DOMA Overturned!

What an awesome day. Today, the Supreme Court ruled that the exclusionary, the cruel, the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. And I could not be happier. To my gay friends, I salute you for staying strong, for keeping your heads up, for thickening your skin, knowing that the day would come that your place in this world would be recognized as just as important as mine. To my fellow straight allies, I am proud to stand by you in the fight for equality. Not just marriage equality, but for all around equality for our LGBT friends.

A Good Bye for the Beginning

I know, I know.  It’s hardly good form to start writing a blog that begins with something negative. But that’s my world this week. A lot of tears and a lot of confusion.

On Thursday, six days ago, I got a call from my husband. “I think Anthony died”. I held my breath. “What do you mean?”, I said, waiting for him to follow the name Anthony with a last name I didn’t recognize, so that I could breathe out. But he didn’t do that. It followed with the last name I didn’t want to hear. And then he was silent for a moment. “Yup”, he said “Anthony is dead”. And I immediately started crying. Giant, non- stop, almost hysterical tears. Thank goodness the baby was sleeping.

See, Anthony is my husband’s best friend’s brother. A tortured soul. A soul who went into the military years ago with the hopes of getting straightened out. A soul, who during those military years, found a wife and had a child. A soul whose demons became larger and scarier even after leaving the military. A soul who had internal battles that life as a civilian husband and father could not win. Anthony didn’t lead the most honest life. He didn’t lead the cleanest or most honorable life. But he was loved so desperately by his family and those around him.

The call I received about Anthony is the one that every parent dreads. Someone had broken into his home and shot him. In the back of the head. And he was gone. And he was found by his parents. Someone had been watching their home, waited for the family to go out, and then broke in and shot him. Broke in and killed their son. Their baby. The thought of it brings tears to my eyes and a knot to my stomach. Any pain I feel, any sadness or sorrow is absolutely nothing in comparison to what his family, my husband’s best friend, feels.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that I’ve been squeezing that baby of mine extra tight this week. Like after the Newtown massacre, I’ve been staring at her. Trying to memorize her face so that God forbid, anything ever happens to her, I will remember every part of her face, every dimple and every eyelash. I can complain about motherhood. I can complain about what it has done to my body and to my career and to my social life. And I will. But at the end of the literal and metaphorical day, I would do anything in the world to protect my child and to tell her every day, as many times as she can handle, that I love her.