IT ISN'T ONLY MEN I FIND PERPLEXING

Riddle: A box without hinges, key or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid. What am I?

Reply: You are a metaphor for life.  You sometimes arrive at my house spattered and dirty.

When our hens climb into the nests with muddy feet or feathers they soil the day's offerings. Hence I wash eggs before using them. I'm doing this now. I handle each egg carefully, examine it closely for the least little spot of dirt.

I like eggs, and not just the way they taste. Our hens lay in sepia tones that range from caramel to tan to beige to, well, eggshell. Some eggs arrive freckled, some splotchy, some bumpy, most smooth. And the shapes! Here's one with a ridge that spirals round its center; another about as rectangular as eggs come. I once read about an ad agency's struggle to find a dozen perfect eggs for use in a television commercial. They bought carton after carton of eggs. In the end they used styrofoam eggs.

If I could, I would keep every egg that catches my eye. That way I could hold and appreciate each egg anytime I wish. But there are limits to what a person can do. So I wash these eggs, set them in the dish drainer, then pick them up one by one. I turn each in my hands, admire its color, shape, individual style. Then I strike it against the edge of a stainless steel bowl. Crack.

How can I marvel at an egg one moment, break it open the next? Perhaps this is what it is to play God. To love life, cradle it in one's palm, then serve as agent of its destruction. Or transformation. 

I cannot save eggs--or anything, anyone--from their fate. All things hurry towards dissolution, change. They don't need my help. Things are what they are. And we are eggs, all of us--with something so magnificent, so golden as life encased in a fragile shell. 

I run my fingers along the beige egg with the spiral ridge, imagine a dancer twirling an orange scarf about her. "Beautiful," I say. "Amazing." Crack.  

"Come here, little speckled freckled Brownie. Thank you for giving yourself." Crack. 

"And you, Square Egg in a Round Body. You hold gold within. Thank you." Crack. 

Yesterday I was outside when I witnessed something new in the night sky. First I heard the croaking and purring, the calling one to another. Then a huge flock of cranes--a hundred or more--passed overhead in several vees. I've seen Canada geese before, yes. And ducks go by, yes. But these were cranes. They were magnificent. I wanted to hold onto the moment. All I could do was watch, notice, appreciate. Say thank you. Say good bye. 

How to stay open, aware, attuned to life? How to say to all that comes my way, "I notice you. Thank you." How to let go? It's a tough riddle to crack. 'Guess I'll keep practicing on eggs.

This essay appeared in The Letter, January 2008

LEMONS AND LIGHTS

This time of year you don't see the cracks in the mortar. They're still there. They jag their way from above the cast iron fireplace insert to under the pine board mantel. Whoever laid the bricks didn't count on the extra weight to make the floor sag, the mortar crack. It did. Actions have consequences. Not that you'll notice, however. Not this time of year.

Step into our living room and your eye is drawn to the holiday decorations atop the mantel. Two green wreaths on either side, an angel in the middle. Shiny red balls, little white lights, bright yellow lemons, pine garland, reindeer, glistening glass. Beautiful—and fraught with meaning. Have a look. 

Two evergreen wreaths adorn the wall, apt symbols of two men whose lives have circled 'round though joy and heartbreak to a sense of wholeness and love. My husband Dave and I marked our eleventh anniversary as a couple this year. Coming out and living as gay men in rural America is a sweet-sour enterprise; lemons nestle with frosted red berries and ribbons amongst the pine bough wreaths. 

Loss and gain, fullness and emptiness. The tension between these poles recurs as a theme in our lives, and is reflected in the antique cut glass bowl propped on edge at the center of the display. Behind it, small white lights cord a pine garland that runs the length of the mantel. Extra lights gathered behind the bowl illuminate it, cause it to shine. Were the bowl full the effect would be lost. Out of the emptiness shines the light. 

Peer long enough into the bowl and you may see faces of the dead peering back: my father, Dave's mother, his firstborn son, friends and relatives. And the living: our former wives, my teenaged sons, Dave’s two siblings and one of mine—brothers by blood who severed ties with their gay kin—and a host of people we once called friends. The refracted light serves notice that even in their absence these persons are present to us; bearers of light all. 

To the right of the bowl stand three hurricane globes graduated in size. A ruby-red heart-red glass ball appears to float in the center of each. Look closely and you'll see the ornaments are suspended from nylon fishing line. It is not always easy to see the threads that tie us one to another. These glass globes represent Dave's three adult children and their spouses. 

On the left, three red balls represent my estranged sons. Twin reindeer each carry a rose-red ornament in honor of my twin sons; a crystal vase cradles the third red globe. Making of loss, beauty. Perhaps an answer to poet Stanley Kunitz, "how shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?"

 

Against the wall between the wreaths lean seven long cinnamon sticks. Squint your eyes and you might be looking at the oaken slats on the side of a crib. A crib that has been the focus of Dave's attention for hours on end this year. That has come into being through his effort. That represents the first realization of his desire to build fine furniture. 

A crib that will cradle our first grandson, born halfway around the world this past July. He should arrive home to his parents next month. He was named Angel Gabriel at birth, re-christened Noah Andrew Gabriel long-distance from Ohio. We've been cooing over photographs of him. What a bundle of hope and promise swaths any infant! As a reminder of this, above the mantel, above the cut glass bowl, above the red balls, the lemons, the wreaths hovers a carved wooden angel with wings widespread.  

There. Did you notice the crack in the masonry? Probably not. But it's there nonetheless. We live in a world that feels flawed, in which there is pain, loss, cracking up. But at the same time there is hope, there is color, there is light. Isn't this the message implicit in Hanukkah, Christmas and Winter Solstice celebrations? In the time of great darkness comes the light.

In this new year may we all be sustained by such hope. And light.

And love.

This essay appeared in The Letter, December 2007

I ALWAYS DID HAVE A THING FOR SPIDERMAN

Out hiking, I turn a corner and come upon two harvestmen tumbling about on the woodland path, a tangle of legs and bodies, rolling, rollicking back and forth. What is going on here? Are they fighting? Making love? Kissing? Killing each other? I haven’t a clue. Should I interrupt, separate them? Rescue the smaller one? I choose to watch instead. Comes now a break in the action. They lay still awhile, leg-locked, mouths pressed together. Suddenly the larger one ups and makes a dash for freedom, only to be pursued, caught and wrassled about once more. Then another long lip-locked pause. Four times they repeat this dash and capture, resist-desist sequence. At last the larger one gets away, hides out in the undergrowth, eludes detection. For them, the contest is over. For me, the questions remain.

What did I just witness? What sense to make of it? Was a life lesson offered me?

I want to know more, anything. I open volume one of my 1965 Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary. Harvestmen, I learn, are not spiders but arachnids, members of a family that includes spiders, mites, scorpions and harvestmen—or daddy longlegs, as they are commonly called. Alas, aside from a note that they eat insects, nothing here about the lives and habits of these small creatures.

  

So I replay the scene in my mind. What do I notice? I make a list:

(1) There is much about life I do not know, do not understand, even when it plays itself out under my very nose.

(2) How difficult it is to do good! Should I have  intervened? On whose behalf? Should I act without knowing the full story? And when am I ever privy to that? 

(3) In the end, I stood back, watched without emotional investment or entanglement in the outcome. I let happen what would happen. Can I view my own life from similar perspective?

(4) The harvestmen were entirely wrapped up in themselves, intent upon their own actions—these two small beings whom I could have crushed with my thumb. Of what real import their struggles? Of what real import mine?

(5) Am I of any more cosmic significance than a daddy longlegs? Would I not appear as ludicrous to any gargantuan force that might peer down at my little wrestlings with others?
 

(6) Surely a spider knows nothing of the wider human world. Surely such creatures ought to be grateful they have instinct, knowledge and awareness enough to make their way in their own world, and leave it at that. What makes me think I can grasp anything beyond human ken? Am I not arrogant to believe a given religious dogma or scientific doctrine explains the mysteries of the universe?

(7) What does it mean to be alive? To be a human? A harvestman? Are we not all somehow spider-men? Perhaps I have more in common with the creepy-crawlies of the world than I imagine. Surely I can learn from them. 

(8) Will I?

This essay appeared in The Letter, November 2007

HOLLOW MEN

Looks like it would make a mighty fine walking stick. It’s about five feet tall, just the right size ‘round. As my husband and I walk  through our woods I spot it alongside the trail. I pick it up, am surprised to find it’s hollow, light as lemon meringue. Dotted with holes where woodpeckers once drilled for insects. Knock all you want, but nobody’s home. 

I once felt like that, empty as all git out, and I couldn’t understand why. I was doing everything right, everything church, society, family told me to do. I married, had kids, a house, a dog. Served as a church leader, worked for a religious-affiliated nonprofit, always used my turn signal. Yet found my self, my whole world, hollow inside. Was there nothing more than nothing at the heart of it all? Good people were supposed to be happy, I thought. Was I missing something? 

In a word, yes. And I didn’t have a clue how big it was. Or if I did, I repressed, ignored, denied any hint of it. I couldn’t be gay. It was unthinkable, impossible. I believed what I’d been taught by church, family, society: gay people were hell-bound sinners, misled, misbegotten, mistaken. These sex-crazed creatures were objects of pity, destined to be much less happy than, say, me. 

No way I could be one of them. No way, I say. No, not that. Anything but that, but them. Not me. 

Bless marriage, middle age, mortality for finally waking me up to life, to the realization that my lifelong attraction to men was more than passing fancy. To my unhappiness, to the fact I was sharing it with those about me. To the news that this wasn’t going away.

After I came out to myself and others as a gay man, my wife and I separated, divorced. Loss beset me on all sides: children, family, friends, church, employer, landlord, legal system. I learned the hard way I could not rely on any external source of help.            

When others turned me out, I turned within—pushed open the door of loss, grief, pain and stood amazed at what lay behind. A path led down into depths, into dark. Shaken, shaking, I took tentative steps into myself.

Along the way I lit several little candles: I recorded the events of my days, dreams of my nights, my reflections on each. I learned about and practiced active imagination. I meditated. I read books, various authors’ call to nurture one’s inner life. By these actions I cast light on the self I’d been afraid to face. 

I found more substance in that supposedly hollow space than I could shake a stick at. And I understood that when wrapped in my robes of self-righteous comfort, I’d been the one who was misinformed, misled, mistaken, an object of pity. Then came life, rapping at my door, insistent, probing, inviting, “Empty yourself. Come in, come down. Of all the space in the universe, this is your true home.”

This essay first appeared in The Letter, October, 2007

TO TELL THE TRUTH

Virginia (not her real name) would die with in 36 hours. She didn’t know it. I didn’t know it. Newest arrival to the nursing home, she’d been placed on the bed beside my grandmother’s. Virginia was distraught, wild-eyed. restless. “What do you think I should I do?” Her voice ran to the high side of throaty. Her tone was earnest, laden with emotion. Her question very human: “What should I do? Oh, what should I do?”

My own throat tightened. What should you do about what? Doesn’t look like you can do much of anything. And how should I know? I don’t have the answers. I felt relieved when her minister and granddaughter soon arrived. 

“Virginia?”

“Grandma?”

 “Oh good! Maybe you can help me. What should I do? I don’t know what I should do.” 

“Rest,” said the granddaughter. “You’ve had a big day. You were transferred from the hospital this morning, remember? You’re here now, but you’re tired out. You need to relax, and get some rest.”

“I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what should I do.” She caught her breath. “Am I dying?” 

Ah, that’s her real question. 

“You’re tired,” the minister said. “You’ve had a big day. You need rest. You need to let your body rest.”

“Is that it, then? I’m tired out? Oh, good. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I’ve been worrying myself sick.”

“Try to relax, Grandma. Just lay back and relax.”

By the next evening Virginia was dead. Didn’t her minister and granddaughter know she was dying? Or did they know but feel uncomfortable talking about it? Did they choose to protect her from the truth?

I don't know. But I do know I don't want the same thing to happen to me. If and when I am dying, don’t tell me I’m merely tired. I want the truth. 

This represents a sea change for me. I spent years not wanting to know, suppressing my attraction to men. I didn’t want to be gay, didn’t want to consider that I might be. I was afraid of this truth. Life changed for me when I turned and faced what was. Possibilities opened up. Awareness set in. No way I want to go back. 

When I am dying I want to know it, and to use the hours and energy left me to prepare for my final passage into Mystery. I'd rather do this than go to bed early and catch up on my rest. Those around me, if they're willing to be honest, able to overcome their own fears about the subject, may be able to offer me a heads up. As I have opportunity, I'd like to make use of my time. Yet that time, that opportunity is now, isn’t it? I need now to be surrounding myself with truth-tellers, using my time to honor, further and tell truth. I need now to be living into what is, learning to stay aware of those facets of truth I already know. 

This I know: I am dying. You are dying. We all of us received a sentence of mortality when we were born. Virginia was no braver than me. No smarter. No stronger. No different, really. Her death, when it came, came with a rush. She navigated this ultimate passage with eyes closed. Me, I want mightily to keep them open wide.

An earlier version of this essay appeared in The Letter, September 2007.

ANOTHER REASON TO WEAR AN ATHLETIC CUP

There is a certain type of man who, when I spot him, I want to greet with a swift kick in the balls. I am not prone to violence; this is an almost visceral response, a (forgive me) knee-jerk reaction. Although I don’t know him as an individual, I recognize his type. I’m sure he doesn’t know I exist, doesn’t care one way or the other. At most I appear as a blip on his radar screen, one more blob among the mass of faces that blur as he rolls by in his gilded carriage. I watch with a peasant’s smoldering rage.

He is twenty-something with dark hair, a face that turns heads, a body to match: trim athletic build, rippling muscles in his arms, legs. His shirt would cost me a week’s pay; the day I wear shoes like his is the day I’m invited to dine with the Queen of England. 

He walks, sits, stands—breathes—with the easy air of privilege, arrogance, conceit. He has, is everything I am not. Comfortable in his skin, his sexuality. Rich. Young. Good-looking. Born to convenience and easy living. Takes life for granted, gets away with it. Treats people like dirt, gets away with that, too. 

Hating him, I feel better about myself. Some frigid part of me hunches over the flames of jealousy, envy, spite. These coursing emotions energize me, if only briefly. While in their grip I feel larger than I am, more powerful, more holy, more dangerous. As a steady diet of hatred would exhaust me, I use it much like horseradish on a sandwich—just enough so it hurts. I get a quick high, a cheap rush. And by holding onto hatred I don’t have to deal with pain.

My reaction is more about me than him, I admit. I despise myself for all I am not, did not, have not become. In lashing out at him I really lash out at myself. My anger simmers, seeks release. It feels easier, safer to direct my rage out and away from me. Let Mr. Got-It-All deal with it rather than me.

Perhaps similar feelings motivate the unknown person who vandalizes our property. We seldom leave the house but we wonder what shape it will be in when we get home. Our mailbox regularly gets bashed in, the house egged, debris scattered in the yard. Only once has a fire been lit on the front porch. Maybe the vandal’s motives are similar to mine; my husband and I perhaps represent the freedom, creativity and courage he longs for, that he lashes out against. Thing is, he doesn’t stop at thinking about it, at spicing his life with mental flights of fancy. Maybe he has a higher threshold for excitement, needs to down the whole enchilada. While I can see parts of myself in him, offer him a hand in recognition of our common humanity, I’m keeping the other strategically placed over the family jewels.

This essay appeared in The Letter, August 2007

PRETTY LITTLE STEPS

From England, in the 1600s, Abraham Cowley wrote, “I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast; and if I were to fall in love again (which is a great passion, and therefore, I hope, I have done with it), it would be, I think, with prettiness, rather than with majestical beauty.”

Cowley is my kind of man. I, too, take pleasure in little things—the sweet snappy taste of orange marmalade, the smell of my husband’s work shirt, the crinkle of a baby’s laugh. If there is a secret to happiness surely it hides in one’s awareness and appreciation of small joys. 

The other night my husband Dave and I sat on the front steps of our little cheerful house eating our very little feast of egg sandwiches, watching the occasional car go by. Our hens are laying upwards of 20 eggs a day so we eat eggs. In sandwiches, tortillas, soup, casseroles. Over potatoes, toast, rice, spinach, beans. Scrambled, boiled, stir-fried, baked. Some days eggs afford very small joy indeed. But the hens haven’t given up yet and neither have we. 

As Dave and I shared our step-sitting supper,  a woodpecker rapped his own meal from the walnut tree in the yard’s northeast corner. A moth fluttered above the daffodils and hyacinth by the driveway. In the woods to our left, tiny spring wild flowers peppered the ground—pink Johnny Jump Ups, white Dutchman’s Breeches and the little yellow ones whose name escapes me. 

We heard the driver’s taste in music (loud) long before he rolled past us in his wide-bodied brown pick-up, windows down, radio blaring. He was twenty-something, beefy build, pulled down baseball cap, dark hair, bushy eyebrows. He stared straight ahead, didn’t glance our way as had other motorists. “Careful,” I wanted to shout after him. “You might catch whatever it is you think we have.”

Sure, I may have misjudged him, but I had felt the air thicken with suspicion as he passed. He fit my image of the unknown vandal who regularly visits our property. 

In our neck of the woods two men sitting on a front porch eating egg sandwiches constitutes a subversive act, as does two men weeding flower beds, two men walking out to the barn, two men painting a picket fence. Two men doing anything domestic is too much for some people. It has provoked some passerby to bash in our mailbox several times. To sprinkle white powder sprinkled in our yard at the height of the anthrax scare. To throw a burning bag of feces on our porch. To egg our house at regular intervals. 

As if we don’t have enough eggs already.

Two egg sandwiches. One simple supper. A small thing, sharing this very little feast with the man I love very much. A little risk, sitting together on the porch in front of God and everybody. A little gesture towards living into the kind of world I wish this one could be.

A world where I wouldn’t look twice before kissing my husband goodbye in the driveway. Where I wouldn’t drop his hand as we walk back from the barn if I hear a car approach. Where I wouldn’t fear epithets—or beer bottles—being hurled at me as I’m out mowing the grass along the road’s edge. Where I wouldn’t wonder, “What will they do to the house next time? Where will it stop? Will they bring guns?”

By little steps I help create such a world inside myself each time I risk showing my heart, who I am, who I love. By little acts of awareness, little choices I make in each moment that is now. To choose freedom over easy acceptance, forgiveness over bitterness. To affirm light, life within. To crack the crusty shell of societal prejudice and privilege. To call into being the world I imagine. A world not of beauty—for even majestical beauty may prove skin deep—but  a world built on little acts of justice, awareness, wholeness. For pretty is as pretty does. 

This essay appeared in The Letter, April 2007