GOOSE ME AGAIN, WILL YA?

He stood behind the ravaged corpse, blood staining his hands, no apology in his black eyes. The white wall behind him was dotted with crimson handprints as if he had been creating art out of gore.

When I have no words to express what's going on inside, sometimes a line from a poem nails my feeling. As I looked at the carnage, a question from Stanley Kunitz' The Layers came to mind: "How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?"

Then came a question spoken aloud by my husband Dave: "What do you want to do with him?"

What indeed?

I love geese. In particular, I love Chinese geese, the most cantankerous, ornery and aggressive of all breeds of domesticated geese. But also the most garrulous. They always have something to say, will offer an opinion on anything.

Several years back Dave and I reared two Chinese goslings. I have warm memories of going out to pick wild black raspberries one summer, leading a parade of two humans, a raccoon foundling, a dog, cat and two young geese. We all of us picked raspberries, even if only two of us deposited any in the bucket.

I love geese. I love their antics, their gregariousness, their individual temperaments. I see myself in their headlong rush to catch up, being too dense to find simple routes through barriers, the way they think they know it all, imagine themselves far bigger and braver than they are.

The woods around us teem with predators: fox, coyote, raccoon. Probably a weasel or two, as well. We'd had the geese two or three years when some creature of the night killed them, first one then the other. After the second strike, I wandered the yard weeping, clutching a white feathered body to my chest. Eventually my arms grew tired. I dug a grave. A friend gave us a concrete goose statue to mark the site.

These wondrously recalcitrant creatures had been my teachers about life, anger, self-centeredness and getting along with others. And now they were dead.

We've been gooseless the last few years and I didn't realize how much I missed the excited trumpet call of a welcome, soft murmurs of grassy contentment, the way a goose always gets the last word. Didn't remember until this spring when we came home from the farmers' supply store with three goslings, two white Chinese and a gray-brown Toulouse. I was in heaven.

They lived in a box in the dining room the first two weeks, then in a corner of the basement until they were big enough to sleep outdoors in a predator-proof cage. During the day we gave them run of a large pen with a goosecote (a doghouse-like structure) for shelter. Then Dave and I returned from an afternoon trip to town to find one of our Chinese geese missing from the pen. We beefed up security, but about a week later, a second goose disappeared. I looked for her, looked for feathers, evidence of (forgive me) fowl play. I saw nothing. Poor feathered thing. I hoped the end was quick.

Dave conducted a more thorough search. He shone a flashlight into the back of the goosecote. "Come look," he called.

I looked. There was my beloved Chinese goose, snow white feathers spattered with blood, body rent asunder. And there, at the back of the cote, caught literally red-handed, a raccoon, staring up with beady eyes.

What to do? Dave put this question to me. I considered the options. Did I want to get a gun, blow the back out of the goosecote and the hell out of the murderer? I could get a pitchfork, impale the hard-hearted creature. Or seal up the door, let it starve to death.

"Let's let him go," I said to Dave. "The woods are full of raccoons. What will we accomplish by killing this one?"

I removed the dead goose from the cote, let the wild creature be. Dug a grave near the concrete statue. The spade turned up a white grub, ugly toothsome creature with a grey butt, orange-yellow face and legs. I focused my anger on that grub, held it back, threw it to the banty chicks temporarily housed in the basement. They looked askance at it until the biggest of them pecked at it, found it to his liking, chawed it down.

Even in death, geese teach me about dealing with loss: mourn what is taken, give focus to anger, let go resentment and revenge, honor the departed, allow life to feed life, learn that to love is to risk loss. Know it's worth it.

Bryn Marlow lives in Indiana on a 1930s farmstead with his husband Dave who mopes about the house saying, "I can't stop thinking about that poor grub." This letter appeared in the August issue of The Community Letter. Photo credit: Rocket Ship, flickr.com

THE WONDER OF AWARENESS

I am not one to talk about awareness. Not when I am surprised every mid-April to learn income taxes are due. But I do have moments of lucidity when something rivets my attention. The threat of imminent death, for example. Or immanent sex. Sometimes, too, quiet moments of reflection heighten my awareness.

Small wonder, then, that I was feeling especially aware this past Thursday while sitting in the hospital waiting room outside the cardiologist’s office alongside the sexiest man I know.

Two weeks ago, on the day my husband Dave retired after 24 years at this same hospital, he went to see his doctor about recurrent chest pain. A treadmill stress test uncovered some abnormality. He was referred to this cardiologist. He was told to arrive 20 minutes before the appointment to fill out paperwork.

I took the afternoon off work so I could accompany him. I was late. Dave already had the pickup running when I pulled in the drive. I jumped in and we sped off, sped down the country roads, silence heavy between us.

We arrive at the office only three minutes late. I breathe a sigh of relief. The “paperwork” amounts to three questions the receptionist puts to him in rapid succession. I’m not listening. My eyes are on the man next to us. Slim-bodied and a little shorter than Dave’s 5'-7", thick silver hair cascades over his shoulders and part way down his back. He wears a long-sleeved pink dress shirt and jeans, huge belt buckle, shoes of Italian leather. I keep looking at him, stealing glances. As we seat ourselves in the waiting room for nearly an hour-long wait, I ask Dave, “Do you think that man is gay?”

He knows who I’m talking about. “The man at the counter? What makes you think so?”

“He’s violating social expectaions.”

“How so?”

“He has long long hair. He’s slim and trim. He was telling the receptionist he watches what he eats. He’s wearing pink.”

“Hmm.” Unlike me, Dave is slow to leap to conclusions about people’s sexual orientation.

“This is Indiana,” I say. “Chances are good.”

“Hmm.”

Silence. Then I stare at my husband.

“What,” he says. He knows I’m up to something.

“Want to break some social expectations?”

“Not exactly.”

“You already are,” I say. “You’re sitting too close to another man. You’re thin. You take care of yourself. You look years younger than your actual age. But I could help you bust a few more.”

He gives me a look.

“Bob Wallace?” A woman’s voice. The man in a wheelchair near us jerks his head up. His daughter has stepped out for a moment, however, and isn’t here to push his wheelchair. The nurse tells him she’ll call him again in a few minutes. She does. Daughter has yet to return. More waiting. Third time’s the charm for Bob.

I’m about to pick up an issue of Angina, sole magazine in the wall rack, when Dave’s name is called.

All the cardiologists here are top-notch. Asked which one he preferred, Dave chose the cutest of the bunch. He has good taste in men, my husband. This doctor has a full head of close-cropped dark hair shading to gray, gray-blue eyes, dark eyebrows, a classic profile, compact muscled body.

Doesn’t hurt that he delivers good news. The abnormality in the stress test probably indicates nothing. Dave has none of the risk factors for coronary heart disease, except that he is male and over 50. The physician recommends a low-level dosage of medication to regulate blood pressure, keep the heart from beating too fast.

“Come see me again in a month.”

Hoo yah.

+ + +

Our mood is upbeat as we leave the hospital to run errands en route home. First stop, the expensive grocery store for a few items the cut-rate shop doesn’t carry. Whilst I flip thru a magazine on raising chickens, Dave leafs through a photo collection of the royal wedding. How very gay we are, I think. Here I am looking at cocks while he’s checking out the queens.

Several minutes later Dave gives me a guilty glance. “I know I’m taking a lot of time,” he says, “but I’m enjoying this.”

I tell him not to hurry. I am aware of how little time we have together, any of us, how sweet our shared moments. Attentiveness offers this gift: it reveals the wonder in the everyday.

As we pull out of the parking lot Dave thumps the steering wheel, “Man, I like living with you!”

“And I with you.” I reach over and lay my hand on his thigh. Warm sunshine glints through the open window. A small black jumping spider edges along the windshield wiper. A nearby cardinal sings, “Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty!”

An edited version of this essay appeared in the July issue of the Community Letter.

WE'RE NOT THERE ANYMORE

My husband Dave very recently retired after 24 years as chaplain with hospice. He looks forward to having time for creative pursuits. Yet even as he says hello to his creative self, he says goodbye to position and daily routine, patient contact and serving as part of a hospice team. He is defined by the space he no longer occupies.

Dave's last day at work was Friday. He left at 3:00, headed for a 3:15 doctor's appointment regarding his heart. "This is not how I envisioned starting my retirement," he said. He's been feeling tightness and sharp jabbing pains in his chest—angina pectoris.

And so we are at the hospital. He's here for tests. I'm here for him. I feel a pang when I look at this man I adore, when I place a hand on his defined pecs, know I love him, fear losing him. I want to hear that all is well, that this pain is perhaps the result of stress and major life transition.

Today Dave will undertake a treadmill stress test with radioactive dye coursing through his system. Just now he is in line for a blood draw when the man behind him engages him in conversation. This fellow had a heart transplant three years ago. Doctors had given him 10 months to live without the transplant, 10 years with it. He opted to pursue treatment.

"I used to weigh 430 pounds," he tells Dave. "I hated shopping for clothes. I felt like I was buying a couch cover when I bought a pair of pants." Before his heart transplant he lost 60 pounds and had bariatric surgery. He's now down to 180 pounds and says he is doing very well, feels great.

Dave says hearing this man's story helps him put his own troubles in perspective. "I realize I'm worried about my condition and there are people who face far greater challenges than I do."

What I hear is how we are defined in part by the space we no longer occupy. This man once weighed 250 pounds more than he does now, and he readily shares this information with a stranger. Part of who he is now is what he does not have. He no longer has the heart he was born with. He no longer has 250 pounds that were once a part of him. These losses allow him to live and to live more fully, but that doesn't mean that he's forgotten about them or no longer thinks about them. In an intangible, invisible way they are a part of who he is.

Dave and I later stand at the radiology counter. An elderly woman comes out of the waiting room, looks about, looks bewildered. The receptionist turns her attention from us to the woman.

"They wheeled your husband down to Area 2. You were on the phone so I didn't interrupt you. Go down this hallway to the desk in Area 2 and they'll tell you where he is."

The woman nods and steps away, then turns back. "When you've been married to a man for 60 years, you miss him when he's not around."

Dave says he hears this as a need to talk, invitation to dialogue, plea for help. I hear a comment about loss, about self-definition, about defining oneself by what or who is not there—or here.

I gauge such encounters through the screen or filter of my own experience. Who am I? I am who I am not; I am the space I no longer occupy. I am the father whose children are lost to him, whose children choose to have nothing to do with him. I am the father whose eldest son at age 10 said, "Dad, I don't want to see or talk to you again." I am the father whose twin sons when they turned 14, obtained a restraining order to put a stop to our visitation together. At issue: my being gay. My being an openly affirming gay man. My being a gay man with the temerity to believe I'm not going to hell for being who I am.

I define myself in part by the space I do not occupy, by the children who are lost to me. By the heart space that is empty, the echo I hear when I call my sons' names. Is this me, the un-father, not-father, used-to-be father? Yes, part of who I am is who I am not. But I sometimes wonder if I spend too much time looking at the empty half of the glass. Still, to be human is to experience loss.

The stress test over, we go to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled. The woman in line behind us says she's been up since 3:00 this morning. Her husband is in the hospital with an unknown heart condition. She received a middle-of-the-night call from the nursing staff suggesting she come sit with him. None of their three children could join her. She's having to go it alone.

"I don't know what I will do if something happens to him," she says. "We're barely making it on two incomes now."

Who will she be when her husband dies? How will she handle a new definition of self when it smacks her in the face? How does any of us handle loss? We adapt, we cope. We grieve. We move on, we get stuck. We do the best we can, the best we know how. We rely on each other. We tell our stories. To anyone who will listen. This is part of being human, too.

Later this month, come Pride Day, I'll be thinking of this as I celebrate us as a people of courage and spirit, as I listen to the stories told of who we are, where we've come from, how we define ourselves. We are who we are—and also who we are not.

This essay appeared in the June issue of The Community Letter.

CAPTAIN JELL-O RIDES AGAIN

I don't think I was born to my parents at all. I think they opened a box of lime-flavored Jell-O, ripped the top off the brown packet inside, poured the powdery contents into a bowl, stirred in boiling water and ice cubes, and–voila!–there I was. Ready to be poured into a waiting mold. All my life I've let others define my boundaries; decide what shape I am to fill.

On the other hand, I'm convinced my friend Bill began life as a hawthorn tree. His parents planted him in the good earth, watched their sapling son grow tall, strong and iron-willed. Like the sharp-spiked hawthorn, Bill can be worse than prickly if you get too close. Grab him the wrong way and you'll be sorry.

Bill seems to have an inborn ability to summon boundaries. Something comes up automatically in him, some self-protective mechanism which I totally lack. He swells up like the puff adder who when threatened pretends to be a cobra. Mess with him or those he loves and you're in for a world of trouble.

Mess with me and I probably won't even notice. Or if I do, I'll tell myself I deserve whatever ill treatment comes my way. I am the puffball. Threaten me and I just sit there. Step on me and I emit a little gasp and spew green spores into the air.

Growing up, I didn't know I was gay. Didn't know the meaning of the word. Didn't know there was a word to describe who I was inside. Knew I was different; couldn't tell you how. Knew that difference was wrong. Knew I was somehow flawed, disordered down deep inside, sinful, wrong. All this without ever learning there was a term to describe me, without learning there were others like me, that who I was had validity in and of itself.

Instead, I picked up on the message that who I was inside was worthless. That if I were to find acceptance and place in the world, it would be granted me to the extent I made my mother happy, to the extent I followed religious teaching, to the extent I paid attention in school and followed the rules.

I grew adept at molding myself into the exact shape of others' expectations. My parents wanted an obedient cheerful child. Voila. The church wanted a good boy, one who told his friends about Jesus, who memorized Bible verses and volunteered time and energy. Voila. Teacher wanted answers, homework done, legible handwriting, no lip. Voila.

Later I met the demands of professor, employer, girlfriend, fiancée, wife with similar aplomb. I look back now and shudder to remember my boss praise me with, "You have a real knack for knowing what I want." Voila. That's how I survived in a world where I felt nobody would want me if they really knew who I am. Given a whiff of your expectations, I'd mold myself to them. Captain Jell-O rides again!

I wish I could say coming out changed all this. My mother would probably say so. She experienced my coming out as a slap in her face. To me, in coming out I signaled I would no longer kowtow to what and who others wanted me to be. At least in this one area I would claim my right to exist. I would claim my own life. I would live into it. My announcement met with something less than widespread acclaim.

"Bastard," said family. "Not here you won't."

"Fired," said employer. "Not here you won't."

"Reprobate," said church. "Not here you won't."

"Betrayer," said wife. "Not here you won't."

Suddenly I was running naked through a forest of hawthorn trees. Bloody business, that. Some of the puncture wounds are still tender, 16 years later.

I have not altogether broken with the past; coming out did not reshape me into an entirely new person. I'm still beset with Jell-O-like tendencies. What's changed for me is that I now ride though life with greater awareness of when and how I'm shaping myself into another's mold. Sometimes I make conscious choices to shape myself this way or that; sometimes I refuse to bend and flex. Sometimes only afterwards do I say, "Gosh, how very Captain Jell-O of me!" I then resolve to be on the alert, watch for it the next time. I forgive myself and move on.

I'll never be a hawthorn tree. It's not my nature. And why be something I'm not? I'm proud of myself those times I ask this same question when I feel the urge to take up my Captain Jell-O cape and ooze to the rescue.

This essay appeared in the May issue of The Community Letter.

SOMETIMES THE WAY OUT IS IN

What raises your hackles may not even ruffle my feathers. We're all different. But we share this: there are times when personal growth requires we face our fears and step into them.

A month back, my husband scared himself when he seriously considered attending a weekend quilting class. He spent long years seeking to squelch his creativity. Since coming out 15 years ago, he has sought to nourish this aspect of self. He has taught himself to sew and quilt. The opportunity to receive formal instruction appealed to him, but he resisted. He would be the only man there, feel out of place, obvious, in the spotlight. He put off making a decision until after the registration deadline had passed. Whew.

Me, I faced fear recently when I signed up for a 10-week intensive writing class with two female instructors. I felt energized by this opportunity. I kept talking about it to my husband and to anyone else who would listen. I had big plans. Was going to do great work. Dive into scary places. Write into my vulnerable spots. Just you watch. Can't wait for the course to begin. Bring it on.

I suspect my husband heard my nervous energy for what it was. When I get afraid I can get verbose. This helps me pretend I feel more confident than I do. Behind all the words, I was afraid I would be shown up, fall flat on my face, have nothing to say, once again be outed as an incompetent blowhard.

That first day of class a nighttime dream woke me up to what was going on. I pay attention to nighttime dreams. I find them instructive. They do an end run around my conscious mind, offer me a peek into my inner life. May I relate this one?

I enter a small one-story house. Along with two other men I get on an elevator that will take us eight floors below ground level. Before we even press the "down" button, the floor of the elevator begins to shake and tilt.

"I don't trust this!" I shout. I fling myself up onto the half-wall that surrounds the elevator shaft. My companions follow suit. The bottom of the elevator drops away; my stomach goes with it. A black hole gapes below us. We three belly-straddle the wall; our feet dangle over the abyss. I feel panic, intense fear.

We worm our way to relative safety on the floor. Two women enter.

"Mind the hole!" I yell, even as one of them steps right onto the emptiness, walks across to us.

"We know the hole there," she says.

I awaken, feeling a mix of fear and relief. Respect, too, for what dreams can reveal. I don't know what you make of it, but I see this: Here I am, first day of a writing class with two female instructors and the opportunity to go down deep within, and I dream of a house with a downward passage and two women who safely navigate the abyss.

Message to self: I may be prating on about how excited I am to plumb the depths, but there's a threefold part of me that's scrambling to stay safe, prefers playing the worm to plunging in. I'm running scared. Afraid I won't be good enough, won't have anything to say, won't like what I do have to say. I fear what I might learn about myself, that I may have to act on it.

Message to self: there's also a two-part feminine energy within me that knows this interior landscape, can handle it. Now there's a confidence booster.

Out of the dream comes this way forward: rather than talk about my big plans, I can face my fears. Rather than worm-crawl the perimeter, I can run at what scares me, jump in, plunge 80 feet down, see what happens before I hit bottom. I can start writing. Just do it.

And I do. I write into what absolutely scares the bejabbers out of me. I do good personal work, learn more than I want to about myself. Find it's true, what I've been told: "Write into your deepest fears; that's where the energy is."

The sign-up date had passed, but my husband called anyway. Any chance he could still sign up for the quilting class?

"Love to have you," she said.

He went. This week he finished piecing together a queen-size quilt top in the shoofly pattern, a traditional Amish design. Now begins the difficult work of hand quilting the whole thing. One step, one stitch at a time, he tells me. One leap, one headlong plunge into fear.

^{This essay appeared in The Community Letter, April 2011}

URHO AND ME: TWO PEAS IN A POD? TWO GRASSHOPPERS ON A STICK?

Every March 16 when I was a teen, my mother and I went all out. We strung streamers in Nile green and royal purple from doorways. We feasted on liver pudding, cranberry whip and other Finnish delicacies. We exchanged homemade greeting cards. We donned purple and green ribbons; clothing in that color combination was hard to come by in the 1970s. I made posters for the wall, grasshoppers holding signs that read, “Hoppy St. Urhoʼs Day.ˮ

I carried my celebrations over to school. Shoving my Finnish heritage in the face of anyone who stood near was one way I tried to explain myself. I knew I was not like others; St. Urhoʼs Day gave me opportunity to celebrate my being different, to pretend this quality was rooted in my ethnic heritage. The rest of the time, I used being the best-ever church boy as lid and lever to repress any hint that I was attracted to the “wrongˮ gender. I did not wish to know this about myself.

At the Christian college I attended I roomed with a man who was as rabidly Swiss as I was Finnish. We got into a knock-down-drag-out wrestling match when he stole my Finnish flag. On March 16 I made a big poster, “Proud to be Finnish,ˮ and plastered it over his bed.

When my children were born, I often sang them the Finnish lullaby my mother sang to me. Theyʼd have to get used to having a father who was not run-of-the-mill. I hoped theyʼd like liver. And church. My wife and I took them to Sunday School, Sunday services, Wednesday night prayer meetings and more.

From my earliest years, religion had helped me make sense of life, of who I was, where I was headed. My religious faith and Finnish heritage were part of me, blood and bone.

No one was more surprised than me when I came out in middle age, in mid-marriage, in the midst of the religious, conservative rural Midwest. Identifying as gay helped me understand why I had felt so different all my life. This was insight of a depth not offered by my ethnic background or religious upbringing.

Who was I? How was I to know? One after another, I watched the touchstones of my life topple.

Down went my identity as husband, every-day father to my children, church leader, church member, employed professional, good son, beloved brother, tacit believer in the legal system, qualified renter, upstanding citizen, acceptable person.

I came to see myself in new ways, as a member of an oppressed minority, part of a creative wellspring of people who as long as life have lived on the fringe, outside the pale, and added to the richness and texture of society. This on a good day. Some mornings I swallowed whole the message that I was outcast, other, a worthless piece of crap, repulsive, dirty, loser, liar, sick-o, sinner, a threat to my children.

Talk about identity crisis.

Who am I, anyway? Who are you? Are we all and only what and who we say we are, who others tell us we are? What comprises our identity? I live these questions every day—Sundays, Wednesday nights and March 16 included.

I never thought Iʼd identity as anything other than Christian, never dreamed Iʼd live outside the churchʼs embrace, yet I have developed a deep mistrust of organized religion. I thought my Finnish roots would always be front and center. But itʼs been a long time since I made liver pudding, waved the white flag with the light blue cross, bought another grasshopper figurine.

According to legend, St. Urho drove the grasshoppers out of the vineyards of Finland, saving the grape harvest and securing a name for himself. In Menaga, Minnesota stands a huge statue of the fearsome saint, a grasshopper speared on his pitchfork. I have often enough made pilgrimage there. The town holds an annual St. Urhoʼs Day festival parade. Some participants dress up like the saint; others go as grasshoppers.

Saint Urhoʼs story parallels that of Patrick, who reputedly drove the snakes out of Ireland, and for good reason. Folks in northern Minnesota dreamed up the legend of St. Urho as a kind of spoof. Why should the Irish have all the fun? The story caught on—any excuse for a party, for ethnic pride, for another mid-March celebration in a cold climate.

Even as Iʼm wearing my purple and green sweater this March 16, Iʼll wonder to what degree St. Urho and I are constituted of the same stuff. How real are we? How useful the identities we attach to ourselves? How long-lasting?

This essay appeared in The Community Letter, March 2011

THE POWER OF ONE

By the time I met him, Orville had mellowed. Years back he'd had a flash pot temper that went off without warning. As a child, my husband Dave ran scared of his dad's anger, always kept his guard up.

Orville was in his mid-80s when Dave came out. "You're my son. You're always welcome here," Orville told him. "Just don't bring any of your friends around."

At the time I counted myself one of Dave's friends. He and I had formed a mutual-survival pact. We'd agreed to companion each other through the coming out process, shared a six-month lease on an apartment.

Despite his dad's instructions, Dave soon invited me to accompany him on one of his regular trips to visit his father. I agreed to ride along. "He may not invite you in," Dave said. Fine by me. I'd heard enough stories about the old man's temper. I'd sit in the car, no problem.

To my surprise, Orville did invite me into the double-wide trailer house straightway. To my delight, he never looked back. He always welcomed me. I'd ask him about the good ol' days; I'd laugh at his jokes. He laughed at mine. He could hear the pitch of my voice easier than Dave's; I became the designated megaphone during regular visits to the house and later, the nursing home.

Dave's siblings had a harder time with his coming out than did their dad. I think they didn't know what to do with him (let alone me) and preferred to keep their distance.

Many a time Dave and I wished Orville would put his foot down, assert in his role as patriarch, "We are a family and no member of this family will be excluded from family gatherings." He never spoke these words; I think everyone involved lost something as a result. Only now after his death at age 97 have we taken tentative steps towards acting as a coherent family unit. I wish he were here to see it. I wish he had used his influence to make it happen.

In small ways and large we all of us exert influence on the world 'round. Even when that world falls apart, we may have more influence than we know.

When Dave came out, his world opened in many new ways. At the same time, the world his wife had been accustomed to turned suddenly on its head. Family dynamics shifted in the wake of their divorce. Their three adult children muddled through as best they could, provided support to one or both parents as they were willing and able. Holidays were celebrated in duplicate; a daughter's wedding gave rise to some tense moments.

Who knows how long this state of affairs might have continued. With plans underway for yet another daughter's wedding, Dave's former wife decided to take action. "We are going to be a family and present a unified front to the world," she said. She was as good as her word. She began by inviting Dave out for a meal to talk matters over. During their conversation her cell phone jangled. It was one of the kids calling to ask how she was doing.

"Your father and I are on a date," she said. Well. That news lit up the family hotline in nothing flat. Their parents were talking. And laughing together. Mom must be serious about being one family.

She was.

Leading by example, she enfolded both Dave and me into the wider family. We hugged, discussed wedding particulars, hung decorations together. We stood side by side in the receiving line. In the several years since, this one family has celebrated holidays and important events together, welcomed the arrival of two grandchildren, weathered job losses, medical issues and moves—the stuff of life, and for all of us now, the stuff of family life.

This past December I looked at the faces lit by the Christmas tree and thought, those kids' mother gave them back their parents. She gave me a family. What a gift.

My former wife and I took a different tack. Upon my coming out we parted ways and have remained east and west ever since. She found solace and refuge in a system of religious beliefs that left no room for a continuing relationship with me. Our three sons soon followed in their mother's footsteps. Now adults, they remain estranged from me.

Amazing, the power, the potential, of one. Of anyone. Of you, of me. And what shall we do with our power? Squelch it? Use it to build up or to tear down? Ours is the weighty responsibility—and amazing power—to choose.

This essay appeared in The Community Letter, February 2011