Tag: Gillian

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Greens, by Gillian

Sitting on the patio writing this, I see at least twenty-five shades of green in the plants around me without really looking very hard. Several of them are in the spruce trees, though, and we call them blue, so maybe I’m cheating a little. So I’ll leave them out. Even without them there is still an amazing display of innumerable varieties of greens.

Green was my mother’s favorite color. Now, personally, sorry Mum, I find choosing one color as a favorite quite ridiculous. All colors are incredible in their endless shades of beauty. But she couldn’t help herself. She taught first graders all her life and it’s simply one of the many silly things you ask little kids. What’s your favorite color/animal/food? in turn necessitating choosing one yourself.

On the more sensible side of my mother, however, I don’t recall her ever saying anything as foolish as, be sure to eat your greens! I’m not sure that we had much concept of greens supposedly being an essential part of a healthy diet back in the distant days of my childhood.

We just ate what was available whenever it was until it was gone, and on to the next. I don’t think anyone valued green beans or lettuce over orange carrots or yellow onions.

One of my stepsons, however, went through a phase during which he abhorred all green food. I, even in my pre-destined role of evil stepmother, never insisted he eat his greens. But my husband was not to be so easily deterred from the rightness of things, and insisted.

‘But it’s greeeeen’, wailed Davie, in tears every time beans or peas, lettuce or spinach, appeared on his plate. It was not a dislike of vegetables per se, but simply anything green. This was aptly demonstrated in a masterful stroke of vindictiveness by his sister when she sweet-talked her friend’s innocent mother into making him a green birthday cake, which he greeted with howls and tears and steadfastly refused to eat.

Now, fifty years later, he grows, and eats, all manner of green things and has no memory of what it was he ever had against them.

Whatever it was I doubt it came down in his DNA because his grandmother, mother of my ex-husband, loved to cook collard greens. She fried bacon, then tossed the leaves into the pan and stirred it all up into a greasy green mess which, I am forced to confess, was delicious, though I can feel my arteries grinding to a halt just at the memory.

These days, of course, green is synonymous with healthy: good. We have MAD Greens restaurants, and Green Superfood for sale, the Green Ride to DIA, the U.S. Green Building Council, and green energy. We even have a Green Party to vote for in November. Green is in; green is good.

But I wouldn’t be too sure it will last. After all, we have a long history of believing that the grass is always greener somewhere else!

© 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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Blue Skies, by Gillian

Blue skies smiling at me; nothing but blue skies do I see.

Well for God’s sake, how boring is that? Sure, we welcome blue skies because they signal a clear sunny day ahead. We use them metaphorically in the same way. But the fact is that clear blue skies are not interesting. They do not fascinate us the way cloudy skies do. We don’t have different names for different parts of a blue sky, the way we talk of cirrus and cumulonimbus clouds.

I belong …. wait for it, you’re going to love this …. to The Cloud Appreciation Society. Weird cloud photographers from all around the world post cloud photos and videos to the website, and so many of them are breathtakingly beautiful. I myself have, in my computer, something over 500 photos of nothing but clouds, or those taken primarily because of the cloud formations they capture. In only one of the whole collection is there a clear blue sky.

A while ago, I put together a small booklet of my own sky photos, accompanied by appropriate quotations, because the sky, to me, is too beautiful not to be accompanied by poetic appreciation. As the Cloud Appreciation Society says it –

‘ … (clouds) are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.’

And, I would add, you don’t have to risk life and limb to watch them, unlike so many of nature’s more dramatic displays.

The same website also reminds us, in its somewhat tongue-in-cheek ‘manifesto’, that we should fight what it calls ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it. Life, they say, would indeed be dull if we had to look up at a cloudless monotony day after day. It is, of course, a whole lot easier to espouse that philosophy living in a place like Colorado than in the many cities in this country which receive over 60″ of rain per year, and have little opportunity to grow bored with clear blue skies.

And there are endless quotes exhorting us to appreciate those metaphorical clouds in our lives, in order that we might fully appreciate the blue skies when they return. Quite honestly, I’m not totally convinced. I suspect this may be a tactical encouragement towards positive thinking of, and response to, the inevitable. Did I really need to break my wrist in order to appreciate my fully-functioning joints? Must I suffer from that miserable Xmas cold to value my usual good health? I don’t think so. But I couldn’t help myself; I had to see what that WWW had to offer.

There are, need I say, many comments on the topic. Two I really liked.

The first said,

‘One can appreciate the Good in Life without experiencing the Bad

However, when one experiences the Bad

That which was not quite so Good becomes Good

and the Good we experience radiates a stronger energy than before…’

The other said,

‘…. experiencing bad would definitely allow you to appreciate the good more then you previously have. But if you were raised with the right values to already do all that then you wouldn’t necessarily need the bad in your life.’

Points to ponder.

But I return to that ‘manifesto’ of the Cloud Society, which ends with the final, simpler, injunction,

‘…. always remember to live life with your head in the clouds!’

© June 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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Nostalgia Regained, Gillian

I
have always thought myself blessed; I can live the time and place where my
nostalgia takes me any time I want. There are countless books, and especially
movies, about Britain during World War Two – the time and place of my early
years. There are not as many of the later 1940’s, or the ’50’s and ’60’s, but
there are enough. If I want to return to my childhood amongst remote farms, I
can watch and re-watch the old PBS/BBC series, All Creatures Great and Small,
which feels to me to be an almost exact replica of my childhood environment.
If
I want to feel that stirring patriotism of the war years, emotions which I
think I recall but in fact was probably too young, I can watch the old
black-and-white movies of the time, many of which are cloyingly sentimental, such
as, In Which We Serve, The First of the Few, or the unabashed
propaganda of Mrs. Miniver.
In the ’50’s and ’60’s
came an era of more realistic movies dealing with the many issues remaining
after the war: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Billy Liar, and
Georgy Girl.

 
Or
those films whose only purpose was to make us laugh, like the wonderful
selection starring Alec Guinness.  
And
then, along came The Beatles with It’s a Hard Day’s Night, which
appeared in 1964, a year after I graduated from college. A nostalgic ride if
ever there was one. 
In the year of my birth
alone, 1942, Britain produced over 50 movies set in Britain. Yes, it is easy
for me to take that trip down memory lane any time I feel so inclined; which I
did quite frequently over the  years. Opportunities
for nostalgic trips via the movies are even more plentiful, of course for
Americans. But most other first-generation immigrants like me are not offered
this escape; at least it is not immediately available from the local library,
and probably not even these days from Netflix and the like. How many movies are
there that would have you jump aboard and be immediately transported back in
time to 1940’s Latvia or 1950’s Guatemala?
But in later years
something seemed to go wrong. I no longer delighted in this armchair
time-travel the way I used to. In fact, rather the opposite. Movies, either
fiction or documentaries, depicting my time and place of nostalgia, whether
made back then or current depictions of it, tended rather to depress and anger
me. They make me cry. They are sexist, classist, xenophobic, homophobic; all
the ists and ics you can think of. They are bigoted, 100% white and 100%
heterosexual. They are all about the unthinking, unquestioning, superiority of
men and equally unquestioningly subservient women. They made me question not
only my memory but my very sanity. This is the piece of history upon which I
gaze with such affection? It has been said that nostalgia is a longing for a
time and place which never existed. I fear that must be what I suffered from
for much of my life. Sadly, I began to see it more clearly for what really did
exist, and did not particularly like it.
I rather blamed my
efforts, over the last few years, to become a more spiritual person. This has,
as indeed it is part of it’s purpose, raised my consciousness; allowed me to
see things more clearly, as they are, rather than as a blurred concoction of my
own designing. But I hated that I was robbed of my nostalgia; my place of
escape on a bad day.
More recently I have
turned yet another corner. I can still take that magic carpet ride. I can still
enjoy depictions of my past. It is simply that I have lost those tinted lenses
through which I once gazed with love and longing.
I wouldn’t go back there
if you paid me!
In 1952, when Alan Turin
was arrested for his homosexuality, I was an English schoolgirl of 12. What
hope was there for me to deal with, or even acknowledge, my own homosexuality?
Not that anyone knew anything of Turin at the time, all he had done for the Allied
war effort was kept under the secure wraps of the Official Secrets Act for
decades, but his terrible story is emblematic of the attitudes of the times.
So now I again enjoy
movies and books portraying that life I once lived. They no longer make me angry.
They simply offer pictures of a past which, thankfully, no longer exists. They
remind me of the many ways in which we have moved forward, for all that at
times it seems that we have not. I can recognize that past of which I was a
part, with at least a modicum of objectivity. I neither hate it nor love it. It
once was, and now it’s gone. Those spiritual teachers/guides would be proud of
me. I am truly, at least in this one instance, living in THE NOW!
© May 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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Bicycle Stories, by Gillian

Apart from many tales of
many many happy days being my Beautiful Betsy’s athletic supporter as she rides
hither and thither and yon around the country, most of my bike stories are not
particularly positive.
My very first ‘bike ride’
was, as with many of us, on a tricycle. It was the summer before I turned five
and started school, and being an only child I had led a pretty solitary,
sheltered, life up to that point. I never owned a tricycle myself; this was an
old one which my cousin Peter had outgrown. Peter was four years older than me,
and it was he who led me off on this adventure. 

Peter & Gillian just before starting on the adventure.

We started off sedately enough
down a paved lane which became a muddy cattle trail which in turn became a
steep, narrow path hurtling down from the pasture to the river. Peter, also an
only child and not averse to having someone, especially a soppy little girl, to
show off to, shot off down the path on his boys’ two-wheeler, pedaling as fast
as his legs would turn, and letting out some pseudo-macho, pseudo-cowboy, yell.
I, oblivious to lurking dangers, rushed to keep up. Had I had anything beyond
zero experience on a trike, I would, of course, have known that three wheels on
a path like that were, at very best, going to get hopelessly stuck. But I
headed off in blissful ignorance, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes! 

Well,
long before I could get stuck in the mud, the front wheel hit an exposed tree
root and I ended up, or rather, down, face first onto a lump of granite, which
seriously loosened by two front baby-teeth. Meanwhile, Peter, arriving safely
but too swiftly at the end of the path, was unable to stop his bike and ended
up in the river. There had been recent thunderstorms in the hills and the river
was an angry brown torrent. Luckily for Peter, he and his little bike tangled
up together and jammed between two rocks, where he hung on for dear life and
yelled for yelp. This story might have had an unhappy ending, but my aunt,
casting a suspicious eye on her son as do most mothers of nine-year-olds,
observed us heading off across the pasture on the bluff above the river, where
he was, I later learned, forbidden to take his bike, and gave full chase. So,
other than, later that day, my uncle pulled out both of my battered front baby
teeth, we were little the worse for wear.
I never went bicycling
with Peter again, though we both rode bikes. I rode mine for purely practical
reasons; it was a way to get around. Peter rode to get around, but also rode
just for the fun of it. Then he went on long rides as a member of a bicycle
club, and did a little competitive racing. His daughter eventually married a
serious cyclist, though she never cared for bike-riding herself. Her husband
was in France training for the Tour de France when he died, on his bike, of a heart
attack. It turned out that he had some abnormal, and relatively rare, heart
condition, about which the details were never very clear and I forget if I ever
knew the correct term. He was only in his twenties when he died.
Twenty-five years later,
my cousin Peter, in his sixties, was riding his bike home from a nearby harbor
where he had been fishing. He died, on his bike, of a heart attack. As if two
men in the family dying of heart attacks while riding bikes was not coincidence
enough, the autopsy showed him to have the exact same heart condition as his
erstwhile son-in-law. And some like to say there is no such thing as
coincidence!
It seems that the
bike-riding at the time of the heart attacks was also coincidental. Both men
could as easily have succumbed to their heart conditions anywhere, anytime; as
likely to die reading the paper on the couch as to die on a bike.
Yes, but …….. I must
admit that when I got news of Peter’s death, and the circumstances, it scared
me. Two members of my family dead on the very seat of a bicycle, and I was
deeply in love with, and committed to, an avid bicycler. You must admit, it
would give you pause! And shortly after that, Betsy decided to go on her ride
from Pacific to Atlantic, an endeavor which of course I wholeheartedly
supported even while it rather gave me chills. I just had to get over it, which
in the event was not so very difficult. My anxiety level decreased rapidly as I
tried to consider it rationally. I decided it was actually good. I was what
Robin Williams refers to in his Garp persona, as ‘pre-disastered’. To
have such a thing happen twice in one family is extraordinary; a third time is
surely out of reach of reality. I even began to be amused, thinking of Sherlock
Holmes’s musings,
‘To lose one wife may be
considered unfortunate, but to lose three?’
No. It was ridiculous. I
shook it off. Now I never think of it. We are already too old to die young, and
if, by some horrible chance, Betsy should be stricken by a lethal heart attack
while riding her bike, hey, thank you kind fate. To die suddenly and swiftly in
the midst of an activity you love. Who could ask for anything more?
………………………………………….
And, although it has
nothing to do with my story other than the topic, I have to include a simply delicious
quote I stumbled upon.
When I
was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that
the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.
Emo Philip
© 30 May 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 Solar System, by Gillian

I don’t think we had a Solar System back in the day. We had the sun, the moon, and the stars, with a few planets thrown in. We had galaxies, I think, and we had The Universe, which we believed to be infinite and now we think not, which is OK with me because I never could completely get my head around that concept anyway. Then we were sure it was ever expanding; now we’re not so sure.

Courtesy of The Bible we had The Heavens and, better still, The Firmament; a word, one among many, that my mother loved. She would roll it lovingly around her tongue and tuck it, for later use, in her cheek. The word occurs several times in the King James Version of The Bible, and my mother, not generally given to biblical quotations, would trot out her favorites while gazing skyward in wonder.

“The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork,” she would expound, giving The Book of Psalms it’s due.

Or, turning her mind to The Book of Daniel, she would sometimes respond to one of my know-it-all moments with a touch of Biblical sarcasm:

“And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.”

Fortunately, Mum died before her local church replaced the magical words of the ‘old’ Bible with the soul-less heretical ones of the ‘new’. Had she still been around at that time, I fear she would have exposed her true religious colors and never attended church again.

With our exponentially-increasing knowledge of what we now choose to call the Solar System, the mysteries, the very mysticism, of it, have gone the way of the King James Bible. Oh, yes, knowledge is a wonderful thing, but is does not sit comfortably with mysticism and mystique; nor, come to that, with romance.

Much poetry has been written about the moon and the stars. Frank Sinatra, along with many others, sang romantic ballads extolling their magic.

“Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby, kiss me ..”

I fear even old blue eyes himself could not have created a classic love song out of, “Fly me to the Solar System …”

© October 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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Help, by Gillian

I, like many of us, I suspect, am not very good at asking for help – though perhaps, with me in my fourth week of putting no weight on my broken ankle, Betsy might not find that statement to ring quite true right now!

No, most of us prefer to maintain our independence; I can do it, whether in large things or small. I walk into the kitchen to find Betsy, wielding our three-foot long ‘grabber’, or standing precariously on a step-stool, reaching for an item on the top shelf.

‘Why didn’t you call me? I can reach it,’ I say from my lofty height of a slowly shrinking 5’6”.

‘I know,’ she shrugs, ‘but I can do it.’

Our general reluctance to ask for help seems strange, given the fact that we humans are apparently programmed to offer it. We have an innate need to help our fellow beings. If you don’t believe me, go and buy a five dollar pair of battered old crutches at the thrift shop, keep one knee bent double, and go hop around the store for a while. You will have more offers of assistance than you know what to do with. Frequently, faced with disasters, our urge to help is stronger, apparently, than either the fight or flight response. How often do we witness live scenes on TV where so many people ignore the risk of toppling buildings in order to help those already in trouble.

Our general reluctance to ask for help seems even stranger, given the fact that giving yourself up completely to the power of those who wish to help you, is one of the most rewarding experiences in life. Once Betsy and I had gazed at my still-swelling ankle for long enough and come to the reluctant conclusion that Urgent Care was the only option, and I had hopped on our old crutches to the car, I let go of all pretense of self-determination. I relaxed completely. I sat contentedly in the car as she parked and then went off in search of a wheelchair from the Kaiser lobby, returned with it and assisted me in. By this time I had reached an almost rag-doll stage of relaxation. Nothing complicated remained to do. Just follow orders: sign here, wait there, sit here, put you leg up here, place your foot there. Just relax, they kept saying, and effortlessly I complied. I was carried away on a comforting cloud of caring. The only decision I was called upon to make was the color of my cast.

After almost five weeks of Betsy would you just …… and Betsy can you fetch …. I suppose my faithful caregiver has had enough. More than enough. That basic human need to offer help and support to others can run pretty thin pretty fast. She denies this, however, and says she is not in any way tired of being my helper. She’d better be careful with statements like that, as I find I could happily float along on my comforting cloud of care indefinitely. But something tells me I had better be over it before the snow hits the ski slopes – and My Beautiful Betsy with it!

© September 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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Strange Vibrations, by Gillian

I was driving north on Wadsworth, probably somewhere about 80th street. It was April 10th 1967. I was working swing shift at IBM’s new facility located between Boulder and Longmont. I lived in Lakewood on 32nd street so it was a long commute, but I enjoyed the drive through what was mostly, at that time, still peaceful farming country. Suddenly my car fell victim to some very strange vibrations. It shook. It bounced. The steering wheel wrenched free of my grip. Shit, I thought, I must have a flat. Now I would be late for work. I regained control of the wheel, breaking hard, and pulled the car off onto the shoulder where I came to a stop and turned off the engine. Strangely, the car still seemed to be shaking. Or maybe it was I who was shaking. I stepped out onto the road, immediately loosing my footing and almost falling. What was the matter with me?

With one hand on the car, I gingerly walked around it, still feeling very wobbly on my feet. No flat tire. At the same time, I was gradually realizing that I was not alone in pulling over. Other vehicles, both ahead of and behind me, had also stopped. Other drivers were standing beside their cars looking confused and puzzled. Then I saw it was the same story across the street; southbound traffic had also come to a standstill.

An older man and woman leaned warily against a pick-up a few feet from me. They peered questioningly at me, he from under a big, battered, cowboy hat.

‘What in Hell was that?’ he asked, querulously.

I shrugged, helpless.

‘I never felt nothin’ like that before,’ offered a young man sitting coiled astride his motorcycle as if ready to spring off at the first signs of any further misbehavior.

‘I’d guess it had to be an earthquake,’ offered a woman, pointing meaningfully to the California license plate on her bumper. I have experience with such things, she implied.

We all digested that in silence, pondering, but we don’t have those here, do we?

Slowly, we all returned to our vehicles and went unsurely on our way.

In August of that same year, I was once more heading north on Wadsworth, this time in the half-light of early morning as I was by then working the day shift. Suddenly my car fell victim to some very strange vibrations. It shook. It bounced. The steering wheel wrenched free of my grip.

Shit, I thought, I must have a flat. But just as quickly followed another thought. Oh no you don’t, you don’t fool me twice like that – fool me once, etcetera – this is another bloody earthquake.

As I, and other drivers, hurriedly pulled off the road, I could see myself as that California woman: experienced, blasé. But I rather fell down on sophistication by checking out the tires anyway, immediately I was out of the car. No flat. I was too slow off the mark, anyhow, to impress anybody.

‘Another goddamn earthquake,’ grumbled a voice.

‘Guess so,’ agreed another.

With world-weary shrugs we drove off.

The quake of April 10th was determined to be a magnitude 5.0. The second one I experienced later that year, the strongest ever felt in Denver, was 5.3. These two were the strongest of a whole series of relatively minor quakes over several years; The Colorado School of Mines recorded more than 300 earthquakes here in 1967 alone. This unexpected surge in earthquake activity was determined by the USGS to have been induced by pumping waste fluids into a deep disposal well at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, and as a result this practice was discontinued.

Those were, indeed, strange vibrations. Mercifully they remained relatively small and no major damage resulted. But the population of the entire Denver Metro area at that time was at most 800,000. Now it is three million. If the current crowded high-speed highways shook now as they did then, it is hard to imagine there would not be many multi-car pileups.

Alas, however, we don’t seem to have learned a thing from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal saga.

Fracking results in the same kind of fluid injection deep below the surface, many areas involved in fracking operations are suffering incredibly large numbers of small quakes and yet we refuse to accept any possible cause and effect here. Oklahoma, as if that poor state didn’t suffer enough from tornadoes, is a case in point. In 2009 there were 20 earthquakes recorded in Oklahoma measuring 3.0 and above. Since then, as fracking continues, the number has risen steadily to a count of 890 in 2015. As William Yardley, a reporter for the LA Times put it* –

‘Yet even as many anxious Oklahomans now track seismic data on their smartphones and struggle to sleep through the long, rumbling nights, there has been one notable location where people rarely seemed rattled. That is here, in the state capital, where the oil industry holds so much sway that for decades drill rigs have extracted crude from directly beneath the Capitol building.’

[To view the statistics, go to http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sej-oklahoma-quakes-fracking-20160302-story.html ]

The famed Erin Brockovich is now deeply involved, and the Sierra Club is suing energy companies involved in fracking, but legal wheels grind slowly and many fear that it will all be too little too late. These numerous small quakes, especially in areas where there are already large faults, may lead to ever larger ones and eventually to a seriously damaging quake. Well, duh! I’m not a geologist, but that seems pretty elementary to me, even if we don’t have statistics to prove it.

My sincerest hope is that the legislators, if not the energy companies themselves, will pay attention to the abundant messages being sent by these countless strange vibrations, before we end up with very big vibrations which no-one will be able to ignore. The Beach Boys once sang heartily and happily about good vibrations and excitations. Alas, I fear nobody will sing, or be happy, about these vibrations; and the excitations are liable to be much too exciting.

© May 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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YWCA, by Gillian

It was October 20th 1964 when I arrived at the door of the YWCA.

My friends and I were delivered there, so my diary tells me, by a very chatty driver of a huge orange and yellow taxi. We did not, my past self informs my present self, understand a single word he said the entire way from the pier where the Queen Elizabeth liner had docked that morning, to the ‘Y’ in mid-town Manhattan. I knew at that moment exactly what Sir Winston Churchill meant when he said that Britain and the U.S. were two countries divided by a common language.

My tattered old diary pages tell me little of the ‘Y’ itself – I record the address at 610 Lexington Avenue, and dismiss it as ‘dark, dirty and dingy’. In the event, we stayed there for only five nights. Immediately we all had jobs, we rented a cramped furnished apartment at 161 Madison Avenue. I say little of this place in my diary; I imagine I was suppressing it. As I recall, it well surpassed the ‘Y’ for dark, dirty and dingy. From this apartment we began the daily grind of American everyday life. But the first four days I spent in this country, wandering out in ever expanding circles from the ‘Y’ to explore my new country, everything was as exotic and constantly astonishing to me as if I had landed on mars.

I had rarely experienced central heating constantly blasting into every nook and cranny. The buildings all seemed dreadfully overheated and stuffy, to me. The UK was then, and to a large extent still is, a country of open windows no matter the weather. I found so many permanently closed, and in fact physically un-openable, windows to be very claustrophobic. The next weekend, when we went looking for somewhere to rent, one of the few pre-requisites we all agreed on was – windows that can be opened. That one thing considerable narrowed our choices.

Food was a source of never-ending amazement. On the first night, wandering around Washington Square with four young men we had met on the ship, we stumbled upon a dark, airless, overheated little cafe where they served one item. Steak and baked potato for one dollar. With a Ballentine’s beer, $1.25. No variations, no additions. It was smoky and loud. The tables were sticky. Who cared?? Non of us, all from Britain, had eaten much steak; two of the men, and I, had never had it. The man at the counter asked, we gathered after his third attempt, if we wanted medium or rare. We hadn’t a clue what that meant. Honestly, talk about ‘right off a da boat’!

In our homes you got whatever it was as it came. On the rare occasions we had eaten out, fish of various kinds took up most of the menu. Mutton and pork was sometimes available, with no choice of how it was cooked, roast beef possibly, especially for the Grand Occasion of Sunday Lunch, but steak was available only to the rich. And here it was, before our very eyes and almost in our hungry mouths, for a dollar. We ate there every night until we all had jobs, and quite often after that.

Another huge surprise was coffee shops. By that time we had them in Britain; for some reason they were mostly Italian and they all served what these days we would probably call lattes, with little consideration for anyone who might prefer their coffee black. If you wanted your cup refilled, you paid the same again. Small sidewalk coffee shops abounded in Manhattan. For a nickel you got a cup of black coffee; indeed a bottomless cup, as some almost disembodied hand kept re-filling it. It came with a little glass milk-bottle-shaped container of cream, languishing in the saucer. Cups, even those which were vaguely more mug-shaped, still came with saucers in those days.

So, we discovered, we could satisfy our hunger for $1.30 a day: endless cups of coffee in the morning, skip lunch, steak and potato and a beer for dinner.

But, when we ranged a little further afield on our third day, we found the most incredible gastronomic emporium yet – the Horn and Hardart Automat. None of us had conceived of such an establishment in our wildest dreams. We watched, silently, as by then we had learned to do, to avoid the fools rushing in mode of operation. Perhaps some of you remember these places, the last one of which closed down in 1991, Wikipedia informs me. This one was one big room with small tables with chairs, and a long counter with stools. The walls seemed to be made of many many little glass panels. Behind each pane was displayed an item of pecuniary delight: slices of pie, sandwiches, cookies, cold cuts, salads, cheese, cooked meats and vegetables. Cafeterias I was very familiar with, but not of this style. First you exchanged your cash for Horn and Hardart tokens, small brass objects with H & H stamped on them, to insert in the required slots. Many doors opened at the drop of a nickel or dime, some more luxurious items required a quarter. We loved it! The surroundings were insalubrious, to say the least, but there were many choices available and you could eat well, if plainly, for less than a buck. And we were broke. We alternated the Automat and the $1.25 steak and potato for a week or two – at least until our first paychecks.

Out of curiosity, while writing this, I googled my first two addresses on American soil. I couldn’t find out much about that particular YWCA, but it is still at the same address. In the only street-view photo I could find, it still looks dark, dirty, and dingy! The old Warrington Hotel, however, at 161 Madison Avenue, appears to be significantly gentrified. It now appears to be a mix of small businesses and medical offices. The only one I could find for sale is 1200 square feet and described as a ‘medical business condo’ for lease Monday – Friday at $8000/month.

I’m assuming it becomes an ‘airbnb’ or something similar on weekends. I did not record the size of our apartment there, but I wrote that it had a kitchen, dining room and two bedrooms. We paid $178/month. For the extra $7,822, without weekends, I hope it’s a whole lot less dark, dirty, and dingy now!

© June 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

Cool, by Gillian

Back
in the hippie days, when it was cool to be cool, I was not cool. The cool years
found me married – not cool, too traditional: raising four step-children – not
particularly cool: working endless overtime hours – certainly not cool,
for a major international corporation – just about as uncool as you
could get.
No.
I completely missed out on cool. Or it missed me.
The
only time I remember anyone using the adjective about me was some incident when
I came upon my oldest step-son and some buddies in the throes of one of his
many transgressions, they were so numerous and varied that I don’t recall
exactly what he was into that particular time. But I do remember him shrugging
and saying to his companions, “It’s OK. Gill’s cool.”
By
which he meant, of course, that I was not going to go off into some
unfathomable (at least to him) rage over the smoking or drinking or sex or
whatever it was; most likely all three and then some. That was exactly what his
father would have done, whereas I would prefer to attempt a calm discussion. By
comparison I guess I was pretty cool. But that was a slightly different use of
the expression. I was never to be a cool dude or a cool cat.
These
days, the term seems to have made a comeback – rather too much of one as it
pops up incessantly. One particular example has rather amused me. I have been
asked a few times recently, what Betsy’s relationship is to me. (As I very
recently went on a bit of a rave about this very topic I won’t say much here,
but honestly! Of what significance is the exact nature of our relationship to a
window salesperson and a colonoscopy receptionist??) Where was I? Oh yeah.  When I reply that Betsy is my spouse the
response seems inevitably to be, ‘cool!’ which I find unobjectionable but
nevertheless a little odd. When I was with a man and had some cause to state
that he was my husband, no-one ever found that to be cool. But I mulled it over
and decided it was rather sweet. People feel the need to say something positive
in response. OK. Cool.
But
then, when this topic came up for today, I realized that actually I had very
little knowledge of what it is supposed to mean, these days. I turned to
urbandictionary.com which informed me that cool is, among other things,
and I quote, ‘… a word to say when you don’t know what else to say …..’
And
that, in my book, if you’re talking about my marriage, is pretty un-damn-cool!
© 16 May 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

Slippery Sexuality, by Gillian

Sex itself is of course
physically slippery, as designed by nature. Metaphysically, metaphorically,
sexuality can be every bit as slippery.
It took me about forty
years to get a good grip on mine.
In my early years, I
would catch tantalizing glimpses of it, slithering sneakily about, just under
the surface, but before I could even reach for it, it plunged back down into
the murky deep; out of sight but never quite out of mind. Certainly, never
completely absent from other body parts. I felt its presence but could not, or
would not, identify it.
In my thirties, it began
making itself more visible; more identifiable. Like a dolphin beside a boat it
now skimmed alongside me, only occasionally disappearing beneath the surface waves,
and more often leaping into the air in full view. It taunted me, it beckoned
me, this beautiful slippery temptation. It called to me, come on, come on,
come out and play! Sometimes it led, sometimes it followed, but it never fell
behind. Occasionally it forged ahead, leading the way with its blissful
athletic leaps. This way, this way! For the most part it stayed by my
side. Sometimes the joyous frolicking threatened to capsize my boat.
Only with great effort did I keep it afloat.
It was a mirage, I knew.
This was no reality. Not my reality. No reality I wanted any part of. I blinked
and shook my head, and sure enough it was gone. The glorious creature
disappeared, no longer leaping before my hesitant self to show me the way. I
was left adrift on a sunless sea, once more becalmed and rudderless. It would
return to beckon me again and again, each time looming a little larger, but
although I occasionally reached a tentative hand in its direction, more rarely
even touched it, still it slithered away. I could never quite grasp it. The
leviathan returned to the deep.
Approaching forty – a
little early for a mid-life crisis, surely? – that seductive dolphin somehow
grew, matured, became huge, became that whale, that very leviathan which I had
somehow always sensed it to be. And I became that legendary mermaid. Despite my
slithery tail, I was suddenly on its back, hanging on to the slippery creature
with all my strength as we crashed together into the waves. Then we were no
longer two entities but one. I had embraced it fearlessly, wholeheartedly, and
become one with it. I was a part of it and it was a part of me. I swam against
the tide: against the waves, against the currents. They were powerless to stop
me, powerless to redirect my journey. I knew exactly where I was going and I
had the strength to get there.
Now I lie in the sun on a
beautiful beach. I snuggle into the caress of the warm white sand, just as I
cuddle into the warm caress of the wonderful woman I love; my partner of almost
thirty years, my spouse, my wife, the love of my life.
I am home.
© 16 Apr 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.