Lesbian Dad

Year in Review: LD 2012

saintnicktreeThe year 2012 in a single run-on sentence: Work, work, work, meet some great people, accomplish some things I’m really proud of, learn a lot along the way; have a little bit of family life but not nearly enough, though for the first time, pay for enrichment classes and summer camp and vacation without going into debt; have hardly any writing life a’tall; get sacked; be flabberghasted in a way fresh to me in umptity-ump years of employed life; lick wounds, and in the yawning space that opens up before me, contemplate fresh possibilities and look again, longer and harder, at old neglected ones; turn 50 (Jubilee!) and, with much struggle, commence the process of giving myself the priceless gift of unshakeable self-esteem, because while others can abet or thwart this, it is at its core something one can only really give oneself. A truth yet to be sufficiently well-lodged, at 50. Never too late.

Gift of loving family: there all along and, in the final quarter of 2012, mercifully back in all three dimensions. Not giving that up again, or even setting it aside,  for the world.

Or, the year 2012 in ten LD posts:

That which we call a rose by any other name would sound as sweet
My dad and I hear each other just fine.  January 12, 2012

At seventeen
Remembering my nephew on (what would have been)  his birthday.  February 27, 2012

I’ll Take Obama’s Symbolic Gesture, Thank You Very Much!
My take on President Obama’s admission/ announcement that he favors marriage equality.  May 11, 2012

GREAT GIFT FOR DAD
It takes all kinds. (A brief paean to my dad’s off-brand masculinity and the gift it’s been to me.)  June 17, 2012

The Twelve Days of BlogHer ’12: 5
An NYC pictorial: 12 city-that-never-sleeps photographs leading up to the BlogHer conference there in early August. Hit the link to George Benson’s beloved classic (in that 5th image) and then go back and scroll through the series for Big Apple Fun.   July 27, 2012

Summer idyll 4: equine-imity
Daughter’s all dreamy about her horseback ride, and I’m all a-dither about sighting the rare and exotic parentus mannish lesbianus outside my native habitat.  August 24, 2012

Fall Guy
A bunch of things fell, all a-tumble.  August 31, 2012

That’s what she said
Those big worries about whether this whole lesbian parent thing was going to freak out our own kids? Yeah, not so much.  October 4, 2012

 3/30: my lady love
A short ode to my beloved, with musical accompaniment (the “3/30” numbering a relic of a fairly abortive NaPhotoPoMo, during which I may have pulled off seven posts, ahem).  November 15, 2012

7/30: post-prandial
Belly full from Thanksgiving dinner, I provide a synopsis of my co-housing “village” and why the second most challenging relationship outside my family of origin is worth the effort.  November 23, 2012

Or, the year 2012 in ten things I’m grateful for, in no particular order:

  • That Obama was re-elected, and after he announced his personal support for marriage equality, not before.
  • That marriage equality was established (or preserved, or not prevented) in four different states, effectively turning the tide on this overdue national civil rights to-do list item. We all have much bigger global problems to solve, and we can’t do it with one hand tied behind our backs. Godspeed on this one, for we have work to do.
  • That a community of people feel as strongly as I do that we should and can develop a community of stories by and for lesbian families and our allies online, and they’ve stepped up and more keep joining us.  (Take a look.)
  • That a wider community of us share a shock at the horrors that can be visited upon others (thinking most pointedly about the young children of Sandy Hook). There is so little to be grateful for, or to learn from that, other than the fact that I am not alone in my reaction. A gift here, if any there are: grieving father Robbie Parker’s heart, his willingness to share it at the darkest of moments, and the light it shines for so many of us, to varying degrees in pain and at sea.
  • My children’s existence in the first place, and their health and safety. I know I can only do so much to ensure that: the rest is chance and grace.
  • My father’s love, still coming from the here and now.
  • That my sister had two children, and is buoyed (and kept here) by the ongoing love of the surviving one.
  • The Buddha-darma, and the ongoing example of other kindred spirits on the path.
  • My beloved (her brown eyes; her heart; her passion; her emotional intelligence; her courage; her having asked me out on a date in the first place).
  • This precious human birth: I’m here, I have the opportunity and many of the means (this medium, in particular!) to try to foster more love and mutual understanding while I am here. I am as aware as I can be of this as a blessing each day, and am trying to get ever more aware.

Thank you, gentle reader, for continuing to make these notes that appear here into some sort of commune-ication; a gift we both get to give and receive (I will always hold to the conviction that I receive much more than I offer up).   Rarely have I been more ready for a fresh new year to get underway. With neither whimper, nor bang, but open arms. I hope the same for you.

 


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