promoted to front page by Lorraine
I hold the Democratic leadership's feet to the fire because I have loved this party for 40 years. I come from a time when liberal values and principles were the ripples on the river that ran over the basement of time, the bedrock principles that engendered pride when these words were spoke, I am a Democrat.

I come from a time when the very word liberal wasn't bracketed but was a driving force, I come from a time when women began to stand up and insist our voices were heard. When equality and justice were at the forefront of the national party, a time when we could hold in our hands the knowledge that we were the party, a time when the leadership fought for the Voter's Rights Act, a time when the leadership fought for the Equal Rights Amendment, when they fought for Roe v. Wade and said out loud and proudly that we were the party of choice.

Because much has changed over the past two decades and because the Democratic leadership was all that stood between this administration and us, the American people, when the leadership didn't do their job in protecting us, when the leadership concentrated more on being elected instead of enforcing our rights through denying the passage of such legislation as the Patriot Act and the Bankruptcy Bill, when the leadership consistently refused to say one word about the war against women, it was then that I started to look outside the party it has become to the party it can be, a more progressive party, a party that embraces its liberal base once again.

This is a reworking of an earlier version of a diary on My Left Wing. It was written June 11, 2006. It speaks to who I am, what my beliefs are, and what I expect the Democratic Party to be, the members and the leadership.

Is loving a child so different than loving a party and a country?

My son was born June 11 at 11:13 AM. He came into the world easily, he waited until the sun had risen to bring in a new day. I was in labor for a little over three hours. It seems he was eager to greet this life of his, he took his first breath, and settled in as the nurse cleaned him, weighed him and measured him. He didn’t cry, he seemed content to be in this new world. As I watched the nurse do what nurses do, I wondered how we would fare together, this little boy and me, I wondered what would become of us, I wondered who he was, who he had been born to be.

The circumstances surrounding my son's birth were not pretty or kind. He was not a wanted child, he was not planned, his birth brought on innumerable crises, one of them being the slashing of my wrist because I was a pregnant teen without a choice, the year was 1966. I tried to end my life because I felt trapped, the freedom of being who and what I wanted to be was stripped away leaving me with options that were bleak.

I wasn’t born to be a mother but I was born to love the man who is my son, I was put on this earth to know and to love him, I am privileged beyond measure to call him my son.

From the time he was still learning how to get his balance, still learning how to walk, still reaching for things to steady him, we have been in this life together. Throughout his life, for better or worse, we have been inseparable. It’s only been in the past two years that we’ve lived further than 10 minutes apart. Sister and her son, Jon, and Derek and I often lived together as a family. We were all bound on this earth to be as one, we taught each other, we reached for the stars together, we fell down together and we rose to fight another day together. We learned who we are together, we learned how to love together, we learned of such things as loyalty and grace together, we learned how to simply be, just be, together.

The four of us moved throughout Northern California together, we roamed from town to town, we packed up and walked out many doors, heading somewhere we knew little of, many times not knowing a single soul in the new place, never caring because we had each other, always ready for a new adventure, a way to live the freedom we all felt after our divorces gave us independence. We never looked back once we were in forward motion, we never looked back.

We devoured life in those days, we were ravenous in experiencing new places, to explore things we had only read or heard about. We needed to live where there were cars other than Chevys and Fords, we needed sedans and sports cars instead of pick up trucks and station wagons. We needed to ride on the backs of motorcycles instead of being as one with caution. We needed the Jefferson Airplane and Santana instead of Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra. We needed to taste life instead of Velveeta.

Our sons went to rock concerts with us, they saw countless bands of the day. They rode on our hips as we protested the Vietnam War, they went to the rally put on by the Black Panthers in Berkeley in 1968 with us, they were still on our hips. They saw Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. They became dissenters by birthright. They opened their young eyes to injustice and ridicule, they knew of bigotry and hate, they also knew they belonged in a world Sister and I both longed for, a world without violence, a world that was rational and a world filled with peace, a world whose very foundation is love.

We all settled in Sonoma, California, a small town Derek has spent most of his life in. He went to grammar school, junior high and high school with friends that are still his to this day. Derek married his high school sweetheart. He said she needed him, that if he could have her he would never want for another thing in this life. Six months after they were wed she gave birth to beautiful Mikayla. Jerod came along three years later. My son settled into being a family man, it’s all he ever really wanted, to be a husband and a father.

Derek and I had a tradition of spending a day each week with each other, just the two of us. It had started when he was in grammar school in Petaluma. We often drove the thirty minutes to the coast, we sat on the beach or on a large piece of driftwood, we would each draw something in the sand and the other one would use what was drawn to tell a story, we would watch the sunset and we would talk about anything that was on our minds. It was in a word, lovely. The bond that was forged in those years between us is so great that we are still the person each of us tells everything to. There isn’t a topic that is out of bounds. This has continued through the years, we call them our date night now.

One night when I still lived in Sonoma Derek came to my house and sat down on the front porch with me. He told me he had something to tell me, he told me he needed to know what I thought of something important, he said he needed to know what my heart would say. I’ve never been a traditional mother, I loathe telling anyone what to do, I offer my opinion, I say what is in my heart but I don’t do discipline and I don’t offer advice. On that Friday evening I asked him what it was and he told me his wife was pregnant again. He stumbled a little as he told me the baby wasn’t his, that he was not the father. I held his face in my hands as I said to him that perhaps that’s why women are pregnant for nine months so things can be sorted out, so the truths of who we are in our hearts and souls have a chance to show themselves.

I told him sometimes we get to see what we’re made of, that sometimes life hands us an incredible gift, the gift of seeing if we just talk the talk or if we truly walk the walk. I told him that’s what this baby was, it was a measure of who we are in this world. We were sitting so close to each other our legs were touching, he put his arm around my shoulder and said that’s why he had come to me, he knew we would find the way together.

Derek told me that first night that he didn’t know if he could do it, if he could love the baby as if it was his own, he didn’t know if he could get beyond all the things that were bound to come up, his ego, his wife cheating, if he could look at the baby and know it’s not the sperm that makes a father, that being a daddy is being there with love and an open heart. I told him that was fair enough, that he needed time to think it over, that he should be sure because it’s a commitment for a lifetime.

We talked often during the coming months. We spoke of who was ultimately the most important person, we spoke of how babies are innocents, that they deserve to be born into a life where they are sheltered, fed and clothed, that they should be wanted and loved. We also spoke of the different ways people come to us, whether they be friends or family or babies we raise and call our own no matter what.

I was with his wife when she went into labor, I had decided that I wanted and needed to bond with the little guy from his first breath on so I held her legs as she pushed until my grandson was born. I watched as he was placed on my daughter-in-laws stomach, I saw how rosey pink he was, how perfect he was, how glorious he was, how loudly he cried. He was robust, in all ways, he was bigger than life, he was a force.

When they brought the baby boy into the room after being cleaned up we took turns holding him. There were great big smiles in the room but there was an obvious silence that was hidden, and then we all heard it, we heard the steps coming towards us made from cowboy boots. I took in a big breath and held it, tears formed in my eyes until they overflowed my cheeks, I knew who it was. Derek came into the room, he walked over to me and kissed my cheek, he walked over to his wife and kissed her forehead, then he reached down and picked up little James Ray, held him up in front of him, kissed his little button mouth and said, “welcome to our family son, I’m your daddy.” That is my son.

I don’t know how to begin to say how I feel about my son. There is, of course, love and devotion, there is pride for who he was born to be and in the man he has become, there is a sense of honor that comes with loving him, there is a swelling up of the heart as I tell this story, there is a sense of privilege that he came into my life, not matter how it was, I am and will always be grateful beyond measure that I know him, that he is my family and my friend.

The relationship my son has with his sons is extraordinary, he is the most natural parent I have ever seen. Mikayla lives in her own world, she’s thirteen now but doesn’t speak, she is presently a little over two years of age mentally, she lights up when Derek enters the room but it is really her mother that she depends on most of the time. The boys, on the other hand, worship Derek and are worshiped in return by their dad, Derek calls them Son just as I called my sister Sister. The boys look completely different from each other, they have completely different personalities but being different in other ways, essential ways, stops there, it is obvious that Derek holds each of them in his heart the same, watching them I can honestly say I’d be very surprised if it is ever a conscious thought that James isn’t biologically his.

Derek and I had the opportunity to have another front porch moment. Three years ago Derek came to me once again and told me his wife was pregnant. Like the last time, Derek was not the father. We didn’t have to have a conversation about it, he said he would be this baby’s daddy. Derek talked to his unborn son all through the pregnancy. He told him jokes, he massaged his wife’s stomach, he read to him, he went with his wife when she had ultrasounds, he passed the picture around proudly for all to see. He started loving that little guy from the moment he knew of him, Derek had crossed the threshold of doubt into doing what’s right by innocent babies who are born into this world, he became the village that would raise them.

They decided to name the baby after Derek’s best friend who had been killed in a motorcycle accident right after they graduated from high school. Clayton Elias never made it though, he was strangled by the umbilical cord as he was being delivered. We barely knew him, we barely knew him.

It’s a sobering thing to say words over a newborn’s casket, it takes courage to speak when a heart is shattered, it takes a reservoir of strength for a man to stand up before the world and talk about a son that was lost, his son that would not be. It takes a humbled soul and spirit to weep openly in front of so many who knew he wasn’t the biological father and felt it their right to judge. It is a testament to who my son is that he never wavered, he never gave it a moment’s thought, he was there for the love of his son, a son that was his in every important way from the time he was but a glimmer of light that had the possibility to shine for the world to see.

I don’t know that there’s any greater hurt in life than watching your child bury their child, what I do know is that there’s no measure that comes close to the wonder that life is when it delivers a child to you that grows into majesty, that becomes the very light Nelson Mandela speaks of, that is fearless in who he was born to be. I am quite simply in awe that he is my child, my only child, that a woman that was so clearly not meant to have children got the bounty of who my son is.

As I looked into my son’s eyes that day I saw greatness. After everyone else left the gravesite Derek and I stayed. We sat on that grassy knoll next to Clayton’s grave and talked and we cried. Derek told me all the hopes and dreams he had for his son, how much he was looking forward to being his father, how he would miss him and hold him in his heart forever. He told me he would never forget the pleasure he had felt all those months of the pregnancy. He said he got to know him in a way a father knows a child before they have graced this earth, he said he will recognize him when they meet again.

I need to say this also, I am in no way condemning my daughter-in-law, she does the very best she can under extraordinarily hard times. She and my son have found a love that they have for one another to this day, they are the epitome of loving friends for one another, they have each other’s backs in ways most of us only dream about. She is courageous, she is loyal, she has been there through thick and thin and there have been times when it’s very thin. I call her my friend, I love her, I will never say anything to disparage her, she is simply finding her way. I am with her in this life 150%.

When I say we are blessed to have landed in our hearts this is what I’m talking about, it’s when life is cruel and harsh but we find a way not to build a wall around us, when life is dark with just a sliver of light, when being in the shadows is our safe place, when our hearts are ripped to shreds and our souls feel like they will never mend, when our spirits are crushed beyond recognition, when we choose, when we make that choice to walk with an open heart, we are the ones who heal and because we do the world heals a little with us.

I’ve been told I romanticize life and politics, that I post sad and wistful pictures as I speak of coming from the heart. I’ve been told countless times that love isn’t the answer, that all my talk of love this, love that, cannot and will not save a blessed thing, most certainly not the world as we know it. I say balderdash, I say that is nonsense. I’ve witnessed extraordinary acts of kindness, some that have saved lives. I’ve seen love lift people up and out of desperate places, I’m alive because I was loved and I continued to live because I found it in myself to love who I am, without reservation, to love me. I have had the occasion to sit with my son and when he asked me what he should do I told him something so simple, I said find the love inside you and give it to these babies. The world is a better place for it. I’m not saying it’s easy or it doesn’t take hard work to get there but dammit it is possible, if we choose to land in our hearts.

I have seen miracles happen, I have seen a life saved partly because a community showed their love, that love helped a man hold on. I have looked into the eyes of my son and I saw a kind, good hearted man do the right thing by two babies who were born innocents, two babies that deserved to have him for a father, two babies that were loved by him before they came into this world. I saw that same man bury his son and I saw him weep because he wasn’t going to have the chance to raise him as his own. There is no greater love than that. And if that ability to love, to see what doing the right thing is, comes because he was raised by a mother who believes in love and being in your heart, then I rest my case.

So when the sun rises each day I choose the greatness of love to guide me. I know what is possible when there is love. To know that and not imagine a world that is governed from the heart is nonsensical to me. Being filled with rage and anger is sometimes the easy way. I , like so many others, was filled with it from 2001 until after the election of 2004. It ate at me, it invaded me, it nearly devoured me until I decided, until I made the choice to rid myself of it, until I decided I wanted my soul back from the Hell we were thrown into.

I’m not saying anyone else has to believe the way I do. I‘m not saying anyone else has to agree with me. I’m saying, for me, that I believe a party can be built on goodness and kindness. I’m saying that unless we, at the very least, include our hearts in our decision making, in our purpose, nothing will change. I’m saying that it’s time to look at what our intention is, that each step of the way we better be damned sure of it, that if our intention is to have a peaceful, loving world of equality then our intention in going forward had best be from a loving heart.

I expect to look into the eyes of the party I’m a member of and see greatness. I expect to see goodness and kindness there. Since we often stay with a party for many years, I expect to love that party and the things it stands for. I expect to be able to hold the bedrock principles and values of the party in my heart. I also expect, no demand that the party I belong to treats me as if I am theirs, no matter how I came to them, I want them to love me as if I am their own because in essence I am theirs, they speak for me, they pass laws and make policies that affect me and the world at large.

How can they possibly treat us all as if we are theirs if they don’t recognize that love is inherent in lifting people up and out of poverty, that love replaces violence if you let it, that love dismisses hate if you let it, that seeing every human being as equal comes from a loving place. Leave love out of governing and you have an empty shell, you have corruption, you have absolute power that is held within the parameters of the beltway and never makes it out to the masses.

Civil rights, human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, minority rights, gay rights, equal rights are all issues when addressed and championed, have a place in my heart. I passionately, from the heart, believe in them and expect my party to as well. How one can separate the two is beyond me.

I know for sure that who we are is shaped by what we hold in our hearts and it is in our hearts where our true sense of values lie. Values aren’t something you sweep up off the street and claim for your own. You are your values and your values are you. Values aren’t just auxillary pieces of us that we carry around in a shopping bag, our values are deeply embedded in our hearts and our souls. They speak for us, they tell the world who we are as a person, they guide us in every single action we take day in and day out. Knowing this, how is it possible to blindly support a party that has betrayed so many of the value liberals hold dear? I want to know, how is it possible to believe this party has one shred of decency left towards liberal values when they have turned their backs on what America stands for, when they have so clearly turned their backs on who we are as liberals?

So I posit this, is loving a child so different than loving a party and a country? Is it so different from deciding that we can be a parent to a party that needs to be born again? Is it so different than loving a party that must return to the womb again? Is it so different than choosing to say this party is ours, no matter what, this party is ours and it will be rise once again out of love, love for all the things this country used to stand for, love for the values and principles we hold dear as liberals?

I say it is not different, I say that we are the village that must step up to raise it, that we have a unique chance to do just that, do we love enough or are we still holding onto something whose time has passed and who we frankly no longer love? Is holding on enough, or does it take love to be the change we want to be?