“Christmas Lullaby,” by Jason Robert Brown, eavesdropped after dinner early December last year. [Ed note: Once you start the video, double-clicking the image expands it to full screen, a decidedly mixed blessing since then you get more jostled by my improv'ed lo-tech iPhone cinematography.]
I couldn’t help but re-run this sweet gem which I first posted a year ago. Still sweet, still–with the exception of the diapers on the boy–true. Love to all who reads and listens here.
Halloween trick-or-treating peanut, Berkeley, CA (2010).
Visual coda to yesterday’s post, in which I mentioned our boy’s Halloween costume choice of last year. I wrote a few words about it at the time, here. If I were to have to guess now, I’d say there’ll be a long gap ’til the next such outfit makes a Halloween appearance, though of course I could be wrong. In the intervening year, his haberdashery pace car has shifted from Big Sister to Main Boy Chum at Preschool. For all the complex reasons that are behind such evolving self-understandings. Advancing years, increased exposure to peer groups, push of culture, pull of self, survival instinct; you name it.
The costume above met a glowing reception throughout the neighborhood last year, though, and not just because there were blinky red lights underneath the tulle (yes there were). I mean, really. The kid looks better in that outfit than I ever could. Also? At least the grown-ups in our neighborhood love kids unconditionally and clearly share our conviction that the best thing we can do for them is clear the runway ahead and help them take flight.
Re: clearing the runway and helping kids take flight (into a world they’re in the process of making) – below, I’ve collected a smattering of nifty resources by and for parents of gender nonconforming kids. Halloween’s pretty much the primo occasion for this, since it’s the one day of the year kids have a wide(r) berth to explore performing different identities.
Pride brunch toast, Berkeley, CA.
Not a Bloody Mary to be seen. This here is Pride, the parents-of-young-children version. Coffee for the grown-ups, hot chocolate with marshmallows (it’s Pride, after all!) for the younger set. Can you make out the weathered rainbow flag down there as our table cloth?
This year, for the first time in over 25 years of Prides, (that number sounds appalling but it is indeed accurate), I didn’t march, rabble-rouse, party, boogie, or even stroll. The beloved had a bum ankle from a backfired dance move demo she’d delivered to one of her theater kids (JC Superstar: not for wimps!), and our own kids were so-so about the Parade (“It’s fun but it’s too hot and noisy,” said the girlie, pretty much nailing the characterization).
We had long planned a Post-Pride-Potluck-Picnic-Party chez nous, and this year we leaned heavily upon it for our mellowed-out dose of queer (family) love. Â A baker’s dozen friends, old and new, each with a kid or two in tow, came to chillax in the back yard, swing on the swing, bounce on the trampoline, and wag the jumbo “Go Marriage Equality” foam hand one of them brought back from Pride (what will they think up next?).
Window watchers, Berkeley, CA (July, 2010).
Sunrise over the Gulf of Thailand, from Chaweng Noi beach, Koh Samui. [Taken July 1997.]
Sylvan scene, Point Reyes National Seashore, CA.
A year ago in the fall. Â He still looks up to her. Just from a different height.
Kitchen scene, Castro Valley, CA. Original image (which I tinkered with a bit): David Rae Morris.
Long ago but not so very far away. My sister and me, in the all-around love-fest leading up to the beloved’s and my commitment ceremony, summer 1997.
A dear friend, photojournalist David Rae Morris, gave us the gift of photographing the whole shebang and then printing up a photo essay of it. Instant décisif after instant décisif (H. Cartier-Bresson’s notion here), for a long weekend of gathered friends and family, of which he was a longtime member. Utterly exhausting for him, utterly priceless for us.
Voting open 'til Feb 19, 2012.
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