The Moon Garden Lounge
Feb 5, 2013 10:38:05 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2013 10:38:05 GMT -5
sugaree, that Clydesdales ad is very dear! And your robin came back! What an amazing bond. It is just so touching. How is Misty coming along? Our new bunny, Dozer is doing well. He spent most of his life in the shelter -- over a year there -- so psychologically he is different from the other bunnies we have had. I think he might be a little "slow." But he is coming out more every day.
glampoon, I hope you are doing OK.
momtomany -- someone had mentioned that they saw you, or a picture of you, wearing the Ray of Light snuggie. I don't think people realize very often that this "Adam thing" is so much more than being a fangirl. Adam weaves himself into the tapestry of our lives as they unfold. The decline of a beloved mother is a major shift in the universe. I am experiencing the anniversary of my mom's passing this month (four years) and it's still extremely difficult. It is beautiful how Ray of Light links you with your mother.
lynne -- what you wrote also touched me. Like my mom, you love your children for who they really are, not some image of how you want them to be. At the end of my mom's life, and one reason the memories are still traumatic for me, a caregiver whom we had trusted tried to destroy the relationship between my mom and her children. At this, she was a complete failure. momtomany and lynne, you wrote of both sides of the mother/child relationship so perfectly.
I hope you guys don't mind if I post a bit about my parents; this turned out to be long so just scroll if not interested.
My parents had four daughters. By the time I came along they were a little bit older than most of the other parents around the neighborhood – in their forties instead of in their 20s or early 30s like most of the other parents. And they certainly couldn’t be called any kind of big social activists. They didn’t march for civil rights, and they couldn’t stand Pete Seeger. My dad was an IBM engineer, liked Spiro Agnew, and thought hippies should get haircuts, put on some deodorant, and get jobs. My mom was sweet and gentle and liked the Democrats, but her main act of rebellion was watching Donahue (a socially liberal talk-show for those too young to remember).
In short, they were practical people mostly concerned with earning a living and raising their kids. And one of their practical philosophies was this:
Live and Let Live
My parents lived through one of the most tumultuous times of social change this country has ever experienced. The civil rights movement, women’s liberation, war and anti-war, abortion and the rise of the Moral Majority, and the gay liberation movement are just the most obvious of the changes they had to roll with.
And when I look back on it … what I learned from them, what I saw and heard from them on a daily basis, was acceptance that other people were different, and that you should be fair to them. We still tease our dad about what happened when IBM-Austin integrated its facilities. Dad, who is capable of making jokes that would make Archie Bunker wince, was assigned to mentor a black engineer who joined the group. The integration was a big change for everyone, but the truth was that the guy was just another father who liked to barbecue in the back yard and worked at IBM. Dad became good friends with the man he called “Big Money Jack” and the two of them ended up winning a brotherhood award for the example they set. As the years went by, Dad was friends with people of many races, creeds, and sexual orientations, and unlike some of his peers, had no problems when a female engineer became his boss. In fact, he even got to be a “bridesmaid” in her wedding.
And the fact is that Dad never stopped making his awful jokes (at age 85 he seems unlikely to change). Does he still see the differences between people? Absolutely. He sees them and he accepts them. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “What harm does it do if my neighbor believes in no gods or twenty gods?” To Dad, intolerance just has no reason for being. It has no practical application for a healthy, rational person. At his retirement community he is known as the guy who is friends with everyone. At the weekly mens' meeting, where the old guys discuss current events, Dad has spoken up for the repeal of DADT and for gay marriage in his own unique way: “If a couple of fairies want to get married, or adopt a little boy and raise him up right, who the hell am I to stand in their way?”
I guess like most kids, we looked up to our dad but our mom was the parent who was our intimate companion and role model on a daily basis. When I think back on it, my mom took the point of view that differences between us are just part of life. She had a big heart and an imagination that allowed for many possible realities. I’ll always remember how she believed that the various prophets such as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed were sent to teach us all how to get along in ways that best suited each part of the world. I understand now that I am an adult that some people actually find this idea heretical. To my mom it just made sense: it wasn’t necessary or realistic that we would all agree on everything. (My mom was really cute; I also remember how she made it a special point to be good friends with all the nuns at the hospital where she volunteered, even though we weren’t Catholic, just in case they could put in a good word with God on her behalf.)
The first time I was ever exposed to homophobia was at a neighbor’s house. My sister and I were very good friends with a couple of kids down the street. "Mike" and I got to be best friends in second grade and played together all the time. Even as we got older we walked to school together every day, all the way up through the 11th grade.
On the surface, Mike's parents were a lot like Mom and Dad. We were all just typical 1970s suburban families, living our Brady Bunch lifestyle. Then, sometime in the mid-1970s. Anita Bryant, the singer and former beauty queen, began leading her anti-gay crusade in Florida to repeal new anti-discrimination laws in Miami. The campaign became a national cause célèbre. I remember playing at Mike’s house one day when their dad launched into an incredible rant against homosexuals. I can’t imagine how he thought the topic was appropriate to vent in front of schoolchildren, but vent he did. I still remember he claimed that gays recruited kids, and were sex maniacs, but most of all I remember him saying:
Gays aren’t even people
I asked my mom about it when we got home. Mom said that gays were “boys who liked to go out on dates with other boys, or girls who liked to go out with other girls.” She said that what Mike’s dad had said was a bunch of nonsense and we should think for ourselves; that she couldn’t think of one reason to worry about gays or ever be mean to them; and that people who didn’t like gays should just leave them alone.
Now, when I think back on it, intolerance was a common theme at Mike’s home. I am older now than Mike’s parents were then, and now I see a couple scared out of their gourds by all the social changes. They weren’t rolling with it like my mom and dad did. They hated integration; they thought blacks, immigrants, and hippies were going to break into their house any minute to molest their kids or steal their stuff; that Democrats were just communists in disguise; and that gays were some kind of predatory alien race.
Live and let live is an old, well-worn maxim, and for many years I took it for granted. Now I realize it is a kind of profound philosophy, a great and vital truth. I was really lucky to be taught to live and let live. It means that as precious, valuable, independent beings, we are free to order our own lives. If you want this independence for yourself, you must respect that of others. By giving respect, by allowing others the dignity to breathe and be themselves, you invite everything that is best and hopeful into your own life. You make room for unlikely friendships; you make space for old wounds to heal.
If you will not respect other people, you will have to fight all the time, and you will believe that other people are fighting you. You will build a wall to keep them out and imprison yourself behind it. You will strangle your own independence in the coils of your narrow definition of who and what is OK.
There was nothing perfect about the house I grew up in. But if I could share one element of my upbringing, it would be to give children the gift of live and let live. Because friendship can blossom and freedom take root only when trust and tolerance are first allowed to grow.
One more thing … Mike rejected his old life in his senior year in high school and left town. Seemed he met a boy that summer and realized he was gay. Are you surprised?
And to end on a lighter note ... the words of George Carlin seem appropriate ... So I say, “Live and let live.” That’s my motto. “Live and let live.” And anyone who can’t go along with that, take him outside and shoot the motherfucker. It’s a simple philosophy, but it’s always worked in our family.
glampoon, I hope you are doing OK.
momtomany -- someone had mentioned that they saw you, or a picture of you, wearing the Ray of Light snuggie. I don't think people realize very often that this "Adam thing" is so much more than being a fangirl. Adam weaves himself into the tapestry of our lives as they unfold. The decline of a beloved mother is a major shift in the universe. I am experiencing the anniversary of my mom's passing this month (four years) and it's still extremely difficult. It is beautiful how Ray of Light links you with your mother.
lynne -- what you wrote also touched me. Like my mom, you love your children for who they really are, not some image of how you want them to be. At the end of my mom's life, and one reason the memories are still traumatic for me, a caregiver whom we had trusted tried to destroy the relationship between my mom and her children. At this, she was a complete failure. momtomany and lynne, you wrote of both sides of the mother/child relationship so perfectly.
I hope you guys don't mind if I post a bit about my parents; this turned out to be long so just scroll if not interested.
My parents had four daughters. By the time I came along they were a little bit older than most of the other parents around the neighborhood – in their forties instead of in their 20s or early 30s like most of the other parents. And they certainly couldn’t be called any kind of big social activists. They didn’t march for civil rights, and they couldn’t stand Pete Seeger. My dad was an IBM engineer, liked Spiro Agnew, and thought hippies should get haircuts, put on some deodorant, and get jobs. My mom was sweet and gentle and liked the Democrats, but her main act of rebellion was watching Donahue (a socially liberal talk-show for those too young to remember).
In short, they were practical people mostly concerned with earning a living and raising their kids. And one of their practical philosophies was this:
Live and Let Live
My parents lived through one of the most tumultuous times of social change this country has ever experienced. The civil rights movement, women’s liberation, war and anti-war, abortion and the rise of the Moral Majority, and the gay liberation movement are just the most obvious of the changes they had to roll with.
And when I look back on it … what I learned from them, what I saw and heard from them on a daily basis, was acceptance that other people were different, and that you should be fair to them. We still tease our dad about what happened when IBM-Austin integrated its facilities. Dad, who is capable of making jokes that would make Archie Bunker wince, was assigned to mentor a black engineer who joined the group. The integration was a big change for everyone, but the truth was that the guy was just another father who liked to barbecue in the back yard and worked at IBM. Dad became good friends with the man he called “Big Money Jack” and the two of them ended up winning a brotherhood award for the example they set. As the years went by, Dad was friends with people of many races, creeds, and sexual orientations, and unlike some of his peers, had no problems when a female engineer became his boss. In fact, he even got to be a “bridesmaid” in her wedding.
And the fact is that Dad never stopped making his awful jokes (at age 85 he seems unlikely to change). Does he still see the differences between people? Absolutely. He sees them and he accepts them. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “What harm does it do if my neighbor believes in no gods or twenty gods?” To Dad, intolerance just has no reason for being. It has no practical application for a healthy, rational person. At his retirement community he is known as the guy who is friends with everyone. At the weekly mens' meeting, where the old guys discuss current events, Dad has spoken up for the repeal of DADT and for gay marriage in his own unique way: “If a couple of fairies want to get married, or adopt a little boy and raise him up right, who the hell am I to stand in their way?”
I guess like most kids, we looked up to our dad but our mom was the parent who was our intimate companion and role model on a daily basis. When I think back on it, my mom took the point of view that differences between us are just part of life. She had a big heart and an imagination that allowed for many possible realities. I’ll always remember how she believed that the various prophets such as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed were sent to teach us all how to get along in ways that best suited each part of the world. I understand now that I am an adult that some people actually find this idea heretical. To my mom it just made sense: it wasn’t necessary or realistic that we would all agree on everything. (My mom was really cute; I also remember how she made it a special point to be good friends with all the nuns at the hospital where she volunteered, even though we weren’t Catholic, just in case they could put in a good word with God on her behalf.)
The first time I was ever exposed to homophobia was at a neighbor’s house. My sister and I were very good friends with a couple of kids down the street. "Mike" and I got to be best friends in second grade and played together all the time. Even as we got older we walked to school together every day, all the way up through the 11th grade.
On the surface, Mike's parents were a lot like Mom and Dad. We were all just typical 1970s suburban families, living our Brady Bunch lifestyle. Then, sometime in the mid-1970s. Anita Bryant, the singer and former beauty queen, began leading her anti-gay crusade in Florida to repeal new anti-discrimination laws in Miami. The campaign became a national cause célèbre. I remember playing at Mike’s house one day when their dad launched into an incredible rant against homosexuals. I can’t imagine how he thought the topic was appropriate to vent in front of schoolchildren, but vent he did. I still remember he claimed that gays recruited kids, and were sex maniacs, but most of all I remember him saying:
Gays aren’t even people
I asked my mom about it when we got home. Mom said that gays were “boys who liked to go out on dates with other boys, or girls who liked to go out with other girls.” She said that what Mike’s dad had said was a bunch of nonsense and we should think for ourselves; that she couldn’t think of one reason to worry about gays or ever be mean to them; and that people who didn’t like gays should just leave them alone.
Now, when I think back on it, intolerance was a common theme at Mike’s home. I am older now than Mike’s parents were then, and now I see a couple scared out of their gourds by all the social changes. They weren’t rolling with it like my mom and dad did. They hated integration; they thought blacks, immigrants, and hippies were going to break into their house any minute to molest their kids or steal their stuff; that Democrats were just communists in disguise; and that gays were some kind of predatory alien race.
Live and let live is an old, well-worn maxim, and for many years I took it for granted. Now I realize it is a kind of profound philosophy, a great and vital truth. I was really lucky to be taught to live and let live. It means that as precious, valuable, independent beings, we are free to order our own lives. If you want this independence for yourself, you must respect that of others. By giving respect, by allowing others the dignity to breathe and be themselves, you invite everything that is best and hopeful into your own life. You make room for unlikely friendships; you make space for old wounds to heal.
If you will not respect other people, you will have to fight all the time, and you will believe that other people are fighting you. You will build a wall to keep them out and imprison yourself behind it. You will strangle your own independence in the coils of your narrow definition of who and what is OK.
There was nothing perfect about the house I grew up in. But if I could share one element of my upbringing, it would be to give children the gift of live and let live. Because friendship can blossom and freedom take root only when trust and tolerance are first allowed to grow.
One more thing … Mike rejected his old life in his senior year in high school and left town. Seemed he met a boy that summer and realized he was gay. Are you surprised?
And to end on a lighter note ... the words of George Carlin seem appropriate ... So I say, “Live and let live.” That’s my motto. “Live and let live.” And anyone who can’t go along with that, take him outside and shoot the motherfucker. It’s a simple philosophy, but it’s always worked in our family.
