Day 255…
Michael and I are NOT adopting a baby.
If yesterday’s post gave any indication that we were even considering it, then, hopefully today’s, will clear that right up.
A million years ago, Michael and I were standing on-line at the Magic Kingdom with my sister and her family. It was later in the day and my nephew was tired. I can’t remember how old he was, but he was still young enough to carry.
I was holding him and talking to my sister. To keep him still, I was rubbing his back and rocking back and forth a bit. At some point in the conversation, I looked over at Michael who was looking at me with a look of beatific bliss on his face that a Hallmark movie director would have sold his soul for. Without missing a beat in my conversation with my sister, I said to him, “Don’t even think about it.”
Now, I have nothing against kids. Some of my favorite people were once kids. In short controlled circumstances they can be extremely entertaining. And then, when I’ve had enough, I can hand them back.
Uncle-dom is the perfect state for me.
Michael, I think, would maybe have liked to adopt a kid when we were younger. There was nothing, however, about the way we were living our lives that was conducive to us doing that. Yes, we could have risen to the challenge, but I never wanted to, and I don’t think that in his heart of hearts that Michael REALLY did either. If I’d really gotten behind it, then I know he probably would have too, but I never did.
Yesterday, we met up with friends of ours who had welcomed their son about three months ago. He’s a gorgeous kid and they both seem extremely happy, if not somewhat tired. It was great to spend some time with them yesterday.
A friend of mine and his husband adopted a ten-year old boy a couple of years ago. This kid had been in and out of the foster system. At a young age, this kid knew he was gay, and he was out and proud. The families that he fostered with couldn’t handle it.
My friend has a drag alter-ego and he and his husband were not the slightest bit phased by their now son’s behavior. They welcomed him into their lives and have made it all work. Like most of my and Michael’s family, they are now raising a teenager. Buckle up.
Maybe it is the nature of the material and the story, but the casts of Jersey Boys, over the years, have tended to be overwhelmingly straight.
That has never been a factor in the casting decisions - my drag queen friend with the LGBTQ son played Joe Pesci and Frankie Valli on and off for years. Much of the cast, however, was usually made up of straight men and women in their twenties and early thirties - the perfect age to start a family.
I remember as a kid seeing a live-action Disney movie called The Living Desert. I don’t know why it made such an impression on me, but it did. There may have been a book version of it that I had as well.
The film was a documentary that explored how life survives in a desert. After long periods of drought, there will suddenly be a period of intense rain that plants and animals have been patiently waiting for.
When the rain comes, the desert explodes. Long dormant seeds quickly sprout and grow. They flower, get pollinated and die in a remarkably short period of time. Animals, who have been in a kind of hibernation, burst out into the world, mate, bear their young and store as much food as they can before the rains finally pass again.
For a lot of these actors, Jersey Boys was like those sudden rains. It was a steady gig with a steady income, and it allowed many young couples the security to start their families.
That is a decided rarity in our business. Most gigs are short and intensively work-concentrated, or they involve going out of town and only making enough money to get by.
Years into the juggernaut that has been Jersey Boys, we figured out that there had been at least 250 babies born to people working on the show around the world in some capacity. That was years ago. We have long since left that number in the dust.
I admire all of them. It’s a tough business as it is. Navigating through it while shouldering the responsibility of a kid, or kids, cannot be easy.
By the end of the day, the United States will have hit 12 million cases of the coronavirus. Over 20% of those cases have been reported since the beginning of the month. Close to 200,000 people were diagnosed just yesterday.
As of this morning, 254,473 people have lost their lives to it. 10,000 of those people died just this past week.
These numbers have not even started to peak. The virus is spreading faster and, in more places, than it did during its spring and early summer previous peak. We haven’t even hit Thanksgiving yet, when despite dire warnings from every single reliable healthcare professional, people are planning to gather.
The CDC says that over half of all new cases are spread by people who will never show symptoms. Somehow, people seem to think that this means that it isn’t dangerous.
This Thanksgiving, there are going to be many instances of young asymptomatic people gathering with their families to celebrate the holiday. Their elderly family members might not survive it. It is as simple as that.
Hospitals around the country are filling up. Utah’s ICU units are at 85% capacity.
As opposed to the early peak, which was concentrated in largely urban areas, the peaks we are seeing now are raging through rural areas. In the roughly 2,000 of the nation’s hospitals that are considered rural, about 1700 of them have fifty or fewer beds and 1300 of them have less than 25. Those aren’t ICU beds those are just beds in general. Many of these facilities only have two or three ICU beds in total.
As the virus rages, so does everything else. Heart disease, cancer, you name it - it’s not as if any of that has abated. Everyone who is ignoring mask and distancing mandates is putting all of those patients at greater risk as well. Where are these people going to go when there are no more ICU beds available for them?
The kicker, of course, is that all of this is largely avoidable. As opposed to heart disease and cancers, the things one needs to do to avoid contracting COVID-19 are pretty simple. If everyone did them, they would also be temporary.
Both the President’s son and the son of his pathetic lawyer, Rudi Giuliani, have now tested positive for COVID-19. It’s passing through every strata of our country.
If the vaccines that seem to be so promising, actually pan out, then the measures that would stop the spread of this virus would only need to be put in place for a limited period of time. We could be back to some semblance of our normal lives in relatively short order. Denial of the virus is only making it spread faster and only ensuring that it will last longer.
Business that were starting to recover are now having to close up again. Schools that were open, are having to close back down again.
I have yet to talk with anyone whose kid is having a good time with virtual learning from home. Smart, challenged, outgoing, introverted - nobody is finding it easy.
No friend or family member of mine, to the best of my knowledge, has ever actually regretted their decision to have children. Yes, there are days when they seem much too close to the breaking point for comfort, but if they could go back would they change their minds? I don’t think so. Even those friends of mine who have tragically lost children, I do not think, would have missed a single moment that they had with them - good and bad.
All of these children are going to take our places in the world. We replaced our parents, and they will replace us. That’s how it works.
For all of my friends and family who are raising or have raised a kid, you have my undying admiration and gratitude. You all seem to be doing a remarkably good job.
None of us want to be judged on our teenage years so everyone gets a pass as they navigate through those. From the vantage point that I have from the outside out here, there’s nothing that you are going to be able to do to get through those years unscathed. You just need to get through them so have at it.
We are two months away from beginning a new Administration. That the President continues to deny the outcome of the election is simply criminal.
There is no basis for his claims. He and his enablers have already lost or withdrawn 28 separate cases alleging fraud. There is no evidence of any fraud. The President has lost again in Georgia following a manual recount. Michigan lawmakers who recently met with the President at his behest are standing firm that President-elect Biden was the winner there.
This is going to drag out to the end.
But it will end.
Until then, it is clear that we will be given no guidance, no meaningful support and no factual information from either this President, or the GOP enablers who surround him.
So, it’s on us to take care of ourselves. It’s on us to be responsible as we go into this next week.
Gathering together is simply not safe for anyone. Keep apart and when we go out, wear a mask.
It won’t stop it, but it will help.
We can really change it all.
It’s on us.
❤️Stage Managers have been the best parents I ever had...
Yes, we can do this
🌟💕🌟💕
Great post! Loved your description of Michael at Disney. 😂🤗