Tag: Gillian

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Back Seat of the Car, by Gillian

Back in the days when I was young and foolish enough to indulge in gropings in the back seats of cars, I was still young and foolish enough to be doing it with boys. By the time I was old and wise enough to figure out who I really wanted to be groping, I was old and wise enough to have a lovely bedroom available for such purposes, as did most of the gropees, so the back seat of the car held no appeal.

I can only think of one car back seat that I remember with any affection. Betsy and I were in our early days together, so it must have been in 1987 or ’88. Two younger women friends, temporarily a couple, decided to go to Santa Fe for a romantic weekend and invited us to go along. They had a lot of money, or at least spent as if they did, and at the time had a brand new Mercedes. Friday night after work they picked us up at Betsy’s house and installed us in the back of the car. It smelled deliciously of brand new upholstery; leather, of course. Who has ever caught a wonderful whiff of vinyl? The back set creaked and sighed elegantly as we settled ourselves. Surround sound speakers spilled gentle music. Ah, luxury! Speeding south on I25 heading out of Denver, a subtly disguised side panel slide open, to display an expansive cooler; electronically cooled, of course, in which nestled bottles of expensive champagne and two perfectly cooled glasses.

‘Help yourselves,’ called Jan, the driver.

‘Will either of us be driving at all?’ Betsy asked, cautiously.

‘Nope!’ came the chorus from the front.

‘We’re doing the driving. You two just have fun.’

No need to tell us twice. We sipped and snacked. The cooler also contained a selection of very expensive cheeses, and crackers. A softly-sighing little spring door opened to offered entertainment in the form of playing cards and puzzle books, this being before the days of those dreadful little overhead car TV’s, but we declined, simply sitting back to watch the night lights go by and sing along with the music. Try a night like that now, and we’d both be rolling around on that spacious back seat fast asleep. But that night we stayed well awake the entire six hours. Of course we did not realize just how drunk we were until we attempted to get out of the car upon arrival at a very swanky adobe dwelling where we crashed for a sadly short time before that blazing New Mexico sun came streaming in the window to wake us up.

Now, our old VW camper, Brunhilda, was not exactly the lap of luxury – except when compared to sleeping on the cold hard ground. The transformation of the back seat tot combine with the cargo floor into a double bed often required much tussling with stubborn metal catches that refused to release and hinges that declined to bend until the necessary level of grunting had been reached or the magic bad words yelled. But after a little blood and sweat – we were never quite driven to tears – we always succeeded, to snuggle down together for the night at least partly on the back seat. So in a sense I guess we could say we spent literally hundreds of nights on the back seat of the car; and loved every single one of them!

© 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.

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Merit Badges, by Gillian

In my misspent youth I used to think casts were Merit Badges. In my really early days, arms and legs in casts were usually associated with the wounded returning from World War Two – beyond doubt, heroes one and all. Later I connected them more with soccer and rugby injuries, the owners of which were, beyond doubt, heroes one and all. Much later in life, I came to the sad realization that many of the soccer/rugby damages were incurred not during the game but afterwards in a drunken pub brawl. So …. not heroes one and all; not all Merit Badges.

The three casts which I have had so far in my life, and I certainly hope to have no necessity for more, were most definitely not merit badges; nothing whatsoever to do with heroics.

The first, which I have written about before so will not fully detail, would at best qualify for an Inattention Badge. I earned it seven years ago, walking around a hilly campground in the flat light of dusk. I really needed to take more notice of the rocky path on which I walked, and the steep drop-off at it’s edge. But no! I peered through the early moonlight at swooping birds, and up at the scudding clouds which seemed to leap across the sky in that Wyoming wind. Crack! I heard the bone go at the same instant as I felt my foot doubling beneath me at a dangerous angle as I, helplessly, sat down firmly on it. No, not a Merit Badge, that ensuing cast.

Then three or four years ago, overzealous in a doubles ping-pong game, I propelled myself sideways at the fastest speed I could create. I was determined to make it to the far side of the room to hit that feisty little white ball right back to the far side of the table. But before I got there, my sideways-moving leading foot caught on the indoor-outdoor carpet on which we were playing and I crashed into the point where the floor meets the wall. I met both the floor and the wall. Crack! I heard that most unwelcome sound as I hit the floor and looked sadly at the rapidly-swelling wrist – the right one, of course.

‘Oh,’ I heard my voice saying, calmly, ‘I think I broke my wrist.’

No, not a Merit Badge for that cast either. I know you can’t drag your feet sideways at speed on a carpet, albeit of the indoor/outdoor variety. No merit; no heroics. More likely a Stupidity Award, or, being kind, a Poor Judgment Badge.

Now I find myself in my third and, I certainly hope, final, cast. No crack! this time. Just a lot of pain. I didn’t know I’d done it and tried to convince myself, and Betsy, that somehow, unknown to myself, I had sprained it. Anyway, as Storytime progressed last Monday, we dashed off to Kaiser where I was told, most definitely, that it was broken. Betsy reminded them that I had broken this same bone a few years back. They brought up the x-ray. Identical with today’s. A small fracture line runs across the base of the fibula and down towards the tip. How, I wonder, can a small break in a small bone create such pain and consequent disruption of my life? How, I wonder simultaneously, can it be so identical to the the break of seven years ago?

I am told that sometimes the bone appears to be completely healed but is in fact not. Then it can break again for little reason. The most frequent causes of this incomplete healing are diabetes and lifelong smoking, neither of which apply to me. I offer lifelong drinking as an alternative. He agrees that can cause many bad things but not this one. He falls back into default mode; sometimes it’s just the luck of the draw.

So my current cast is no Merit Badge; neither is it any kind of de-merit. Apparently, it’s the result of one of life’s situations at which you can do no more than shrug and say, oh well. It’s one of those things we learn to do over a lifetime; accept that there is not always going to be a reason, or none that we can accept. We’ve done everything right and still everything goes wrong. We shrug it off.

I am happy to be the proud owner of a Shrug Badge.

© August 1016

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.

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Eavesdropping, by Gillian

I say the days of
eavesdropping are over. Like so many other things, it is obsolete; extinct.
Voices yell intimacies into smartphones, while people’s every thought, word,
and deed, flood from Facebook and Twitter. We have entered an era more of anti-eavesdropping;
of trying not to hear the intimate details of everyone’s life; their
every opinion. Not long after the last Superbowl a friend and I met for lunch.
The business- men at the next table were so raucous in their analysis of the
game that we had to move to another table. Next to that one, two women talked
incessantly, almost as loud as those men, not to each other but into their
phones. Eavesdropping, if you can even use the term, has become obligatory.
As a kid, especially
being an only child, I loved to eavesdrop. I recall clearly one conversation on
a bus. The young couple in the seat in front of me had a very emotional, if
whispered, argument over whose fault it was that the girl was pregnant. I got
quite an education. The last time I rode a bus, which actually was to get to
Cheesman Park for the start of this year’s Pride Parade, a young guy yelled
abuse into his iPhone the entire trip. Apparently, his girlfriend was pregnant,
and, very apparently, he was displeased. He repeatedly called her a ‘fucking
stupid bitch’, occasionally switching to ‘stupid fucking bitch’, which seemed
to exhaust his vocabulary. I really didn’t want to hear it. I hurriedly shoved
in my earbuds and turned on my iPod. Definitely we are in the
anti-eavesdropping era.
I was first taught to
eavesdrop by my parents. They listened constantly to Mother Nature, who never
stops talking. Through them, I learned to relish birdsong, which of course is
eavesdropping. They aren’t singing to me – they sing to each other, or perhaps to
themselves simply for the glory of the welcome light of morning. Mum and Dad
taught me to listen to the whispers of the wind in the trees, or the howling of
it against the window panes, and to know what it meant for tomorrow’s weather.
From my aunt, and later from a wonderful teacher in high school, I learned to
listen to the whispers of the rocks. They also never stop talking, but oh so
quietly. If you can manage to hear them, they tell the amazing history of our
planet, and they tattle-tale on Mother Nature herself. They give away her age.
As far as our planet is concerned, at least, she is middle-aged; half way
between birth and her life-expectancy of nine billion years. The rocks tell us
that dinosaurs once roamed right here, where we sit this Monday afternoon. (Not
exactly here, on the second floor, but you get my drift!)
But there’s something up
with old Ma Nature. She’s not as quiet as she used to be. Her whispers became
louder. Over the more recent decades she has begun not only to talk out loud but
even to shout. She knows something. She wants us to know. But we don’t listen.
We are well into the
anti-eavesdropping era.
We really don’t want to
hear it.
We put on our headphones
and turn up the music.
Mother Nature is
desperate. We must hear her. She will be OK, as will the planet, at
least for another five billion or so years, but we must save ourselves.
She tosses tumultuous tornado swarms at us to wake us up, and hurls humongous
hurricanes to get our attention. We ignore her. In 2003 as many as 70,000
deaths in Europe were attributed to record heat. In June last year London hit
it’s highest temperature on record, at 103. TV shots showed train tracks
buckling in the heat. But this July as I tried to watch the tennis at
Wimbledon, (I say ‘tried’ because it was rained out day after day) London was
treated to the wettest month on record. Last year’s heat waves in India,
Pakistan, and parts of South America broke all records. Australia has had to
add new colors to weather maps to accommodate temperatures never experienced
before. Climate craziness.
2015 also brought heat
records to Alaska and parts of the American southwest. Meanwhile we recently
had record rainfall in China, and across this country from Texas to Washington
D.C.
And still we hear nothing.
Mother Nature might as
well be silent for all the attention we pay.
Flames roar from the
forests on every continent. Even as I write this, sitting on the patio, I smell
in the air the smoke from the Boulder County fire. Another fire blazes on
Hayden Pass, Colorado, which they do not expect to contain before October.
Mother nature absolutely
screams.
Still we do nothing.
A few years ago,
residents of several Polynesian nations banded together in a desperate attempt
to get the world to care about their islands, which were, and of course still
are, disappearing into the Pacific. In their traditional hand-hewn wooden
boats, they temporarily were able to block the mouth of the Australian harbor
from which a huge coal-ship was ready to leave. The coal was destined for the
huge hungry mouths of the Chinese coal-fired energy plants, whose energy goes
to fill the huge hungry mouths of the endless factories producing goods for the
endless huge hungry mouths  of the world’s
insatiable consumer appetites. Don’t blame Australia. Don’t blame China.
There’s plenty of guilt to go round. We are all guilty. I still drive my car,
and occasionally I fly on a plane which is exponentially worse for the
environment. Those south-sea islanders get it. It’s in your face down there;
quite literally. When that beautiful blue ocean which once lapped at your feet,
starts to slap you in the face, you get it.
Hopeful-sounding treaties
are signed every now and then, after endless wrangling, but always making
agreements for future goals, not demanding big decisive action now. It
all smacks, to me, of the alcoholic who intends to quit drinking once he’s
finished this last bottle of whisky. No! He has to quit now. Poor out
the rest. We are all addicts, hooked on our lifestyles and standards of living.
We need to quit now, not when we’ve smoked that last carton of
cigarettes. If we don’t start hearing Mother Nature’s cries right now,
it will be too late.
What if that man on the
bus was not shouting abuse at his girlfriend, but yelling to me; to all the
passengers? ‘Fire! Fire! The bus is on fire. Get out now. Fire! Fire!’
I ignore him. I do
nothing. All the people on the bus do nothing.
I don my noise-canceling
headphones, turn up the music and go into anti-eavesdropping mode, breathing in
the billowing smoke.
We would all say, that is
just insane, suicidal, behavior.
Wouldn’t we?
© July 2016 
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.
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Choices, by Gillian

Choices
are what we all make, constantly, throughout our lives. Most of the obviously
huge ones we all recognize as such: marriage, divorce, babies, changing jobs or
homes, coming out, retirement, suicide. Meanwhile the innumerable tiny choices
we make go almost unnoticed; tea or coffee? Should I watch ‘Gone with the Wind’
yet again or the Bronco game? Or is now a good time for a nap?
Sometimes
we will say, ‘I had no choice’, ‘I’ve run out of options’, which of course is
never true. Except for a few who are tragically unable to make choices, or
incapable of following up on them, we always have options. What we really mean
is, there are no good options to choose from. Our transgendered friend
Margaret, who came to this group for a while, says she reached a point in her
life when she had to change this ‘wrong body’ she inhabited or kill herself.
Period. No other options were available. But still, she had a choice; just not
a good one. I guess that’s how it is with all suicides; heartbreakingly, it’s
their last best choice.
When
I talk of my own coming-out process I sometimes say it never felt like I chose
to come out. It was something that happened to me. I was swept up on this
runaway train, going wherever it cared to take me. But I know that’s not
strictly true. I had a choice. I could have thrown myself, at great risk of
serious psychological injury, off that train. I simply chose not to.
But
choices are not always what they seem. Apparently small ones can turn out to be
huge; literally a matter of life and death.
A
month ago, over three hundred people chose the same course of action.
Hey, lets go to Pulse
tonight. It’s Latin Night y’know?
Yeah, we’re planning on
it.
It was great last
year. 
I know Tony and Luis are
going.
Non
of them knew they were choosing a night of terror. Fifty of them did not know
they were choosing to die.
I
am invaded by sadness for the terrible losses of that Orlando night. I am sad,
of course, for all who died, and for the many who were seriously injured. I am
sad for those who loved them. I am sad for all who survived, though physically
unscathed, to live with what must be terrible psychological traumas. I am sad
for the entire LGBT and Latino communities, whose tribes have been attacked. I
am sad for the crazed shooter, so lost and astray that he felt compelled do
such a terrible thing. It was a choice, of course. He could have chosen one of
oh so many other ways to go. But most of all, I think, I am sad for the parents
who found out, in one nightmare moment, 
that their son was dead and that he was gay. (I say ‘son’ because the
majority of those killed were men, though lesbians died also.) I can imagine
little worse. I learn in the same instant that my son is dead and that I never
really knew him. And now I never will. What choices of word and deed did I
make, that my son was a stranger to me and I didn’t even know it?
But,
whatever right or wrong choices we might make, our ability to chose is of great
importance to us. Our free will gives us at least some slight feeling of power;
of control over our lives. And for others, power is found in the act of taking
away our ability to chose. The classic example of that battle would be the
abortion issue, which seems as if it will go on forever.
At
this very moment, combining thoughts of choices with my sadness engendered by
the Orlando tragedy, I finally get the connection. My very sadness is a choice.
A terrible thing happened. I can close my mind to it: forget it, shove it down
deep and not think about it. Not good. I can be very very angry. But I’m doing
my best to give up anger. But sadness is OK; not fun, but it seems like a
reasonable reaction. So I chose it. But it came over me in too dark a cloud;
with too much weight. I have felt overwhelmed by it. And now, just knowing it
was a choice has mitigated it’s hold on me. Even as I type, I feel it lifting,
becoming a much lighter, less overpowering, form of itself.
Once
again, writing things out has helped me deal with, lessen, change, and
understand, emotions. But it’s not just the writing. So again I thank you all
for this wonderful group – for your caring and sharing and support. That’s
where the real magic lies.
© Jul 2016 
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.

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Hysteria, by Gillian

The old black-and-white movie flickers and jumps. A woman screams. And laughs. And cries.

‘You’re hysterical,’ booms a strong male voice.

A strong male hand slaps the woman’s cheek. Silence; followed by a quiet sobbing.

That is hysteria in the movies.

I actually don’t think I have ever experienced that kind of hysteria; my own or anyone else’s. Perhaps it has never actually existed, outside of old movies. Or perhaps I have simply been extremely fortunate, having lived a life free of horrifying experiences which might create hysteria in myself or others.

No, I have not had to live such nightmares; but certainly I have seen them unfold on the TV. I have watched everything from terrorist attacks to mass shootings, from earthquakes and mudslides to tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes. I have seen people’s response to such things. But, you know, I honestly cannot recall hysteria. People run, sometimes screaming, but that is a simple reaction to danger – the good old fight or flight response. I have seen tears: strangers enfolding each other in comforting arms, injured individuals sitting on the ground, alone and confused. That is shock and grief. It is not hysteria. Desperate people wave to helicopters from rooftops barely protruding from floodwaters. They shout for help from beneath heaps of rubble. These are people trying to save themselves. They are not hysterics. It makes little sense to me that hysteria should be encouraged by Mother Nature, anyway. She has given us an overwhelming survival instinct. We will do whatever it takes to live. Hysteria is counterproductive; it interferes with our ability to save ourselves. I’m sure it’s not listed on Mother Nature’s list of approved survival tactics.

On the other hand, a much more dangerous form of hysteria is alive and well and ever expanding, especially in recent years with the phenomenal growth of social media; mass hysteria. Until recently, this kind of group emotion was of necessity engendered in a group – a physical group of people close together, shoulder to shoulder, acting in ways none of them would have alone. The New Year’s Eve festivities downtown are great fun until a few idiots begin to egg each other on to break some windows. Before anyone realizes what is happening, dozens or even hundreds of people are heaving anything handy through windows, and the looting starts. Mass hysteria tends to lead to mass arrests. The soccer game is over and the crowds wending their way towards the stadium exits. A gang of lager-louts, till now only a little obnoxious as they react to the home team’s win or loss, begin an argument with opposing supporters. Voices get louder. Voices get angry. One man swings a fist. In seconds dozens of fists are swinging. Innocent bystanders rush for the streets. Hundreds are trampled in the panic; dozens killed and injured. And even without physical violence, hysteria is ugly. Just watch our political conventions.

Lately an even more frightening, more pervasive, form of mass hysteria has appeared, fomented by social media. An angry young man no longer needs to fly to Syria and attend a mosque frequented by violent extremists to become what we now chose to call ‘radicalized’. He can work himself into a frenzy of hatred and bigotry simply by reading what is offered in great abundance on his iPhone or laptop. He barely needs to get up off the couch. Perhaps he will never appear on any no-fly- or watch-list, but he is every bit as dangerous as those who do.

Mass hysteria is almost as scary even when involving no actual violence. These days all it takes is sound bites; Obama was not born in this country, Hillary is a crook. Repeat it often enough via all forms of social media, but particularly TV, and some of those listening will repeat it. Some of those hearing it will then repeat it, and in twenty-four hours there is this ground-swell of mass hysteria all based on a lie.

But strangely, I have observed recently, social media can create something which seems to me even stranger; almost the antithesis of hysteria. But if the opposite of hysterical is calm, this is behavior surpassing anything the word suggests to me. It is a level of denial for which I think we have no word. It seems to have appeared along with the universal inclusion of cameras in cellphones.

On the TV screen I see a man almost up to his armpits in swirling water. He holds one arm above his head, gripping his phone in his hand. Debris of all kinds swirls around him in the rising waters of Tropical Storm Sandy. He shouts breathlessly into his phone, capturing the image of himself struggling to remain upright. His commentary, as played on the television, consists mainly of beeps.

‘I’m here in bleeping New Jersey, in my own bleeping house. I’m standing in my bleeping kitchen, man. I don’t see how the bleep I’m gonna bleeping get out of here.’

He turns the camera off himself to show a jerky unfocused view from a window.

‘And over there it bleeping looks like every bleeping thing is on fire, man. How the bleeping bleeping bleep do you get bleeping fire on bleeping floods? Bleep. Bleep.

I gotta bleeping get up to the bleeping roof. Bleep … bleep ……’

After a few seconds of wildly gyrating film of ceiling and walls and water, everything goes blank and silent.

You see more and more of these death-defying shots, movies, and commentaries. People seem increasingly more interested in capturing their own images for posterity than in saving their own lives. Mother Nature must be very confused and frustrated!

Or perhaps she’s happy to see them go, cleansing the gene pool.

My very favorite so far, and I say so far because I reluctantly doubt that this new phenomenon is going away, is a still shot of a young woman in a bikini who obviously waited for the perfect moment to get a selfie as the tsunami waves broke through the windows behind her.

What is wrong with these people? I have no training as a psychologist, but I’m not too sure that your average shrink understands why people act this way, though there is, doubtless, at this very moment, at least one Ph.D student studying the topic.

Apparently the two people I have just described must somehow have survived. We have the content of their presumably intact phones. But how many, I have to wonder, have died in the grip of this strange ‘anti-hysteria’? I am starting to think that a good old-movie style face-slapping bout of hysterics might look downright healthy.

© August 2016

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.

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Birthdays, by Gillian

The only problem with birthdays is, there are waaaay too many of them; both vertically and horizontally, if you get my drift.

Vertically, the number is ever-increasing because the average longevity is ever-increasing, at least in what we choose to call the ‘developed’ countries. But the overall world life expectancy has also risen. According to my favorite go-to website, Wikipedia, worldwide life expectancy has risen dramatically just in our lifetime, from 48 in 1950 to 67 in 2010. Since 1900, when it stood at 31 – well, you can do the math – it has more than doubled. In short, many lives are enjoying way too many birthdays.

Horizontally, there are many more humans to enjoy this increasing number of birthdays; exponentially more. Not quite in our own lifetimes, but between 1900 and 2000, the world population increased from 1.5 billion to over 6 billion; in one hundred years an increase three times greater than the entire previous history of humanity. The graph depicting this is an amazing picture.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longevity

But I took a break from writing this and now it is November 9th 2016. The day after Election Day. Two days after my birthday, so I’m happy to say I was able to enjoy the anniversary of my birth before disaster struck.

Today I feel nauseated, have a pounding headache, and cannot stop crying. How did this terrible thing happen? I remind myself that Clinton won the popular vote, but much good that does. I remind myself that, with almost half of all eligible voters not voting, and half of those who did vote voting for Hilary, Trump voters comprise only 25% of the eligible voters of this country. But much good that does.

My next birthday will be my 75th – a kind of semi-significant milestone. I wonder what horrors will have befallen us all by then. I fear for myself, for our country, and for the world. I am not alone. My cousin in London e-mails that she is ‘deep in the slough of despond’ which, I reply, is a mighty crowded place about now.

Now it is Sunday the 13th. On Friday evening, Betsy and I went to the usual Friendly Friday gathering of our HOA. Officially we had ended Friendly Fridays for the year when we put back the clocks, but many of us felt a particular need for comfort this week, so planned one more.

One of our neighbors was handing out safety pins, and introduced us to the Safety Pin Movement. Here at least is something we all can do now, with minimal effort and cost, to show solidarity with each other – all of us in fear from Trump’s promised oppressions.

According to a post on Twitter, here is what the safety pin signifies – the message it sends to those who see you wear it.
If you wear a hijab, I’ll sit with you on the train.
If you are trans I will go to the bathroom with you.
If you’re a person of color, I’ll stand with you if the cops stop you.
If you’re a person with disabilities, I’ll hand you my megaphone.
If you’re an immigrant, I’ll help you find resources.
If you are a survivor, I’ll believe you.
If you’re a refugee, I’ll make you welcome.
If you’re a veteran, I’ll take up your fight.
If you’re LGBTQ, I won’t let anyone tell you you are broken.
If you are a woman, I’ll make sure you get home OK.
If you’re tired, me too.
If you need a hug, I’ve got an infinite supply.
If you need me, I’ll be with you.
All I ask is that you be with me, too.

I have never before thought of the safety pin as a great weapon, but perhaps at this moment it is.

It is at least one small, non-combative, way to begin to push back.

Otherwise, all we have is the popular misquote of Tiny Tim at the close of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol –

God help us, every one.

© November 2016

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

Leaving, by Gillian

This topic got me humming ‘Leavin’ on a Jet Plane,’ the old Peter, Paul, and Mary hit, which got me thinking about leaving on jet planes – or not.

It was 2003 and I was heading for DIA for a flight to London. Unfortunately, it was Tuesday March 18th of that year, and Denver was in the grip of one of the worst blizzards in the city’s history. All day, as the snow fell and the winds raged, I repeatedly checked on the departure status of my flight. Each time I was assured it was ‘on time’, even though every other flight out, or in, appeared to be cancelled. Eventually we could delay no longer and Betsy and I battled our way through at least a foot of heavy wet Spring snow in Betsy’s ancient Honda Civic – we had no four-wheel-drive vehicle at that time – and somehow made it to DIA. Sure enough, my flight was still listed ‘on time’ so Betsy left to fight her way back home, which by some miracle she was able to do.

Right on time we began boarding our plane; the only one visible at the entire airport with it’s lights on. The rest were hunkered down: abandoned, dark, and dormant. Meanwhile, the snow kept falling. The plows went doggedly up and down one runway which we London passengers began calling ‘our’ runway. But, no matter how the plows tried, they could not keep the surface clear. The snow was simply coming down too hard. After a couple of hours we moved away from the gate and onto the white runway. Some cheered. Most peered apprehensively out of the windows. Safely on the runway, engines roaring, we sat. And sat. Almost three hours later we slunk back to the gate. We were not leaving.

Over 4,000 people were stuck that night at DIA. The runways were closed and the roads were closed. Nobody was leaving. Most of the people were in the terminal and on other concourses, especially Concourse B which is always busy. Our flight had been leaving from Concourse A which is a little off by itself. The 500 or so passengers from that flight were the only people on the eerily dark and quiet Concourse A. The entire airport was without power except for that provided by the emergency generators. By the time we disembarked from our failed attempt at take-off, all the restaurants and shops were tightly closed up, dark and gated. So to bed without supper. Oh well! Come to that, without a bed either! We discovered that cots and blankets had been provided from DIA emergency supplies while we were spinning out wheels on the runway. There were not nearly enough, so we late-comers to the party had no hope. It was the hard marble floor for us.

Everyone seemed pretty cheerful all the same; nothing to be done about it. We all fanned out across Concourse A picking out a spot for the night. There was no hope of stretching out across a few chairs; they were all of the kind where several chairs are joined together in a row, with hard immovable arms between each. I remembered that behind the service desks there were rubber mats for the employees to stand on. Aha! That would soften that marble surface. I staked my claim by leaving my hand luggage in the middle of the mat and went off to see what others were doing. Of course our luggage was on the plane, and with carry-on alone it was hard to be very creative. Many of us hoped to use our coat as a pillow, unless or until it got too cold, with only a little emergency heat to keep us warm.

I sauntered over to a group of twenty or so in the midst of animated discussion. They were gathered around an old man being taken back to the U.K. for a final visit to celebrate his 90th birthday. No, they were all agreeing, he certainly could not be expected to sleep on the floor. He needed a cot. And a blanket. A raiding party of four young things was dispatched to the terminal, returning after a few minutes grinning broadly and carrying a cot and two blankets. They were greeted with cheers. Even pumped fists. Amazing, I thought. After a very few hours we had already become a village, a tribe, isolated out here, bereft of comfort, ready to attack that main body of refugees lolling around in the terminal in relative luxury, and simply take what we need.

After a pretty uncomfortable night for most of us, we nevertheless greeted each other cheerfully enough in the bathrooms in the morning. We had running, if cold, water; and, most important of all, we had flushing toilets. No morning coffee, no breakfast, but never mind, at least we had water to drink, and we’d be leaving this morning one way or another. Having encouraged each other in this way, we unanimously refused to see that it was actually snowing just as hard as it had been the day before and it now looked as if there was a good two feet of snow out there.

For a while we waited, expecting some official to appear momentarily with news. Nothing happened. Some child discovered, just playing around, that the phones were working. This was before cellphones were ubiquitous, and there were still banks of pay phones scattered around the airport. They couldn’t be working. Surely lines must be down? There was a rush to try them and they offered up the friendly hum of a dial tone. Unbelievable! After a wait for a phone to free up, I was able to call Betsy. She had spent a nightmare three hours getting back home from dropping me off at DIA, and of course had not been anywhere since. Assuring that I would call as soon as we knew about our flight, I joined the chattering people. That tribal village feeling was back as we fell over ourselves to exchange the news we had just heard via our phone calls.. It was as if we had been cut off from the outer world for weeks. There’s over two feet of snow. …. all the roads are closed in the city and in most of Colorado …… all the Interstates are closed; Denver is completely cut off ….. they’re calling out the National Guard to rescue stranded motorists …… it’s gonna snow all day and tonight and maybe stop tomorrow ….. the Red Cross can’t get here with food ………

The last two pronouncements left a little cloud of gloom in the air. Another whole day here without food? Another night on the cold hard floor? We gave a kind of collective shrug. Nothing to be done. Just fill the day.

A group of us went wandering off along the train tunnels, feeling like adventurous explorers. What would we find? Was there a food stash on Concourse D? Had more cots and blankets appeared in the terminal? Was there, by some miracle, coffee anywhere? We found none of the above. What we did find was water pouring in from the ceiling of the terminal onto astonished wet people, and, sadly, now wet cots and blankets, below. Apparently, so rumor had it, the weight of the wet snow had caused a rip in one of those famous tents on top of the Jeppesen Terminal.

Our little tribal band leaned over the railings on the second level and looked down upon the soggy scene below with, I am ashamed to admit, a certain grim satisfaction. That’s just what they deserved for hogging all those cots and blankets. Wondering, without much sympathy, how bad that waterfall would get, we returned to our village with the news.

We found a surprisingly varied scene. Some people sat quietly reading a book from their carry-on or doing the crossword in yesterday’s Denver Post. Other groups played cards. Again, this was prior to the days of universal laptops and tablets and smartphones. Further down the concourse was a young woman instructing a very well-attended aerobics class. Across from them was a yoga group. Still further along, a young man and woman had gathered up most of the kids and were organizing games. Others had started kids’ relay races down the concourse, using empty toilet rolls as batons. It was really rather an incredible scene. And the best of it was, everyone was smiling and laughing and just generally enjoying the day.

Definitely a village.

When we crawled up off that cold hard floor the next morning, pretty hungry by now, the snow had lessened to flurries and the skies looked slightly less threatening. Surely today we would leave! But there was a mighty lot of snow on the ground, and the wind had whipped it into really high drifts. On the phone, miraculously still working, Betsy knew little more than I did. With widespread power outages it was hard for most people to find out anything. Her little Honda, she said, was completely buried, leaving not even a little hump in the snow to signify it’s existence.

But for the first time there was a great deal of activity outside. Snow plows resumed their valiant attempts to clear paths and trucks loaded with mounds of sticky wet snow disappeared from view. We sat watching every move from the huge windows. Surely we would leave today!

The day wore on. Our village returned to much the same activities as the previous day, but with a slight edge of grim determination and a little less real enjoyment. This was getting old. By afternoon a few planes were taking off, but ours was not among them. There was great excitement when word reached us that the Red Cross had arrived in the terminal, followed by some disappointment when all they had to eat was food bars; two each. But as the power was now back on, they did have urns of good hot coffee, and all 4000 people lined up for their drink and snack in surprisingly good-humored and orderly fashion.

Back to our village and one more night in my little nest behind the service desk, but, joy of joys, the sun shone from a clear blue sky in the morning and Betsy informed me in our morning phone call that the airport was officially open. Soon, clean unsmelly unwrinkled people began to arrive, trampling our village. Our tribe dispersed to various just-opened restaurants. Eventually our plane took off, right on time if three days late.

As the wheels lifted off the runway a great cheer arose from us all. We really were, finally, leaving.

© November 2016

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.

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The Drain, by Gillian

Searching Google, as I so often do, for inspiration on this topic, I was surprised to see one of the first things to come up was a pop music group of some unknown (to me, at least) variety called The Drain. This has happened amazingly often with our topics. There are apparently, for example, groups called Magic, Guilty Pleasures, Culture Shock and Did It My Way, all topics on which we have written. There is also one called Horseshoes and Hand Grenades. We have only written on the first part of that, so maybe we should tackle Hand Grenades one of these days.

Tricky things, drains. In the northern hemisphere liquid rotates clockwise as it disappears down a drain; in the southern hemisphere it circles in a counterclockwise motion. We all know that this is simply a function of the rotation of the earth, and yet everyone seems to be fascinated by this one fact of life. Anyone, going for the first time to the other hemisphere, just can’t wait to gaze raptly into the bathroom sink to see the water draining in that unaccustomed direction. Yes, it suckered me too, though at the moment of truth, all I could come up with was ‘huh!’

So; tricky things, drains. Like many things, we only recognize the true value of them when they cease to do their job. They are designed to consume material, but on occasion they refuse , or even regurgitate, instead. We’ve all seen times in Denver when the storm drains, blocked by fallen autumn leaves or overwhelmed by the occasional gully-washer downpour, simply refuse to digest the requisite amount of water and leave it to flood intersections and underpasses, and many people say much more than, ‘huh!’

There is little more nauseating then the indescribably disgusting gray goo which has to be extricated from the bend in the pipe when the sink drain refuses to absorb anything further.

Did that stuff really come from me? Huh! The horrors from which our drains habitually save us!

At the time that I left the U.K. in the early ’60’s, the whole country was suffering from what was termed a ‘brain drain’ – so many with higher education left for other countries as Britain offered so few opportunities. One arm of that drain, however, has always run the other way. In the Britain of my youth it seemed as if almost every doctor was from India, and on once again checking with Google, I find that the situation has not much changed. Those from India still provide the largest number of non-British-born doctors and health professionals in Britain, and, in fact, the National Health Service is currently actively recruiting doctors from India. The current fear, however, is that since the Brexit vote with it’s associated real or imagined rise in xenophobia, doctors from India and indeed any other country will be unwilling to commit themselves to a move to the U.K. With a mere 37% of all doctors in Britain currently being British-born white, this does not bode well. Tricky things, drains.

Since the recent U.S. election, many of the same concerns are being voiced here, where more than 25% of all doctors are foreign-born, again, incidentally, with an incredible 10% of all our doctors being from India. There are roughly a million foreign students in our universities, many of whom will remain to contribute greatly to the country. But with the new atmosphere of just about every kind of ism and phobia imaginable, will students from other countries still want to come? Will they feel safe? I can only suppose probably not. This would almost certainly be true of many other potential immigrants except for those sad souls driven by an even greater fear of life in their place of origin. Trump talks of limiting immigration and deporting many of those already here, but if he reverses the flow of that drain, blocking the incoming and increasing the outgoing, our country will be sadly poorer for it. Tricky things, drains.

Now our future leader talks of ‘draining’ the swamp of the Washington establishment – something many of us would not find discouraging. Cleaning up the quagmire of dark money and general corruption and lies, to replace it with clean fresh honest air, who would argue? Sadly, any vision we might have had of an outward-flowing drain was swiftly dispelled. No, the drain flows in.

And with it it brings a new level of homophobia, racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism the likes of which most of us never saw coming in our worst nightmares. But we can stop the flow. We can reverse it. With constant vigilance, not to mention a lot of hard work, we can do it. Just don’t forget, Donald – tricky things, drains.

© November 2016

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.

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Eye Contact, by Gillian

My father spoke a million words to me through his eyes, which is as well because he rarely spoke to me or anyone else in words. He was a very quiet man, but his silence always seemed to me to be one of contentment; a positive silence rather than a negative one, if you get my drift.

He had, I suspect, very sexy eyes. But I prefer not to go there. It makes our eye contact intimacy seem somehow slightly incestuous, so let’s just say he had very expressive eyes. I really could read them like a book. It was only in recent years that I began to wonder if he could read mine as eloquently. I hope so. I think, perhaps just because I want to think, that it must have been so. That wonderful eye-conversation that I remember couldn’t have been one-way, or worse still imaginary, could it?

His ocular eloquence shared with me his joy in newborn puppies or kittens – common creatures in my childhood, before prevention became a necessity. It also conveyed the beauty he saw in a sleek new car, and heard in it’s purring engine. In a time and place when foxes were only good for shooting, I remember us going out one snowy morning and finding a fluffy red fox curled under the holly bush. Dad put a hand gently on my arm to stop me going any closer, gestured with his head towards the animal, and said, with his eyes: Just look at the beauty of that creature. Just look! If we leave very quietly maybe he’ll stay there. In unison we backed silently away and returned to the house. I thought he would take Mom to look. But his eyes said, you give your mother this special gift. YOU take her and show her. Which I did, and by some miracle the fox was still there, though at my mother’s squeak of delighted surprise, he left; a sleek red streak across the snow.

When it was time to kill an old hen for the pot, Dad’s eyes screamed at me. I can’t do it! I can’t. But why? they begged. Why? I’m a MAN. I’m supposed to do it. Then they whispered. I’m ashamed. My mother did it many times. Why can’t I? I do so hope that my eyes replied. I fervently hope that he read in them: I’m proud that you can’t kill things. I love you for it. And the last thing I want you to be is anything like your mean hateful mother!

What I said, in words, was, ‘I’ll get Mr. Jones.’

Jack Jones was our neighbor, a farmer well versed in the killing arts. I knew he would do it without a second thought and without any judgmental commentary. My dad worked tirelessly to keep Mr. Jones’s ancient tractor running and was owed a few favors.

As I left I couldn’t manage to escape my father’s eyes, now brimming with apology.

Sorry love, they said, I’m even too ashamed to ask him myself. I have to send you to do it for me.

Our very best eye-chats always involved my mother; completely unbeknownst to her. I firmly believe that not once in her entire life did she catch on to our endless silent conversations, so often with her as their subject. Many were variations of a single theme – don’t let Mum know how unsuccessful are most of her efforts at handicrafts, cooking, etc

For example. After weeks, months, of agonized efforts, my mother has finally finished knitting me a pair of gloves.

‘There!’ she cries, triumphantly, dropping them on my lap.

The day I have dreaded has arrived.

One quick glance tells me they don’t look exactly like a pair. I glance desperately at my father and immediately my dread turns to an almost uncontrollable need to giggle.

Go on. Be brave, his twinkling brown eyes instruct me. Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks. Though … they continue ….. I rather think it might be!

But not a WORD, they continue, the now stern gaze increasing my urge to giggle.

And show some gratitude, they conclude.

‘Ooooh, Mum, thank you thank you,’ my five-year-old voice squealed in excitement as I hugged her. She tssk’d me away as if it had only been an hour’s effort and wasn’t worth mentioning.

Unable to come up with further delaying tactics, I sat back down and picked up the gloves. I began to pull one on my left hand, then decided the other must be the left. But was it? I glanced anxiously into those eyes across the hearth.

Steady as you go, they said. Easy does it. Don’t forget to smile.

Carefully I urged my little hand into the even littler glove. It was very tight and as it stretched it displayed a dropped stitch right in the center of the palm.

There! said my dad’s eyes, triumphantly. Now you’ll always know which is the left!

The anxiety fled and the giggles returned.

I wriggled my fingers, with considerable effort, into the too-tight, too-short finger tubes.

Oh well, not so bad, I replied silently. At least I hope I did. I couldn’t do this without you: your wonderful love and humor, I hope I added.

But that left the thumb. Where was it to go? I slithered my thumb around, searching for a hole. Ah! There! No, that was the dropped stitch in the palm. After what seemed like minutes, I managed to jamb my thumb into a distorted and very miss-located little tube, causing considerable discomfort.

Triumphantly I held my gloved hand out in front of me, the way ladies of old do when trying on soft, leather, hundred-dollar gloves in the movies. My dad and I both beamed at my mother.

‘By ‘eck,’ said my father, driven, I think, by true admiration for both Mum and me, though for different reasons.

He beamed encouragement at me. One down and one to go! said the eyes.

Turned out, the right hand was easy. It was huge.

‘I thought perhaps I got the other just a bit too small so I added a few stitches.’ Mum announced proudly.

My hand was lost in the wide woolly spaces. How would I ever keep it on? If I wore it I would lose it the first day.

Doesn’t matter, Dad’s eyes replied, you know neither of us wear your mother’s creations once we’re out of sight. You’ll just put them in your pocket and have cold hands. Like we always do.

Dad and I gazed at each other in mutual satisfaction.

Driven to verbosity for the second time in two minutes, he avowed, ‘That’s grrrrand!’

My happiest memories, and in fact the majority of all my memories, of my father, are centered on what I now see as a true gift we had in our silent communication. Without it, I wonder now, how would I ever have known my silent father? Perhaps we developed it because of his lack of words? I shall never know, just as I shall never know if our conversations were truly two-way.

I shall simply choose to believe they were, and the eye contact with my dad will always be one of the true miracles of my life.

© December 2016

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.

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An Awkward Moment, by Gillian

It was in March 2002. The new Schlessman branch of Denver Public Library had just opened a few days earlier and I was excited to pay my first visit. So, obviously, were many other people scuttling eagerly in its direction. The day that library opened, it outgrew its parking lot, so we approached from neighboring streets.We had had several days and nights of that typical Springtime thawing-and-refreezing and there were unsuspected patches of almost invisible ice hiding in the shadows. Suddenly both feet shot out from beneath me and I landed hard on my back, my head making a sickening crack against the sidewalk. Ouch! (Though I suspect I thought words other than that!)

Gathering up what was left of my dignity I scrambled to my feet, making I’m OK gestures to nearby concerned citizens. Though once upright, I wasn’t so sure. I felt a bit woozy. Hoping not to repeat one slightly awkward moment after another, I hastily sat down on the low wall edging the library parking lot. What I am referring to as awkward might be embarrassing moments for some people, but I so exercised my right to be embarrassed in my youth that I grew out of it years ago and now rarely feel that anything goes beyond awkward. But awkward moments I can sometimes excel in. In fact they tend to, with me, very like buses; nothing for a long time and then several, one right after the other.

And sure enough, here came another one. Resting my head in my hands in an attempt to ensure my equilibrium, I noticed a tickling sensation on both hands. Half-opening my eyes, it was impossible NOT to notice the steady drip of blood falling onto the sidewalk. Shit! Gently I felt the back of my head, which did not cause me any great pain but my hand came away covered in blood. Shit! Was I right in thinking I could just walk back to the car and drive home? I felt that I could. I knew Betsy was not at home, she was in Birmingham on a family visit, so there was no point in going into the library to call – not to mention the slight problem of dripping blood all over their nice shiny brand new floor.

It dawned slowly upon me that quite a crowd was gathering; a lot of concerned faces were turned in my direction. This was before the days when absolutely everyone had a cellphone, but one cute young blonde thing was waving one around, vaguely in my direction. I tried to trawl through friends and family phone-numbers I knew by heart, but my slightly fuzzy brain was unable to offer much help. A young man with a little boy by the hand said, to me and the gathering crowd, that he thought I should go the hospital. The cutie with the cell phone nodded agreement.

‘May I call an ambulance?’ she asked, politely.

I was not sure. I wanted just to go home. But maybe, I wondered, watching the blood dripping ever-faster onto the cement, I was not really thinking too clearly.

‘Really,’ another voice offered, ‘You should go the hospital. You’re bleeding badly.’

Murmured agreement rose from the onlookers.

No shit, Sherlock, I thought, ungratefully.

I hesitated. I gave in. Shit! They were the ones thinking clearly, not me.

I had never been strapped onto an ambulance gurney before. Come to that, I had never been in an ambulance before. Another cute young thing patted my arm and talked soothingly of nothings as we sped through Denver, sirens wailing. I supposed it should have been at least a little exciting, but I felt rather a fraud. My head didn’t hurt very much, and felt much clearer than it had for a minute there. Wrapped securely in some delightfully soft something, it might have still been bleeding but at least was no longer dripping on everything. I gave a mental shrug.

What the hell?

Four hours later, a disgruntled young man perched on the edge of my bed in St. Jo’s E.R.

‘It really is nothing,’ he decreed, glaring at me for wasting his valuable time, of which he had spent all of perhaps one minute with me.

‘The nurse will be back, then you can go home.’

He made me feel as if I should apologize profusely for unnecessarily occupying this prize piece of real estate in the form of a bed in Emergency.

Almost another hour later, another cute young thing appeared. There were so many of them around that day, I was starting to wonder if the knock on my head was causing me to have hallucinations – if very pleasurable ones.

‘Better safe than sorry, Honey,’ she said, agreeably, reading my mind, as she unnecessarily helped me up off the bed.

‘Sure was a lot of blood but it’s no more than a bad graze. We can’t even put a dressing on it without shaving a real lot of hair off so best just leave it. It’ll heal in it’s own time,’ she concluded, comfortingly.

Now feeling nothing but a very slight throbbing in my head, and a worse stiffness from lying in a cold room for hours, I decided I would simply walk home and evade all the logistical complications of finding someone to come and pick me up. I could get a cab, but having seen the blood-covered back of my yellow jacket and the front of gray sweatshirt, I rather doubted one would agree to take me anywhere. Anyway, the day had warmed up considerably and a walk home in the late afternoon sun would be good for me. I would go through City Park, always pleasant. At that time we lived in Park Hill, and this of course was the old St. Jo’s, so it was probably, at the most, three miles.

I had gone as far as the path around the south side of City Park Lake, where I stopped for a minute to enjoy the cormorants, sitting about as they do with their wings spread out and held up as if drying their underarms. A young woman, pushing a stroller containing a small child, jogged past me. A few yards on, she stopped. She looked back at me, hesitatingly, then turned to walk back towards me. Yet another cute young thing. I should bang my head more often.

‘Umm …. excuse me …. er ….. I guess ….. you do know that your head is bleeding?’

Oh Lord. I had forgotten all about my blood-spattered clothes. I smiled reassuringly.

‘Sorry, I forgot about the blood on my jacket.’

I apologized, meanwhile pulling said jacket closed in front and hoping she had not noticed more dried blood on my shirt. Perhaps I did look rather like an escapee from somewhere.

She said nothing more but simply looked pointedly back in the direction we had both come.

A trail of blood spattered as far as I could see. Shit! Why hadn’t I grabbed a handful of tissues before leaving the hospital?

I explained the circumstances briefly to her and, still looking skeptical and requesting several assurances that I really would get home OK, she jogged off.

I arrived safely home after only one more encounter. An older man and woman in a shiny Lincoln passed me along Montview Boulevard, pulling over to park near the library which I assumed was their destination. But no, as I walked up beside their car they both got out, faces full of concern. This time I jumped in first: an apology, a brief explanation, an assurance that my house was now only a block away. No matter, they insisted, they would take me home.

‘I … might … um …. mess up your beautiful car …..’ I offered, looking through their eyes at my bloody clothes which by now were further stained with new blood over old.

Not only would they refuse all argument but insisted, upon arrival, in walking me to my door and seeing me safely inside, where I sank exhaustedly into an armchair the moment the door closed.

Shit! Nosy people had turned what should have, would have, been a perfectly pleasant, relaxed, walk, into a series of uninvited encounters. Shit! Why didn’t people just mind their own dam business? I sat grumpily in my chair. Gingerly fingering my head I realized it had stopped bleeding. I supposed it was the walking motion that had started it off, and kept it going. My irritation lifted and I found myself smiling. People were really so very nice, I thought. And even now, when I need to remind myself of that truth, I remember that day. I don’t relive the awkwardness of some moments, but rather the caring kindness of strangers.

© December 2016

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.