First Lesson of Project Happy Life

I want to find the perfect way to tell you that there have been huge changes for me lately.  Maybe you've heard:

I quit my job at Blue Man Group.

I never really wrote much about the fact that I worked there.  I wasn't sure what the rules were, and I was afraid, honestly, that I would inadvertently break one and get in trouble or embarrass someone or hurt someone's feelings.  There's a lot to say about what working there has meant to my life.  I'll get to that another time.  For now, the actual departure and aftermath:

The day I left - the day I had cleaned out my office and had everything packed and ready to get loaded into a cab for home, we also had my dear friend, Zea's birthday dinner to attend.  So we left all my things near the exit on the wardrobe work tables, and went to dinner.  On the way back to the theatre to get my stuff, Cindy heard a message on her phone that her mother had just passed away.  As we walked, she stopped every 50 yards or so and threw up in the street.  When she was as collected as possible, she hailed a cab, and I shuttled things up the stairs and out onto the sidewalk.  Our friend Elvin came by and jumped in to help as soon as he knew what was going on.  The cab driver was lovely and sympathetic.  Cindy sobbed most of the way home.  The driver even helped unload all the stuff into our house!

And then we were home.  I had no more job.  Cindy had no more parents.  I didn't know what to feel; I'm not sure I had any feelings.  Cindy was monumentally sad.  She was trying to figure out how she could immediately fly to Hawaii.  I was trying to figure out how I could immediately get to work on Project Happy Life.  Actually... I was a little angry.  I felt a little robbed.  I had just finished my last week in a job I'd had and loved for 8 years (one of the many I've had at Blue Man over the 20+ years I worked there).  I was the Production Stage Manager for the New York production.  My last week was beautiful.  I had my final show on Wednesday, and my best friend, Bernadette (who is also the Stage Manager there) and Akia organized a party for me in the lobby afterwards.  So many people said such nice things to me.  I wanted time to reflect.  I wanted to put those memories in my pocket, so I could have them whenever I need them.

But I said I felt robbed.  I had all these impulses - to stay at home for a couple of weeks and ball-up.  I wanted to have a good cry and to take stock of everything that happened to me.  But at the same time, how could I not go with my wife to her mother's funeral?  Honestly, I looked for excuses to stay home.  The first day of school for the class I am taking this semester was that Tuesday.  Cindy and her brother urged me to stay home and attend my class.  But, I knew that wasn't right.  As I made my peace with the fact that things weren't going to go as I had planned, some friends offered to skype me into my Tuesday class from Hawaii.  It was settled.  I was some kind of relieved. I was going with Cindy.  We organized and packed on Sunday, and we flew to Hawaii on Monday morning for the funeral.

We've been home now for 5 weeks, and for the majority of the time, as Cindy has been grieving, I have felt like I've been working without inspiration.  I've felt aimless and yet excessively busy with school, theatre projects, organizing...  I haven't really known what to say to you.  I wanted to have some big sort of splashy reveal of Project Happy Life, LLC and how it will work.  I wanted to be able to tell you about all my big plans.  But it's honestly, I overextended myself with theatre projects and volunteer projects and class projects.  First lesson of Project Happy Life - don't take on too many projects, and leave space to show up for the people you love.

More to come.

The Arnold Cabin Project Part 2: Planning

Hi there!  Cindy and I are getting ready to fly to California for two weeks to work on the Arnold Cabin.   If you missed Part 1 of the Arnold Cabin Project, click the link to read all about it.

 Now, before all you mashers and thieves out there in Internet Land get excited about pilfering our television while we're out of town, settle down.  The upstairs tenants will still be home, and we have additional people cat sitting and looking after the green roof.

With the home front in good hands, I'm getting nerdy-excited about our trip.

Here's the plan:  We're going to fly into LAX, rent a car, drive up and spend a night visiting Cindy's twin sister, Jodi in Lancaster.  We can't wait to see the school where she teaches and the new house where she lives. The next day, we're going to drive a bit further up and spend the night visiting Daron and his wife Marianne in California City.  Daron is one of my three fathers, and if you don't know what I mean when I say that, check out this previous blog post: Three Fathers. One Me.  Cindy hasn't met Daron and Marianne yet, and I'm very excited to introduce them!  The following day, we'll head up to Carmel Valley and settle into our housing at Hastings Natural History Reservation.

The Barn at Hastings

I spent this past Thursday night, and all day Friday and Sunday researching metal roofing systems and suppliers for the cabin.  I think I found the right thing - corrugated sheet metal.  It'll stop the rain, last a long time, give the cabin a few more minutes of time if a wildfire comes through, and it'll be in keeping with the style of the cabin.  I have the heart of a loyal restorationist and preservationist, so I really thought hard before moving away from a shingled roof (which is what is currently on the cabin), but I've seen photos of other family cabins with sheet metal on them, so I think my ancestors would approve.

Another thing to consider is the delicate nature of the land and the fact that it's used for natural history research.  Most metal roofing systems these days, it seems, come either coated in paint or a polyvinyl fluoride stuff.  I didn't want to risk all that paint cracking off or the PVCF chemicals leeching or peeling off the roof and getting into the environment over time.  So I chose a product that's as safe and environmentally inert as I could find: 7/8" corrugated sheet metal coated in "galvalume".

From the manufacturer's web site:

The Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification program, administered by the International Living Future Institute, takes a broad view of sustainability and embraces the philosophy of a restorative future by looking at a building’s performance over time.  In fact, certification is not granted until the building has been occupied and its performance documented for one year.

The Institute’s Declare Label is an ingredients-based eco-label around the Red List of “chemicals of concern” that have human health and toxicity impacts.  Declare aims to provide transparency and open communication by allowing manufacturers to voluntarily share their product sources, materials and manufacturing locations.

Metal Sales™ is the first metal panel manufacturer to be included in the rigorous and exclusive Declare™ program. Metal Sales has fully disclosed all of the ingredients in the Acrylic Coated Galvalume® roof and wall panels through Declare, and they are designated as being Red List Free on the Declare Label. 

For more information, please visit www.declareproducts.com

Are you still with me?  I know.  Corporate writing is snoozeville.  I could hardly get through that stuff myself, but I googled around, and it doesn't seem like greenwashing.  Here's hoping I'm making a good choice!

Since I've never built a metal roof, I had a lot of questions in my mind about how to deal with the corners, the roof ridge, the line along the roof where there's a change in slope (which I now know is called a "pitch break"), how the flashing and the roofing panels go together, how to deal with the little gaps under the corrugation, how to cut corrugated sheet metal... 

The internet is a marvel and a wealth of free education if you take the time to poke around and always verify things across multiple sources.  It seems us Americans cut sheet metal with power tools - nibblers and grinders.  In the Phillippines, Australia, and New Zealand, they just snip a nick in the panels and rip them by hand.  Since we won't have electricity (or water, for that matter) at the cabin, I'm excited to give the snip-and-rip method a try.

Well, the metal manufacturer had a bunch of installation diagrams and stuff on their web site, so I downloaded and read almost all of them.  If anyone ever wanted to prove that I'm not normal, they need only point out that I really loved spending three days reading about how metal roofs go together.  

But, before I could order the roofing materials, I had to know the pitch angles of the roof.  There are 3 roof sections on this cabin.  Clearly, the original 12'x21' cabin got too small for my two great-great-grand parents and their 5 children, so they added a section onto one side to make a 21' square cabin.  The new addition - let's call it the West wing - created a second pitch angle.  I took some rudimentary measurements of the cabin when we were out in July of 2013, but there were a couple of critical measurements I didn't think to take.  In order to find the slopes of the roof, I had to trace them off photographs I had taken.  But then I wanted to double check my tracings, so I ended up making a model of the cabin in SketchUp and matching some photos (taken on two different days) to my measurements.  If I did the photo-matching correctly, my measurements were pretty close.  If I didn't, I hope my metal order included more (rather than less) than I'll need - there's a week's lead time for orders, and we'll have to drive to Watsonville for the pickup! 

Arnold Cabin in SketchUp

Arnold Cabin in real life - July 2013

While I think the cabin is pretty square, it's clear from matching the model to the photos that the walls aren't perfectly plumb.  For a roof, square is pretty important so your eaves and gables - the parts that overhang the walls - aren't all crooked.  I'm hoping plumb won't mess me up too much, since I won't have time to starting fiddling with the cabin's foundation.  Someone else worked on that back in (I'm guessing) the '80's, around the last time the roof was replaced.  Want a picture of the foundation?  I'm sure you do:

Family lore has it that the boys slept down here - under the floor of the cabin.  The girls, I gather, slept up in the West wing.

And while I'm trying to impress you with this little cabin, here's a shot of the interior.  That's the front door on the left.  I'm guessing this would have been the living room:

Here's what the ceiling in that room looks like - just shingles on purlins on rafters.  Like my nifty new roofing lingo?  You can see the spot where the wood stove chimney used to be.

And last-but-not-least-ly, this is the West wing with the back door.

So, the plan is to strip off the shingles, sweep out the wood rat poop, nail tin over the rat and wood pecker holes, put the metal roofing system on the house, and replace the missing redwood batons and a couple of broken floorboards.  

Speaking of redwood, I found a guy who salvages old growth redwood logs down in Big Sur.  He's going to be our redwood supplier.  Here's his web site: http://bigsuroldgrowth.com/

Oh, and if there's time, we'll replace the broken window panes and re-glaze the rest.  My Aunt Trish is flying in from Phoenix, my Aunt Lynda is coming down from San Francisco, and a handful of cousins will gather at Hastings for a little family reunion and visit to the cabin on our last weekend.  And for our last night, we'll be heading up to San Francisco to take Lynda home and have a nice visit with my cousin Robert.

I'm looking forward to a great trip.  New roof or bust!!

Black And White Makes Grey: What If You're Biased Against Yourself?

When I was in my late teens and early 20's, I didn't know how to figure out whether I was gay or not.  The only sex I knew about (straight sex) sounded to me like pretty much the most awful thing two people could do together.  I knew girls were supposed to like boys... my cousin Samantha was basically boy-crazy, so I watched her and tried to make myself feel the way it looked like she felt about boys.

It didn't work, but I didn't know it wasn't working.  I kept trying, and I aimed squarely at "doing what I was supposed to do."  I had this white-picket-fence vision of where I was supposed to be in my life.  I don't know where it came from - TV, my grandmother, talk at school... I was definitely one of those perfectionist kids who equated doing well with the path to receiving love.

Shortly after high school and not wanting to fall behind in life's schedule, I lost my virginity to a guy I was dating named Dave.  I don't know what it was like for him, but for me it was uncomfortable... painful at worst and boring at best.  A day or two later, after a conversation about whether he would promise to put the toilet seat down when he finished peeing (something I knew nothing about, other than it seemed an important thing to establish, since it had been a source of tension on many TV sit coms), I set to work convincing Dave that we should move in together.  I was 18.  He was 23 or 24, divorced, and a Corporal in the 761st Chemical Company, stationed at Fort Ord, California.

Portrait of an Army dude with a teenager...

We rented an apartment together in a grey, cookie-cutter townhouse-style apartment building in Marina, California.  We bought a huge sectional sofa, a gaudy brass floor lamp, a Sega Genesis, and cable TV.  If I had to guess, I'd say we had been together for about 3 months at that point.  Did you ever hear the one about what a lesbian brings to the second date?  A U-Haul!  Normally, however, the lesbian in the joke knows she's a lesbian... but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I went through the motions of being in a relationship with Dave for a few months, and while I felt love for him as a person, I certainly never felt anything even close to a crush or romantic love for him.  But, at the time, I didn't know the difference.

I did, however, love to hang out with my friend Stacy.  We were both working on SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE at Monterey Peninsula College.  She was doing props, if I remember correctly, and I was on the fly rail and run crew.  She was funny in her own right, flirty, sharp, charming... but together, we were absolutely hysterical.  We were a dynamic duo and fast friends.

Stacy and Lory, such as they were then.

I admired Stacy's confidence.  She was bold and talented, tortured and unafraid.  I drove her home one night after the show, and while waiting for two men to finish crossing in the crosswalk so that I could turn left, with an air of bravado, I made a joke.  I said something to the effect of, "Move it, faggots!"

Stacy didn't laugh.  She didn't cheer me on.  She said, "Oh, no, Lory.  Don't say things like that.  It makes me sad to hear you say things like that."

I was confused.  Flashes of feelings and questions raced through my mind: fags were like monsters, right?  Or like the devil?  There was nothing good about them, so hating them was fair game, wasn't it?  Good versus Evil.  Wasn't seeing a fag just an opportunity for a decent person to flex their muscles and show their strength a little bit.  The gays deserved it... right?

Embarrassed and perplexed, I back-pedaled, I did my best to underplay my failed attempt to impress, and I moved on.

Over the next couple of days, Stacy became distant.  I begged her to tell me what was wrong.  She was certain I wouldn't want to be her friend anymore if she told me.  After the show one night, we drove to Carmel and talked.  It took a lot of convincing, but finally, in the car headed back North over Highway 1, as we came over the crest of the hill between Carmel and Monterey, Stacy told me that she was gay and that her friend Nina, whom she had spoken about many times but who was studying abroad for the year, was actually her girlfriend.

My legs went numb.

First, is it possible to say that my legs went numb and not have you worry that I crashed the car?  I didn't.

Then, is it possible to tell you so that you understand: when Stacy came out to me and my legs went numb, I awoke to the Truth that people - people worth loving - can be gay.

And that,

Changed

Everything.

I don't know what the biological explanation might be for my numb legs.  It could have been shock.  It could also be that my body knew I was gay in that moment - even when my mind was still clinging to the ridiculous hope that I could carry on my straight-lived charade and have a "normal" life.

Within moments, as I clung to the white-picket-fence image I had in my mind of my life with Dave, I felt a fierce loyalty and desire to protect Stacy and Nina from anyone who might want to hurt them.  I fancied myself a Defender of The Gays.  I would be the ambassador of Gay Is Okay to the straights!

In the weeks that followed, Stacy and I became closer than ever.  She was living with Nina's family even though Nina was away, and I guess to get a break from them or so we could hang out longer, Stacy occasionally slept over at Dave's and my apartment.  One such morning, we got in my car and headed to Monterey.  I was taking Stacy to work and myself to school.

At the time, I was driving a hand-me-down from my Great Grandmother: a turquoise blue 1954 Ford Ranch Wagon.  I still own it.  Although it doesn't run now, my Aunt Trish in Phoenix keeps it for me.

"Elizabeth" - The 1954 Ford Ranch Wagon

I still remember the exact moment - the sun was crisp and low on the horizon to the East, and we were headed South, with the shining expanse of Monterey Bay to our right, and quiet Sand City to our left.  The hills of the Monterey Peninsula were waiting ahead of us.   I don't remember who said it first, but we pulled off the highway, Stacy called in sick to work (at a pay phone, see?), and we got back on the road - headed in the opposite direction.  We were playing hooky.  We were headed for San Francisco!

I've spent time in San Francisco with Stacy since that day, and now, 20+ years later, it's hard to be sure which memories go with which day.  I'm pretty sure we started on Haight Street with my first falafel sandwich (a tradition I still keep), we visited Chinatown, The Castro District, and I remember driving my tank-of-a-car (which had no power steering) down Lombard Street, which was hair-raising.
We talked and laughed and stumbled around the city together.  It was so much fun, I was high on that day for weeks afterwards.

Although I still couldn't imagine that I myself was gay, my relationship with Dave quickly fell apart, we broke up, and he moved out.  I had seen deep, primal joy on that stolen day in San Francisco.  On some level, I knew I wasn't going to see that kind of joy again if I spent my life with Dave.  But I was too ignorant about life and love, and I was still in hot pursuit of doing "the right thing."

I casually looked for another boyfriend.  The trouble was, I had no idea what a crush was, so I had no feelings of my own to go on.  I got in the habit of relying on other people to like me first in order to know whom to date.  And, when I was 20, a girl I had worked with on a production of WEST SIDE STORY gave me a mix tape, and after listening to it for days, it slowly dawned on me that all the songs were edgy, sexy... romantic.  I slipped into a 2-year relationship with that talented, hilarious, and fierce woman who is a dear friend to this day (also, I suppose, in stereotypical lesbians-stay-friends fashion).

It took me 7 years and a couple more girl friends before I finally found the confidence and self-assurance to know with certainty that I was unreservedly gay.  For those intervening years, it was as if I was a butterfly - flitting around labels like "gay," "queer," "dyke," and especially the oh-so clinical and stigmatized "lesbian" - trying to find a safe place to land.

My heart and my body knew who I was.  But all the rules I thought I was supposed to follow just confused me.  So many of the symbols surrounding "gay pride" were hyper-sexualized and, frankly, tacky.  I've never been interested in putting up phallic art, or driving around topless with leather chaps on a motorcycle, or getting in someone's face and shouting "Get used to it!"  In my naivety, I thought that in order to be gay, I had to identify with all of those symbols.  And while they've definitely helped break down barriers and give people a source of strength (even me, occasionally), it took me a long time to figure out that I don't have to go to parades.  I can be gay and quiet.  I can be gay and introverted.  I can be gay and stay home and garden on Pride Day.

I used to think there were a lot more rules than I now know there are.  Some people have some very strict rules against homosexuality.  The way I see it, those rules are like trying to outlaw the sky on a rainy day - people don't have to like it, but all their shouting and carrying-on can't make the rain stop being wet, so they might as well get used to it after all.

On The Occasion of Gay Pride Day NYC - 2014

Black and White: Talk About Race

You might have already guessed this by observing my rugged self reliance, but to give your suspicions confirmation, I was a Girl Scout from before I started Kindergarden until I graduated from high school.  I didn't belong to a troupe when I was in Phoenix living with my mom for the school years; I only really participated in the summer time while I was living in Salinas with my grandmother, so for most of my childhood, I got to do all the fun summer camp stuff without all the meetings and uniforms and cookie peddling.  I think that's why I lasted so long.

But, I started living in Salinas full time when I was 15, and I finished high school there.  So, around the time of my Junior year, I suddenly found myself trying to sell Girl Scout cookies (for the first time) with my new troupe at a booth in Northridge Mall.

Somewhere along the way, I had seen this old, silent, black & white Girl Scout movie.  I can't find it online, and I don't remember what it was called, but the moral of the story was that all Girl Scouts were sisters.  So when a black girl came up to our cookie booth in the mall and said she'd been a Girl Scout for a few years, I got excited and called her sister.  We chatted for a short while, and after the girl and her friends left, our troupe leader (who was white) scolded me - she was furious that I had called a black person "sister."  I was completely confused and tried to defend myself.  She hissed something at me about how black people call each other "sister" and "brother," and as a white girl, doing the same would look as if I was mocking them.  I was mortified.  I was embarrassed.  I felt like a fool.

After that day, I had a hard time going to Girl Scout meetings.  I felt like the troupe leader and I held each other in suspicion.  Whether it was true or not, it seemed as if she never got over being mad at me for calling a black girl my sister.  And I don't suppose I ever got over being embarrassed for my perceived mistake and angry at how unfair the whole situation was.  After being a Girl Scout for nearly my entire life, I stopped actively participating, and I walked away from the opportunity to earn the Girl Scout Gold Award (Girl Scouting's highest award) in my Senior year of high school.  That same troupe leader said I'd always regret it.  I was never too fussed about awards, so I can't say she was right.  But, I certainly never forgot it.  It's just that, until the moment of writing the above paragraphs, I never really recognized why I stopped going back.

Now I realize that experience left me irrationally afraid to talk about race.   But that's finally changing.  Whether or not that troupe leader saw my heart and knew my intentions were good, I know they were.  In fact, I now know that my innocent "mistake" was far more equalizing than her knee-jerk reaction.

There is a huge problem in the United States.  We never properly healed from the national trauma of slavery and all the other miserable stuff that has come with it over the centuries.  After reading the excellent article by Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The Case for Reparations" (you should read it too), I find myself energized to come out of the closet as a white lady who wants to talk about race relations.  I want to talk about it, and I want to do everything I can to help our country heal these national injuries.

I know from Buddhism, the only way I can do that is to start with myself.

It won't be easy - we're all trained by our society to have certain pre-judgements.  And by "we," I mean everyone - all of us.  In the academic world, these pre-judgements or prejudices are called "hidden biases."  We might think we treat people with equality, but when someone says "doctor," most of us likely assume the doctor is a man.  When you stop to think about it, that's not fair, is it?  That's an example of our hidden bias about doctors.

But I'm not just talking about professions and gender!  I'm sure we can think of all sorts of hidden biases we and our society hold along racial lines.  In fact, I was listening to a podcast last night and heard a great segment about the "Carefree Black Girl" movement - which aims to correct our hidden bias towards seeing black women as either over-sexualized or struggling through massive adversity.  Carefree Black Girl makes a space in our society for images of happy black women, possibly even wearing flowered dresses, riding bicycles, picking daisies...

You (and I) have hidden biases towards certain types of people and against others.  We were trained to have these hidden biases by living in our society, and we can un-train ourselves by understanding our own thought patterns and by being mindful of our own biases and those we observe in others.

If you want to get scientific about it (I know I do!), you can learn more about your own personal hidden biases by participating in Harvard University's Project Implicit study.  It's free.

So, here's my plan: I'm going to take a good look at my own hidden biases and prejudices so that I can root them out and learn to see each person as fairly and completely as I see myself.

This is the first post in what will become a series of posts, written to document my thoughts and experiences around hidden bias and race as a 43-year-old gay white Buddhist American woman living in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States of America, North America, Northern Hemisphere, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, The Universe.  Now you know where things stand.

Here are some flowers from the green roof:

That Whole "Gay Marriage" Thing...

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but Cindy and I are both women... and we're gay... and we are married... to each other.

Let's establish an important distinction: There are weddings - that's the actual ceremony.  And there are marriages - that's everything that comes after a couple is pronounced married.  As a society, we talk a lot about "same-sex marriage", but when we hear that phrase, it's normally about the right for a same-sex couple to marry.  It isn't really about the actual marriage that follows.

If you were to google around the internet, you will find plenty of blogs and articles about the struggle for (and against) marriage equality.  You'll even easily find a handful of same-sex wedding blogs - with pictures of traditional and non traditional brides and grooms... and groom-ettes... and Mr. brides... and on and on.  But what I can't seem to find are articles or blogs about same-sex marriage.

I generally reject the whole "men are from mars, women are from venus" thing as issues related to upbringing and cultural influences on a person, rather than inherent differences between the sexes.  People like to perpetuate some notion of men being macho or women being shop-a-holics, because they think it's funny.  Personally, I think it's mostly inaccurate.

And from what I've seen, marriage is pretty much marriage.  Once you're in it, your problems and triumphs are probably similar to most everyone else's.  The only thing that makes my marriage different from my best friend's marriage is that she is married to a man, and I'm married to a woman.

Maybe that's why it isn't easy to find same-sex marriage blogs.

Or maybe we (as a whole) haven't gotten comfortable with the legal right vs. wedding vs. marriage distinction yet.  So maybe finding gay marriage blogs is a semantic/search-term issue.

Or maybe we (gays) are so focused on the big, bold, exciting fight for the right to marry that our quiet little married lives don't quite hold our attention.  So we don't write about that part.

Or maybe we're afraid to talk about marriage once we have it - fearing the haters will find a way to take it back.

Or maybe (and this is the most personally frightening of all), if we write about our marriages, some ill-intentioned, anti-gay person will find us in our homes, or recognize us on the street, and physically come to attack us.

Whatever the reason behind the blog scarcity, there's this hole in the blog-o-sphere, and it's vacuum forces are drawing me into it.

So here we are!  Not ignoring the extraordinary work so many people have done to afford every couple the right to marry in 17 states (and Washington D.C.), as well as the work they continue to do for the rest of the country, these are the early days of life on the other side.  It's like marriage equality is the big bang, and we're still feeling the effects of the cosmic background radiation as its ramifications ripple outward, but those effects will normalize and decay over time, to the eventual point of hardly being noticed anymore.

Or, on a personal level, having marriage equality is like attaining enlightenment.  Paraphrasing Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield: first enlightenment, then the laundry.  This giant and important, life-altering thing happens.  And then you carry that thing back to your work-a-day life.  Project Happy Life - a little blog about a little married couple, living their little lives.  And we happen to be gay.

On the occasion of receiving our marriage license from the State of New York.

Three Fathers. One Me.

If there is a person born on this earth who doesn't have a biological father, I've never heard of them.  Everyone has a father.  The thing is, I didn't know that I had one until I was four or five years old.  On a typical, sunny afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona, my mother took me into one of the bedrooms of the small, 3-bedroom ranch-style house we shared with my grandparents and cousin, Samantha, and she showed me a picture of herself in a wedding dress with a man whom I didn't know.

It says on the back of this photo that my mother was 23 years old, so she would have been around 28 at the time she first showed it to me.  Charles (Charlie) Skouson was his name.  And, she explained that I was born with the name "Lory Anne Henning Skouson".  They were divorced before I was born, so alone in the hospital, my mother had written "Lory Anne" as my first name, "Henning" my middle, and "Skouson" my last name on my birth certificate, figuring I could make my own decision later about what last name I wanted to use.  In that small act of my mother's, I see now a well of generosity to my father and bravery for herself.  It was April 1st, 1971 - no joke.

My four year old self, I must admit, found this whole thing exhilarating yet slightly confusing.  As far as I was concerned, the men in my life were my Grandpa Dave (with whom, as I said, we lived - so much as he was home), and Daron Dustin.  

Daron was my mother's second husband, and I learned later that he had been a friend of the family for many years.  During their short marriage, we lived at his house in California City, CA.  Although I was only 2 or 3 years old at the time, I remember my room there, and I have some faded memories of Daron's dogs, a tortoise I named "Mama Tortoise", a stuffed orangutan, a flowery orange suitcase-style phonograph, my friends Too Sweet and Sweet Pea (actual girls' actual names), an incident involving me not wanting to eat green beans, and the long, hot drive in the middle of the night from California City to Phoenix when my mother left Daron.

Even though I never called him anything but "Daron", Daron was as close to a father as I had known.  I loved (and continue to love) him dearly.  He is something of a delightful, maniacal genius.  I remember one story in particular about how he blew a huge pothole in the street in front of his house when he lit half a stick of dynamite off to celebrate the 4th of July.  In fact, I can't publicly discuss Daron without posting this excellent illustration of the kind of man he was/is.  Here we are in his motorized bathtub:

However, divorce always comes with a story - usually complicated - and my young self was not burdened by the details of why we suddenly lived with my grandparents.

After learning about Charlie Skouson's existence, I became confused - what was a dad?  And was I supposed to take his name?  Upon entering Kindergarden, I was almost proud to have "a father", but I suspect I was even prouder to be unique among my classmates due to my confusing little father situation.  I remember proudly trying to explain to a teacher that my last name was Henning, but it could have also been Skouson.  I'm sure she was flummoxed.

Time passed, and thoughts of Charlie Skouson and the wedding photograph faded from prevalence in my life.  Daron drove up from Cal City (usually in a fantastic old Jeep) to see me when we visited my great grandmother (Nana) in Salinas on holiday's.  My cousin Samantha (by then my grandparents' legally adopted daughter) was, at the time, as good as a sister to me.  And, after my grandfather decided to divorce my grandmother so he could live full-time in Santa Ana where he had a produce business (and continue his tryst with a nice lady he met in Japan), my mother and grandmother were my only true, daily parents.  We were a foursome: Grandma, Mom, Sam, and me.

Until, that is, Grandma and Samantha moved to Salinas to care for my great grandmother, leaving my mother and me in Phoenix to sort ourselves out.  It was the summer before my 3rd Grade school year, and the breakup of our little family left me (and my mother, I suppose) deeply traumatized.

I'll gloss over the intervening years for now.  They, too, were complicated.  Suffice it to say, without consciously knowing what was happening to me at the time (I now know I was consumed with grief for the loss of the little foursome we were, and for the "normal" family I'd never had), I watched Eight Is Enough to the point of obsession - wanting to have that sort of life so badly, I consumed - practically ate - that TV show.  Now that I mention it, as I've written in an earlier post, it was at that time, watching those TV shows after school, that I learned the problematic habit of emotional eating.  But that's neither here nor there.

Since my mother was single and working, and I was a latch-key kid, I spent my Summers with my great-grandmother, grandmother, and cousin Samantha in Salinas.  When I was 15, in the Summer before my Sophomore year of high school, I decided I wasn't going to go back to Phoenix for the school year any more.  I decided to stay and finish high school in Salinas.  And, still glossing over the fraught details of that transition, my move to Salinas is what lined me up to land at Monterey Peninsula College, where I met my third father:

My Chosen Father.

Dan Beck

Dan is the technical director for Monterey Peninsula College's Theatre Department.  He, Patrick McEvoy, Edmund Row Reed, Craig Dunbar, and Steve Retsky took my love of theatre and my need to belong, and they shepherded me into becoming a confident theatre artisan.  But Dan, in particular, took the time to teach me any skill I wanted to learn.  And it was that gentle, guiding attention and confidence that drew me to him.  

In thinking back about it now, Dan was 39 years old when we met.  And having a 19 year old female student slowly latching on to him and wanting to make him proud of her might have been... awkward.  Good thing I'm tremendously gay.

In the 24 years since I fell in paternal love with Dan, he has patiently, quietly allowed me to maintain my adoption of him.  And he has reciprocated in kind.  I tell my mother nearly everything.  We have an excellent telephone relationship, and in my adult years, we've learned how to have wonderful in-person visits with each other too.  By contrast, Dan and I rarely speak on the phone.  But when we're together (as we were for nearly a week solid back in January), we easily chat a lot.  And we are easily quiet a lot.  I tell him everything I can think of that might interest him, and I gently grill him about his life and how he feels about this and that (as is my habit).  He tells me things he knows - how things work, what he's building and doing, and we see the sights.  And sometimes, I hardly know what to do with myself - feeling overwhelmed with love and at a loss for how to express what a gift Dan has given me by allowing me to choose him.

In case you had any doubt, fathers are important.

Charlie Skouson died in 2000.  I spoke to him a handful of times on the phone, but never met him in person.  Daron continues to write to me every year for my birthday without fail, as he has done my entire life, and we visit each other whenever we are within reasonable driving distance of one another.   I see Dan whenever I can - usually at least once a year.

I continue to learn about fathers and what they mean to this day.  Cindy's love of her father (even though he passed away a few years ago) is palpable.  The Spencer Family is like my second family.  Michael is the father of that clan.  And I find myself paying attention to our friend, Arsenio - watching him parent his son (our godson), Axel.  I sometimes babysit Axel, and Arsenio teaches me a lot about how to do it.  I'm not jealous of Cindy or Axel.  I feel rich!  You see, I have three fathers of my own.  And there are all these other gorgeous ones around to see.

Arsenio and Axel Castro