Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

I talked to my parents last night (a Friday instead of a Sunday since they've got plans this weekend).

My dad mentioned the new pope. My parents both said approvingly that he's "pretty progressive, pretty similar to Francis." Which was a big change after the previous 24 hours of social media being all shitposts and "uh guys did you know this guy sucks and actually the catholic church is problematic, can't believe no one has mentioned this yet."

My dad mentioned something the new guy has said, I just got a garbled version from my dad but I think it was something about him saying it's not his place to judge humans that God has created to be gay. Regardless of the accuracy or veracity of that, it was something my parents were repeating approvingly, which feels like a very big deal to me.

On the topic of same-sex marriages, my dad said "I see these pictures of people and...they just look so happy. If they want to get a piece of paper, fine!"

"And it isn't hurting anyone else!" my mom chimed in. It's true! (In a few weeks my parents' mixed-sex marriage will have existed for fifty-three years. Unbothered by the existence of gay marriage for like the last 15 or whatever of those years.)

Then my mom said "And those homosexual..." but she kinda swallowed the word like she was thinking wait, that's not the right one, then she said "lesbian" in a way I thought might be about disgust but I later realized was more "trying to carefully say a new foreign word" but then she still struggled to get her sentence out and then my dad had sufficient context clues to say "Do you mean trans gender?" And again it was definitely a new word, with a big space between the two parts like it was foreign (reminded me of those people who hyphenated "bi-sexual" for such a long time) and I had time for just a moment of oh, here we go... dread before they went on to say something I can't remember word-for-word but basically, they're being told trans women are too manly to play sports but also not manly enough to serve in the military, and they're not having it.

Even my parents can see that transphobia doesn't have any internal logic.

It was a stressful call for other reasons, and I had a huge headache by the time it was done, but I hung on to my dad saying "They just look so happy" about queer couples getting married. It warmed my heart. As did the fact that, even not knowing the words for trans people, they know that you can't decide they're whatever gender allows them to be punished the most.

Telling the others about this afterward, I mentioned that I remembered, by chance, being at my parents' when the Obergefell ruling came down legalizing marriage across the U.S. and watching TV news with my dad, with some of those photos of beaming newly-married couples. I remember my dad saying something similar then (I know I wrote about it here, but search doesn't seem to be working for me right now sadly), about how happy the people looked.

D sent me a link to a song, "City Hall" by Vienna Tang saying it's his "favorite 'queer people being happy about getting married' song." I wasn't familiar with it, but just reading the lyrics gave me goosebumps.

Ten years waiting for this moment of fate
When we say the words and sign our names
If they take it away again someday
This beautiful thing won't change

The annotation on that Genius link for those last two lines says

Those who were married at the City Hall in 2004 knew that their right to do so remained in jeopardy– and unfortunately, it was in fact taken away; in August of the same year, the state courts ruled against the city and voided all licenses it had issued to same-sex couples.

I remember those times, I remember people driving sometimes across the country, people who'd been together for decades sometimes. People lining up at night to be ready when a city or state or federal law was about to come into force. The eagerness and the desperation. And all the businesses and volunteers that gave them food, drinks, treats, people wanting to do whatever they could to support this, to celebrate, to whatever limited extent felt possible.

It feels so long ago now and it really wasn't. And I remember the first time Trump was elected hearing Lib Dem friends, who treated U.S. politics like a series they were binging, blithely talk about Obergefell being overturned. Nothing can be taken for granted.

But it's still there. And my mom is saying it isn't taking anything away from anyone else. The world really has moved on. I have hope.

I'm proud of my dad, who didn't exactly express an emotion tonight but admitted to previously having had an uncomfortable one.

He was telling me about some event at my mom's church that featured music from Gavin and Ellen and Eva and maybe someone else, I can't remember...anyway, these are all people I remember from school because they're only a couple years younger than me. They are, as my dad pointed out, all from my brother's grade. "Why couldn't he be there to watch it too?" Dad said. I muttered rueful agreement and we all sat in the silence with that feeling for a little bit.

I'm proud of my mom too, who said "I never knew back then that Adam was gay." I didn't even know where to start with that. She reminded me that Adam is the same age as the kid she was a support worker for; she followed that kid all through from preschool to high school so she got to know all the students in that year pretty well; they were basically her coworkers every day for like 15 years. And one of them is this Adam.

I am dying to know how she's so sure now that Adam is gay but she didn't explain, just saying "It was so obvious." (Did he just say "my husband" or "my boyfriend"? Did he have a lisp and a limp wrist? What would be obvious as gay to my mom??) But she didn't report his gayness in a complainy way, much less like it's a tragedy, like she's telling me someone has inoperable cancer, so this is a vast improvement on the past. And she added "He was really nice, though," and reported on a nice ordinary conversation they'd had about his job. It's such a big deal for my mom to say a person can be gay yet also nice. And to have a normal conversation with them and report it as such.

Gary had a slightly weird day -- not as interested in things that are usually high-value treats, with no obvious explanation; had friendly but unexpected humans in his house; probably still has a full stress-bucket from the last day or two. With one thing and another, he wanted lots of pets and even though his humans stayed home all day he was really clingy even when I was, like, in the next room talking to my parents this evening.

We call him a "feelings dog" or "feelings boy" when he's like this (always affectionately, often when he's either doing the sad little squeaks or getting cuddles that he's unusually interested in).

At times like this I really admire his emotional literacy: he knows what to do, you ask your humans for help, you demand more affection that you'd usually accept, you try to get extra treats out of it, you do what I've learned as a trick from V who describes it as "what would a person who felt okay do now?" -- they'd eat meals, take meds, go about their little self-care routines. Gary does this by trying to settle down when he's tired and it's bedtime; he's a great flailer, a thrasher of blankets, you can almost see his excess feelings departing his body as he beats his bedding in to exactly the right shape for a cozy nest.

I really admire his ability to determine what his emotional needs are and to ask for the help he needs.

I guess I've also been a feelings boy myself today. Lots of things went into it for me, too. "Here are my sad squeaks:

• a dream I had last night which meant that the first thing I thought about when I woke up is that I don't know what my plans for Christmas are going to be. My parents haven't mentioned anything one way. They didn't even nag me about not visiting this summer. I don't miss Christmas with them at all, but I feel like shit if I skip it.
• the headache I went to bed with last night, which persisted all night, woke me up several times but not so much that I could do anything about it like get more ibuprofen, oh no, just enough that I felt sorry for myself and despaired of getting any good sleep
• thinking of things that would help for my work trip which I can't source by Thursday: a better backpack, a work ID, business cards...
• ...new shoes, to replace the ones I gave away yesterday after they hurt my feet again. I planned to go shoe-shopping and try some on today, but other stuff got in the way.
• going back to work tomorrow after a weekend I was worried that I expected too much from, since I won't really get a weekend next week at all (work trip is from Friday to Tuesday), but which even by normal standards didn't have much to recommend it: chores and a bad headache and poor weather today and not much else
• how very busy my work week is (and not just busy but with lots of different things all of which are pretty important so it's not easy to prioritize or focus) right up until I get on that train, and I go right back in to bring frantically busy. Nothing happened in August; so much was pushed back to September.

My dad is so funny, he's talking about their long drive Up North yesterday --they had to go a different way than usual because of flooding. So he was telling me the new route in the kind of loving detail the dads in my family are good at (I still miss him and my grandpa sharing notes on this).

He said "Once we got to Remer I was looking for Bigfoot! From Emily north, it's all woods!"

(Emily is the name of a town.)

Remer (which is pronounced as if its spelled Reemer) has Bigfoot Days every year, and I wanna go so bad now.

It's my dad's birthday today and I just realized he's seventy-five now.

He doesn't seem it. I'll be happy if I'm doing as much at 75 as he is. One thing I do have in my favor is that I'm not averse to resting or ibuprofen like he is.

He looks older to me now because he lost a dramatic amount of weight (intentionally) during lockdowns, which has made him look even more like his dad, who was always (well always for me, but he was retired by the time I was born) a really skinny dude. Last time I was visiting I happened to catch a glimpse of him walking outside and was struck by how much he now moves like my grandpa did. It's funny how that happens: I was once in a car that my aunt, my dad's sister, was driving and I noticed her holding the steering wheel just like he does.

I saw this post, by a disability rights lawyer, talking about extending accessibility features to more people who've aged into disability and who don't think that they're disabled or that accessibility menus are for them, and I've been thinking about it ever since.

I love that it includes good questions, answers, and good strategies to get more accessibility into the hands of more older people, and they sound like good ones. I think it was silveradept who I saw muse on how older people benefit most from learning about new/unfamiliar tech things through sources they trust and consider authoritative, and I love to see that reflected in these strategies, where the sources might be AARP, phone store staff, or their loved ones who found out about this via TikTok.

This topic also has me thinking that another way to address people not knowing about things that may become relevant to their changing bodies as they age is to address ableism as far and wide in society as possible.

The writer asks her dad great questions, like does he consider himself deaf (no), a person with a disability (no), disabled (no), or hard of hearing (yes). And there can be lots of reasons why someone who watches TV with no sounds at all, captions only, says he doesn't have a disability and he's only aware of accessibility because it's relevant to his daughter's livelihood. I wouldn't speculate on a specific stranger's reason for not thinking of themself as disabled, but one of those possible reasons is internalized ableism. Just ambient, systemic ableism that we all (including people who do identify as disabled!) can be affected by. Heretofore-able-bodied people have decades of thinking of disability as Other. Quite a lot of decades, in the case of an elder who's only recently acquired an impairment in something they'd previously not been impaired by. It can take a real paradigm shift for someone to start thinking of themselves as something that's been distant and by overwhelming consensus worse than their previous identity.

Of course I'm thinking of my own parents too. My dad just had surgery to repair a torn meniscus. Before he knew that this is what was causing his pain, he hoped he could "just get a cortisone shot and go back to normal." Didn't know the word ibuprofen (literally he struggled to pronounce it, and that's a whole week after I suggested it to him!). My mom said after the operation he walked with a walker only for "a few days."

She's no better: the very first thing she told me about his surgery on Skype today was to grumble "not that you'd know it" after mentioning that it had happened earlier this week. She resents him for getting better quicker than she was after a broken ankle a few years ago. My parents are both desperate to not think of themselves as disabled even temporarily.

Meanwhile here I am, taking advantage of every ambient mobility aid or adaptation available in my household in the wake of my broken ankle, whether technical (grab rails, waking cane, shower chair) or social (we've all agreed that until further notice I have dibs on the spot in the living room where I can sit with my foot elevated all the time).

But I grew up thinking the same way as my parents. It's the disabled friends I started to make only in early adulthood that taught me a better culture is possible. One where we work on ridding ourselves of shame and of the veneration of individualism. One where we recognize that everyone is interdependent, there's never been only one right way to succeed and that success isn't going to look the same for everyone anyway, that there's as many ways to live a fulfilled life as there are people.

I think younger disabled people can play a big role in helping older people can learn about the benefits of this kind of culture as well.

And devs can learn it too, to go back to the iPhone example. Maybe the 29 accessibility options don't only have to exist in their own special section. The article writer's dad was never going to look at a menu on his phone called "accessibility," even though there was an option there that makes his life better every day. A lot of people benefit from, say, larger text or live captions or reduced animation who never think of themselves as disabled or these as accessibility options. They can also be just "options," other ways for the display or the notification sounds or whatever to behave. (While also staying in the accessibility menu ideally, because that's where many people are used to finding them, and also it can be way more accessible to go "okay, here's the 'vision' section, that's what's going to be relevant to me" rather than having to wade through screenfuls of irrelevant-to-me bells and whistles in the display options to find "high contrast mode" or whatever.)

It's a tricky balance, between disability pride and wider awareness, a tension I feel in all my thinking about how I as a disabled person interact with an ableist world. Being "integrated" or "mainstreamed" isn't good because it makes my access needs less shameful by being more "normal." Numbers don't legitimize them; they'd be just as important if it were only me who needed magnification and good color contrast and no animations. But it's not just me, so it's good to put such options in front of as many as possible or the people who would benefit from them.

diffrentcolours and I got the plumbing fixed, at least as fixed as it was before. I just had a shower and nothing catastrophe appears to have happened!

My mom was pretty intense on Skype tonight. Some miserable stuff is going down with the sale of their house (they forgot to tell me it's sold, they're hoping to close next week I guess?!) and with the women at her church who are being destructive of decades-long traditions upheld by the work of women who the few ringleaders do not respect. It's so much easier to tear down institutions than it is to (re)build them.

Woke up to an email from my parents that says they got the house and they close on the 15th.

Still gotta figure out what this means for me flying over.

The three of us went out this adteneoon, for lunch and to buy silly decorations for Halloween -- mother_bones's favorite time of year. Going to look at things in stores may be even better than eventually putting up what we do have, because you see so many things you'd never take home. It was a little overwhelming in that regard, but also so fun. To watch MB just in her element, to squee or gasp or laugh at things together.

It was so nice for all three of us to do something -- it's been a while (beyond dog walks; Gary is increasingly convincing all three of his humans to come outside with him for a few minutes -- that happened this evening too!). It's always so good for me.

I'm feeling kinda deprived of socializing just now, so it was really nice to get this. My mental health hasn't been at its greatest; I didn't fall asleep until after 4am last night and I am not sure if tonight will be any better.

In other news, my parents might have found a house to move to. My mom is all excited and talking like it'll happen immediately. My dad says hopefully they'll be moved before Thanksgiving. So if I do want to go help them pack up and move, November is looking likely. It'd be that instead of Christmas (my mental block on buying flights for that so far might be paying off!).

I still really want to be there to help them move (and to try to extract the things I do want myself). And I've always said I hate being away from them around the time that Chris died. But can I face that with all my emotions around this house thing on top of it? Woof.

I'm making a big list of all the heavy things I want to blog about thanks to being around my family. Zero of which I have the spoons for right now.

So for today I'll do a report on the food. This morning, Dad was happy to make my "Benevolent Bacon" along with the meat bacon for him and D. He cheerfully cooked it according to the package instructions (sadly with too little fat, that's how my parents cook everything because their absorption of dietary advice/trends stopped in the 90s, but it was still okay). D suggested I save a little of it for him to try, and not only did he but he offered it to my mom and she had a tiny piece. Something I never expected would happen! Dad pronounced it perfectly nice. (Mom mumbled noncommittally but honestly even that is a win: she didn't say anything bad!)

And then tonight they had ribs on the grill and I had hot dogs (Morning Star brand, which I'd seen before but never tried). As he was taking them off, one rolled away and fell on the ground. I didn't think much of it, there were plenty more (Mom wanted to cook the whole box for some reason) and I had other food to take into the house at the time. But a minute later, Dad came in with half a hot dog hanging out of his mouth and said "these are pretty good!" Mom was horrified that he'd picked up the hot dog and eaten half of it. I was delighted that he was willing to try it: if anyone's first experience of a new food is one that fell on the ground and they're still willing to try it and they announce unbidden that it is good, I think that's about as good as it gets!