I don’t know how to talk about something that seems untalkaboutable.  C.’s father died last week, and I learned that death can bring out the best in people and the worst in people.  I want to hang onto the people who were kind, sympathetic, generous, and inclusive, but it’s the worst that I remember the most and rehash in my head.  Such as:  ”family” versus family.  Homophobia.  The unmitigated audacity of shallow, clueless, stupid, selfish people denying the rightful and proper recognition of a dead man’s children by inventing a fictional family that resembles nothing in reality.  These are people who didn’t give a damn about this man when he was alive, who let him go about in threadbare clothing, who stole his money, who committed identity theft against him, who let him go without the basic necessities and thus his dignity, and now they are concerned with “sending him out with style” at the expense of the people who actually loved him, cared about him, tried to provide for him.  The people who are his actual family, the two children he raised, the woman he was married to for 35 years–they are all erased in the face of their fraudulent fiction.

These past few days have been incredibly rough and traumatic, and it wasn’t even my loss.  It was mine by association.

C. and I spent five days with this man when he was in the hospital last month.  I fed him, washed his face, sang songs with him, held his hand, brought him special treats, advocated for him, made sure that his daughter got to see him, and asked questions.  I did more for him than those who claim ownership of him.  And I’m erased, dismissed.  I’m his real daughter’s partner, but I’m not “family.” I’m shoved aside in favor of a horrible bovine stepdaughter who chewed gum during his funeral and talked on her cell phone during his visitation.

I think part of dealing with grief is telling the story of the trauma.  I would rather talk about C’s cousins (her mother’s people, not her father’s people) who embraced me, told me that they loved me, and included me like the family I am.  I want to talk about the funeral home usher who made sure that I got to stick by C’s side, and that C and her sister were rightfully recognized.  I even want to talk about the Mormons who brought over a ton of food for those gathering after the funeral.  But instead, all I can think about is the horrible stepdaughter who listed her siblings’ names first in the obituary as his children, and C. and her sister as an afterthought.  The funeral home usher who made me leave my partner’s side where I belonged.  C’s aunts and uncles who lied about coming over after the funeral, instead choosing to go elsewhere instead of sharing their grief with their brother’s daughters.

I am letting my mind spin out these stories in the hope that it will later want to focus on the good, the love, and the true family.  Do you think it will?

The Kentucky State Fair.  A riverboat cruise on the Ohio on the Belle of Louisville.  Library books.  Watching movies.  Vacuuming.   Physical therapy.  Dinner.  Music.  Feline frolicking.  These are just a few of the ways I’ve occupied myself recently instead of watching TV.  C. returned a few weeks ago, thus soothing my loneliness and sadness into oblivion.  We shifted pretty easily back into our domestic bliss routine.

C. and I have had some fun times lately.  We’ve had walking adventures and nighttime bus rides and date nights at home with rented movies and homemade caramel popcorn.  We had friends over for dinner and it was such a joy to fill our little home with good people and food and music and stories and laughter.

But then life got serious all of a sudden.  The day after we had company for dinner we found ourselves on the road to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where C. is from.  We had news about her sick father, and the news was bad, and we decided that we needed to hit the road right then so that C. could see her dad.  After some scrambling to tie up loose ends at work and arranging for cat care, I drove us to Arkansas.

A few weeks ago, when setting goals and identifying our relationship’s core values, we decided that starting in August, we would take hour-long walks together at least twice a week.  Tonight, after veggie burgers and World Cafe, C. and I went for our first walk.  We walked to Central Park.  I love this park, and yet this is only my first visit to the park since I moved back to Louisville two years ago.  (When I lived in Louisville the first time, I lived around the block from the park and took walks there all the time.)  We walked a winding path around the park, declaimed half-remembered bits of Shakespeare on the amphitheater stage and fake-jousted, ran through the sprayground holding hands (twice!), walked the colonnade, and generally enjoyed ourselves immensely.  We will definitely return to the park, and soon, and possibly with a picnic.  We took a meandering route back home, stopping at the drug store for allergy medicine and two ginger ales.  We were gone almost two hours, and it was one of the best nights in recent memory.

Cooking is usually C’s bag, but there are certain meals that are my specialty in this household.  Chicken enchiladas is one such dish.  This afternoon, I readied a dish of enchiladas to bake for dinner, while listening to Wait Wait… I made a smaller batch than I usually do, using a 9 x 9 baking dish rather than the 13 x 9 that is my usual practice.  So when it came time to roll the tasty chicken filling into tortillas, I had a conundrum.  The big burrito-size tortillas were way too big for this smaller dish.  I quickly arrived at a solution:  enchiladitas!  I sliced the tortillas in half and rolled up little baby enchiladas with the half-tortillas.  They are so cute and small, but they will still be awesomely delicious, I’m sure.

Yesterday was an epic day of patronizing local businesses and not watching TV.  C. and I started off the day at the Bardstown Road Farmers Market.   C. headed home on the bus with our tomatoes and squash and green beans and eggplant, and I headed to my coffee shop to get some work done.  C. met up with me there several hours later, and we went to Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen to enjoy the 25¢ Ice Cream Social.  75 cents later, we went to Baxter Avenue Filmworks to enjoy the new Harry Potter film.  Finally, we headed home for a delicious supper of homemade chicken salad.  Just another day in the life of the best life ever.

The floor of our new kitchen is an excellent dancing surface, especially if you’re wearing socks.  C. and I kitchendanced to Michael Jackson tonight while our veggie burgers cooked.  After dinner, we headed to Carmichael’s to meet Greg Garrett and hear him read.  I learned a lot about U2 tonight.  C. is an ardent fan and plans to convert me.

Last semester, I encouraged my first year seminar students to watch the inauguration on TV and write a report about it.  A number of students who submitted reports about viewing the inauguration declared that Barack Obama’s election proved that racism was a thing of the past, that we were all equal now.  This pained me, and I challenged their assertions in my marginal comments, attempting to encourage examination of their white privilege.   And I was reminded of these students tonight when, over gazpacho salad and hummus and pita, C. and I listened to this guy on the radio talk about a possible California ballot initiative denying benefits to children of undocumented immigrants.  He even contested that these children, who were born in the United States, were valid citizens.  I was gobsmacked by the totally heartless and and unabashed assholism of this guy, but I shouldn’t be surprised.  Racism, xenophobia, and unexamined privilege are alive and well in America.

C. turned on the stereo as I prepared to make dinner tonight.  Did I want to hear the news?  No, I did not.  I wanted to listen to music, something that would make me want to dance in the kitchen.  C. obliged by putting on a CD called Absolute Funk, and indeed I began to kitchendance to “Brickhouse.”  I made tacos for dinner tonight, and I used the ground chicken C. bought at the farmers market.  I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of flavor.  Would the ground chicken taste, well, chickenier?  Would it taste special, because it came from happy, local chickens?  The answer is yes, unequivocally.  The chicken had a richer, more distinct flavor than grocery store chicken.  It was delicious.  “Thank you for giving your life to us,” I addressed the tacos.  “I’m glad you had a happy life.”

Dear Internet: I’ve been watching TV!! I have. I have watched TV in my hotel room. I am in Chicago for the American Library Association conference right now, and so I’m in a hotel room, and there is a TV, and you can fill in the rest. When not in my hotel room watching TV, I’ve been in various hotels all over downtown Chicago, or on the train, or on the conference shuttle, or in a cab, or going to meetings, or eating food, or seeing old friends, or doing all kinds of things. Most of all, during this time, I’ve been homesick, for my new home, my kitties, and my Mama Bear.  I’m so ready to go home.