Dad and Laura.

My father and my gay sister's partner finally have something in common: they have asked me not to blog about them. C'mon! How can I resist? That's almost like daring me to do it.

I will write one paragraph about each of them. After this, they can each repeat their request to not appear in my blog if they still feel that way. I will honor it.

My dad was raised on a farm in rural Iowa as the oldest of 6 kids. You know, up at 5:00, milking cows, his mom made his clothes, up hill both ways in the snow kind of thing. He is now a sophisticated and savvy investment banker in San Francisco, listens to opera, and can't start his day without the Financial Times. He is currently either meeting with his architect to plan the remodel of my parents' wine country home, on a plane to Germany to meet new potential clients, having a beer at the hot SOMA brewery my brother works at, or blasting Hawaiian music as he heads over one of the Bay Area's five bridges in his BMW. He is the first to compliment the amazing job his parents did raising their kids, but it is common knowledge that the farm was run as a dictatorship (however benevolent) and the kids were beaten with a switch if they misbehaved. Even so, Dad took the best from his parents and magnified it as our father. He may still be a Republican, but you might also mistake him for a sensative new-age guy when you see him listening to his kids' problems, having a tickle fight with his granddaughter, or reading a novel on religious tolerance during the Inquisition in India. Clearly, the man has come a long way.

But he still cries upon hearing old blue-grassy church music, especially "I'll Fly Away," and old harvest hymns like "Come Labor On," and "We Plow the Fields and Scatter the Good Seed on the Ground." You can take the boy out of the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy. And I would never want to.

Laura: My sister-in-law was also one of 6 kids in a family without a lot of money. She grew up in a coastal suburb, the daughter of teachers. My dad was motivated by a poor childhood to change his circumstances, and he has: he put himself through college and law school, started his own business, and sent all three of his own kids to college when he was the first of his family to even go at all. His ability to change his circumstances, as opposed to accepting the hand he was dealt, at many different points in his life is an inspiration to me. Laura's childhood motivated her to want to change the world. She's a social worker who works for a Washington watch-dog group that moniters health care and poverty issues. One goal of her organization is to collect and present data that will encourage government to change its approach to healthcare, particularly in regards to children below the poverty line. She chooses a lifestyle that is as low an impact on the environment as possible: she and my sister have one car. She is a vegetarian. She eats little dairy. Her thoughfulness is astounding. Ask her what she thinks about any problem in your life and she will simultaneously affirm your efforts and encourage you to be even better. She has a bum knee and bad ankles after years of gymnastics but still makes it a priority to get out and about in nature as much as humanly possible. She has 7 nieces and nephews and lavishes her attention on each one as if they were the only child who has ever done anything as cute as spit up or get an A in math. And at the end of a long, hard season of research and reporting, after months and months of thoughtfulness towards the world and the environment, the woman loves a good day at the spa. Her motto might as well be: "Love the earth; love each other; love yourself." And we love her for it.

Wow, after re-reading this post, it's clear that my dad and his daughter-in-law actually have a lot in common, underneath the surface.