Tag: memories

The first man I loved

We didn’t always agree, but there was never one moment in my entire life when I doubted his love for me. The older I get and the more I see and hear, the more grateful I am for that.

It turned out that even though I didn’t think we had a lot in common, I adopted some of the traits that made me love and respect him so much, and that I hoped would make me a better person. I know he was flawed, because he was human. But time has made those flaws endearing, even humorous, and I like to think about them because they sometimes make me a little more patient with my own flaws.

I’ve never had to endure any confusion over how to be ethical or responsible or honest because I learned those things from him. I may not have always made the right choice, but I always knew the right choice. And on occasions in my life when I made choices he didn’t understand, he invariably said the same thing: You’re my daughter. I love you and support you.

Everyone should have an adult like that in her life. I was so blessed that I had one in my father.


Happy birthday, Daddy. I miss you.

I remember

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that on this day six years ago, blessedly unaware with his mother of world events, my great-nephew Steven was born. He gave our family happiness on that day. Happy birthday, Steven.

It’s okay to suspend belief in “I’m 35” for a few moments

When I was in graduate school, I was friends with a couple of other graduate students who’d been raised in the same hellfire and brimstone fundamentalist religion that I was. At that point in our lives, one of us was becoming Episcopalian, one was becoming Catholic, and one was becoming agnostic. All of us in our turbulent twenties, we’d come together at a point when a lot of those things we were taught to believe in as little Southern girls had proved not to be all they were promised–religion, politics, higher education, careers, marriage, family.

So we were a little abashed to find out that we were all secretly yearning to stay awake through a hot night in July to watch a love story on our TV screens. Once we cleansed our liberated souls with some good old-fashioned confessin’ to each other, we threw feminism and cynicism to the wind and gathered in comfortable clothes with lots of snacks to see a virgin bride wed her prince.

The bride wasn’t much younger than us, and we wanted so much for her to escape the harsh realities that we’d endured as she grew into her twenties. It was not to be, of course, but somehow, as she got older, either despite or because of public scandals and her own flawed nature, she became even more interesting, more beautiful, than she had been as a shy young bride.

I was online, in my old chatroom, late on an August night in 1997, when someone said, “Isn’t it terrible about Princess Diana?” When I asked what he was talking about, he said, “She’s dead.” I thought it was a joke in really poor taste, but after other people confirmed it, I went to the TV and CNN as I’ve done so many times when I get awful news. I was transfixed by the television over the following days, until I again stayed up all night, this time alone, to watch the last flower-strewn ride of a princess.

During those few days, I do remember leaving the house one night. My friend James called and told Tom and me to go to the intersection of two streets, Montrose and Westheimer, which, as I told Debbi in comments to another post, has long been considered the center point of gay Houston.

this is what I saw there

Photo Friday, No. 59

This week’s Photo Friday theme: Unfinished.

A friend was cross-stitching something in Steve R’s hospital room during that last month before he died in 1992. It seemed to soothe her, so later, I began to learn how and thought I’d cross-stitch this simple piece for his parents. They had a white cat named George, and this reminded me of him and their farmhouse in Minnesota. I began it in 1996, intending to give it to them for Christmas. I could never finish it, and eventually I figured out why and wrote a poem about it. The poem and the unfinished cross-stitch are framed together and hang in my house.

Every week the Photo Friday site provides a theme and a list of links to photographers from around the world who’ve submitted a photo for that theme. I don’t count myself among the “real” photographers. I just enjoy coming up with something, either new or from my old photos, to match the theme.


For those of you who visit here via my link on the Photo Friday site, thank you for letting me see your world through your lenses.

Another anniversary

Monday night, Tom told me that he was changing channels and saw that a character from the show How I Met Your Mother hates the word “moist.” Either TV writers are stealing from our LiveJournals, or my friend and writing partner Jim is secretly freelancing. He’s the one who discovered my distaste for this word and therefore uses it often. Because that’s what friends do–right, Marika?

Remember how I rambled on about July having been the tenth anniversary of my meeting Tim and Ron, as well as Tay and Rhonda in our now-defunct online chat room? August is the month that I began talking to Jim in that same place.

read more about Jim and me, if you’d like