Category: Friends & Family

Happy Birthday Mom!

On By SarahIn Food & Cooking, Friends & Family, SpiritualityLeave a comment

Today is my mom’s birthday.

She hasn’t been with us since January 10, 2001, but everyone in my family finds a way to celebrate her life each year on her birthday.

On the anniversary of her death this year, my family had a very sweet email exchange about how we were all recognizing the anniversary of her passing. Our mother loved food, and it turned out that each of us was preparing a special menu in her honor and raising a glass to her.

My mother struggled with it the way that so many women do in this culture. I used to blame my mother for my my own formerly unhealthy relationship with food. I have struggled with food in my own way, and I have happily ended up with in a healthy place of loving delicious cuisine. Now I credit my mother with my very healthy appreciation of fine dining. I thank her for my educated palate.

My beloved is an artist in the kitchen, and each year on the anniversary of her death and on her birthday, we have a special meal that we know she would love. In January we had steak and Ceasar salad with a lovely Cabernet. My sister and her husband also made steak. My brother had artichokes with hollandaise (which we would have had but the artichokes here in Chicago just weren’t up to snuff).

So this weekend, Gillian has prepared a special menu yet again. We’re having shrimp scampi tonight, and tomorrow, shrimp cocktail with potatoes gratin and a lovely steak. I wish she were here, and I’m sure in her way she is.

Gillian and Mom got to meet before Mom died, but Gillian never got to cook for her. I’m sure she’s enjoying the ever meal that we prepare in her honor.

Freedom of Expression

On By SarahIn Friends & Family, Opinion, Politics, Spirituality1 Comment

My dad sent the following letter to Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern last week:

Representative Kern.

I just heard your remarks about gays. I am a 76 year old successful business executive who has known many gay persons at work and in society. All of them have been very productive and loving and kind. None of the deserve the hate that you are broadcasting. This is the trouble with this nation. People like you become misinformed and believe what they hear and become divisive. You are in a position of trust where you are supposed to represent all of the people. Gays make up over twelve per cent of the population and their friends and relatives expand that to at least twenty five per cent or more.

Do you feel responsible in your representation when you bash over one fourth of your constituents?

I ask you first to reconsider you hateful position and then become informed so you can represent your constituents properly. I can guarantee that you will be a much happier person as well.

My dad rocks. He’s one of my greatest role models. I thought this was an incredibly generous and hopeful response. My sister wrote to her, too, expressing her love and acceptance of gay people, and expressing her concern about Kern’s views (or more accurately her ignorance) about Islam and Muslims.

I can’t remember exactly what I wrote when I submitted my signature to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund open letter to Kern, but the general point was that I believe that Kern must know that her views are prejudiced, ignorant, and shameful. Otherwise she would not have expressed herself in a private audience where she believed her views wouldn’t be exposed.

My beloved pointed out that Kern is simply exercising her freedom of speech, and she has every right to her opinions. I couldn’t agree more, and I hope that more of her ilk come out into the light and expose themselves as the hate mongers that they are, especially if they are educators and hold public office as she does. People who hold office have a responsibility to represent and protect the rights of all people in their communities, even they don’t like them.

The Right Side of History

On By SarahIn Community, Friends & Family, Opinion, PoliticsLeave a comment

Gillian and I watched our attorneys today argue before the California Supreme Court for the rights of same sex couples right to marry. The hearings were webcast, so even though we now live in Chicago, we were able to watch history being made.

It made me think back to when I first lived here in Chicago back in the early 1990s. In the spring of 1992, there was a protest for domestic partnership rights at the University of Chicago. I wasn’t a member of the University community at that time, but I lived near by and knew many people who were affiliated in some way. I knew lots of queer folk, and regularly attended events and social gatherings. The day before the protest, my acquaintance and future girlfriend, Tamara, asked me if I wanted to get married.

I was a little taken aback since I hardly knew this girl, but she explained that it would simply be participating the protest of the University’s policy of denying domestic partnership benefits to the same-sex partners of their gay and lesbian employees. I accepted her offer.

I really felt that the whole thing was a silly lark. It was fun, after all. In the spirit of Queer Nation and Act Up, the event was festive and fun. I remember Mardi Gras beads and drag queens, lots of people flirting, and lots of fun. I still have the pink marriage license. I was in my early twenties at that time, and not in a serious relationship, and I really never thought that I would care about being able to get married or health care or benefits. I never that same-sex partner benefits would happen in my lifetime, much less same-sex marriage.

By December of 1992, just a few months after that protest, the University of Chicago agreed to offer domestic partner benefits to their gay and lesbian employees, one of the first major American universities to do so.

Twelve years later, I got a phone call from my ex-girlfriend who asked me to marry her all those years ago, asking me again if I wanted to get married, this time to my beloved, Gillian, and this time for real at San Francisco City Hall. We would be among the first same-sex couples in the United States to get legally married. We jumped at the chance. In this ACLU newsletter, you can find a photo of all of us (page 6).

And today the California Supreme Court heard arguments in our case. No matter what the government and the courts say, Gillian and I know we are married in our hearts. I know that we’re on the right side of history, and maybe the change won’t happen in our lifetimes. I didn’t expect my small action back in the spring of 1992 to make a difference, and yet in just a few months same-sex couples employed by the University of Chicago had the same benefits as married straight couples. I am now an employee of that institution, and I wouldn’t have been able to accept my current position here if they hadn’t been able to offer me those benefits.

I am exceedingly grateful and exceedingly hopeful. I know things might not go our way in California. Even so, I know we’re on the right side of history, and it’s just a matter of time.

The days are getting longer

On By SarahIn Community, Friends & FamilyLeave a comment

Last night upon arriving home after work and running a couple or errands, I noticed that the sky was just a little bit lighter blue than it had been at that same time a few nights ago. With all of the frigid weather and incessant snow storms we’ve been having here, there is something so sweet about anticipating spring. This is the change of seasons that I have miss all these years in California. I know how wonderful Chicago is in the spring and summer, and I can’t wait to skate along the lake shore, ride my bike around town, and meet Gillian for picnics and concerts in Millennium Park. I long for the farmers markets, fresh corn, tomatoes warmed in the summer sun.

Tonight, we’re hunkering down for another storm. We’ve been celebrating our fourth first wedding anniversary all week, and we have a feast planned, which I’ll write about tomorrow with a few photos. Enjoying comfort foods, snuggling up with a romantic movie, getting cozy as the next storm revs up, and dreaming of spring.