Today has been an awesome day!
My daughter (#2) from Nashville arrived last night and we have spent the entire day together.
I needed this.
We have talked about a lot of stuff and we're both looking forward to "The Wizard of Oz" tonight. The gay thing has been such a big part of both of our lives. It's going to be good to just be able to laugh at it as it is presented in the telling of this timeless classic!
#2 visited with Lovey's mother this morning for breakfast.
Afterwards, I found out that Lovey is coming to town tomorrow to visit with her attorney to take the depositions necessary for the processing of the remaining steps of the divorce. So, we must be on our way!
#2 and I have been invited to "grandma's" tomorrow night for dinner....with Lovey....and God alone knows who else. It's gonna be okay. #2 says she doesn't want me to be put into any awkwardness.....and I told her that there isn't going to be.
I'll be just as warm and friendly and as phony as can be. If they can be that way...then why can't I? Especially when my daughter needs me to be there.
I am sure I will have lots to report...
2 comments:
Bravo Frank! Several years ago, I read several books on the coming out process and indeed one of the prime messages that I got was to develop a network of gay friends prior to coming out, because even under the best of circumstances, you will need them. They have or are going through the process and understand to a degree what you are experiencing (no two experiences are ever really the same but there are similarities). We all morn elements of the old life. We all have some fear of the unknown future being faced without some of the structure with which we have faced the future previously. We all deal with some measure of internalized homophobia.
I have gone from knowing no gay people, to right now I could spend most evenings each week with a group of gay people (men and women). So when I feel it is right for me to come out to my wife, I hope that this network will soften what ever trauma it may generate. You need to build your network after the fact. I am glad to see that you are.
Rick
Frank:
I am glad that you can spend this time with your daughter, and share with her some of her new Dad. I would not be surprised if she found some of it new and exciting and yet be somewhat nostalgic for some of the old, as in reality I am sure that you are also.
Dinner with the rest of the extended family can be stressful as all of you try to find out where you all fit. And the phoniness on all of your parts probably slows down the process but keeps the friction down to a manageable level. When you think about it, I wonder what kind of reception Mom O’Lovey would give to a gay person that she had not gotten to know over the last 24 years? Society and her church have, I am sure, instilled a lot of homophobia. To many of her age, all gay people are “sexual perverts – some of the worst kinds of criminals”, no mater what some liberal minded supreme court justices say.
I know my own mother had a very hard time reconciling the nephews that she had loved from little on with the fact that they were gay, and tended to be harder on them from the time that she learned that they were gay. Maybe that is one of the reasons that I was never able to come out to her, even when I knew she was dieing, and I knew that I was having my last private conversation with her.
Rick
Post a Comment