Vindauga

Another Milestone

I've got people growing up all around me. You know, it happens in dribs and drabs, and every once in awhile there is concrete evidence that a moment has passed that will never come again.

Lin posted her Christmas wish list on the fridge. It was short (5 items) and entirely reasonable. Then I noticed something was missing. There isn't a toy on the list. No doll, no clothes for dolls, no Lincoln Logs, no weird little stuffed animals. She's my last girl folks.

I will never again thrill over the intricacy of a doll house, pick out the perfect china tea set, look at dress-up clothes, or wonder if I'm warping her by buying the girly toys she asks for. I may one day have granddaughters, but it won't be the same.

I'm happy to have her move on, just as I've been with her sisters. With her sisters she was the back-up, the fall back. I still had Lin when Mal or Rory moved on to music and books and clothes. She's it now.

We're done. It's delightful to see the older girl emerge, but damn those tea sets were cute.

The flipside? We're getting rid of lots of it, and I can actually see a day when her room is a disaster because of clothes and books all over the floor instead of 18 inches high with toy debris. Woohoo!

Gee, Mom what are they talking about?

You know, I can remember growing up and watching tv with my grandparents or my father, and being embarrassed because a Summer's Eve or a tampon commercial would come on. Then, before we blocked MTV, there were the Trojan commercials with the kids. Now, we've got KY Intense commercials constantly popping up on every channel. Really, what's next, commercials for a dominatrix?

Today is a special day

It's Mallory's birthday (and mine). More importantly it's Mallory's 18th birthday. By most of society's legal standards she is an adult. (We got her a button to wear today that said "18- I'm an adult, show some respect". She smiled politely, put it away and gave her sister horrified looks.)

So, anyway back to my point. She is 18. Eighteen years ago today Noelle brought her into the world, and placed her in my arms and trusted me with this little human. Her own flesh and blood. Neither one of us could predict how this would turn out. This experiment in all our lives called parenting. Only Noelle and I took even more of a risk with Mallory and raised her in this thing we call open adoption. Neither of us had first hand experience with it, hell I didn't even know anyone marginally who was part of one. I had essays in books and research from a handful of studies.

More importantly we had this immediate connection with Noelle and K (Mallory's first father). We had trust. We had gut instinct. We had love. That got us over the very minor bumps we ever had in our relationship. It sustained us in both in grief and in joy that adoption brought.

We raised her making sure that she knew she was free to love all of us however suited her best, and more importantly that we ALL loved her. It hasn't always been easy for Mallory. She has suffered grief. loss and heartache because of adoption. She has also felt joy, confidence, compassion and love because of it.

We couldn't predict how it would turn out, and it has exceeded all of my dreams and hopes. So even though there are naysayers all around;those opposed to adoption, period, and those opposed to open adoption, I can tell you that it worked this time and worked well. I know it doesn't always work. I feel lucky it has for us.

OUR daughter is a beautiful, healthy, happy, smart adult and the world is lucky to have her. There are four of us who can take credit for that, and I feel so fortunate to be one of them.

A Very Happy Day

For one of my best buds. I'm not going to give the details, because it's her information, but let me say that the song "Mother & Child Reunion" has been playing in my head for a couple of hours. Very happy by the turn of events.

Sometimes it's not the huge expected moments that are the big ones. Sometimes it's the everyday ones that are extraordinary. A phone call. A conversation. A connection. Better than any award or lotto winning.

Congratulations one of my favorite gals. Someday we will meet and toast this moment. Hell, I'll even smoke.

December 1st

This is a post, I've posted a couple of times before on this date.

Today is World AIDS Day. In 1985, AIDS changed my life forever. My best friend Tom was my instructor from beauty school in 1982. We made each other laugh from day one and became best friends overnight. We even took part in an ill planned ruse of a marriage. He was gay and going to be outed. I loved him. It seemed like a simple solution. It wasn’t. We lasted four months.

After the marriage ended we remained soul mates and roommates. Even after he met a man, Richard, who completed his life in ways I could not, we remained the closest of friends. The three of us decided to become business partners and opened a hair salon. We had a great time, worked day and night, and had a successful business in our small little town. Then in January 1985 Richard had a flu that he just couldn’t shake. I think in the back of our minds we all worried it was related to AIDS, but this was still early in the epidemic. No one we knew had AIDS. The only reference we had to it was from the media. Surely we couldn’t be touched by this disease. That was for people in the city.

About March, Richard went to the doctor. This small town physician examined Richard and asked him if he was in any of the high-risk groups for HIV. Richard said “Well, I have never been to Haiti, and needles scare me to death, but I suppose I should be tested.” The test came back positive. The doctor was very clear this didn’t mean Richard had AIDS or even ARC. He also suggested Tom be tested. Tom’s test came back positive as well. He was completely symptom free, but Richard wasn’t as lucky. He had one nagging malady after another. Still the doctor said it wasn’t AIDS.

Richard’s sister lived in California and would talk with us over the phone. She and I both read everything we could get our hands on about AIDS. We would talk privately about how the night sweats and weight loss had to be a sign. Richard spent more and more time in bed, bundled up in blankets and robes. He developed a sore on his forehead that would not go away. I was worried that he had some sort of infection and insisted he go back to the doctor. The doctor gave him some salve and took a tissue sample.

Richard insisted on going to a large Halloween party some friends of our's threw. He dressed up like a genie, and he looked terrible. Tom did drag. His blonde alter ego-Mabeline. Mabeline looked an awful lot like Tammy Wynette, but in a kind of run over by a truck kind of way. I was Ladonna, Madonna’s younger, sluttier sister. I remember I wore fishnets and was draped in rosaries and ripped clothing. The three of us tried really hard to party  as we had in previous years. Richard kept shivering. I was actually annoyed with him for being sick yet again. Our friends had no idea of his HIV status. There was so much shame and secrecy then. We went home early, Richard complaining how the heater in my car didn’t work.

A few days later I was doing hair when I could barely hear a faint radio voice talk about how the health department had announced that a local man was the first one in the state to be diagnosed with AIDS. My stomach immediately sank. As soon as my client was gone I went upstairs to Tom and Richard’s apartment and told Richard what I had heard. He immediately put in a call to his doctor. He quietly wept, and told the doctor it would have been nice to know first. It was the last conversation he would have with this doctor. The doctor told him the lesion on his head was from Kaposi’s Sarcoma. This immediately classified him as an AIDS patient. The doctor was obligated to tell the health department. The health department alerted the media. We cancelled our appointments for the rest of the day and sat in the quiet dark apartment, turning the television on only for the news. We watched in horror and fascination as Richard started to deal with being the unknown man everyone was talking about. We were terrified not only of Richard becoming more ill, but of people ostracizing us. Within 48 hours I couldn’t go anywhere where I knew someone without being whispered about. Like I said it was a really small town. Richard was a sick gay man. Even though we lied and said he cancer, people easily put two and two together. Within a week Tom and Richard decided to go to California to stay with Richard’s sister. They found a wonderful network of people at the San Diego AIDS Project and began trying to create a new life for themselves.

Back at home our business was dying. People were still ignorant about how AIDS was contracted and many refused to come to our salon. I told my three hairdressers I was going to close the doors December 31st. They all began to look for new jobs. I decided I would move to San Diego and help care for Richard.

Then at 2:00 am January 1st, 1985 Richard died. He was one day short of his 44th birthday. Tom was there, his sister and mother were there, and it was mercifully quick. I flew down to California two days later. It was a surreal world. First off it was warm. Second we could openly talk about Richard’s illness and death. We didn’t have to say “lung cancer.” There were all these wonderful volunteers who had only known Richard a little more than six weeks, who were all supporting us and treating us like long lost kin.

Tom and I decided we had to leave our small town. San Diego seemed logical. So we went home and spent a very painful couple of weeks packing. My father helped us move what we couldn’t take into a storage unit. I remember he had a girlfriend who asked him what precautions he was going to take so he wouldn’t get AIDS. He answered, “I won’t French kiss the cat.”

On the way to San Diego we stopped in Tucson and saw Tom’s grandmother. We never left. Tom needed the comfort of his family, and I knew he wouldn’t stay if I left. We both got jobs. Tom got on AZT. He did well. We both began a new life. A few months later I met Bert. In about 6 months we married and moved away.

Tom’s health deteriorated. Bert and I started trying to have a baby. All long distance conversations between Tom and I started revolving around the latest medical indignity we had suffered. He visited us, we visited him. Finally it became apparent that Tom was living his last days.

I went to Tucson and stayed with him and his mom. He told me I was the best friend he ever had. Then he began hallucinating. He weighed less than 70 lbs. Some of his friends and I began discussing euthanasia. None of us had the guts to do it. So we just lay around his tiny apartment watching him go in and out of lucidity. I lit him cigarettes and helped him smoke. His mother gave me grief over it. Tom would laugh. Finally on May 15, 1991 in a room with 20 people around him, he turned to his mom and said, “I’m going to Granddad and Richard” and closed his eyes and died.