It’s impossible to avoid all the memes, retweets, and sentimental odes to fatherhood being shared this time of year. And for everyone who is lucky enough to have had a great dad, I am very happy for you. Go, celebrate his wonderfulness. Tell him how great he is. Recognize that not every person who manages to make a baby is also a good, loving father. If yours is that kind of wonderful, he deserves a big “thank you.”
Not all of us got so lucky. Continue reading Not All Fathers
Some people who do have a great relationship with a great mother still have some issues with the Mother’s Day holiday. Some of them wish they could have children, but for whatever reason don’t, and Mother’s Day becomes just another reminder of how much society still measures a woman’s worth by whether or not she’s a mom. Some of them had a great relationship with their own mothers, but those mothers are no longer among the living, and mother’s day is a very painful reminder of that loss.
I’m well aware that I quite lucked out in the mom department. Certainly compared to some folks I know. I’ve never had my mom tell me that she would put me back in her will if only I would divorce my spouse, for instance. My mom has never had to plea bargain her way out of several theft and fraud charges to avoid jail time. My mom wasn’t physically abusive, or otherwise like the parents in any of the horror stories you will find if you delve into the backgrounds of children at Child Haven.
And she’s quite cool. She’s the person who introduced me to both science fiction and comic books as a child. Just this last week we had a long geek-out session together via text message because X-men: First Class is currently her favorite movie. Mom was my writing buddy for November’s NaNoWriMo. My mom encouraged my interest in science most of the times that people in the fundamentalist churches we attended warned her that my interest in such things as paleontology, relativity, and the like were inspired by the devil. More often than not during my childhood mom erred on the side of being inclusive, tolerant, and accepting of people who were different than us.
Do I wish that she were happy for Michael and I when we were finally able to legally marry? Yeah. While I’m glad that she seems to genuinely like Michael, that she’s welcomed him into her house, and that she refers to him as her other son, I wish she could come around to seeing our relationship as not sinful. But it could be a lot worse. It has been a lot worse. Sometimes you have to be thankful for what progress you get.
When I started this post, I had intended to publish it last Sunday. But I read enough interesting exchanges on various social media between some people who’s relationship with Mother’s Day is more complicated than the typical Hallmark commercial, and I felt like a bit of an interloper or even impostor for even drafting this.
It’s as if I don’t quite feel I have the right to talk about what issues I and my mom do have. Particularly since I’m hardly the ideal Hallmark son, myself.
We muddle along fairly well, in no small part due to her firm belief that part of loving a person is being in their corner, even when you don’t agree.
I am not posting an April Fool’s Day joke1816!
Footnotes: Continue reading What a fool am I!
The first year I did it was way back after our current landlady bought the place (and moved in down stairs). All of the porch lights for all the units in our little four-plex are controlled by a timer in the basement. We can’t turn our own porch light on or off. As summer changed to fall and then to winter, sundown went from well after 9:30pm1 to about 4:30 pm2, but the porch lights weren’t turning on until after 9. It was freakin’ dark around our front door. The icicle lights were controlled by a light sensor that I have plugged them into, and they made it possible for people to see to walk up and down the concrete steps, and for me to find the right keys to unlock the door.
We eventually found out where the switch was, and tried to teach the landlady how it worked, but she just didn’t understand. However, she gave us permission to adjust it throughout the year, and that’s what we’ve been doing since.
The next year, because we had control of the porch light, we took down the icicle lights right around New Year’s Day. And the landlady was very sad. She asked why we took them down, because she liked the lights. Also, after the lights came down, when she drove home from work after sundown, she kept driving past the driveway3, because she couldn’t tell which house was which, and she’d have to turn around and drive back more slowly to find the driveway.
The problem is, when I leave the lights up well past Christmas, I start feeling judgmental attitudes from other neighbors and strangers who pass by. I recognize that this is mostly just in my head, but it bugs me. Also, the PCV plastic on the lights isn’t really designed for prolonged exposure outside, and the longer you leave the lights out, the fewer Christmas seasons you will get to re-use them.
So we came up with a compromise. I agreed to leave the lights up until Daylight Saving Time starts, at which point sundown is late enough that usually when she’s coming home there is enough light for her to tell the houses apart by color.4 And she agreed to talk to her business partners who had nagged at me to take the lights down.5
Since Daylight Saving Time’s start keeps getting moved earlier, I decided to change my date to the Spring Equinox. Sundown well after 6pm by then, and twilight lasts a while after.
This year, I also left all the other outdoor lights up, though I had unplugged them. I didn’t mean to, at all. But every weekend since New Year’s Day has been either very rainy, or we had a lot of things going on, or I was really sick.8
This week, since I was going to take the icicle lights down, I was determined to get the rest of the lights no matter what. And I did. I haven’t heard from the landlady, yet, but I know when I next see her, she’ll be very sad that the lights are down.
So I’ll just have to remind her that she only has to get by without them until October, because that’s when I’ll put up the Halloween lights.9
Footnotes:
1. That’s one of the advantages to living as far north as we are.
2. And that’s one of the disadvantages.
3. She lives in the unit behind and downstairs from us.
4. She isn’t completely happy with this, because when she comes home later she sometimes still misses the driveway, and has to circle back.6 She also admitted that she just thinks they’re pretty and wishes everyone left their Christmas lights up all the time.7
5. Turns out she didn’t. Last year when she and him were meeting us and an inspector as part of the refinance of the mortgage, he started to give me shit about the lights, and I told him they were still up because she asked me to leave them up. She very sheepishly explained to him what was going on. He thought it was weird, but seemed happy when I told him I took them down at after the equinox.
6. I have pointed out that we have a bunch of those solar light sticks on the flowerbed running up the driveway, and by that time of year there’s enough sunlight during the day for the lights to glow until after midnight. I know they aren’t as easy to see as lights hanging from an eave, but I still think they should work.
7. When I pointed out that most years she doesn’t even put lights in her own window, she said that it’s mostly because she’s too tired and/or busy each year.
8. Several weekends, all three were true and my husband was as sick as me!
9. Of course I put up Halloween nights! Halloween used to be the high holy days of queers everywhere. Until the straights co-opted it for Heteroween. But that’s okay. Straights need a socially sanctioned night to dress up as sexy nurses or sexy firemen. They’re so reppressed the rest of the year!
The troublesome question has been ever since then, why do non-irish and non-catholic elected officials march in a religious processional? And more importantly, why are police and firefighters allowed to march in uniform?
The last point is particularly important. It has long been the consensus opinion (and has even been accepted as a statement of fact at the federal appeals court level), that allowing the police to participate in uniform in a discriminatory rally or parade gives ordinary citizens the impression that the police department (and the entire justice system) endorses the bigoted message of said event. When police participated in Anti-segregationist Marches in the past, it had a chilling effect on the minority communities. People in those communities became even more reluctant to call the police to report crimes, afraid to cooperate with police in the investigation of crimes, et cetera. All one has to do is to watch the video of nearly an entire contingent of cops in uniform marching in the St. Patrick’s day parade a few years ago all flipping off a small group of gay protestors standing along the parade route to understand what kind of message that conveys.
The new mayor of NYC decided not to march in this year’s parade (as did the mayor of Boston). The NYC mayor instead participated in the St Pat’s For All parade earlier in the month. Note, that article mentions a deal that was being worked out for one gay group to march in the Boston parade, but that deal has since been rescinded.
The mayor has declined to try to forbid NYPD officers from marching in uniform in the bigots’ parade, claiming it is a free speech issue. Except, the courts ruled long ago that because marching in uniform creates the impression that the city endorses a discriminatory message, that the city’s responsibility to serve all citizens equally trumps the rights of the cops. They can’t forbid the cops to march, they can’t forbid the cops to march with banners and signs that say they are cops, but they can forbid them to march in uniform.
The sad thing is that, since gay rights groups have been lobbying these city governments to ban the uniforms from the parade, parade organizers and their apologists have squawked loudly, claiming that doing so would be discrimination!
This coming from the people who created new religious non-profit corporations to sponsor the parade for the explicitly stated purpose to discriminate. It’s all well and good to discriminate against gay citizens, but Saints Preserve us if you suggest that maybe the police department shouldn’t endorse such a thing…
Now that we are finally legally hitched (and given what a struggle it has been to get it legal here), shouldn’t our wedding anniversary be the one we observe?
Or course, it’s impossible to forget about Valentine’s Day. I know this because I have been told many, many, many times by various people how the way our society deals with Valentine’s Day amounts to oppression or even abuse of people who are not in a relationship… Continue reading What’s the big deal about Valentine’s Day?
So I understand why some people are tired of it all by Boxing Day.
It feels like people are more impatient to end it than they used to be, and a friend had an interesting theory about that… Continue reading The eleventh day
Some years ago I wished everyone:
May you be wise when you need to be, foolish when it doesn’t matter, loved always, and ever ready to love.
And I can’t think of a better wish.
Happy New Year!
Continue reading Conjuring the proper ghosts
Happy Christmas! Blessed Yul! Happy Hogswatch! Joyous Kwanza! Festive Festivus! Feliz Navidad! God Jul! Mele Kalikimaka me ka Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou! Beannachtaí na Nollag! Buon Natale! Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus un laimīgu Jauno gadu! Felix Dies Nativitatus! …and bless us, every one!
Font Folly 