Tag: Gillian

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In Praise of Drifting by Gillian

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
Frequently, drifting,
as applied to people, is used negatively. There are those scruffy old bums or drifters
in Depression-era movies; not anyone you want to grow up to be.
“Come
on,”  parents admonish
their adolescent offspring.
“You
need some direction in your life. You can’t
just drift!“
In the old days,
and I mean even before my time, maybe people simply drifted much more than
today. Sons drifted into continuing whatever trade their father had, or farming
the same family acres, and marrying some vaguely distant cousin from the next
valley. Many people did not contemplate these moves, they simply drifted into
the next phase of their lives without considering too deeply what in fact they
actually wanted. They did not have the options we have now; perhaps in fact
just drifting has become a negative because, being privileged to have so many
options, we are committing some act of betrayal by not taking complete
advantage of them.
I didn’t
see myself as drifting, in my younger days, but looking back I see clearly that
I was. I drifted my way through life letting others design major life changes
for me, until I came out to myself.  Then
decision-making on behalf of the real me versus that character acting my part,
became meaningful. But I’ve written about
all that several times before and I won’t
go into that again.
So, in praise of
drifting.
I think most clearly,
most productively, when I’m drifting in that
warm pool of unconsciousness just below the waking level. I am unaware that I’m
thinking, but I must be because I so often wake up with the puzzle solved, the
solution at hand, the decision made, the story written. No, I haven’t
taken to sleep-walking, let alone sleep-writing, but usually I decide, as I
drift just below the surface, what I want to write for Story Time, or on that
difficult Sympathy card, or in that note of apology.
I also love
physical drifting. I lie on my back in the swimming pool, letting every muscle
go limp, and just drift. I empty my brain of all thought, my body of all power,
and just drift. Usually I’m bumped out of my
reverie by an irritated hand or foot pushing me away, or the cold hard edge of
the pool impeding my slow, aimless, motion. Drifting is not as easy as it
sounds!

The first time I
was married, my husband and I, and his children, lived in Jamestown, an old
gold-mining town in the Foothills above Boulder. We had a horse, and the town
is surrounded by National Forest. I loved to spend any free time I managed to
grab, which was not much, riding along the endless trails. But this wan’t
really riding, it was nothing more than sitting on the back of a horse. I
rarely touched the reins, the old mare wandered wherever she wanted; we
drifted. At least I did. She had very definite ideas on where she was heading.
She had been trained as a cutting horse, and, having spent most of her life
among them, I don’t think it had ever
occurred to her that she was not, in fact, a cow. In the summer months herds
summer-pastured in the forests around town, and instinct always told her where
they were on any particular day. She wandered lazily in their direction. I
drifted idly in the saddle. Idyllic moments. Until, reaching a certain
closeness to the herd, she would, without warning, break into an excited gallop
which, inevitably, tore me from my drifting state and propelled me into an
equally excited grab for the reins. After cutting out a couple of resentful
cows from the herd, to keep her hand in so to speak, she settled in to graze
with them for the rest of her life, each time resulting in a battle of wills
when I decided it was time head for the barn. But once her reluctant head was
turned in that direction, she usually being the only one who knew the way home,
we returned to our peaceful pattern, she wandering, me drifting.

We love to drift
when Betsy and I go off on trips in our camper-van. Of course we usually have
some vague plan of when and where, but we have no reservations, no deadlines.
We change decisions frequently; staying longer here, less time there, ending up
in a campground we had no intention of using, or didn’t
even know existed. I have no desire to live like that every day of my life, but
it’s
wonderfully free and relaxing for a while. Just drifting.
I find, as I age,
that actually I do live more like that, more of the time. It’s
so much easier to do a little more delicious drifting in the latter part of
life. Drifting doesn’t go down well with
teachers and bosses. When you have successfully escaped their strictures, it
becomes much easier to decide not to do that today, or to go there next week,
or to stay a few days longer. Betsy and I both find ourselves shrugging a
casual “whatever,”
in
answer to questions to which we would have had very definite responses not so
long ago.
And of course we
are all carried along, inevitably, in the Big Drift, which will deposit us,
sooner or later, in the Big Sleep. We have always known this, but it hangs
around the front of my mind rather more as later becomes less likely
with each passing day, and sooner approaches with indecent haste. I don’t
know what awaits me where the Big Drift pours over the cliffs, but I do know I
will not burn in some eternal fire any more than I shall play the harp upon a
cloud.
I have no fears,
and find myself at odds with my adored Dylan Thomas. Perhaps, for some psyches,
it is healthier to rage against the dying of the light, but I think not for
mine. When that time comes I hope to drift, peacefully, towards the light.

©
July 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.
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Angels by Gillian

Angels apparently abound.

Angel Falls and Angel Island. The Blue Angels, fallen angels, guardian angels, angel cake, angel hair, angel wings, angel dust, angel eyes and angel sharks; the Los Angeles Angels, Angels in the Outfield and Angel on my Shoulder. Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Angels We Have Heard on High. Not to mention innumerable men in Spanish-speaking countries named Angel.

In spite of the word’s popularity, I had a friend who couldn’t even recognize it, though I wouldn’t class it as a very difficult word, and his native language was English. (If you can say that about someone from Minnesota.) He was a devout Lutheran, and seemed to have no difficulty with the word in prayers, or the Bible, or Xmas carols, but he was incapable, apparently, of recognizing it out of context. The famous U.S. navy flight squadron became the Blue Angles, and remained so even after he had been to see one of their displays. There was angle food cake, angle hair pasta, and angle dust. But then, this came from the person who unfailingly called the old Alpenglow motel in Winter Park, now a Best Western by the way, the Al-pen-gull-o. I amused myself one day trying to get him to say angle iron, wondering if it would have become angel iron, but failed to elicit the word at all.

I don’t have a problem recognizing the word, but I’m not too sure I would recognize the real thing. Although, in hind-sight, at least, I’m getting much better. There are many of them (or us) about. I firmly believe that most, possibly all, of us, have a bit of angel somewhere within. The amount varies from person to person, time to time, place to place, and in the eye the beholder. For many fortunate children, like me, parents are at least partly angels. They are our guardian angels, keeping us safe and helping to guide our early ventures in this new world. For many fortunate parents, as they age and the roles begin to reverse, the children become the guardian angels of the parents. For many fortunate adults, again like me, a spouse or life partner provides some glimpses of angel. Often we get a briefer glance at an angel; that friend who uncomplainingly moves in for a month to take care of us after surgery, or that neighbor who never talks to us but who unfailingly keeps our sidewalk shoveled free of snow simply because he sees that for us it is no longer a pain-free activity.

Sometimes it’s a complete stranger. Several years ago I observed an old woman leaving a homeless shelter. A fresh flower lay on the sidewalk, looking as if it had just fallen from someone’s button hole. She tried to pick it up, but it seemed too hard to bend so much, so I swooped in and picked it up. She looked ready to cry, then pure joy glowed in her face when I handed it to her.

“Oh bless you,” she muttered, “I did want that.”

Her shaking fingers held it up in the sunlight.

“All that beauty!” she said.

“And all for nothing”

She will never know it, but she was my angel for that moment, and returns to me as such quite often. I see a beautiful sunset or colorful bird and I hear her voice again,

“All that beauty! And all for nothing.”

Perhaps I too was a momentary angel that day, for her. Perhaps the fact that someone not only did not cross the street to avoid her, but actually acknowledged her existence and for two seconds offered a hand in kindness, meant as much to her as the encounter did for me. I shall never know, and that will never matter.

I used to be a champion Dumpster Diver. You’d be amazed at what perfectly good items end up tossed in the trash. I don’t do it much now; not because of any newfound dignity but because of newfound aches and pains. One morning I surfaced from a promising dumpster to see an old face just surfacing beside me. A possibly homeless, certainly poor, old woman with a sad face which looked about to cry.

“No doughnuts nor nothing.” She leaned back down over the rim, rummaging as far down as she could reach. I gazed hopefully with her, but could see no sign of wrapped food items.

“Monday morning,” she declared knowledgeably, “I can mostly find some breakfast in here.”

She sank dejectedly down on the pavement, again looking close to tears.

“Don’t go away,” I called as I hurried off into the store, “I’ll be right back.”

I bought a dozen assorted doughnuts and rushed back out.

Another old face lit up. She thanked me profusely and set about stuffing the things into her mouth.

She was, and is, among my angels. She reminds me of my extreme good fortune in this world, that I can go dumpster diving for fun whereas she, and all those many like her, do it out of necessity.

I doubt most, if any, of my angels, dream they are so important to me, a person who, to many of them, is a complete stranger; someone they have probably completely forgotten. In the same way, I don’t know if I have ever been, or am, anyone’s angel. Only one person has ever actually told me I was an angel, and that was my oldest step-son. He was, as usual, deep down in a Bourbon bottle at the time, so I should probably not let it make me too proud of my inner angel.

But I do believe I have one. I believe everyone in this room has one. In fact, someone in this room might be an angel to someone else in this room. We can become an angel to someone at any moment anywhere, and we can find our own angels any moment anywhere.

All we have to do is open our hearts and spirits, and receive with joy whatever comes.

© 15 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.

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Naturally by Gillian

I can think of only one activity in which I would possibly describe myself as artistic, and that is writing; at least if I’m going with the definition, “having or revealing natural creative skill.”

The key here is the word “natural.”

I can paint. I can draw. I could create pottery vases or even carve wooden figurines. I could play the harp in readiness for my audition for angelhood. But these are, or would be, learned skills. If you try hard enough, you can learn to do just about anything. What you cannot do is make it come naturally.

Betsy and I spent some time in Taos with her daughter, Lynne. We all painted and sketched. Mine were mechanical reproductions of the scenes before my eyes; Lynne’s, very evidently, came naturally. They had a feel, a soul, to them, that mine lacked. Even had mine more adequately reproduced the subject, though I’m most certainly not making that claim, hers would still have been more artistic.

When I write, I am, to adopt a modern expression, “in the zone.”

No, not always. Of course not. But when the result is good; good to me, which is all that matters,

I don’t even feel that it is me writing. Or, if it is, it is some other me. Some subliminal me.

When that happens it is indescribable. Perhaps it’s like some drug-induced high from the ’60’s, though I cannot say from personal experience.

Maybe all of us, when we are truly creative, feel that high.

There’s another definition of the word which I also like, “aesthetically pleasing.”

I love to take photographs. This is not an artistic endeavor! Especially today, with digital cameras which do all the work. But it has it’s own creativity.

It’s kind of on a lower scale.

I see, naturally, what creates a good image.

The camera does the rest, but I point it!

I hope my photographs are aesthetically pleasing, because that’s my goal. But I hope, sometimes, for more than that. Some of them I am simply looking for the beauty that is abundant in this world. Sometimes that is enough. But real artistry should surely engender emotion, not simply beauty. Seeing it, and then capturing it, that’s the trick.

Just last week I was driving down Colfax to Story Time at The Center, when two figures rushed into the street in front of my car. A young Hispanic woman dragged a little boy of perhaps five by the hand. Under her other arm she clutched a huge plastic basket piled high with laundry.

In the boy’s other hand he hauled an immense plastic bottle of laundry soap. In a second they were gone, safely across the street and out of sight as I moved the car forward. Of course I didn’t even have a camera with me, and if I had, everything moved too fast and too unexpectedly for me to have had any chance of capturing that wonderful image; one of those pictures worth a thousand words in the stories it tells. But, “thinking like a camera,” if you like, I did capture the shot. It is burned in my brain. I can look at it whenever I want, and seeing it I can describe it to others.

One of the greatest gifts of one’s own artistry is, at least for me, that it changes for ever how I see what I see. When I’m driving, or standing in line, or doing the dishes, I feel the words of some imaginary writing come into my head, or I’m framing the perfect photo.

If I reach the stage of life where I no longer raise a camera or a pen, I hope that gift remains with me, and continues, forever, to lighten and enlighten my life.© September 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.

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A Ring to Prove It by Gillian

I don’t believe I’ve ever actually told anyone this. Not because it’s shameful or embarrassing but because it held really no significance for me; so I say, but here I am remembering it after almost 45 years, so it must figure somewhere, if remotely, in my psyche.

It was, I think, 1970. Maybe ’71. I lived with my husband and step-children in Jamestown, a small, one might say tiny, old mining town in the foothills north-west of Boulder. It’s roughly ten miles up Left Hand Canyon, off highway 36 which runs between Boulder and Lyons. In those days there were few houses in the canyon until you reached Jamestown, with its impressive population of around 200.

I put in many extra hours of work at IBM, built a few years earlier between Boulder and Longmont. Being by nature a morning person, I preferred to arrive early rather than stay late, and frequently began work around 5 am. This particular day I must have had some compelling task ahead, though I have no memory of it, as I started out to work under dire conditions.

It was a dark and stormy night.

No, really! It was.

I set out down the canyon about 4:30 in the morning, in our old Willys jeep, hardly able to see anything for the snow swirling in the headlights. I doubt I had reached 20 m.p.h. when I thought I saw something moving ahead of me: just a vague dark shape against the snow which had already built up on the road, drifting against the trees. Deer, I thought. They were often about on the canyon road. I slowed even more, knowing how skittish they could be. I crept up on the shadow still moving ahead of me. Not a deer. A shambling, half running, half walking, figure on two legs.

What on earth was he, for some unknown reason I identified the figure as a man, doing, walking down the canyon in this weather? Had his car broken down? Crashed? I had seen no vehicle beside the road, but with the dreadful visibility maybe I’d have missed it.

I stopped beside him. He was beside the passenger door, and before I knew what was happening the door was torn open against the wind and this dark figure hauled itself into the passenger seat. Well? Wasn’t that why I had stopped? You can’t, at least I can’t, ignore a fellow human being under these circumstances. And anyway, he must be a neighbor; at the very least someone I knew by sight. Who else would be in Left Hand Canyon on foot in the middle of a blizzard?

Socially, I introduced myself, then politely enquired,

“Who are you?”

Silence.

“Do you live in Jimtown?” I asked, using the local vernacular.

In the absence of a reply, I asked, “Where you trying to go?”

A grunt which could have been interpreted as “hospital,” emerged from the dark shape beside me.

“Boulder? Which one?” Boulder at that time had two.

Another grunt.

By this time, my common sense was reasserting itself.

Who was he? Why, in God’s name, was he heading for a hospital on a night like this?

Was he hurt?

I glanced occasionally in his direction but could see nothing but a dark shapeless mass of clothes. What to do, what to do!

I tried occasionally to engender conversation, but failed miserably.

My imagination took over.

Perhaps he was riddled with bullets! Was he, at this very moment, dripping, no, pouring, blood all over the jeep? Worse – well, maybe worse – was he suffering from some highly infectious disease and in two days I and all my family would be at death’s door?

What to do, what to do?

I breathed deeply and calmed myself.

Of course! He had had a phone call. Some loved one had had an accident, only to be expected on a night like this. They were in E.R. and he was going to their bedside. Or he himself had had an accident. The car had gone over the bank into the creek, quite likely in this storm, and explaining the absence of a vehicle. Was he, perhaps, drunk? I sniffed the air surreptitiously but could detect no hint of alcohol.

Whatever the truth, I should get to Community Hospital as fast as possible, which actually was very slowly indeed, and part company with my guest. Alone with this silent, apparently unknown, man, on a night like this in the pitch-black canyon, was seriously not comfortable.

As the friendly street lights of Boulder approached, I glanced in his direction as often as I could possibly afford to take my eyes off the road, which in fact was pretty infrequently.

He had one hand, I managed to see, tucked into his coat, Napoleon style.

My imagination took off at a run.

Was that hand injured? Or holding a gun? Or, I tried to bring myself back to earth, just cold?

He was resting, I now saw, with his head on the back of the seat, (no head-rests in those carefree days!) with his eyes closed. He looked much more vulnerable than scary as his head rolled with every turn. Was he asleep? Passed out?

The coat which carefully encased his left hand looked like an army great-coat.

A sick Vet? A deserter? The Vietnam War still raged. It was possible. I liked the idea and warmed to him on the strength of it.

I pulled into the brightly-lit entrance drive to the hospital. I had no idea if this was where I should take him, being as ignorant of hospital etiquette as I was of his needs. As I pulled up, he pushed himself up in the seat, blinking his eyes.

“Community Hospital,” I said, sounding terse even to myself.

He, however, became positively verbose.

“You’re good person,” he said, or something like that.

“No money. Here.”

As he stumbled from the jeep into the still swirling snow, he pushed his right hand towards me.

It held a ring between the thumb and index finger.

He gave a heavy shrug.

“Not worth much I ‘spect. All I got …. “

I gazed at it, stupefied.

“No, no, I don’t need anything. Just hope …,” I had no idea what to say, “everything’s OK,” I finished, lamely.

He slid gracelessly off the seat into the drifting snow and staggered into the hospital without another word or a wave of the hand.

What did I expect, that he would wave a goodbye kiss?

I went to work.

As happens sometimes in Colorado, the sun was out by noon. The cars steamed in the parking lot. By late afternoon there was nothing to suggest the raging blizzard of twelve hours before. My midnight rider seemed surreal to me. Could I have imagined the whole thing? I wasn’t sure if that worried me more, or the fact that it had actually happened.

It was still vaguely light when I left work. I studied the jeep passenger seat carefully. It wasn’t wet; perhaps slightly damp. There was no hint of blood. I ran my hand once more over the seat and brushed against something hard. I picked it up, held it up. and peered through the dim light.

A ring.

Had he dropped it when he got out of the jeep? That seemed unlikely. I realized that it had been centrally located in the middle of the seat. Placed there. It was his payment for my assistance. I slid it into my pocket. It was nothing I wanted to explain to my husband, however I cared to view it.

For the next week or so I monitored local radio and read the Boulder Camera from cover to cover. I looked for gangland shootings, hippie overdoses, army deserters, and deadly viruses. Nothing. Then I went off into true paranoia. There were no reports in the media because he was a #1 FBI fugitive and they wanted no publicity. He had a highly communicable disease and they were keeping it quiet to prevent panic. He was a Communist spy – this was still the Cold War, remember – so they were keeping him under wraps.

Slowly the years went by and of course I forgot all about it. It had, after all, little if any impact on my life. But for whatever reason, doubtless nothing more than inertia, I still have the ring. And that is the only reason I know that this really did happen.

© October 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.

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Pets by Gillian

My mother was
a great one for pets. She had pet peeves, pet grievances, pet projects, pet
phrases, and, being a school teacher, even teacher’s pets! She herself used
these expressions.
“Oh, you know
that’s one of my pet peeves,” she’d say as a hand projected from a
passing car to deposit unsightly fish-and-chip wrapping in the flowering
hedgerow. Split infinitives was another. Star Trek was after her time, but I
cannot hear that phrase, to boldly go, without imagining how she would
have given a sharp intake of breath, shaken her head sadly, and told the TV,
admonishingly, “It’s either boldly to go, or to go boldly,
NOT to boldly go!”  Split
infinitives, she always stated, set her teeth on edge. Fortunately for her,
being a teacher, fingernails on the blackboard did not!
I, also, have
pet peeves; people who, chatting on their cellphones, crash their grocery carts
into my ankles. Or almost crash their car into my car. Or shout into their
cellphones at the table next to mine in a restaurant, or in line at the
supermarket. Or those who, speaking of the supermarket line, react in
astonishment when the clerk implies that they need actually to pay (see, no
split infinitive!) for their groceries, and begin an endless hunt, in a
bottomless purse, for their checkbook.
Mom’s pet
grievances, and they were many, were all sub-titles. They related, mostly
directly, occasionally indirectly, to the the Grand Category of Grievances: my
father. What he had ever done to deserve this, I never could ascertain; but I
have written about this before so will not repeat myself. Suffice it to say
that I loved my dad, and never truly understood Mom’s animosity.
When I say I
loved him, I don’t mean that he was my dad so of course I loved him in spite of
all his faults and wrong-doings. I mean that I loved him because of who he was,
not despite it.
I have my own
grievances, but most of mine, or so I like to think, are general rather than
personal.  “A feeling of resentment
over something believed to be wrong or unfair,” says the online
dictionary.  Given that definition, yes,
I grieve every war and every youth sacrificed to it. I grieve every starving
person with no food to eat, and every thirsty person with no water to drink. I
grieve man’s inhumanity to man, but then you’ve heard all that before, too. In
the last couple of years or so I find myself forced to grieve for young black
people killed, no, let’s use the right word here, murdered, for no
reason other than the color of their skin, by angry bigoted white men.
My mother’s
pet projects, in the sense of those which go on, year after year, were writing,
both poetry and prose, and pressing flowers. I do my best with writing, and
truly love doing it, but the pressed flowers somehow passed me by. I do love to
photograph them, though, so perhaps that’s some kind of higher-tech equivalent.
My latest pet project is organizing my photos into a series of theme books.
And so to pet
phrases!
Do as you
would be done by. If the whole world lives by
those few words, what a wonderful world it would be!
If you can’t
say something nice, don’t say anything at all. We, as a society, definitely have abandoned that one!
Oh dear! What
will people think? Mom, a product of an age when
appearances greatly mattered, said that quite frequently to both me and my dad,
neither of us great respecters of neighbors’ judgments.  
This one was
somewhat at odds with another pet phrase of Mom’s.
“Just be
comfortable,” she’d respond, in any discussion of what to wear, but then
proceed to “what will people think?” when I arrived in slacks or my
dad without a tie. Mom was not without her inconsistencies, but we learned
easily enough how to deal with them and my mother was, on the whole,
considerate, sweet, and kind. As with my dad, I loved her very much, simply for
who she was.
My mother had,
quite literally, generations of teacher’s pets. She began teaching in the local
two-room school in 1928 and retired in the early 1970’s, so, except for few
years out in the 40’s, she taught in the same room for about forty years. At
the end she was teaching some whose grandparents she had taught.  
“Oh that
little Johnny Batchett!” she’d exclaim. She never denied having favorites
but she would never have treated them as the classic teachers’ pets. She would
have taken great care never to show any hint of favoritism.
“He’s got
that same little cheeky smile as his granddad! He’s got his mother’s dimples
though. The girls are going to be round him like bees around the honey! Of
course, his dad was just the same. All ‘love them and leave them’ young Tom
was, till those dimples hooked him fair and square ….. ” and off she’d
go.
” ……
but that Yvonne Atkins! What a little madam! Still, what can you expect? Her
mum and dad, both such discipline problems at that age. I’ll never forget the
time …….”  My dad would give me
his covert wink, and we’d settle down to listen, or at least pretend we were.
Recalling
Mom’s pet thises and thats reminds me, once again, how the world has changed
over the course of my life. Not too many people these days are taught by the
same person who taught their grandparents, or even their parents. Or even, come
to that, an older sibling.
Most of us
care little what anyone thinks of the way we look, or often even the way we
act.  Those old admonitions such as the
Golden Rule, once painstakingly embroidered and hung on the wall, have more or
less disappeared; I’m quite sure they aren’t about to go viral any time soon.
I’m not suggesting we abided by such things in our day, but at least we were
aware of the concept; perhaps we tried.
Yes, I am
being an old curmudgeon. My own pet peeves and grievances grow apace.  Well why not? There is much of this Brave New
World I do not like.  But there would, I
suspect, be more to dislike, knowing what I now know, if I returned to that
rose-colored past, than there is in the reality of the present. Why would I
want to return to a world where homosexuality was illegal? A woman having a
baby was forced to quit her job, and for this reason could not get a loan to
buy a house or car in her own name, no matter how well paid she was. And even
after the birth control pill gave women much better control over their own
reproductive rights, it was illegal to provide [or] prescribe them for an
unmarried woman.  No. I really want np
part of it.
As for the
future, who knows?
As Jay Asher
says, in his novel Thirteen Reasons Why –
“You can’t stop the future
You can’t rewind the past
The only way to learn the secret
… is to press play.”
So as I’m not
yet quite ready to press the stop button, and certainly not the eject, I guess
I’d better do just that!
© 18 August 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.
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Reframing Reality by Gillian

Many things can force us to reframe our reality; death of a
loved one, divorce, health problems, loss of a job or change in career,
relocating our home, addictions and substance abuse. The list goes on and on.
And the reasons don’t have to be negative. Winning the lottery could certainly
reframe reality, as could falling madly in love or escaping from
addictions and substance abuse.
But the extent to which you allow your reality to change when
such things happen, I believe, depends very much on how secure you are with
your own reality, and your place in it. Possibly I am being hopelessly naive,
but I really think I could find myself the lucky recipient of, say, fifty
million bucks, without it changing me very much. I think I could face health
problems, or being forced, for whatever reason, to live in some other State or
even country, and survive it without allowing my reality to morph to too great
an extent. Of course I’m kinda sticking my neck out here, inviting all of you to
judge me eagerly when one of these happenings does befall me. But at least my
own reaction to these things is something that is within my control, though
whether I do in fact master it may be another matter.
What I have little, if any, control of, is how something
which happens to me, ends up reframing another person’s, or many other people’s, realities around me. When I win
that fifty million, you know it changes me in other people’s realities. The same happens if,
say, I am diagnosed with a terminal illness and given six weeks to live. Does
that cause others to reframe me in their realities? You bet it does.
One of the strongest effectors of reality change in a person
and in those around them is probably addiction and substance abuse, whichever
direction those nightmares are moving. If we fall under the influence of an
addiction, it certainly changes our vision, our very sense, of reality. All
else becomes less and less real; the only thing real to us is that addiction.
Likewise, it is all others see of us. Our entire reality, to our families and
friends, is taken over by the addiction. If we continue, our frame of reality
both to ourselves and others, is the addiction.
Ah, but we have made the miracle happen. We are recovering
from substance abuse. So all will be well, will it not? We don’t fool ourselves. How many
relationships have we seen disintegrate well into the recovery stage? All those
friends, family members, perhaps partners, who had been been accompanying us
happily down Addiction Road no longer find us fun. We no longer share that
costly habit; that dark secret. As we fade in their realities to mere echoes of
our former selves, we are dealing, ourselves, with the formation of very new
realities. We are mere echoes of our former selves to ourselves, also, and must
begin the challenge of creating for ourselves a completely new reality which
maybe we have never known, or at least forgotten.
Well we can’t let this topic go without at least dipping our toes into
the Coming Out Ocean, can we? When I first came out, just to myself, I felt a
huge shift in reality. Or more, it seemed that my previous reality had simply
disintegrated, pffff, in an unimpressive little puff of steam like some things
do on the computer when you press delete. I had no concept of what my new
reality looked like. I was an explorer alone in a newly discovered land: a
time-traveller.
It took coming out to others to begin to frame this new
reality, and for those others to reframe their own, with the new me in it. But
as we stumbled along together, my family, friends, and I, we /found that, at
least superficially, not so much reframing was required after all. I was still
the same person. Little had really changed.
Oh but it had.
Oprah Winfrey has spiritual gurus on her TV channel on
Sundays, part of a series she terms Super Soul Sundays. Watching one of these
one morning I heard an expression that summed up the state of my soul to
perfection. Oprah, or her guest whose name I don’t even recall, used the phrase homesickness
of the soul.
“Yes, oh yes, that is it exactly!”  I wanted to yell and dance and shout for joy. Yes, that is
it.
Before I came out to myself with true, complete,
unquestioning acceptance of who I was, my soul was terribly, agonizingly
homesick. Now it am home. My soul and I came home. We are where we
live; where we must be. What we were born to be.
That is what now frames my reality, and no matter what
happens it will never change.
Perhaps that is why I dare to think, in a way that maybe
seems rather smug, that my reality will not falter in the unlikely event of
suddenly having undreamed of wealth, or, sadly somewhat higher odds, being
diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The only really important reality is my soul, and it has come
home.
©
June 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

Competition by Gillian

It’s just not a part of my reality: my
psyche. As far as I can tell, in retrospect, neither of my parents had a
competitive bone in their body. So I come by competitiveness, or the lack of
it, honestly. The only kind of competition they introduced me to, if it’s worthy of the term, was of the why
don’t
you see if you can do a little better next time variety;
competition with myself. So it’s
hardly surprising that I consider that to be the only contest worth the
winning; making myself just a little better every time.
I remember, back in
the John Elway days, the first time we, by which I mean the Denver Broncos,
lost the Superbowl. On the local news following the game they gave out phone
numbers of local therapists standing by to help Bronco fans deal with their
emotions. I was simply amazed. It’s
a game, for God’s sake, not World War Three.
Years ago, perhaps
in the late ‘50’s, I read an article in I know not
what newspaper or magazine, written by a Brit, claiming that Britain was a “good
enough”
country.
We had lost our drive for perfection and were happy to settle for “good
enough.”
I’m not sure of this, but I think my
attitude, which undeniably has a certain shade of “good
enough,”
in
it, as did that of my parents, and the country at large, might have stemmed
from World War Two. And perhaps a carry-over from World War One.
In a country
subject to harsh rationing during, and for years after, World War Two, meals
were frequently “good enough,”
and
that often required a ton of positive thinking. When Churchill reviewed the
rations he judged them adequate, until he was told they were for a week, not a
day as he had supposed. With one egg and one ounce of cheese a week, it is
actually very positive to be able to proclaim a meal, “good  enough.”
During and after
the First War, women took up jobs which were traditionally “man’s work.”
In
Britain roughly two million woman replaced the men who had left to fight, so
many of whom were destined never to return. Many women took over this work by
choice, but many, especially in country areas, had no choice. You had a
farm to keep up and there were no men left to do the work, so women must do it.
Given the situation, and knowing how hard all farming families worked even
before the men left, I can well imagine exhausted and demoralized women
struggling with overwork, much of it unfamiliar to them, tossing down the
carpentry tools or stabling the plow horse and saying it would just have to be
good enough. It’s
hard to strive for perfection when you are inexperienced, exhausted, and
overwhelmed.
I can imagine the
same thing of many members of the upper class who lost most of their servants
either directly or indirectly to the war. My Lord having to clip his own hedges
for the first time in his life and Milady forced to mend her torn curtains,
might well have finished their attempts saying, in effect, that it would “jolly
well have to be good enough.”
I very much doubt
that Britain is a “good enough”
country
these days. I’m
sure there is as much perfection per capita as anywhere else. And prior the two
world wars, the British were responsible for many inventions; everything from
Isaac Newton’s
telescope to the steam engine, spoked wheels to cement, chocolate bars, and jet
engines. Inventions may occasionally be due to some accident or mistake, but
they are rarely precipitated by a shrugged “it’s good enough.”
I often hear,
though, even now, that the Brits frequently lack that killer instinct that
fires you to be really competitive; to win at all cost. Britain still tends to
cling to the idea that it’s
how you play the game that matters, not whether you win or lose. That is very
much the attitude my parents gave to me. I have never lost it. On the whole,
although there’s
certainly an argument to be made that humanity would have accomplished a great
deal less, I think the world would be a better place without competition. I am,
after all, an unapologetic peacenik, and what is war but the most extreme form
of competition?
© February 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

Endless Joy by Gillian

I’m not sure why but that phrase, the entire
concept, makes my skin creep a bit. Maybe it’s because the only people I can imagine
making me a promise of endless joy are fundamentalist preachers from the mega
church, urging me towards rebirth, and the corner drug dealer urging me towards
powders and pills. It also, to me, conjures up a vision of a constant and
rather scary manic condition.
Not that I’m suggesting there is anything wrong with joy
itself, but, like so many things, it is probably best taken in moderation. The
Free Online Dictionary defines it as intense and especially ecstatic
or exultant happiness. Now really! Who can keep that up for a lifetime? We
who are fortunate enough frequently feel joy in our lives, but it goes away;
either crashing down or floating gently away as we return to the usual
mundanity of everyday living. Christmas comes to mind, as I am writing this at
Christmas time. The word joy pops up frequently in carols, and we often
associate the holiday season with joy. Sadly, this anticipated joy does not
always manifest itself to those who expect it and they are doomed to angry
disappointment. Others, even more sadly, are realistic enough about the
situation in which they currently find themselves that they expect nothing; and
are not disappointed.
But let’s
suppose, for now, that we have a perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas. The kids
are joyous as they unwrap their presents and delve eagerly into the stockings,
the parents and grandparents rapturous as they watch. We build a snow man on
the lawn, then enjoy a perfectly dinner, after which we sit around the tree and
lustily sing joyful Christmas carols. We drop into bed, awash with Christmas
joy and egg nog. We are still pretty joyful in the morning, even though the
go-to-work alarm wakens us rudely before dawn. This Christmas was pure joy, we
congratulate each other silently. We totter into the living room which we find
completely covered in tattered wrapping paper, ripped-off ribbon, and abandoned
toys. The dining room looks almost as bad. When did all that gravy end up on
the floor? And what might that be, all that sticky stuff trodden firmly into
the carpet? And, oh God, the fudge somehow got left out and the dog ate it,
then threw it up in the corner. That joyous high is dissipating in a hurry but
we are also in a hurry. No time to do anything about anything right now. I dig
my way out to the car through that foot of snow that we were all so excited
about yesterday. Ooh, how perfect. A real White Christmas! Bloody fools,
I grumble to myself, digging out the car and beginning to register a slight
pounding in my head. How and why had I left egg nog for rum punch? Now I’ve got to get out on the icy freeway with all
those fools who don’t
have a clue how to drive in this stuff…. and I’m developing road rage before I even get the
car in gear. Not one ounce of yesterday’s
joy remains.
Weddings are other occasions
frequently linked with joy, indeed endless joy to be carried forward from this
joyful wedding to last a lifetime of marriage. A wedding crowd is very often a
joyful one, attending a truly joyous occasion. The happy couple overflows with
joy and we all rise with them onto some euphoric cloud. They rush off to the
airport only to spend three miserable hours waiting for the arrival of the
plane which by now should have already winged them away to that luxurious hotel
on the beach. When they finally do arrive there, exhausted and irritable, it is
pouring rain and colder than the home they just left. After a week of cold,
wind, and rain, viewed from the streaming window of the over-priced hotel that
euphoria bubble has truly burst. The honeymoon is definitely over.
Of course it isn’t just positive emotions which don’t go on uninterrupted forever. Negative ones
don’t either. If you marry
him you’ll
have nothing but misery. Not quite accurate. Maybe he will,
does, bring you much unhappiness, but it’s
not endless, with never a break. Surely miserable lives are, even if only
occasionally, treated to some relief, a little levity, perhaps even some rare
moments of joy. Years ago I saw a homeless woman pick up a small white flower
someone had dropped on the sidewalk. The expression on her face as she held
that flower up to the light was very evidently an expression of pure joy.
Don’t we need the bad times so that we can really
enjoy the good? If we did have endless joy, would we appreciate it? Would we
even feel it? I’m
not sure. And how could we have empathy for those not feeling so good? Helen
Keller said, “We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only
joy in the world.”
Eckhart Tolle, a name I’m sure you’re sick of hearing from both Betsy and me,
and sometimes Pat, suggests that if we live each moment in the now, never being
distracted by the past or future, every moment will bring us joy; not the
Christmas or wedding kind of joy sometimes engendered by an external stimulus,
but the spiritual joy of simply being. I work hard at it but doubt that
I will ever attain that spiritual strength. If I had been practicing it my
entire life I might have some hope of getting there, but I only really started
paying the attention I should to my spiritual needs after I retired. I am
making progress, and have experienced enough of those tiny shots of spiritual
joy to feel the beauty of it, but it is far from endless. In fact it is absent
more than it is present. The closest I can get is a kind of inner spiritual
peace, which I revere. It is almost continuous, though being a spiritual novice
I sometimes let it get away. So far, at least I am able to get it back. It is,
I believe, as close as I will ever come to endless joy. Will it be endless
inner peace? Only time will tell.
©  January 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

Gay Music by Gillian

What the hell is that? I don’t even know what it means! A so-called “gay movie” or “gay book” is identified as such because of it’s GLBT content; it’s characters and/or subject matter. But the vast majority of music, even most music with words, is androgynous, unisex. A couple of weeks ago our topic was, “All My Exes Live in Texas.” In my short piece I also referred to that beautiful song, “Could I Have This Dance For the Rest of My Life?” Different as those two pieces are, they can both be taken to be heterosexual or homosexual, depending on the preference of the listener, as is the case with most songs. I am wiling to bet that many of us in this room listened to those old love songs of the forties and fifties and, when performed by a singer of our own sex, turned them into songs of love directed at us. Certainly there are, these days, a few songs that are unmistakably GLBT; amusing lyrics performed by drag groups, Lady Gaga singing about coming out, more recently even a collection of songs about gay marriage, but the total of all this specifically GLBT-themed music together would not add up to a single drop in the ocean of music in it’s entirety.

Is “Gay Music,” then, that which is written and/or performed by someone of the GLBT family?

If so we could talk about Tchaikovsky and Elton John and a vast number of others in between.

But what sense would that make? We don’t call a book a “gay book,” because it’s author happens to be gay; usually we don’t even know, although that kind of information is much more readily available these days. If J.K. Rowling unexpectedly revealed that she was a lesbian, would the Harry Potter tales suddenly become lesbian books and movies? K.D Lang is openly lesbian, but I would not call her songs “lesbian music.” Many movie producers and actors are GLBT but that doesn’t make their movies “queer.” No-one refers to “A Farewell to Arms,” as a gay movie just because Rock Hudson starred in it.

Maybe because, at least until recently, we of the GLBT community had little we could call our own, we would like to claim significance to “gay music,” but personally I find it a bit of a reach.

But wait! As I typed that last sentence, with one eye on the Winter Olympics on TV, I caught a few bars of our very own National Anthem. Perhaps I’m just missing it. When we strive to hit the high notes of the “land of the free,” could we be celebrating our freedom? Well, yes, we could, but I’m afraid I’m much too cynical to accept that phrase at face value. But, now I’m trawling through National Anthems, perhaps I really have stumbled onto something. After all, how many times in the first twenty years of my life did I sing out, in the British National Anthem,

“God save our gracious Queen

Long live our noble Queen

God Save the Queen!”

February, 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

I Used to Think by Gillian

I used to think I was straight, but now I know I am actually as queer, as the saying goes, as a three dollar bill. No, that’s not really true. Oh, the queer part is, but back then I didn’t think I was straight, because the words straight and gay were not yet in play; indeed the concepts barely were. So what I actually thought was that there was something wrong with me that I didn’t get all excited about boys the way my girlfriends did. But I also believed it would go away. It was just a phase. It would pass.

I used to think, when I got married to a man, that it was forever. I took my marriage vows very seriously and meant every word of that rather horrid phrase, till death us do part. It was the end of a phase. Of course I know now that it was doomed from day one. My previous feelings were not a phase, and neither was my marriage, being no more than a piece of rather good acting on my part, albeit somewhat subconscious.

I used to think, when it came over me that I just had to come out, that I would lose a few people I thought of as my friends, but so be it. Now I know that most people, even back in the early eighties, really didn’t care. And it gets more that way with each passing day.

I used to think, when I first came out, that I would never get too serious about any one woman. I would simply play the field making up for decades of lost time. Now I know that when you meet that special woman, all previous thoughts, in fact all thought of any kind, flies right out the window.

I used to think, long after coming out, long after committing my life to partnership with my beautiful Betsy, that there was no hope that gay marriage would ever come to this country, even as it spread to many countries across the globe. I told myself I didn’t care. We had as loving and committed a relationship as was possible. We didn’t need, or even want, that failed straight institution. I know, now, that I was in a wee state of denial. After all, if something is unavailable what is the point in hungering for it? I still have a dream that we queers can do something better, but meanwhile I proudly clutch my official, legal (at least in about twenty states) marriage license.

I used to think that my liking for alcohol would pass. Just another phase. I know now that at the age of 72, after drinking my way quite steadily through over half a century, that is not likely to happen. On the other hand, it is not the temptation it once was. Or perhaps to be more accurate I should say that the temptation, if succumbed to, is much shorter lived. I tend to fall asleep after one beer, unless I remain in constant motion and my arthritis argues strongly against that.

I used to think, as a pudgy child, that my battle with weight would also pass. Yet another phase! And indeed for many years taken up with raising four step-children and putting in long exhausting hours at work, I settled comfortably in the acceptable center of that BMI range. For several years now, though, I have been pushing greedily against the BMI north face, and sometimes toppling over. I now know that if I ever return to the center, where all the charts and measurements estimate I should be, if I ever lose considerable weight, it will probably result from some condition not promising me health and longevity.

I used to think that someday I would no longer feel pain from the death of my mom and dad. Suffering the loss of one’s parents is, after all, the natural progression of life. Now I know I shall never get used to being an orphan, and will always have that tiny empty space inside me.

I used to think that someday I would write that unique novel. It would be translated into at least thirty different languages. My name would be recognized in as many countries. I would walk into a meeting room on a business trip to, say, the IBM facility in Melbourne. Those Aussie jaws would drop as they chorused, “Oh my word! You don’t say you’re THE Gillian Edwards?!” Now I know it’s one chance in a million that I’ll even have some inane comment go viral to make me at least famous for a day. Or a nano-second. I am honored to have a very occasional short piece published in that most erudite of journals, Out Front. I also know, now, that if I can write a few hundred words which occasionally amuse or emotionally captivate a small minority of a group of wonderful people gathered around a table on a Monday afternoon, that is the only claim to fame I need.

© August 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.