IN SEARCH OF GAY COMMUNITY

When I see an especially sexy man I capture and preserve him the way some people collect butterflies. Oh, I don’t dab camphor on his head, run him through with a pin and stick him to a board (though I’ve been sorely tempted). Rather, I capture his image in my mind, add a drop of mental fixative and file him away for future review. If he’s a rare specimen, unusually compelling in some way, I write a description of him, add it to the others in my red three-ring binder.

Thus I have preserved in ink the man who stood on tip toe in tank top, shorts and shapely thighs to replace a light bulb in a Pride Fest vendor’s tent, stretched muscled arms up overhead as if to bridge the gap ’twixt heaven and earth. Thus I can call up the image of a shirtless farm boy, out of college for the summer, working the roadside vegetable stand with his father, relaxed, easy among the melons. Thus I can envision the actor in a community theatre production who stumbled on stage in a tight white t-shirt and navy blue pants, barefoot, bound, bleeding. Beaten down time and again, he rose to his feet, chest heaving, shirt ripped, expression both defiant and resigned. 

Maybe it’s because I don’t see many men that I hold onto the ones I do. By choice, I live in the rural Midwestern United States, work at a small production company a couple miles from home. My husband commutes to work in the city, does our shopping while he’s there. No need for me to get out. By choice we live without television, VCR, DVDs, cell phones, cable, internet connection. We turn our attention instead to each other and to various projects, plants, animals and books. There are ample pay-offs. There are trade-offs, as well. When it comes to sexy men other than my husband, I get little in the way of visual stimulation—photo books of artful male nudes, calendars featuring the work of these same photographers and the pictures I carry in my head.

For me, it’s much the same story with regards to the gay community. Connections close to home are hard to come by in this conservative part of the country and complicated by my Luddite leanings. Concerns for physical safety, job security and personal reputation persuade many GLBT persons to remain closeted or keep a low profile. Around here, pressure to marry a person of the opposite sex is high. Many gay persons have and do. Clandestine rendezvous for sexual expression often take precedence over other forms of community-building. These were the messages my husband and I heard during the three years we facilitated a monthly support/discussion group in our home for local gay men. The group—never large to begin with—dwindled and eventually folded. 

While our gay friends are close to our hearts, their houses are far from ours. Once a month my husband and I drive to the capital city, a trip about 30 times that of my daily commute. There we attend a gay discussion/support group with three bosom companions. One weekend a year we attend a gay men’s retreat. Other get-togethers dot the year, most held far from our home. For us, gay community is encapsulated, comes in discrete doses. It’s not something we get all the time.

I was mindful of this recently when we made a long drive to crash a party some friends were hosting for their city’s LGBT social/education/advocacy group. About 20 people attended, men and women, some single, some partnered, some with children in tow. There were retirees, professional types, working stiffs and the currently unemployed. There was the flaming queen with his enclyclopedic knowledge of classic cinema, the master gardener, clerics, professors, an artist, the bartender and weekend deejay at a local gay club. There was laughter, power tool-talk, jokes, prattle, warmth, show tunes, sarcasm. There was good food, earnest discussion and more.

I savored these moments as they transpired and pinned butterflies in my mind all the while. Two men lustily singing the Munchkin chorus from Wizard of Oz. Another telling about the office party he hosted, pretending his partner was the hired help—and the woman angling for his affection who wasn’t fooled by this subterfuge. 

The obvious love and respect the gardener has for the earth. The curate “between cures” struggling to find a place he can call home. The Marlene Dietrich impressionist. The lesbian protesting she does know something about interior decorating, that her home proves it. The kids moving amongst the hubbub with easy grace.

I store up these memories so I can take them out to look at later. To sustain me through the long dry spells when community seems a chimera, mirage, impossible dream. 

I don’t think this is a feeling unique to GLBT people. We live in an era when in living memory air conditioning lured people off front porches and into secluded living rooms, when radio and television replaced community pageants and sing-alongs, and cable cemented the deal, when increasingly, internet connections reconfigure face-to-face interaction, and do-it-yourself religion empties edifices of faith.

Oh, I know there are bonds of community that support me and keep me safe, as easy to ignore and disremember as the highway bridges I sail over without thought of those whose work carries me across the waters. I know I breathe air once inhaled by GLBT pioneers; that their labors and those of many others have sent ripples into the world whose current touches me, carries me along. I am grateful.

At the same time, I am not satisfied. I want more than a whiff of unseen community. I want the connectivity of my childhood. I want the taste of Evelyn Fox’s apple pie at potluck dinners. I want the wrinkled hand of church patriarch Charlie Hough tousling my hair. I want what I saw every summer at my grandparents’ home amongst the pine forests, bogs and lakes of northern Minnesota. 

All their lives my grandparents breathed an almost palpable sense of community. They were among the many white families who bought land on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. While Grandpa scraped out a living as a farmer, hunter and woodsman, Grandma kept house, raised children, canned food and welcomed friends who dropped by. My grandparents lived seven miles out of Deer River along the road that runs up to Northome and Squaw Lake. They lived for a long time without electricity, indoor plumbing, an automobile. They lived in a time and place when everyone knew everyone else’s name—and business—for miles around. 

Folks helped one another out. When Grandpa heard of nearby kids going hungry he’d shoulder his rifle and head into the woods, deer season or not. When fresh venison appeared on their step, the neighbors accepted this bounty graciously and kept their mouths shut, especially when the game warden came nosing about. 

Folks made their own fun: community dances, ball games, picnics, parades and more. Grandma belonged to the Happy Hour Club, a gathering of women who lived along the same stretch of road. At monthly meetings they talked and socialized, traded gossip and recipes, worked on group projects that eased the loneliness and isolation that could otherwise overwhelm. One year they all made friendship quilts. Each woman embroidered her signature on a fabric square for each of the others. Each then pieced these blocks together to make her own comforter or quilt. Each was able then to wrap up in, feel the warmth of friendship in a very literal way.

Grandma recently gave me her friendship quilt. I asked her about each of the two dozen women whose autographs it bears, including Mary Daigle (“She was a queer one, Mary was”), Bessie Ploski (“She lived a hard, hard life”) and Katherine Juvalits (“She stood in my yard wringing her hands in her apron, saying, ‘I’ve been hungry, Violet, oh, so hungry’”). 

I now spread this quilt of many colors across my lap. To me, it embodies the warmth of community stitched together from the scraps of life people had on hand, marked with their names and personal histories. These were dirt-poor women, neighbors who stood together when times were hard, who celebrated life in creative ways, marked its passage with laughter and tears.

Of necessity, many GLBT folk fashioned similarly courageous, caring communal responses to the ravages of the HIV-AIDS pandemic. While they, too, stitched together a quilt—expression and emblem of pain, loss, hope—I remained oblivious. I was married, raising children, focused on my conservative church-related career and activities. 

I knew as much about the GLBT community as did my mother. Our mutual sources of information were the fundraising letters and radio broadcasts of the religious right. We imagined a vast, organized, legal, political and social conspiracy of hell-bound opportunists who recruited naïfs (like me, say) to further a hedonistic agenda to destroy society.

I turned 35 before I realized I am gay. Before I turned 36, I realized Mom and I had it all wrong. I found no organized network of contacts waiting to greet me with open arms, offer acceptance, support, warmth and fellowship, show me the ropes, help me find my wings. I found no such ready-made security blanket. 

Instead, I pieced together fabric gathered from various sources. I joined online and face-to-face support groups. I went to gay bars, pride parades, gay-themed theatre, concerts. I cried as the women’s chorus sang, We who believe in freedom cannot rest, as the men’s chorus intoned, There is no map for where we go…we’re not lost, we’re here. I attended church services of a denomination founded by and for GLBT people. I involved myself in Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). I read everything I could get my hands on that related to coming out, the GLBT experience.

I found supportive people like Larry and Larry, a retired couple who gave me a taste of what I yearned for. They checked in on me, offered emotional support, fatherly advice, home-cooked meals, even gave me pots and pans, silverware and cooking utensils when they learned how scant were my resources. 

I found a straight couple who hosted a weekly spirituality group for GLBT persons, another—parents of a gay son—who sat with me in court during one of the sessions in my protracted divorce and child-custody hearing. 

I found people online who were willing to lend a listening ear, sometimes by phone or in the flesh, as well. On a few occasions these latter encounters led to sexual experiences, sometimes invited, sometimes not. I navigated these for-me uncharted waters.

 I learned by experience—my own and others. I listened to a friend, editor of a GLBT newspaper, detail the infighting and lack of cohesive community in his city. I heard a man recount his coming out as a teen, the abuse he suffered at the hands of men who were interested only in his body. I learned what I should have already known—perfect community does not exist. 

It never has.

The members of the Happy Hour Club reflected the prejudices of their society, their time. They jibed at the Native Americans around them, looked down on anyone deemed less acceptable. They knew Katherine Juvalits stayed with her abusive husband because he stood between her children and hunger, but they turned a blind eye to this and other domestic violence in their midst.

If not in the past, I am sorely tempted to locate ideal community in the future—once the current regime is ousted, once more sensible laws are on the books, once entrenched beliefs give way to more enlightened attitudes. 

I am not alone in this. As humans, we keep heaven always before or behind us, so rid ourselves of the responsibility to find or fashion it in the here and now. We avoid having to embrace the present as it is, this world of “scorch and glory,” as poet Mark Doty puts it. 

Yet we are human; community gives us back ourselves with all our flaws, paradoxes, and potential for transcendence. Perhaps this is its saving grace. Perhaps in our coming together we save ourselves from coming apart. Community magnifies the potential for magic to happen, for moments that transport us to a perspective beyond ourselves. 

Such a moment unfolded for me in the small group meeting my husband and I attended last week in our state’s capital city. In a gritty and honest act, one man spoke the truth of his experience in a way that left me gawping at his honesty, insight, daring. I felt our common humanity, the ways truth-telling offers me opportunities to set aside judgment, meet another in the field that fourteenth-century Persian poet Rumi envisions (in Coleman Barks’ translation), a field out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing.

I treasure such moments, cradle these images, review them in my mind and heart. 

We human beings fashion community out of what we have at hand. We can bring no more, no less, to the enterprise than what and who we are. It is enough. 

And maybe, just maybe (or is it this gay boy wanting to be special?), we as GLBT people, in bringing ourselves and our ways of living and loving, offer unique lessons in community-building. People who love outside the strictures of their society become adept at creating community out of nothing and less than nothing—out of furtive glances, out of disparate images held in the mind’s eye, in the face of prejudice, in the face of a pandemic, under cover of darkness, under the gaze of repressive authority. The community-building efforts shared among and between GLBT people stand as testament to the creativity, imagination, determination and power of human spirit, to the need that drives us out of ourselves and into the arms of others, to the magic of butterflies and pretty rainbows. Our efforts are not perfect. Far from it. Lives are lost, hearts broken, evil perpetrated. Yet we carry on. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We carry on. Sustained by faith, by hope, by certainty, by felt community—whether in capsule or time-release form. There is no map for where we go. We carry on. As we do, we offer as exemplars our lives, our loves, our very selves to a world that may or may not be taking notes.

This essay appeared in White Crane, No. 78, fall 2008

THE MOURNING AFTER

Dawn arrives, crisp and cool. Crickets chirp, insects chorus from the trees. A gentle breeze waggles green maple leaves, spiked with what I imagine are the red-brown eggs of some creature whose larvae will hatch and dine before their great green dinner plates turn mustard-color and slip away. Bright sunshine dapples the ground. I savor the early morning chill, knowing afternoon will bring sweltering heat and humidity. I step barefoot across dewy grass, dig in my toes and say, “Ah, Mother!” I do not know whether I am addressing the planet or the woman who yesterday was laid to rest in its earthy embrace. 

The caress of the breeze. The cool of the day. The soles of my feet wet and chill. Simple pleasures not afforded the dead. 

I hear the phone ring. Earlier this morning I called my first lover—he of some 27 years ago—and left a message informing him of my mother’s death. He calls from France to offer condolences, to share some verbal snapshots of my mother. We both agree she was a wonderful person, funny and engaging, warm, interesting. “Most of all I remember her eyes,” he says. “They were so bright. They glistened with life. They were vibrant. I remember her eyes most of all.”

Hmph. This, the same woman on whom I turned my back three months ago as she lay dying. I walked away when even on her deathbed she refused to accept me as I am, to see me as worthy enough to provide care for her. You’re gay, therefore you’re not good enough, not accepted here, not acceptable. This the message both she and my siblings communicated.

I’m outta here, I said, and left. 

I have tried in the 12 years since my coming out to be the good son, to care, to love, to show my family that I am the same person I ever was. I’ve tried to please them, educate them, scare them a little into opening up their worldview, into looking past religious prejudice to see me as a person. I’ve tried to show them love, patience, tolerance, acceptance, hope, life. A new way of being in the world. How happy I am. How angry I am. How much I have to offer.

I might as well have tried to baptize a cat.

I did not attend my mother’s funeral. I choose to direct my energies toward life, not toward people for whom I will never measure up. Better, more honoring of the bright-eyed woman I hold in my heart, to nurture awareness of life and its simple pleasures—now, while I still can.

Yesterday, as my siblings gathered about her casket in a cavernous church building some 12 hours away, I stood alone under an arch of blue sky in our back flower garden. I laughed, cried, sang and spoke remembrances of the woman who gave me birth. This morning I dove my toes into dewy grass and said again, thank you for life.

This essay appeared in The Letter, Spetember 2008.

THE ROUND NOT TAKEN

I’ve washed the drinking glasses, am on to the bowls. I pick up my favorite, a study in dandelion yellow, inside and out. Its outside is ribbed—’twould be a bumpy ride if I were a flea circumnavigating this half-globe. If I made it over the thick rounded rim, however, I’d have smooth sailing right down into its slick center. Were my world then turned upside down, I’d be trapped under what looks like a frat boy’s embarrassingly bright beanie topped with a big dimpled button. No backstamp offers the name of its maker, hint to its age. Ah, well. 

Perhaps where things are going is more important than where they came from.

Sturdy to begin with, this bowl grows heavier with age, encrusted with layers of memory. It once belonged to my grandmother, part of a colorful set that included yellow, orange, cobalt, and turquoise. These were the favored cereal bowls of my boyhood. Every summer our large family spent at least three weeks at my grandparents’ home in rural northern Minnesota. Every morning there we ate hot cereal—oatmeal, oatmeal with raisins, oatmeal with coconut, wild rice porridge, cornmeal mush, cracked wheat, farina. 

My siblings and I vied for our favorite bowl colors. Yellow was my first choice, with orange and cobalt following close behind. Some mornings there was no color in my world since there weren’t enough of these favored bowls to go around. Two people ate from shallow, scalloped white china bowls and two poor saps had to spoon their oatmeal from soulless, square, glass bowls with insides the color of watery milk, outsides a sickly yellow. Those bowls made any kind of cereal lose its savor. But there was no use protesting. I knew what my parents’ answer would be. Might as well dig in, make the best of it. Be earlier to table tomorrow.

This lesson has proved useful.

My wife and I were visiting Grandma one summer when I asked if we could someday have those colorful bowls. She laughed to think anybody would want them, told me to take all five home. 

Though I glued it once or twice, the cobalt bowl did not survive the onslaught of our firstborn son. I was prepared for this. Early on, my wife and I had agreed we wanted to give our children the message that people are more important than things. We knew accidents would happen and our children would break things we treasured. We would accept this with good grace and remind ourselves that everything is temporary, fragile.

Another useful life lesson.

Our three children came to visit me at the ratty apartment I moved into after coming out to myself and others as a gay man. My middle son accidentally knocked the orange bowl to the floor. It might have been my heart lying there. Or my marriage. Some things, there is no gluing back together. 

That was a time when my life seemed to echo Yeats’ description of a world in turmoil: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” In coming out I lost my marriage, home, job, contact with my family of origin, my friends and faith community. Soon, my eldest son quit coming to see me, citing discomfort with my sexual orientation, conflict with his religious beliefs. A few years later my other sons followed suit. A judge stamped his approval. Here, have another helping of mush in a pus-yellow dish.

These losses hit hard. Some days I had no appetite for life. Yet morning after morning, bowl after bowl, life went on dishing out my daily portion. It was amazing how the sun kept rising even on days I had no desire to get out of bed. No matter my reaction, life kept on dishing it out. And the thing is, some days it arrived in a dandelion yellow bowl. 

From my grandmother I received all those years ago—is it mere coincidence?—not one but two bright yellow bowls. My husband and I ate breakfast from these this morning—my husband, partner in a heart-marriage that has lasted as long now as did my first church-sanctioned union. I live in a soul-nurturing home—walls painted vibrant colors, many windows, the woods around full of birdsong, coyote call, tree whispers. I have animal, plant and people friends who enrich and wonderfully complicate my days. I have alone time. In solitude I have opportunity to explore the universe within my heart, even in sleep to plumb its depths in dreams.

Life is a mix, I keep learning. Some days my portion arrives in a sunny container I love. Other days I glance at what I am given and think, “I’m expected to eat that?” The answer is yes.

This essay first appeared in The Letter, August 2008

WHAT MAKES THE HUMP IN MY TENT

Recently, I woke up to the long hours I was spending online gazing at one beautiful male body after another. Gorgeous frames, faces, pecs, penises. Each man different, each man the same. Each one leaving me wanting more. 

That’s the nature of desire. It is never satisfied, always goes to bed hungry. Repeats itself ad infinitum, ad nauseam. 

Poet Mark Doty jolted me awake to this fact with three words—longing’s repetitive texts—from his poem, “Homo Shall Not Inherit.” For two weeks I repeated this newfound mantra, then unplugged myself from the sources that (at my request) had been sending me daily doses of erotica. 

“Enough is enough,” I said. I meant it.

“Enough is never enough,” Desire whispered. 

But I was firm. I’ve heard it takes six weeks to change a behavior. In the following six weeks I was back online searching for erotica only twice. Had I changed?

Not a chance. I was waylaid at the local community theatre presentation by one of the actors. Tall trim body, chiseled features, large dark eyes, long brown hair that makes my heart ache. His character appeared on stage bound and bleeding. His expression mingled vulnerability and defiance. Long after the performance I replayed images of him, mental theatrics that featured his front and center. 

Desire licked his lips and they were mine. Of course. Who am I trying to fool—escape Desire? This will happen only when I quit breathing, if then. So long as I am alive, Desire is joint tenant in my experience of life. 

I want it to work like this: I give Desire room and board; he stays out of the control room. But he is part camel. Given an inch, he takes a mile. And I easily go unaware of my actions. Somehow Doty’s phrase woke me up to the camel in my tent.       

I asked for a one-on-one with Desire. He sauntered into my dining room, pulled up a chair. I thanked him for his role in my life, for enlivening my days. I asked him what he wants and needs from me. I listened to his reply. 

He wants sex, power, excitement and more of it. I pressed him about his underlying needs. He looked into middle distance, spoke slowly. Said he needs to feel loved, acceptable. We surprised ourselves, got teary. I asked to hold him. I assured him he is loved.

We compromised, agreed to a limited amount of visual stimulation. I reminded him that there is a place for him in my life, but it is not the driver’s seat. He nodded. We were back on track--for the moment. 

Mindful of his camel nature and my own easy forgetfulness, I wanted to mark the moment, erect an ebenezer to remind me into awareness. But what, how? I turned again to Mark Doty’s poem:

      

      in each body, however obscured or recast,

      

      is the divine body--common, habitable—

      the way in a field of sunflowers

      you can see every bloom’s

      

      the multiple expression

      of a single shining idea,

      which is the face hammered into joy.

      

Sunflowers, sexy men--all different, all the same--me, my husband, the actor, the men who posed for the photographs I ogled--we are all repetitive texts, a single shining idea writ many times over in muscle and manhood, flesh and bone. Sunflowers can serve as an apt reminder.

Hmm. Several sunflowers had sprouted beneath our bird feeder. I asked Desire to accompany me. Picturing the actor, we transplanted these fledglings to a small patch of earth along the garden path. There takes root my lust and longing for the sexy thespian. There grows a green and gold reminder to stay awake to the nature of longing, to see past it to my true heart’s desire, to give thanks even as my face, my life, all I love, is hammered into joy.

This essay appeared in The Letter, July 2008

IF I LOVE YOU, WILL YOU BITE ME?

The first twisp of spring flew about our kitchen one day last month. "Twisps," I call them, because my husband Dave hates wasps. By using their Native American name I hope to remind him of the Lakota phrase etched above our front door. Translated, it reads, "all my relations" or "all are related" or "we're all in this together." By subterfuge, then, I appeal to his big heart, remind him to treat even those he fears and despises with respect. Fine. He won't thwack twisps with the flyswatter if I capture them, carry them outside for release.

This twisp I encircled with a clear drinking glass, slid a recipe card over the mouth of the vessel, inverted it and carried said twisp outdoors into the sun. I held the glass upright, removed the card, waited to see him fly off. He was much too involved in grooming himself to take flight. I watched as he stroked his bald head several times with his two front legs. He reminded me of a cat cleaning itself with its paws. First his head, then each antenna. These seemed to have subtle joints in them. They bent in sections to the touch of his legs. He was very intent. Focused on one antenna, then the other, then back to the head again. Next he gave himself a backrub, petted his thorax, that little button of a body piece threaded directly behind his head. With his back legs he rubbed his abdomen—that stretched-out football of a heine—again and again. Employed his wings, too, to rub it, stroke it, soothe it. I almost fell asleep myself, it looked so relaxing. 

I marveled at what a thin joint attaches such a big behind to his body--as if his waist were a size 3 and his buttocks a good 64 inches 'round. I drew the glass close to my face, wondered what it would be to slip a paring knife down inside and sever the twisp's butt from his body at that narrow isthmus. I watched him clean each wing in turn, then stroke each of his needle-thin hind legs. The only body parts I did not see him clean were his center legs. I presume he needed them to balance upon.

Ready at last, he buzzed up out of the glass, alighted on the roof and proceeded to clean his abdomen some more. So big a portion of his body appropriately demanded a large percentage of his attention. Then he was up, over the rooftop and out of sight.

He reminded me of the stereotypical gay man grooming himself. Except that he didn't change his clothes several times before leaving, he devoted as much attention to his appearance as does my friend Kellin before he steps out of the house each Saturday night to head for a smoke-filled, dimly lit bar where he proceeds to remove as many items of clothing as possible. 

All my relations.

Though he said nary a word, Brother Twisp spoke volumes to me. He reminded me that I share much in common with all beings, no matter what their size, shape or intention. Even with those who would do me harm, those whom I fear, despise. They, too, cleanse. 

We are all in this together. And together we wing our way towards a common fate. The poet Emily Dickinson writes: Death is the common right/ of toads and men/ of earl and midge the privilege.

Aware that death is in my future I find the present richer, fuller as I recognize parts of myself in all I meet. Maybe we do carry within us a spark of One light. With my Buddhist friends, I could bow to those I meet and say namaste—the light in me greets the light in you. Easiest to say this to my friends, but there are people aplenty in my world who carry the sting of prejudice, discrimination, bigotry. How to treat them with respect yet avoid their venom? Perhaps Sister Twisp (for she may well have been female) points the way. She suggests I try seeing myself in the smallest creatures I meet, practice saying, "All my relations." And mean it.

This essay first appeared in The Letter, June 2008

I NEVER PROMISED YOU A ROCK GARDEN

I plan to put in a rock garden this spring. Nothing big, only three short rows. In one row I’ll plant smooth river rocks spaced about an inch apart. In another, ordinary gravel. In the third, some of the curiously shaped and colored stones I inherited from my father and grandmother. 

I’ll tamp the soil lightly over these pebbles, water them well, wait to see them sprout, watch them grow, gather a bounty of rocks this fall. 

Wasted effort? Misguided hope? Sheer stupidity? Perhaps. Yet so much like my life! After coming out as a gay man 14 years ago, I tried hard to educate my wife, parents, siblings and others about homosexuality. I tried to help them see, accept and love me for who I am, as I am. I might as well have been coaxing rocks to grow. 

I hoped the woman I loved most in the world, the one to whom I was married, could understand. Hoo boy.

Perhaps my siblings, the people who grew up with me, would be able to get it. No way.

I realized it would take time, but I believed that before they died surely my parents would come around. They proved me wrong. 

A year ago this month, my mother was admitted to hospital, diagnosed with a terminal illness. She was to return home, would need 24-hour care. My husband and I volunteered to take the first week-long shift. But even on her deathbed, she was concerned about keeping up appearances, adhering to church dogma. In the end, religious scruples outweighed love for her child. We were not welcome to provide care for her in her home overnight. Receiving this on top of other you-are-not-good-enough messages, I left. I hardened my heart, refused to make contact, check on her condition, attend her funeral.

 This past month, at an uncle’s funeral, I saw one of my siblings. The one who testified against me in court during my divorce hearing. Who in this and many other ways has thrown stones my way. With whom over the years I’ve tried to reopen communication, offered to meet, discuss differences. No more. I gave up waiting for those rocks to sprout. 

Not that stones can’t be a catalyst for change. My husband and I were married in Windsor, Ontario by a minister who was among the first in the city to wed same-sex couples. When outraged detractors hurled stones through the windows of her church building she redoubled her outspoken advocacy for the right of all people to marry.

Not that stones can’t offer thrills, excitement. My cousin Neil captains an ocean-going boat in Alaska, takes fishermen out in search of bottom-feeding halibut. One client fought for 20 minutes to bring up what he’d hooked from the ocean floor. No one on board knew he’d snagged a rock until it broke the water’s surface. 

Not that stones can’t serve as vehicles for healing. In my first experience of a Lakota-inspired sweat lodge ceremony, I held the door flap open as red-hot rocks were carried into the midst of the darkened circle. The lodge keeper explained that those stones, older than imagining, could serve as recipients of all the sorrows I asked them to bear. 

When I plant my rock garden this spring, perhaps I’ll plant the rock that is my heart towards my sibling, my mother. The rock that is my gallstone towards my former wife. The rocks of my kidney stones towards the church, legal system, higher education, organized anything.  The stones my society flings at me, the messages that demean, diminish. The millstone I carry around my neck of not being acceptable, my internalized homophobia, self-hatred, despair.

Maybe I can release these stones into the earth’s accepting embrace. Maybe I don’t need to carry this load of stones around, after all. Watered, nurtured, weeded, maybe the results of my planting will be something beautiful.

This essay appeared in The Letter, May 2008.

DEATH AND TAXES

Income taxes come due mid-April. I know this. Yet every year I act as if the deadline has been changed to the thirtieth of July, say, or September third, or the fifth of Never. I only fool myself, I know, but I can be pretty gullible, especially when I work at it. Problem is, my fool’s paradise is a fragile thing and one of my co-workers seems bent on shattering it to pieces. Not only does he file his taxes early, he advertises this fact. Again and again.

“Nope, didn’t watch the game last night. Got my taxes done instead.” A few minutes later, “See you got a haircut. Looks like they shaved you as close as the IRS did me this year. Found that out last night when I did my taxes.” Then, “My cousin called me last night and I told him about getting my taxes in by the end of January. . . .”

Sheesh. The groundhog hasn’t yet poked its nose out of its burrow. No way I’m going to take my head out of the sand. Or so I reason. I want to believe that my life flows easier, richer, fuller when I ignore all things taxing. That my days grow more footloose and fancy free. Never mind that little black cloud on the horizon, the one that grows darker and more threatening as April approaches. Never mind that I scramble at the last minute to put my financial house in order, find the papers I need, receipts, bills, check stubs. Never mind that last year when the IRS reviewed my return they found I’d overlooked some of the finer points of the law. They refunded me an extra 800 dollars. 

There’s a lesson here if only I would listen. My way of doing business exacts a high price, both in mental stress and material loss. Ignorance falls several hundred dollars short of bliss. The cost of living in a fool’s paradise keeps going up. 

So does the cost of dying there.

Death and taxes, they say, are the only two sureties. And I do a capital job of ignoring both. But as I lollygag my way through life, pretend I am immortal, I wind up paying a high price when death comes knocking on my door. Ignore the fact that I am going to die, and I lose out on experiences of life I don’t even know are mine. What’s the good of hiding my head in the sand when I have one foot in the grave, the other on a banana peel? Staying aware of death’s approach may allow me to more fully experience the moments I have, 

Easy to say, hard to do. Monarchs of the Middle Ages had a servant whose task it was each day to remind their royal highnesses they would die someday. I can’t afford to hire someone for the job. Guess I’ll have to do it myself.

Life offers me little reminders, opportunities to practice dying. To say goodbye. To feel pain. To let go. 

A college professor friend teaches a class on death and dying. He passes out four slips of paper to his students, asks them to write on each something they value highly. Could be people, popularity, relationships, eyesight, physical or mental health, house, home, motorcycle, good grades, whatever. He then talks about the aging process, about having to let go of things that have been meaningful. He directs his students to select one piece of paper, pass it to him. “You’re left with only three now,” he says. “Imagine what your life is like.” They discuss these losses. He has them turn in yet another slip of paper. Students find it difficult to choose. They talk some more. Then he walks the aisles, himself takes one slip of paper from each student. Some grow angry. “That’s how it is,” he tells them. “You don’t have a choice in what you will have to give up.” Fact is, in the end, they will have to surrender everything. Life itself.

Hard words, these. Hard truths. Not pleasant to think about.

But they can motivate me to stay open, aware. To be thankful for what I have now. To know it will not last, that circumstances will change. To practice holding all things lightly, practice letting go. When I feel pain, to try opening to it rather than clenching tight around it. To see if I can get through it, to find out what, if anything, awaits on the other side.

My husband, bless his heart, all year long saves receipts, files papers, tracks tax deductible expenditures. As if he knows this preparation will pay off somehow in the end. As if he has some privileged information about a day of reckoning to come. Can it be?

This essay first appeared in The Letter, April 2008.