Andy Mobley, December 31, 2014
annual New Year’s Eve walk down Cape
Canaveral beach together
Gantries of Kennedy Space Center in
background
Today my
husband and I celebrate our 41st anniversary of loving relationship. In August,
we will celebrate our fifth year of legal marriage.
In many,
many ways the fact this relationship has lasted so very long is a miracle. It
has survived multiple separations for school and work. It has survived the interminable
period of coming out that I had to work through for about 20 years, discerning
who I was and what I was about. It has survived competing partners,
disapproving parents, family members and coworkers and discriminating employers.
It has survived the selling of one home as a part of uprooting to move across
the country and back and it has survived the loss of another home to a
hurricane and the seemingly endless process of rebuilding it.
It has
survived much that most relationships never have to face and still remains
intact with all the scars to show for it. But it has survived.
There Were
No Manuals….
I met my
now husband at our fraternity in Gainesville in 1973. In all honesty, neither
of us much liked the other to begin with. His upper middle class roots in
Georgia’s country club society were everything this hippie reviled. And he had
never met anyone as dangerously curious – and as willing to simply reject the
conventions of society out of hand – as me.
The
brothers assigned me to Andy as his little brother during my pledge period
because no one else thought they could deal with me. Little did either of us
know where that would take us.
There were
no manuals on how to be a gay couple in 1974 when Andy first told me he loved
me. And there was an awful lot working against being a couple, not the least of
which was the law that criminalized it.
At the
time I was in a relationship with a woman I planned to marry and everything in my
world of 1974 pointed in that direction. On my recent visit to Tallahassee to
visit my 93 year old aunt, I passed the wealthy neighborhood where the woman I
once loved now lives with her attorney husband, her children now grown and one
grandchild already on the scene. I thought to myself how different my life
would have been had I lived into those same dreams I once thought I held in
undergraduate at the University of Florida in the mid-1970s.
As I
pondered that driving down the oak-shaded canopy roads of Tallahassee it quickly
dawned on me that I was very fortunate that my life had turned out as it had. At
a basic level, those dreams of practicing law and living a conventional
professional middle class life in a plush neighborhood in Tallahassee were
probably never my dreams to begin with. Perhaps I knew that at a basic level
and, as I usually do, followed my intuition. Perhaps my guardian angels had
been nudging me to be true to myself at the right moments while prompting my
then girlfriend to find herself another frat boy who wanted to be a lawyer. Or
maybe I was just lucky.
Regardless
of the reason, life would have been very different had Andy not come into my
life so unexpectedly in 1973. And for that I will be eternally grateful.
In all
truthfulness, I could not imagine my life without Andy. As all couples
approaching old age do, I find myself worrying about things I never worried
about before – What was that cough about?
Why do you always have headaches? When are you going to the doctor about that
cyst? When are you going to be home? I’m concerned about your diet….
No One Gets
Through This Alone….
Sometimes all I need
Is the air that I breathe
And to love you
Is the air that I breathe
And to love you
The Air That I Breathe, The
Hollies (1974)
If I had
to pick any given moment of our 41 years together as a highlight of our life,
it would be my ordination to the diaconate in December 1994. Andy always talks
about this moment. The service had been elaborate – the Gospel in several
languages, Crazy Horse’s grandson singing an honor song, the Buddhist nun who
taught the sangha I attended and my Jewish friend who occasionally attended
classes with me at seminary in the audience. The loving multicultural community
of St. Philips had gone all out for this event.
At the
conclusion of the ordination portion of the service, Bishop Richard Shempfky turned
to the congregation and said, “No one gets through this process alone. So I want
Andy, Harry’s partner, to come up and stand by him so we can show him our
appreciation for all he has done to make this night possible.” Andy came to
stand by me and the entire parish rose in standing ovation. It was a rare
moment of affirmation in a stormy sea of rejection. My eyes tear up as I type
these words remembering that unforgettable moment.
You see,
the truth is, it was precisely Andy’s steadfast, grounded presence that has
loved me through virtually all of the crises of my life over these past 41
years. It was an unbroken love which at times was unmerited by my own behaviors
and held together by the glue of Andy’s determination to make it work.
He has
been the unheralded, trustworthy one securely holding the tethers for the hot
air balloon floating above the concrete canyons of the parade route that has been
my life. As a colleague has often said of our relationship, “If you want to really
see family values, you need to look at Andy and Harry.”
The 1974
hit by the Hollies, “All I Need is the Air that You Breathe” was the song that
expressed our love when we first met, trying to get past our own internalized
homophobia to bond with each other. When it would play on the radio, I would
often find myself breathless and teary eyed. It was a frightening yet thrilling
reality we were encountering in those days. Even today when I hear that song played,
I lose my breath, transported almost immediately back to 1974, scared,
bewildered, and deeply in love.
Happy
Anniversary, Beebee. You are the love of my life. If I ever wonder whether G_d
loves me, I only have to look at your gentle face where the image of G-d is so deeply
and beautifully imprinted. And I will be eternally grateful to that gracious
G-d for the wonderful gift that is you.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry
Scott Coverston, J.D., M.Div., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Professed Member, Third Order Society of St. Francis
(TSSF)
Asst. Lecturer: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
Osceola Campus, University of Central Florida, Kissimmee
If the unexamined
life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious
or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of
value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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