Among those with whom they chatted: a pair of young 20-something females who'd met in the Navy. When they weren't concentrating on the number board, nervously willing it flash their number - 104 - my father and Javier passed the time, striking up conversations with those my father happily referred to as "their people": other same-sex couples. Together, we stood in New York's City Hall, waiting for their marriage 'number' to be called, in a long corridor that reminded me of Grand Central Station: rather pretty, exceptionally crowded, with a mass of humanity waiting to move from one place in their lives to another. I wore a rose Zac Posen dress, my husband his favorite suit. My father and Javier wore button-down shirts and khakis and matching boutonnieres (white carnations nestled in a spray if green).
My husband and I served as witnesses at my father's wedding on a beautiful fall afternoon. We never had to explain Opa's sexuality because we didn't think there was need to explain. It made no sense to explain my father's sexuality to our oldest son during any of "Opa's" visits - since he was so young and Opa was so non- committal. My father discussed the notion of marriage and commitment ceremonies with those men once in a while - but, for the most part, my father seemed uninterested in formalizing any of the relationships, in large part because the relationships dissolved, on their own, in relatively short order. Later came Tony, a Japanese businessman, then Shastri, an Indian-American accountant, then Rick, an aspiring personal trainer, and Sakis, a would-be dog groomer from Greece. Then came Franz (real names, both, I swear), a former member of the Vienna Boys Choir. First came Hans, a kindly German immigrant and gifted interior designer.
He left my mother for another man when I was 8 and went on to bring a series of "special (boy)friends" into my life. My father has shared details of his love life with me for years. Would my husband and I be the witnesses, he wondered. He was flying from his adopted home in Florida to New York to wed at City Hall. My father announced his engagement in a typewritten note. And so his new marriage to another man makes things, well, complicated. But my father, my son knows, was married to my mother, a woman. And we have friends who are gay, whom he adores. My son understands a little bit about same-sex couples.
And part of it stems from just how he's wired.īut wise-beyond-his-years though my son is, there is one situation my husband and I are still figuring out how to help him get a proper handle on: my father's recent marriage to another man. Part of this stems from the fact that he's the oldest of four children (two little brothers and a baby sister hang on his every word). automotive industry to the inner workings of the human body. I know he accused Nick of making me dependent on him for everything, which is the pot calling up the kettle to have a long talk about being black.My 8-year-old son has frequently been called an old soul one of those kids who uses big words like 'epitome' and 'antithesis' with ease and who enjoys chatting up adults about topics ranging from the fate of the U.S. "He was convinced that Nick didn't understand commitment, which I didn't think was fair," she continued. "'Marriage is about hanging in there,' he said.
But my relationship with Nick, that he could control." "Nick was the one thing my dad and I fought over," she revealed. "He never said no to the label, as much as he groused about how they were marketing me. In her new memoir, Simpson detailed how the relationship with her ex-husband, Nick Lachey, often came between her and her father. Maybe I wasn’t ready to listen, I don’t know." Jessica Simpson opened up about Joe Simpson's rocky relationship with her ex, Nick Lachey. "I wasn’t sure how to handle my father now, so I worked with the information he was ready to give me. "I reminded myself that I needed to accept my father for who he was as he worked it out in real-time," she added, alluding to her father's sexuality and who he keeps company with.