Body Positive Feature Profile July 31, 2015

"There are so many things that are beautiful to me that I narrowed it down to two. I am a better person today because of my children. Biological or not.

I have sent two picture with this message. The first is a picture of me and my 13 year old stepdaughter Arianna. The second is a snapshot of my son in my mother's lap holding a candle. I will explain why both pictures represent something beautiful to me. Something from Nothing.

This is how my relationship Arianna started. I first dated, then married Arianna's mother. We gave Arianna a baby brother and another reason to smile. Arianna and I became friends to the point of being able to hold conversations about science, music and boys without noticing time pass us by. Soon her mother and I divorced and I was just another ex. I was someone Arianna didn't want to get any closer to. She had already exhausted her nerves during the endless court-battle and barrage of name calling and blame placed at her feet by her ever-bickering father and mother. Keeping track of me was too much. Three years later, her mother and I rekindled our relationship and gave birth to a baby girl. Now living back in the same home, Arianna and I feel as if we took one step forward and two steps back. When parenting needs to be implemented, I am not her father so my lessons and instruction fall of deaf ears. She still feels a little lost. At 13 she hasn't lost any baby chubs. She eats her feelings and lets everyone know she thinks she's fat (which she is not). Every so often she'll say "I'm a loaner and I love it!" Her mother and I can read between the lines and see she wants help, but she doesn't know how to ask. Our efforts at activity, heart-to-heart talks and even counseling have shown slow movement. Things got worse between her, her mother, her father and her now raging hormones that keep every conversation at the red-alert status. I had no idea folding kitchen cloths could have such a dramatic effect on a human being as it does on a teenage girl. I have lots to learn. Just as I thought things were headed the right direction, the earth shook and crumbled our house down to the proverbial foundation. After some time healing with professional help, Arianna's outlook has gotten back to the normal red-alert level. After our world erupts and somehow we all make it out alive, we wake up to a new day. On one of these new days I arrive at her middle school large group orchestra festival on a Tuesday morning when all the other parents are at work. Arianna asked me to come the day before. I couldn't utter the syllables fast enough..."absolutely!" The old memories of talking science music and boys immediately sent euphoric waves of nostalgia through my mind. Remembering the good times. Sitting back in an almost empty auditorium, me, three other parents, and the judges listened intently to the half-cooked version of a Bach movement. She was happy I came. I was grinning from ear-to-ear. This moment, after everything has happened, this moment is what is most beautiful. Her happiness.

Story behind the second photo is much more simple. When I was a little boy, my parents brought my brother and I to church at the First Presbyterian Church in Kennewick. I remember my favorite service was always Christmas eve service. We would listen to the bell choir, light the nativity candles, and sing "Silent Night". I knew not long after church let out we would head home and partake in one of the most important traditions known to mankind...opening one present under the tree before bedtime. This went on for years. That church became a personal mecca for Christmas memories and all around joy. I find it very ironic that after all of my efforts to leave my hometown and run my family through the gauntlet of alcoholism (and finally recovery), I wind up taking my son to the same church, on the same night, to sing the same hymns, light the same candles, and sit on the same woman's knee as I once did over two decade before. My first born, the light of my life, is holding a candle in the picture sitting on my mother's knee as I once did all those years ago. I moved across the country once, tried to join the military once, almost married the wrong woman twice and fate (or as I like to call him, God) put me right back where I started. To see my son in that light, that is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen." -Ed C.