Happy New Year

I must admit that I missed being able to write this blog over the course of my holidays. Many things happened to me and I was able to do next to nothing most of the time, so it was very relaxing. However, it did not start off that way.

I arrived in Edmonton on the afternoon of the 19th and was going to visit my sister about ten hours north of there. My sister, Carlene lives with her husband of ten years and her two kids (eight and ten years old) far in the north of Alberta at a tiny oil town. The highway ends at their little burg of maybe 500 people. When I arrived in Edmonton my sister called and the conversation went to hell.

Carlene told me that she had not explained the situation with Bud and myself to her children yet and she asked me to be discrete.

I was taken aback by this request, but said nothing and for the next 24 hours I was steaming. Now, my sister has every right to decide how, when and if to explain my being gay to her kids. That is completely her decision to make and I have no problems either way. They are her children and I will not tell her how to raise them. But she shouldn’t have waited until I arrived in Edmonton to drop this on me.



What exactly did she mean by discrete? It is one thing for us not to maul each other around the kids and another thing altogether for me to pretend that Bud is my roommate. I was furious. If I had known that this was what was going to happen, I would have suggested that we wait until another year.

I told Bud about this and he felt, quite justifiably, unwelcome. I suggested that we not go up, but Bud thought that we might as well. Of course, my mom and brother were expecting us to go up and assist with the ten hours of driving and the expense. I was kind of stuck.

My sister called me the next day and I explained all of this to her. I said that I didn’t feel comfortable pretending that my husband was my roommate and that my days of lying about it were over. And I explained that she should have given us the option well in advance.

Now, my sister is a wonderful girl and please don’t think unkindly of her for this. She struggled for a long time about how to approach this and she suffered from a lack of consideration of my perspective about it. I told her that I had to discuss with Bud about whether we would go up.

Then she called again. She said that she and her husband decided to “grow some balls” in her words and tell the kids. And to her surprise, but not mine, they reacted nonchalantly. It was a non-issue. When her husband explained to the eight year old that we were two married men, he said, “You can do that – that’s loco!” This coming from the kid most likely to turn out like me anyways!

So it all ended well. We passed a great time up there with the family and even Daniel loved it. Seeing some of the wildlife, like deer, certainly helped.