Tonight

So obviously I can't read a radar map. It has rained and poured and strangled toads and there's been lightening and thunder, huge great peals and cracks of both. And still it comes down, steady and sweet, and I rejoice along with the garden, the trees, and every holy growing green thing.

Jason came and he pressure washed that fence you see, the closest one, the one in our yard. He pressure washed in the pouring down rain. He's a hard worker, that one. He brought Owen with him and it was nice to have that boy all to myself again. Just him. We even read books on the bed and I asked if he wanted the Mr. Peep story, which is the story I used to tell him when he was younger to get him to fall asleep, and he did, but not too much of it. It was so sweet though, to have him lie there and for me to start our old story, "Once upon a time there was a very old turkey named Mr. Peep," and to go from there and he smiled and he giggled and he remembered.

While we were on the bed reading, Jessie called from Bhutan. Oh my god! How is that even possible? How can someone who crossed those mountains in a plane call me on a phone? I could imagine her voice bouncing off of satellites all across the vast sky above us and there was hardly any lag and I couldn't help it. I cried.
"Are you okay? Is everything okay?"
"Yes. Everything is wonderful," she said and they are leaving Bhutan in the morning which will be in the middle of the night here and after traveling for so many hours and spending eleven hours in New Delhi and six hours in Chicago, they will arrive home on Wednesday night, her birthday, around eleven. I think of it all. The airports and the flights, crossing back over those mountains, the highest on this planet, the people, and she is so far away and in such a different place (those mountains, those mountains!) and she is so tiny compared to it all, even with her husband and their true, great love and my mother's heart quakes.
She will be fine. She and Vergil will be fine but oh I will not lie to you. I cried and I can't wait to hold them, behold them, again.

Owen doesn't like it when I cry. "Don't cry, Mer-Mer," he said.
"It's okay. I just miss Jessie," I told him. "It's okay for Mer-Mers to cry sometimes."
"You got Boppy," he offered helpfully. "I love you."
"Oh Owen! I love you too."
And I hugged him to me hard and we went back to reading about the little fish Otto who is fed too much and who grows and grows and grows.

He's not spending the night tonight. We discussed it, he and I. He thought he would only be spending part of the night and I told him that no, he would be spending the whole night. He pondered this.
"My mommy be so mad," he said.
"No she won't, Owen. She doesn't mind at all if you spend the night."
"I love my house," he said. Then he thought about it. "I love this house too but I love my house best."
"I understand," I told him. And I do. His house has his mama and his daddy and his brother in them. Soon, though, on a day when he has spent enough time with them that he misses me and Boppy enough, he'll come with his jammies and his pillow and he'll spend the night with us. It'll happen soon. I just want him to be perfectly and completely ready. To be a pure peace with it. Soon. Very soon. Maybe even this week. It just all has to be considered in that brain of his, to be turned over and thought about. It takes courage, you know. Which he has.

And this man has courage, too- Jason Collins- the first male U.S. athlete in a major sport to come out as gay. I read the essay he wrote for Sports Illustrated and it is a fine thing. 
It would, of course, be a finer thing if it wasn't such a big deal but the truth of the matter is that it IS a big deal. Professional athletes are not known for their great tolerance when it comes to gay teammates. But bit by bit, that will change. Is changing. Has changed.
So yes, I think he has great courage. In some ironic way, it may well take more courage for a seven-foot tall, 255-pound man to come out as gay than it does a man built more like Tim Gunn. Whom I also respect tremendously. I don't know. But I do know that eventually, it won't matter. And here's another thing- I am damned glad to live in a time when I see these changes happening. When I see things like our first African American president elected not just once, but twice, when I see a Jason Collins come out and say that he is gay. I'll tell you what else I've seen in my life- I've seen the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. I've seen the murder of Matthew Shepard. I've seen racism at its worst and most vile and horrific and I've seen the gay, the transgendered, and the bisexual shunned, made fun of, bullied and threatened in every way possible.

Well. Perhaps a time will come when all of us are no longer judged by our skin color or our gender or our sexual orientation. Or disabilities.
We shall see. Meanwhile, every time someone tells the world that they will no longer try to conform to some cultural standard of what should and should not be, we get one step closer to that better world.

It is still raining. Even in the prematurely early twilight the new growing-green glows. My baby and her husband will be home soon, my husband is home now. My grandson is considering his bravery. The world changes and does not change.

Me too.