana,  and the other from a small town in Indiana. They were living the American dream when tragedy struck in 2011. The guy from Indiana fell from the rooftop of a four story apartment building - he didn't survive.

This is where the true tragedy begins. The guy from Montana had a family that was very happy that he had found someone to share his life with when both guys had decided to come out to their families. The one from Indiana? His family was the exact opposite. This is the link for the original video that still has me shaken: "It Could Happen To You"  It starts out with a black screen with white letters floating: "What if tragedy struck the one you love?" then changes to "Would you be prepared?" then simply says "I'm Shane", "And this is my story."

There are several things that hit me hard about this video. First the music in the beginning of Shane's story is Debussy's Clare de lune which is the very music Robbie and I walked down the aisle to at our commitment ceremony over 8 years ago at the Disciples of Christ Church here in Indianapolis. Second it never occurred to me that someone else could step in and prevent Robbie or I from taking care of the funeral arrangements of the other one if something were to happen. So now it's another trip back to the lawyer for us. And never mind the fact that not having Robbie in my life is a thought that is more than I can bear.

If anyone still wonders why marriage equality is so important to us, there is the reason why. No one should have to go through what Shane did. NO ONE! All the biblical arguments are nonsense in this matter. You don't go to a church to get a marriage license. The minister/priest/clergy all say the same thing at the end of the ceremony "... by the power invested in me by the state of _____" It IS a legal contract between two people of consenting age. If you choose to make it a religious matter then you can. No state requires that once you get your marriage license that you have to get married in a church. None.

Just in case you didn't see the links in this post, here they are:

It Could Happen To You
Bridegroom Trailer #1

THE Question We Are Most Asked

The question we inevitably are asked more than any other is "When are you getting Riley a sibling?" The quick answer is that we're always trying, but it doesn't seem to take. I've been told that's a bit rude and too much information for some people. To which I say if they are going to be rude enough to ask about our personal plans they deserve a rude answer.

But not really. It's meant as a joke. People seem to genuinely want to know about how we became parents, the process that we had to go through and would we do it again. Wording is everything people. I've previously wrote about how we became a family and the steps we had to go through. Some would say hoops, but in hindsight it doesn't seem like it was that much to go through to have the gift that is our daughter. Would we do it again? In a heartbeat - or a lifetime of them.

Riley will be six this year, I'll be 52 and Robbie will be 43. While our original thought was that we wanted Riley to have a sibling the reality is the math just isn't there. Not only are we of the age that a lot of our heterosexual peers are either becoming grandparents (great-grandparents in some instances) or sending their children off to college, we can't swing the fees we would incur with the adoption process. It's not cheap folks. We could throw caution to the wind and live on the very precipice of financial solvency but we would like to think that if something were to happen to our home, health, or jobs that we would be able to manage. Throw another person into the mix at this point and we could rapidly approach the point of homelessness if something were to happen. Yes there are tax breaks for adoption and other incentives to help defray the cost, but those are only available once the adoption is finalized. Adoption can take years - it was a 2 1/2 year process with Riley.

But, and this is a rather large but, we also are open to anything happening. If God gives us a baby we would not say no, somehow we would make it work. There have been a couple of instances in the past few years where we have been asked to think about adopting. One instance was a high school girl who asked us to think about adopting her unborn child. We talked about it and decided that if she wanted to put her baby up for adoption we would do it. Then a week later she had her first ultra sound and the baby became a real person to her. Her son will be two this summer and our family remains three. If you remember School House Rock, three is the magic number.

It is never easy when our daughter says that she wants a little sister (some days it's a brother) and we have to think of something to tell her that she can relate to as to why she won't be a big sister. More than once we've had to explain that when she says she is getting a little sister or brother that is just her active imagination at work. One can always dream though.


Yes, dream. I wrote the part above at the beginning of the week and had my number one critic and fan read it. He said it wasn't my usual work - it wasn't bad, just very matter of fact and a bit cold with the talk of costs being the main focus. So here's the truth about this question for me. I would love to have another baby. There are times that I can literally feel an ache inside and it usually occurs when I'm around babies or get the announcement that friends are expecting.

Several months ago I was listening to the syndicated morning radio program "The Bert Show" when one of the co-hosts Jenn Hobby announced that she and her husband were finally expectant parents. They had been trying for quite a while and had to have the help of fertility specialists. Jenn spoke very emotionally about having to wait several months to tell her co-workers about being pregnant and keeping her and her husband's attempts at getting pregnant a secret. She spoke about what it's like hearing that someone else had such an easy time getting pregnant while she and her husband were struggling. (Follow Jenn on Twitter @JennHobby) It was a very emotional segment about a personal ordeal that  radio personalities rarely share. She spoke very honestly about the all the emotions of feeling inadequate, the desires of having a baby, and the struggles to keep a very private matter private until she and her husband were ready to announce their good news.

That's when I lost my composure and had to go hide in a bathroom stall for a while. Nothing like being at work and having the unexpected feeling of loss at not having the larger family I always wanted. I was sobbing  knowing that we probably won't be holding our very own new baby in our arms again. That Riley won't be a big sister like she wants. That this is it for our family. Not that it's not perfect the way it is, but I think it's human nature to always want more especially if what you have is so good. But I would really like to have a son. Or another daughter. I just want another child.

There's also the fear that if we do get another child that one will be more of a challenge than Riley ever was. Yes there have been frustrating moments - but those truly have been rare and far between. She started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks. She's never been that susceptible to illness other than the rare case of the sniffles or a cough. She's never been a picky eater other than a complete and utter disdain for peanuts and peanut butter. Or anything that those two things might be lurking in.

There was the time a few years ago when she had sudden and unexplained loss of balance. That was a fun day going through three doctors starting with her pediatrician and ending with a pediatric neurologist and an MRI. Turns out it was only a buildup of a huge plug of wax in her ear causing a pressure imbalance. It was without a doubt the scariest thing I have ever been through. And I've had several scary instances over the past few years where I thought I was going to lose one of my brothers. This was by far the worst thing to ever see. Trying to calm our three year old as she is laying in a hospital bed in her peach colored scrubs while they give her gas to put her under. There was no way around it as kids can't stay still long enough so they can do the MRI. Watching her fight it at first and then see her eyes roll back as the anesthesia takes effect was the absolute worst as I was trying to keep the thought out of my head that might be the last time I saw her. What would happen if she never woke up? What if something goes wrong? I hope we never have to do that again. It was only after seeing her in the recovery room sleeping soundly that I was able to give into those thoughts and just sobbed at what might have happened.

Aside from the medical scares, we also worry that the balance of the universe would give us a child who would be the exact opposite from Riley. A child who would keep us up at night. One that wouldn't be as healthy. One wouldn't have Riley's sense of humor, her compassion, or her sensitivity to the needs of others who don't have it as well as she does. I realize that even in the genetic pool it is all a crap shoot, but with adoption there are so many more variables. And it just seems like the more time that passes, the further away that dream of having a larger family becomes. I just have to put it out there and let God do the rest.

Facebook and the Magic Genie Jesus

You may have seen this by now. One if any number of pictures of Jesus stating that you should share if you love Jesus - just keep going if you don't. When did Jesus start following Facebook and is that what Christianity has become for the masses? A series of clicks for eternal redemption?

I mean really. I know people are living through Facebook at an incredible pace these days - and increasingly completely unfiltered - so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that Christianity would become the next version of a Facebook poke. But granting wishes isn't anywhere that I can find in the New Testament. Am I missing something that one of my friends who me is better versed in theology than I can enlighten on? 

Those posts drive me crazy. "Like this picture if you love your mother/grandmother/teacher/fireman/barista." The underlying message is that I'm a cold hearted puppy killer along the lines of the National Lampoon cover that featured someone holding a gun to a puppy's head with the headline "Buy this magazine or the dog gets it." When National Lampoon did it though it was funny. Now it's just beyond annoying and I'm getting closer to clicking the button for "block all news from this person."

But back to the Jesus posts. Or the Angel pictures promising you something good will happen in the next thirty minutes or days if you like or share it. Facebook is becoming the electronic version of the chain letter. They don't work people -  they didn't in the time of snail mail and they didn't work when they worked their way into email and they certainly don't work on Facebook. Redemption/salvation can't be given by clicking a like button on a picture of Buddy Jesus either. You won't have bad things happen if you don't share the picture of the miracle angel. All of it is superstition plain and simple. And I'll let you in on a little secret though, it's bad luck to be superstitious.

How We Came To Be: A Short Story of Our Family

Photo credit: Mark Lee GreatExposure@aol.com

Once upon a time, a little over twelve years ago, I met Robbie and had no idea that my life was about to take another sharp turn from the direction I thought I was headed.  Funny thing about life, you make plans and get an idea of where you're headed in life. Then you get sideswiped by a Mac truck and suddenly you're facing a new direction. Most of the time you come out of it intact, but completely shaken up. As I've said before, being in a relationship was not what I wanted when I met Robbie, but there I was a few months in and was hooked.

An earlier "Mac truck" completely altered the course of my life when I came out. I always wanted to be a father but gave up on that idea once I accepted that I was gay. When I came out (the first time was in the early eighties) and there just some things gay men didn't do. In fact were expected not to do.  No white picket fence - okay. Small house in the 'burbs - gone.  No wife - whew! No kids. Sigh.

No kids. That was the hardest part about the coming out process. In fact it was probably the biggest reason I broke up with my first serious boyfriend. It was all too much, too fast and I was just not ready to wrap my head around everything that I was giving up. It was too big of a sacrifice leaving behind all the things I was raised to want and strive for. Looking back now it seems rather silly, especially from this side of "The Big Life Changing Event." Funny thing is, the big changes are usually brought about by small things. In this case it was a newspaper article about a man named Craig Peterson.

Craig Peterson, one man who made a big impact in my life - our lives - without ever meeting him.  In the paper one day was an article about how he adopted his boys. Originally he was going to adopt them with his partner but in the middle of the process the partner bravely decided that he really didn't want to be a father and bailed. I'm not sure how Mr. Peterson felt about that, but to me it probably worked out for the best since they hadn't completed the adoption and the boys hadn't had a chance to bond with the ex. I would go into more detail about the Peterson family but I personally don't know them and I couldn't possibly tell their story properly. Plus I would have to get out my soapbox about what he and his family where subjected to during the process of making the family whole again and I just don't have the energy right now.

All the old "wants" starting coming back after reading the article . I had watched as my brothers started their families and I became the uncle who had moved away from home to make a different life. Up until the point I finished reading the article everything was going okay with my life. I had my own house, I was dating a good guy, and I had a good group of friends. Now I was facing a new direction again. Did I tell Robbie about what I wanted? Of course. Our relationship was still relatively new so I figured if it wasn't something he was interested in it wouldn't hurt so bad to end things right there. So I gave him the article to read and held my breath. I think his reaction was something along the lines of "I think I want to be a dad too, but let me think about it for a while" or something to that effect. Then he left for the night saying we'd talk about it later.

Later came the next day when he sat down with me on the second-hand sofa in my urban bungalow he said the he had grown up expecting to be a father one day but had given up the possibility once he had came out. The article had changed what was impossible to him to a possibility again. Robbie said that if I wanted to look into adoption he was willing to also. I think we had been together over a year at that point spending just about everyday with each other at that point and we started our journey to make our family complete by looking first at international adoption.

One of the things that made international adoption appealing to us was that the agency we had met with said we would be guaranteed to get a baby with them whereas with domestic we would probably be eligible for older or special needs children. We were really looking to adopt a baby - a child around 2 or younger for a couple of reasons. Bonding with a younger child is supposed to be much easier was the biggest. Our next step was in trying to figure out which country to adopt from. Depending on the country there were several hurdles to overcome the biggest being sexuality. We discovered pretty early on that only one of us would be doing the adopting and that we would have to lie about our relationship - not ideal for us but a condition we could work with.

The second hurdle was cost. Again, depending on the country costs can differ dramatically. It may seem like an inconsequential thing to consider, but if we were going to have to go broke in order to bring a baby home it didn't make sense. Nothing like bringing a third person into your life and not being able to afford the roof over our heads because we had spent the next twelve years worth of mortgage payments on the legal costs of bringing home an international baby.

We also had to pick the country based on how long we were expected to stay in the country - which could be from a few days to a few months. Brazil requires that you speak Portuguese which is it's own challenge seeing as how I have difficulty with my native one. Also with international adoptions we could have picked the sex of the child we were getting. (Keep in mind this was eleven to twelve years ago and a lot of things have changed on international adoption laws and treaties.) And then the next "Mac truck" came along.

Robbie was offered a position at a university in Chicago - and after some discussion he accepted it. We put the adoption plans on hold for a bit, figuring that with housing being part of his compensation package we would be able to easily save money for the adoption process. Chicago was a city we had talked about living in because we had always had a good time when ever we went there for a weekend trip.

The first year saw Robbie settling into his new role and I was busy turning a university apartment (read institutional) into something more to our tastes. Every room of the apartment was furnished with the exception of the master bedroom. We had just bought a new bedroom suite the year before moving and didn't want to get rid of it. Also gone were the pieces of "artwork" the university had paid someone a large amount of money to hang really high up on the walls. They would have looked better in a Motel 6.

One day Robbie came home with some exciting news. He had met a woman... Wait, that's not quite right. Robbie came home to tell me that he had been working that day with a woman who had adopted two little girls along with her partner through an agency in Oak Park called Adoption Link of Illinois. Adoption Link is an agency working in domestic adoptions of African American and multi-racial children. They were having a family picnic that weekend and Robbie's coworker thought it might be a good way for us to learn more about the agency and what they did. We met up with them and had a great time meeting other families of all walks of life with the same thing in common. Everyone had the same warm glow on their faces when talking about their families, how they came to be, and especially when they talked about their children. We were hooked.

I'd like to say that we were so excited that we started the paperwork right away. What is closer to the truth is that we were scared. Were we making the right decision? What was it going to be like raising a child of a different race? How were people going to react? Luckily Adoption Link has all those questions and many more covered as it wasn't simply a matter of filling out some paperwork and signing some checks every so often. There were criminal background checks, fingerprinting, home visits, psychological evaluations, a portfolio of what we could offer the child to be shown to the birth parent(s), and classes to take. The reality is that anyone who goes through the adoption process is probably more prepared and grilled about why they want to have children than the average person. Sometimes I think there would be a lot less child abuse if every person of child bearing age had to go through the same process as prospective adoptive parents.

Robbie and I took the process slow as we had met a guy who right after starting the adoption process was picked by a birth mother. That would be similar to finding out you were pregnant and the baby arriving the next week which is how we didn't want to do things. So we took our time filling out the necessary paperwork, getting fingerprinted, and having the home studies completed in order to become licensed foster parents. And Adoption Link did warn us that it would be a long process since we were a gay couple as it was still a huge taboo in the African American community to give a child up for adoption let alone to a gay household. But they did tell us if we were patient that in about two and a half years we would become parents. They were right on the money with the timeline.

After one set back - we were chosen by a birth mother to adopt her son who was due in January of '07 - we stopped talking about the process. Robbie would still hound the agency to get updates every few weeks, but we didn't discuss it. Even knowing for a few months and then having the link fall through was enough that I couldn't hope any longer that getting a baby was going to happen. We quietly and literally shut the door on the room that was to become a nursery and went on with our lives planning to take a vacation to Florida at the end of May that following year.

One afternoon, the second week of May, I was walking back from Little Italy after a tanning session (Midwest skin tends to burn easily in the sub-tropical Florida sun) when I got a call from Robbie. He said something about Margaret (she founded and ran the agency), little girl born the week before, and that's when things started getting a little blurry around the edges and I had to sit down on the curb along Taylor Street. Once I was able to see again I had him start over to make sure that I heard him correctly. There was a baby girl born the previous week, she was still in the hospital, the agency was giving us the first option because we had been on the list so long, and they needed to know our answer in 24 hours. What happened the rest of the day is gone. I somehow found my way back home - six long city blocks away - where I had to wait for Robbie to finish working out the rest of his day.

There really wasn't much of a discussion once he got home. There were a few complications with the birth and she would have to stay in the hospital a few more weeks - which was fine with us as it gave us a little more time to prepare mentally - and we said "of course we'll take her." One of the stipulations which still saddens me is that the agency didn't want us to go to the hospital to see our girl. The hospital was close to where we lived and was in the middle of an African American community. Adoption Link was afraid that if the hospital thought they only dealt with gay and lesbian couples the hospital would stop contacting them when they had a birth mother who wasn't already working with an agency.

So after three of the longest weeks of my life, we got the call from the social worker that she was on her way to the agency with Riley and to meet her there to sign some paper work and get our daughter. Oh, and to make sure we had the car seat or we couldn't leave with her. One day before she turned a month old and two days before I turned 46 we finally brought Riley home. She will always be the best birthday present I will ever receive. Oh yeah, the Florida Vacation was cancelled which with the start of our new family was so worth it.

First day as a new dad.

A Small (?) Challenge for 2013

Last year my nephew and a few other Facebook Friends had posted pictures for a Photo A Day challenge. This year I saw John was once again posting pictures for it. This is the challenge for January that he placed on his page a number of days ago and I thought I would try participating this year.  Yesterday was a simple assignment since it was simply about "today" and I'll post that picture here for people to see at the end of this post.  Today is also a fairly easy one as it's only been a week since Christmas and I have a few new things to photograph. I promise that I won't subject you to every picture everyday, but I will update you from time to time with some of the photographs I'm more particularly proud of. 

 

I've decided also to combine it with a little twist. I don't remember exactly where or what the suggestion was. Maybe it was writing down thoughts on slips of paper and putting them in a large container throughout the year. The idea of that exercise is to at the end of the day to write down one good thing that has happened to you today. There are so many people out there who feel that there is only bad things, unfortunate things, things out of their control all happening to them in a constant barrage of bad news. Sometimes it's just paying attention to the good things in your life to eventually break the cycle of "whoa is me" to help see the good things around us everyday. It may be something as big as getting a special recognition or promotion at work or something as little as noticing the way the lawn sparkles under the frost as the beams of the car headlights sweep across the grass.

 

That is my challenge for myself and for you. I realize I may be a day late in suggesting (or passing on) this idea but I feel if you think back to yesterday you can come up with one good thing that happened to you. For me it was spending a quiet afternoon with my family, my niece and her boyfriend, and just having a good time around a dinner that didn't exactly turn out as hoped. Dinner was the background story. The time with family is the big story. 

 

It could be a simple old shoe box that you put those scraps of paper in. It could be a glass jar so you can see the slips of paper building up. I would suggest thought that you date the events of your life as they get placed away. An advantage to this would be you could just grab something back out at random to help you through a particularly bad day and maybe give you a spark in remembering something good about that day. I do remember though that the suggestion was to write at the end of the day and keeping the container bedside. Maybe it's just a small way to give thanks and remember that even in the darkest of night there are thousands of small points of light that help guide our way.

 

And as promised here is the picture from January 1, 2013 taken around 8:00 am EST and is the view from our front door.



"...we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” Dr. Mark Vonnegut

Today is the start of a brand new year - no news there unless you live in a cave. This is the time when we reflect back on the prior year and try to wrap up everything that has happened. Or we try an exercise in futility by looking forward and guess what the new year is bringing. Even worse are the posts about trying to make improvements in our lives through resolutions, promises, and pledges. Ugh. I'll spare you any of that today.

This blog has been a big pain in my ass at times quite honestly. More than a few times I've even contemplated pulling the plug and not writing it any longer. I've put a lot of pressure on myself to come up with things that may be witty, sometimes profound, or just plain observations about life around me. Something has happened recently that has given me a change of heart and spurred me to write maybe a little more often than I have in the past year or so. 

The Internet can be a great time waster while pursuing information/knowledge. For someone like me there are a lot of distractions (look! a squirrel!) that have kept me from being a little more productive with the time I have. I'd like to say that the reason I haven't written more is that I've been trying to stay away from the Internet in general because of it. That is so not the case with me. Then something happened that makes me want to write more. It may be hubris on my part, but maybe this really isn't anything more than trying to help other people. The title of this post comes from the response given to Kurt Vonnegut by his son when the senior Vonnegut posed the question to his offspring about the meaning of life. It may not be the best answer, but sometimes the simplest reason is enough.

Years ago, decades actually, our family minister told me that God has a plan for all of us, we just need to listen closely to find out what that plan is and do it. Ha! Easier said than done. Recently though I've had the great privilege of chatting with a young man on the other side of the planet. He discovered my blog by chance and contacted me to chat about a few things he has read here. Over the course of the past month or so I've developed a friendship with him. One of the things that he said is that for the first time he feels that someone out there understands what he feels. He has never told anyone before that he is gay.

He's from a small town in his country and feels that he has no one close to him to talk to about his feelings. Very similar to my early years growing up in a small town, he's afraid that he will lose the few friends he does have. At first I felt a little bit uncomfortable with this new role as mentor, but I've come to see it as helping a friend talk through things and I've become more than just a little protective of him. Once he said he was very near to telling a friend that he is gay, but at the last minute didn't. He hated that he couldn't say it.

I don't like giving advice. It puts me in an uncomfortable position of feeling like I am then responsible for that person for any outcome to their decision. One of the things I told him though was to come out at his own pace, tell people only when he feels comfortable doing so. Relaying my own personal stories as well as coming out stories of other friends I think is the best way and I reminded him that it's his life to live however he wants and he only has to answer to himself and his own timetable for if and when he does come out to people. The people in his life who truly care about him won't care one way or another and the ones who react negatively were not really his friends to begin with. True friends won't care except that they want to see you happy with your life.

Well he told someone last night. He's started out the New Year with revealing his true nature to the very friend that he had nearly told several weeks ago. Their response? They love him no matter what and just want him to be happy. So here's to you to my young friend. It takes a lot of courage to live life honestly and I'll always be there to help and support you in any manner I can.

Now, when do I get my toaster oven?