Signs and Signals

Have you ever felt like someone is trying to tell you something, but you're just not sure of the message? Like it's on one of those radio stations that comes in as you're driving along the interstate: strong at one minute, fading the next, static often filling the space in between? I feel like I've been getting one of those rural radio messages this week, though I think I know where this one is coming from.

The first time I picked up the signal was this past week, when I watched my dear Mama Bear win a much-deserved award for the work she does. Her speech was amazing and inspiring, and the award hard-earned, the product of equal parts amazing work ethic, crazy determination and the strongest sense of justice I've ever witnessed. Though I didn't realize it then, I think that moment was the first time I came across this phantom station. Faint, full of static, but definitely noticeable.

The second and third times both happened today. Once when a colleauge told me about his relative, a young man in high school who, in an embodiment of bravery, came out to all of his friends and family at a party. At a time of year when things generally weigh heavy on my heart (my father's death, my estranged mother's birthday and my birthday all fall this month) this story brought so much joy to my day. The fact that my co-worker felt the same, and realized it would have this effect for me made it even sweeter. I often feel like such an outsider in the land of wedding pictures and marital privilege, that feeling completely connected to someone there was amazing.

The third event arrived even more unexpectedly, like when you lose a station and for some reason forget to tune to something else, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, the sound begins again a few miles down the road. Yeah, this was one of those kind of shocks. It happened as I was checking Facebook (because who knows how many important things happened between work and this evening) and it was, quite simply, one of the top three emails I've ever read. No amount of paraphrasing or explanation could do it justice, so I'm just pasting it below, with any identifying information omitted:

You may or may not remember me from...softball or the eight days that I spent at your college...but, you, I will never forget!

Years ago, my cousin told me that you came out to her. I was outwardly shocked, but inwardly relieved. At that point I knew that I would have to do the same sometime in the future, but I had never known another person that was gay and had no idea how to go about it. Thanks for making the world seem a little less scary.

How amazing is that? I mean really, just out of the blue, the nicest email I've ever read. Someone reaching out to say "thanks for making the word seem a little less scary." Because isn't that what we're all trying to do, especially once we become parents? Just make this place a little less scary for those coming after us?


Taken individually, each of these things would be nice, touching, maybe even worthy of a blog post on their own. But taken together? All three of these lined up in a row during this, the hardest week of every year? These are more than a coincidence or luck. These events were a signal, just as real as the station carrying bad country through the static in Missouri, Nebraska or Ohio. And I'm starting to get the message.

You see, when I came out those many years ago, when the news was spreading from cousin to cousin, and through the web of information in my hometown, that estranged mother of mine didn't take it very well. And my father, though he didn't take it so well at first, eventually came around, and had only one concern. "I just always hoped your life would be a little easier than mine" he once said "and knowing this, I just think it might not be." Years later, after he was gone, that estranged mother (for one of the reasons she's estranged) tried to tell me, in a letter of all places, that my father never was okay with me being gay, that he never truly accepted me or my life.

And if I didn't know then that she was wrong, I sure do now. That message arrived bit by bit since Saturday, and came in loud and clear today, and I know it came from my father. I know that the message I received from that long lost friend was really my dad's way of letting me know that he's aware, wherever he is, that things are okay, my life is a bit easier than his, and that, at least for some folks that have followed in my path, life is a little less scary.

Dear Mr. President

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the economy lately. We all have, thanks in no small part to the media. I don't blame them, I mean if I could get up everyday and write the same thing over and over, I'd likely do it too. So, we are bombarded with news of how bad the economy is, how low the Dow has fallen, and how yet another bank has taken our hard-earned bailout money and used it to throw a party on the moon.

But all this noise that passes for news has me thinking about a time many years ago, when I wasn't much older than Baby Bear, and my father lost his job. It was the last time that bad news dominated our airwaves, though I don't remember hearing about it quite so much, except in certain places, like family events at my father's union hall, and in hushed tones in my childhood kitchen. But it happened, just as it happened to lots of other families, particularly families like ours, solidly blue collar and lower middle class, living in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

At the time I had a Fisher Price record player, and a number of 45s that looking back seemed a bit mature for my young ears. But one tiny record in particular has come to mind a lot lately, and try as I might to find more information about it on the vast expanse of the internet, I'm afraid I'm the only person who remembers it. The song was called, I believe, "Dear Mr. President" and was written from the point of view of a man, not unlike my father, who had lost his job. To this day I remember many of the words, and can even recall the tune, which I find interesting when so many other things from even more recently are lost in my memory.

"I've got payments on my house, payments on my car, and the unemployment checks now they don't seem to go that far. Every thing I worked for, well it seemed to slip away, I don't think I'll get my benefits, my compensation pay. I got a wife and three children, depending on this man. I got a government in Washington that does not give a damn. So please Mr. President, won't you Mr. President, open up the steel mills for me."

Granted my father hadn't worked in a steel mill. He worked at a factory though, making, if I recall correctly, grates for industrial furnaces. but the song still rang so close to our family situation (minus two of the three kids) that I played it over and over again on that Fisher Price phonograph.

I don't think that children's record player was meant to handle such weighty tunes, just the way a child of my age wasn't meant to carry such a heavy burden. But we both did, and the economy continued its slide, and I went on to march with my father in a number of Labor day parades, chanting even more grown up phrases like "Reagan, Reagan he's no good, send him back to Hollywood" and "One, two, three, four, out the door in '84."


By '84, however, I was 8 years old. Far older and wiser, I had outgrown my childish records, and my father, due entirely to the generosity of one of my playmates' fathers, had a new job. But we still marched. We marched for my father's fellow union members, who hadn't had the same luck as him, and we marched because we believed, truly believed, that this country could be far better than the awful news cycle we had found ourselves in. And we still chanted, because we knew those chants, like the songs on my record player, gave others hope that they were not alone.

So these days, as I listen to the endless drone of bailout and foreclosure noise, I remember my father. And my records, and those early years of worry. And I thank my lucky stars, and my father (not The Father, but my father, the one who made those furnace grates) for all his hard work and sacrifice that allow me to hear the noise this time, but not absorb it.

But lest my father be reading this from wherever he is, don't worry Dad. I still remember the lessons learned from that record player, and those early days, and I'll always remember the words to those songs and chants. So no matter how nice Baby Bear and Mama Bear and I may have it, we'll always vote and fight like you taught me.

UPDATE: One of my amazing friends (who is a librarian...shout out to librarians!) helped me figure out the song title, which led me to this - a YouTube video of someone playing the 45. It was amazing for me to hear this after all these years. Hope you enjoy it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aka2CGafYsM