Tag: Gillian

Posted on

Birds, by Gillian

What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird?

David Attenborough

I have always loved birds. I love their colors: their grace: their amusing antics: and , in many but not all cases, their melodious voices. I love the effortless way they ride the airwaves. I love the way they cock their heads to look at me through curious little black eyes.

I first learned to appreciate them, and many other things in our natural world, through my aunt and my mother. Then in elementary school I learned to identify a dozen or so of the most common local birds from pictures. From there we progressed to coloring in outline shapes of these same birds, and thence to drawing them ourselves freehand and then adding crayon or paint. I am happy to say that none of my efforts have survived, as I’m sure my attempts were pretty dismal. But never mind – I learned so much from trying.

I don’t know the details of the current British Elementary School System, but I seriously doubt that bird identification looms large. In my day, before the advent of TV and expensive trips to distant places, with little more than the occasional radio program or book to divert us, I think we paid, and were expected to pay, much closer attention to the world immediately around us.

Anyway, between family and school, I formed an early fascination with birds. Somewhere along the lines my parents gave me a bird book for Xmas, and I began trying to identify some of the rarer birds I was not so familiar with. I kept this up for most of my life, always taking a bird book with me on vacations and even on business trips. The birds don’t care why I’m there, after all. I was never quite sufficiently serious to succumb to the tyranny of that ‘Life List’ which all ‘real’ birders carry. Some of them become utterly obsessive to the extent of making special trips to likely places at likely times to see the birds without a triumphant X beside their names on ‘The List’. They go out at four in the morning in the pouring rain, accompanied by cloud of excited mosquitoes, in the hope of glimpsing the Crested Weewee so they can legitimately add that definitive X. No! I’m never going to be one of them. If I had a Life List I’d most likely cheat, anyway. I’d open one eye at the crack of dawn, see rain streaming down the window and imagine all those mosquito bites and snuggle back under the blankets. ‘Let’s not and say we did,’ I would shrug to myself, and probably put down a big firm X regardless. Or, on the search for the rare Lesser Spotted Peterpecker I would claim the sighting while knowing full well that in fact I had seen the much commoner Greater Spotted Pussygrabber.

I did go as far as trying to photograph an unfamiliar bird and check it out in the bird book when I eventually got the photos developed, but really! Can you even remember what it was like before zoom lenses? To snap a tiny bird with an old Box Brownie you’d have to be about two feet away and glue its feet to the branch! With a zoom lens chances were better, but still I wasted a fortune on blurry shots and/or too many versions of the same bird because I wouldn’t know until days or weeks later whether the previous dozen shots were any good.

Then along came the true gift to all photography, digital cameras. At first I admit I was a bit obsessive, snapping away at every bird I saw. But, you know, it was almost too easy! So I took to photographing birds in flight; much more challenging but still relatively easy with a good camera. After all, it only takes one good shot. The other fifty cost nothing and just go in the trash. And that’s the digital trash, of course, so I no longer even end up with a plastic bag full of 4 x 6 visions of blurry flapping wings or, more often, an empty sky.

My next obsession was with online printing. I found discounts for wall-size prints, prints on metal, on glass, on wood, and made to look like paintings. I gave gifts of them until everyone cringed and no-one chose mine in any gift exchange. I covered the walls of our house with them until my poor Beautiful Betsy howled enough!

Then I turned to digital photo books, which I devoted not entirely to birds but they usually featured prominently. These books greatly thrilled me at first but now languish under dust in the bookcase, rarely opened.

Finally, I am free! Free to enjoy birds as I once did. I still look up the occasional one in the bird book, but mostly I don’t bother because I shall immediately forget what it was, anyway. I simply enjoy the sight and sound of them. I watch in delight as the magpies play their silly games with the squirrels, as the chickadees flit so effortlessly from branch to branch, as the seabirds soar. I listen with joy to the trill of the robins and finches as they greet the spring. I am no longer driven to do anything more. Sometimes, growing older can be such a blessing!

© January 2018

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Posted on

Anxious Moments, by Gillian

This topic started badly. I found myself humming, endlessly, that old Perry Como hit – except I kept thinking his name was Perry Mason which did give me an anxious moment!

Anxious moments, moments we’ve been sharing ……. finally I realized, no! That was magic moments ….. but it hasn’t helped and that old tune is still going round and round in my head.

But back to anxious moments. Of course I’ve had them; plenty of them. You don’t get to my age without them do you? Even if you’re not one of the world’s natural-born worriers, which I am not. You still have anxious moments unless maybe if you’re some kind of psycho- or socio- path. Maybe they escape them. I don’t know. I don’t belong to that group either.

The thing is, I’ve already shared with this group many of my life’s anxious moments, so I will simply touch the surface of a few. And if you occasionally get a feeling of deja vu, no it’s nothing surreal, just me repeating myself – again!

Earliest memories of anxiety all revolve around my mother. Being responsible for her mother’s happiness is a burdensome thing for a little girl. I used to let her win at games, always anxious lest she should spot my subterfuge. I expressed boundless enthusiasm for the latest strange dish she cooked or peculiar garment she knitted, all of which resulted from many anxious moments for my mother. It wasn’t that my mother was just by nature incompetent, though there was a little of that, but simply that she had such limited resources due to wartime rationing. The World War Two philosophy of make do and mend was not a natural fit for her. Now of course, looking back, I am eternally grateful that these petty anxieties were the worst inflicted upon us at a time when so many had so very much more to worry about.

As rationing diminished after the war, new anxieties over my mother’s happiness arose. Things which she remembered from the pre-war days with such excitement, began to reappear.

She was so thrilled to be able to introduce them into my life. I tried hard not to disappoint. For some reason, pop (which my mother referred to quaintly as a ‘fizzy drink’) and ice cream returned, at least to our neck of the woods, at the same time. Mum and I stood in line forever, she barely able to contain her excitement at this new and wonderful experience about to come my way, and finally we got a little table in the crowded cafe. I peered doubtfully at a blob of some dubious white substance slowly melting in my little flowered bowl, and the even less salubrious reddish-brown liquid in my glass. Lots of bubbles swam to the top of the glass where they congealed to form a scummy-looking foam rather like that sometimes floating on a neighboring farmer’s pond; or the beer my dad occasionally drank. My mother was waiting, her face aglow with anticipation. I spooned a large helping of ice cream into my mouth and, feigning great enthusiasm, followed it immediately with a big gulp of Coke. Unaccustomed to ‘fizzy drinks’, the effervescence caught me by surprise. My little mouth let out a big gasp, and a mixture of ice cream and pop shot into my wind pipe whence shortly after it escaped down my nose to return, in ugly drips, to my little flowered bowl. I coughed loudly. I couldn’t get my breath. I was scared and I started to cry. The anticipation on Mum’s face turned to horror. Not, I understood even at that young age, for fear I might choke and die, which indeed was my fear at that moment, but because we were making a scene! Everyone in the cafe was looking. Those still lining up outside craned their necks to see and asked each other what was happening. My mother, absolutely mortified, picked me up and scuttled outside and away as fast as she could go. I coughed and hiccuped and sobbed my way home, devoured by guilt that I had so failed to bring her happiness.

Decades later, after my dad died, I had sleepless nights of anxiety over my mother trying to cope all alone in our old cold damp house with no heating except for the coal fire, and with few neighbors. It was with great relief that I finally persuaded her to move into assisted living in the local town, but even after her physical safety was pretty well covered, I still fretted anxiously over her psychological health. While she lived, I was never able to free myself of that responsibility I felt for her happiness, however illogical.

Other anxieties throughout my life have never reached anything like the strength of those concerning my mother. See, I can’t even stop writing about it. I said I would skim over my anxieties and immediately got all bogged down in those tales of my strange dynamic with Mum.

The rest I really can touch lightly upon.

A pang of anxiety on my first day of work at IBM. I’d be working on bombs, they said. Ever a pacifist, from centuries of Quaker heritage, I was horrified. Who knew IBM made bombs? It was with great relief that I saw it in writing as BOMs without the second b and learned that it meant Basic Operational Memory.

All the inevitable anxieties over raising children, in my case made in some ways less and others more by them being my step-children. Endless anxieties over the eldest. I loved the boy. I loved the man. But his teenage alcoholism sent him into a fast-forward path to a heartbreakingly early death at the age of fifty. I still grieve.

Anxieties over children never really go away even if, by now, they are not only parents but grandparents themselves. Should I have anxiety for my great-grandchildren in this insane world?

I cannot. I cannot picture what exactly my anxiety should encompass. For better or worse, their lives will be so very different from ours.

A touch of the anxieties we all feel as we age and future joys such as cancer, stroke, dementia and nursing homes rear up on the horizon, looming ever larger. But I find these are in truth minor anxieties. We’re all gonna’ go, sometime, someway!

In fact, as I age, I seem to have lost most of my middle-of-the-road kind of anxieties, which were mostly about others. The anxious moments which stay with me are either very small and completely self-centered, or over the Big Picture.

My tiny personal anxieties really do not loom large in my life. I don’t watch Betsy’s tennis matches because they give me occasional anxious moments; not because I care if she wins or loses but because I know she does. I get anxious in a way I never did in my younger days when i have to negotiate unfamiliar traffic patters. I’m always anxious not to be late so I arrive to almost everything half an our early.

If any anxieties keep me awake at night, which would be rare, they encompass the Big Picture. What can we really do about climate change? What can we really do about our President’s insane 4:00 a.m. tweets? How do we get our country back onto something like a sane path?

I find I can just let it all go. I play my small part. It’s all I can do. Anxious moments accomplish nothing. I hope to give them up completely.

© June 2017

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Posted on

Evil, by Gillian

I’m just sitting here gazing blankly at an equally blank page. I can’t seem to get started with this one. The basic problem is, like all of you I try to relate the topic of the week to some personal history, and I have none regarding evil. I can’t say I have ever met, or even had a passing remote acquaintance with, anyone I could ever see as evil.

Sure, I know of people who are frequently described as evil – Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Osama Bin Laden, Charles Manson, Kim Il-sung and now Kim Jong-Il, Saddam Hussein; on and on and on. I have on not so rare occasions called The Tangerine Tyrant, and all who sail with him, evil. But I do not know any of them personally. Neither, come to that, do I want to. I must have been touched, at least indirectly, by Hitler, but I was too young to connect the dots.

And, just as I write this, it occurs to me that evil, and/or the direct results of it, seem to be creeping ever closer. With madmen on both sides of the Pacific, some kind of horrific confrontation between The U.S. and North Korea looms ever larger. Meanwhile, our country drifts rudderless on international waters with no-one at the helm. Our military, overburdened with the weight of international policy, now abdicated by Trump, in addition to traditional military decisions, flounders. While here at home the evildoers threaten ordinary hard-working law-abiding citizens – the vast majority of us, in fact – with cruel and unusual punishments: worsening working conditions, decreasing environmental protections leading, quite probably, to increased sickness at a time when they are taking away our healthcare. Utter madness. Or evil.

I suspect they are frequently entwined.

And does it matter? It is what these people we choose to call evil do which is evil. Whether the perpetrators are evil themselves, or just crazy, or have a belief system very different from our own, is not important; at least, not unless I need, for my own satisfaction, to judge them. In that case, what it is which causes them to do things which I judge to be evil might be important. I might be robbed of my righteous anger, or seething hatred, of the Orange Ogre if I had to accept that he is mentally ill, or was severely traumatized as a child. Personally, I have no intention of going there. I know, from long experience of trying, that I am incapable of getting inside the heads of those who hold attitudes and beliefs very different from mine. I no longer try. For whatever reason, they are what they are. I cannot change them. All I can do is fight back, not against the person but against the evil that they do. As Edmund Burke so famously said, all it takes for evil to triumph is for the good to do nothing.

My second responsibility is to myself; my own sanity. I must not allow anger to take over. It will destroy me. It’s a completely negative emotion with no positive outcome. Buddha said many wise things about anger, as he did about so many things.

You will not be punished for your anger, he says, but by your anger.

He also says,

Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

Someone – other than Buddha but apparently anonymous, maintained,

Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

Evil, alas with greater odds than the peace which passes all understanding, will probably be with us and remain with us always. If I fight it every way I can while keeping myself free of the clutches of anger, I will say I have done my job. And, seeing that I have fallen once more into quotations, as I so often do to save further effort of original thought, I will try to keep Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy in mind –

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.

© June 2017

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Posted on

Changes I would like to see, by Gillian

There are plenty I’m reminded of every time I look in a mirror! This scraggly old turkey-neck could lose some wrinkles to start with. The bags under the eyes could disappear along with the gray hair, and there could simply be … well …. less of me. Many pounds less of me. But I have no intention of buying overpriced skin cream nor coloring my hair, and seem quite incapable of taking either diet or exercise too seriously, so I suspect the changes I see in the mirror will be those I would rather not see. On the other hand, the things I don’t see in the mirror, those things which make up my inner self, my soul, however you choose to think of it, I am pretty happy with. My psyche seems to be doing OK and actually going in the right direction, and I provide as much spiritual help as I can give it. I think that is why I don’t worry much about the negatives offered up by the mirror. They just do not seem important.

Looking out at the world through plain glass, however, is a very different matter. Perhaps because I so love taking photographs myself, some of the memories burned into my brain come in the form of photos I have seen over a lifetime. And they mostly represent things I hope never to see again. For humanity, that is the change I would like to see; simply never to see such things again. Never again to see photos of beautiful old cities carpet-bombed in the way The Allies punished Dresden, managing to kill an estimated 135,000 people in one nightmare nigh. I hope never again to see photos of thousands of refugee children, as in post World War Two Europe. The photos were posted in the hope that someone would recognize these poor tattered, shattered, bodies and souls, and return them to someone who loved them. I would like to see a world where we don’t look at photos of a little naked girl running from the napalm destruction of all she knows. The Siege of Sarajevo’s 20th anniversary was memorialized in 2012. Empty red chairs were set out in the main street, symbolizing 11,541 victims of the war. 643 of the chairs were small, representing the slain children. On some of them, during the day-long event, passers-by left teddy bears, little plastic cars, other toys or candy. I hope never to see a picture like that again. At one Storytime last year I passed around a photo I think says it all about the horror that is now Syria; a tiny little child, obviously near death from starvation, being eyes greedily by a hungry vulture. I won’t inflict it on you again today, but it still haunts me.

I very much want to see a changed world in which such terrible photographs represent an awful past from which we have recovered and moved on. Somehow I doubt that. In fact at this time, with two madmen with their fingers on red buttons, it seems less likely than ever. Being a political pessimist ain’t easy. And so, I’m back to me again. I started out saying I was pretty happy with the way I feel inside. But should I be seeking to change, at the very least, my political pessimism? No, I don’t think so. If I were a real true pessimist that might be different; it must surely be depressing always to expect the worst from life. But being a political pessimist I really believe brings me peace. It’s very much the philosophy of hope for the best but prepare for the worst which I find to be very practical political advice. I found a wonderful quote from Thomas Hardy, who said, “And as I am surely approaching that infamous stage of life, second childhood, I’m sure I’m much better off sticking with child’s play.”

© January 2018

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Posted on

Will-o’-the Wisp, by Gillian

For the first few decades of my life, of course, my own personal – very personal – will-o’-the-wisp was my attempt to catch and then kill whatever this very vaguely-defined ‘thing’ was which was ‘wrong with me’. But, no, that wasn’t right. I honestly did not feel that there was anything wrong with me; in which case the problem must lie with the boys, and then men, that I knew. If I felt no desire for any of them, either in the role of a quickie or a lifetime lover, then there was something wrong with them! So rather than search for the thing which did exist, what it was which made me different, I switched to chasing that real will-o’-the-wisp, this magical ‘right’ man.The search took me from home to college, from country to city, from country to country. When, in an eventual flash of clarity, the mystery was solved, I was freed from the chase, but by then was married to a man who could never, I finally understood, solve my problem.

The original meaning of will-o’-the-wisp is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travelers at night, especially over bogs, swamps, or marshes. It resembles a flickering lamp and is said to recede if approached, drawing travelers into the dangerous marshes. Certainly, in marrying a man when deep in my being I knew I should not, I was following a ghost light into tricky emotional swampland. Having lost my path I hurt innocent people along the way, and I shall always regret that. But on occasion we all find ourselves blundering around in the dark, following strange lights. And I don’t always hear my aunt’s voice warning me,

‘Nay, Lass, tha’s no-but a will o’ ‘t- wisp!’

© March 2018

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.
Posted on

Tears, by Gillian

I saw my father cry three times.

When I was four or five we had a tiny 6-weeks-old kitten. He was all black, and sadly found a shaggy black rug a cozy place to sleep. My mother, no idea he was there, stepped right on him. We heard the terrible sound of crunching tiny bones. Tears were running down my dad’s face as he scooped up the screaming little body to take it outside and put an end to its suffering.

Neither my mother nor I cried.

When our old dog, for years Dad’s constant companion, died, my dad cried.

Neither my mother nor I cried.

For very different reasons neither of us cried. I, even as a child, somehow was playing a part; not being the real me. So, until the time I came out to myself in my early forties, when I did finally become the real me and no longer was simply an actor on life’s stage, I felt very little real emotion. I do not remember ever crying as a child.

My mother never got over losing two children, ages two and four, before I was born. She shut down. She refused to let herself feel any more personal sorrow. She did cry, quite frequently, but never over anything personal; anything really in her life. The first time I remember her doing this was when horrific newspaper photographs accompanied the stories of Allied troops liberating Hitler’s death camps; and why not, that was plenty to cry about. But she also cried at sad plays on the radio, or newspaper tales of abused animals or injured children – anything not actually personal to her. The few times I hurt myself pretty badly, as children do, neither of us cried.

But my dad had tears in his eyes when he carried a toddler me home from a pretty bad fall.

The third time I saw my dad actually cry was after I had come out. I was the authentic me. I had been back to England for a visit and when the day to leave arrived, Dad drove me to the train. As it pulled out of the station and I leaned out of the window to wave, I saw that he was crying. One of several things over my lifetime that I would rather not have seen, but you cannot unsee things.

I sobbed all the way to London. How much easier my former life spent playing a part had been, feeling emotions at best superficially.

Now, I cry at so many things, tears of sorrow or tears of joy; though tears do not necessarily flow. I find the feelings to be much the same whether in fact I literally cry, or cry just on the inside. I cried at the sight of The White House lit up in rainbow colors after The Supreme Court ruled on behalf of Marriage Equality.

I cried for the loss of Stephen and Randy, of this group, as I cry for every loss of yet another friend. I even cry when friends’ pets die.

I cry for our country which currently feels like one more loss, as I cry for the planet as we know it, which is another.

But I have no regrets for my tears. Having lived for so long without them, I welcome them. I almost revel in them; celebrate them. They serve to remind me, I am really me!

© October 2017

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Posted on

Finding My Voice, by Gillian

Finding my voice has never been difficult for me. Finding it when I should be losing it is what has always been my problem. From my early school days on, if a group of us were somewhere we should not be or doing something we should not do, I was always the one who got caught. My voice just naturally carries, so even if no-one witnessed our misbehavior, someone was sure to identify my voice and name me as one of the otherwise unidentified miscreants.

For a shamefully long time I failed to learn from this the obvious advantage of keeping my mouth shut! I was a fount of firm opinions, and rarely failed to voice them. This led to many arguments, a considerable number of which I lost because I tended to find my voice without the necessary accompaniment of engaging my brain. Later I would often ask myself, why on earth would you say that? What in the world were you thinking? I failed to answer myself, as I should have, by saying, that’s the problem isn’t it? You were not thinking.

I added to my difficulties by consistently finding my voice when I was angry; and if there ever is a time to lose your voice, that is it. But no, my voice would be off, seemingly of it’s own, volition, speaking whatever words it wanted without reference to me, and most certainly not to my brain which remained silent except occasionally to mumble indistinctly and very sotto voce about big mistakes and future regrets. I could not begin to count how many times I was forced into abject apologies the following day. (I can never decide whether this means I completely flunk steps 8, 9, and possibly 10 of Alcoholics Anonymous, or possibly I have already completed them with flying colors. Suspecting the former must be why I doggedly remain absent from AA.)

However, despite my lack of assistance from AA, I did eventually accept that I needed to change my ways, and for this I needed help. I turned for this to Spirituality. I have been especially blessed in my efforts to follow this path in that my Beautiful Betsy accompanies me. Finding your way along an unfamiliar and often difficult trail is always easier with a companion rather than having to go it alone – especially when that companion is also your soul-mate and the love of your life. Together we have read many books, joined Spirituality groups, listened to CDs and watched wonderfully articulate guests on Oprah’s TV series, Supers Soul Sunday.

One of the early books we read, though more self-help in general than Spirituality, contained simple advise I have never forgotten. Remember to ask yourself from time to time, the author says, why am I talking? I find this the ultimate relaxation tool for group situations. Can’t get a word in? Not familiar with, or no interest in, the topic? Relax. Just listen. You have no need to talk.

I have become a much more peaceful person, both for others to be around and within myself, since I started down the path of Spirituality. Anger is almost a thing of my past, and when it does overcome me at least I no longer find my voice, at least until I have thought through what I really need to say and how I need to say it. I don’t mean to make it sound easy. Given our current socio-political situation in this country, I struggle with the extent to which I should in fact control my anger. I know that in theory I should negate the anger and replace it with calm, positive, action. But is there never a time when anger is justified? Ah, I still have a lot of work to do. Spirituality, like so many things, requires eternal vigilance. And that, in turn, requires something so important to you that you never question the need to pay it constant attention. I have found that in Spirituality. I never intend to go back to the days of finding my voice when I should be losing it.

© October 2017

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Posted on

Don’t, by Gillian

My mother was the one who instructed me on the do’s and more specifically the don’t’s of life. Throughout my youth they dropped effortlessly from her lips with great frequency.

“Gillian,” (always a mark of displeasure when she used my whole name rather than the usual ‘Gill’), frequently followed by a couple of disapproving tsk tsk’s,

“Please,” (emphasized to indicate that her severely-challenged patience was near it’s breaking point),

“Don’t do that!”

Mostly followed by,

“What will the neighbors think?” (managing to ignore completely the fact that in actuality we had no neighbors close enough to see me picking my nose or scratching my thigh or hitching up my skirt to straddle the fence or whatever this particular ‘that’ was. No human ones anyway, and the sheep, no matter what you may think of them, are not ones to pass judgement. Had I ever pointed out that basic fact, I’m sure she would have replied,

“Some passer-by then,” managing to ignore the rarity of that, too.

Of course those same fictitious persons must also be protected from hearing the unacceptable.

‘Don’t shout, dear,” she would say, almost in a whisper, thereby proving her point.

“I’m only three feet away. The neighbors will think we are arguing.”

“Do turn that awful noise down, please!” she implored as I turned up the radio volume for my beloved Beatles. “I don’t want the neighbors knowing you listen to that dreadful stuff”

My poor mother, life was simply loaded with pitfalls. If she wasn’t protecting us from the negative judgment of the non-existent neighbors, she was protecting us from the negative judgment of fate itself.

“Oh, don’t walk under there!” she would grab me to steer me around the leaning ladder.

“Stop! Stop!” she would cry out in alarm if a black cat – and there were many loose cats around in those days – threatened to cross our path.

If we saw a lone magpie we would gaze around anxiously for another. Where was it? There must be one! as she murmured,

“One for sorrow, two for joy.”

The only judgement which apparently held no fear for my mother was that from above. She never once even suggested that anything she or I might do would incur any negative judgement from The Almighty. The God she offered me was a loving God, not one of wrath. For that I am forever grateful. In my eyes it more than compensates for any petty fears I still hang on to, such as searching relentlessly for that second magpie. I confess that I still do that, if at least a little tongue in cheek. My efforts remain a bit unsettled because I am unsure of the rules. When does the Statute of Limitations expire on that other bird? Is it actually vital to see both birds together? Or is an hour later OK? What if I successfully spot number two later but on the same day? The same week? Someone once asked me, if I could spend five minutes with my mother now, what would I want to ask her. Crazily what immediately leapt to mind was that damn bird. Quick, Mum, tell me rules of the two magpies.

It was inevitable, of course, that my dead mother was hovering around, peering over my shoulder, when I decided I had to come out to the world. Gillian, what will the neighbors think? Indeed!

No, for all her earthly warnings, I have no concern about any Heavenly fears. If by some remote, as it seems to me, chance that she is actually aware of my life as it is today, she will not condemn, she will not fear, she will not scold. If she knows everything, then she understands and accepts everything. She is free of fear. She is done with don’t. And so am I!

© May 2017

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

Posted on

Resist, by Gillian

As we get older we tend to deal less well with change. We don’t like it. Unfortunately, at this stage of life, changes are all too frequently thrust upon us by forces we are unable to resist.
But I tend to see myself as someone who has never liked change – very much a status quo kind of person, even when I was younger. Thinking about this topic for today, I am forced to wonder why I see myself that way. I left home and went away to college, I emigrated to another country, I got married and then divorced. Finally, I completely changed my vision of myself by accepting and then embracing my lesbianism, embarking upon a lifetime commitment, and eventually marriage, to another woman. I have had something like twenty different addresses throughout my life. This does not really sound like someone who resists change.
Perhaps in fact what I did was fail to resist change. I didn’t initiate it. I didn’t own it. I simply went with the flow, falling in with the plans of others. It was not until I came out. morphing into the real me, that I truly began to take responsibility for my own life. Coming out in itself was, of course, my first and greatest resistance. There can be little more challenging than pushing back against your very self, or at least the self you always thought you were.
Ever after that sea change in my mid-forties, I have been much more cognizant of, and proactive about, change. Not all change is good, not all change is bad. Sometimes we resist change, sometimes we resist remaining the same. And, inevitably, we can never all agree on which is which. Change can also be very deceptive. The voters who gave the world both Trump and Brexit, insisted they were voting for change. In fact, they were for the most part resisting change, or perhaps hoping for things to start moving back in time, to return to a former world, which is change of a sort I suppose. Trump supporters want to return to a time of high-wage car factories; a land where coal is king. Brexit supporters hunger for the days when the British invaded other countries, rather than the people of those countries surging into Britain. Britain first. America first. In both countries, there are large segments of the population resisting any kind of positive, forward-moving change.
But it all depends, of course, on what your own vision is of positive change. I feel like I have been resisting, pushing back, against changes I thought to be negative all my life. Though, as I said before, in my earlier life I fear I did very little thinking, and more especially feeling, for myself. At least I can say, in my own defense, that I chose those I followed along with, very wisely. All the protests I took part in then are the same ones I would choose now, now I am the real me. I resisted nuclear missiles both in the UK and later in the US. I protested against the Vietnam war for what feels like forever. I marched for support of AIDS victims for another forever.
Now I am resisting as I have never resisted before. And now it is I who resist change. I resist Trump’s evil changes not only in protest marches but with daily actions; phone calls and e-mails dispatched at a rate I never before dreamed of. Since election day 2016 I feel that I am living some awful nightmare from which, every day, I am ready to wake up. I just hope this particular resistance is not yet another of those forevers.
© March 2017 
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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.
Posted on

Maps, by Gillian

I have so many maps that I had thought I would not write anything and just do a show and tell. But once I started going through the collection I found myself transported immediately away on endless waves of memory. Map-memory. Rather like muscle memory in the way it seemed to operate quite outside of any conscious thought. Why had I not anticipated this? I’m not sure
.
Much as I have always loved maps, I guess I never saw them as anything to inspire emotion. But why ever not? Now I find they wrap me in memories in a way that even old photographs do not; perhaps simply because I look at the old photos from time to time, whereas the maps have just languished in a box, untouched for years other than once in a while when I open the box and toss in a couple more maps for the collection.
There are old ‘Tourists & Cyclists’ maps of various parts of Britain dating from somewhere early in the twentieth century, once used by my parents riding around on Dad’s motorbike in the 1920’s. One is of Shropshire, my home county. It is one of the linen-backed, more expensive variety, obviously bought to last. (I stuck an arrow on it, pointing at our house!)
Then there are the common but most popular British maps, those on the one inch to one-mile scale. They were produced between 1952 and 1961 and covered every inch of the British Isles. I bought many of them for school-day, and later college, hikes. They were produced in great detail and made it almost impossible to get lost.
Even more detailed was the series, published around the same time as the one inch to the mile, was the one mile to 2 1/2 inches; maps so detailed they showed every single building. I also bought a lot of these, largely because by this time I was getting into geology in high school and they made fossil sites easier to find. Detailed geologic maps were not common then as they are today, but I had one very generalized map of Shropshire geology which I greatly valued. Fossil finds were mainly communicated by word of mouth, so a detailed map was almost essential. Our house was, as always seems inevitable, right on the joint of two maps, but I put an arrow again. It’s right on the edge of the map above where it says ROMAN GRAVELS. There are endless old Roman sites around there. Just to the left is marked a stone circle. It is small in size, as are the stones, but nevertheless an unmistakable prehistoric stone circle. My parents and I used to picnic there quite often, it’s a beautiful, very silent, remote, spot. At least it was then. Now many tourists apparently go there in the summer. On another one is the tiny town of Bishop’s Castle, where I went to the high school marked at the crossroads. Also, clearly marked is Stone House, the old workhouse now converted to the nursing home where my mum and dad both died. At the south end of the town is the church where they are buried.
Then we come to stacks of maps that I, and then Betsy and I, have bought on our travels. They take me back with great joy to the many places we have been, but they tend to be more of the highway route variety of map and less emotive in detail than the old ones.
I love all maps, and these are a small percentage of my collection, but the old maps are special. There is somehow something surreal about seeing all these places that have loomed so large in my early life depicted so clearly before me on a long-forgotten map. I am grateful to whoever chose this topic for giving me the incentive to explore the contents of that dusty old box.
And, not for the first time, I find myself grieving for the current and future high-tech generations.  I fear they will never know the magic of an old map, tattered from overuse, with pencil arrows flowing from a scribbled teenage note, trilobite fossils here. Who, with the very best of intentions, can find magic in the memories of Siri scolding, ‘you are going in the wrong direction! Complete a U-turn immediately it is safe to do so and return to the intersection.’  Seriously lacking in any sense of history!
I have decided against naming my next baby Siri.

© 31 Mar 2017 
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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.