What is Normal?

      There are a lot of people who like to remind me on a regular basis that I am not normal. Actually most of the time, they just like to laugh at my completely different set of morals and quirky behaviors. There is one fact that I do know: there is no such thing as normal, just varying degrees of weird. I know my life experiences aren’t anywhere near normal and I’m perfectly at peace with that. I like to think my childhood has given me an undeniably unique perspective on life. I grew up in world of contradictions. I lived in two very different worlds. It all depended upon which parent I was with. I had a mother who raised us in the conventional manner. She kept us in multiple extracurricular activities and brought up children with stellar grades and who were expected to have matching manners. She brought in the degree of stability that every child needs. She excelled as a single parent and performed better than many children brought up in a unified household. There is no question that she is the person in my life that I most look up to and I will count it as my greatest accomplishment in life if I can be half the mother she has been.

     Even under the care of such a wonderful human being, most of my quirks and truly influential moments come from the less stable part of my life. My father was a wonderful man who loved his children to a fault, but stability was not his forte. The safe reason for that was he could barely take care of himself let alone three children on his own. My mother did a lot for him while they were married. Looking back, I see now that those ten years were like caring for four children rather than three.

      My father was all book smarts and had absolutely zero common sense. He didn’t know how to clean a house or how to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Marching to the beat of his own drummer was an understatement. He didn’t seem to realize that you must set limits when it comes to your children and that there is a level of appropriateness in what your children should and should not know at a young age.

For example, here are some examples that others might call missteps in parenting:

• Allowing your 10 year old to watch Silence of the Lambs
• Leaving your sex toys and porn within view of your 12 year old
• Allowing your 14 year old to steal the neighbor's dog
• Buying your 16 year old handles of 100 proof vodka
• Offering your 17 year old marijuana

      The saddest part of this coin is he probably did all of this as a way to spite my mother, because each action was fronted with the promise that we wouldn’t tell her. Even with these mistakes, some of the things he introduced me to, I feel that everyone should be aware of. When my father came out of the closet, I learned about an entirely different culture. Interacting with the gay community has given me the chance to develop a much more open mind than I would have had by never leaving my sheltered bubble in Springboro, Ohio. My father decided to maintain a residence in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Dayton for when he was in Ohio. It was not uncommon to hear gunshots or to meet people who did not have as lucky a home life as I was blessed with. My father was heavily involved in animal rescue and I got to experience the rehabilitation of severely abused animals as well.  I was thrown into a radically liberal atmosphere from a somewhat conservative one after my parents divorced. At 17, I became involved enough in politics that I decided to work the election. This is a direct result of my experiences with my father and the community with whom he surrounded himself.

      All this said, my father was a very good man despite all of his faults and there are a great number of people who will attest to that. When the people he was closest to look at me, they see him. I, personally, like to think some of my best attributes came from him. I got my love of service, animals, and people from my father. I have developed his overwhelming confidence and knack for anything academic and I, like him, would go to the ends of the Earth for someone I love.

      Overall, my childhood was hallmarked by interaction with opposite spheres of society and these experiences ultimately complimented each other enough to get me a uniquely well-rounded childhood. I lived so many fronts. I got to grow up in a yacht club, an affluent suburb, and a ghetto. I got to grow up in a traditional structured household and an alternative one. I got to grow up in a conservative town and a liberal city. I have lived with the underrepresented and politically undermined and the people who have societal influence. I got to experience it all because my father didn’t always play by the rules and had no problem forging his own path. Some people may say that I had a screwed up childhood; I like to think it was exquisitely eccentric.

Growing Up Gay

   

      With all this crazy DoMA and Prop. 8 stuff going on in the Supreme Court recently, there has been a lot of debate about gay marriage. It's being discussed on the news, in social media, in my classes; it's everywhere. I, honestly, find it astounding that people are still of the opinion that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. They obviously grew up on some other planet than I did. In class today, a kid tried to argue that a marriage was only for the intent of making children. He said there was no point in two men or two women marrying because they cannot procreate. He went on to say that children raised by gay and lesbian couples were at a disadvantage to those raised by straight ones. I am not even to get into the flaws in his argument that marriages now are only for making babies. Instead, I'd like to address his claim that children raised by gay and lesbian couples are somehow disadvantaged in approximately the same way I addressed it in class.

      I have lived both sides of the spectrum. I have one heterosexual parent and had one that was homosexual. I have grown up in the same house as a transgender individual. I have been raised by a couple united in marriage. I have been raised by two people who were later divorced. I have been taken care of by two men and by a man and a woman. I can honestly say, no matter which side of the coin you analyze: I have and had two excellent parents. They brought me up to respect others and to respect myself. They taught me to take pride in myself and help any other person in need. I learned from them that no matter what you always stand up for what you believe and support the people you love. They instilled the humility to know my weaknesses and to ask for help. They molded me into the person that I am today. Someone who graduated high school with a 4.0 GPA. Someone who is actively involved at her university and performs around 100 hours of community service a semester. Someone who is happy, healthy, and makes the effort to succeed in anything that they put there mind to.

      It doesn't matter if the person that raised you is gay, straight, or transgender. It doesn't matter if you are raised by a single parent or a happily married couple. What matters are the morals they teach you and the strengths that they instill in you. A parent's job is to mold their offspring into a productive member of society and if they can accomplish that, they have succeeded. Anyone can be a parent if they are willing to put in the time and energy required to care for another human being.

Blood Clots: only beneficial outside the body

     Yesterday, something happened that I did not consider ever having to deal with until decades down the road. I got a phone call that my father was in the hospital and that he was in really bad shape. Getting a call like that is a real punch in the gut. There is a moment of disbelief right before the onset of panic happens. You rack your brain for signs that something was wrong or ways in which something like this could happen. Thirty minutes in the car becomes what seems like an interminable amount of time. I had spoken to him less than 24 hours before and we had discussed when we were going to see each other next: less than 24 hours after the time I got the call. It's horrifying to think how my last words to him were, "I'll see you tomorrow, I have someone on the other line, I have to go." There was no 'I love you' said and I was in such a hurry to get on with my day that I had given him little if any consideration during our 2 minute and 37 second conversation.

      I pulled into the parking garage and walked into the ER with no information on his condition. The person I had received the phone call from was his boyfriend and they wouldn't give him any information on his condition because he wasn't family. I was told that doctors were working on my father in the back and that the resident on the case would come out to talk to me in the waiting room once they got him stabilized. Twenty minutes later, it was explained to me that he was experiencing a pulmonary embolism that was caused by a blood clot in his leg dislodging and traveling to his lungs. In other words, he was unable to breathe on his own and this was causing distress to multiple organs.

       When you hear multiple organ distress, that's when you know that there is a serious issue. Staying calm while calling my grandmother and uncles was probably one of the more difficult things I had to do that day. They were all flying in as soon as possible which added to my anxiety. When his brothers decide to make a trip to Ohio, you know that something is very wrong.

      I got to go back into the ER to see him shortly after I had finished the phone calls that I needed to make. He was hooked to dozens of machines, was not conscious, and had a breathing tube inserted. He began convulsing just as the doctor left us. I had no idea what was happening until I heard the telltale monotone from all the hospital dramas I watch. At this point, I was asked to exit the room as they brought in a set of paddles to attempt to revive him. When the current hit him, I expected some sort of movement, but there was nothing. It took three tries for his heart beat to come back.

      My mom and brothers were the first to arrive at the hospital. They got there just as they were beginning to transport him to the Intensive Care Unit. By then, I had been further updated. The clot traversed the entirety of his femoral artery. Little pieces were continuing to break off into his blood stream because the blockage in his heart and now lungs had caused his blood pressure to skyrocket. They were going to perform an emergency surgery to attempt to remove the clot as soon as he was stable enough to transport to an operating room.

      He was taken to the operating room half an hour after his mother arrived at the hospital. We sat in waiting rooms two floors down for hours waiting on any news. The news we didn't want came blaring over the loudspeaker while he was still in the operating room. A code Blue was called and doctors from all over the hospital came flooding towards the doors through which he had been taken just a couple hours before. After thirty minutes, a gurney came out with three people on each side and one person on top of him pumping on his chest. They were headed back to the ICU to get him stable enough to be put on life support.

     I was approached an hour later asking if I wished to stop extraordinary measures. I was not and don't think I was ever going to be ready for this question. I was not prepared to be the legal next of kin as his adult child. I expected this decision to be made by his mother or his brothers, but not by me. I had to make what in a way was both the hardest and easiest decision of my life: the decision to end all extraordinary measures. On my 18th birthday, he and I had had a conversation. He was in the hospital because his kidneys were failing and he was unable to stand without being dizzy. He told me where his will was and to never let him live on life support or in a capacity in which he didn't have all his cognitive functions. By this point, my choice was whether to let him die naturally or to put him on life support knowing that he would likely never wake up again and that parts of the clot had traveled to his brain likely causing severe damage.

      He died minutes short of Easter Sunday. Seeing him after death, he almost looked disfigured from the bloat caused by all the IV fluids they pumped into him. His lifeless 6 foot 5 inch frame hung off the bed because they didn't have one long enough for him. 

      I was the only one who couldn't seem to muster up the energy to cry. Instead, I waited for his brother to arrive from the airport. He'd died when he was in the air, so I figured I should probably break the news seeing as I was the only one maintaining any composure. Besides, I wanted to take a break before having to meet with the organ donation people. 

      So now, I'm running on exactly 25 minutes of sleep trying to figure out the rest of my life sans a father. We'll see how this goes. 

Happy Easter everyone.