“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” (St. Exupery)

Today's a strange and significant day for me. It's the first day of the next phase of my life, the first time in 14 years that I am a stay-at-home mom home alone. I've had moments, hours, like this before, but never more than snatched and sipped, never routine and predictable. Technically, this big day should have happened last September when our special-needs daughter started school. But my husband was on sabbatical last semester, writing a book, so it wasn't just me, my house, and the rest of my life. Most stay-at-home parents would have reached this point eight or nine years ago. But because we have an autistic daughter who has been home schooled (because there were no decent schools for her until this year), I'm coming to this party late. But that's me, blooming late, as usual.

I spent the morning looking at family photos, because i want to start on drawings for a children's book I've written. I started out looking for pictures of my daughters when they were toddlers to use as models for one of the characters. But, of course, I got completely side tracked. I found pictures of my husband's French grandmother and her brothers taken in the Tuilleries sometime before WWI. One of the brothers would go on to fight in WWI where he was seriously wounded. He lived and was transformed by the experience and went on to become a world-famous surrealist painter. My husband's grandmother (the painter's baby sister) grew up to make an unhappy marriage to an odd American man and move to the U.S.

Then I strayed into pictures of my family. My parents are both 100% Southern (I could join the Daughters of the Confederacy on both sides.), yet childhood pictures show me strapped to the back of a Taiwanese Amah, wandering down the ruined steps of Angkor Wat, running barefoot and wild on the dirt roads of Laos. Taiwan, which was a repressive dictatorship when I was born there, is now a great democratic success story. The sleepy rural Cambodia of my childhood was tortured, murdered, killed by Pol Pot in his holocaust. And while I was happily roaming the streets of Laos, the CIA was running covert operations there, buying cocaine from Hmong tribes to win their loyalty as anti-communist fighters. Which worked out so well for everyone; Laos has been a Communist country for decades, and the many of the Hmong live desperately poor lives on the run from Lao forces. All of which makes me conclude that, despite all our planning, our best (or worst, hello CIA!) guesses, there is simply no way to tell how things are going to turn out.

This is a comforting thought for me today. Having a child who is very "differently abled," and who I know will probably live with me for the rest of my life, can be overwhelming if I stop and think about it too much. What will become of her when I'm gone? Who will love, care for, and appreciate her the way my husband and I do? But these pictures I've been looking at tell me there's no point in that kind of thinking. Who would have guessed that the young French boy in his stylish Sunday best, would lie bleeding all night on a battle field, watching the stars, and be transformed? That his little sister would leave Paris and live a strange lonely life in Ohio? That the lovely, quiet backwater that was Cambodia, would consume itself in insanity and hatred? That this American child with an Asian childhood would end up in the grey American rustbelt with a hybrid family of her own? No one.

As I sat alone in my disconcertingly silent house looking at pictures, I also thought about this new, uncharted phase of my life. There's so much I want to do: creative projects of all kinds - novels I want to publish, books I want to write and illustrate, windows I see in my head that I want to see in real life, and, always, children to love and help and worry about. The outcomes of all of these things are completely uncertain. I wanted to talk to someone, tell someone about it. But the husband is busy at work, family and friends are scattered and busy. So it was such a comfort that I had this place, and all of you, to come to and pour out my confused feelings and inchoate thoughts. Thanks for being there and holding my (cyber) hand on this odd, quiet day, as I make my uncertain steps forward into the always uncertain future. (And having written this, maybe tomorrow I'll actually get some work done!)

I think maybe my gaydar needs a tune up.

This afternoon I was driving a car full of teens to the mall. Thing 1 slips a CD into the player and her new favorite boy band starts to sing:
"This is gonna be a hard break up.
You just found me dancing in your make up.
Tell me just one thing before you leave,
Does this dress look good on me?"
No one says "ew" or "gross" or "that's so gay" (see, if you like, my earlier posting, Voices from the back seat, on "gay" as the new all-purpose put down.) and I'm surprised and pleased. I think about how the (straight) lead singer of Greenday, Billie joe Armstrong, wears far more makeup than I ever have.

Later, I meet the twins and one of their guy friends at Ulta, a cosmetics superstore. The guy says, "Oh my God! This store is great. I'm going to have to come back here with some money and buy some hair products." He shops happily with us and points out all the good sales. He tells me how the twins straightened his hair and it looked fantastic. We have a nice time and, when we're leaving, he tells the girls, "I love your mom!" and allows me to give him a big hug. He's had tons of girlfriends (which I know means not a whole lot). But the thing is, I'm truly confused. Is he, as my 70s fag-hag spidey senses are whispering to me, "gay, gay, gay," because he uses hair products and is adorable and openly emotive? Or is he just a new-millenium emo boy, at ease with products? No way of telling yet, but the fact that I'm confused is probably a good thing.

Rufus Wainwright - Gay Messiah

""He will soon be reborn
straight from 70's porn.....
Better pray for your sins
'cause the gay messiah's coming."

From his lips to God's ears! Happy Friday!

An brilliant singer and a wonderful night

I am totally, heart-palpitatingly, hyperventilatingly, Beatle-maniacally in love with Rufus Wainwright. I was sitting in the second row and it took all my self control (that, and the large black man strategically placed to prevent stage rushers) not to storm the stage like a crazed teeny bopper and throw myself swooning at his feet. If you EVER get a chance to see him perform, go! He is one of the most passionate singers I've ever seen. He writes his own songs, his voice is amazing - part cabaret chanteuse, part opera diva, part folk singer - and he has a deeply emotional way of playing the piano. The man is drenched in talent. And, girls and boys, he is gorgeous and mind-blowingly sexy. My god! Naturally, he's gay.

Well, as you can probably tell, I had an absolute blast tonight. Live music - in a small enough venue so that you can really see and feel the performer - is magic. No, it's art. And seeing art being created right in front of you; what a privilege and a joy!

Take a moment and watch the video below. It's Rufus, channelling Judy Garland but still making the song his own. He has another song (you can see it on Youtube) called "I want a gay Messiah." I think I've found mine.

Rufus Wainwright - Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Palladium)

Rufus, with his mother on piano.

In your future I see....

In Asia, where I grew up, in preparation for the new year, people clean their houses from top to bottom, prepare lots of food, buy all new clothes. They do this because they believe that the way you begin your new year is very important because it will be the way you live out the coming year. So, basically, people, I'm screwed. Apparently, in the coming year, my husband is going to be working (well, no surprise there. He's got a wee touch of the workaholism.), my house is going to be messy (again, no surprise there because I'm... me and I just can't figure out where the servants got to.), and other people's children are going to be projectile vomiting all over my house. (Note to the mom of said child: She was the sweetest, most apologetic of pukers.) After four kids, a little thing like vomit all over my hall and bathroom is just par for the course. But as I wiped it up, then gathered up the reeking towels and carried them to the basement to be washed, I thought of my childhood - where you tried not to even say one unhappy or angry word on new years day, where you were careful to have the first guest in your home be an honored and auspicious person - and I had to laugh. Oh well. It could be worse, right? All the kids, and the dog, could have been puking. Now where did those servants get to?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Here's wishing you all a safe, happy new year full of love and joy. Thanks for all the pleasure you've given me by blogging, reading, commenting, or simply being around and about. Old friends, new friends, blessings. xoxo