His Mama’s youth music theater company’s Once Upon a Mattress might have closed this past Sunday, but not in the boychild’s mind.  Every day brings a fresh opportunity to dress up and sing along to pretty much every part, from Princess Winifred the Woebegone to Prince Dauntless the Drab and the whole royal retinue in between.

Oh, he skips some lyrics and provides his own original interpretation of others.  Artistic license.  In “Opening for a Princess,” he sings that “nobody’s getting any yogurt” (the rest of us thought it was “younger”), and “you can recognize a princess by her elegant hair” (and here I thought it was “air” all along).

Here’s his pace car, Carol Burnett, in a 1964 television version (she opened it on Broadway in 1959).

Pops, indicating the height of the trees when his dad planted them 70 years ago.

In my recent, breezy, Twitter-length series of As to some Qs about lesbian fatherhood, I wrote: “My dad is one of the beacons of love in my life.”  True story.  One of his most oft-repeated definitions of family is this line from the sympathetic speaker Mary in Robert Frost’s poem, “The Death of the Hired Man”:

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,  They have to take you in.

One of the clearest and warmest youthful memories I have of my dad, besides standing next to him singing as he played Broadway show tunes on the piano, or playing frisbee with him in the back yard, or walking the streets of San Francisco en route to an “old timey movie,”  is how he tucked my sister and me in at night.  I can’t vouch for what he might have said with my sister in her room, but I suspect it was fairly similar to what he said to me.  We would wax philosophic — mostly at first, he would, and I gradually joined in as the years wore on — pondering life’s big imponderables.  Then as he’d turn out the light and linger in the doorway, he’d say, “It’s a good world.”

He said it enough times that I pretty much came to believe him.

Continue reading ‘Family tree’

Daggone! Enough of y’all meandered over to the Bloggies website to vote this thing in as best glbt weblog!

I would like also to thank whichever mysterious nominator(s) tossed my well-worn baseball cap into the ring in the first place, and whichever Bloggie finalist-winnowing committee people plucked this blog out of the pile and brought it to wider attention as a finalist.  For most of us, publishing a blog with any sense of mission and regularity is a labor of love, receiving little or no fiscal compensation.  The quality of the community the blog helps to collect is our daily bread, and recognitions like these are our butter.  My plate runneth over.

I’d like to give a respectful bow to the other Bloggies best glbt weblog finalist blogs, Queerly Complex, Lesbifriends, Naked Blog, and Aussielicious (way NSFW! unless you work at Babeland or Good Vibes! Suitable For Major Winkie Viewage is what that puppy is! Plus general madcap Aussie fun!).  Now if you visit this link to a YouTube plea by Lesbifriends‘ author and feel regret about not voting for her blog because she’s so spunky, I can only offer condolences, since the whole shebang’s done this year.  But she makes a good point: we pretty much are all different, and are all mutual supporters, at the largest level.

As with The Lesbian Lifestyle’s annual blog awards (this year’s “Lezzys” will be announced Wednesday night , 9-11pm EDT, on The Lesbian Lounge podcast), it’s an enormous honor at all to be considered for special recognition among my peers.  I feel strongly that all us queer folk and our allies online value one another’s presence,  despite or maybe even because of the infinitesimal hair-splitting and incessant in-fighting that we can engage in over the political struggles that mean so much to us.  I’m so very glad we’re out there, being out, here.

Does Lesbian Dad represent queer folks online generally?  Oh hell no.

Continue reading ‘Well b-low me down’

Kid’s baseball card photo/talisman, Berkeley, CA.

Had to wait ’til Monday, since over the weekend the spirits flagged too much. Kept looking at pictures of pictures of my nephew, who would have turned 15 on Saturday. Couldn’t post a picture of anything other than him, but then couldn’t really post about him, either. So, a blank weekend.  Today, just a wee slice.

Every morning I pick up a bracelet I got in his memory right after he died, to keep him and what he teaches me in full view.  Just before I put on the bracelet, I kiss the tip of my index finger and touch it to his face in this peanut league baseball photo, taken several years before he died, and try to connect/summon/say a little something to him. We all do what we can.

My punkin lamb peeping the world through a pair of “100″ glasses.

The girlie’s Kindergarten class celebrated their hundredth school day earlier this week. So, so long ago was her first. An excited, nervous, pre-K little girl ago.

Who’s in her place now? If only I could can catch hold of the happy, self-posessed blur in front of me, I’d tell you.

This year’s Lezzys are on: over two dozen lesbian-authored blogs, finalists for The Lesbian Lifestyle’s “Best” blog for 2009 in Entertainment/Culture, Humor, Parenting, Engagement/Wedding, Feminist/Political, Personal, “Out later in life,” Sex/Short Story/Erotica, NEW Lesbian Blog, Podcast, and Lifetime Achievement. Yrs truly is up for “Best Parenting Blog.” Voters vote daily (with email link confirmation) ’til midnight, March 2 last night.

[Addendum: a hearty congrats to Vikki, of Up Popped A Fox, this year's reigning Lezzy Award-winning Best Parenting Blog! Go! Read! Get hooked!]

Partly in service to the students in the class I spoke to the other day whose online questions I didn’t have time enough to answer in person, and partly in service to the random assortment of you readers who may have asked such questions at one point or another, if goaded to by a class requirement, I offer up the following smattering of Qs and their As.

To make matters reasonable, I am going to pull off the feat of keeping all the answers to Twitter-length, otherwise known as 140 characters or fewer.  For those of you who are not Twitter denizens (Twenizens?), you will see, over and over again, both its strength and its weakness. Brevity: the soul of wit, but also of vast oversimplification.

When kept to this constraint, we can see that sometimes a pithy reply is best.  Many Twiterers (-erers), however, myself included, are compelled to post strings of related Tweets when one won’t do.  Do let me know if you think a thought/conversation ought to be strung out a bit more and we can carry on in comments or in another post.

For context, students were assigned the six-part essay I excerpted here a few years back: “Confessions of a Lesbian Dad.”

Q: Has your brother, brother’s wife, partner’s mother, and spouse adjusted to you referring to yourself as “baba” or lesbian dad?

A: Easy, on the 1 hand: I’ve never been anything else. But family slipped a little 1^st few wks; newbies do weekly. I explain; it all works out.

Q: How old is your child and how is your child handling having a mom and baba? Does the child refer to you by those titles or has the child opted for something else?

A: Girl 5, boy 3. They’ve only known us, so our family’s the baseline reference pt. Gal often calls me Babbi. I try not to think of the kid in The Brady Bunch.

Q: Do you regret not being the one to bear the child or labeling yourself as “baba” or lesbian dad?

A: Never, never, & never. Much to my great relief on all points. I use descriptor “1/2 way betw. a mama & papa” most often. Makes sense to all.

Continue reading ‘20 questions about lesbian fatherhood’

It’s happened again! The beloved opened another show (per usual: a runaway smash hit; this one is Once Upon A Mattress), and our family life is beginning to find its equilibrium again. Granted, equilibrium is preceeded by both kids having various breakdowns all over Mama, but veteran parents such as we are now (don’t laugh) are totally ready for this. It’s the babysitter effect. The kids hold it together for the duration of the crisis, and then after calm is restored (parents returned; whatever), they go all to pieces.

Come to think of it, this effect holds true later in life, too.  It might be more drama-worthy to show people panicking in crises, which is why we see this in movies. But the shit usually hits the fan when the dust is settled and everyone thinks it’s safe to get back in the water.  To mix a metaphor or three.  Like the never-ending half-life of big grief, the truer aftermath of crises – the slow-mo, quiet, solitary breakdowns; the displaced/misplaced catharses –  will rarely appear on the big screen. The rest of us know better, though.

But so. Mama is now home again, rather than 24/7 at the theater, Baba gets a morsel of childcare furlough, and business can be gotten down to! (*Sound of palms rubbing enthusiastically.*)

First order of which is, holy moly! LD is a finalist for the Lesbian Lifestyle Best Parenting Blog award!  Yahoo!  And thank you whoever you are, for nominating this thing!  As do so many, I aspire to greatness, and whether or not I manage to get this thing to achieve it, or do so with any reliability, it is an enormous honor to think that one or another of you-all’s believe it might be noteworthy or voteworthy.  In fact, please go vote if you feel so inclined! Daily, evidently, ’til midnight March 2nd. There’s email confirmation of vote, etc., etc., to keep people’s noses clean, so watch your transom and follow up by clicking the vote confirmation link.  Etc., etc.

Continue reading ‘Whistle-stop housekeeping tour’