Button Nose

June 22, 2008

Here is a picture of me from Christmas 1974. My sister, Andrea, gave it to me last week. We’re planning her 40th birthday and Ted and I are in charge of the invitations. She wanted us to put a picture of her –from when she was a cute, button-nosed little kid–on the invite.
But I thought i’d show you a picture of ME when I was a cute, button-nosed little kid, too.

Gee I wish I had that hair again.

So Ted and I saw the family on Friday up at Camp Pendleton. My brother-in-law is retired Navy and every summer my sister and her husband and my dad and step-mother and little brother and sister and older sister and her family and me and Ted all meet up at Camp Pendleton where you can camp on the beach, or rent cottages near the beach. This year, though, my sister and her hubby and my dad and step mom all bought RVs (well, my sis actually bought a trailer). So they RV’d it.

The beach there is beautiful, but Ted and I get a little nervous driving our Honda Civic, with the Obama 08 sticker, the rainbow flag, and the ACLU sticker onto the base.

We had a great day, though, sitting on the beach, watching Marines and sailors flirt with underage girls (like my little sister), BBQing, playing with our 10 month old niece, and listening to my dad’s stories True-Crime stories.

My dad can tell a story like no one else I know. He talks about his various jobs, his travels through Europe while in the service– and when he talks he moves his arms wildly and his face lights up (or, rather, gets red and puffy), and uses phrases like “You wouldn’t believe it…” or “I thought I was a gone-er for sure!”

We grew up with these stories but mostly brushing them off (because we’d often hear the same ones over and over, only more elaborated as the years passed). But now I like listening to them. And Ted can sit listening to him for hours (or maybe he’s afraid to offend my dad and leave the room).

<Ted listens intently to Dad’s story

My father and I have a good relationship now, after years of distance and resentment and guilt and shame. When I came out to him he didn’t speak to me for almost six months, and then for ten years after he never spoke of me being gay, rarely asked about my life or who was in it. But when I met Ted I decided to not let that happen anymore. He met Ted in 2005 (after we had been together for a little over three years), and we see him (and my step mother) more now than I ever did in my 20s. And they adore Ted. My father asked us Friday when we are going to have kids of our own. Funny how time changes people. How people grow and evolve and learn.

And I’ve come to realize that my father and I are probably more alike than we would want to admit. That maybe I get my ’storytelling’ talents from him.