Father’s Day and Gratitude

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Blogging, Buddhism, Community, Faith, Family, Gay parenting, Gratitude, Living in Hawaii, Marathon training and running, Middle Age, Presidential election, Trisomy 21

Well, our Father’s Day was a success, and my appreciation for it has increased at least a hundred times once I saw images of families separated at the border who are trying to enter the United States.

I was stunned, and on the Monday after Father’s Day I closed the door to my office a few times and cried.

Never did I imagine that in my lifetime I would witness people elected to serve their country push the envelope of human decency by ripping children away from their parents. In fact, my husband and I made a decision to leave Germany with our daughter, who was then a baby, and moved back to the United States where we are citizens because for our bright, beautiful girl born with an extra chromosome, America is still the Land of Opportunity where she has a better chance of realizing all her potential.

And now I’ve read that Donald Trump’s former campaign manager has refused to apologize for his sarcasm about a 10-year-old girl with Down Syndrome who reportedly was separated from her mother in South Texas.

What has this country come to?

Have any of the men and women who have endorsed separating families ever spent time in a cage? Have they ever had their children taken from them?

As challenging as parenting can be at times, I look at our new Father’s Day family portrait with renewed gratitude for the welcoming community we have found in Hawaii, for our neighbors who embrace our daughter, for her wonderful teachers who bring out her many strengths, for all the joy she and we have discovered here.

I wish I could package some of that joy up and send it to the families and especially the children at the border.

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Tapering for Father’s Day

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Blogging, Faith, Family, Fate, Gratitude, Living in Hawaii, Marathon training and running, Middle Age, Parenting, Philanthropy, Quakerism

When the regular school year is over, many students and faculty disappear for family vacations or individual travel dreams. Some work summer jobs away from school, often outdoors, and return looking tan, fit, and refreshed. Still others appear for a few hours or so at school for summer sessions and then leave for the rest of the day.

I have always found that hanging around less a few times a year at work is better for everyone, especially in small learning communities where the intensity during the traditional academic year can be like training for a marathon week after week with the same people. All distance runners I’ve known take precautions for overtraining. Many are wise to savor the camaraderie of running together but also appreciate a few miles just on their own (while grateful for the distances they’ve reached with friends).

Which is my segue into my Father’s Day weekend post!

As many followers of this blog know, I’m an administrator (or facilitator of philanthropy as I like to be called!) at a small, wonderful school in Hawaii. I’m also a marathoner, a father of a young child and a poet.

We’ve now crossed the halfway mark in June. And I’m feeling it! The miles that I start to log in usually start the second or third week in July when I’m working to prepare for the new school year are really catching up with me now, some 11 months later. And I still need a strong finish for the two weeks left in the current fiscal year!

But I’ve been a facilitator of philanthropy in small learning communities for 22 years now. And I’m training for my 22nd marathon. In fact, in a few hours, I will start my long run of 20 miles before I start to taper down for my event in July.

So after this weekend I will be in taper mode — officially tapering off at work for a few weeks and running fewer miles to save my legs!

I’m not a great traveler, but fortunately I live in Hawaii in my family so I’m not yearning to find a dream destination. I’m already living in the most beautiful place on earth!

Instead, I’m celebrating after my training today with a new haircut, by savoring Father’s Day weekend with my husband and our daughter, and gradually becoming a bit more scarce at work for the rest of June and early July.

And not only saving my legs, but saving myself from burnout.

With or without a new haircut, I want for my sake and my colleagues’ sake to make myself a bit scarce during the one time of year when I can, to show my face a little less, to enjoy hours of Quaker silence before all the noise returns.

Why? So that I can stay in good shape for many, many more marathons — both the actual and metaphorical distances in life that I would miss terribly if they weren’t part of my life.

 

Up and Running

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Blogging, Buddhism, Healing, Health care, Marathon training and running, Middle Age, Quakerism, Vegetarianism

Well, Dear Readers,

I guess my last post was a little intense, so let me aim for more lightness this time!

To stretch a theme a bit, I’ll just write that I’m lighter on my feet today!

As a vegetarian and a marathoner, I’ve had some excitement with proper nutrition and when I’ve had my blood drawn for yearly physicals.

I’ve learned to take the results that come back from the blood tests in stride (no pun intended!) and ask doctors questions when I need to.

Advice to readers: don’t be afraid to ask questions when it comes to your health. If a doctor makes you feel that you’ve offended him or her by asking too many questions, look for a new doctor. It’s better to ask than to websurf and possibly drive yourself or those near and dear to you crazy. Being frozen by fear is pretty pernicious for the mind and body.

If you reward your body, it will often reward you. I’m training for my 22nd marathon. Recently, my new doctor asked me why. I gave him the best answer I could: “I love training and being part of marathons.” I assured him my personal best days are several years behind me and that I’m not overtaxing my body. I have embraced being slow!

He asked good questions about maintaining good health, and I did additional reading and consulting with him on vegetarianism, distance running, making sure I get enough protein, vitamins and recovery after training as a middle-aged runner.

I’m excited to have increased my knowledge base in the last few months so that I can run and enjoy three marathons between now and January. As frugal as I am, I celebrated this past weekend by purchasing an expensive pair of running sneakers. I’ve worn them the past few days and feel like I’m walking on clouds!

Suicide is Not Painless

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Angels, Austria, Blogging, Community, Faith, Family, Fate, Fitness, Friendship, Fulbright Program, Gay marriage, Gay parenting, Gratitude, Growing up gay, Marathon training and running, Middle Age, Quakerism, Suicide, Tennis, The '80s, Writing

My last post, this past Wednesday, was a tribute to my fellow bloggers, two of whom I feel have become friends even though I have never met them in person! Their writing is inspiring. One blogger usually writes about food; the other about many topics, including her successful battle to like eating again.

I received permission from BeautyBeyondBones to “draft” off her recent post about “10 Things I’d Say to 15-Year-Old Me”: https://beautybeyondbones.com/2018/06/05/10-things-id-say-to-15-year-old-me

Her posts often speak to me, as if we are sharing a good meal and conversation about how we’ve overcome life’s challenges. Her writing is fun, relevant, honest, purposeful and imbued with faith but not preachy.

I left myself time for the weekend to draft off BeautyBeyondBones’ theme of looking back on her life and what she wishes she could have said to herself when she was younger and struggling with her eating disorder.

Some of my own followers have thanked me for writing about growing up and fearing I was probably gay but making it through that dark tunnel that took decades to navigate and finding Light at the other side.

Then Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain committed suicide this week.

My drafting theme for this post has changed a bit. Rather than write about staying true to oneself, it may be more relevant for me today to write about staying alive.

I’ve tried twice to commit suicide.

The first time, I was barely 18, a sophomore at college who had a good eight years of daily verbal and physical blows sent my way because I was gay.

At that time, it seemed to me the whole world was ready to make that proclamation.

But I wasn’t.

I endured. Until one night, hungry, I went to the large cafeteria in my dorm hall. All I wanted was to eat and mind my own business. I sat down at the end of a table alone. People at the other end started passing notes and snickering. I waited them out. Eventually, they left. I read the notes. On one of them I saw the words, “Better be careful not to breathe the same air as the faggot at the end of the table.”

Devastated, I left and walked upstairs past a lounge on my way to my dorm room. Beautiful, healthy college students engaged in lively conversation stopped speaking when I walked past. As soon as I did, they started laughing about “the skinny faggot.”

I made it to my dorm room. A message had been taped to the door: “Watch out for the faggot who lives here.”

In a trance, I walked to a classroom building known as the Hall of Languages. I entered an unlocked room, moved a desk near a rope holding a map of the world, tied the rope around my neck, and jumped.

The world was dark until found myself staring at the section of the map and the country in front of my eyes: Austria.

The rope had broken.

I thought at the time, “If I want to succeed and receive my degree early, I better go back and study.”

A few years later, I received a Fulbright Scholarship to study and live in Austria.

The wonderful Fulbright Commission in Austria extended my scholarship a second year so I could write poetry in German, English, and French and teach in a secondary school.

In my second year in Austria, a man who lived near me began a friendship. We were both 23. We went to movies, played tennis. After a few months, he said he wanted  a relationship.

I had never had a relationship with a man. In high school, I dated two wonderful young women, and in college, I fell in love with a woman from Japan. Years later, I realized I had also fallen in love with a man. But actually having an intimate relationship with a man, something for which was very clear to me would make me an outcast in a straight world that was the only world I had known, where I hadn’t been welcomed as a teenager, and had even been beaten up physically, not to mention verbally taunted relentlessly, was not in my life plan. I didn’t think I had the courage to dive off the deep end into a same-sex relationship.

But I tried in my young 20s in Austria.

The man and I became intimate. (And thank goodness in a safe way.)

And then he dumped me and never explained why.

And at age 23, I poured myself a warm bath, ate a good meal, sat in the tub, and threw in a radio so I would be electrocuted.

I was literally so shocked I jumped out of the bathtub!!

And survived.

Unlike the first attempt, I let my parents know. Back then, people didn’t write emails. I called them and heard the desperation in their voices. A week later, I received cards from both my mother and father, both telling me how much they loved me, both imploring me never to try again to take my own life.

And I never have.

Many years and one failed marriage to a woman later, I found the man of my dreams. We have been together 16 years, 8 of them legally married. We have a stunning daughter. I live for them and for me.

Since my two suicide attempts, I have had a successful career, finished 21 marathons, successfully coached tennis teams, had poetry published, have found friends all over the world, have found my dream home in Hawaii.

And had good counselors who have helped me look at the dark tunnel of doubt and loneliness and pain and see all the Light that surrounded me and the people who have loved me and whom I have loved.

I’m so grateful that decades ago I failed at my two suicide attempts. I was lucky.

I must have had a few angels at my side who guided me through my 20s and 30s and 40s.

And a desire to run another mile no matter what happens.

My prayers go out to the families of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain and to any family or friend of someone who has attempted or succeeded at suicide.

Please, whoever is reading this post, if you ever have a thought of ending your life, please reach out to others. Talk with them, cry with them, whatever it takes. Share a meal, many laughs. As my mother once wrote me after my second attempt so many years ago, “Please go to a place where you can hear a child’s laughter and see people who love each other and know that life is good.”

Finding Community

Tags

Blogging, Community, Faith, Friendship, Gratitude, Identity, Living in Hawaii, Marathon training and running, Self-care, Self-esteem, Writing

One of the unexpected benefits of blogging these past two years has been joining a worldwide community of bloggers!

A few months after starting my blog, I noticed patterns of “likes” from friends and other writers. I was flattered! Then I started reading other blogs, including one from a young woman in Canada who stopped writing posts because she felt too squeezed for time with her full-time career. I felt sad and read in her comments section that many of us hoped she would one day return to her blog.

Two of my regular followers, both women, live on the Mainland, one in the Midwest and the other on East Coast. I love reading their writing! It’s a favorite part of my day, like how I used to feel when I lived in Baltimore, awoke early, and trained for marathons with an amazing group of women at 5 a.m. or earlier before we left to get ready for work but only after we had solved the world’s problems! (It was fun being the token male!)

With the Hawaiian time zone five and six hours later than the Midwest and East Coast, I awake early after most of the Mainland has been up for a while, read posts from my favorite fellow bloggers, and start my day inspired.

Let me give gratitude and shout-outs to them:
https://whatsfordinnermoms.com
and
https://beautybeyondbones.com

To use a running term, I “draft” off these writers, just like I drafted off my marathon teammates in Baltimore who are far better runners than I’ll ever be! I miss them.

Drafting off a runner or writer, or anyone who inspires you (poets come often to my mind or musicians with whom I’ve played in orchestras — another topic) is a compliment as long as decent etiquette is followed.

If I’m in a marathon and looking for inspiration to help me finish the next mile, I will sometimes begin a light conversation with another runner, often someone I’ve never met, and stay with that person for a while, even try to emulate her or his pace and style for a while.

This week, the author of https://beautybeyondbones.com wrote a post that I keep thinking about because I found so much resonance in her words that give meaning to the many miles I traveled to gain confidence and my self-esteem, and, fortunately, survived in doing so.

I asked https://beautybeyondbones.com if I could draft off her topic. She told me it would be an honor.

With that setting up for my next post when I will draft off beautybeyondbones this weekend, I will say good-bye for now, but I have a brief postscript: I told my husband that finding this community of bloggers is as rewarding as the many miles I ran with my friends in Baltimore.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could all meet in Hawaii, run a mile together, share our writing and a meal or several together, talk story as they say here, and stay friends for life? I am ever hopeful!

A Change in Direction: Part V – The Middle of Nowhere

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Blogging, Buddhism, Faith, Family, Fate, German Heritage, Gratitude, Living in Hawaii, Marathon training and running, Middle Age, Parenting, Poetry

Recently, on an early morning in Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I read a photo essay about The Middle of Nowhere.

Being a hopeless romantic, I was immediately fascinated with the theme: unspoiled terrain crossed by trailblazers who breathe solitude and seek freedom, who yearn to be far from the madding crowd.

So how do I find The Middle of Nowhere?

I have found it often finds you!

Even when I’ve taken part in marathons with thousands of runners, I’ve always traveled to a couple quiet miles where I feel like I’m the only person on the course. I talk more easily with angels who are helping me finish.

When I lived in a monastery, the monks were fond of saying that we arose at 4 a.m. so that the angels could hear our prayers more clearly!

This summer I’ll run a marathon on the eastern end of O‘ahu with probably only 50 others on the course. With far fewer participants than many marathons, I get to know the other runners and we all celebrate that feeling of being alone but still with each other.

Isn’t a marathon a kind of guided course? And isn’t life?

When I was a young teenager, I visited Germany for the first time, was separated from other students in my high school exchange program, and was lost. I walked eight miles back to my host family not knowing where I was.

But maybe I did.

A few years later I learned that the path I chose was a pilgrimage route traveled by my foremothers and forefathers since the 1300s.

The Middle of Nowhere also finds me when I write poems and wonder what direction they will take, if I’m struggling as a parent, if I move out of an uncomfortable interaction with someone knowing that I may not have been perfect but gave it my best effort.

Where this all leads me is to a place of gratitude and acceptance, to know The Middle of Nowhere can be a bit daunting, but that the courage to embrace it is always a way to learn and keep going another mile.

 

A Change in Direction: Part III

Tags

Angels, Blogging, Faith, Family, Fate, Gratitude, Growing up gay, Marathon training and running, Middle Age, Poetry, Tennis, Trisomy 21

I can’t believe I’m approaching nearly two full years of writing this blog. As my followers know in the first year I posted every day except weekends and holidays. In the second year, I’ve written every Wednesday and on weekends. The results have been surprising, almost always in good ways:

1. I realized a few months into my first year that I had started writing more poetry again! It was like finding a familiar friend I had grown up with but whom I lately had only seen infrequently. I used to write poems nearly every day when I was a teenager. It was a great way to escape the constant taunting about being gay even though I was years away from coming out of the closet. Truth be told, I didn’t know what coming out of the closet meant! But writing poetry gave me some measure of pride — by the time I graduated from high school, I had won 12 national writing awards — and control when I often felt at a loss about not being able to change who I was. Decades later, I’m glad I didn’t. I would tell most young people: celebrate who you are even if every day people mock you for being you. Be open. Be kind even if others are not. Give them time. They may come around. Easier said (or written) than done!
2. With the blog, I was able to thank the dozens of friends and relatives who helped me along the way. Some, like my aunts and my mother and grandmother, were (and are) constant wellsprings of love and encouragement. Others I knew far fewer years, but they all were like the volunteers at marathons who offer water, comfort, and inspiration for runners wanting to make it through another mile!
3. By writing, I’ve come face to face with how I want to and can be a better father, husband, son, and friend. It’s never too late to tweak and grow!
4. I believe my readers have a better understanding about what it was like to grow up gay in the ’70s and ’80s and now, as a middle-aged man, to raise a child born with an extra chromosome. And I shouldn’t forget tennis! I’ve had a few readers write that they had never watched a match until they started reading my blog.

So where I am going with all this?

I thought two years writing a blog would be more than enough and I could move on to other goals, like making sure my daughter has a stellar year in third grade, training for more marathons even though my legs, like tires, are showing the miles! I even want to play the bassoon again!

But I would miss the blog, the community of wonderful bloggers I am honored to have joined, and my readers who have been amazing!

So on July 1, the beginning of the third year of this blog, I will be writing a poem once a week for my posts. The themes I have covered in this blog will surely be covered in the poems.

What do you think, Dear Readers? Do you like the idea?

A Change in Direction: Part II

Tags

Blogging, Buddhism, Faith, Family, Gay marriage, Gratitude, Hair, Living in Hawaii, Marathon training and running, Middle Age, Quakerism

Dear Readers,

It’s been an intense weekend, and my last post was pretty heavy-duty, so I’ll continue my theme about changes in direction but hold back from too much intensity.

About three years ago, after life had thrown me a few major curveballs — within a five-month stretch my husband and mother both had strokes and my father discovered he had terminal cancer — I went into a barbershop to have all the hair on my head shaved off.

My husband, who recovered pretty well from his stroke, asked me never to do that again! My mother, who also recovered, agreed. I made the decision partly out of solidarity with my father. I later learned that he refused treatment and kept a full head of hair.

I’m still glad I honored my dad. But I hadn’t realized a few downsides to having very little hair on top:

1. 1. Sunburns on the scalp happen a lot more quickly!
   2. For un homme d’un certain age — or a man of a certain age (doesn’t the French language always make phrases sound a lot better!), having a shaven head isn’t always flattering!
   3. Water from a shower on a bare scalp, while it can feel great, best not be too cold nor hot!

So I started growing my hair again, until a friend said maybe it didn’t look professional enough after a certain length. I followed her advice, but lately I’ve been contemplating a new look to celebrate living and working in Hawaii for 4 years, training for my 22nd marathon, 16 years of marriage through thick and thin, my daughter turning 8, and, well, growing it while I still can! Many friends have told me to go for it!

What do you think?

The picture on the left is me with my family during that difficult summer. The guy with longer hair is me years ago with my hair the longest it’s ever been (and in the best running shape I’ll ever be in!).

For a Quaker, this post is truly light and a bit silly even though what happens to many of us can become pretty serious pretty quickly as I found out three summers ago.

It makes me realize more than ever:

1. Appreciate, always, what I have and what I’ve gone through.
2. Try to have fun while running life’s marathons!

A Change in Direction: Part I

Tags

Blogging, Buddhism, Community, Down syndrome, Faith, Gay parenting, German Heritage, Gratitude, Living in Hawaii, Marathon training and running, Middle Age, Parenting, Poetry, Quakerism, Tennis, Trisomy 21

On the last day that I will probably ever be in Germany in this lifetime, I grabbed a German magazine about parenting that had caught my eye for several weeks when I would go to the grocery market.

For the first time since I had graduated from college, I had stopped working.

Or so I thought.

For years I had yearned to be a parent, and I couldn’t wait to be a stay-at-home dad.

Or so I thought.

A natural parent I was not.

Endless hours spent alone with our daughter in our apartment in Bonn, Germany, while my husband was teaching were lonelier and harder than I ever imagined. Our gorgeous girl has always slept beautifully, and I used much of that time to savor books and magazines before I would wake up, try to smile, warm bottles, feed our baby, read and sing to her, take her for walks, sing and read more, once in a while visit a friend in our home, and wait for the hours when Ben could be with Ellen so I could train for a marathon, buy groceries, or go to church with the family on Sundays.

My appreciation for gifted parents rose exponentially.

Ben is a natural father. I am not. Ben is the reason why our daughter, born with an extra chromosome, is more than holding her own with her age peers. She is a gifted reader of two languages. She has a working knowledge of Hawaiian. She speaks and writes well. Her penmanship and math skills could use some improvement, but when I step back and think about all she has accomplished as a student fully integrated in her public school, as an athlete (she loves to climb walls at the YMCA), Girl Scout, young Buddhist in Dharma School, hula dancer, and loyal friend to a half a dozen kids, I realize how lucky we are as parents.

I think back to my last day in Germany.

One of the feature stories in the magazine I gave myself as a farewell present was about a family with a young daughter born with Down Syndrome. The mother had decided to start a blog about the family’s experience. (I should write her some day because she is one of the many people who inspired me to start my blog.) She also expressed her fears openly about how her daughter would gain any kind of decent schooling in Germany, be accepted by others, and lead an independent life.

Her fears were the main reason we left Germany: to give our daughter more opportunities in the Land of Opportunity. The clincher for me in Germany came one day when a mother in a baby group we had joined actually asked when we would have our daughter sterilized.

To say I was shocked and horrified would be a major understatement. I later learned she had been checking in for months with other parents (but not us directly) about why we had joined the group.

After I caught my breath, I said to her, in my most polite German, that I thought we were living in the year 2010, not 1942. The other parents were silent. One hugged me as I got up to leave. She and I later became lifelong friends.

I never went back to the baby group.

I’ve always been proud of my German heritage, my family traditions, and, although a citizen of the United States, keeping the language of my grandfather and his parents and siblings, but I knew I wanted to leave the country as soon as we found a home back in the States.

To keep a long blog post from getting longer, I’ll just write what many followers of this blog may already know. We settled in a Quaker learning community in Iowa before we moved to Hawaii permanently four years ago. My husband and I both work in a wonderful school. Our daughter is thriving.

I have a horrific fear of flying, so I likely will never make it back to Europe, or for that matter even the Continental United States. If I ever did go back to Germany, though, I would take my daughter to the mother whom I never saw again and say, “Look at our beautiful children. Aren’t they all remarkable and give us hope?”

When Patience is Part of the Job

Tags

Blogging, Down syndrome, Early Education, Gratitude, Marathon training and running, Middle Age, Parenting, Trisomy 21

This morning at 5 while I was in no-man’s land between being fully awake and hoping I might sleep a little longer, the most beautiful creature in the world startled me by crawling into my bed and saying, “Papa, I love being with you.”

I put my arm around her. My daughter is still young enough that she wakes up excited to see me. It was the first of probably 20 or so moments today when I will be grateful I traveled to the land of parenthood eight years ago.

Two hours later, though, I had crossed the border into “I’ll need a couple hours before I miss you.”

My daughter, who had been playing beautifully on her own, had started to decorate one of her cabinets with a crayon. We all needed to leave for school in 20 minutes. I still had not taken my shower.

With all my middle-aged dad wisdom, I tried to keep my voice steady and calm, but frustration was creeping through like a bad weed about to good wild.

My daughter said, “I don’t like you.” I said, “You don’t have to, but I’m still your father.” She then asked that I not come to her birthday party in about 10 days when she will turn 8. Fortunately, I said nothing.

About five hours have passed now. I miss my daughter terribly like I do most days. I can’t wait to hear about her challenges and triumphs on this Wednesday.

Many people think children born with an extra chromosome are angels all the time. I had one misguided person tell me before my daughter was born how lucky I was because when adults with Down Syndrome pack her groceries, she always breaks out in one big smile.

Oh.

I calmly asked if maybe we should wait until my daughter was born, attended school and probably college if packing groceries would be her chosen (by her) career path. The person just looked at me. We haven’t stayed in touch.

My daughter is on a great education path. She’s bilingual and loves to read. I count my blessings. I know I’m lucky when she is stubborn and wants to hold her ground and then some. She’s strong and independent.

But to get through those times when my hair grows a little grayer, I look at a few pictures from my daughter’s past. Sure enough, I then cross back over into the country called “Grateful Parent.”