The other day Sari had an appointment in Manhattan, so I took care of Phoebe for the afternoon. Couple hours into it and Phoebe wakes up starving from her nap. Just as I sit down with her and a bottle of pre-pumped breast milk, the phone rings. It’s Sari.
“Is Phoebe hungry? Are you feeding her now?”
“Yeah,” I said, surprised at her timing. “How’d you know?”
“My boobs were tingling.”
Hello!!!
A bit belated, but here’s my first attempt at exporting an iPhoto slideshow and uploading a video to YouTube.
Is inside Sari!
This is not a PhotoShop effect. Isn’t it amazing?
Our most intensive collaboration to date is due to debut sometime around July 16. All preprations are in order. The “baby” now has a room of its own. The doula has been reserved. A list of 50 names for each gender is being considered.
Wish us luck, please. We’re gonna need it.
Today is Sari’s birthday. I wish I could be there to celebrate it with her.
Four years ago today, Sari & I held our commitment ceremony. We were celebrating the ten years we had already been together and formally cementing our relationship. And all because Sari had the good sense to propose to me!
I had long had an aversion to the idea of marriage, partly because my parents were so bad at it, and partly because I was offended at the idea that a religious or state institution was empowered to marry us — while at the same time preventing others (e.g., gay couples) from enjoying the same priviliges. So together Sari and I crafted a ceremony without any official endorsements, outside in a meadow (in upstate New York) with just our friends and family as officiants. And at the end we “married” ourselves.
We cobbled the ceremony together from a friend’s wedding, which was based on a secular humanist text, some other sources, and our own inventions, edits, and additions. And we were blessed by the participation of not only the 50 or so witnesses, but an amazing group of friends and family who together performed the service. We’ve since had the pleasure of attending a number of weddings which used our text as the basis for their ceremony. It would be nice to think that this type of event is taking on a life of its own.
The day of the ceremony was one of those perfect days — much like today — with temperatures in the 80s and no humidity. The sky was blue, with just a few clouds, and I’ll always remember it as one of the last truly happy days before the horrors to come. Only 16 days later, on another pefect late summer day, two planes flew into the World Trade Center.
In celebration of our fourth anniversary, I’m attaching the text of the ceremony below.
p.s. Special prize to anyone who can identify the source of our actual vows. They’re from two divergent places.
Sari and I have moved back to the East Coast, specifically to Provincetown, MA. Sari, who’s a fiction writer, is a Fine Arts Work Center fellowship recipient, which means she gets seven months of supported writing time, and free accommodations besides! Of course, I couldn’t pass up this opportunity either, so I moved here for the duration.
I plan on using the time in two ways: freelance to make money and pay off some of those fershlugginer credit card bills, and work on my comics. Right now, I’m focusing on finishing up my epic “Josh & Sari travel” stories, hopefully with a graphic novel collection in mind. My next project is a serialized comic dealing with my childhood in Southern California and my lifelong obsession with the Vietnam War. I’ll keep you updated as these projects move along.