Feddie, Bonnie, and Bob: Kemah Boardwalk at Christmas

Last year I wrote about how I’d grown up with the tradition of El Día de los Muertos – the Day of the Dead celebrated November 1 and 2 – through my family’s several spins of Air Force life in San Antonio and our eventual adoption of it as our home.  Coming just a year after my parents’ passing, it was a special and poignant time for me.  This year, I’m remembering them, and I’m also making a special remembrance for Freddie’s sister Bonnie who left us in February.  My ofrenda for 2009 is Bonnie’s Mayonnaise Cake.

The tradition described in Wikipedia:

Ofrendas are also put in homes, usually with foods such as candied pumpkin, pan de muerto (“bread of the dead”), sugar skulls and beverages such as atole. The ofrendas are left out in the homes as a welcoming gesture for the deceased. Some people believe the spirits of the dead eat the “spiritual essence” of the ofrendas food, so even though the celebrators eat the food after the festivities, they believe it lacks nutritional value.

My own tradition, of course, is to eat the foods and talk and tell stories about our beloved departed.

Bonnie sent us this recipe on January 24; less than a month later, she was gone.  She had come to live with us briefly in San Diego in late 2001, not long after her diagnosis with leukemia.  Within nine months, we all had relocated, first Bonnie back to Indiana, then Freddie and I to Galveston.  She visited us once on the Island at Christmas, but her most fervent wish was to get back home to be closer to her adult children.  I last saw her around Thanksgiving, 2007 in Indianapolis when we stopped by on our way to spend the holiday with Freddie’s parents.  Freddie grew so much closer to Bonnie in those couple years, often speaking with her on the phone every day.  It’s a loss that has not healed.

In any case, the cake is wonderful and easy to make:

2 cups flour
1-1/4 cup sugar
3 or 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 cup mayonnaise
2 teaspoons baking soda in 1 cup warm water
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix flour, sugar, and cocoa powder into a large bowl.  Stir in mayonnaise.  Gradually add in water mixture and vanilla.  Pour into two greased and floured 9-inch pans.  Bake at 325 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

The Toppers are threatening to boycott Eurovision, held in Moscow this year, in response to a call from Russian gays. Last year’s Pride Parade was subject to violent police interference; this year’s may be shut down my force. (More from Joe. My. God.)

In the doctor’s office Thursday, after the doctor had stepped out to arrange for Freddie’s hospital admission for the battery of tests next week, he expressed it again:

I’ve done this before. It’s always the same. They don’t know why. Don’t know what to do. Always another pill, another test, another frustration.

Venting, of course, but still…

I quietly sang a three word reply:

“Maybe this time…”

Natasha was spectacular, wasn’t she.

When I was going back and forth to San Antonio so often in 2007 when my mother was sick, she’d always thank me for coming and helping.  I’d hem and haw as grown children do When Mom Says Thank You From A Hospital Bed, but often, that last year of her life, I used to think about the words in a Conway Twitty song, and I’d hum it to myself:

That’s my job
That’s what I do
Everything I do is because of you
To keep you here with me
That’s my job, you see

I’ve done this for years, actually.  Not just the mental soundtrack thing, but the “job.”  I’m the one who fixes what’s broken, who takes care of the one who hurts, who lends a listening and non-judgmental ear.  That’s my job.

These last few months I’ve been doing it more intensely than ever for Freddie.  He’s weak, unsteady, can’t stand for more than a couple moments without getting dizzy.  The other night he fell.  Walking across a big parking lot is pretty much out of the question.

We went to the doctor today, resulting in a scheduled hospitalization next week for tests, leading to who knows what.  Another one under the belt, maybe to result in “answers” or treatment, maybe more referrals and tests, or maybe palliative and adaptive measures.  Who knows what.

My money’s on Thyroid, like the name of a quarter-horse, but really, who knows what.

I’ve known all of our years together that times like this do come, but I never know where or when.  There was the day Freddie fell off the ladder at the San Diego house, and the next several months confined to an upstairs room.  There was the night in Galveston his blood glucose went down to 27 and I woke up to hear him moaning.  There were the countless hundred-mile round trips to the Houston-based doctors, and to the Houston pharmacies required by bureaucratic necessity.  And then our last move, with me preparing the house to sell while he was hospitalized again.  And here we are, today, not knowing, but still, always, knowing.

That’s my job.

That’s what I do.

Bursting onto the scene in the 1990s through the Mickey Mouse Club and then “Hit Me Baby One More Time,” her train-wreck life of the last decade is a metaphor for What We Did to the economy. A promising young star turned tabloid fodder: Trashy. Vulgar. Ostentatious. And of course, her signature song in the middle of this, like a bad portfolio of mortgages and derivatives, was “Toxic”.

Oops, she did it again. How many Enron’s and WorldCom’s was it supposed to take before we learned that, just as Britney had no panties, our financial emperor also had no clothes? They’re not that innocent.

And we — awash in credit card debt and unneeded consumer goods masquerading as necessities — are also victims of our own and each other’s excess.

For Britney, recovery meant conservatorship.  It meant long multiple stints in rehab under close supervision before she could be allowed to make her own decisions again, and before she could start to heal.  The recovery, the rehab, and yes the supervision for Wall Street and the rest of us is just beginning.

If it’s a sign of hope, Britney now is on a sellout concert tour.  Her number 1 album “Circus” has had two number 1 singles, so far. If she can come back from the edge of the pit, we can too.

Carry on, Britney.  Grow up, live a better and more responsible life, and take care of your kids.  Isn’t that what we all have to do for those who’ll come after us?

Azaleas In The Front Yard On Saint Patrick's Day, 2009

The azaleas have been blooming sporadically for the last six weeks or more. Today, warm and sunny after last week’s rain, they’re at peak bloom.

We saw this last night on Palladia. Quite amazing to see little Taylor rockin’ out.

I was supposed to have been what they call a “gifted child.”  I remember, when I was young, hearing my mother say, “You’re a [fill-in-the-surname], you’re smarter than most people.”  It’s interesting that usually she filled the blank with her maiden name, not her family name.  I’m not sure what that says about her opinion of my father, but she always believed that her children were the brightest and smartest and most likely to succeed of anybody.

What this meant for me became very clear in second grade.  Those years my father was stationed at Dover AFB in Delaware and we lived in town.  Mom used to take me to the Delaware State Library, and I was allowed to check out pretty much anything I wanted, whether or not it came from the children’s section.  I had a tenth-grade reading level, so the nuns at the Catholic school decided that it was appropriate to take me out of the second-grade class and send me to read with the fourth-graders.

Of course, this meant that I became marked as “different” from both second-graders and fourth-graders.  And the school still did not provide the appropriate reading material.

In my third grade we were in San Antonio.  The school there, in an infamously poor and underfunded inner-city district, decided to have me read by myself in the corner while the other children did their lessons as a class.  My homework was always completed in class, a pattern that was to be repeated for years, and I always got “A’s” whether I was really paying attention or not.

Except for PhysEd, where the “A’s” were rare.  But that’s another story.

In time, these seeds of “being different” sprouted into full-scale alienation.  I developed psychosomatic illnesses: asthma, vomiting, colds, anything to avoid having to stay in the class where I clearly didn’t belong.  I wasn’t consicous of the psychosomatic mechanism, all I knew was that I still got “A’s” whether I was at home or at school, and I felt better when I stayed home and read good books, wrote music, and did other creative things.

We went to Guam for a couple years, then came back to San Antonio in my sixth-grade year in 1972-73.  I was sent to a child psychologist.  The main thing I remember about him is that he asked me if I’d ever seen the movie Cabaret.  In retrospect, that should have been a signal that he had figured out that I was gay.  At the time, all I knew was that I was too young to see it.   Years later, it all made sense.  In the meantine, puberty and discovering my sexuality became just another reason to feel separate, different, and unable to relate to the world around me.

I was severely depressed.

We went to Minot, again, for a couple of years.  I don’t know if my father had offended someone or if the Air Force had a strange sense of how to cap off his career, but he had the special misfortune to be stationed in the middle of frozen nowhere, North Dakota, for two separate periods.  In the first, I was born in 1961,  After the second, he retired and we moved back to Texas in 1975.

I completed eighth grade there in Minot with a tutor instead of going to school.  Basically, I’d read books and go over to visit a lady on base and just talk, every day.  I don’t recall her name now, but we’d sit at her kitchen table and just chat about whatever.  And that was school.

Upon moving back to San Antonio, I was enrolled in the high school a couple of blocks from home.  I only lasted a month or so, and then I didn’t go back.  I didn’t fit, didn’t belong, wasn’t challenged, wasn’t interested…  I just wanted to be alone.

After several alternatives were considered and discarded, I finally finished high school, almost on time, all “A’s” through a correspondence course.  It provided me with a diploma to say I had one, and entry to college.  I also had and retain the peculiar distinction of being able to say I went to high school with Michael Jackson.  He did the same high-school-by-mail that I did.

I’d like to think that I progressed from wierd to normal, and Jackson the other way.  But really, who knows.

After high school it was too late in the Spring to apply to the university, and I needed an experience to sort of “get my feet wet” before trying to plunge into college.  I went to the community college for a year.  Although I did well in my studies — all “A’s” again — my biggest lesson was learning how to be around people, how to fit in.  The first class I took was “Speech Communication”.  Listening skills,  Public speaking.  It was a big help.

After that I went on to the University of Texas at Austin.  I did finally manage to get two “B’s” over those college years, but ended up graduating with Highest Honors, Phi Beta Kappa, and Phi Kappa Phi.  I’d had almost no social life to speak of, not dealing with starting to come out until my senior year.  Being gay was something I had to handle intellectually before I could handle it emotionally, and of course, even then it was difficult.

I didn’t know what to do when I graduated so I went to grad school.  Big mistake, but at least it got me to Washington, D.C.  I had more social opportunities there, found friends who gently helped me develop further, had a lesbian boss mentor (thanks, Anne!) and many incredible experiences the like of which I’d never imagined.

Still, I always felt like some sort of a changeling.  It’s as if I grew up in a different country, and people assume I grew up here.  I didn’t, not really, and it still catches me up from time to time.  Shyness.  Labeled as a person apart.  Seeing everything from a strange perspective.  It is what it is, and all I can do is my best

Featured on JMG today.  I remember when this Smalltown Boy came out in 1985.  How sad it was, how lonely, how perfectly it captured the sense of growing up gay in a particular place and time.  I bought the album, bought the follow-up, bought the Communards’ album, too, which featured Bronski lead singer Jimmy Somerville.

Listening to it now takes me back, and I can feel it all.  I feel chills.