Moment of hating Typepad – it ate maybe 20% of this post! Which of course was the best 20% and my re-writing efforts will never match the pure literature of the missing words. 
Early morning update to include something I’m proud of that I forgot!
Because she is so persuasive, I volunteered to Trista to participate in the "agree to a 5 question interview" meme that’s floating around these days. And what interesting questions they were!
I’m supposed to find 5 volunteers who will let me interview them. If you’re willing, please say so in the comments! (You can either answer in your own blog, or in the comments here if you haven’t started blogging yourself.)
1) What did it feel like to see your name on a real, honest-to-god book for the first time?
It was unbelievable! Not as good as getting married or as when they finally brought Noah to me, but way up there. Better than graduating. Even better than the time that I found out an article I also co-authored was being used in a course at Harvard Law School (it was only recommended reading, not required — but still!). That’s probably the closest experience I’ve had to the same feeling as the day my 5 copies of the books arrived at the house. It was amazingly satisfying.
(Like the subtle way I worked that brag in? Unlike the book, I can almost never think of a way to tell people where that article ended up. I found out because my co-author was a Harvard Law student at the time, and his classmates thought it was cool that he was on the syllabus.)
The most surprising thing about writing the book — not that you asked — was how much of a collective experience it was. I absolutely, positively, could NOT have done it without my co-authors, especially Helen Adams, the lead author. Her commitment to the project really pulled me along during the times I felt overwhelmed, both by the work and my own fear of not being good enough.
I also couldn’t have done it without Jill, who humored and indulged and supported me in all of my crazy days of struggling with the book. I actually made her go away for an entire weekend at one point, because I was literally unable to make myself do the work when she was home, even if she was trying to let me work. (Thanks too, to Mikki, who invited Jill to spend the weekend!)
2) What is the thing that you are proudest of Jill for doing?
Changing careers to pursue her dream.
Jill left a job where she was a big mucketty muck for a professional sports team, managing ~1100 people, to see if she had what it took to be a professional actor. And even though the idea of not "paying her own way" — being dependent on someone else — was really scary for her, when we sat down and figured out that we could do it, she let me support her for almost a year. It turned out that it was harder for us to make the $ work than we originally thought, so she did need to go back to having a day job. But she took a job that would allow her to keep focusing on her acting, unlike the previous position.
She may be about to pass that one up with her current evaluation of her priorities.
3) What is the thing that you are proudest of yourself for doing?
This was the hardest question to answer. I think I’m going to go with "writing the book." But because it was hard and I have a terrible fear that I’m bragging, I’m going to actually force myself to put down some other things that I’m proud of having done:
- Really great "get out the vote" work that helped Mom get elected to the State Court of Appeals in 2004. She won with 51% of the votes, so I know I made a difference. She swept the student ward where I spent most of election day, and voter turnout was high.
- Coaching. I’ve been trained as a communication & leadership skills coach, and some of the people I coached really took themselves and their lives on in an amazing way. I helped an overeducated secretary figure out that her true passion was hospital chaplaincy, and get on a path to fulfilling that dream for herself. I helped another woman design and implement a program to help 11th graders at her low-income/immigrant family dominated high school get ready to apply for college.
- Learning to admit to myself what I really want, and learning to ask for it. It sounds so simple, but for me, the fear that I was going to disappoint people, or that they would think I shouldn’t want that or need help getting it, was unbelievably hard to overcome. It still isn’t a cakewalk, but you shoulda seen me back in the day.
- My political skills. Political skills get a bad rap. I’m especially proud of my ability to communicate with straight people about glbt issues, in a way that has them "get it" and calms their fears. I’m able to listen to them and acknowledge wherever they are, without making them feel like I’m judging them. And that creates a space where they can listen to me. There’s a lot of "being" as opposed to "doing" in all this. I’m really good at being "pretty much normal, same hopes and dreams and fears and crap as you" about being married to Jill, and us being Noah’s Moms, and communicating that to people who maybe think it’s a little weird, or have some totally out there idea of what that "lifestyle" means.
- Updated Item: www.GetNetWise.org – I was responsible for all of the at launch content of this website, which was jointly sponsored by every big in 1999 Internet company that you can name. It went from an idea we were pitching with vague interest and support, to announcement of the launch by Vice President Gore, with 2 Senators, 1 Cabinet Member, and numerous other senior members of the administration, non-profit leaders, and corporate excecutives also speaking. And all that happened in the course of the busiest 6 weeks of my life. But the result — good Internet safety information for families, a tool that let parents compare parental controls software in an unbiased way based on their values, and launch support from companies otherwise practically at war with one another — was wonderful.
4)
I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I will not
retreat a single inch; and I will be heard.” – William Lloyd Garrison.
Have you ever felt this in your life? What was it about and what
happened?
Yes, actually! (I know you’re shocked.)
The best example I can think of is about our wedding.
Jill and I had a big wedding in February 2003, almost a year before the San Francisco weddings caused national attention to the issue to completely explode.
At that time, most of the GLBT people we knew had "commitment ceremonies."
When we started planning ours, I decided that I was just NOT going to accept second class treatment, starting with second class language. I was calling the state between proposal and ceremony "being engaged," the event itself a "wedding," and the state of being after the event "married." I also invited all the people one traditionally invites to a wedding, including extended family members whom I knew might have opinions that were not entirely in support of same sex couples getting married.
There was a blowup involving the extended family and my nuclear family.
But at the end of the day, no one in my nuclear family equivocated, excused, or retreated a single inch. And my cousin who was at the epicenter of the explosion learned a lot about family and judgment and compassion and putting yourself into someone else’s shoes. And so did I. In fact, I think the whole experience made me closer to that entire arm of my extended family.
Added interesting twist: 51 weeks later, I declared to a room full of probably 800 people that my purpose in life was to cause gay and lesbian families to be safe, secure, and fully celebrated as families. Days after that, Mayor Gavin Newsom began granting same sex couples marriage licenses.
Obviously, there’s a lot "more east to go" in this process, but IMO, the public discourse on gay marriage and 2-Mom or 2-Dad families has made a monumental shift in the last 3 years. And while we can’t take credit for the whole shift, I believe that the stand Jill and I took about our wedding was a piece of a grassroots groundswell that will continue to change the world.
5) Do you think Maple cabinets and Cherry Cabinets can look good together in the same kitchen? Why or why not?
Yes, I think they can. But it depends on the kitchen, and really, on the house. If the house were all maple but for one or two lonely cherry cabinets, that might look weird. But if there were a lot of different stains and grains of wood already in the house, then you have a theme of natural wood finishes. The other alternative would be to focus attention on the difference, so it looks like an artistic choice, not an accident.
I don’t have a very "matchy" style, myself. So my dark cherry bookshelves sit next to my walnut stained entertainment center, on my blond wood floors. And the dining room table has a finish that reminds me of olive wood, but I’m sure it isn’t, and the chairs are a very deep brown. They actually match the kitchen table. All of them are natural wood finishes, which I love. Oh and we have some pine bookshelves behind the couch (which has walnut-looking feet) and pine storage cabinets near where Jill works in the kitchen. Tragically, IMO, we are cursed with bright white kitchen cabinets AND counters. They blow the theme, and are absolutely not my taste.
On the other hand, my sister has much matchier taste. Maple and cherry mixed together would never work for her 50s era blond wood furnishings.
Top 40 songs were a huge hit with him, especially "Dirty White Boy." He actually squealled with uncontainable glee when Jill started singing that bit.
This doctor thought we should give it a week of me not eating dairy, and if there’s no improvement, then she’ll prescribe infant zantac.
