Change is brewing

I'll be 59 in April and somehow this approaching birthday - or more accurately, the beginning of the final countdown to 60 - has triggered the beginnings of seismic internal reflections about life, direction, time lived, time left, and so much more.


I don't plan. I lean into change, and when what I need to do and where I need to go manifests itself, I leap. I feel the tremors of a great leap coming. Similar to when I came out almost 25 years ago in my mid-30s. I had inklings, feelings, and then a slow rumbling (and a few secret kisses) that were telling me I was queer and needed to leave the good life I was living, and leap into the amazing life I've lived since. One day it all fell into sharp focus - I was actually driving in my car and suddenly yelled to myself, "I'm a lesbian!" and started to laugh and cry - and then I acted. Within a month I had left my kind husband, announced my queerness to the world, and found my first girlfriend.

The next great shift is coming. I'm leaning in and getting hints and signs. But mostly, right now, I don't know what will come. I just feel it coming. I'm thinking of re-activating this blog in some kind of way, to document the unfolding. Or maybe a new blog, or a different kind of thing all together. Or maybe I'll fall off the grid and be in coffee shops or out in the woods. Or downtown. Or someplace else in the world. We'll see. 

In the meantime, here's a very old piece of writing (with apologies to Tim O'Brien) that I did shortly after that last seismic shift happened (so long ago I still put two spaces between sentences). Reading it today, it is so corny, but so full of the amazement and pure joy of being a freshly hatched queer girl all those years ago.

The things she carried out 

When she walked out of the closet she carried her secret with her, and her children, but left behind her borrowed last name, and her husband, who was not surprised but sad to see her go.  When she walked out of the closet she looked around and saw doors flinging open everywhere, and a chorus of radical dyke angels greeting the multitudes, who were dressed in all kind of ways, and going in all kind of directions.  She saw the attorney in heels and a three-piece suit, the school superintendent, who was dancing under bright lights and not hiding his face.  She saw mothers everywhere, and fathers, and even a bevy of grandmothers.  Kids were twirling around a Maypole and holding streamers of every hue in the rainbow.  Lavender kites were flying in the sky.  When she walked out of the closet she saw artists and car mechanics.  She saw her friend the piano tuner and his new lover playing blackjack at Mystic Lake.  From the corner of her eye she saw her fifth grade teacher surrounded by a big crowd of aging teachers, nurses and nuns.  They were singing old Andrews Sisters songs and bent over laughing from their attempts at three-part harmony.  When she walked out of the closet she saw the women she had secretly kissed and touched, saw her future lovers and friends, who were no secret to anyone, and amazingly, were all together having a party and dancing to Nina Simone, Sade, Anita Baker, Stevie Wonder and even Prince, that bad boy. When she walked out of the closet and opened the door to the rest of her life, she never once turned back except to wave goodbye.

October, 1993