Part 1 Chapter 2

My new home was a wonderland. It sat on a hill over looking a valley nested in fragrant pine and eucalyptus trees. The neighborhood was rural; the street twisted and turned sprinkling houses here and there as you rose to the top. There were no street lights, no airplanes flying overhead and you could barely hear whether your neighbors were home. The yards were well manicured with California Native flowers and shrubs. The backdrop for this neighborhood was a private school for girls on the other side of the hill and a water shed that cradled the valley. Wild animals could be heard and seen, creeks gurgled, blackberry bushes fenced the creeks and the woods that framed this scene seemed never ending. For a child that had never really seen so much life from living in a concrete cave this was something straight out of a fairy tale. Deers, birds, bob cats, vultures, wild turkey, lizards, frogs…all new to me and all spectacular.

The neighborhood families all had children of various ages. Next door to me was my first friend. He was not as frightened of people as I was, but he was most definitely shy. One year my senior and with a set of monkey bars in his yard, he was my new mate. His thick black hair always attempting to wisp over his peering blue eyes revealed a boy who was kind and curious. Jason’s yellow house was a play ground to me. It has something I had never seen before: 2 floors. I wanted to run and up and down the stairs all day long, but being the 4 year old boy he was more interested in all things outside. His mother had a gravely voice that you could hear from any radius of his home; the woman could project her calls what seems miles. We had no doubts when she was calling us back to her kitchen and there was no hesitation to begin moving toward it when the beacon was sent out. His father seemed to be a shy timid man. He was usually working but when he was not he seemed in constant contemplation. It was Jason who introduced me to the other children in the neighborhood. My across the street neighbors Ellen, also one year older, and her older brother Chad who would become my first crush. Down the street were Doug and Mark who I never was very sure about. They were awkward suspicious  boys. And, around the bend was Helen who would become a life long friend who I would lose track of and pick up again throughout my life. Jason and I walked to people’s homes, creek walked for hours and would study plant life while he would tell me stories of where this plant came from. Jason taught me to fly kites and not be afraid of the nature around me. A boy scout in the making he was adventurous and a small gentleman never allowing me to get hurt in any of our quests in the woods and creeks.

While it was never said it was known to me at a very early age my family was different and my family had secrets. The neighborhood children were not invited over to my house; my dad would always ask if I could go over to theirs for a few hours during the week while he sought out day care for me. I never questioned this being eager to please and terrified of being left again. The neighborhood parents also never asked if their children could come to my house. I have no doubt that there were suspicions of my parent’s gayness and I have no doubt that despite the progressiveness of Marin County the stereotype of homosexuals being perverts was prominent in parents minds. This is despite my yard having a pool and large enclosed yard to play in. This is despite me being a spoiled princess with more toys than I could possibly ever play with. But, this was the way it was due to the times and the mentality of most parents.

Oliver worked in San Francisco in the insurance industry. A white collar conservative and consistent industry that appealed to Oliver’s love of study and steady. The year was 1979 and it was still a time where a gay man could be fired if he was outed. Recall that this was the year after Proposition 6 was defeated. A politician from Orange County asked California to vote on banning any suspected gay teachers from educating children in California. This proposition also sought to out people who supported gay rights and ban then from public service as well. Although Proposition 6 failed there remained a reticent hurt and fear. More importantly, there were no anti discrimination laws protecting gay people from being fired just simply for being gay. Oliver was putting on a front with his employer. My dad could not be known to them and because Oliver’s home was more than an hour from the Financial District there was little threat of someone stopping by. This was a blessing because life at home was unsettling for all of us.

The biggest fear in our household was me. I was not warming up to Oliver and in fact I would neither speak to him nor look at him. Oliver’s hopes of having a family rested on my little heart opening up. 6 months had passed and there was no sign of this happening. I was a picky eater, I only wanted to be around my daddy and I refused to sleep by myself. Not exactly the situation described by the psychic Oliver had been counseled by so many years ago. My dad must have sensed that my love would be the glue to the relationship because he tried everything to help me warm up. To his dismay nothing was working. A trip to Golden Gate Park proved to be overwhelming for me and embarrassing for Oliver. I cried the entire time overcome by how many people were around us. I was weight in my dad’s arm who attempted to find relief for his arms in passing me along to Oliver but my protest quashed any success of that endeavor. Oliver tried cooking for me but I would not eat anything that was handed to me by him. He tried reading to me but I cried when he would enter my room without my dad. I was, to put it mildly, an impossible child.

A year passed and as Oliver frequently did, he went on a much needed business trip. He traveled at least 3 days per month for work, My dad and I would drive him to the airport and retrieve him from his returning flight. This trip was particularly special for Oliver. He contemplated his relationship, the lack of relationship with me and what effect this was having on everyone involved. He wondered if maybe this was not going to work. He felt he may have to break things off when he returned home. As he walked through the gate he saw my dad’s curly hair towering above all of the anxious greeters waiting for their loved ones. I was there too nestled in between my dad’s  legs circling in and out of them as he stood waiting. I heard my dad say “Oh! There he is!” I looked up and saw my dad’s love smile. My head turned towards the object of his affection and I ran. I ran not away from Oliver but to him. He dropped his carry-on to the floor and with shock opened his arms as he bent down to my height. I put my arms around his neck and hugged him tight. I had missed him. My dad peered on with confusion and mixed elation. Oliver stayed knelt down until I had put my little body so close to his that he could pick me up with one arm. He kissed my cheek, looked at my dad and carried me back to the car. I insisted on sitting in the middle of them cuddled up to Oliver the entire two hour ride home. My dad did not know it, but I had just saved their relationship.

As a friend of mine said….Tha Man Made Thriller

“Touching Home” …..a movie you need to see

Last night I attended the movie premiere of “Touching Home” at the El Portal theater in North Hollywood (now known as NOHO …which makes me giggle. No hoe…hehehehe).

Brooklynn, Noah Miller, Friend, Maryann Gough, Logan Miller and Jeromy Zajonc

First time film makers, Logan and Noah Miller, created a beautiful ode to their dad and to Marin County. It is a story of 2 boys and their struggle to have a relationship with their alcoholic father who loves them more than life itself but struggles with his disappointment in the father he was to them. The cinematography is nothing short of amazing; the scenery is breathtaking! With veteran actors Ed Harris (Apollo 13, Empire Falls), Robert Forster (Jackie Brown, Heroes) and Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings, Mississippi Burning) you can rest assured the acting is superb. The story grabs your heart from the start and has you feeling a roller coaster of emotions in the 2 hour film.

The back story to the film is just as amazing as the film itself. This is the little film that could. I highly recommend you pick up the book “Either You’re In Or In The Way…” It will key you into the depth and passion behind the making of this movie. The book is a surprising gem that is an endearing story and a motivational pick me up.

I highly recommend you look for this as there is no doubt it is coming to a theatre near you. You can pick up the book now….which you really should Oh and full disclosure: I went to school with the Miller Brothers and Jeromy Zajonc who produced the film. And while I realize I may be slightly biased, I can say that I brought someone who has no relationship with them and he was super impressed with the film.

Vacay….

 

Westside

One day this dog is gonna talk and then my most handsome man will check me into the looney bin for sure. Jordan is shall I say the master manipulator. He is a terrier and thus is attention span is intense and unwavering. When he wants something he gets close to you and then stares his desire into your brain. “I want snuggie on sofa” “I want food. Don’t you see what f-in time it is?” “Gimme lovin. Need belly rub.”  In this particular photo, our little furry mound of love is insisting for a little chest rub….and don’t worry Cesar, he only comes on the couch or lap when invited AND clean. No stinky pushy dogs on our furniture! 

So, this is the routine: Jordan comes and sits next to your feet (you must be on the couch for this one …or the toilet which is his 2nd favorite place for a rub)while looking/staring at you intently over his left shoulder. His next modus operandi is to place his chin on your thigh; aka the uber cute look. If that does not woo you, he lets a sigh and moves closer to your leg almost sitting on your foot. By this time, Jordo has become too pushy and so he is banished to his bed – or as I like to call: Doggy Timeout. Cesar would be proud! After his sulking is sufficiently out of his system Jordan is beckoned over to the couch, instructed to get up on the blanket, his doggy parts are not allowed on the fabric, and then he makes his way to getting as close to you as possible. Our little love machine. If he is not too sleepy, he makes his way to your lap and this is where he makes his move….flips onto his belly, front paws out to the side and looks up into the air behind him prepared for the chest rub! It is devastatingly adorable!

Part 3 Chapter 1

** Quick note: Some names have been changed. All events are from my memory and conversations had or overheard. 

At my grandmother’s home I felt suffocated. I loved her but was weary of her. She had this air about her that was deliberate. In her life, Grandma Pearl had been married and divorced about five different times. She was an abused woman by men and yet she was fiercely independent; cancer would eventually take her over leaving her helpless and dependent – two things she could never tolerate. Two of her children were of the same father (my dad being one of them and my aunt Harmony the oldest child being the other – both favored their father) and the youngest was from a separate but short marriage that again ended in abuse. Pearl ran her own beauty shop out of her converted garage where she catered to the local women and Canadian women who would cross the border to visit her. The shop was rancid with the smell of permanents curling women’s poor over processed hair. I distrusted Pearl because I did not understand why I was there. My mother had always let me read and explore; my grandmother was not keen on me reading and felt I should stay put while she worked. A 2 year old being asked to sit still? I was more of an ornament  in the shop than a grandchild. In my own personal revolution against my grandmother, I hid constantly from her and would wander away from her house while she was working. Once I hid underneath her car. I stayed under there for hours looking at the rocks beneath her tires; studying the different sizes. She finally called the police. I could hear her making up all sorts of explanations of how I got our of her sight: I was so small! Anyone could lose a child that small! I was a beautiful child and anyone could have duped her into looking the other way while they stole me!  It was probably my mother in a haze come to steal me! I thought this was hysterical listening to my grandmother fib to a policeman. I started to laugh and within a few minutes this large man’s head peered beneath the vehicle asking me to please come out. I did and the consequences to my behind were severe. My hiding would send her into a terror which always ended poorly for my bottom. I don’t imagine she ever wanted to be in a position of explaining to my father or my mother that she had lost her grandchild. 

My dad came to visit two times while I was there. I recall his masked horror during the first visit when he saw that she had cut my long, thick, blonde curly hair into a boys cut. Apparently she did not feel she needed to tend to my hair in conjunction to working 7 days a week and watching me until it was time to drive me to California. Or maybe it was because she kicked her then husband out of their marital room and had me sleep with her. She always complained that my hair got in the way of everything. She never left me in the room alone with anyone and insisted whenever we were in the same house (even into my teen years) that I sleep in the same bed with her so she could protect me from harm. I was an intensely shy child who wanted nothing to do with any stranger which was a likely byproduct of my mother leaving me with unknowns; this was Pearl’s way of protecting me; trying to help me feel safe. Strange yes, but devious no. There my dad was looking at me and commenting “What did she do to your hair child?” Out came my grandmother asking if he liked it. Before he could respond, she let him know that my hair was too thick for a child’s head and this was the one way she could brush it. My dad’s expression surely gave him away; Pearl had turned his little girl into a little boy. She added that no girl this young should be reading and it would do good of him to stop sending me books to read. I was just 2 years old and had been reading to myself for a few months now. My mom and dad had taught me to pick out the alphabet and spell our names off of the cereal boxes at the grocery store when I was a little over 12 months old. Pearl did not approve. She preferred little girls learn how to be little ladies. What man is going to want to marry a girl who acts smarter than him? This coming from a woman whose taste in men needed tending. 

The one time I recall feeling close to Pearl was after she had warned me not to pet the dog next door. Of course the first chance I got I went to the fence to pet the yellow lab who was about three times as big as I was. Placing my small hand through the metal opening of the wire fence I opened the gate, I stepped inside the gate and I was on my back with a 30 pound dog on top of me blood draining from my chin. The dog had gashed my small chin and Pearl beat the dog to within an inch of its life. She took me to the emergency room for stitches and held me on her lap ride back home in between her lap and the steering wheel. She cooed and coddled me; she made me feel safe. The dog, however, would run every time either myself or Pearl stepped outside. I can’t imagine what the vet bill must have been but the dog certainly learned its lesson about attacking small children; or at least just me. 

It was shortly after this that Pearl packed me up with her husband and drove me from the Canadian border to Sleepy Hollow, California. A small neighborhood with all of its streets named after the characters in the famed book in the complicated Marin County. As we got closer to my new home I looked up out of the windows and all I could see were these tall trees; they canopied the street we were on for what seemed like hours. Pearl kept calling it “Buttercup Road,” but I would come to know it as Butterfield; the main road through the 3.5 miles of asphalt that connected my house to the rest of San Anselmo, California. A few turns off “Buttercup,” up and endless hill and I was in the arms of my daddy. There was a stranger present whom my dad kept in close vicinity to. I wrapped my arms tighter around my dad as he attempted to introduce me to the stranger. “Say hi to Oliver. This is our new home and this is Oliver’s house.” I would not answer. I would not perform any pleasantries. I would not look at him. I was scared he was taking me away or worse that my dad was leaving me with him alone. Another person I did not know and I had no confidence when my dad would come back. The tears started and I would not allow my dad to put me down for the rest of the night. Oliver was worried.

To be continued………..

Love and Brooklynn

I am struggling with the religious folk lately. I have attempted to discuss their positions with them. I attempted to show why people feel their rhetoric can be hateful. I have asked them to see a different perspective. The response? Well, I have been told that I am illogical, in denial, faithless, a boy, without reference, unlearned, in need of Jesus and flatly wrong. One poster actually requested that I read their blog and provide feedback. I did and the response was a complete rejection of what I provided. I am still rather perplexed why my feedback was sought since it was not even remotely received, but alas my attempts to understand the super relgious run me in circles.

After Proposition 8 in California I decided to make an effort to explain my position to those that sought to deny Gay couples the civil right to be civilly married. I succeeded with some. I was able to invite them to see a different perspective away from their religious views, because civil rights are not based in faith they are based in rights of the state and goverment. With some, we respectfully opted not to discuss it any longer….these folk included some of my oldest friendships. Religion and state are in theory supposed to remain separate. We know that for the most part they are not. Politicians consistently use their religion as a means to be elected. They try to appeal to a base of people who for all purposes are not supposed to be discussing politics on Saturday’s or Sunday’s at their place of worship listening to the discussion from the pulpit. But, the people I spoke to, I discussed with, I debated with – they were ready and willing to see another person’s point of view. I am willing to listen to them – to see where their passion comes from and they were willing to hear me and see where my passion is rooted. I can say with all honesty that our discussions swayed their positions. Not their faith, but their positions on civil rights.

Yes, I undoubtably have issues with organized religions. I am not against people believing; I actually support their beliefs in a higher power. My disenchantment is with those who refuse to look at anything other than their own religion. Their faith is the best. They know best. And, if you are not with them then you are against them. In their eyes, they are here to save you and if you will not be saved then you are destined for hell. I see this as pompous. This position is what polarizes people. How can you talk to anyone who is unwilling to look at a different point of light? When you study other faiths, other beliefs and other ways of life you are able to make your life richer because you see other people in a way that you could not have had you not opened up. Faith is such a personal topic and in my opinion is not something you spend a lot of time debating. What you can debate is the practice and the teachings because these are ever changing.

So, for now I have taken my lickings and I am opting to step out of this topic for the time being. I do thank those who have visited my website and provided critique on my writing. It is always welcomed and appreciated.

Screw Teabaggin…Try Treehuggin!

 

It is in our hands

I am a total tree hugger….TOTALLY. Except that I don’t necessarily look like a tree hugger. I try to buy used clothing, I recycle, I buy organic when I can afford it, I grow vegetables, I compost, I use green light bulbs, I unplug everything, I turn off the water in between rinsing and I walk where ever I can. I do believe we can make a difference by doing things that do impact our lives or the comfort of them. I save money in gas and in electricity. Yup, that’s right I save money! You should see how much money I save in clothes and I do not compromise in style…..well, my style. 

So I urge you to do something today and tomorrow and the next day. You, me and all of us can make a difference. Take a step. It will make you feel good. And, even if you do not believe in global warming it can save you some cash$$ ….we all like that.

Teabaggers Unite

I’m having a hard time understanding people who listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, etc. I just cannot get my mind around why people believe these guys. Do people not understand that this is all an act? A show? Entertainment? Do they not understand that these shock jocks are not passionate behind what they are selling? And yet, people follow them blindly.

I was watching a show on Democracy Now( http://www.democracynow.org/) about these guys and I was flabbergasted to hear clips of them being….dare I say? Liberal. They were talking about how to get more viewers and the only way to get more viewers was to get more extreme with the rhetoric. They were also talking about what a fucked up job Bush was doing and how he was destroying our civil rights. Believe you me, if the media was so Lefty this would have been on the Evening News. But, it was not.

I never paid much attention to this clique of entertainers because quite frankly I do not enjoy listening to their lies and contradictions….even it is for entertainment purposes. 4 years ago when “The Left” was protesting about various Bush doctrines Hannity was on the news calling them terrorists and how dare they go against their president. Now, he is covering the Teabagging event and saying it is our patrotic duty to voice dissent. What the fuck?? This is what I am talking about – IT IS ALL AN ACT.

Again, this is why I take such issue with people who follow these people. And no…before you get your pantyhose all twisted I am not someone who follows Left Radio or rhetoric. I think the news in general is full of shit and does not actually report any news. If they did we would not have been subjected to Brittany watch last summer. If you really want the news, you have to go find it and it is certainly NOT on Fox or CNN.