Keeping it Simple

I’ve done it; I quit my job in a way that would make most job counselors cringe—that is, I quit a job before I had a job (reasons why at On the Backs of Children). And I guess I had about five minutes of panic, but then realized: this is the very reason I choose to live my life so simply… so I will never feel trapped.

A few years ago, I chose to buy a house in an area that many would call “ghetto” (house payment = $530) when the bank wanted to give me a lot more money for a house that would give me a little more status. No thank you. I shop at the Goodwill, estate sales, and used hardware locales, and I don’t partake of many fancy gadgets (like iPhones or TVs). That’s not to say, of course, that I’m any better than the next gal or guy who likes all that stuff, but it does give me a little breathing room. And in that room, I’m now able to dream in ways that I haven’t much allowed myself in the past many years.

Simplicity. In that world, gardens and long walks and books and stories yet to be written, await. But more than that, there is the space for the things that can never be simple, and, to my thinking, shouldn’t be.

I often think I must be among the luckiest women in the world to have the relationships in my life that I do… with my sons, my sisters, a close friend and great colleagues… and Christy. But not one of those relationships is simple. Each person in that list comes with a different history and personality and creed and, dare I say, a little neurosis. And in the confusion of a professional life running out of control, the temptation, for me, was to make simple those relationships, skipping out on the time and attention that any diversity of humanity requires; a commitment that represents the richest aspect of my breathing.

In one of the sweetest love notes Christy’s ever sent (and she’s sent many that are beautiful), she reminded me of the tenderness of that diversity.  She sent a video showing the unlikely friendship between a hound dog and an orangutan. After watching it, I asked simply, “Am I the orangutan or the hound dog?” to which she responded:

I think, you, my Love, are the beautiful, loyal, sexy hound dog.

 Case in point:

• The orangutan needs a life vest to swim.
• The hound is much more easy-going and content to just ‘hang out’. (Look at all the spinning around in circles that the orangutan does— he’s a bundle of energy!)
• The orangutan can’t keep his hands off the hound, and sometimes, squeezes too tight.
• The hair!

It could be that such love in circles of orangutans and hound dogs comes easily. But I wonder, too, if the world they inhabit isn’t just simple enough that appreciation is the first emotion of contact–an emotion that nurtures and sustains more than any achievement or ambition I’ve seen yet in the corporate rat race (teaching wasn’t always that, but sadly it has become so).

My quest, moving forward, is to keep simple all that can be, in order to embrace the lovely complexities of relationships that can never be.

And here’s hoping someone’s squeezing you too tight today

Changing Times

My son came out when he was 16, several months before I told him I was gay.  I’d wondered about his sexuality long before I began questioning my own. At four, even before he loved Mary Poppins, he carried Barbie to show-and-tell and preferred making necklaces to tossing footballs. His love of Hotwheels was a little inconsistent with his other passions, but mostly he preferred arranging them in interesting patterns to actually racing them. And somewhere around his 5^th year, a playmate’s mom came to me beaming that C. had told her daughter how great her new haircut looked; she was sure that he would make a girl so happy some day. I remember lifting an eyebrow to tell her I was pretty sure he’d be making a boy happy some day. But as he grew older, I saw fewer of those indicators and no longer felt the same certainty.

He’d been dating a girl for many months and I knew that he was wanting to break up with her but struggling with the how and when. So when he called me in tears one afternoon, asking me to pick him up at an off-campus location, I figured it was the break-up and it hadn’t gone well. In the car, I began the standard parent lecture, “Honey, I know it’s hard, but she’ll get over it in time…” to which he responded with “Mom, it’s more complicated than that.” And I knew.

That night, he asked to talk to me out of ear-shot of his little brother. We sat at the table on our back patio, and he said, “Mom, I don’t know how to tell you this. Can I text you?” I was a little late entering the world of texting, so could only say, “How do I get a text?” He shook his head with the same disbelief he always felt when I reminded him of my technological resistance then said, “Okay, I’m just going to type it into my phone and I’ll hand it to you,” and there it was…

I don’t like girls.   

I knew what he meant, of course, and poured forth with all the parental assurances that seemed necessary in the moment, but almost immediately, I started worrying about his next day at school. When he broke up with his girlfriend, he’d told her that he was gay and her response had been loud and angry. (Her previous boyfriend, she’d learned, was also gay. Little wonder that she was growing frustrated.) Students and adults alike had overheard the conversation, and I couldn’t imagine what kind of fall-out he might face.

Not much, as it turned out.

Friends and teachers offered only kindness and support—not one word of judgment did he experience in his next two years of high school. In fact, he went on to become “Head Boy” (equivalent of student body president that he shared with “Head Girl”), pushed the school’s commitment to environmental standards through the environmental club that he founded, and delivered a graduation speech to make any mother proud.

Times they are a-changin’.

 So, as I’ve said before, it comes as something of a surprise when I catch word of activity that seems to herald from some other time and place. From Laurel Ramseyer at Firedoglake, I read today that a Washington state senator is attempting another “License to Discriminate” bill. Frustrated that a florist is now being sued for refusing to sell flowers to a gay couple, Republican Senator Sharon Brown is asking for the bill in order to protect the rights of those who might need to discriminate on the basis of their religious convictions. Interesting. As a teacher I had convictions about testing, and my choice was to give the test or quit.

In Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, scholar Elaine Pagels explains how Augustine, the 5^th century “saint” who defined the direction of the Church and the Empire both in his lifetime and for many centuries after his death, had a conviction that all sexual desire, even that between a man and a woman, was unnatural and sinful. In fact, any spontaneous erection was a sin, even absent of intercourse. Ever so slowly, the church moved on from Augustine though I can’t help thinking… had legislators stepped in to defend Augustine’s convictions, a florist would have had the right not only to ask for a signed affidavit of virginity but of any male customer’s word that they’d never had an erection.

At some point, we look upon history, incredulous that it could have been so. And I think that’s the hope that I feel—that we have moved forward enough that a misguided florist and those of her ilk are, for the general populace of Washington, an embarrassment to their state, not the gay couple seeking flowers for their wedding. After all, Washington already killed a similar bill back in 2006. And Washington has other Republican legislators who might well cringe to read Brown’s bill. In fact, one of the most inspiring speeches I’ve heard on the issue of gay marriage came from Washington Rep. Maureen Walsh.

I get that perhaps it is dangerous to assume we have entered that space in time where we look upon a religious florist as the isolated lunatic screaming from the corner with whom we avoid eye contact, so uncomfortable are we with her bizarre behaviors. And I probably wouldn’t have the same thoughts if we were talking about a state in the South (I cringe to hear some of the stories at comingoutatmidlife.com and know my own story would be different were I still there). But I’m feeling optimistic. Perhaps my sons will look at these stories and say: Wow. Can you believe that happened in our lifetime? Perhaps.

 

For anyone interested in what’s happening in education (the effects of corporatizing the U.S. education system), PLEASE visit PBS education journalist, John Merrow.

On the Backs of Children

It’s been an interesting couple of days. Finally, “reformer” and “educator,” Michelle Rhee (from my vantage point in the public education system, she is neither reformer nor educator) takes the media stage for the cheating scandal she tried so hard to ignore—an omission that kept politicians, their charter profiteers, and millions of dollars from public coffers rolling towards her. I am trying very hard not to lose my humanity in an outright giddiness for her suffering; it’s just that as she’s profited SO MUCH, she’s attempted NOT to reform public education, but to destroy it, as well as the reputations of teachers nation-wide. How? By offering the public a view of teachers that are lazy and incompetent, selecting a few anecdotes of incompetence as representative of the whole of our nation’s teachers, and promoting a glossy well-funded though unsubstantiated “documentary”—more fiction than fact—Waiting for Superman (see instead the grassroots, well-substantiated The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman). I am especially bitter because in just a couple days, I will be offering my “resignation” from my teaching position in a secondary urban school (not, in fact, a resignation because I have no contract, thanks, in part, to the propaganda of Michelle Rhee, et al).

By all accounts, education is a career I was born to. I’ve passed even the absurd evaluations created by people vested in “flunking” the nation’s teachers in order to rationalize their greed. But born also an idealist, and believing myself to be an effective educator, I took my skills to low-income schools, where I am finally beaten joyless and exhausted. I’ve decided it’s just not worth my health or the meaningful relationships in my life—both sacrificed under the pressures created by Rhee and others similarly motivated.

I’m sure some of you are wondering what this education news has to do with a blog presumably devoted to the views and experiences of a woman coming out late in life. I’m not sure myself, except that there seems to be an intersection between the efforts of the Religious Right and politicians prostituting themselves for power, both finding financial wings on the backs of the most marginalized in our society. There’s the work of people like James Dobson, who for years has profited off the religious propaganda of fear and hatred directed at the LGBT population of this country, and those like Michelle Rhee and her base of charter/voucher constituents who have done an amazing job of capitalizing on impoverished students and their families. Her profiteers have run roughshod over parents’ voices in the running of their children’s schools and communities, closing one building after the next and refusing them the resources they need to grow their students and communities. Read Diane Ravitch’s post on Karen Lewis and the closing of 50 Chicago schools.

That such greed finds its most fertile ground in the gardens of those historically marginalized is profoundly disturbing to me. Though, of course, it is nothing new. From time immemorial the poor have been exploited for profit, and in ways, no doubt, more inhumane than this. But that worse inhumanity exists can no longer be an excuse for my inaction, the very invitation to uglier forms.  Inevitably, there will come a tipping point, as there most often does in cases of oppression. Maybe this is it, though the question remains… Is there something more reasonable and just on the other side?

Rights to an Uncertain Pod

When Christy left at the end of October—when we thought the leaving was permanent—there were several hours between the time she left and the time her big white Pod followed her (those crates that are packed up, picked up, and shipped off to designated locations). In the two days before she left, I would drive up behind its open door to bikes and furniture, saws and garden tools, all belted into place for safe travels. But here, now, it sat sealed, locked… fallen leaves kicking at its sides on winds of finality. When the driver came to tow it off, I stood staring out my kitchen window through the slats of open metal blinds, my older son standing next to me. At first, I made pretense of wanting to see how the mechanics of lifting and storing such a thing worked. But after a time, my son said, “Mom, this is weird. That guy can see us watching him.” Then, giving up the pretense in a fashion so atypical of my usual self-consciousness I said, “I don’t care. I’ll never see him again in my life; this is the last I’ll see of Christy,” and I stood there watching, without apology, until the trailer with its gleaming Pod pulled away from the house and the last inch of its blocky whiteness slipped out of my view.  It was a sad day.

Fast forward through the break-up-that-was-not-to-be to spring break, 2013.  Christy and I are walking around Portland imagining the spaces of her new place, chuckling at funky yard art, folding into 60s era bar chairs crafted of wine barrels, and sniffing mason jars of herbal remedies and twined sage bundles—the ones sure to aggravate any of those pesky spirits hanging around to take out ancient grievances on happy new home-owners. Retailers comment on the public nature of our coupling:

“It’s sweet to see you so affectionate. How long have you been together?” asks the woman in the herb shop.

“About two years,” answers Christy.

“My partner and I are at three and a half. Good to be reminded…”

I have a couple thoughts: 1. If she only knew, and 2. Is three and a half all we get?

Then she asks, “Have you heard anything about what’s happening in the Supreme Court?” and she tells us how the first question asked of the attendees is something like, “How does anyone’s right to marry affect you personally?”

It’s an interesting question… one that takes the steam out of The Bible Tells Me So, though, I suppose, if you buy into James Dobson’s argument that the shooting at Sandy Hook was a result of the country’s opening to gay rights, then you could fear for your child’s safety in school.

But when I got home and read some of the other questions the justices were asking, I became confused. They were questions about the security of children raised by same-sex couples or the newness of gay marriage in society, a suggestion from which I can infer that the idea just hasn’t been tested sufficiently in time.

Hmm… I seem to recall from my high school civics class that the function of the Supreme Court is to ascertain the constitutionality of the law, and I can’t quite see how either of the questions above relates to an interpretation of the Constitution. Rather they look a bit more like stall tactics employed by politicians than the sound arguments of law I expect from the highest court in our country. To be fair, however, I suppose if the justices were making arguments that favored my position but lacked the argument of law, I might look the other way. Or applaud.

These days, having been married and divorced, both before I knew for sure that I was gay, I’m not even certain what marriage means to me, though Christy suggested the nearest meaningful purpose I’ve heard: It marks a coming of the fullness of a loving relationship though not the end of it. But like so many gay citizens of this country, it is the validation that comes of the right to marry that I hope for. It is a validation of love and the mess that often accompanies it—of the humanness, both for better and for worse, that gives birth to our choices. Maybe that’s the reason I’ve watched Noah St. John perform his story, “The Last Mile” on NPR’s Snap Judgment no less than a hundred times. He tells a story of love and family that transcends type—a story that humanizes us all. It says that love in all of its mess, with white crates that leave and come back again, is still love, after all.

In the days and years that follow our Supreme Court’s decisions on gay marriage, we will surely hear about the numbers and percentages of gay divorces and the children of gay parents sitting in therapy—we already do. But to those un-well-wishers I would ask, simply, how is my humanity different from yours? And add that maybe if we could all be supported in loving those whom we love, ourselves most of all, those statistics might begin to look a little different for the whole of us.

If you haven’t seen Noah’s story, check it out. I’ll be shocked if you can watch it less than five times or twenty in a day.

A Story As Yet to Tell

I spend many a Saturday morning at my favorite little coffee dive in Denver seeking stories. Stories of gardeners and parents, of nurses and mixologists (looking for that perfect rosemary cocktail if anyone has suggestions), of environmentalists and spiritualists, stories of courageous transgendered youth and adults, of young lesbians and, eh hem… those more mature. It’s humbling, opening to that sea of human experience, only to find that my own story is at once unique and not-so-very original.  A feeling similar to that one I get sitting small and alone on a cliff looking up across the peaks of a grand mountain range. It’s the most freeing space of small—not small as in demeaned or belittled, but small in time and place and worldly concern.

But there is, as yet, a return from those experiences. As much as I want to live my life in that open space, there’s a miss and a remiss. And so often the thought that returns me to the space of demeaned small is Tell your parents. You’re 50 years old, for god’s sake. Be done with it and live your life. And then when I read the stories of those who’ve courageously suffered in the telling of their truths, I’m even more confounded by my reticence. What fear is it? What hold?

Of course, there’s no simple answer to that question. In part, I suspect it’s that lifetime role I’ve played in all my relationships—the pleaser—the way I quietly negotiated the landscape of my childhood that oozed its way into my adulthood (my relationship with my ex-husband notwithstanding). But it’s also the fear of losing that bit of truth I share with my parents—their histories and soils, so similar and different from my own, my dad’s, especially.

I mentioned in a previous post that my father’s father was a Pentecostal radio preacher (Central Louisiana) who, according to a story I got from a cousin, once took an icepick to the family pictures. By all accounts, he was irredeemably abusive—both to his wife and his five sons. I asked Dad once if he could remember a moment of kindness. And although it’s never been easy for him to talk about his childhood, he thought for a moment, even tried to give his father credit for a triviality that we both realized in the telling was yet selfish, nowhere close to kind. In fact, my dad, who was somewhat small in his youth, took up boxing as a means of defending both his mother and himself against his father. A picture or two, steely eyes glaring at the camera over gloved fists, tell the story of a pretty decent amateur.

The gloves of resistance are my birthright, it would seem. And I’ve worn them… through a loss of religion, through divorce, through job changes and a brazen apathy for most types of status seeking.

Save one.

Given that my 18-year-old son is also gay, and has had almost no issues coming out to anyone (he’s ready to tell his maternal grandparents when I give word), I’ve wondered if there’s some sort of genetic predisposition to courage that skips a generation, like balding or double-jointedness. Though more than likely it’s as much about the shift of place and time—a shift out of the South and into the years that gay rights has a consistent presence in his media saturated world. Still… many of those mature gay and trans women and men whose stories I’ve read have overcome hurdles no smaller than those I face in my parents’ stories of religion and control.

So even as I now embrace the hot flashes that announce a physiological shift in the tides of my own time, I remain oddly stuck in another. That time of patriarchy whose sensibility seeps into the crevices of the present—crevices that I simultaneously rage against and fall between.

A Generational Divide

It was a reunion of sorts. Back in the early 90s, before children and divorces and career changes, we were a group of friends who met every Wednesday night at a local dive to drink beer, eat cheap appetizers, and generally celebrate making it over the “hump” of the week.  But in the wake of early-morning feedings, followed by soccer and play practices, then band and track and school projects, the tradition disappeared. So this past November, one of the original members requested a reunion.  All knew that Bob and I had divorced, and I’d told some in the group that I was gay. Others had really just been acquaintances, so they hadn’t made it to the top of any need-to-know list. But there we were, and as I was trying to tell this story about an event in the little hood where I now reside, I found myself suddenly stuck… There was this conversation with Christy that had occurred in bed in the middle of the night–a conversation that was integral to the story. No doubt, this table of bygone friends might wonder about this woman in my bed. I could leave out names and doctor some pronouns… awkward. Or I could pretend the name was Chris as I had done with my younger son for a month or so after I’d started dating her. Or I could just be out with it.

I opted for the latter, and one of the women with whom I’d had little contact over the years said, “Okay,” in that snarky, superior way that lifts into sarcasm, then followed it with “moving right along.”

Are you kidding me? Why moving right along? You came of adulthood alongside Ellen for god’s sake. This can’t be that hard for you. I was a little taken aback because, after all, this was Central Denver, not Colorado Springs, and I’d gotten nothing but support from anyone I’d told up to that point, INCLUDING my ex-husband (who sat across from me at the table that night) and sons.  So much support, in fact, that I was beginning to think that the nation was truly beyond its gay-hating hetero entitlement, a sensibility that could now be relegated to a handful of extremists.

I was wrong, of course, and I need only look to the news in states like Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, each considering legislation protecting the right to discriminate against LGBTQ citizens, to know that mine has been a somewhat privileged coming-out story—privileged, in large part, because I’ve been pretty cowardly about who I’ve told.

And yet…

One of the groups absent from my need-to-know list was my students. I adore them, but I wasn’t willing to risk the potential for making a difficult job MORE difficult if I happened to have some punchy parents—gutless on my part, I know. But lately, as I now have 1.75 feet out the door of an institution that treats its teachers with such contempt and disrespect that I no longer fear losing my job, I’ve taken an attitude of If the opportunity presents itself.

And on Friday after school, it did.

A group of five girls came in because they didn’t want to wait for their parents in the cold. We were chatting and laughing when one of the girls said, “Ms. C., do you have a boyfriend?”

“No,” and I began to wonder if this was that opportunity presenting itself.

“Well, we need to find you a man because, you know, when people are excited and in love, everything becomes more exciting… like maybe your class.”

I reminded her that anything she thinks is exciting (SpongeBob is the only offer she’s ever given me, and I actually looked for a SpongeBob episode that featured one of the themes of our reading) is way beneath her abilities, and man or no man, I wouldn’t be making my class easier for her.

“I still think you need a man.”

Deep breath. “What if I don’t like men? In that way, I mean.”

All five stop and stare.

“You don’t like men?” and they’re looking a little bug-eyed and incredulous.

“Would it matter?”

And now they’re fueling up and wanting truth.

“No. But Ms. C., do you like women?” with such boldness and immediacy that I’m fearful of pretending.

I glance over at the picture of Christy on the wall above my desk and point, “That’s my girlfriend.”

Squeals of delight erupt, and as classmates come in from the hall they announce, beaming and proud, “Ms. C. is gay!” and each starts to tell me the story of an aunt or a cousin or a friend.

And apart from the day I met Christy, this is perhaps my sweetest coming out moment yet.

My fears are rooted in that same history that informs the bias of a 50-year-old acquaintance who is stuck in time, and status, and fear.  Yet the evidence, as I experienced it through the voices of five thirteen-year-old girls, suggests that we are, in fact, moving right along, thanks in no small part, to so many with the courage to stand up and challenge the course of history with their rights to be just exactly who they are.

On Bumper Stickers and Acorns

My 5^th grade Sunday School teacher called them “wordy dirds,” and when my babies were little, I tried hard, for obvious reasons, not to use them. But once in a while, events got the better of me, and out they came.