When I was in sixth grade, the teacher gave us a writing assignment. “Write about one of your heroes,” she said. As my classmates immediately thought of firemen, their grandma or Jesus, I had to ponder my options. Joan of Arc? Harriet Tubman? Louis Braille? Superman? Athena? Woody Guthrie? Teresa of Ávila? The list was [...]
Archive for the ‘Family’ category
Airport Thoughts
I am waiting for a flight to take me home to the little college town where I live, a home far away from my family. For the first time in eight years, we took a holiday trip to see my parents’ parents and siblings, which resulted in the predictable reversion of my folks to their [...]
Stuff and story
There is always a moment when the holiday season kicks in: the first fluffy snowfall, the first decorations on sale in September, the Macy’s Parade, the smell of baking spices wafting through the house. With respectful acknowledgement that celebrations and interests vary, our family loves Christmas time and it begins when we bring the first [...]
Happy birthday to me, I mean you
The alarm went off at 5:00 am last Tuesday, but I was already awake. I had been lying there wondering if I could still cut one last rose this season to put in a bud vase. I got up with atypical morning energy and began the planned preparations. Over the next hour and a half [...]
Thursday playlist: Loose associations
Last time grandpa fawcett posted here, it was a bunch of gripes. This time it’s a jumble of thoughts and enthusiasms, the ramblings of early dementia: 1.) This song “A Real Hero” by College (feat. Electric Youth) is from the movie Drive. I could not stop playing this song every day, ten times a day, [...]
Comparative Freedom
I have often wondered where I got my inability to understand the unspoken expectations of authority. For a while I figured there was some kind of cognitive gap right in the part of the brain that might do that; it feels almost like a mechanical failure. Of course it’s almost certainly the fault of radical [...]
Old
My parents are only in their early 70s…not so old, right? Two weeks of vacation with parent 1 and then parent 2 brought me face to face with the brutal reality of our immortality. Actually, I don’t think it’s the immortality that worries me. It’s the aging. Mother has always been a challenge. Apparently, as [...]
Having a baby changes everything
“Not having kids is making aging confusing.” This was a friend’s status update. It jolted me to read it. In fact, I’m not sure how he intended it, but it took me back immediately to this documentary I watched in grad school, Daddy & Papa, about gay couples adopting kids. Now, I’ve never wanted kids. [...]
Family Slide Show(s)
Hey TGW. Kate the Great had all our family slides digitized! She’s my middle brother’s oldest, of six! Looking through these jpegs has been really fun. We were “shutterbugs” growing up. My dad loved having a Canon SLR and he loved having sons that could use it. From the many repetitive images I would say [...]
What is it you want?
After the ball was over, after the break of morn, after the dancers’ leaving, after the stars were gone…it was about forty eight hours before I read my first piece of Internet verbiage about how the goal of marriage is an assimilationist one and how saddened the writer was to have her queerness coöpted. And [...]
