Hasta La Gadget!

My mother died on November 1, so this is our first Thanksgiving without her. To make the occasion less painful, I’ve decided to think of funny things she used to do before dementia took her away. For space constraints, the long list has been pruned to only six memories.

1. Turkey pudding. My mother overcooked the Thanksgiving turkey for two days. For some reason, she thought she was a pilgrim doing a slow-roast over a pit behind the covered wagon so she set the bird in the oven before midnight on low heat and basted it every hour. As a result, she was tired by dinner the next day and the turkey had lost all its shape as the butterball morphed into turkey pudding hanging off the carcass.

2. Sinking the gravy boat. Because the turkey took all the space in the oven, she cooked the green bean casserole, the potatoes, the gravy, and the stuffing on the stove — all at the same time. She wrapped bread rolls in tin foil and stuffed them around the turkey until they hardened into crusty dough balls. When the gravy was thick enough to stand on its own without a pan, it was time to eat.

3. Death by sugar. Mom thought there should be a dessert per person. If a dozen guests were coming for dinner, there would be at least four pies, four cakes, and four platters of fudge. Pants and belts were adjusted accordingly.

4. Cutest cook ever. She required real whipped cream on the pies, so she would aggressively operate her trusty hand mixer like a frantic high-speed drill until the cream was two seconds shy of becoming real butter. She wore a festive, handmade apron over her best holiday sweatshirt, so she resembled a jolly, plump elf scurrying about the kitchen.

5. Pilfering the pie. My mom loved my aunt’s sweet potato pie and assumed it was a healthy dish because it used a vegetable, despite the butter, brown sugar, pecans, and marshmallow sauce. She would sneak a bowl for herself and hide it behind the pickles in the back of the refrigerator. She later grinned with delight about her sneaky accomplishment.

6. Her signature dishes. Like a dutiful drill sergeant, she organized the girls and women-folk to hand-wash all the dishes after the meal while the men meandered to the living room to pat their bellies and watch football. She took great pride in dividing leftovers into equal portions and filling Tupperware containers and Corningware dishes for guests to take home. To insure her items were identified and returned, she used fingernail polish to paint her initials on all the containers. I now have stacks of dishes sporting faded red initials “LA.”

This Thanksgiving, the family will come together to toast the holiday and give thanks for our abundant blessings. Some things will remain the same: commotion will come from the children’s table, the men will wrestle for the last turkey leg, and I will declare that red wine goes with turkey — and everything else. The most noticeable difference will be the empty chair at the table. Happy Thanksgiving, Mom. Maybe I’ll sneak a bowl of sweet potatoes for you. Thanks for the funny memories.

November is National Adoption Month and RaiseAChild.US is celebrating with twice weekly “Let Love Define Family™” series installments in the Huffington Post Gay Voices. Today’s story highlights a Latino family from La Habra, CA and the three adorable siblings who made it complete.

It only took one glance at a black-and-white photo for Rosalba and Laura Mejia-Torres to know that the boys staring back at them were the children they wanted to adopt. The strong, courageous, and protective young teen between his two younger brothers, one arm wrapped around each of them, was all the prospective moms needed.

“Just the look on their faces! They were looking right at us saying, ‘Choose me,’” Laura said during a phone interview.

The Southern California couple decided to start a family four years into their relationship — one that started unexpectedly. Laura, now 48, a Spanish teacher, and Rosalba, now 44, a social worker, met during a self-improvement class. Laura sought Rosalba’s friendship and it slowly developed into a romantic relationship. Neither of them knew they were gay at the time. The two women have always felt strongly about family and that didn’t change once they found out they had feelings for each other.

For Rosalba, adopting was always the way she saw herself starting a family. “To me, family means having someone who loves you unconditionally regardless of blood,” she said.

Initially, Laura was not so open to adopting. She wanted to have biological children of her own. That all changed when she found out that she was not able to have children.

“I felt like I had lost my own child, in a sense,” Laura said. “I had to go through a grieving period and that’s when I became open to adopting.”

Determined to form a family together, the couple sought resources through the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. DCFS didn’t make their sexuality an issue.

The road to adoption had its bumps for the couple, however. While they received strong support from the county, some of the other prospective parents in their foster/adoption training classes were not as welcoming. Some people attending the classes were not open to the idea of same-sex parenting.

“There were individuals who were ignorant and vocal about their thoughts and made us feel uncomfortable,” said Rosalba, “but it was a negative experience that turned positive.”

The positivity came once they finally got to meet the three boys they fell in love with during a visit with their social worker to the boys’ foster home. After interacting with Carlos, Raymond and Joseph in a game of monopoly, Raymond, the middle brother, told the social worker that he wanted to go home with Laura and Rosalba, that he didn’t want to stay in his foster home. That, for the couple, was a sign of mutual feelings and affirmed their choice of adopting them.

The couple never planned on adopting three children at once, but they felt a strong connection to the brothers.

“They were of Mexican origin just like us,” explained Rosalba. “We felt that they would fit in comfortably not only with our family and cultural traditions, but also with our Catholic faith.”

After having to make some changes to their house in order to make room for the three brothers, Laura and Rosalba welcomed the boys to their La Habra home three weeks later. Having become instant parents, the couple was ready to face anything that was to come with their new role as mothers.

Initial nerves kicked in for the couple. It was a bit overwhelming jumping into parenthood. Little things like not knowing how much food to cook became something they worried about. Most surprisingly for them were the social and emotional challenges the boys’ background brought to the family dynamics. The three boys came from a broken home so the transition into their new home was something of a challenge. The couple says the children had to adjust to a lifestyle that was more stable. The brothers came with habits that Rosalba and Laura describe as “survival mode.” Sometimes the boys wouldn’t heat up their food or they gulped down their beverages.

Today, the handsome brothers are well-behaved and feel very proud of their new family. At the Catholic military school they attend, neither staff nor fellow students have ever taken issue with their two-mom family.

The couple finds solace and happiness in the bond they are forming with their sons. Laura has found a special connection to her sons through music, something she inherited from her own father. But their most memorable moment as a family has been their wedding this past July 2.

“The boys weren’t saying, ‘Our moms are getting married.’ They kept referring to it as ‘our wedding.’ It was like together we were all celebrating becoming a family,” Rosalba recalled.

Rosalba and Laura have found their experience so rewarding that they speak to other prospective foster and adoptive parents through classes at DCFS and on parent panels at events held by RaiseAChild.US, a national organization headquartered in Hollywood, California that encourages the LGBT community to build families through fostering and adopting to serve the needs of the 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system.

“We want people to know that it’s a rewarding experience if you are willing to trust the process, have the patience to see it through and advocate for yourself,” said Rosalba.

For National Adoption Month, RaiseAChild.US is hosting two free events for prospective foster and adoptive parents. We hope you will join us and learn about the advantages of building a family through fostering and adoption. Tuesday, December 2nd at The Garner House in Claremont, CA. Wednesday, December 3rd at The Montalbàn Theatre in Hollywood, CA. RSVP and information at www.RaiseAChild.US.

Jennifer Velez is a volunteer at RaiseAChild.US. Since 2011, RaiseAChild.US has run media campaigns and events to educate prospective parents and the public, and has engaged more than 2,400 prospective parents. For information about how you can become a foster or fost/adopt parent, visit www.RaiseAChild.US.

Thoreau may have been the literary world’s poster boy for walks. His passion for walking complemented his general valorization of nature; to truly experience the woods is to ramble through them rather than to remain cooped up indoors or to speed through them on a horse or other means of conveyance. As Maria Popova of Brain Pickings recently noted, “Thoreau is careful to point out that the walking he extols has nothing to do with transportational utility or physical exercise — rather it is a spiritual endeavor undertaken for its own sake.”

Sure, but Thoreau is the hippie of literature — of course he thought everyone should walk around ponds all day. Many other classic literary figures were also strong proponents of strolling, however — not just the tree-hugging Thoreau. He is joined by brilliant writers including Friedrich Nietzsche, C.S. Lewis and acclaimed author and essayist Rebecca Solnit, who have all commented on the value of a satisfying saunter. Even those who haven’t explicitly extolled walking as exercise frequently endorse it indirectly. The role of the flaneur in literature, post-Flaubert, is ubiquitous. From Virginia Woolf to Teju Cole, great authors capture life by narrating walks through it.

Recent studies suggest that walking bolsters creativity, retroactively validating the musings of many classic writers who have enumerated the mental and spiritual rewards of walking. This practical angle may be reason enough to head for the hills, but even if no great insights arise, these authors remind us that strolling through the world and experiencing its sights is reward enough in itself. Even in Thoreau’s time, authors spoke yearningly of walks as a way to escape daily demands and the clamor of the city. How much more do we need this escape today, when our work frequently follows us home in the form of email pings, and when our idea of relaxation too-frequently involves more time in front of a screen?

Here are 17 eloquent literary quotes that remind us of the simple, restorative power of a good walk:

“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” — John Muir

“Now shall I walk or shall I ride?
‘Ride,’ Pleasure said;
‘Walk,’ Joy replied.” — W.H. Davies

“To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper.” — Michel de Certeau

“If I couldn’t walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish.” — Charles Dickens

“Only thoughts won by walking are valuable.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one… who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared.” — C.S. Lewis

“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.” — Henry David Thoreau

“After a day’s walk everything has twice its usual value.” — George Macauley Trevelyan

“I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.” — Ernest Hemingway

“I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbours who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.” — John Clare

“We ought to take outdoor walks, to refresh and raise our spirits by deep breathing in the open air.” — Seneca

“I always feel so sorry for women who don’t like to walk; they miss so much — so many rare little glimpses of life; and we women learn so little of life on the whole.” — Kate Chopin

“Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.” — Rebecca Solnit

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.” — Søren Kierkegaard

“Perhaps
the truth depends on a walk around a lake.” — Wallace Stevens

“Walks. The body advances, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.” — Jules Renard

“[Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.” — Elizabeth von Arnim

This friendly neighbor did something beautiful just to see a little girl’s face light up.

Lily LaRue Anderson, 6, of Wayne, New Jersey, was diagnosed in May with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a type of brain tumor, which her doctors say is inoperable, according to her fundraising page. While Lily has shattered expectations and lived longer than her doctors’ initial estimates, much of that time has been spent in the hospital, CBS New York reported.

Her big-hearted neighbor, Craig Tkaczenko, who owns a Christmas decorating company, recently volunteered to adorn the 6-year-old’s house with spectacular lights. Last week, a ceremony was held at Lily’s residence, and the entire community came out to watch her light her home.

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“I hope it means that she can enjoy Christmas this year and make it as bright as we can for her,” Tkaczenko told CBS of his act of kindness for Lily.

First-graders, teachers, friends and family came out to support Lily on the magical night, according to her Facebook page. The 6-year-old told CBS that the surprise delighted her, and she wasn’t the only one. Her family was overjoyed by the gesture and the outpouring of love they received.

“This most perfect light and moment … Thank you,” Lily’s family wrote on her Facebook page after the lighting ceremony.

To learn more about Lily, or donate toward her medical expenses, visit her fundraising page here.

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Like millions of other stunned onlookers across the United States, and the world, I have spent the past several nights watching disturbing scenes of social unrest and often violent clashes between civilians and law enforcement personnel, into the early morning hours. Images of unarmed young people handcuffed and lying face down on the ground, or police officers in helmets and body armor facing off against them are never reassuring. At times, I found myself re-winding the footage over and over to be certain I had just seen what I thought I had, given the surreality of the events represented. Protesters carried signs pleading for peace, equal justice and cries for their voices to be heard, and recognized, amidst tear gas, and thick smoke from burning buildings, or vehicles.

This was not reportage from Ferguson, Missouri where an empaneled grand jury decided not to indict a white police officer in the August 9 shooting death of an unarmed African-American teenager, but from Selma and Birmingham, Alabama; Mississippi; Tennessee; Arkansas; Detroit; and Washington, D.C., as depicted by the seminal, near-30-year-old documentary of the American Civil Rights Movement, “Eyes on the Prize.”

I had started out watching the breaking news footage of Ferguson’s disintegration on Monday evening after a St Louis County grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown was announced, but couldn’t stomach it for very long. I was hoping that by looking back at the struggles of activists fifty, sixty years ago through the frame of “Eyes on the Prize,” that I could draw useful parallels and contrasts to what has been unfolding over the past couple of months, coming to a head this week.

A native of St Louis, long a New York City expat, I less felt anger than shame at the inevitability of it all. The largely African-American protesters who took control of the streets in Ferguson — some, but certainly not all, violently; the local mayor, police chief and state governor who despite predicting the possibility of unrest still seemed taken off guard when it actually happened; and the national journalists, usual casts of pundits, celebrity clergy and activists who likely had never heard of Ferguson before August 9 but were either waiting in the wings for “something” to happen, or parachuted in as soon as possible once it did. The decision not to indict, the outburst of rage, best exemplified by Michael Brown’s stepfather, Louis Head, who implored a restless crowd to “Burn this bitch down!” And ultimately, the relentless descent into chaos and the communal implosion of Ferguson, a suburb on the outskirts of St. Louis City. Performers cast in a familiar play with specific roles to play once the curtain went up.

For the brief period of time I watched the St. Louis County prosecutor’s press conference and immediate response on the streets, I couldn’t help but think of two distinctive but very different quotes, both which were incredibly apropos. One by African-American poet Pearl Cleage at the outset of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, “it is the nature of oppressed people to turn on themselves.” The other, from an unidentified American officer in Michael Herr’s classic tome of the Vietnam War, “Dispatches”: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

While I am upset and disappointed the grand jury’s decision, I still draw hope in Michael Brown’s family receiving justice for themselves and their son through the alternatives which still remain viable possibilities for them, in civil court and U.S. Department of Justice action. And to be sure, the residents of Ferguson and communities throughout the United States can and should use the resources available to them from living in a republic to change the laws which provide automatic protection to police officers such as Darren Wilson in situations such as these.

Personally, my ire, or rather, frustration is with us, “the elders,” and leaders who failed the young people on the streets Monday night in Ferguson and across the country by not taking the time, or investing the effort in their understanding and appreciating the lessons of the civil rights movement and other successful non-violent efforts. Nor have we truly prepared them for sustainable, constructive leadership using their language and tools.

In his 1964 collaborative project with photographer Richard Avedon, “Nothing Personal,” James Baldwin described a “light,” within everyone and the importance of it being maintained and carried from one generation to the next. He wrote, “one discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith…The light. The light. One will perish without the light…For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

Rodrick K. Burton is pastor of New Northside Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis. Leading a congregation of more than 600 people including a number of Ferguson residents, Burton has held at least half a dozen strategic meetings with clergy, law enforcement officials and local youth activists since Brown’s death. A friend for more than thirty years since we went to high school together, Burton identifies a general divide between protesters around Michael Brown’s death, and traditional leaders borne out of the civil rights generation twenty, thirty, forty years ago.

“In this situation, the young people had actual power through the vote, as well as so much knowledge in resources such as the Internet, and social media tools, but instead chose violence,” he observed in a lengthy conversation we had the night of the grand jury announcement, after he’d returned home from being on the streets of his church’s community and Ferguson. “When the violent protests are over, these actions will have no impact on the next black person shot and killed by a police officer, and there will be another one. The activists in the 60s studied struggle, but the younger generation are disconnected from the deeper history of the civil rights movement and others. They’re not studying the struggles to apply what could have been done successfully (in Ferguson) even before the grand jury decision, but have chosen another route. The Department of Justice said the (local) clergy were not showing leadership in this situation, and they were right. We’ll be out with the protesters but we are not leading or organizing them in a positive way. Many groups coming here from outside the community were also not a help, speechifying and not speaking to the core issues of what is happening on the ground with destruction of businesses, black and white, and provocation of physical confrontations with the police. Ultimately, more black people must participate in government and change the political and economic realities.”