To say my family likes ice cream is an understatement. It’s like saying Taylor Swift likes winning awards or that the Kardashians like being seen on television. I’m pretty sure all my brothers have ice cream makers in their homes as adults because ice cream was such a big part of our childhood. The older I get the more I realize our histories are a version of reality our minds piece together. In my mind’s history I ate ice cream for dessert every night when I was a kid.
I remember how we couldn’t pass a Dairy Queen without stopping. My mom would say to do so was sacrilegious. I remember many late nights either eating ice cream or drinking shakes and malts until my stomach ached. But my most fond memory is when my mom would go to dish out ice cream and there was only enough for one of us. She would always let me have that final scoop. I thought to myself, she must really love me. Who would give up ice cream so someone else could have it? I imagined it was some kind of punishment parents had to endure for having children and I couldn’t fathom the idea of loving someone so much that I would sacrifice the last of the coveted ice cream. That is, of course, until I met Dylan Todd.
Dylan and I met at the WAVE award celebration at Hamburger Mary’s Ybor in 2018. He was receiving an award for Favorite New Business, Dylan Todd Photography. I had first heard of Dylan not long before at an Equality Florida Gala. Watermark’s Tampa Bay Bureau Chief, Ryan Williams-Jent, showed me his photography work and mentioned that if I met him, I’d probably like him.
I was smitten. Standing before me was a beautiful, talented and driven man who seemed to be as interested in me as I was in him and that made me nervous. I was going through some significant changes at the time. Although I had been sober for a few years, I hadn’t dated anyone. Dylan was the first person in decades that I met without the influence of alcohol. He was the first person who offered to buy me a drink who I told immediately that I couldn’t drink. I also was 43 years old with braces and my teeth were going in their own direction, each of them separately. I felt pretty much undateable at the time. Dylan saw past that.
It’s fascinating to be truly in love with someone, to experience such a dichotomy of emotions. I feel I’m getting older while my heart stays a teenager, I feel so secure in something that is so fragile and I feel selfish indulging in something so wonderful while giving myself fully to make sure someone else is equally as happy.
Dylan and I got married this past Sunday, April 25, in a beautiful ceremony at Leu Gardens. It’s hard to express how I feel about that. It’s hard to imagine this world today that allowed two guys to marry when I spent my high school proms in the ‘90s crying in my bed, listening to Air Supply, wishing I could take my crush to a dance. Now, there we were in front of our friends and families with the Honorable Barbara Leach legally binding our lives. It was simply beautiful.
Dylan and I debated for months over what to do about our last names. Does one of us take on the other’s? Do we hyphenate? Claggett-Todd just seemed like too much to fill out on a form, and since we both had successful businesses, we decided to keep our names the same. This had been the plan for some time, but the closer we got to the wedding the more that didn’t feel right to me. I felt like we were holding on to the past, that we weren’t honoring the idea of marriage that so many people sacrificed for us to have. The excuse that we both had established careers under our own names didn’t feel like we were fully engaging in this commitment. Since Dylan’s name is literally his brand, I decided to change my name to Rick Todd.
I don’t look at it as if I am giving up my name. I’m not changing it because I hate it or because it rhymes with terrible words. I am simply becoming a family. I am taking on the name of my husband, the man I am committed to, the man I hope to spend the rest of my life with and the only person in this world I would give the last of my ice cream.
In this issue of Watermark we take a deep dive into Orlando Fringe, while in Tampa Bay we introduce you to two new businesses, Snap House and Cocktail.
We strive to bring you a variety of stories, your stories. I hope you enjoy this latest issue.
