The California Political Landscape

It's only September and I'm already beginning to get worried about the coming elections in November. As a gay man and a parent, I guess my family has special concerns about who is elected. We need to make sure our family remains protected and nothing harms our little girl. What I find incredible about the elections in California this fall are two Bay Area candidates, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. Both have run Bay Area high tech companies, so you'd think they'd understand the need to be fair and equal; especially when it comes to the rights of LGBT citizens, given how many of them work and live in the Bay Area.

What's scary is both of them have such solidly anti-LGBT policies and stance. Both are against equality for marriage, which means they are against families like mine. As I've written in the past, my partner and I got married in California in the summer it was legal. Our daughter took part in our ceremony, and she still tells people we got married as a family. Anything that would make her think we can't be married would be devastating to her, and that's just what Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina want.

That's why even though both these candidates may appear to be ideal because of their Bay Area background, their attempts to look mainstream are more scary than ever, as most mainstream citizens aren't going to realize how right-wing some of their views are. So I urge you, if you're reading this to *NOT* vote for Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina. Instead vote for Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer, both of whom support equality and would protect our family.

Still a Miracle

We do something every evening we probably need to get out of the habit of doing fairly soon. We let Lauren fall asleep in our bed and then move her to her own bed. I indulge her and by indulging her, I get to indulge myself. I let her sleep for a few hours while I check email, do some last minute clean up before bed. Then I walk into our bedroom, pick her up and move her to her own bed. Looking at her sleeping in my arms, is perhaps the best moment of the day. She looks perfect, I can see part of me in her, and I can see that's she's her own person. For that moment in time, I'm just carrying a small miracle. She's absolutely beautiful, at peace, and completely serene. I just think about how lucky I am to have her, and wonder how I had a life before her.

I see lately on TV a lot of shows that have somehow found gay parents as the topic du jour, but every show deals with how difficult it is is for gay couples to become parents and all the trials and tribulations they go through. In that respect I guess we were extremely lucky when we decided to have our daughter. While it was a significant drain on finances, everything we went through went incredibly smoothly. We didn't have a single problem or hiccup in our journey to become parents and for that I suppose I should be thankful.

Being who you are

Lauren's in Junior Kindergarten now, and one of the benefits of being in that slightly older group (4 1/2 year olds to 5 year olds) is that they get to go on a lot of field trips. Just yesterday they took a field trip to the library, and recently they had a field trip to the planetarium. Lauren loves to go on field trips, and she keeps asking when I'm going to go on a field trip with her.

It's not that I don't want to go, in fact for her very first field trip to a pumpkin farm, I had signed up to go as a chaperone, but that trip got canceled after a major rain storm caused major puddles and flooding on the farm. I've tried to find time to chaperone another field trip, but with my change in job title recently (this past November), I'm finding myself committed to more meetings in the office than ever before, so it's hard to find a date that coincides with a field trip where I'm available. But I know this age isn't going to last forever, so I'm just going to have to cancel a few meetings and go on the next field trip (or the one after that).

For as long as I remember, people have come up to us and told us how beautiful Lauren is, or how pretty she is. It's gotten to the point if you ask Lauren, "Are you pretty?", or "Do you know you're beautiful?", she'll get a very weary and knowing look on her face, sigh and reply back, "I know I am". If you ask her why she's beautiful, she'll usually say something like, "It's because I have long hair". She's very attached to her long hair, and while it's a part of her I don't necessarily agree that it's what makes her beautiful. She refuses to let us cut her hair still, and she prefers to wear it long.

But recently she's let on to a little secret. Every once in a while, she'll ask me "why don't I have yellow hair?", or "I want yellow hair". I don't know why, but something in our society makes being blonde too much of an attraction. Even though I've told Lauren I love her dark hair, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen since she was a baby (not to mention everyone else telling her how beautiful she is), somehow she still feels it's not enough and she needs blonde hair. I just hope all my reinforcement of how wonderful her own hair is, will make her realize she's special just the way she is.