Life Lessons

from love in the slow lane…

Rules to Riches: Forging New Holiday Traditions

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Thanksgiving greetings, readers and friends! A few days late, but gratitude is always timely. I hope you’ll forgive my delayed good wishes and post. In addition to hosting a family holiday gathering for the first time in our new home, I also celebrated a birthday this past week. I decided to focus on family, food, and fun with friends, and save my reflections for today.

tablesettingCelebrating our first Thanksgiving as a married couple was exciting and exhausting. Hubby Steve’s two grown sons came in, and we made valiant efforts to ready the house for their company, unpacking and arranging the last of the kitchenware (we didn’t quite make it) and situating the remaining cardboard boxes, if not out of sight, at least out of footpath. It was tough for me to host with so much still in disarray, because growing up, a house about to welcome holiday guests (even close relatives) was always scrubbed, straightened, and festively arrayed. It felt like I was breaking an unwritten rule to have stacks everywhere and so much still out of place. Continue reading →

Portrait of a Mixed Marriage

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Donkey-elephant

Photo by johnlund.com

Politically, my husband Steve and I have a mixed marriage: he has traditionally identified as right, conservative, Republican; I as left, liberal, Democrat. In a nigh-unto-election year, should either of us be persuaded by the political media machine that urges us to adopt these broad labels as essential truths, we would likely spend the first year of our marriage in warring camps, chary adversaries if not flat-out enemies.

Thankfully, that’s not necessary, because—contrary to what politicians and the media (not to mention your Facebook friends) would have you believe—the nexus of identity and political ideals is never quite that simple. Steve, for example, does not fit neatly into any ideological box. Fiscally, he’s conservative, but on social issues he stands somewhere between libertarian and liberal. He’s voted for Republicans, yes, but also Democrats and third-party candidates. He holds some distinctly right-wing views (he believes there is a liberal bias to most mainstream media) and some distinctly leftist ones (he supports gay marriage as a civil right). The best word to describe his overall stance is probably “moderate,” but it’s more accurate to say he defies categorization.

I, on the other hand, might actually be that simple. Every political-orientation quiz I’ve ever taken places me squarely in the liberal zone. According to The Political Compass, I’m left of the Dalai Lama. Continue reading →

Fall, in Love

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golden leavesLast year around this time, as we scuffled through the fallen leaves covering a local park trail, my now-husband Steve recalled an article he’d seen about the process by which leaves change colors. The brilliant orange and yellow and red hues of autumn are always present in the leaves, the article asserted, though we see them only in the fall. In spring and summer they are masked by chlorophyll’s green. As the production of chlorophyll wanes, the bright, varied colors that were always underneath emerge to glow against the steel grays and robin’s egg blues of an October sky. The writer likened this process to the presence of God in everyone, using it as a metaphor for a kind of true spiritual beauty that all possess, even when it’s not readily apparent.

That’s a lovely idea, and the writer mostly got the science correct: carotenoids, the pigments that produce yellow, orange, and brown, are present in leaves year-round and revealed in autumn; the compounds called anthocyanins that make leaves turn red, however, are manufactured in the fall in response to a combination of light and an abundance of sugars. In any case, the process put me in mind of a slightly different metaphor. Continue reading →

Ripples and Reflections

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Wading in Great Salt Lake

brine shrimp lay eggsIMG_5995

that lie dormant through drought

ten years suspended—

a few drops of water,

and they hatch

without a hitch

­

no wonder they dance

in whole body jazz hands

sometimes the wait

is worth the miracle

~~~

Travel to a conference in Utah this week re-set my posting schedule along with my alarm clock. Faced with a decision between staying in and writing or seizing a new adventure, well: sometimes it’s necessary to stop and breathe the brine. My visit to this natural wonder was only too brief, maybe half an hour. But for those minutes of walking an ethereal landscape, my sense of being so baldly exposed and sized to scale left me feeling both insignificant and strangely empowered. I am small, but I am seen.

For those spending the weekend in Southwest Virginia parts, I want to give a shout out to the OneLove Wedding Expo set for today, Sunday, November 8th, at the Sheraton Roanoke Hotel and Conference Center. Readers might recall my April post on the Weddings for Equality Vendor Showcase. The OneLove Expo is organized by the same great folks, and it promises to be a fun day and an excellent resource to find gay-friendly wedding vendors.

marina 2For love’s arrival, for its acceptance: so glad, for so many of us, that the wait is finally over.

To We or Not to We? — Thoughts on Couples’ Costumes

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Halloween weekend is upon us, ushered in by chilly nights and a waning but still bright Hunter’s Moon. Ghosts and gremlins appear on neighborhood streets and office hallways, though the spectre that haunts many of us most this time of year is the question, what costume should I wear?

Can you guess this year's costume?

Can you guess this year’s costume?

Dressing up is no longer as simple as finding an old sheet: cut eye holes, it’s a ghost, wrap it around you, it’s a toga. These days Halloween attire requires navigating sticky questions. Why does the woman’s firefighter costume come with a mini-skirt and garter? Does dressing the dog in a tutu qualify as animal torture? And for those who are in a relationship: do we or don’t we couple up our costumes? Continue reading →

Catch and Hold

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If wishes were fishes…

Prior to our wedding, a number of recent brides, mothers-of, and members of the bridal business told us how grateful they were (and we would be) for beautiful pictures of the day to look back on. The day goes by so quickly, they all said, and no bride or groom can be everywhere at once; photos stop time and offer a window into those “elsewhere” moments. They were right, of course. But I never expected the day to be such an intense and surreal experience I would need photos to remind me of moments I actively participated in.

Sharing a signature cocktail

Sharing a signature cocktail

Strong drink was not the issue. Our signature cocktail threw a punch, but I had only one. (For those who wondered if my enthusiastic dancing was a sign I’d imbibed too freely—nope, that’s just what happens when you set me on a dance floor and play my favorite songs.) The only things I was high on were adrenaline and love. Continue reading →