Tag: Gillian

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Boredom by Gillian

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity ? 

Dorothy Parker 

Boredom is an emotional state experienced when an individual is ….. not interested in their surroundings.
Wikipedia

I thought of simply copying the first part of last week’s story, Forbidden Fruits, replacing the words bigotry and prejudice with the word boredom, because I can no more relate to boredom than to bigotry, and I’m sure that in great part I have my parents to thank for it. They were never bored, I’m sure, and naturally it rubbed off on me. They were never bored because they reveled in tiny insignificant things. When I came across the above quotations, I wondered if it was all about curiosity, but I think not, at least not with Mum and Dad. It was simply, with them, more the Wiki way. They indeed had an intense interest in their surroundings: whatever, wherever.

I’m not claiming that nothing is ever boring; but you don’t have to become it’s victim and be bored. There are endless cures available.

“Look at that!” said my dad, in awe.

A tiny ant labored over the muddy lumps of clay at Dad’s feet, carrying an upright blade of grass as if shouldering a gun, except to be in scale a man would have to march with a rifle about 300 feet long.

“Oh, look!” breathed my delighted mother, “A Red Admiral!” One of Britain’s more common butterflies so not a great discovery, but a thing of beauty nonetheless. “Oh, those colors!”

She would stop whatever she was doing and watch every move the creature made until it flew off, just as Dad studied the progress of the ant.

It wasn’t that they were simply lovers of nature. I see them, looking back, yes, possibly through rose-colored glasses, as lovers of everything. (Except, sadly, of each other, but that’s yet another story.)

Dad would study a newly-purchased car part, or Mum a new batch of wool, in every detail; running their hands over it, caressing it, getting to know it. Appreciating it. My dad would listen to the sounds of the engine in the old tractor driven by our neighboring farmer, as intently as my mom would listen to the sounds of her pupils playing beneath her classroom window.

During, and for several years after, World War II, gas was severely rationed and our old car rested on blocks behind the house. Dad looked after it as if we were off in it on Sunday to see the Queen.

“It’s still here,” he told me one day, answering an unasked question, apparently with little regret. I understood, then, that the value of something was that it was there: to be appreciated, loved, revered; from an ant to an automobile.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. 
Ellen Parr

An aunt put the icing on this particular cake for me. Perhaps, coming from my parents, I might have rejected, if only subconsciously, this love for the detail that was now, as children so often fail to respond positively to their parent’s values. But I spent several much-loved summer holidays with my aunt and uncle in the north of England. My uncle was at work most of the time and he was, incredibly, even more silent than my father, so he did not loom large in my life. But my aunt, she held me in the palm of her hand. Anything, with her, was an adventure. We roamed the moors, a la Wuthering Heights, although neither of us was on any search for Mr. Heathcliff.

Who needed anyone or anything? Everything was at our fingertips.

We wandered beside streams, sitting on the grassy banks to examine the flowers fluttering there; never to pick them, just to look. We had a tiny brass-rimmed magnifying glass through which we peered, sometimes with great difficulty in the wind and rain. My aunt would never permit any adventure to be missed or even curtailed by the mere fact of atrocious weather. On sunny days we’d lie on the spongy moss-covered hillsides, listening to birds sing while watching others glide on the thermals above us. It was my aunt who first inspired my fascination with geology. She had taught herself some of the basics, and would scoop a handful of rounded, shiny, wet pebbles from a stream-bed and sift them through her fingers, searching for anything from a kind of rock or fossil she could maybe identify, simply to one that looked like a frog, or a cow, or my uncle! Waiting in the cold and rain for an overdue bus, she would examine in detail the grain of the wood making up the bench we stood beside, it being much too soggy to actually sit on. Or she made up silly names and acronyms from the license plates of passing cars, the same way my mother did. Looking back at it now, I suppose they must have once done this together, as little girls growing up at the time of the first appearance of cars on the country roads.

Looking back to thank the older generations for what they gave me, I’m forced to wonder about today’s youngsters. With that multiplicity of gadgets they should never be bored, but I’m not so sure. With their multi-tasking high-speed lives, do they ever have the time, or indeed the inclination, to sit silently and listen to the breeze? And yet, perhaps it doesn’t matter. Every generation has its own way of embracing life, and come to that, each person deals with it in a unique way. However it’s accomplished, my sincerest wish for everyone is that they may never ever be bored. It has to be the greatest possible waste of the privilege we are given, to inhabit, albeit for a fleeting moment, this beautiful, incredible, planet.

And as a postscript, I stumbled upon this quote, so it looks as if no one in this room need ever be bored, at least according to William S. Burroughs, who proclaims,

In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.

May, 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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All My Exes Live in Texas by Gillian

George Strait’s rendition of this hit was at the top of the Country charts in the summer of 1987. It seems like last week that I danced many a night away to that song, but it doesn’t take higher math to figure out that it was actually over twenty-five years ago. It was also the year I came out, at the age of forty-five, and began dancing with women, and one woman in particular, which is doubtless the main reason I remember this particular track with such fondness. It was the year I met my beautiful Betsy. All in all, 1987 was just a bloody good year!

I was living alone in Lyons then, working at IBM in Boulder. I was prompted to come out to the world in a letter to the Boulder Camera newspaper on the subject of the upcoming referendum to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. The referendum passed that November, the first one in this country and quite a trail-blazer. It was only the year before, after all, that our trusty U.S. Supreme Court had declared that the right to privacy did not extend to homosexuals. How far we have come in the last quarter century.

In 1987, Charlie’s was further East on Colfax than it is now. That location became Ms C’s when Charlie’s moved, but before that there were few places for lesbians to dance, so every Thursday night Charlie’s was turned over to the women.

Oh how I loved those wonderful Thursday nights!

I had to practice up for them, though. I mean, if you plan to indulge in same-sex dancing, you need to be at ease either leading or following. So I practiced, leading an imaginary, very sexy, partner around my basement and, yes, often to the accompaniment of “All My Exes …. ”

I carpooled with a Lyons/Estes Park group. Katie, the leader of the pack, had a passenger van and in piled five or six of us every Thursday night, come rain or shine, come gale or snow. Women came from all over Colorado. I danced with lesbians from Grand Junction to Pueblo to Julesburg, and at least once during any Thursday night, we would two-step with much gusto to “All My Exes Live in Texas.”

Many were boycotting Coors at the time for their anti-gay bigotry, and Katie had a unique way of introducing herself to Coors-supping strangers. She bought another beer brand, took it over to the Coors-drinker, and wordlessly replaced the Coors with her preferred brand. Needless to say that engendered many interesting conversations!

When Charlie’s closed at two in the morning, the carpool group went to the White Spot for breakfast, accompanied by endless cups of caffeine stimulant, and an analysis of the night’s events. Then it was back to Lyons, a quick shower and change, and off to work.

Just the thought of it exhausts me, now! But how I enjoy those memories.

The beautiful, energetic, funny, Katie, now nearing ninety and lost to dementia, can no longer enjoy hers. The only other remaining member of our car-pool group lost her home to last year’s Estes Park fire. Yes, a lot has changed over twenty-five years; not all good.

And the moral of that story is; make your memories while you can, and enjoy them while you may, for who knows what the future may bring?

Sometime in ’87, a new women’s dance-bar called Divine Madness opened up, so the carpool extended to two nights a week, but thankfully we could go to DM on the weekend without work the next day looming over us, while of course we kept up our Thursdays at Charlie’s. And so we doubled the frequency of trying to pick up a good woman while dancing to “All My Exes Live in Texas.”

One Friday night in November 1987, I spotted Betsy across the floor at Divine Madness and asked her for a dance. This is where, obviously, I should say that the tune we danced to was “All My Exes Live in Texas,” but it was not, it was Ann Murray singing, “Could I Have This Dance,” a beautiful waltz. I returned to my car-pool group after that dance and announced, “I’m going to marry that woman!”

Of course I didn’t dream, at that time, that some day I would be able to make that statement literally become true. Oh, yes, a lot has changed since then; and some things have stayed the same. With sincere apologies to a great dance tune, I cannot say that “All My Exes … ” offers much in the way of romance: rather the opposite! But for me, “Could I Have This Dance,” is every bit as meaningful today as it was that November night in 1987.

I’ll always remember,
the song they were playing,
The first time we danced and I knew
As we swayed to the music,
and held to each other,
I fell in love with you.

Could I have this dance
for the rest of my life,
Could you be my partner
every night,
when we’re together
it feels so right,
Could I have this dance
for the rest of my life?

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.

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Tender Loving Care by Gillian

I came out to the world in the early eighties; the early nineteen-eighties, that is, not my early eighties. I was around forty. I came roaring out of the closet in a letter printed in the Boulder Camera newspaper, as I lived in Lyons at the time, and it felt great.

Beyond words great. 
I was free, I was me – the me I was born to be. 
Free at last.
OK.
Now what?
I didn’t have to hide the real me any longer. Great. But what did that do for me? Yeah yeah it did feel wonderful, but it had to lead somewhere. Feeling free is terrific but I needed action. But what action? I hadn’t a clue. I knew what I wanted but I hadn’t a single solid idea of how to go about finding it. A few other lesbians made themselves known to me at work after I came out, but they were in long-term relationships and had little to suggest by way of meeting others. All they had to offer was The Three Sisters bar in Denver, or start playing softball, neither of which appealed to me. I have, as most of you know, no aversion to bars and alcohol, but was quite incapable of conjuring up in my imagination any vision of what a lesbian bar, or its clientele, would really be like. How was I expected to dress and act? Going to this place alone offered rather a scary prospect.
Almost as scary as taking up softball!
At that time, gay and lesbian gatherings and organizations often kept pretty well below the mainstream radar and were not easy to find. I looked in the Boulder paper and found very little. But then, one Sunday, I spotted a small ad. The following weekend was the monthly meeting of a group called TLC – standing not for Tender Loving Care, as I had supposed, but for The Lesbian Connection. This group proclaimed its purpose as offering an alternative lesbian gathering for those outside of the college community. At each meeting there was a speaker and a following discussion. It all sounded rather staid and not in the least bit scary. It was held in a church community room for God’s sake!
The next Saturday I turned up at my first TLC meeting, and in the first ten minutes I knew I had found a home. There were more lesbians there than I knew existed in the entire country, and it seemed to me that every single one of them was warm, and witty, and wonderful. Of course they were not. They were just like any other group of people; some were indeed warm, some witty, some wonderful, but others were boring, aloof, or just plain obnoxious. But I loved that group of women who folded me into their arms and their lives and propelled me into a lesbian social whirl I so craved. They eased my entry into this new world; they welcomed and supported me in my new life. Some became firm friends for life. As far as I was concerned, the initials TLC certainly did stand for Tender Loving Care. That was what I found there, anyway.
The group continued for several years, eventually dying a natural death as such organizations do.
These days Betsy and I again gather with a lesbian group which meets monthly, but this one is OLOC, or Old Lesbians Organizing for Change. We meet at different places throughout northern Colorado, from Denver to Estes Park to Loveland, and all points in between. This group, as the name implies, has somewhat loftier aims perhaps than the old Lesbian Connection, but many of the same women are there, and a similar number of women attend the meetings. 
The social time and energy we once used in dancing and parties and wild weekends, we now tend to expend in support of old friends in care facilities, and hospitals, or struggling to stay independent at home. But the laughter and the camaraderie remain, as does the tender loving care.
These wonderful groups, past and present, played, and still play a huge part in my GLBT existence. But the icing on that particular cake is, now, this very special Storytelling group.
I find, within it, that same humor, the same sharing and caring and support, the same laughter and tears, as in TLC and OLOC. I consider myself incredibly blessed to have been welcomed into such groups throughout my lesbian life; groups which, whatever the name, could all most appropriately have been called Tender Loving Care.

© 19 April 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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What A Performance by Gillian

It might have been soccer thugs battling riot police, or the Vietnam war or, a little child exhibiting an extreme case of the terrible two’s on the bus. In many instances, my parents, most especially my father, would shake his head and say, 

“What a performance!”
That use of the expression was quite common in the Britain of my youth, but I’m very out of touch with everyday British jargon these days. I am stuck in a 1950’s British English and on visits I tend to get quizzical looks when I talk and comments such as, goodness me, I haven’t heard that in decades! Or worse yet, oh yeah, I remember my old granny saying that.
I often find, when I look up in the dictionary words and phrases still commonly in use by me, the preface “arch. Brit,” which does, indeed, make me feel archaic. So I checked out “performance” before writing this and found that the on-line Oxford English dictionary does offer three definitions. 
1) An act of presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment,
2) An act of performing a dramatic role, song, or piece of music, and a third which it proclaims as informal, chiefly Brit. but does not deem to be “arch.” 
3) A display of exaggerated behavior, or a process involving a great deal of unnecessary time and effort; a fuss.
“What a performance,” was about as critical or judgmental as I ever heard from my dad. He was not a great talker anyway, but I don’t think he was awash with unspoken negative thoughts. He was generally a very positive person and, “what a performance,” was just about the limit of his negativity. When, on rare occasions, it was directed at me, I knew I was well and truly in the dog house. 
Like the time my homework blew away. 
It was a rare beautiful warm sunny Sunday morning and I was writing a paper sitting out on the back lawn. My mother called to me to help with preparing lunch, and foolishly I left my almost completed work on the chair. Busy indoors, I failed to notice that a strong wind had come up until it was too late. I rushed outside but the chair had blown over and the papers, representing about three hours of work, had disappeared. I flew into a terrible teenage temper tantrum, swearing and stomping, kicking the chair around and finally hurling it in the general direction of a very disdainful cat. Dad, coming from the vegetable garden where he’d been working, to see what on earth was happening, watched in silence until my rage finally ran itself out of energy. He looked at me with very much the same expression as the cat. “What a performance!” was all he said, and shaking his head in disbelief, returned to the onion patch.
One of our neighboring farmers was about as lazy as it’s possible to be and still maintain any kind of farm at all, even an inefficient one. When he did summon up enough energy for action, it usually took the form of wandering to the nearby pub until he could summon up enough energy to leave, which generally meant closing time. His hedges and fences were a mess and the gates too crooked to latch properly, so his cows were always wandering off in search of greener pastures. One day they identified our lawn as such, and I was dispatched on my bike to get their owner. It being a Friday evening I didn’t bother trying the farm but went straight to the pub, where I managed to pry Mr. Evans loose from his pint. He and three drunken cronies staggered to our house, only a short distance away, and began rounding up the dozen or so cows, only to succeed in startling the animals and driving them haphazardly into the vegetable garden and thence into the flower beds. The ground was very wet and soft from recent rains and the poor animals slipped and slithered around, mooing and rolling their eyes, stamping and snorting, and inevitably adding a considerable amount of steaming brown goo to the muddy earth. Eventually they all, cattle and men, shoved through the hole in the hedge the entering cows had created, and quiet descended. Mum and Dad and I gazed at the chaos that remained. I suspect many men in such circumstances would curse roundly, shouting of retribution and revenge. 
My dad took off his flat cap and scratched his bald head.
“What a performance!”
The last time I joined my parents in their own home was when I took a short leave of absence from work and went to England to get them settled in nursing homes. My mother had fallen and broken her hip, an accident from which she never really recovered, and was only able to get around with a walker. My father was physically fit as a fiddle, but completely lost to dementia. By that time, he had no idea who I was. As I left the room I heard him asking my mother, “Who is that woman?” 
They were an impossible combination. Dad would be off God knows where doing God knows what and Mum wasn’t physically able to keep tabs on him. This was our last night in our old home which we had inherited from my paternal grandparents. The old place still had no heating system except the coal and log fire and a small electric bar heater. My dad certainly was not safe with a real fire so I had asked friends to take all the logs and coal for their own use now summer was officially here, so we were down to the electric heater. 
The evening was cold and Mum turned on the bar heater which stood just in front of the original fireplace. In no time the three bars glowed red, emitting some semblance of warmth. Not enough, apparently, however, for my dad. Before we realized what he was up to, he grabbed the old metal poker which still hung in its assigned spot beside the fireplace, and jabbed it between the protective bars directly into the glowing electricity. 
There was a loud crack and a whoooosh, lots of sparks flew, followed by a billow of stinky black dense smoke. 
The cat, the last in a long line vaguely descended from the one not even narrowly missed by that flying lawn chair decades earlier, now disturbed in the act of settling himself cozily as close to the heat source as he could get, changed course and leapt onto my mother’s lap. He landed deftly in the middle of her knitting, startling her, perhaps, even more than the exploding heater. She jerked in alarm, in turn knocking her full water glass onto the cat, which let out a furious scream/growl combo and jumped onto the table, trailing wool and one attached needle.
I had set the table, complete with table cloth, ready for dinner. The cat, landing on it in full flight, dug in his claws as it started to slide, resulting in cat and cutlery crashing to the floor. The enraged cat ran from the room. 
Mum sat, speechless, in her armchair. 
Opposite her sat Dad, gazing in silent fascination at the ruined heater. 
In the sudden silence that ensued, I came so close to tears. 
I had heard such a clear resounding echo, in my head, of my younger father’s voice, saying, calmly, “What a performance!”

© 14 April 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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Meals to Remember by Gillian

Much as I like to eat, I am not any kind of gourmet. I have very simple tastes and don’t care so very much what I eat, so it comes as no surprise that I can come up with only two meals that I remember because of the actual food. Memories of any kind can be wonderful or awful, so let’s get the awful one out of the way.

I have talked before about my time in Russia. Right after it became Russia and the old U.S.S.R . broke up, I spent a few weeks on a volunteer job in Leningrad, at that moment returning to it’s old self as St. Petersburg. I stayed in a private apartment with a lovely woman named Ludmilla, and her silent soldier husband and equally silent soldiers-to-be teenage sons. The last Sunday before I was due to leave, there was a “family dinner,” the first since I had been there, to celebrate my stay with them. Ludmilla’s widowed father, who lived some miles away in one of the many little towns that dot the Russian landscape, was coming in on the train specially to meet me, and bringing rabbits he had trapped in the woods for what Betsy would term a “taste treat sensation.”
Oh whoopee. I sighed to myself, mentally squaring my shoulders, could do this. Not with the delight expected of me, and that I must try to fake, but I could do it. In England during my youth we all ate a lot of rabbit, usually scattered around in little pieces in a big stew, liberally augmented by vegetables. I was well versed in ways of wrapping the bits of meat in some vegetable matter while in my mouth, then swallowing quickly without actually chewing the meat or allowing it anywhere near my taste buds. Of course that was fifty years ago, but I was sure I retained the knack.
So, Ludmilla of course refusing my offer of help, we huddled around the only table, a small wooden one in the kitchen corner; three silent men and me, with, thankfully, a charming and garrulous Grandpa. He and I managed quite an informative conversation in spite of no common language; possibly the free flow of vodka had something to do with it. Anyway it came to a sudden end as Ludmilla approached flourishing an old pewter plate which she placed, with as much ceremony as can be mustered in a small, crowded, steamy, kitchen, not in the center of the table but directly in front of me. Ludmilla and her dad beamed at me with pride and anticipation. Even the silent ones nodded gravely in agreement.
The small head still contained accusing, though by now, lusterless, sad brown eyes. The top of the head had been cut off, exposing the brain. Beside the gruesome, pitiful, object, a tiny glass spoon rested. Everyone in the kitchen watched, silently. They had sacrificed their favorite treat for me. I knew what was expected of me. My stomach heaved. Oh please oh please don’t let me throw up. I took a long drink of water and considered doing the same with vodka but knew that would only exacerbate my digestive woes. Ludmilla, bustling housewife too busy to stand and stare, placed a huge stew-pot on the table, accompanied by an exquisitely carved trencher piled high with chunks of thick black bread. Oh, thank you God, I can do this. I put a big piece of bread beside the beleaguered bunny, picked up the spoon, raised my head, and beamed at everyone.

“Thank you; all of you. Spaciba. Balshoye spaciba.”

I sounded so sincere, I almost believed it.

I toasted each of them individually. Surely, a little vodka would help.

And after all, rabbit brains are very tiny.

OK, enough of that. On to the good memory. Betsy and I were hiking in Scotland, I suppose ten or fifteen years ago. We ended up in a delightful little town, the name of which I knew until recently when it leaked from my brain along with a lot of other stuff. We decided, not for the first time, just to get fish and chips to go for dinner. We knew there had to be a “chippie” in a place of this size, and found it with little trouble. These chip shops which are scattered throughout Britain are not a chain, they are owned by individuals, and therefore, although they all look and smell much the same and serve essentially the same things, the end product varies.
We scuttled off with our haddock and fries still scalding hot. It was cool and drizzling a little and the heat felt good as it seeped through the paper wrapping; no longer simply newspaper as in my youth, but with hygienic wax paper now inserted between the paper and the food. At least that was how that particular shop served it though sadly some have now gone to those awful indestructible styrofoam boxes. 
We found a bench in a lovely little park beside the river and beneath a big tree to keep us dry, and unwrapped our precious bundles. Why, I have no idea, but those were the best fish and chips I have had in my entire life, before or since. Betsy thought so too. We raved to each other over them. We chattered happily about how far we had walked that day. Could we possibly….? We deserved it, didn’t we….? We practically ran back for a second order.
As I inferred at the beginning, I have had many many wonderful meals worth remembering, but I love the memories for where I was and the people who shared them. Mostly I have only a very vague memory, or none at all, or what I actually ate. Collectively, my meals most worthy of recall are those Betsy and I have had while camping, and the content of them is rarely memorable. We eat very basic food and much of it gets repeated day after day, especially as we often camp for days in some spot miles from any food source. There is something so special about eating outdoors, often by a stream or river, listening to the birds twitter and sing, while gazing into the campfire with the love of your life beside you. 
How could you possibly remember what food you ate?
© March 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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Favorite Literary Character by Gillian

This one took up a chunk of thinking time. With little trouble I can come up with many literary characters I love for many different reasons: I empathize with them, they make me laugh, they express themselves brilliantly, they make me cry. So first of all it depends whether the actual topic is a favorite character, as in one of many, or my favorite, as in one and only. I decided on the latter, which of course makes it a much more challenging pick. I next tried to get a clearer vision than my own as to the exact meaning of “literature,” but found that most definitions seem as loose, fluid, and confused as mine and so concluded it means just about anything that anyone has written, ever, about anything.

My eventual choice I find to be more than a little embarrassing. In fact coming out with it is a bit like coming out of the closet; a bit scary, unsure of acceptance. Fears of rejection or ridicule abound. I fear you expect more of me. You perhaps are awaiting the introduction of some obscure character from some equally obscure piece of writing which has rarely crossed The Pond, and in those rare cases only to lodge itself in still more obscure ivory towers of Academe. Or maybe someone extremely funny, created by Kingsley Amis or Hilaire Belloc. Or some delightful female creation out of Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf. Or someone in one of those gritty novels by Ruark or Hemingway. Or a real person writing with true courage, such as Anne Frank and Paul Monette, or authors out to change the world like Rachel Carson or Mary Pipher, who wrote a book actually titled, Writing to Change the World.

The choices are endless, and all good. But I rejected them all.

One of the problems is that my very favorite changes all the time. I read a new book and one of the characters in it becomes my favorite, but pretty soon another from yet another new book replaces him or her. My one and only very favorite, then, has to be one who has stuck with me; every time I encounter that character, it is still my favorite. If I simply remember it, it is my favorite. And I could only, then, looking at it like that, think of one. I have loved this character since my childhood, and have never lost that love. Even movie and TV portrayals have not diminished it.

And, yes, dammit, it is like coming out. So I’m not ashamed, I’m not embarrassed, I can love whoever I want, and I will not apologize for my love, nor will I deny it. I shout it from the rooftops for all the world to hear —–

MY FAVORITE LITERARY CHARACTER IS ……. WINNIE the POOH!!!

OK, OK, I’m sure it’s really my inner child that loves him, and why not? One of the many Pooh books, and I don’t know which, is the first book I remember having read to me. I cuddled on my mother’s knee and jabbed a finger and squealed at the delightful illustrations and headed off with my buddy Pooh for adventures in Hundred Acre Wood, though I’m sure I had no idea what a hundred acres would be like. (Come to that, I still don’t!) That particular book was just wonderfully illustrated, and I’m sure that’s why my inner kid fell in love with Pooh Bear.

I mean, what’s not to love in an androgynous, vaguely ursine creature of indeterminate age, whose height of ambition is to suck down the very last drop of honey in the pot and then go to sleep, and whose closest approach to an expletive is, “Oh bother!”

Pooh portrays the the very height of non-ambition, and his tiny bear-brain is certainly not very active. He trails along with his wonderfully entertaining friends, seeking a spot to nap or consume more honey or both. And his friends are all such exquisite characters, each depicted so that the reader inevitably reacts with, oh I know someone just like that! Take Tigger, for instance. He bounds and bounces and is never still for a moment. He overflows with zest and zeal, bouncing off this way and that, never thinking first, and bouncing into endless troubles. He bounces right through the ice on the lake and Pooh et al have to go to the rescue; likewise when he bounces right up into a big tree or into a raging river. His friends are tired of always having to rescue him and wish he would occasionally take time out for a little thought before taking his next big bounce. But when, in one book, Tigger loses his bounce, he just isn’t the same old Tigger they know and love, and they are all delighted when his bounce eventually returns. Now don’t we all know someone like that?

There’s Mrs. Roo, mother of Kanga. She’s the quintessential mother everyone wants for their own. Soft-spoken, never issuing a reprimand stronger than, “Oh dear!” she is always on hand with milk and fresh-baked cookies, and of course toast and honey, or just honey, for Pooh.

Then there’s Eeyore, most definitely a glass-half-empty kinda donkey. He trails dejectedly at the back of the pack and rarely intones anything more significant then, “Oh well, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

In my childhood book, the wonderful illustrations brought these and many more characters to life in a time preceding mass animation. Pooh was illustrated dozing at the bottom of page four, waking up on page five, ambling along the bottom of pages six through ten, then, having caught up with the narrative, dozing at the bottom of page eleven. Later, on page fourteen, he was depicted climbing a ladder to the top of the page fifteen where he appeared again in the story, sucked another pot of honey dry, and promptly fell asleep on line two. Meanwhile, Tigger had bounced off to page twenty, way ahead of the story, and bounded up above the top line and back down below the bottom, up and down across the page while he impatiently waited for the others to catch up with him.

I don’t know how many 21st century children read Winnie the Pooh. Maybe they play computer games or enter chat rooms instead. If so, I think they miss out on something warm and wonderful. Winnie the Pooh and his assorted anthropomorphic friends make me smile even now, and provide me with that deep warm glow inside that isn’t always easy to acquire in adulthood. I still read the books, occasionally, and still delight in them, although I do try not to jab my finger at the illustrations and squeal with joy as I once did. I also watch the animated versions of Milne’s stories on TV, because by some miracle, to me at least, they have not ruined but rather enhanced my own version of the characters. Pooh Bear has filled me with warm fuzzies for seventy years. How can he not qualify as my favorite literary character?

April 19, 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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Magic by Gillian

Tossing this topic around in my head, I consistently found myself humming that tune from West Side Story, I like to be in America, OK by me in America.

When it finally pushed into my consciousness, I realized that my subconscious was telling me something (as, of course, it always is!) Coming to, being in, America. That is magic. It has been for so many people for so many years. I am using the word America, here, the same way it was used in the movie, to mean the United States; politically incorrect, I was always taught, as America North and South encompasses many countries, but nevertheless that is how it was used in that particular song.

Now, almost half a century since I first set foot on American soil, I can still feel the magic I felt then. And I wasn’t a refugee escaping political persecution, or poverty, or violence. At worst, I was simply looking for a better life than was then on offer in a struggling, and still, in many ways war torn, Europe.

I stepped onto Pier 41, I think it was, off the ocean liner Queen Elisabeth, on a cold, drizzzly, October morning, and felt the magic. This was where I was supposed to be! Not where I wanted to be, I had no experience to tell me that, I had been here ten seconds, but where I was meant to be. I truly felt it in my inner self, as if my soul had somehow been misplaced in a body born elsewhere, when clearly my soul belonged here. I can’t explain that feeling, and I don’t know if all or most immigrants feel that way or if I am the only one. I only know that it was clear to me, and that I still feel it.
After fifty years, of course I recognize that there is much Black Magic abroad in the country; that all is not well, at least as I see it, with the good old U.S. of A. But I knew it then. President Kennedy had recently been assassinated. Oh yes, I knew there was a Dark Side. And since then, in my opinion, the Dark Side has become darker and more insidious; or perhaps I have just become more aware. But my place, my belonging, has nothing to do with intellectual processes. It is simply my soul, whatever that word may mean, knowing where I belong.

August 2013

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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One Summer Afternoon by Gillian

Betsy and I sat on our patio sipping our afternoon tea. It was an idyllic afternoon. The sun shone from a clear Colorado blue sky and the late summer flowers glowed gold in its reflection, while a few late hummingbirds buzzed the feeder. It was very quiet, with little traffic and few people about. It was one of those times the poet Robert Browning must have had in mind when he wrote that God is in His Heaven, and all’s right with the world.

It was September the 11th, 2001. Sitting on the peaceful, peace-filled, patio, we couldn’t seem to come to grips with the reality of what had happened, was happening, in New York. We, like everyone else, had been glued to the TV, watching in horror as events unfolded. Then we switched it off and it simply went away. And we sat outside, in our silent oasis, and tried to believe, or not to believe, what we had just seen. We wanted to go back in, turn on the TV, and see cheerful mindless commercials followed by the credits rolling as the awful movie we had been watching came to an end. But that was not to be.

That day changed this country, and us, in so many ways. We gave away our rights and freedoms in exchange for promises of a security that can never be a reality. But the changes we wrought on other countries half a world away were so much more, and so much worse.

After the horrors of the 2013 Boston Marathon, an editorial in an Afghanistan newspaper said, and I’m paraphrasing to the best of my memory, here, Welcome to Our World. Welcome to the fear, and the reality, we live with every day. Where will your drones strike next, and how many innocent people will be maimed and die, and how will we try to make sense of it?

My dream for the world is that it may be filled with September Colorado afternoons rather than September New York mornings. But why is that so hard to imagine?

© June 2013

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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What’s Your Sign? by Gillian


I’m a sign of the times.

I am a woman with more freedom than any previous generation in the history of humankind.

I have freedom of expression, and self-determination of my life, which women of the past could scarcely dream of.

I vote, a privilege not extended to all women in the U.S. until 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, although in Colorado, women gained the right to vote in 1893.

I have complete control over my own property, a privilege not extended to American women until 1900.

I can even purchase my own property, a privilege I was astonished to find not extended to me in 1966. I had a good job and determined to buy a house; a very modest, two-bedroom frame house, the likes of which have mostly become “scrape-offs” in recent years. However, I found that although I could qualify with my income, I could not get a loan. This refusal certainly had nothing to do with my being a lesbian; it would take another 20 years for ME to figure that one out! It was because …. What would happen if I became pregnant? As an unmarried woman I had no one to pick up my debts when I had to quit work. (Hey, perhaps being a lesbian might actually have been an advantage!) Poor innocent little ol’ me. I had no idea that only one in a thousand women (0.1%) owned homes in 1960, but, WOW, by 1970 we zoomed all the way up to a shaky two in a thousand (0.2%). Currently, single women are around 20% of homebuyers while single men account for only 10%.

Just in my lifetime, how things have changed. I own my home, I own and drive my car, I manage my own money. I haven’t worn a skirt since I retired; I am free to follow fashion or ignore it. I am free to follow social mores or ignore them.

I talk about religion and politics, very much verboten in my youth, and, still worse, about sex!

I have lived with my beautiful Betsy for over 25 years. Far from causing us to live in fear, this fact does not seem to faze anyone among our acquaintances, friends, and families. And now, in July 2013, neither does it, according to the Supreme Court, threaten all those straight marriages out there. Which, by the way, are failing at a rate exceeding 50%.

Like many older people, I get a bit curmudgeonly at times, bemoaning today’s world and muttering on about how things are not what they used to be.

How happy I should be that they are not!

I have lived, and am living, in the best possible time.

I am indeed, and delighted to be, a sign of the times.

© 6 July 1913 

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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Do I Have Your Number…. ?? by Gillian

Do I have your number? No, I do not mean your phone number! I use the phrase in the way we say, or just think to ourselves, ‘Oh yes, I’ve got your number!’ meaning ‘Oh yes, I know what you are after, I know what is going on here, I know what you think and what you want; I know what you are about. I know who you are.

So, in that sense, do I have your number? Do all or any of you have mine? We have shared many of our most heartfelt emotions, thoughts, and ideas, over the last two or three years. We have held nothing back. We have laughed and cried together. We have hidden nothing from each other.

Still, I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. It makes me wonder if really deeply knowing someone, completely understanding them, is actually possible. Surely very few, if any, family members truly know each other, even those who consider themselves to be very close. After twenty-six years together, and with considerable help and spiritual guidance from such people as Eckhart Tolle, do Betsy and I really really know each other? Of course not. We still struggle to understand each other every single day, with mixed results.

But how can I even dream of a deep and flawless understanding of any other person when I still don’t know my own self? I try. I look deeply inside myself and try to interpret correctly what I find there, but I don’t always get it right. After all these years, I can still surprise, perhaps even shock, myself.

Some time ago our group’s topic for the week was Marriage. Some of you remember that my piece had the recurring theme: “marriage doesn’t freakin’ work!” I questioned why we, the GLBT community, are so determined to jump onto this faltering band-wagon.

Last week came the staggering announcement that the IRS now recognizes same-sex marriages. Perhaps Betsy and I should consider marriage, after all. But only, I firmly lectured my inner self, for purely fiscal reasons. After all, I insisted, we had no emotional need for any such thing. We are as committed to each other and our relationship as any two people could ever be, and we don’t need any official sanction to help us along.

So why on earth did I find myself, close to tears, asking Betsy if she would consider marrying me? In fact, I became so obsessed with the idea that I kept on asking. I guess I couldn’t quite believe the answer. Finally the poor beleaguered woman laughed,

“You’ve asked me three times and I’ve told you ‘yes’ three times. OK?”

Not the most romantic response, but I’ve finally got it; the answer is YES!

I am completely taken by surprise to find myself so thrilled at this that I feel almost sick with excitement, something we do not experience too frequently once we leave the uninhibited emotions of childhood behind us. Suddenly this is all about love and nothing about money; much more peering inside myself to be done!

No, I don’t have your number. I don’t even have my own!

September 2013

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.