I’m posting this on the one-week anniversary of our legal same-sex marriage in California. Since I took it with my Sidekick and uploaded it to Flickr right after our civil ceremony, it’s been viewed (as of this writing) 199 times, had received 53 comments, and 6 people call it a favorite.
A million thanks to all who made it possible for us to get married legally!
This is dedicated to a colleague’s son who died suddenly last week at the age of 4. I attended his funeral at a Mormon church yesterday. The first order of service was singing a hymn called “Families Can Be Together Forever” whose lyrics resonated with me, a gay Jewish man:
“I have a family here on earth.
They are so good to me.
I want to share my life with them
Through all eternity.
Families can be together forever
Though Heavenly Father’s plan.
I always want to be with my own family
And the Lord has shown me how I can.”
(Words: Ruth Muir Gardner, Music: Vanja Y. Watkins)
It is interesting that I heard this song the day after watching the movie Juno and being struck by a line spoken by Ellen Page’s character: “I just need to know that two people can be happy and stay together forever.”
I do believe they can, and it doesn’t matter what religion or sexual preference they are. My grandparents were married for over 64 years before my grandmother died. Andy & I married for life. We’ll be married four years in August, and we intend to stay together “forever” (on the question of life after death, I’m agnostic). In the short time that Andy & I have been together, we’ve seen couples comes and go. But we’ve also known couples, both gay and straight, who have been together for decades. So, although families don’t always stay together forever, they can, and I dedicate this image to the little boy who brought me to a moving reminder of that truth. The little boy loved bubble gum, so that’s what I used to spell out the word Families on our neighbor Elva’s green grass lawn.
Here are a couple of valuable links I came across when searching for the lyrics to this song:
1. The sheet music on the LDS Church Website.
2. The perspective of an LDS woman who taught primary school yet grew up in a broken home. It’s called When Families Aren’t Forever.
I’m usually in on this myself, but it was great to be able to grab our point & shoot and get this little video of Buxley & Lady playing with each other and one of their daddies.
Yes, we don’t know how it happened or why it happened — there’s water in his water bowl! — but our J.J. has gotten into the habit of licking our wet legs after we shower. Heck, he even sticks his snout into the shower while we’re in it and licks the bathtub. But when either of us steps out of the shower — or even while we stand in it and dry off — he licks the water off our legs. Now, I know there are bound to be some people who think we shouldn’t let him do this, but we think it’s harmless and sweet.
This morning, Andy asked me if I was making coffee (which I was), and I responded sarcastically, “No, I thought we’d have hot chocolate instead.” After saying that, I decided to have hot mocha instead of just coffee. I’ve never made that decision before. It was just a “wild hair.” I got the can of hot cocoa powder out of the pantry and used the remaining product to make my mocha. As I was about to throw out the container, guess what I saw on the bottom? “Best before April 19, 2007″! Well, did I get that wild hair just in time, or what?
Then Andy asked me to check the calendar and see whether it was his step-mother’s birthday tomorrow. Well, I found out that her birthday wasn’t until next Thursday, but it reminded me that today was my own dad’s birthday!
And what’s also really weird is that this morning the dogs were so excited they just couldn’t wait for us to get out of bed. I got up and said to Andy, “You’d think it was some kind of special doggie holiday we don’t know about!” Did they know it was their “grandfather’s” birthday? I don’t know. It’s been a freaky morning!
