My inner drag queen…
Went to a wedding yesterday and wore eyelashes for the first time since last Halloween…
I forgot how icky it feels when you can’t get all the glue off.
let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
I’ve often been told I should write a book about my childhood. Honestly I don’t think it’s interesting enough for a book but there are a lot of questions that have been left unanswered.
I have been deep in Ancestry.com trying to sort some things out, still not finding all the answers…
Maybe if I use these pages to sort of sort it out (Cindy, feel free to chime in if you read this and remember stuff).
So, here we go…from the beginning…
I was born in Daytona Beach, Florida June of 1965. My parents were young, both just 20.
We moved from Florida to New York, unsure where but somewhere near Kingston, where we lived in a small apartment that was a converted strip motel. I remember it only in vague images and from flashbacks from pictures.
We moved from there to a house outside High Falls, NY.
I recently went on a trip to Kingston and decided to have a look around. I found our old house. As soon as I turned onto the street I immediately remembered. It was so familiar. I’m not sure how long we lived there but my sister was born in Kingston and she is 5.5 yrs younger than I am. There were 2 brothers who were born and died between me and her.
My dad worked for IBM Kingston and was transferred to Virginia, Manassas to be exact.
This is where things start to get pretty wild. Mom and dad separated and divorced around this time. I don’t remember where dad was but I know he wasn’t around much. Mom worked in a Photomat (remember those photo booths in the middle of parking lots?) This had to have been around 2nd grade if memory serves. (I tend to remember things in ’school time’)
Mom, me and my sister moved to New York, I’m guessing around Kingston again… very sketchy. When I went back to look around there were some familiar areas but when I questioned dad he got very, very defensive about it…not sure what to make of it.
The summer of my 9th year dad came to get my sister and I for a visit. When we arrived in Virginia I was told to call my mother and tell her we weren’t coming back, I remember my mom crying. Essentially my dad kidnapped us.
At this time he was living with a woman in Virginia, who he eventually married, although he denies ever being married to her. She was a real ‘winner’. I remember being rather abused by this woman. She had 2 kids of her own and they ruled the roost. My sister and I were an unwelcome nuisance.
Eventually we moved to Texas, outside Houston. I recall my mom coming to visit us and according to her, she almost tried to kidnap us back. This was 5th grade in Texas. She sent me money for my birthday and I had always recalled being told to send the check back with a note telling her to never contact us again. Sad what adults will do to children.
When I finally re-united with my mother 20 yrs later she still had that letter… (to be continued)
Stay gold, pony boy…
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay. ~Robert Frost
I love this little snippet of prose. It often serves to remind me how fleeting time is and to try and relish in every day. Most days I fail at this.
Every day is a chance to do good.
To be better.
I think the greatest thing we can do as human beings is to have made a positive difference for someone else.
..some days are like that
Most aspects of my life have gone as I thought, but there are some things I wish I could have done differently.
Times when I wonder what things would have been like had I taken the left fork instead of the right.
I’m 45 now and I guess that would qualify me as mid-life. Unless you take into account the actual lifespan of most of my family members I should have met with mid-life around 30.
Is this what people think about who have reached mid-life?
Taking stock.
Is it wasteful thinking of what could have been?
I have been thinking a lot of what will be.
After I’m done being primarily ‘mom’ and can get back to being ‘me’ and a whole companion to my husband.
I am looking forward to spending time with him without having to worry about taking the kids needs first.
I will always be ‘mom’ but I’m looking forward to the time when I can be primarily ‘me’.
…remember sheet forts?
I thought about them the other day and today we went and saw Where The Wild Things Are (surprisingly deep…still trying to process it) and the kid had made a fort out of sheets and blankets. I used to make those for my kids and it was fantastic. We have the perfect dining room table for it… a large ‘farm’ table with plenty of room under and if I pulled the chairs out just enough we could drape blankets all around and use the seats as shelves. Remember how safe and secure it felt with all your favorite stuff inside?
Some days I wish I could make a fort like that and crawl inside.
…graduation!
Today was Grace’s graduation from school. She is such a wonderful child who I have loved watching figure out who she is.
Once she gets it all worked out she will set the world on fire, no doubt.
Congrats Grace and the class of 2010!
…pride makes me proud
Yesterday marked Syracuse 2010 Pride Parade and Festival and it reminds me how lucky I am to be able to be a part of the community as a straight ally, as a parent of a gay child…as a human being.
That being said, I’m exhausted!!! The lead up to the parade was filled with hope and much stress. As the president of our local chapter of PFLAG we are trying to keep our heads above water and I was hoping this parade would be the starting of a renewal of interest in our chapter. I.was.wrong… We were fortunate enough to be part of a project with the school of industrial design at the university to make floats. We had a fun float, in theory(which I’ll get to in a moment), caterpillar into butterfly theme but would require the commitment of at least 5 PFLAG parents/supporters to help with it. Of my list of almost 200 people I got commitment from 1. You read that right… 1. person. So about Wednesday the realization set in that this might not happen. I was going to have to try and marshal our group as well as carrying the banner and float. So along comes Twitter.. I posted a note for anyone who might be able to help and my tweets answered the call! I had 3 more wonderful people, that I had never met, show up and help me! We marched and laughed and it was great. I love the internet!
The float was a caterpillar made from balloons… and it was about 90 degrees, with pretty high humidity… you can see what is coming right? They started popping. Fortunately the wonderful balloon lady at Mickeys Balloons fixed up the caterpillar as best she could and we were off.
Seems the crowd understood what the theme was so that worked.
And when we got to the festival the caterpillar balloons were tied to the kids tent and they got to enjoy them.
After all the stress and heartache I think if we get the opportunity to do it again next year… I’ll consider it.