Author Archive | Lesbian Dad
Weekend bonus shot, 05.12.13
Happy truck washer, Berkeley, CA.
This time I convinced him to get outside the vehicle as I washed it (last time: he stayed inside and listened to a Sondheim musical). He had that huge spray nozzle thingie in his hands for a mere moment, and he instantly understood why Baba has so dadgum much fun washing the vehicles. And he was danged good at it, too.
I tried to convince him that going on a dump run was about as much fun, maybe more. “Huge piles of garbage, taller than that building there!” I said. “Ginormous tractors just pushing the garbage in a huge pile! So much flying dust they have to spray a mist of water down on the pile every so often! Can you think of anything more fun than that?”
As it happens, he could. Spraying the nozzle thingie with soap and water all over the side of the truck. I’m going to keep working on him about the dump run.
Face as canvas
Body crayon-faced boy on swing, Berkeley, CA.
Courtesy his sister, who knows whereof she colors all over someone’s face, based on personal experimentation. I can’t say what in the Sam Hill they were aiming for here. One version was a dog, I remember that. But it kind of took off from “dog” and headed in more of a “Dali” direction.
Feeling a bit less verbal here, a bit more photographic. For perhaps evident reasons. World’s a bit spinny lately.
To Boston
Robert Indiana sculpture, W54th & 6th, NYC.
Whenever I hear the sound of an ambulance, I pause and do a little tonglen. It’s a Buddhist meditation practice, intended to take in pain and send out compassion and relief. Wherever there is an ambulance or fire engine siren, I know someone, somewhere, is in distress. So I try to do what I can to relieve it. Not much, but something.
From the other side of the country, I’m not sure what I can do. But I can say that doing tonglen, as a distance healing of sorts, also heals the healer. A bit. Here is a pithy instruction in how to do it from my main teacher, Pema Chödrön. Mostly it’s breathing in and breathing out, but slowly, and with very focussed intention. If you are in distress, or feeling very heavy hearted about others in distress, it may help.
And may love and a sense support from near and far flow in abundance to all who need it in Boston right now.
Weekend bonus shot (Monday edition), 04.15.13
View from below, Memorial Stadium, Berkeley, CA.
I was heading to an event up there, on the balcony of the top floor of Cal’s remodeled Memorial Stadium, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Having managed not to read the directions explaining how to enter the building, *cough*, I had a little time to spend outside it, watching my chums schmooze.
- Lesbian Dad: Many thanks, open hearts....
- Jennifer: Right back at ya kiddos :)...
- romeo .....lesbian dad: I really liked the picture of you and your mother ...
- Lesbian Dad: Thank you, Brandon!...
- Brandon@TiredOfWorking: Nice photo and this has to be one of the more inte...
Elsewhere
I'll be reading, along with over a dozen other fantastic local lady-writer-parents, at the San Francisco Listen To Your Mother show, Sunday, May 12th at the SF JCC. Check us out!
Advocacy
If you build it, they will come
Folks, I’ve arrived! That piece that came out in the Advocate earlier this week did indeed flush some detritus out from under the bushes. My first ad hominem homophobic attack (in seven years of online publishing) arrived in ye olde inbox this morning! Name redacted to protect the woefully ignorant:
Mrs. Dad, ever of the theater world, quipped: “It’s like you’re an off-Broadway show and you just got picketed! This is great!”
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