Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Filed Under All Posts, Christie Healey, Group Posts, Parenting | 2 Comments
I knew Fred would be an artist when he was four years old. He started to create a complex color drawing: 24 inches long and 20 inches wide. The drawing started with a boat, then an iceberg was added followed by sharks and other underwater creatures. The drawing would be worked on for weeks at a time and then put away for months before being taken out again. He completed the piece just before his sixth birthday. As complex as the final artwork became, it was not cluttered. Plenty of white space to rest the eye, create flow and add dimension. Read more
Forgiven Hurts
Filed Under All Posts, Family, Group Posts, Prudence Baird | 2 Comments
“Didn’t you bring a different dad last year?”
My classmate Susie, trotting alongside me at the Linda Vista Elementary School Father-Daughter Day Picnic, had noticed. I was mortified—even though Bill, my surrogate dad, was young and buff, sitting straight in his saddle chatting with a real father.
Last year, I’d brought Curt; both he and Bill were firemen my mother had hired from the station across the street to accompany me to the annual event. My father wasn’t available; as usual, he was golfing. Read more
On Men
Filed Under All Posts, Connie Stetson, Family, Group Posts | 9 Comments
“On Men.” Quite a title, yes? I’ve spent way too much psychic energy “on men”, literally and figuratively. The darlings.
My father and mother divorced when I was six, my sister was four. When he left us, he promised he was just leaving mom, not us. He lied. He was so handsome, funny and charming; a musician, and we loved him wildly. I learned from him, that part of love was expecting a broken heart. He disappointed me one time too many and I didn’t speak to him for 15 years. Read more
Daddy’s Girl
Filed Under All Posts, Cathy Fischer, Family, Group Posts | 5 Comments
I don’t’ really see myself as a “daddy’s girl” but I sure do love my dad, and yes, he spoils me.
In some ways he’s typical of his generation, distant but close. Born in Poland in 1922, he lived through the horrors of WWII, lost his entire family and amazingly rebuilt a life in France, then the U.S. Both he and my mother worked in garment factories in New Jersey, then their own lumber and hardware store in South Central, L.A.; immigrants dedicated to giving their children everything they didn’t have. Read more
SWGF50
Filed Under All Posts, Melissa Howden, Politics, Relationships | 8 Comments
Recently a few “friends” have been dealing me rations of shi*! about being the lone voice of mid-life gay (t)reason on Fifty is the new… It’s true I’ve been flying solo for a very long time having previously spent 10 years with my then closeted partner. My gay credentials are in danger of revocation. My response to the loving jabs has been to acknowledge that though it’s true I’ve been living a monkish existence, I am still gay in my parallel universe/fantasy.
My friend Connie decided enough was enough, so she pulled up a dating site for midlife lesbians and went down the list asking me to respond to my preferences. Read more
Age Envy
Filed Under All Posts, Beauty, Carine Fabius, Politics | 3 Comments
Growing old gracefully just got easier for me. It happened as I was reading an opinion piece by Meghan Daum in the Los Angeles Times, in which she reflected on “society’s shallow preoccupation with physical appearance.” Like a lightning bolt, it hit me that as aging women are advised ad nauseam on how to bring back their youthful glow, the youthful glow set is acting like a bunch of middle-aged women dealing with the reality of their reflections in the morning mirror. They want to be us! Pardon me, but aren’t lines, wrinkles and sagging skin the purview of women in their fifties? Not anymore! Now women in their twenties and early thirties are running, not walking, to the swamped Botox Store to get rid of frown lines they should keep—for frowning at important things like idiotic boyfriends, vexing career moves, 650,000 civilian lives lost in Iraq and whether to spring for that sixth pair of jeans or not. As you know, once you get Botoxed and the lines disappear, so does the ability to frown. Read more
Madonna’s Sweet Tooth
Filed Under All Posts, Cathy Fischer, Miscellaneous | 10 Comments
Madonna. Friend or foe? Fascinator or agitator? Shockster or schlockster?
What do you think about just-shy-of-50 Madonna’s latest album cover?
What does it say to you? Share your thoughts by posting your comment… Read more
