MUNI underground photo taken from Lucy's perspective in 2007

On this morning’s MUNI adventure to take Lucy to her summer day camp, we took the underground and then a bus.  She’s been carrying her very precious prized small tooth fairy pillow with her because she has a loose tooth and wants to have the pillow with her at camp in case the tooth falls out at camp.

While we were stepping off the underground, she accidentally dropped the small pillow and I watched it fall towards the gap between the train and the platform.  I held my breath and wondered how we’d ever replace it. Just as it almost fell into the gap and under the train, a small threshhold popped out, at floor level, between the train and the platform, and caught the pillow.

I picked up the pillow and we walked towards the stairs to leave the station.  While we were walking towards the stairs, Lucy said, “I was so scared my body and head were shaky inside and then I was so glad I didn’t lose my pillow but my insides were still shaky.”  I said, “That’s adrenaline, it’s something your body creates when you’re scared or excited, and then you might be relieved and let out a big breath and said, Whew! and still feel the adrenaline.”  Lucy said, “I felt my body feel the Whew! but I didn’t say it, my body said Whew to itself and it still feels it.”

Can’t make this stuff up.

Sunny day outside the Federal building

As Moya and I walked to the Federal Building for the Prop 8 closing arguments yesterday (full transcript), I remembered all the times we’d walked that way to take Lucy to preschool, as well as the times when the marriage cases were before the California Supreme Court and we’d had to wade through Prop 8 supporters and opponents to get into the state building to take Lucy to preschool.

We entered the Federal building, took off our shoes, removed our laptops, got through security, and went to wait for an elevator to take us to the 19th floor where we planned to watch the arguments in the overflow room.  We were told that the overflow room was already full. No problem, we’ll just wait, I thought.

After we got through security we saw a good friend of ours who works in the building but couldn’t stop to chat much because we needed to get in line for the overflow room.  We waited for the elevator and noticed that one of the men waiting with us looked familiar (it was David Boies).  He was talking with a pregnant woman and said to her, “we have mostly friends here today.”

We got up to the 19th floor and got to the back of a line of approximately 20-30 people who were waiting for a space in the overflow room.  Moya chatted with the man standing in line behind us while I sat on the floor and configured apps on my gadgets.  At some point Moya mentioned Maggie Gallagher and I said something about how I’d like to invite Maggie over for a cocktail so she could see how much our family is more like hers than different, how our marriage isn’t threatening anything or anyone, and how our daughter is thriving and happy and healthy.  Eventually a woman came by and counted the people in line.  By then there were 70 or 80 people in line and I stood up to be counted and then chatted with Moya and the man who was behind us in line.  He talked about his high school son and his daughter in college and mentioned he lives in Southern California and that we should come visit sometime.

The first overflow room was full.  A second overflow room was opened up and we were counted as we walked in (I was number 30).  As we were walking past framed old photos, the man behind us in line mentioned the photos and that he’d been here in January for two weeks for the Prop 8 trial.  As we waited to walk into the overflow room I asked him what kind of work he did that allowed him 2 weeks off to fly up to San Francisco and watch a trial.  He leaned towards me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, with a smile, “I’m your enemy.” I thought he was being sarcastic and joking.  I laughed.  We continued some conversation about how people on both sides of Prop 8 have more in common than they might think.

Apparently he had a similar conversation in January during the Prop 8 trial, about the photos in the wall, about commonalities amongst people on both sides of Prop 8.  Davina Kotulski wrote, on January 22, 2010:

I started the morning with gulping down my latte. While I was doing this and admiring the historic photos of San Francisco on the 19th floor in the federal building, I struck up a conversation with the other person in the hallway. It turned out that I was talking to Brian Woodward from the California Family Council. We talked about how we could find our commonalities and exchanged business cards.

My view from the 2nd row

When we got into the overflow room, we felt lucky that we got a seat in the second row behind a large screen.  There were smaller screens on tables with chairs and large screens in front of rows of benches.  I checked Twitter and noticed people commenting about Maureen Dowd, in sunglasses and holding a Starbucks cup, sitting in the back of the other overflow room.  Brian and Moya and I were chitchatting and checking our devices before the Ted Olson’s closing argument began.  Olson was followed by Terry Stewart, attorney for City/County of San Francisco, and then the attorney for the governor and attorney for the attorney general were given time.  I loved that the state attorneys simply stood up and waived their time and said nothing in defense of Prop 8.

Then Judge Walker went over some marriage application forms with Claude Kolm representing the Alameda County Clerk Recorder.  I was never really sure why Alameda County was represented.  Judge Walker provided some comic relief when he said (from pages 68-69 of the transcript):

We didn’t check Alameda County, but just this morning checked San Francisco, Orange County and Imperial County. It appears on applications for marriage licenses that in San Francisco there is a box for groom, there is a box for bride and that’s labeled optional.

And in Orange County (sic) there is a bullet point for groom, a bullet point for bride, and one labeled none.
(Laughter.) And I think the same is true in Orange County (sic). And my understanding, although I personally didn’t go through the exercise, in the Orange County application, which you can apply for a marriage license online, if you fill out, say, groom and then fill out the data and then punch next, which would call up the other party, you can put in groom again. It doesn’t give you an error message.

return ticket for overflow courtroom

The morning session was done and we claimed a spot on a bench near a power outlet for later so we could re-energize MacBooks and Blackberry and Droid and iPhone after lunch.  As we left the overflow room for lunch we were handed a yellow ticket marked with an 8 to get back in.  Our friend Ed had brought us some delicious sandwiches.  A college friend of Moya’s, Merlin Nygren, met us to have lunch.  We tramped down 9 flights of stairs (because there were lines for the elevators) to the 10th floor  cafeteria to have lunch.

Moya’s college friend works in the building and knows his way around so he helped us find the right elevator bank to get back to the 19th floor.  The elevator doors closed.  When they opened again, Cleve Jones and Dustin Lance Black, among others, got on.  We mentioned to Cleve that we really appreciated his appearance at Lucy’s school‘s civil rights assembly last month, and I noticed that Dustin Lance Black is way cuter in person than on-screen.

While scanning a twitter list of people writing about the Prop 8 trial, I noticed there a lot of snark and sarcasm from both sides.  Most people, on either side, myself included, wrote a lot of dehumanizing and disrespectful commentary about each other.  We are all, after all, human, and deserving of basic rights and respects.  I wonder if the communities of No on Prop 8 and Yes on Prop 8, as well as our society as a whole, might be helped with some sort of  truth and reconciliation hearings regarding rights and opinions and harm and so on.

I also noticed that the Alliance Defense Fund had posted a Bible verse on Twitter, just after lunch, that reminded me of being told “I’m your enemy.”  The Yes on 8 people also blogged that morning at 8:18am and described Ted Olson as their nemesis. Why are these people so interested in battle and fighting and enemies instead of extending grace and compassion and bridging divides and increasing understanding?  When I went to grab a screenshot of the ADF’s tweet, I noticed that the Alliance Defense Fund has blocked me.  I’m still snarky.  I’m not sure if I’m honored by their block or not.

My high school friend Jeff Koertzen showed up and sat behind us for the afternoon, providing peanut gallery comic relief.  Thanks, Jeff!

The afternoon started with Charles Cooper’s closing argument.  During his argument he said. “Our submission, obviously, is that sexual orientation is not an immutable trait, that is an accident of — an accident of birth” (page 121 of the transcript).  He said, “religions that condemn homosexual conduct also teach love of gays and lesbians.” (can someone actually condemn and love? Condemn is often about disgust)  He discussed not wanting to invalidate the 18,000 marriages, and even Maggie Gallagher blogged “Cooper fighting hard to protect 18k gay marriages.” I don’t understand how they can hold and defend this conflict of supporting Moya and my marriage (as part of the 18,000) but not supporting other gay and lesbian marriages.

from http://www.prop8case.com/ee.php/blog_archive/cooper_fighting_hard_to_protect_18000_gay_marriages/

Then, finally, there was a short break, Ted Olson gave a rebuttal statement, the overflow room cheered and clapped at the end and we were done.

Moya and Ed and I headed over to Hastings for the press conference.  We ran into Brian, who we’d met that morning, and Moya asked him more about his role and why he was at the trial.  He said he works for the California Family Council — who we know was a major supporter of Prop 8.  We asked if he could point out Andy Pugno.  He said he could introduce us.  I said that Andy Pugno had contributed to harm and damage to my family and families like mine and I didn’t want to meet him.  I also was uncomfortable standing so close to the Yes on 8 people who were coming up to him to talk, asking him to watch their things while they did their press conference.  I realized I don’t really want to be associated with any of those people, just as much as they (or at least they say) don’t want to be associated with me.

Plaintiffs with attorneys Olson and Boies at press conference

Brian is a friendly guy.  He seems conflicted.  We shared stories about our kids and about travel and general chitchat.  He showed me pictures of his kids.  I showed him photos of our kid.  I talked about how religious beliefs in my family convince so many people in my family, and friends from my childhood, to shun me because I’m gay.  He works for an organization that has specifically chosen to fight Moya and my right to be married and define our family.  The organization he works for claims to support California families, but it doesn’t support our family.  His boss, Ron Prentice, said, on August 29, 2008 (coincidentally our daughter’s birthday), “”Same-sex “marriage” is the most radical human experiment yet, putting children at risk and threatening generational stability!”

Brian stayed for the Yes on Prop 8 part of the press conference and then gave me a hug and said goodbye before Ted Olson and David Boies had their press conference.  Reflecting back on what I’d said about Maggie Gallagher, I extended an invitation again to come over for dinner, have a cocktail, and continue our conversation.  He has our contact information if he’d like to keep in touch. I wonder why he couldn’t stay to hear our side.

What divides us as people is always much smaller than what can join us together as a community.

Harriet and Frances in 1992

My grandma’s sister Frances died today. She lived in and near Savannah, where they grew up (she’ll be buried in Bonaventure — such a deep old history in Savannah). Every time I saw Frances, when I was a child, I absolutely adored her. She and my grandma were some of the most fun loving people I knew.  If there is a heaven, I’m sure these two fabulous women are having a rollicking good time together.  You can see it in their eyes.

Lucy's Kindergarten Class

This morning 5 1/2 year old Lucy told me about a kid in her class who told her last week that a woman can’t marry a woman.  Just as she did in preschool and daycare, she said that she told her friend that’s not true because her mommy and momma are married and she was at their wedding and that she knows marriage is between two adults, a woman and a woman, or a woman and a man, or a man and a man.  She said that her friend told her that her parents’ marriage is not legal, and, this morning, she said, “I know you’re married, and it is legal, right?”

I simply said yes, your parents are legally married.  Otherwise, I would’ve answered her with all of the complications that involve lack of equal rights for our family.  Sure, it’s legal here in California, a handful of other states, and a short list of countries.  No, it’s not legal according to our country’s federal government, a long list of other states, and a long list of other countries.

The first time, that I know of, that she ever responded to the question of why she doesn’t have a dad, or the challenge of “a woman can’t marry a woman,” was when she was a toddler in daycare and one of her friends asked her why she doesn’t have a dad.  She was barely 2 years old, if that, and she told her friend “I have a mommy, momma, and wanda, and you have a mommy, daddy, and dog, and you are missing a momma and a wanda and I am missing a daddy and a dog, so everyone’s missing something.”

Sometime last fall or winter, when Moya and I were in Lucy’s classroom, one of her classmates asked us if we were sisters or cousins.  We said, no, we’re married to each other, we aren’t sisters or cousins.  The kid responded with surprise, “no way! Two women can get married?!”  We shrugged and said yes and left it at that.  The kid seemed happy to know it was a possibility.

I’m glad that Lucy’s figured out on her own to stand up for herself and answer questions about her family as though she’s simply reporting on the weather and I hope she always feels that confident about her family.

found in my grandma's 1943 joy of cooking

I happened on this recipe card this morning when looking for a recipe for blondies and it fascinated me because it’s basically a meringue put on top of raw cake batter and then baked with the cake. It was stuck in between pages with yellow cake recipes and that’s my favorite cake.

I love seeing my grandma’s handwriting.  I miss getting a letters from her.  When she was alive she mailed a letter to me every 2-4 weeks.  We sent letters back and forth to each other for 20 years.

Listening to Natalia Paruz in the subway

Last Thursday (April 29) I went on a Subway Music Tour with the energetic fabulous entertaining interesting artist/illustrator Zina Saunders as a part of the Gel conference (on of my favorite conferences).  The Gel conference is basically a 2day summer camp for adults, only it’s in spring.  This year it was a combination of technology, design, community, social consciousness, military, religion, art, music, politics, robots,  inspiration, joy, whimsy, and some friends I hadn’t seen since last year’s Gel conference.

The conference is just 2 days, with choices of activities on the first day (this year I chose the music tour, and last year I went on an underground tunnel tour in Brooklyn) and an intriguing day of live music and presentations on the second day.

Everyone we talked with who plays in the subway mentioned that it’s a good place to rehearse/practice and, hopefully, make money too, though some of the musicians commented on how much they are ignored by all of the people who walk by.  The Ebony Hillbillies performed at the conference on the second day of the conference and said that they use their subway performance times as rehearsal time/space.

Natalia Paruz

Natalia Paruz was studying to be a dancer when she was in an accident that stopped her dance career.  She saw someone playing the musical saw when she was in Austria and asked how to learn to play it.  She was told to buy a saw at a hardware store and figure it out.  She figured it out!  She straps an iPod to her leg which plays backup music through an amp and a speaker while she plays her saw.  Often people think she’s singing and she has to show them that it’s the saw, not her voice.

One of the musicians we chatted with and listened to was Luke Ryan at grand central station.  He pointed to all of the people who walked by without looking at him and diagnosed and identified and stereotyped them and then mused about the commonalities and correlations between people who listen or stop or talk with subway musicians and those who don’t.  Can Hunch figure out what inspires or motivates someone to listen or stop or talk or give money to a subway musician?  Luke mentioned that he’d like to gather together the 30 or so people who pay attention to him every day and have a banquet — figuring that if they could all sit at a table together, he’d easily figure out what they all have in common. That’d be a fantastic dinner party!

While I was on the plane, flying to NYC for this conference, I received an email that my grandma (my dad’s mom) had died.  Within the next day the funeral had been set for Sunday.  I had plans for Saturday and Sunday in NYC with friends.  By Friday I had decided I’d change my plans, change my plane ticket, buy a new plane ticket, reserve a rental car, and go to my grandma’s funeral.

I hadn’t seen her in a long time (I wasn’t as close to her as I was to my other grandma who died last year).  We exchanged cards and photos at Christmas every year.  She was always kind and gentle.  She made a sock monkey for me as a child that I still have and that my 5 1/2 year old daughter now claims as her own.  She spent almost all of her adult life as a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and finally, before she died, a great-great-grandmother.  I loved the huge family gatherings with my dad’s family when I was a kid, with so many cousins and aunts and uncles and chaos and noise and diversity.

Me in tux/ruffles

So I flew home to San Francisco on Saturday (instead of Sunday).  My wife had tickets for the NCLR party that night and left a ticket for me on the counter.  I changed into a tux and a ruffly shirt (in solidarity with Constance McMillen and Ceara Sturgis who were at the party and had suffered discrimination at their high schools due to wearing or wanting to wear a tux).  I checked my wild einstein-curly hair in a mirror and went to find Moya at the party.

My siblings and their spouses and kids

The next morning I put on a black suit and went back to the airport to fly to Portland, Oregon, get a rental car, and drive to the church for the funeral.  All of my aunts and uncles and cousins were there, but my parents weren’t there.  My younger brother read a letter from my dad recanting some sweet stories about my grandma (my dad’s mom).  When my dad was a child, my grandma made him 3 shirts all from the same fabric, so people thought he was always wearing the same shirt, not 3 different shirts that were exactly the same.  After the funeral at the church, there was a drive to a cemetary to bury my grandma, and then a drive back to the church for a meal with everyone.  While sitting at a table with all of my siblings, with relatives and other people stopping by to chat with us, I remembered Luke Ryan’s comment that he’d like to have a banquet table for the 30+ people who stop by every day.  Those 30+ people might not have as much in common as he hopes, or they might.  In a large room in a church with most of my relatives, who I rarely see, I realized we all have our humanity in common, and that’s enough to treat people with graciousness even if they’re nervous around me or ignore me for whatever reason.

Both iBooks and Amazon Kindle because most books aren’t available in every e-reading app.  I like reading books via the kindle app on iPhone/iPad and the iBooks app on iPad — particularly for books I don’t want to own in paper form because I just want to read them, not own the physical book. When standing and riding on public transportation, I can hold on to a pole with one hand, and hold onto iPhone and read a kindle book with the other hand.  I can’t do that with the iPad, it’s too big to hold onto and change pages with one hand.

Twitterrific is the only Twitter iPad app that doesn’t completely annoy me.  I tried the others and hated them because it feels like they don’t make good use of the space available. I wish there was a way to turn off the chirp in Twitterific.  They’ve said they’re working on it.  For now the only way to turn the chirp off is to manually mute  the whole system volume.  I also use Twittelator on iPhone, Twidroid on my Droid, and Twhirl on the Mac.

The WordPress app is okay.  I’d give it a C+ because it doesn’t give me access to all the usual tools and controls over my wordpress blog.  I can’t, for example, change the content in a widget.  I have to go to Safari and login to wordpress.com and then fumble my way through.

WolframAlpha is a fun timesink though it, in general, frustrates me, because it’s hard to find the actual source for any information.

Similarly, The Elements, which takes up a ton of space (almost 2 GB), is a gorgeous way to procrastinate and kill time and remember the beauty of Chemistry (one of my favorite subjects in college).

Numbers and Pages and Keynote have turned out to be super useful for me when I’d like to work on a document on the iPad that I generally keep on a thumbdrive or on one of the computers I use.  I use iWork.com to transfer docs back and forth between iPad and any Mac that I use.  I usually use Word and Excel for docs, but have started using Pages and Numbers more when I know I’ll want to access the docs from iPad.

GoDocs to more easily manage my Google Docs.

I’ve been thinking that I should try using Dropbox instead of the combination of GoDocs, iWork.com, and a thumbdrive.

Evernote because I adore Evernote and hope it never goes away because I’d lose all the bits of fleeting thoughts and random lists that I hold there. I use the Evernote Mac Client app as well as the web site and the iPhone and iPod and Droid Evernote apps. I love the cloud and hope it doesn’t disappear.

I wish that the Epicurious app on iPad and iPhone would sync with the Epicurious web site and keep track of the recipes I have saved or favorited.  Instead, I have saved/favorited recipes on iPhone, iPad, and web site, all in separate lists. There’s no sync’ing in the cloud for Epicurious.  This app works well in landscape mode but is a total mess in portrait mode.  In landscape mode, the ingredients list and recipe instructions display side by side.  In portrait mode, the ingredients list is a dropdown, accessed by tapping on “Ingredients” button, and then the list of ingredients overlays and  covers up the instructions, totally frustrating me if I’m trying to follow instructions and refer to ingredients at the same time.

I’ve tried out the BigOven Lite app but, on startup and while searching, it has photos that move slowly in the background and that makes me feel dizzy.  I can’t concentrate on typing a search term with a moving photo.

I have WeatherBug installed and use it from time to time, but not very often, on the iPad.  I use it daily on my Droid.

Videos for all my iTunes store downloads (plenty!) and Netflix for on-demand viewing. We have Roku in our house and it’s useful to have our Netflix instant queue available on the TV and on the iPad.

For my 5 1/2 year old daughter, who is convinced that the iPad is hers, MagicSketch and TiltHD and Word Magic and Toy Story book and Alice in Wonderland (which she LOVES) and iFOTOFLO (she can type in the word puppy and see endless photos of puppies).

I’ve been trying out Brushes though I’m not even a decent artist or illustrator.  One a recent plane flight where I was feeling all sorts of extreme emotions, I used pogo stylus with Brushes to vent all sorts of stuff in drawings.  It felt good.

When I feel unbalanced, the iPhone app iHandy Level looks fine at 2x on the iPad and provides nonsensical readjustment.

Similarly, Smule Magic Piano, is great fun – particularly for playing a duet with someone else somewhere else in the world.

I use Digits and Calculator XL for calculating.  My daughter likes to play with Digits.

And, finally, there are some apps on my iPad that I haven’t yet used: ABC Player, Shazam, IMDb, and Catan (I’ve been meaning to find time to play this but I rarely have time for games).

My grandma, Lucy, my mom, me in November 2004

She woke up early every morning to make breakfast for me and my siblings.  We had a breakfast menu at our house when I was a kid. Oven pancakes (we called them Finnish pancakes for some reason) and eggs on Mondays, french toast on Tuesdays and Thursdays, pancakes on Wednesdays and Saturdays, dry cereal or oatmeal on Fridays.  Or maybe it was pancakes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, eggs on Fridays, oatmeal on Mondays.  I don’t remember the exact routine, but I remember there was a routine and I loved it.  There was always a jar of sourdough starter in the cupboard and some of it went into the pancake or waffle batter.  They were the yummiest pancakes.  My daughter likes her pancakes with berries in the batter.  I prefer the slim light pancakes my mom used to make.

We had an old orange VW bus that we took on camping trips.  My mom made savory turnovers that were cooked by the heat from the engine in the VW while we drove to wherever we were camping. A hot meal in the car on a roadtrip with ketchup for dipping.

She has four children and she worked diligently as a pharmacist to support our family.  She still works as a pharmacist and her customers and co-workers have always liked her.  On the rare occasion where I’ve talked with one of her co-workers or customers, they unanimously say how helpful and nice she is.  She found different people for childcare for me and my siblings.  I have fleeting memories of a young woman from Kenya who was college student, another woman who spent all of her time painting her toenails and fingernails (which fascinated me), another woman who would sneak outside to smoke, and another woman who brought candy for us (we didn’t eat much candy in our house).  One summer I spent a lot of time at a house where there were a bunch of other kids and a play structure in the backyard.

She plays piano and organ and was often the organist on Sunday at church services.  The organ, in the church I grew up in, was in a loft behind and above the main seating area for services.  I liked the days when she was the organist for the church services because it was easier to draw and play in the loft while she was playing for the service.  If I sat in just the right set in the loft then she couldn’t see me and I could work on solving the rubik’s cube in my pocket or draw pictures in a notebook.

We didn’t have much money when I was a child. We grew a lot of our own food on our small farm and we picked fruit on other farms, bringing it home in huge buckets and boxes to preserve it.  I never enjoyed these summer tasks very much but sometimes we’d have something to listen to or stories to tell while we tipped and snapped a 5-gallon bucket of green beans for canning.  Sometimes there were quarters, as a reward, at the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket of fruit or vegetables that we were prepping and preserving.

We bought everything on sale and in thrift stores.  I don’t remember her ever being impatient with me when I spent forever trying to find just the right clothes at a thrift store or on a sale rack.

She encouraged all of us to pursue our academic best and I always knew I was going to college because of her.  It surprised me when I found out that some of my friends weren’t as confident that they were going to college.  I thought everyone’s parents enforced the belief that you will go to college.

I believed I could learn and do anything because of her.  I didn’t feel limited just because I was a girl, like so many other girls did.

She gave me a lot of rewards and appreciation when I got good grades.  She supported me when I wanted to skip 3rd grade in grade school because I was bored and unchallenged in 2nd grade. She has, in recent years, fondly recanted the story of the petition letter I asked all the adults in the school to sign (including the janitor) to let me skip 3rd grade.  She looked out for me and made sure I got what I needed in school.

Most evenings, after dinner, she would read a chapter of a book to our whole family.  We would sit in the living room (I remember often curling up on the floor with a pillow behind the recliner and closing my eyes so I could see the story in my mind) while she read.

She took me to our town library often and let me check out as many books as I wanted.  I thought everyone’s parents took them to the library every week.  I didn’t know it was her way of supporting and encouraging me.

She bought tickets for a variety of plays, musicals, talks about science and nature, and I can still feel the tiredness of my alive brain after spending an evening in an auditorium learning about animals and then seeing animals live on the stage.

She supported my love of music and drove me to/from piano lessons, violin lessons, youth symphony practice, showed up for all concerts and recitals, took me to classical music concerts which encouraged my interest in and love for music, and sometimes took me out for ice cream, as a treat, after a concert or recital.

She sewed and made dresses and other clothes for me as a child.  I loved ruffles and lace and I thought the dresses she made were the prettiest.  She taught me how to sew and I made a lot of my own clothes.  She taught me how to cook and supported all of my cooking and baking efforts.  She helped organize a 4-H club so that I could enter the county fair and create and make and bake and can and preserve all sorts of things that got me piles of blue and red and purple ribbons.

She saved everything.  She was an expert in reusing and recycling.  Plastic milk jugs were reused for a homemade irrigation system in our multiple aboveground bins where she grew vegetables.  They were also used as homemade slug traps.

When I was 10/11/12 years old, I worked as a strawberry picker in June each year.  The strawberry field where I worked was over the hill from our farm.  She made lunch for me, froze a container of juice, and packed it all in a bag.  The frozen juice kept my lunch cold and the juice defrosted (in the sun) by lunchtime.  I hated the way the strawberries semi-permanently stained my hands and she helped me find ways to get the stain off my fingers.

In the summer of 1979, my family took a trip to San Francisco to see the King Tut exhibit, and, on that trip, we went to the Exploratorium. I had brought money with me for souvenirs and saw a book I wanted at the store at the Exploratorium (The Book of Think, published in 1976).  I had already spent some of my money and didn’t have enough m0ney to buy the book. I’m pretty sure I whined and begged for more money so I could buy it. I wanted that book so bad.  Months later, on Christmas, I opened a gift from my parents, and it was that book.  That was one of my absolute favorite presents when I was a child.

She found camps for us to attend in the summer, sleepovers outside in a grassy field, sleepover camps for a week or two, and my elementary school friends have told me that they thought my mom put on the best birthday parties.

She had a cookbook with pages of cakes in different shapes.  On my birthday I would choose which cake I wanted and she would bake and make it.  Jelly bean eyes, licorice whiskers, red hot buttons, silver button decorations on a bunny cake for one of my birthdays.  A butterfly with a big wingspan for another birthday.

She taught me about volunteering for people who need help.  I don’t think I ever knew why we went to this girl’s house regularly.  In my memory, the little girl couldn’t walk and my mom would help massage and move her limbs.  We often sorted and organized food into bags around holidays. I was always aware that she gave money to people who needed it even though we, as far as I knew, didn’t have much money.

She still does a lot to help people around the world, volunteering her time in various countries and cities to teach people, provide needed care services, and share her love of her religious beliefs.

I imagine it wasn’t, and probably still isn’t, particularly easy for her, and I love the goodness she holds in herself and shares with others.

make pancakes for our daughter

wake up our daughter

make lunch and pack it in our daughter’s lunch box/bag

remind our daughter to finish eating her breakfast

take a shower

get dressed

look in mirror (sometimes I forget about this part)

remind our daughter to get dressed and stop reading books and playing with toys

brush our daughter’s hair and continue reminding her to get ready

point to the clock and say, “you only have 5 minutes left before we’re leaving for school!”

check email/facebook/twitter in those 5 minutes

walk daughter to school (unless my wife drops her off)

sometimes stay at her school for their “morning circle” of all the kids and teachers and staff

go to work via public transportation and/or walking

do work that makes money and pays taxes

txt my wife throughout the day

chat with my friends at the office

try not to forget to eat lunch

remember to return the library books

wonder what we can make for dinner and try to remember what’s in the fridge

do work that makes money and pays taxes

pickup daughter from school (unless my wife picks her up)

make dinner and cocktails

maybe, just maybe, get a chance to chat with my wife in between requests from our daughter

make a bath for our daughter and help her get ready for bed

catchup on email/facebook/twitter while she’s in the bath

fold laundry while she’s in the bath

play piano

read books to our daughter

my wife helps our daughter get to sleep at night

read a book, read various news sites, watch a movie, make food for the next day, make lists like this one

kiss my wife

sleep

repeat

(In previous post there’s the text of an email sent to me from a pastor of a church which references the church not affirming a “homosexual lifestyle”)