Weddings, Babies, and Long Trips Away From Home

Next week Gareth and I are going to be traveling back to my hometown in Pennsylvania for a wedding with my good friend Mike and his bride-to-be Kelly. I'm going to be his best man and I'm really honored that he chose me since he is the first friend I really came out too and he has stood by me all this time. It will be an honor to now stand by him at his wedding and share in their happy day.


This morning, Gareth and I had a talk while lying in bed. He asked me if I wanted to have children and I said sure sometime. But he said he was thinking more like now, in the near future. He said we could use a surrogate and both donate sperm so we wouldn't know who the father really is. I mentioned that I have a few long trips at sea this year and he is going to be going back to Africa for a few months in March so the timing right now just doesn't seem right. It doesn't leave us much time to find someone that would be willing to do this and its definitely not something you can just leap into. Since it caught me off guard, I kind of let that conversation hang without a clear answer. It's definitely something we're both interested in, but it will require much more thought than either of us have put into it up to now.


As mentioned above, yes Gareth is going back to Africa for several months. He's been mentioning it for months and even though he says he just recently decided to do it, I've known and planned for it for a few weeks now. I'll still miss him as much as I always do when is away, but I'm getting better at not whining about it as much as I used too. lol Plus, I have several weeks where I'll be at sea for two or three weeks on longer voyages this year for my work. So that will help occupy me while he is gone.


On a good note Gareth got a home video of his family on Christmas Day. His family still gets together and someone had a video recorder and was taping everyone. As we watched the tape his mother is caught on tape in the kitchen with some relatives and they are talking about Gareth and myself. His one cousin said that Gareth is looking really good and his mother who had her back to the camera and didn't realize the camera was on her agreed. She said "I couldn't be happier with his choice of companion, I just love him. And I've never seen Gareth as happy as he is. It's wonderful and he's such a helpful boy." At first I thought, companion? I'm not his dog. But then we rewound it and listened to it again and I realized she meant it not in a bad way, it was just a word she chose and that she was actually saying nice things about me when I wasn't in the room. His cousin who was cutting carrots or something just replied "Yeah, he does seem happy" and then the subject got changed to something else. We laughed because we weren't sure if his cousins was feeling our gay love. His mother though loves me and getting the mother-in-law to love you is always a good thing!