Tag: Gillian

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Horseshoes, by Gillian

In my childhood in
England there were still a few work horses left, plodding ahead of plows or
hauling overloaded carts. I suppose their existence was extended a few years by
the World War Two gas shortages, but before long they and their peaceful quiet days
were supplanted by dirty, noisy, tractors.
But those beautiful
beasts, or at least their shoes, remained with us in Britain for much of the
last century. Many houses had a horseshoe nailed as a U above the front door.
It had to be that way up as it captured and contained good luck. If it came
loose and slipped sideways, or still worse upside down, it had to be righted
immediately because all the good luck was fast draining from it. For many
decades, horseshoes and pubs was apparently a mandatory pairing. I don’t
remember ever being in a pub in my younger days – and, yes, I was in quite a
few, – that did not have the obligatory horseshoes and other horse brasses
arrayed in gleaming splendor around the fireplace, above the bar, or nailed to
smoke-blackened overhead beams. Pubs in those days were relatively quiet places
intended for serious drinking, with nothing noisier than low conversations and
perhaps an occasional outburst of song. Entertainment was in the form of darts,
checkers, or dominoes, none of which create a huge clamor. They didn’t serve
food, except for so-called ‘bar snacks’ such as pickled eggs and pork crackling
so there was no endless clatter from a busy kitchen.
Around the 1960’s things
began to change, ramping up the noise level with juke boxes, then pinball
machines, and slot machines for minor gambling. By the 70’s many had gone from
bar snacks to full meals, generally increasing the hustle and bustle. By the
80’s, and certainly the 90’s, pubs were having to compete with the upscale chic
little wine bars that were appearing everywhere and making the old-style pub
seem dark and dingy by comparison. In many, as central heating became
commonplace, the old fireplace disappeared; and along with it, the horse
brasses. Over the same period, people became more sophisticated and less
traditional and out went many old superstitions.  And along with them, out went the lucky
horseshoes. You might still see an occasional one in a remote country village
but you’d have to search.
In the early days of my
thirty-year career with IBM in Boulder, there were horseshoe pits behind one of
the buildings, and most of the daylight hours’ groups on break or at lunchtime
would be out there tossing horseshoes at the stakes in the ground. Horseshoes
has always been, apparently, something of a blue collar game. The pits were,
I’m sure not accidentally, placed behind a manufacturing building not one that
housed office workers. Occasionally men with loosened ties and rolled up shirt
sleeves were spotted out there, but for the most part it was enjoyed by people
in jeans and t-shirts.
Over the years,
manufacturing disappeared there, as it did from most of in this country, being
shipped off to that unidentified never-never land called Offshore. Along with
it went the horseshoe pits and the horseshoes. Oh, it was all probably replaced
by a wonderfully-equipped exercise room with showers and steam room, free to
all employees. But I’d be willing to bet few have the fun there that we had
with those old horseshoes.
Horseshoe pits seem to
have suffered much the same fate as lucky horseshoes on cottage doors.
You might stumble over
some in Podunk, Iowa, the American equivalent of that remote country village in
Britain, but for the most part people prefer to partake in less staid, and much
more expensive, activities these days. If, that is, they don’t just settle for
computer games.
Many an old English pub,
dating back to seventeen-something-or-other or whenever, has been gutted and
completely remodeled. A huge-screen TV dominates the wall where the fireplace
once stood, surrounded by horse paraphernalia. The place is so crowded these
days that you know, the minute you enter, that you will never find anywhere to
sit. If you tried to have a conversation you couldn’t hear a word that was
said; people our age certainly couldn’t, anyway. All the earlier noise-making
machines are still there, but now there’s the blaring television and dozens of
shouting people as well. Most of those who did manage to snag a seat are
ignoring their companions and giving full attention, barring an occasional
quick glance at the TV to check on the status of Real Madrid versus Manchester
United, to their various electronic devices. Oh well, at least they are
contributing little to the unrelieved cacophony.
Thinking back to the old,
almost silent, snug, with its shining horse brasses reflecting the flames of
the big fire, brings tears to my eyes. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. But
Grandma, things are really so much better in so many ways than they were back
then. And I know you’re probably right. But today, just for today, I don’t
want to look at the past objectively, weighing the good against the bad and
finding it wanting. I just want to remember those horseshoe days as good. And
cry because they’re gone.
© February 2015 
About
the Author 
 I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 28
years.
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Normal, by Gillian

Well how in Hell would any of us know about normal? I was tempted to write just that and only that, but that’s taking too easy a way out. But normal, just by it’s definition of usual, typical, unexpected, is just not very exciting Oh, an occasional normal, as in temperature, or blood pressure, can be welcome, but on the whole abnormal is surely more interesting.
And maybe I’m just feeling irritable today, but I’m really getting sick of the New Normal. I found it to be an interesting and quite clarifying phrase once upon a time, but it has been, and is, so overused that it has become …. well …. normal. On the internet, of course, it abounds, usually capitalized: the New Normal of globally aging populations, of a slower-growing U.S economy or those personal New Normals we must find after the birth of a child, or a recovery from cancer, or suffering grief.
The Economist magazine recently headed a section, ‘America and Cuba – the new normal,’ and the New York Times entitled an article, ‘Puberty Before Age 10: a New Normal?’ I have to agree with Harvard professor David Laibson who said that people are “a little trigger-happy with the ‘new normal’ label.” Well, I say to myself, new things of any kind are often over-used at first.
But wait!
This phrase is apparently not new at all: rather making a resurgence. Believe it or not, and I did indeed find it rather incredible, a New York Times article in 2011* printed a graph showing the frequency of the term [new normal – ed.] in books printed over the last century. According to this documentation, it was even more commonly used in the 1920’s and ’30’s than it is now – at least in the printed word.
Then it lay pretty dormant until zooming to it’s current popularity since around 2000.
Anyway, whatever the reason and like it or not, we appear to be destined to be inundated with New Normals at least for a while, so I’ll add my own.
WE are the New Normal. And, yes, I do most sincerely believe that. No, I don’t mean that we in the GLBT community are suddenly going to find ourselves in the majority, but that we will become, if we are not already, normal. Looking at listed synonyms, that simply means we are usual, ordinary, customary, expected, even conventional. Of course NBC tried to suggest just that with the TV series The New Normal which aired in 2012 and ’13, and more power to them, but there is nothing more powerful than the personal. It doesn’t mean we will be universally loved, approved of, even accepted. But we hardly come as a surprise, let alone a shock, to many people these days. Yes, an individual coming out may still shock unsuspecting family and friends, but we, as a group, have arrived. And as more people get to know us individually we will become more usual and ordinary and, in many cases, perhaps seen as quite conventional. I believe that this will all speed up if the Supreme Court, which has finally said it will do as it should have initially, actually makes a ruling, and in our favor.
Even gazing ahead through such rose-colored glasses, there is danger. Not for any of us older folk, I think, but for the future of our community as a whole in years to come. Will we, in fact, cease to be a community if we become more integrated into society as a whole? Worse, will we find ourselves becoming boringly, numbingly, normal; adopting all the previously straight mores and strictures of society and settling for over half of our hard won marriages ending in divorce? I so hope not. My dream is that we will form relationships and love with strengths forgotten or abandoned by our hetero friends. Perhaps they will even learn from us, and together we can all find much that has been lost, or more likely never was. Or perhaps, as several psychological studies have suggested, same-sex relationships have certain integral advantages over those of opposite-sex couples. Women will always be from Venus and men from Mars and that’s an end to it. And that, I guess, would make any same-sex couple, just, inevitably, normal.
*http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/the-new-normal-is-actually-pretty-old/?_r=0
© 2 Feb 2015 
About the Author 
I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 28 years.
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Hinterland, part two, by Gillian

Grief

A few days after my time-travel to Aberystwyth, I returned to Episode One of Hinterland only to find Matthias dashing off to Devil’s Bridge. Well, duh, that was the title of the episode. I just hadn’t noticed.

Devil’s Bridge is a little village up in the mountains about ten miles inland from Aberystwyth and it was a very, very, special place to my parents. My mother wrote in her photo album in 1930 that it was the most beautiful place she had ever been. You can’t tell from the faded old sepia photograph but it is a pretty spot, though I suspect Mum’s enthusiasm for it was more because it was where she and Dad spent their honeymoon. Several years later, we went there quite frequently on our day trips to Aberystwyth, always stopping there for tea and a walk down to the waterfall no matter how hard it was raining. It is the only place where the three of us ever stayed overnight, in the same hotel where they had honeymooned; inevitable as there was, at that time, only one hotel. (Now, I am astonished to find, Expedia lists eight right there, and a hundred and forty-six nearby!)

Now, I sit here in Colorado watching Matthias hurrying down to the falls, where of course he finds a dead body. I am amazed to see solid stone steps with handrails zig-zagging down the little gorge. No such thing in my day! We simply scrambled over wet muddy slippery rocks until, one way or another, we landed at the bottom. I am disappointed in this development, but have no time to dwell on it as Matthias is now entering the hotel. THE hotel. The one I stayed in with my parents, and where we used to go for tea. In the series they call it the Devil’s Bridge Hotel but I recognize it instantly as the old Hafod Hotel, as it is actually still called, they just changed the name for the TV series. It has been there since the 1700’s when it opened as a hunting lodge, and there was probably some kind of hostelry long before that, as there have been bridges across the gorge at Devil’s Bridge since the 1100’s.

Probably I was already sensitized by my Aberystwyth experience, but seeing the waterfalls, and the bridge, and following the path of the TV camera into that very hotel, overwhelmed me. I had an intensity of grief for my parents such as I have rarely felt, and certainly not for many years. As I have said before, I seem unable to come to grips with being an orphan, but this pain astonished me How can I possibly feel such sorrow after … what is it now? Thirty years. I guess real grief never leaves us, despite the healing qualities of time. We feel it less often, perhaps, but it is never gone. It sneaks up on us when we least expect it, and stops us in our tracks.

I turn off the TV.

Again.

I have decided that Hinterland Episode One is not for me.

Warily, a few days later, I did watch the other three episodes. All was well. Matthias trots his grim path around many places I recognize, but none that tear at my heart. I’m not sure if I will ever return to Episode One.

Who needs what the critics are calling ‘Welsh noir,’ anyway? At this moment I am grieving for a longtime friend who died last week. There’s enough ‘aging noir’ in real life these days, I don’t need to borrow grief from the television.

© 10 August 2015

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Hinterland, part one, by Gillian

Going Home

Although I spent the first twenty years of my life in Britain, I have been away from that home so long that it has long ceased to be ‘home’ to me. Colorado has been my home for fifty years. I have fond memories, sometimes sliding into nostalgia, of that original home, but most of us occasionally succumb to such sentiments for the days of our long-lost youth. Once in a while, though, something propels me instantly, unexpectedly, through time and space, and there I am as surely as if I had clicked my little red heels.

A few weeks ago I watched, on DVD, a Brit police drama entitled Hinterland. A strange choice of title, you’d think they would have chosen from an endless array of lyrical Welsh words. It is set in the wet wilds of Wales, and is all a bit dark and dour. I don’t think the main character, the investigating cop, Matthias, smiles once in the entire series. Actually I’m not sure anyone smiles once in the entire series. But the police are headquartered in Aberystwyth, a small seaside town; a place very close to my heart.

I’ve bored you endlessly about when I was a little kid and gas was still rationed and the British economy shot to hell, so few people had cars, and no-one took unnecessary trips. But by the early nineteen-fifties things were finally looking up. My dad bought a small, very used, car, and we fell into the habit, on rare summer sunny Sundays, of spending the day in Aberystwyth. It was only about an hour’s drive, and a breathtakingly beautiful one; up and over the rugged Welsh mountains and down to the jagged rocks greeting the crashing waves of the Irish Sea. These were always special days. Just Mum and Dad and me, carefree and silly.

Back on the DVD, the camera, seeing the world through the Matthias’s eyes, rolls down an Aberystwyth street, between solid Victorian buildings of local Welsh stone, towards the pebbly beach. I had walked down that very street, exactly there, many times. And suddenly I was there. I was there! Walking down that street. I was no longer watching. No longer seeing through other eyes; nor through the camera lens. I feel and hear the crunch of my feet on the sandy, gritty, pavement. Mum and I have our arms linked and are half walking half skipping like little kids.

My dad, who of course will have no part of skipping, is striding beside us, swinging my hand up and back in big arcs. I am too old for real hand-holding, probably ten or eleven, but swinging seems OK.

Dad looks down at me and winks.

“By ‘eck, i’n’t this grrrand!”

He rolls his r’s. He is Welsh and being in Wales makes him more so.

We are at the end of the street, where we have to turn either left or right to follow the waterfront.

Dad releases my hand. I am suddenly in a dark, smoky, room. Matthias is growling something.

No. I am not there. I am no longer there. I am, once more, the watcher.

I am in my house in Colorado.

It’s 2015.

I turn off the TV.

This incident bothered me so much that I did not return to that DVD for a few days. I felt all discombobulated. What had happened? I tried to shrug it off. Nothing so surreal, in fact. Just a very vivid memory, as some childhood memories seem to be. But why that one? Why that street? It wasn’t as if it ended in some terrible trauma, causing it to be burned into my memory. And to be honest, it wasn’t really a memory. Not like memories are, usually, where you are outside them, just looking in. Just remembering. It was more like a dream. A very vivid dream. I was there. I was there.

No, don’t panic. I’m not about to deliver a diatribe on the space/time continuum. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t. I just recognize how grateful I am that I was blessed with such an all-encompassing flash back, and hope for more to come. Living away from home is fine, but it was great to go back and visit.

© 3 August 2015

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Clear as Mud, by Betsy and Gillian

(Betsy)

This past summer while strolling through downtown Denver with some visiting relatives, we came upon a sign that read,

RESTROOMS ARE LOCKED

TO PROVIDE CLEAN FACILITIES

FOR OUR CUSTOMERS.

The sign caught our attention especially because we had been searching for a restroom for quite some time and were more than ready to find one. “If they are locked how do we get in?” the three of us said almost in unison. The sign was not posted on the door of any particular store, rather on a door from a walkway into a hall leading to nowhere except the two restrooms. We were not customers then, but neither was anyone else. The walkway belonged to the entire pavilion which housed many stores. “Do we have to buy something to get a key from one of the stores?” I queried to myself. How long will that take. There are no stores immediately handy.

Fortunately in a most timely fashion, a woman came out of the walkway door and informed us that she had been given the secret code to open the restroom by the previous user and she would gladly pass it on to us. It turns out that we did the same for the next person in need. It seems the only way for this restroom to be used at all is to have a constant stream of users passing on the code. Otherwise the facilities would most surely stay clean forever. A good way to keep your facility clean: lock it.

One day while driving on I 70 through eastern Colorado on our recent trip to the east coast, my mind was wandering as it does on such roads. I began thinking about the next topic we would be writing about when we returned at the end of the month. MUD, hmmm. The phrase “clear as mud” jumped into my head and reminded me of the puzzling sign I had recently seen on the door at the pavilion in downtown Denver.

It was then that Gill and I decided to make a collection of such signs on this trip.Gill would take photos of them, otherwise no one would believe we had actually seen such a sign. We would then pass on these gems of wisdom to our friends at Storytime.

(Gillian)

On one of those narrow winding backroads that are quite common in the eastern states, we got stuck behind a slow-moving truck. On the back of the truck a big red sign said,

CONSTRUCTION VEHICLE

DO NOT FOLLOW

Now, it’s not as if we were following from choice. We were simply heading down the same road without a chance to overtake. What is expected here?? Are we supposed to find an alternate route to avoid following this truck? Not so easily done in the mountains of West Virginia. Was he heading for a top-secret destination?? We’re probably on yet another CIA/FBI shit-list now.

(Betsy) 

Sometimes if we have time and we are in an area with which we are not familiar, we like to travel the back roads. It does mean a lot of stop and go, especially in the more populated parts of the country. But it presents so many opportunities to learn—and laugh.

We’ve driven through many, many small towns with very unusual names.

We had to turn around a get a picture of this one.


WELCOME TO ACCIDENT

I forget in what state the town of Accident is—it doesn’t really matter. What makes this sign memorable is the sign just beyond it directing passersby to the nearby hospital with an arrow (unfortunately we were unable to photograph the two signs together.)

Welcome to Accident—the hospital is right around the corner, it said to us. I wanted to add “for your convenience.”

(Gillian) 

At a gas station a sign in the window read,

BE A GOOD ROLE MODEL!

DISAPPROVE OF UNDERAGE DRINKING

An admirable sentiment, doubtless, but surely a little wimpy? Nobody, including all those underage drinkers, gives a toss if I disapprove. The word has no power; my disapproval has no power. Perhaps I might accomplish something by fighting underage drinking, or by not drinking with minors, or by not buying booze for them, but disapprove?? I think it is actually the first time in my life that I have been urged to disapprove of something. Ah, lots of ‘firsts’ to be found on road-trips!

(Betsy) 

What this negative message says to me is: My advise to you adults driving cars(hopefully sober) and reading this sign is as follows: model for young people how to judge others—never mind taking positive action to suggest a better behavior.

(Gillian) 

Next to this gas station was a big sign,

Arby’s

DO NOT ENTER

Of course there are these signs at the exit of all drive-throughs, but this one was big and quite threatening. Well, OK then. We had never intended to enter. We drove happily away.

(Betsy) We don’t use Arby’s really, but couldn’t help but notice the unwelcoming sign. I guess we all know what they really mean, but couldn’t they come up with a better presentation. They certainly know how to present their food—if one dares to enter.

(Gillian) 

This one is not exactly about a sign, but rather a tale of two billboards. One was positioned directly above the other. I have no photo as we zoomed past at 75mph. The upper one had the usual pitiful baby picture accompanied by the statement,
ABORTION is MURDER

NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO TAKE A LIFE

The lower one had a picture of a man bearing arms; and was he ever! Six-shooters in a gun-belt, cartridges slung across his manly chest, rifles over his shoulders, machine-guns at his feet. It read, simply,

IT’S YOUR RIGHT

I have no idea if the two signs were put together on purpose, but the irony is delicious.

(Betsy) 

The last day of our trip and back in our home state we were not disappointed by Colorado road signs. No one can miss the huge sign on I 70 entering Colorado. It is written in lights across the highway like a Broadway marquee.

0 FATALITIES 0 TOLERANCE 2015

Clearly because of its in-your-face presentation, this is a very important notice announcing, “ Please, all those entering the state, take heed.” We did just that. We did take heed and we definitely took note of the sign. I am still contemplating its meaning, however! Have there been no fatalities at all in 2015 in Colorado. No wonder the population is increasing at record rates. And it will continue to do so. This clearly is 

THE PLACE TO BE
—a place where one dies only of natural causes.

But then we must remember there is zero tolerance here. Does this mean all entering are on notice that the state of Colorado 

WILL NOT TOLERATE THE CURRENT RATE OF ZERO FATALITIES?
Surely that can’t be what they meant.

Maybe it means: the state of Colorado has zero tolerance for any fatalities. But when you put the phrase zero tolerance directly below the phrase zero fatalities??? I’m left scratching my head. Now if you put the sign “0 Tolerance” by itself, then one might be deterred from entering the state.

(Gillian) 

According to Colorado Department of Transportation’s own statistics, as of October 1st of this year there have been 398 highway fatalities, so the meaning of this sign completely eludes me. Apparently staying here in this state of zero tolerance will not preserve us from danger. We might as well keep on taking road trips!

© October 2015

About the Authors

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Bumper Stickers, by Gillian

Bumper stickers,
to me, are a kind of precursor of Facebook. I don’t partake in Facebook because
my miserably puny ego cannot begin to imagine there is one person out there in
cyberspace, let alone millions, remotely interested in what I did yesterday or what
I think of today, or what I think of anything. Similarly, I assume that the
people in the car behind me have little interest in who I voted, or plan to
vote, for. Neither do they care that I want to free Tibet or Texas, am ALREADY
AGAINST THE NEXT WAR or that my daughter is an honor student at Dingledum High.
It strikes me as a
very strange, and I think almost uniquely American, need; this urge we seem to
have to tell everyone around us such facts about ourselves. It’s only, what,
three generations ago at the most, that no-one would dream of telling anyone
how they voted – even if someone asked, which of course no one would. Now we
apparently feel compelled to scream it to all those complete strangers who
chance to glance at our car. I’m no psychologist but surely it must be all
about ego? My candidate is better than yours. My causes are greater than yours.
I am right and so, if you think differently, you are wrong. I’m a better parent
than you, see, with my honor student daughter and my son who plays football for
the Dingledum Dummies. And I proudly display a Dingledum University sticker,
managing to imply even higher levels of success. I even have a better dog than
you, as I proclaim BULLDOGS ARE THE BEST BREED.
Sadly, these
things have now gone beyond simple proclamations. They are frequently
derogatory, angry, and confrontational. That poor Honor Student particularly
seems to attract attention, as in MY KID CAN BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT, or MY
SON IS FIGHTING FOR THE FREEDOM OF YOUR HONOR STUDENT. No longer content with
advertising how we vote, or don’t, we now have to add a comment. VOTE DEMOCRAT.
IT’S EASIER THAN WORKING or VOTE REPUBLICAN FOR GOD, GUNS AND GUTS.
In our gun-crazy,
polarized, society, I am constantly surprised that those kind of bumper
stickers don’t engender more violence, and also those commanding that you HONK
YOUR HORN IF YOU’VE FOUND JESUS, HONK IF YOU HATE OBAMA or HONK YOUR HORN IF
YOU SUPPORT GUN CONTROL, the latter a clear invitation to be shot, if you ask
me. Al Capone supposedly said that an armed society is a polite society but
that doesn’t seem to hold for bumper stickers!
Some stickers, I
have to say, are creative and funny. There’s little that cheers me up faster
when I’m stuck in a traffic jam, than a good laugh at the bumper sticker in
front of me. A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A BICYCLE is one of my
favorites, along with TV IS GOODER THAN BOOKS and INVEST IN YOUR COUNTRY – BUY
A CONGRESSMAN, and one most of us can relate to, INSIDE EVERY OLD PERSON
IS A YOUNG PERSON WONDERING WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED.
I confess I have
not always been totally immune to bumper sticker appeal. My car sported a U.S.
NAVY sticker when my oldest stepson signed up, to be joined by U.S. MARINES
SEMPER FI when my youngest went that direction. But that was simply to show my
support to my stepsons, not to anyone else. Which of course is probably, in
large part, the justification for all those honor student stickers. I only once
succumbed to the political cause sticker, and that was in 1992 when I felt
strongly enough about it to post VOTE NO ON AMENDMENT 2 on my bumper.
As I waited at a
stop sign in Denver one day, another car pulled up close behind and a man with
a tire iron in his fist jumped out. He ran at my car, yelling queer abuse, and
brought the iron bar down just as the traffic cleared and I was able to gun the
car forward. The blow broke the rear side window and I sped into the nearby
King Soopers parking lot where I knew there would at least be a security guard.
But the crazy guy didn’t follow, and that was the end of the incident.
And, call me
coward if you like, it was also the end of my brief involvement with bumper
stickers.
© 5 Jan 2015 
About
the Author 
I was born and raised in England. After
graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered
Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965,
working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got
divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have
now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 28 years.
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When Things Don’t Work, by Gillian

Throughout human
time, I believe, there has been a certain protocol to be followed when things
don’t work. You change them, stop using them, or eliminate them. This is more
or less the pattern today. But we seem to have added a little something. We
apply the same rules to things or procedures or systems which do work!
A prime case in
point would be computer programs. I struggle for months to master how to use,
say, hypothetical programs photomax, to share my photographs on line, or
readywrite for my weekly story-writings. I don’t find either of them
particularly user-friendly, but then, at my age new cyber-tricks do not settle
instantly in my brain. I can guarantee, the moment I become fairly comfortable
with them, I shall receive notice of the dreaded upgrades. I dither. I do not
want to install the bloody upgrades because then I shall return to the bottom
of the learning curve. But if I don’t, I run the risk of the whole thing
becoming so down-level that it slowly bogs down in computer mire. Timidly, I
click on ignore. The screen is instantly filled with flashing WARNING signs. If you do not install this
upgrade, oversized, over-excited words threaten me, you will no longer be able
to use readywrite 4-1. Meanwhile photomax is telling me that unless I download
their upgrade my system will lose security integrity. But why is it, that in
order to upgrade security, they also change every little thing about how it works?
When I pressed *4, this used to happen. Now, nothing happens. But if I hit
command S, which used to sort my photos, the screen now goes blank. Oh, I see.
It transferred everything to the trash. Why oh why, I moan, do they always have
to fix things when they ain’t broke? It worked perfectly. I had learned
to love it. Now I hate it all over again!
The real-world
equivalent of cyber-upgrades would be the similarly dreaded new and improved.
That phrase can generate panic attacks. Oh no! That means it will no longer
work for me. That blouse I have bought three of over the last couple of years
will now be too tight and have sleeves that end, as modern female fashion seems
to dictate, four inches below my fingertips. My favorite shoes, now new and
improved, are suddenly only available in strangely psychedelic colors. A
few years ago they “improved” many of my favorite deli and restaurant
dishes by loading them up with pico de gallo; a flavor I really do not
appreciate. When a new and improved bus schedule comes along, you can
bet it provides a diminished service.
Often appearing in
tandem with new and improved is the worst one of all; for your
convenience. Any time you are greeted with that one, you know things are
about to become very inconvenient indeed. For your convenience,
with that new and improved schedule, the bus will no longer run after
6.oo p.m. and will no longer stop at Union Station. For your convenience the
parking lot will be closed for two weeks in July. This, of course, in order to
provide new and improved parking spaces. A few weeks ago King Soopers
reorganized it’s stores for, of course, our convenience, so that now no-one can
find anything. I think my favorite to date is a sign posted recently on a bank
door; for your convenience this branch will no longer be open on
Saturday morning. Really! Where are these people’s heads? Do they believe that
simply saying it makes it so? 
Maybe we should
give it a try!?
There are, happily,
many of us in our Monday story-time group these days, so I’m trying to keep my
offerings pretty short. But my future new and improved stories will be a
minimum of 10,000 words. For your convenience.
© 8 Dec 2014 
About the Author 
I was born and raised in England. After
graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered
Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965,
working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got
divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have
now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 28 years.
Posted on

Terror, by Gillian

I don’t understand terrorism
or terrorists. I mean, intellectually of course I do. I understand what
psychiatrists say about the factors causing people to become terrorists; but I
can’t get inside their heads. I simply cannot feel what it is they are feeling.
With an estimated minimum of a thousand young people a month from different
parts of the globe currently rushing off to join forces with ISIS, however,
it’s clear that creating terror holds an attraction for a significant number of
people.
Not only am I completely
mystified by that desire, or compulsion, to bring terror to others, but I am
fortunate enough to be able to say that I have never felt true terror myself.
That is not because I am remarkably brave and tough. Neither am I in denial of
some unacknowledged terror. It is simply that I have lived my life in a place
and time that has been terror-free. For me, that is. Not, alas, for everyone.
I can only imagine the utter
terror I would feel, hiding in the bushes in Rwanda, waiting to be discovered
and hacked to pieces by my erstwhile friends and neighbors. Or hiding in a room
in Nazi Germany, waiting to be turned in to the Gestapo by my erstwhile friends
and neighbors. Sadly, the list is endless. I would know what real terror was in
Stalin’s U.S.S.R and Mao’s China: the Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge and on and on
to today’s North Korea and most places in the Middle East.
I say I can only imagine, but
in truth I’m sure I cannot. I have lived so far from the horror of so many
people’s lives that I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like. I
have lived in my own little warm and cosy cocoon, safe and secure. Oh sure,
I’ve been a bit afraid occasionally. For instance, long before the advent of
cellphones, on business in Florida, I got lost in Miami in the dark and pouring
rain and my rental car broke down in a part of town which looked seriously
uninviting. Walking home in Denver one night after dark someone followed me
step for step. When I slowed, the footsteps behind me slowed; they kept pace if
I walked faster. Nothing bad resulted from these minor incidents, and the most
they made me feel was a bit nervous: just a frisson of fear. I’ve had health
issues that made me feel much the same, but that’s nothing approaching terror.
They call it a cancer scare, after all, not a cancer terror, though I’m
equally sure that being diagnosed with some horrific Stage Four cancer would
certainly invoke terror.
The most frightened I have
ever been, I think, were two instances involving airplanes.
One was on a flight from New
York’s La Guardia to London Heathrow. It was at the height of the Falklands
“war,” so it must have been 1982. I was working God knows how many
hours a week at the time and as soon as I settled to watch the movie, which was
Tora Tora Tora, I fell into a deep sleep. Over the mid-Atlantic we hit
some really rough air, and even that didn’t wake me, but a combination of
things suddenly did. We were bouncing around so badly that one of the overhead
bins bust open – it must not have been securely latched – and a hard-sided case
fell out onto the woman directly in front of me. It must have been heavy as
blood started pouring from her head and she began to scream. At precisely the
same moment, a voice from the cockpit announced with regret that the H.M.S.
Sheffield had been sunk with heavy loss of life. Well, you know what it’s like
when you are rudely awakened from a very deep sleep. You lust can’t get your
bearings. I was awash in confusion. My last memories, from the movie, were of
air battles; planes crashing into the ocean. The name Sheffield bothered me
because that’s where I went to College. Were we at war? What was happening? Why
was that woman screaming and bleeding?
Why was the plane pitching and
reeling? Were we going down in the ocean? I’m sure this complete lack of any
grasp on reality was very short-lived, but it seemed like forever and I was
truly scared. But I think I was too confused to be really terrified, and I
realized well enough that I was confused. Had we really been going down, yes,
then I’m sure I would have felt undeniable terror, for real. I think, now, of
those doomed passengers on that flight that went down in Pennsylvania on 9/11,
and more recently the one that wandered off course around the skies for several
hours before, they think, ending up at the bottom of the Indian Ocean; some
terror involved there, I would guess.
The other time was when my
husband of the time was flying us back from California in our little
four-seater plane. There were the two of us and my two youngest step-children.
We had just cleared the Sierra Nevada summit, heading East back to Colorado at
about 8,000 feet in a clear blue sky. Suddenly an invisible hole in the sky
opened up and we fell through it like a rock. My stomach hit the roof. The
clipboard securing the navigation charts, which I always held on my lap, shot
up and the metal clip gouged a big gash under my chin. My step-daughter started
screaming. The hillside was coming up to meet us at a really frightening speed.
The plane stopped falling as suddenly as it had started, and we landed at the
first available spot to make sure there was no damage. There was a crack in one
wing and in the tail, but not enough to stop us flying on home. We later
calculated that we had dropped about 6,000 feet in very few seconds.
And it was scary, but it was
all over before I had time to work up to real terror. Maybe it’s just that my
reactions are too slow!
I had planned to end there,
but you know how these stories go. Sometimes they seem to take on a life of their
own and go off on a tangent you had not planned to take. So we’ll just follow.
Some of you may remember that
several months ago I wrote about my dad, who, lost in a daze of dementia,
created havoc by trying to liven up their electric heater, which was made to
look somewhat like a real fire, by jabbing at it with the old metal poker. 
I was writing this current
story, last week, on a very cold day, around zero outside. Somehow when it’s
that cold, it seems to seep into the house regardless of how you have set the
thermostat.
I was cold. I huddled closer
to the cozily-glowing gas insert fireplace and noticed that there was a
considerable gap between two of the “logs.” No wonder it’s cold in
here, I thought, and unbidden the next thoughts leapt into my head. I
need to get the poker and rearrange those logs a bit, that’ll warm things up.
Now that truly terrifies me.
© 24 Nov 2014 
About the Author 
I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.
Posted on

Dreams – the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, by Gillian

Good or bad, but I don’t dream much.

Oooooops! I forgot!

I try not to say it that way or I’m guaranteed a lecture on how we all dream, it’s just that I don’t, for the most part, remember mine.

Let’s start again.

Good or bad, I don’t usually remember my dreams. Even if I have, on occasion, they must not have been very interesting because I can’t remember the content of a single one. Some people apparently have vivid dreams just about every night, and remember them clearly. Betsy’s daughter-in-law, or daughter-out-law as we refer to her as she lives with Betsy’s daughter in Georgia where they will probably never sanction gay marriage, is amazing. She can spend hours recounting every dream from every night down to the minutest detail. Understandably, she takes some interest in the supposed significance of the content of dreams. I, equally understandably, do not!

Good or bad, there was a time when this absence of dream memories changed, for a while. I had to take prednisone for a few years. Now that is not good, definitely bad, in fact downright ugly. I am off it now and hope it stays that way. But one of the side-effects when I was taking it, was dreams so vivid they were more like hallucinations; I remembered them equally vividly. Of course I don’t think you can really use the word hallucination for things that occur in your sleep, but it’s how I think of them, simply because they were so very real. No, they were beyond real in a way I can’t describe. I have never done drugs so I can’t compare, but perhaps that’s what a “good trip” on hallucinogens is like. If so, I can see why people get hooked. Or maybe most ordinary everyday, or I should say everynight, dreams are like that for most people. I simply don’t know. Mine were never scary, nor even weird. They were terribly mundane, and very short.

I would walk along a beach, or in a wood, or drive on I70 or pick flowers from the garden. I don’t know how long they lasted, in my memories they were maybe a minute at the most. But so clear: blindingly bright. They are the only thing I that I regret the loss of from no longer taking prednisone, and that one regret will certainly not send me back on it.

Good or bad, I rarely daydream either. As a child I suppose I conjured up possible futures the way most children do. I think, though, that, even at a young age, I knew at some level of consciousness that my future was to be different from what I was currently experiencing. There was something in it I couldn’t see, around some hidden corner, or should I say in some dark closet, that I was happy enough not to see too clearly. So I never was much of a daydreamer. I tended rather to roll along, letting life take me where it may. In some ways I guess that’s bad, not picturing your future, not having goals and really very little direction. But I ended up with a wonderful life so it can’t have done me much harm. And these days we are encouraged by spiritual leaders to live in the moment and in fact not to daydream, so perhaps I accidentally fell into good habits!

Anyway, there’s little to be done about any of it, good or bad. In my seventies, I don’t see myself suddenly spending hours daydreaming of my future. And there is no way, as far as I know, to make myself remember dreams for the first time in my life. Except for some drug-induced method, that is, and in my seventies I don’t quite see myself taking that route either.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams,” said Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman I greatly admire and usually agree with. But I have to say I have managed to live a life just about as good as any I could imagine, without the influence of dreams: good, bad, or ugly.

© November 2014

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

Posted on

Nowhere, by Gillian

This is going to be very repetitive for some of you who have been part of this group for some time, but I’m not going to apologize for that. When you have shared little pieces of your life story almost every week for about three years, even at seventy-something there just isn’t enough life to go round and a little repetition is inevitable! And, for all that I have had some practice, I doubt that I shall be able to express this whole thing any more clearly this time around. As far as explaining it, I don’t even try.

So …. nowhere is pretty much where I was for the first 40-odd years of my life. I was living nowhere, going nowhere. You see, you have to be someone to be somewhere. And I was not.

Oh sure, I was a human body going about it’s business on this earth. But that’s all I was. I wasn’t real. The real me, my essence, my soul if you like, wasn’t with me. At least it wasn’t part of me: in me. For as far back as I can remember, maybe the age of about three or four, the real me hovered somewhere above or occasionally beside what I think of as the faux me. The real me simply watched. Observed. The faux me went on acting a part on the world wide stage, all the time knowing she was playing a part as the real me looked on. I thought perhaps everyone felt this way, though now I know better. In fact I have never once, since I have, only recently, started to try to describe all this, had anyone say to me,

“Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean! I felt the same way.”

Never.

The moment I came out to myself, at around forty, I literally felt the faux me and the real me merge. It was like an expertly guided boat bumping gently against the old worn wood of the dock. A softly whispered thunk, and my soul was safely home.

It has never left again.

I have no fear that it will.

I have, as I said, absolutely no explanation. It most certainly was not some schizophrenic kind of thing. I never felt like two people; just two separated parts of the same one. I never, rather to my regret, heard voices telling me what to do. I am actually rather resentful about that. Why did my soul sit silently like a lump on a log instead of offering a little guidance once in a while? I certainly could have used it. Or, giving her some benefit of the doubt, maybe she did. Without her I might still be in the closet. But if so, why didn’t she save me sooner? A case of, for everything there is a season, perhaps.

No, I never will understand it.

I never will be able to explain it.

I’m just so happy we are now united.

There’s a Country song, I’m Half Way to Nowhere.

“I’m half way to nowhere but it’s too late to turn back now.”

When I came out, I was half way from nowhere, and it was way too late to turn back.

And why would I?

I was finally whole.

I have finally found my way out of nowhere. I never intend to live there again.

© December 2014

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.