Tag: Life Stories

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Bicycle Memories, by Will Stanton

My bicycles memories are very clear still, even though they are from long ago. I still toy with the idea of riding a bike from time to time, yet I never seem to get around to it. I do have two English Raleigh bicycles in my garage. They are about fifty or sixty years old, three and five-speeds, no resemblance whatsoever to advanced, modern bicycles of today. They were hanging on hooks for many years. Two summers ago, a friend helped me lower one off the hooks so that I could ride it. After all, there is a park right across the street from me. However, I still haven’t pumped up the tires. It still sits there in the garage with flat tires. I’m not even sure that the tires are still good after all these hot summers stored in the garage.

I see lots of young and adult riders in the park when I occasionally take a walk there. What astonishes me are the very tiny, pre-school kids, mostly boys, wearing protective helmets, zipping around the park on miniature bikes without trainer-wheels. I never saw that when I was very young. I never did that myself, either.

Back in the day (I’m talking two generations ago), kids that age had tricycles and no helmets. Apparently, no one dreamed of putting tiny kids onto tiny bikes. Then, when kids graduated to small bikes, they started out with training wheels. I was grade-school age before I biked around on just two wheels. Although I did a lot of exploring around the neighborhood on that bike, I never raced around, jumping over humps are doing dangerous tricks like kids today or like the ones portrayed in kids’ movies such as “E.T.” or “Max.”

My small bike was a typical, rather heavy bike, similar to ones that all the other kids were riding in those times. My older brother was the first to experiment with the new European style bike that was taller and had very narrow tires. It sported a generator attached next to the wheel that powered the headlight, a small saddle-bag with tools, and a tire-pump attached to the frame. That was quite something. I inherited this French bike when my brother went away to college.

I road this bike everywhere, even all the way to down-town, so often that I became quite expert; and, that is saying something, considering how rough the streets were. For example, there were two ways to ride to the center of my small town. One was a two-lane State Street that originally was the state highway through town. It was the busier street, so I normally avoided it. The other was a zig-zag course of rough brick streets through residential areas. Because the railroad line curved around the south side of town at an angle, a street ran straight south until it could go not farther, then I would have to turn right onto an adjoining street, then south again, then west again, right, left, right left. At one point, there was a very bumpy railroad crossing where a siding ran to the A&P grocery store.

I rode the French bike so often that I gained a remarkable degree of balance. I could ride without touching the handle bars, even on rough patches, going around corners, or over the railroad crossing. I steered simply by shifting my weight one way or the other to turn corners.

I recall one day, I spotted a teacher of mine slowly approaching me in his car going the other way. I decided to tease him. I sat up straight on the bike, grabbed a large book from my bike-rack, and pretended that I was reading, holding it with both hands while riding my bike. I did see a clear view of his face as we passed by each other. His eyes looked very big, and his mouth was hanging open.

I continued riding my bike early in college. I was so confident with my skill that I recall an incident when, ordinarily, a rider might have become hurt, but I wasn’t. There was one very steep, rough-brick hill that I rode down – – – no problem. At the bottom, however, all the sand from winter had washed down to the base of the hill. As I began to ride around the corner, I could feel the wheels slipping out from under me. I knew I could not prevent my going down, so I decided to gently lay the bike over on its side, coming to a halt just as I touched the ground – – – not a scratch! One kind-hearted student was concerned that I might have been hurt, but I was just laughing about how easy a landing I had.

On occasion over the years, I have considered possibly obtaining a more modern bike with fatter tires that would be less likely to become punctured by all the sharp stuff in the streets; however, I never have felt that ambitious. If I don’t even ride my old bikes, why get another?

Maybe it’s just as well. I have met people who bought fancy, $2,000.00 bikes and had them stolen, even with bike locks and chains on them. My acquaintance Larry always hired cheap laborers, including one young guy who was a drug-addicted thief. After the helper died of throat-cancer from the effects of constantly smoking marijuana, people checked out a storage shed he had and found around 200 bikes. I’m fairly certain he never bought them.

Now that I have way too many years and pounds on me, I sometimes think back to those easy-biking days. I have a feeling that, if I pumped up the tires on my fifty-year-old Raleigh and took it for a spin, I’d feel like an over-size circus-bear laboriously pumping away on a little bike, much too small for his bulk.

© 15 May 2016

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Raindrops, by Ray S

Splat, splat, splat—

The sky is almost black, the wind is howling, and that is the sound of the rain drops hitting my window panes like raindrops morphed into water-born missiles. 
Splat, splat, splat—
And as I gaze out on the almost blank glass immersed in an angry sheet of water, a ghostly vision emerges from my deepest memories.
Splat, splat, splat—
A radiant bride dressed in a white lace wedding gown comes down the stairway to meet her father waiting to escort her to her betrothed. That day it rained too.
Splat, splat, splat—
The vision fades into an aspen grove golden in the September sun. There’s a rushing mountain creek, there is a gathering of family and friends. The ashes are silently scattered. That bride has found her way home.
Splat, splat, splat—
Another vision momentarily fades into view. The raindrops scream as they pound the windows’ glass. There is a bed now with only one grieving man restlessly tossing and turning. Aloneness is the only bed partner.
Splat, splat, splat—
The torrential tide begins to recede and in the faint new light a wonderful phantom moves out of the ether, and I can sense the warmth of strong arms embracing me. I am no longer alone; there is a new love next to me in OUR bed.
Splat, splat, splat has transformed into a symphony of raindrops.
© 4 April 2016

About the Author

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Moonlight, by Phillip Hoyle

The approach of the full moon makes my partner cranky, occasionally not very pleasant at all. We just went through that phase. Now the moonlight is still intense but the mood is changing. I’ve never quite understood these lunar changes, but they’ve been a part of human behavior for millennia. In fact lunacy has its root in Luna, the moon goddess of Rome. And Monday is the ancient day of the moon. At some point I read of a folk tradition that warned not to sleep in the light of the moon, especially on Monday; one might go crazy in doing so. The idea seemed quaint and unlikely to me.

Still I really like those nights when the moon is in its full stage and its reflected light even makes shadows. That light changes the perception of what it illuminates, sometimes sharpening, sometimes soften what I see. The eerie beauty of it has inspired in me some moonlight art with white Prismacolor® pencil and black ink on black paper, white moon and wispy clouds setting off black trees and housetops. I really do like at least some imaginative aspects of moonlight.

As a teenager I began to pick up hints of the moon’s part in romance. Perhaps it was a moonlit autumn night when I drove my new college girlfriend Myrna up to the hilltop parking lot of the Manhattan, Kansas, City Zoo to talk. The night sky was beautiful—bright shining stars and planets overhead, a few clouds on the western horizon, occasional orange lights flashing beneath those clouds from war games being practiced by US Army Units at neighboring Fort Riley, a full moon overseeing it all. I leaned over and kissed Myrna. I don’t know if she meant to (she later claimed she was just nervous), but she bit my earlobe in response to that first kiss. I don’t know if right then a fake bomb went off at the Fort or if the full moon winked, but electricity shot through my body, and I was sure I was in love.

Oh that moonlight!

Now I realize that a culture of romance can convince one of many things. I guess it did that to me, a boy who had seldom felt much deep emotion except when singing classical music, seeing children baptized, or kissing with his boyfriend when he was fifteen lying with him naked in bed. I kissed Myrna that electric night and a few weeks later in public and felt sure we were on our way into a wonderful relationship with marriage, sex, children, and a shared life of meaning and romance. We did enjoy a wonderful marriage, but eventually I did have to pay attention to a sense of love and life beyond what my central Kansas culture had taught, one that seriously altered my perception of moonlit romance. Myrna and I are still friends, even while I have lived with three different men in the past sixteen years. I still like the moonlight even with its unpredictable and confusing glow.

© 6 July 2015

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Security by Gillian

Security, like living happily ever after, belongs in the never-never-land of children’s tales. It rarely exists; certainly not in modern reality, and in fact I doubt that it ever was thick on the ground. In those long ago days of our childhood, perhaps we locked the doors at night and counted ourselves pretty secure. But we had other terrors much worse than a midnight thief. Prior to Salk’s invention of a vaccine in the early 1950’s, we, or certainly our parents on our behalf, lived in constant terror of polio attacking our young limbs. Childhood diseases raged through schools and communities: measles and mumps, chickenpox and whooping cough, diptheria and meningitis. Today we are protected from most of those diseases but still left with little security as to health. We have to worry about old sicknesses returning in a new resistant form, or new ones – at least to us – suddenly appearing in the news, such as bird flu and sars, West Nile and Zika. Added to that, we have the fears of not being able to pay for the health care we need, just as our forebears feared it for themselves.

But at least our forefathers did not suffer from our insecurities of lack of privacy. Perhaps we have a physical privacy they lacked, but we live in constant trepidation of just how much personal information, down to the minutest detail, is available to anyone who cares to pluck it from the ether. Just this weekend I began filling out on-line applications for car and home insurance. I was amazed and appalled by the amount of data that was entered for me automatically the moment I put in my name and the first digits of my street address. It knew the answers to it’s own questions about me: it knew Betsy was my spouse, it knew every detail about her. It informed me that we are both retired and have no dependents. It filled in the year and model of our cars. Yes, I know none of this should surprise me, and at some level it did not. But there was something very unsettling about seeing it in action. A form meant for me to fill out was completed almost entirely, and accurately, by some unknown and invisible entity in cyberspace. I was a minimal presence in the whole process.

Not that here is much security in insurance, anyway. As our beleaguered climate swings from one extreme to another, natural disasters abound, and insurance rates soar. Before long I fear that all but the absolute minimal coverage will be unaffordable to many. Even if you can afford it, it is frequently unavailable. Live near the coast? Live in a floodplain? Well, gee, it just might flood there, so you can’t have insurance because you might need it. And these so-called floodplains are seriously iffy anyway, identified by computers in the garbage in/garbage out mode. I used to live in Lyons in a little house on top of a 100-foot cliff above the river, but the house location was identified as high risk of flooding and I could not buy flood insurance; not that I would have, anyway. In the terrible floods of 2013, most of the town of Lyons was washed away. But my old house stood firm and dry.

Our use of computers and all they offer can destroy our illusions of security in countless ways.

I have always, I believe, been a faithful friend. I value friendship highly, chose friends carefully, and feel safe and secure in those relationships. One of my longtime friends was a man I had worked with at IBM for thirty years. He had been supportive at the time of my coming out; he and his wife invited Betsy and me to their home and they visited ours. After he and I both retired we sent e-mails back and forth – jokes and cartoons and such – in the way most of us do.

We had a distribution list of old colleagues and scattered this silliness around. Suddenly, one day, I opened up one of these messages from my friend to find, to my disbelief and horror, pages of gay-bashing rantings. This was not tasteless homophobic humor, which I might, just possibly, have forgiven. This was pure vitriol. Hate-mongering gleaned and forwarded from all around the web. Tears poured down as I re-read it, fancying the first reading to be some kind of delusion. No. The hateful words remained. I just could not believe that he had kept such feelings from me for so many years, or that he had sent this garbage to me. I could only suppose, and still think, that he simply lost track of who exactly was on that particular distribution list. They can be dangerous things if you don’t pay attention. Whatever the reason, his true colors were clear to us all. After a night of sleeping on it, or, to be accurate, tossing awake on it, I replied. I acknowledged my heartbreak over such an ending to what I had always believed to be a firm and sincere friendship. I searched hopefully through my messages the following days, and then weeks, honestly expecting a reply; some kind of apology, some kind of explanation. None came.

I never heard from him again.

I never quite recovered from that incident. It robbed me of an innocence over friendship which I doubt I can regain. But I have tried to deal with it rationally and without allowing it to drag me down into complete cynicism and destroy other friendships, or my desire to make new ones. I have learned to say, with almost complete sincerity, that another person’s homophobia is their problem not mine. The same could be said, I suppose, of duplicity, but I find that so much harder to bear. It is not my friend’s homophobia that hurts so much, but the pretense, the subterfuge, the deceit.

Now, securely at home as a member of this storytelling group, I feel something very like my old innocence return. Perhaps lost innocence can be regained, after all. I feel safe and secure here.

I don’t fear that you are going to exhibit any duplicity; any pretense. I don’t believe that you are saying mean-spirited things about me behind my back. Oh sure, a little gossip and tattle-tale, but not real hard-core back-biting derision.

Security like that is hard to find. Reviewing it reminds me of the honor which has been bestowed on me and the pride I feel in being a member of this group.

© March 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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Aw, Shucks, Good Enough Is Great, by Betsy

Until later in life I never gave a lot of thought to making choices. I had my rules of conduct and, I suppose, used that as a guide to choosing. I did make choices everyday of my life, but I never think of it as “shall I do this or shall I do that.”

It all seemed to come quite naturally and was part of a routine or structure. Back in those days we didn’t have the options that present themselves today. I do believe life was simpler. We chose a path to follow and took whatever came along on that path. We made the most of what was good enough and we made good enough work for us.

I don’t remember choosing between a man and a woman until many years later when I became aware that I had the choice. Even though I was attracted to women, marrying one or even spending my life with one was not an option for me back in 1950. So I, a homosexual woman, married a man. Nevertheless, you will never hear me saying today, “Aw sucks, darn! I spent 1/2 my adult life with a man.” No, I will never say that; those years were good enough, and good enough was great then. I still feel that good enough was and is great.

It serves no purpose to regret any of the paths I followed in my younger years. Had I felt I had more choices, my life would be different and that is hard for me to imagine right now. I love my life the way it is and the way it has been. I love my children and my grandchildren as well as my life partner and spouse. I would not have my children and grandchildren if I had chosen differently in 1950. I probably would not have my beloved Gill had I chosen differently back then. So, I’m glad I went with “good enough,”

I often hear contemporaries say, “I lived in the best of times.” Aw shucks, I’m going to go ahead and say the same thing. If I suddenly, magically became a young person, I would be mind boggled by all the choices presented to me every day. Not just among the plethora of consumer products put in front of us daily, but the choices of life style, career paths, subjects available to study, places to visit, etc.

I am aware that there are many people in this world who have no choice except to take the easiest path to survival. Mind you, I do not believe that desperate situations, inaccessibility to basic, life sustaining resources is good enough, by any means. Such inequity that exists in the world is very wrong. I am blessed that I have never been in such a situation. So I am keeping the discussion here to choices that have been made available to me throughout my life and that have affected my life.

I never spend too much time choosing the right consumable product because I honestly do not feel it’s that important. I like to think my time is better spent in other areas of life which may or may not require making choices. For example, I know I should exercise so, if it is time to do that, It is already on my agenda, I do not have to make a choice about that. The choice is merely between the gym, the bicycle ride, the walk around the neighborhood, etc.

When it comes to choosing clothes for myself at the store, I confess I am not very diligent. Often I come home with something that is not good enough. Then standing in front of my mirror it’s “Aw shucks, this just isn’t what I thought it was.” I think the stores have trick mirrors that make things look better on you than they really are. I have learned in my later years that my lovely wife can pick out clothes for me much better than I can. So I don’t go shopping for clothes unless she will come with me. Usually I get her article of choice home and realize it’s not just good enough, it’s perfect. I don’t buy too many clothes anymore ‘though. Most of the stuff I have held on to are the things that were good enough when I bought them so they are good enough now, even if they are 20-30 years old.

Fortunately as I approach my 80’s I have everything I need and do not find myself having to make choices about what to buy. The choice of what to do comes up occasionally, but that usually has been predetermined and I simply follow an already structured agenda. I like structure. Maybe that’s because I don’t want to be making choices all the time.

I’m afraid I have almost driven my lovely wife crazy with this characteristic or mine.

“Shall we go to Mexico or Hawaii for our vacation,” she asks. My answer is truthfully, “I don’t care, or I don’t know.” “Well, which would you rather do?” she asks. “How do I know,” I answer. “I’ve never been to either place.” Poor Gill.

On the other hand I hate being wishy-washy. If a decision has to be made, I will gather as much information as I conveniently can and just pick one. Too much deliberation just complicates it. It usually turns out that it was good enough and it was great. I can’t ever remember coming home from a pleasure trip and saying “Aw shucks, we should have gone to that other place.” This “aw shucks” situation should be avoided at all cost. But I truly belief it is totally unlikely to occur in my life, because I’m sure most any other choice would have been good enough as well, and therefore the perfect choice.

© 6 April 2015

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her wife of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Queer — A Defining Word, by Pat Gourley

It is quite amazing to me
really how little of my childhood years I remember beyond vague, though some
significant, generalities. I suppose I could view this as suppression of lots
of terrible stuff but I really think it is more a matter of not much out of the
ordinary or worthy of sublimation ever happening. Lord knows my rather intense
at times Catholic upbringing and schooling might have been a source of great
consternation and resulting psychopathology, but for whatever reason I think I
sailed through those years queer as a three dollar bill and largely unscathed.
As I have written before
(my apologies for the repetition) one episode though that has stuck with me was
when I asked my mother what the word “queer” meant.  I think I was about 12 years old when I first
heard it used. She said it was a bad word and I should never use it. I then
went straight to the dictionary but the only definition provided that stuck
with me was that it meant “odd”. I went back to her with this piece of
information but she persisted that it was not a word to incorporate into my
vocabulary. I suspect that I or someone near me had been called a “queer” and
being totally oblivious to any homosexual connection with the word thought this
to be a weird choice especially delivered in less than loving fashion.
Queer
to this day remains a loaded and offensive word by some LBGT folks, despised as
much as the “F” word. The “F” word being “faggot” of course and not “fuck”. I
could have written about “Faggot” as a defining word but thought I had enough
to tackle on my plate with “Queer”. And I actually thought for a fleeting
minute of writing on the word “fuck” one of my favorites but decided to keep it
closer to home. And besides other than this little phrase I ran into on Facebook
the other day I don’t have much more to say about “fuck”: “I have been told I
am going to hell for my excessive use of the word FUCK. I have rented a bus if
any of you fuckers need a ride.” From Fsensitivity Web Site
Back to Queer. Certain
words used to describe us are ones that we have simply and innocently appropriated
like “gay”.  Others are words that have
been used to denigrate and belittle us, some of which we have reclaimed and
others not so much. The use of language to offensively describe some folks as ‘other’
has often been used as a means of control. Though for a minority struggling for
self-definition and empowerment the re-appropriation of often-derogatory words
is I think a legitimate exercise that can enhance identity and liberation. And
such is the case I believe with the word “Queer”.
In looking for the
origins of the word I kind of fell down an Internet rabbit hole. The use of it
as a derogatory term aimed at homosexual folks may well date back to 16th
century Scotland. The actual roots of the word seem perhaps lost to time.
However, my go to person, for meaning of the Queen’s English if you will, remains Judy Grahn and her seminal
work from 1984 Another Mother Tongue. Grahn
states that the original word was “cwer” (c-w-e-r) without directly attributing
any tribal or national origin to that word. After an hour or so of floundering
around the ether a possible source for “cwer” I stumbled on is that it was old
Welsh in origin. However, don’t take that to the bank.
Let me quote Grahn’s take
on the possible meaning of this descriptive moniker:
“
‘Sinful,’ ‘of the devil’ and ‘evil’ are all expressions that have been used
very effectively against gay culture, as has ‘queer’, which derives from cwer,
crooked not straight, kinked. Perhaps the difference between queer and straight
originated very simply with the difference between the straight-line dance of
male/female couples and the Fairy round dance”. From Another Mother Tongue. Page 276.
So perhaps it was a word
used originally to acknowledge that we were different from straight folks in a
rather kinked or crooked sense and that the evil or sinful associations were
added later. Maybe we were the ones who preferred to dance in circles rather
than in straight lines and this bit of nonconformity was one thing I hope,
among many, that set us apart. And of course anyone set apart from the norm was
often then fair game for ostracism that could become nasty.
I suspect there is a rich
history to this word “Queer” that is lost to the mists of time. I am choosing
to reclaim it as a defining word, one that helps set us apart from the
hetero-hordes. A word that hints at our uniqueness and the valuable
contributions we bring to the human tapestry by way of our otherness.
© 19 Feb 2016 
About
the Author 
I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled
by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in
Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an
extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.
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Any Writing Is Experimental (Attack of the Giant Cootie), by Ricky

As
one of our group members stated in his writing to this topic, “all writing is
experimental.”  The Muse finally struck
me upside my head and so, what follows is her experimental writing.  She hopes you will find this, amuseing as this story is based on an
actual event I witnessed while my family was visiting a close friend in Tucson
a few years back.
Attack of the Giant Cootie
“Daaaad!
Someone just drove into our driveway.”[I wonder who that could
be.]
“That’s
my friend Rick and his family.  They’re
from South Dakota.”    [He doesn’t like to meet strangers so I
didn’t tell him to forestall any whining.]  “Didn’t I tell you they were coming for
dinner?”
“No you
didn’t.”  [I don’t like to meet strangers.  That’s probably why he didn’t tell me.]
“Don’t
worry son.  This fact is
interesting.  We have two boys, a girl,
and another boy in our family.  They have
two girls, a boy, and another girl in their family.  The oldest girl is your age—10.”  [Hmmmmm. 
Wouldn’t it be interesting if their girls married our boys and their boy
married our girl?]
“Yuck!  Girls! 
I’ll get cooties and they only play with dolls and dress up.  I hate that stuff.”[I
am going to be sooooo bored.  I need to
find a hiding place until they’re gone — even if I miss dinner!”]
“You’ll
be fine.  Don’t make a fuss, and make them
feel welcome.”  [Just
don’t embarrass me in front of Rick.]
“Will
they be staying the night? 
[I’m not sleeping on the couch or floor so THEY can use MY bed.]
[Silly question.  We don’t have room for 8 kids and 4 adults.] “No.  Just for a
visit and for dinner.”
“Ok
Dad.  I’ll be good.  Wait! 
Is that their oldest daughter? 
She’s huge!”  [A
giant cootie.]
“Yes.  That’s her.  She is rather tall for a 10-year old.  Her mother told me that she is as far above
the normal growth curve for girls as a girl’s normal growth curve is above a
boy’s normal growth curve.  Since you’re
short for your age she will appear quite large next to you.  But, she is also a tomboy, so she’ll probably
like the same things you do.” 
[I hope they get along.  I can’t
stand it when he whines about anything.]
“Yeah,
but her size bothers me and she still has cooties.”  [What’s a tomboy?]
“Now
listen!  These are my friends and I
expect you to be nice.” 
[I hope he obeys me this once.]
“Okay,
I’ll do my best.”  [Dad
can’t see that I have my fingers crossed behind my back].
“Uncross
your fingers and let’s go meet our guests.”
…..
“Glad to
meet you too, Mr. Dawson.”  [What
happened?  He shook my hand then my tummy
feels funny and it’s harder to breath.  Why
do I feel this way?]
“Nice to
meet you, Mrs. Dawson.”  [I like her smile.  She seems friendly enough.]
“Hi.”  [Ugh!  I’m shaking hands with a giant cootie.  If she were any taller my neck would break
from looking up at her.  I gotta get away
from her and wash my hands.  I think I
might pass out.]
“Are you
okay?”
 [He looks pale like he’s going to
faint.]
“Excuse
me; I need to use the bathroom.”  [She
sounds sincere, but…]
“Are you
okay, son?”  [I
hope he’s not getting sick.  He looks
pale like he might pass out.]
“Yeah
Dad.  I’m okay.”  [Just a few more feet to safety. Okay. I’m
locked in the bathroom.  I’m safe.  Just splash a little cold water on my
face.  Ahhhh that feels good.  I’m breathing easier.  A bit more water should do it.  Oh yeah. 
Now I can breathe okay.  Even my
tummy is feeling better but is a bit tingly. 
I wonder what happened.  It
started when I shook hands with Mr. Dawson. 
Why did that make me feel funny and not be able to breathe easy?  Did the giant cootie have anything to do with
it?  Did she make it worse?  Uh oh. 
It’s all starting again.  Maybe
more water in my face…Yeah.  That’s
better.  Mr. Dawson is a good looking
man.  Oh no.  Here it comes again.  I need more water.  Ahhhhh.  That did it. 
I’m alright again.  I guess I
should not think about Mr. Dawson.  Oops.  More water. 
Who’s that knocking on the door?]
“Are you
okay in there, son?”  [I
wonder what’s taking so long.  Maybe I
should have THAT talk with him after our guests have gone.]
‘Yeah,
Dad.  I’ll be out in a minute.”  [Out,
but hiding somewhere else in the house.]
…..
[Ahhhh.  They’re all in the livingroom.  I promised dad to be good and make them feel
welcome so I can’t hide in my bedroom they’ll find me and dad will be
angry.  Where can I hide?  Hmmmmm. 
The kitchen? No, it’s too open. 
The hallway?  No, that’s even more
open dummy.  The closet?  No, I’m already in there.  The attic? 
That’s dumb.  We’ve been told to
stay out of there because of the spiders. 
I hate spiders worse than cooties. 
I know!  I’ll hide under the
dining room table.  That way I can hear
the conversation in the livingroom but not be seen so if I’m questioned later I
will know what was said.  Yeah, that’s a
great plan.  I’ll just crawl under the
end nearest the window and they won’t be able to see me from the livingroom or
the kitchen.  Owww!  Gotta remember not to raise my head too much
or I’ll hit the table again.  Now, I’ll
just relax and wait.]
“Hi
whatcha doing under there?”  [Is he
playing at being a spy?]
“Owww!  Just looking for a nickel I dropped.”  [How did she find me?]
“Oh.  Sorry I startled you.  Do you want me to help look for it?”
“No.  I just found it.”  [Lucky for me there really is a nickel
under here.]  “Owww!” [Dang it!]
“Did you
bump your head again?”  [What
a klutz]  “Your name is Jason, right?”
[Why is she standing so
close to me?  I’ll get big cooties.]  “Yes.  And your name is Suzie.”  [’ll just backup a step to get more
space between us.]
 “No, my name is Susan. 
No one calls me ‘Suzie’ except my grandmother.”  [Why is he backing up?  Is he going somewhere?  I’ll just follow him.] 
  “Oh, sorry.  Are you
really only 10 years old?”  [She’s
coming closer.  Danger! Danger, Will
Robinson!    I’m being attacked by a giant cootie.  I’m going to backup two steps this time.]
“Yes just
turned ten last November.  I’m very tall
for my age.”  [There he goes again.  I’ll just follow his lead.  My dad said not to make fun of his size but
I want him to say it before I believe it.]  “Are you really 10,
because you look younger?”
[She’s closing in for the
kill.]  “Yes I’m 10 and I can’t help that I’m short for my age
right now.  Dad says that I’ll grow like
a weed in a year or two.  I can’t wait
for it to happen.”  [Okay
this time back up THREE steps.]
[Wow.  He sounded irritated by my question.]  “Do you get picked on
by bigger boys?”
 “Yes I do.”  [I
move back THREE steps and she follows keeping one foot between us.  She is scaring me.  I’ll back around the table this time.]
[He’s backing away again
like he’s afraid of me.]  “Well, in my class, I don’t let any of the bigger
boys pick on anyone.  When they tried, I
made them back down.  If you were in my
class, I would protect you from them.”  [I
like this little guy.]
[I like her attitude but…] “If you did that, it would be worse for me after
school.  The bullies would pick on me
even more whenever you were not around.”  [Ooops.  The wall is at my back.  I can’t back up any further.  What can I do?  Wait. 
There’s a chair.  I’ll drag it
over here and stand on it.]
[Now what’s he up too?  Standing on a chair so he becomes taller than
me?  Because I’m so tall does he think I am
going to pick on him?]  “At recess at my school, I play baseball, football, and
basketball.  Do you play any of those?”
[She likes sports?  Weird.]  “I’m too small to be much good at any of them but I do like
to play them.  Do you want to go into the
backyard and play catch?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll go
get my glove and ball and another glove for you too.”
…..
“Well son
they’re all gone now.  What did you think
of them?”
“I liked
the family.”
“The whole
family or just Susan?”
“All of
them.  You were right, Dad.  Susan was okay and does like the things I
like.  We played catch and other games.”
“And what
about the cooties?”
“Well.  Susan is okay, but all other girls have
cooties.”
“Even
your sister?”
“No.  She is okay too.  But all the others DO have cooties.”
“Hold
that thought, son; at least until you are 18.”
© 7
September 2015 
About the
Author 
I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale
and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to
turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their
farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents
divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.
Posted on

True Colors, by Ray S.

Long ago in the days of
Tin Pan Alley—that was when popular music lovers were still buying sheet music
and the latest 78 RPM records. Our subject “True Colors” reminded me of a song
titled “The Night that You Told Me Those
Little White Lies.”
Here, today we have been
able to hear your thoughts (and/or maybe confessions) about True Colors.
Certainly there may be a
liberal (no pun intended) number of patriotic red, white, and blue references
as well as our tribe’s Rainbow flag palette.
Shame and guilt-ridden as
I am, my dominant thoughts promptly unearthed a lifetime of lots of little white
lies and a few under the heading shady black. So many that it is very difficult
to recall when and if any true colors of virtue stand out. I can’t recall when
I had occasion to show those True Colors. I don’t believe I am alone in this
category.
Think which were the true
colors when you were confirmed in a faith and didn’t really know what all of
that stuff was about, but maybe you were cleansed of everyone else’s sins, or
swore secret allegiance to some quasi lodge, fraternity, sorority, high school
clique. Mind you, I do not disrespect the various Orders’ goals; it is just the
way we obey. True Colors where are you when needed?
Of course true colors are
always subject to slight adjustments or reinterpretations as the times and
circumstances demand.
Did you have your fingers
crossed way down deep at your wedding? True colors prevailed with pride
(depending if it was unintended) and love upon the arrival of the baby girl or
boy. Color me pink or color me blue—lavender came later.
Final reason for the
showing of true colors, one of celebration and liberation, after a long
struggle finding our way out of the blackness of many closets, the Coming Out
we all rejoice in, with the True Colors of the beautiful rainbow.
© 29 February 2016 
About
the Author 

Posted on

Patriotism, by Phillip Hoyle

Last
weekend while travelling south along I-25, we approached the Broadway exit. A
large American flag held aloft on a sturdy pole sunk in concrete and sitting at
the top of a rampart flapped in the breeze. “I’ve never noticed that before,”
my friend commented.
“Nor
I. Must be new,” I responded.
Her
next comment was about how good it is to live in America. I agreed with my
rather minimal statement that I, too, was happy to live here. I believe for her
the sentiment is rather standard fare formed from listening to too much
conservative talk radio. We don’t talk about that. For me the issue of being
“proud to be an American” is something quite different. She seems some kind of
absolutist while I am surely a relativist. So are we philosophers? Since we
spotted the flag on I-25 I’ve been thinking about patriotism—perhaps that does make
me a philosopher of sorts.
I
believe patriotism most dramatically relates to an image of heroes who put
their very lives on the line for their identity as part of a particular people.
The history of any Fatherland or Motherland obviously has its origins in the
LAND. For me the land is always the Flint Hills of Kansas. I grew up in wide
open spaces with a broad river valley and low bluffs nearby. The landscape was
further defined by creeks: so grassy highlands and wooded valleys with stretches
of plowed fields in the bottomlands of waterways are all a part of my
fatherland. Agriculture abounded there.
In
my particular patria a military
presence with a long history lent gravity and opened me to a larger society and
world. I grew up around the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry; Custer was once
stationed at Fort Riley just across the river from our town. The presence of historic
stone buildings that housed both the officers and the fine horse stock of the
cavalry, of wooden barracks for the enlisted men, of parade grounds, of rifle
ranges, of helicopters coming and going in the air around the base’s heliport,
of convoys made up of personnel carriers and artillery, jeeps and guns, trucks
and heavy machinery often impeding traffic on highways, and of our lively
community that entertained GIs provided endless variety for a Kansas town me.
Then there were the children of Army families in our school population, and for
me, the family-owned IGA store providing groceries for families of GIs, Civil
Service employees, as well as the townies like me.
Thus
my patria was racially mixed, with
multiple languages, mixed-race families, and people who had lived all over the
world—especially Germany and Japan as I recall it. Soldiers marched in local
parades and cannons and other Army equipment impressed the youngsters and brought
tears to the eyes of elders.
My
fatherland was rather new by world standards yet as a youngster I felt
connected to the antiquity of the place by the presence of an old log cabin church
and by stories of my ancestors who had long lived in the area. Still the Hoyle
and Schmedemann families arrived only three generations before my advent. My
great grandparents came to Kansas to homestead. Some may have come to help
assure that Kansas would be a free state in the political heat up that
eventuated in the US Civil War. Yet in my family there were no ultimate
patriots—those who made the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ for their country—in any of
the stories I heard.
Growing
up I heard lots of talk of such sacrifices of life, but most of them were in sermons
not about the country but quoting a “no greater love” value as applied to the
ultimate vicarious death of Jesus as the Christ. Religion figured heavily in my
fatherland.
I
became aware of the country as something much larger than my state when I heard
my parents talk about the differences between Ike Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, then when I met men who had served in the Korean conflict, when I
further realized just what the US Army did besides entertain us with wild
stories and exotic tattoos, when I became aware of missile crises, the Cold
War, the building of the interstate road system, the anti-communist diatribe,
the deaths of national leaders, the threat of the draft, the Vietnam non-war,
the peace movement, and the growing realization that our USA motivations
idealized in myth and PR announcements didn’t well match my own vision of reality
or basic values.
Welcome
to thoughtful adulthood, Hoyle.
AND
EVEN MORE THAN THAT, THERE WAS ALWAYS THAT NAGGING REALIZATION THAT IF ANYONE
REALLY KNEW ME, THEY CERTAINLY WOULDN’T LET ME BE A PATRIOT IN ANY SENSE OF THE
WORD.
But
I am a patriot who feels a deep sense of meaning in being American. I love it
but not in an exclusivist, better-than-any-other identity or country.
© 25 Sep 2013 

About the Author  

Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
Posted on

Moving, by Gillian

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the adjective as
“having a strong emotional effect: causing feelings of sadness or
sympathy.” So what is it within us, we humans, that draws us to stories or
places or events which we find moving? I know that is true for myself. I also
know the memories of such places or events, whether I have purposely involved
myself or simply stumbled into them, way outlive many other memories.
In high school I went to France with three other girls. It
was the first time any of us had been out of Britain and I’m sure we saw it as
some wild adventure. We stayed in the picturesque town of Annecy, and from the
warm glow which accompanies thoughts of it, I’m sure we had a good time there,
though any details escape me. This is supported by a few faded old photos of
happy, giggling, girls. But I remember only one thing. Our train, heading
south-east from Calais through rich farmland, suddenly entered fields growing
nothing but crosses; small white crosses which in my memory numbered in the
thousands, stretching to the horizon and continuing for endless miles. They
reside so solidly in my mind that I can feel the swaying of the train and hear
the clickety-clack of the wheels on the rails as I write. Even as a silly
giggly schoolgirl I recognized the crosses as commemorating the dead of the
First World War, while France still reeled from the Second. They moved me to
tears. They are as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday.
Years ago, I have little idea when it would have been, I was
for some reason in Washington D.C. with time on my hands and went to see the
Vietnam Memorial Wall. With almost 60,000 names, the gold lettering seemed to
go on forever, like those white crosses. The weather was windy and wet and
there were few people there. I became mesmerized by one old woman who stood,
the rain mixing with her tears, silently caressing each letter of one name. Her
wrinkled old fingers gently traced the name from beginning to end and back from
end to beginning, over and over and over. I couldn’t stop watching. I wanted
badly to put my arms around her but could not intrude on her obvious grief.
Whose name was it? She seemed pretty old for it to be her son. Grandson?
Granddaughter? Why was she here all alone? My heart felt that it would break for
her.
I remember nothing else of that visit to D.C. I don’t even
know why I was there though I suspect a business trip. But I have never
forgotten those worn old fingers slowly moving over the cold wet stone.
Shortly after I retired, I found myself in a volunteer job in
Hungary for a few weeks. I resolved not to leave without visiting Auschwitz in
neighboring Poland, and so one weekend took the overnight train from Budapest
to Krakau, to spend a day which was well beyond moving; harrowing,
heartbreaking, horrifying. After some time at Auschwitz, having reached my
saturation point of the evil of that dreadful place, I returned to Krakau in a
cab shared with four others. The five of us stood silently on the cobbled
street, watching the cab rattle away. It was almost as if we huddled together
searching for comfort from what we so recently had seen and felt. There seemed
nothing to say. Eventually we began to introduce ourselves – and a motley crew
we were. There was a Jewish woman, about my age, from Wisconsin, two young
Japanese men who, as far as I ever discovered, spoke not one word of any other
language, and an even younger man who literally spoke not one word at all, so I
never knew what country he was from or what language he would have spoken, had
he spoken. Still we seemed to have some compelling need to stick together. One
of the Japanese men gestured across the street. There was a cinema, showing,
rather shockingly I somehow felt, Schindler’s List. He turned
questioningly to the rest of us and we all nodded yes in silent agreement. What
strange impulse led us to do that? It was as if our current state of numb
misery was not enough; we needed more. After the movie we performed a strange,
hesitant, kind of loosely formed group hug, and I returned to Budapest on the
overnight train after one of the strangest days of my life. But I can still
recall every detail of that day, while most of my time in Hungary recedes into
misty muddled memory. 
Betsy and I spent the whole month of September 2015 on a 5,000-mile
road trip to and from the east coast. We stayed in so many different places and
did so many completely different things that it seems, looking back, like
several mini-vacations all rolled into one. Some things were scheduled and
planned, some were simply spontaneous. Driving back home through Pennsylvania,
Betsy spotted a tiny red square on the map. Beside it, in miniscule red
letters, were the words, Flight 93 Crash Site Memorial. Although we were in Pennsylvania,
we hadn’t given it a thought. I’m not sure we even knew there was such a thing.
Without hesitation we agreed the small detour was worth it, and took off across
back roads through rolling farmland.
The Memorial is beautifully, very tastefully, done. 

There’s a long black granite walkway
following the flight path, which comes to an end overlooking another pathway
(but you cannot walk on this one) mown through the long grass and bushes of
that infamous field. This ends at a boulder placed there to mark the impact
spot. All very simple but oh so effective.

It moves you to tears and also to
shades of the terror those passengers must have felt. There is something magic
about it that almost moves you right into that plane with them. At least that’s
what it did for me.

And after all that is why we visit places like that isn’t it?
To feel. If we don’t feel moved, then why go?
But, back to the original question I asked myself, why?
Why do I need to be moved to sorrow and sadness by monuments to death and
destruction? Since I decided to write on the topic, I’ve been thinking a lot
about it and I decided that for me it accomplishes several things.
Gratitude. I simply feel enormous, completely selfish,
gratitude. It was not me. I was not there. Nor were my loved ones: not on that,
or any other, doomed flight, not in the Twin Towers, nor the jungles of Vietnam
dodging snipers’ bullets, nor any school or shopping mall mass shootings, nor
in the Asian tsunami. It revives and strengthens that everyday gratitude I
should feel for the blessed life I have lived, and continue to live.
Balance. We need the yin and the yang, that balance of
negative and positive, in our lives; the ups and downs. Without bad, we are
less able to appreciate good. I have been so fortunate, that I think I have to
indulge in collective sorrows to keep my balance; to really feel just
how good my life is.
Connection. In feeling the pain of others, I am connected to
them. Your pain is my pain. We are members of the same tribe. At bottom we are
all tribal beings, and in sharing, no matter how remotely, minimally, the pain
and terror of Auschwitz, I keep myself connected; in the tribe.
So it’s not that I get some sick twisted voyeuristic pleasure
from being moved to tears by others’ pain. 
It’s simply that I need it.
Nicolas Sparks in, At
First Site, says, “The emotion that can break your
heart is sometimes the very one that heals it…”
I think that describes perfectly
my need for being moved to tears. It keeps my heart healthy and strong when
otherwise it might be weakened by a life too lucky.
© 2 Nov
2015 
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.