Dramatis personae

Happy New Year!

I have plenty to say, but have been having a little trouble making the time to say it. So, as a means of priming the pump, and also just because it seems like a good idea, I’d like to briefly introduce the members of my household.

My daughter is ten years old and in the fifth grade; I’ll refer to her here as the Mercurial Maiden. She’s a smart, quirky, feisty kid. She loves reading, singing, and making up stories and songs. Why the Mercurial Maiden? Because she’s a Gemini, with a quicksilver intellect and temperament, and because she contains multitudes.

As it happens, I have been blessed with not one, but two life partners. I shall refer to them here as the Wizard and the Samurai.

The Wizard and I have been together for twenty-five years now, and have been married for twenty-one of those years. He’s an electrical engineer by profession, fond of science fiction, model rocketry, and folk music, among other things. He’s been having some bizarre health problems lately; perhaps I’ll say more about that in the near future, after some relevant medical appointments take place in the next couple of weeks. Why the Wizard? Because of his cleverness, and because he has always been the kind of person who can look at a problem, take in the details, and find a solution.

The Samurai — well, it’s a long story, but here’s the short(ish) version: our twenty-year friendship began with a whirlwind romance that was set aside for reasons that seemed to make sense (though they also made us sad) at the time; then, after many years of living geographically distant from each other and only getting together a few times a year, a series of circumstances led to him moving in with us in the fall of 2005. We thought at first that this would be temporary…but then there was a cosmic click as many things left hanging suddenly fell into place, and we decided that our family of three would become a family of four. Why the Samurai? Because he knows how to be a warrior, having served in the military in the past, yet he is also skilled in a number of gentle arts…and because he is much, much happier with a tribe of family and friends to serve. He lived ronin for a few years, and it was pretty rough on him. I’m grateful we found our way back to each other, and consider it one of the great miracles of my life.

So, yeah, here I am, living quietly with my daughter and my two partners, quietly polyamorous, quietly non-mainstream — though of course, here on the interwebs, we polyfolk are common as clay, and I feel right at home. (Though if anyone wants to leave a comment saying that you don’t hate me for being unusual in this way, that would be really nice…wait, did I just type that out loud?)

We have a number of animals sharing our home, too. I’m still trying to figure out whether the three colonies of bees living in our backyard count as pets or livestock, but we currently have three animals who are most decidedly pets. I guess I’ll call them Elder Cat, Younger Cat, and The Dog. (It’s tempting to refer to our dog as The Bitch, but she’s so sweet-tempered that it would be completely misleading. The cats are bitchier than she is, and they’re both boys.)

Last, but not least, I think I’ll take a page out of Hiro’s book, and consider my business as a separate entity and a Dramatis Persona in its (her?) own right. Spiral Song Creative Arts is the name I use for my clinical practice as a music therapist, and is also the name I will use as I stretch into other areas, such as performing and writing.

So, that’s me. Hi! And who are you?