The Total Experience

Today at our little church, Pastor Patrinell Wright sang Alice Parker and Robert Shaw's "Sometimes I Feel Like a Moanin Dove," with our church choir.

How did she get here? I don't know. Wait, yes I do. It was grace.

In 1964, the year of my birth, she traveled from her Texas home to make a home in Seattle, WA, just so that she could sing to me today. I'm not sure where today's lyrics came from, her own rendition or an older rendition that I can't find.

This morning, she lifted her arms and sang with a soulfulness that took my breath away. She sang of sadness, "Sometimes, I feel like a moanin dove," and "Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child," and she sang of beauty's power, "Sometimes, I feel like an eagle in the air."

The sadness and the beauty lifted me. Her presence lifts me, too. She's given her gift of song and of spirit to the world in a way that has often brought her onto stage with famous folk and into public awards and recognition for all that she has given.

In my little church, however, she faced the congregation and, before she sang, she folded her hands in namaste, a greeting that I learned in yoga that means, "I honor you." She put her fingers to her mouth and blew us a kiss. I learned this signal, "I love you," long ago.

And then she sang. I sat in my pew and believed that she sang to my cross-eyed and somewhat crippled self. I felt honored. I felt loved.

At the end of the service, I wanted to say thank you, but she was already gone. I didn't hear the boards creek when she left. It seems that she left more quietly, as angels do.

Living Backwards

"Now ordinary people are born forwards in time, if you understand what I mean, and nearly everything in the world goes forward too. This makes it quite easy for the ordinary people to live. . . . But I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of time, and I have to live backwards from in front, while surrounded by a lot of people who live forwards from behind."
- Merlyn in T.H. White's Once and Future King

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Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,	70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;	75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

--Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"

Like Merlyn, I seem to be living backwards in time. It seems that many others believe, like the poet William Wordsworth, that their youth was the time when they were most connected to a divine spirit, to the center of their true selves.

That was the message of Pastor Jim's sermon today, a message that echoed Wordsworth's mullings in his "Ode: Intimimations of Immortality."

As Jim talked about having felt more whole, more connected to our dreams in our youth, heads nodded, indicating that for some of those with greying hairs in our community, life has moved them away from their true selves. There seems to be a melancholy about this loss.

Though I like Jim a  lot and like to encourage him in his preaching, today I could not nod my head. Life for me has gotten better, not worse, through the years.

"Children," he said, "seem closer to God." Heads nodded. I think I heard a sigh.

I was happy as a child (at least until middle school.) I had fun. I loved the swings, and I discovered with awe that bricks, when rubbed together, make sand.

I do not believe that as a child I had a clear vision of who I might be, so there was no vision to shatter. I did have a vision of a lovely life, but I did not necessarily envision that that lovely life would be mine. I bit my lower lip and wondered what life I might have.

Now I know. In my life, there has been some loss, especially through these tumors. I can no longer run after a soccer ball or read a passing billboard sign. I can no longer make it through the day without at least a couple of naps.

More abundant for me, however, has been the grace in living a lovely life. I got to be a high school teacher and witness genius and kindness and hope. I have visited places like Lalibella, Ethiopia, and Guarjila, El Salvador, places I could not have imagined from the cul-de-sac of my suburban youth.

I get to live my life with a woman who loves me and with whom I feel whole. I get to wonder at fall colors, spring roses, and frozen berries in the early snow fall. I get to read poetry and nod my head, "Yes."

In living backwards, I grow into my naivete, a wonder in the world, a joy in every day living. I grow into my Yes.

Fish Tacos and Chichis

This is a g-rated blog, so if you speak Spanish and are worried that this entry won't be appropriate, fear not. I am writing about the tasty meal we had in Hawaii in December and the dinner party for church auction folk we had at our home last night.

The fish tacos were made with true cod, jalepenos, garlic, cole slow, tomatoes, mango salsa, and melted cheddar on a soft taco shell; and the chichis are a blended drink made with pineapple juice, coconut cream, vodka, and macademia nut liquer. Those chichis might be the only thing in the world that's tastier than a milkshake. In fact, they're a lot like a milkshake with vodka, so you see what I mean.

Eleven people who signed up at the church auction came to this dinner. It was a fun night with people from lots of different pews. We believe in diversity.

Michael recounted some of his favorite marquee signs on the now closed, peep show establishment, "Lusty Lady." On the inauguration on the Seattle Art Museum's "Hammering Man," the Lusty Lady sign read, "Hammer away, big guy" and during the Mariners' winning streak in 2001 - "Randy Johnson?". Then the Lusty Lady had a respectfully  blank marquee for about two weeks after 9/11.

I remember the Lusty Lady signs, so I did a little historical research into previous signs. There are several top ten lists. I like the Seattle Weekly's favorites:
An hour after the Ash Wednesday quake...
We're Still Shaking -- Come Feel the Earth Move
During the W.T.O. riots...
W. T. Oohhhhhhhh! -- The Nude World Order
On Oscar Sunday...
We'd Like To Spank The Academy
On St. Patrick's Day...
No Body's Wearing Green and Erin Go Braugh-less
Christmas...
We're here for yule and Dancers, Prancers and Vixens
And Thanksgiving...
Happy Spanksgiving!
When SAM first moved in across the street...
Welcome SAM! Once you've seen their nudes, come in and see ours.
When Hammering Man was first installed...
Hammer Away Big Guy.
When SAM reopened after an expansion...
We Made Sam Grow
And when Chuck Close came to town...
Chuck Clothes
And finally, in 2006, after the Lusty refused to sell to ex-Mayor Paul Schell and the other investors trying to tear it down and build a Four Seasons...
We're Open, Not Clothed.
Just not for long.*
*All marquee titles come from memory, History Link, Rick Anderson's story on the failed Four Seasons sale and Robert Jamieson's 2001 column in the P-I.

Pat, a Metro bus driver, recalled seeing one of those "Jesus is _______." billboard signs on her route one day. The blank had been filled, in excellent billboard scrift, with "a taco." On the return trip, the sign had already been cleaned of its humor.

Pat also recalled a large man, not fat but barrel-shaped, who collected cans and crushed them in his hands. She referred to him as the "Can Man." One day, a lady with some sort of disabilities who talked very loudly got on the bus and announced that there are three ways to get into heaven, so the bus did not need to pray for her. Pat described  her this way: "She was very special.....really, I knew she was very special. She had these kind but very intense blue eyes...like a wizard would have, or the sage lady living in the hollow of a tree in the fairy tale....and her mission was to tell people how to get to heaven. There are three ways: ONE: You give birth. TWO: You save someone's life, and THREE: You give blood. Notably all are about sustaining life. She was precious beyond precious. I knew God was present when she was." As the Can Man got off the bus at a later stop, he said plaintively to Pat, "You can pray for me."

Another day, a different woman who voiced her thoughts was sitting towards the front of the bus when two perfumed women boarded. "I smell a candle," the woman at the front of the bus said. Then she pointed to the two women making their way down the aisle and said, "It went that way."

Yet another time, this same woman sat near two women on break from their jobs at Nordstrom's Department store. When they departed, the woman said, "They have man problems."

The conversation was at times hilarious and at times serious. Pat recounted a day when a man, apparently homeless, got on the bus. He was whistiling beautifully, and as he boarded he whistled the tune to Ella Fitzgerald's "Someone to Watch Over Me."

There's a saying old
Says that love is blind -
Still we're often told,
"Seek and ye shalI find."
So I'm going to seek
A certain lad I've had in mind.
Looking everywhere,
Haven't found him yet;
He's the big affair
I cannot forget.
Only man I ever
Think of with regret.
I'd like to add his initials to my monogram.
Tell me, where is the shepherd for this lost
lamb.
There's a somebody I'm longing to see
I hope that he
Turns out to be
Someone who'll watch over me.
I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood.
I know I could
Always be good
To one who'll watch over me.
Although he may not be the man some
Girls think of as handsome
To my heart he carries the key.
Won't you telI him please to put on some
speed -
Follow my lead -
Oh! How I need
Someone to watch over me.
Someone to watch over me.

The raucous bus quieted to his song, and our conversation took a more serious tone. "What is our responsibility to those who are in pain, to those who are homeless?"

Individuals shared how they respond to homeless people. Whenever Doug and Mary get in their car, they take Power Bars to share with anyone they see who is hungry. Ann buys the homeless newspaper "Real Change." Others shared their strategies.

Terry takes $1 bills when he drives, but he takes the bus to work, and talks with people on the bus who seek his company. One Sunday, when the church was having a brunch, he invited a homeless man he met on the way, and the man came to church for a couple of months and sat on a back pew. We wondered together how open and affirming we as a congregation are to those who are homeless. Terry shared the disturbing statistic from a Food Bank study that showed that over 60 percent of the women who use Seattle's Food Banks are women with small children whose husbands have abandoned the family.

It might sound like the party ended on a downer, but it was a communal celebration where we shared moral struggles and left feel connected and reflective.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. " -- Henry David Thoreau
Mary

My Easter Story

As Ann finished reading aloud Patty Smith's Just Kids, Smith's memoir about her loving relationship with her soulmate, Robert Maplethorpe, I wiped a tear from under my right eye.

My tear surprised me. I wasn't surprised that I cried. The memoir and its close were moving. My right eye, however, has not teared since I had surgery four years ago. Right after surgery, I could not close my right eye all the way because of nerve damage, but I've regained a lot of control since then, so I've been able to close the eye for some time. Generally, however, the right eye does not water. If I cry a tear, my left eye usually sheds that tear.

At night, Ann puts an ointment in my eye so that it doesn't dry out too much, and during the day I use eye drops. I know that if my eyes dry out, they hurt, and I don't see very well. Thus, this tear feels hopeful to me.

I think of the Ocotillo, my favorite flowering desert plan, which looks like dead sticks buried in the dry desert sand, but in the spring, strange green leaves sprout from its woody stems and its ends bloom a surprising bright red. At a desert museum, I once encountered a sign in front of the ocotillo in its woody winter phase: "Dead or Alive?" Sometimes, as the poet Pablo Neruda writes so hopefully in "Keeping Quiet" (one of my favorite poems), "Perhaps the earth can teach us / as when everything seems dead / and later proves to be alive."

Spring is the time of so much rebirth. Maybe this single tear tells me not to give up where I have given up. Maybe this tear tells me that my nerves may yet come back to life.

I don't want to fool myself, but I don't want to miss signs of life, either. I wonder in what ways the world and I are coming back to life. I wonder if I am noticing.

(I've posted all of Neruda's poem below, so that you can love it, too.)

Mary

KEEPING QUIET -- Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we all keep quiet.
For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors
would put on clean clothes and
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused with
total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving
and for once could do nothing
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Slow Learner

I must be a slow learner, but I did NOT learn everything I needed to know in kindergarten. I only remember learning a few things. I learned that other kids struggled in ways that I didn't when Tommy had a temper tantrum on the playground every day: since the playground was the most fun part of the day, I knew he wasn't faking his pain and felt bad that he always missed the most fun time.

When I saw my teacher in her bathing suit at our swim club, I learned that old people's legs are different than young people's legs.

I also learned some good songs at our church's program for kindergartners. I remember learning the hymn that celebrates the divine in the natural world, "This is my Father's World." I was surprised when, about forty years later, my grandmother chose that hymn for her memorial service:

This is my Father's world:
He shines in all that's fair;
In the rustling grass I hear him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.

This may have been my best lesson from kindergarten.

In church we also sang Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" (and my dad says it's not a hippy church):

Yes, how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky ?
Yes, how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry ?
Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Even in kindergarten I understood that the answer, blowin' in the wind, would be hard to catch, that it will take too many deaths til we know that too many people have died.

So yes, I learned some important things in kindergarten: I learned from Tommy that other kids struggled in ways that I didn't; I learned that old people had funny legs; I learned that the world's beauty whispers to me that God is with me; and I learned that war seems to never have an end.

I also learned some things in kindergarten that I had to unlearn, however. Though I don't remember this experience personally, research shows that some young people before kindergarten may begin to identify as queer, but in kindergarten many of these young ones learn that queer is not okay, and these students go underground until maybe fifth or sixth grade. Perhaps I went deep underground, since I didn't come out until I was thirty years old.

In kindergarten, I learned to be quiet if to speak up might mean I'd get left out on the playground. In sixth grade, I learned that silence is collusion. When my friends on the school bus bullied Bernie, the girl who wore cowboy boots, I didn't join in their taunts, but I also didn't stop them. My principal pointed out that in this I was like the Germans who were silent as Jewish people disappeared from their neighborhoods. My teacher said the principal was too harsh, but I knew he was right. My kindergarten lesson of being silent in the face of injustice in order to protect myself is a lesson I am still trying to unlearn.

I also had to unlearn the habit of excessive persistence. Like Kenny Rogers sang, "You have to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run." In high school I finally learned that I had to make decisions about how long to persist when, realizing I was not having anything close to fun, I quit the high school basketball team. While quitting the basketball team may seem trivial to you, for me it was not. Through junior and senior high school, I often felt lonely, and my identity as a good student who was also an athlete was central to my self-definition.

I finally realized that I needed to redefine myself and that this redefinition would begin with quitting the basketball team. Later in life, in another painful time of letting go, I had to quit my marriage in order to be myself, and now with these tumors, I have had to give up so much in order to find the kernel of who I am.

I suppose if I had learned everything I needed to know in kindergarten, I might have been a guru or a saint, but in this life I am neither, so I am glad to keep learning, and in that learning is the constant spirit of grace, learning again and again that God is with me everywhere.

Mary

PS4 who am i

Like many poetry-reading teenagers, I connected with Emily Dickenson's "Are you a nobody? I'm a nobody, too." When my sophomore English teacher Mrs. Smisson invited us to create a graphic symbol of ourselves, I cut out a large question mark. Today, I'm more of a semi-colon than a question mark, but the question still intrigues me: Who am I?

The too-early child of a nurse and a doctor,
I am from Grady hospital's white wing.
I am from a house on a hill,
from copperheads in the lawn,
from a cul-de-sac,
from a suburban acre
in the piney woods.

I am from
the magic word and
the golden rule,
from "Oh, I'd like to thank the Lord," and
Mahalia at Christmas.

I am from
Yellow roses in a yellow room,
from the nighly stock report,
from Hotlips and Radar.

I am from
the backyard basketball court,
Sunday soccer games after church,
the volleyball gym.

And I am
a child of the seventies,
of Watergate and
Add-a-beads.

I am
a woman in love
with a woman.

I am
a teacher in schools
where brown rain falls through the ceiling.

I am
a survivor:
two brain tumors, three surgeries, six weeks of radiation.

I  am the woman down the street
who walks with a cane.

I am a daughter,
a sister and a cousin,
a niece and an aunt,
a writer,
an adventurer,
a friend.

"I contain multitudes."

Mediocre in Spanish,
child of Apparicio y Maria,
Romero y Father Grande.

I aspire
to courage
and kindness
and right.

I aspire to wander beyond the boundaries of
Who I am and
Where I am from.

Summer #21: Down to the River

Summer #21: Last Saturday, Ann and I went on my longest bike ride since radiation with our friends Renee and Alex. We took the Cedar River trail from Renton and rode about ten miles to a place by the river where Latino families were picknicking in the shade and playing with kids in the shallow water, and teenagers with innertubes disembarked from their ride down the river, generally towing a cooler behind. It was a hot summer day for this area, in the high 80s, but we've just returned from North Carolina's high 90s, so to us it felt beautiful. We had our own picnic in the shade: local cherries, ham from PCC and bread from a local bakery as we watched the families play in the water. I said the scene reminded me of the swimming hole (tanke)  I frequented the summer I lived in Michoacan, Mexico. Alex said it reminded her of Mexico, too. Renee said it reminded her of Pennsylvania. Maybe there's a universal river scene that makes us all nostalgic.

The summer I lived in Michoacan, I lived in a small town with three other Americans volunteering with a program called Amigos de las Americas. On hot weekend days, it seemed that everyone in the town went to the tanke to picnic in the shade and rest or play in the water. In the shade, families built smoky fires and snacked their treats. We were more interested in the water. We watched the scene for a while and then slipped, unobtrusively, we thought, into the water. The sixty or so people in the water, unaccustomed to white people in their tanke, moved immediately to the edge, sat on the rocks and, silently, watched us. Fortunately, Juan, whose parents were originally from Mexico, had foreseen this possibility and had brought a football and a frisbee, and finally the kids slipped back into the water, coaxed by the fun of play.

As a teenager, I spent my summers first as a camper and then as a counselor at a sailing and waterskiing camp on the Neuse River, near North Carolina's coast. I love being outside, getting such fun exercise in the sun and heat. Many campers' best loved "jeep rides" where campers would pile into trailers at the back of jeeps and go off-roading, generally getting wet and muddy in the process and in the end eating an ice-cream treat. Despite the temptation to ice-cream, I loved this time best because much of the camp would empty and I could sail or waterski or shoot at the shooting range without waiting in line. From a cabin in the river's bank, I watched the most beautiful lightening storm I have ever witnessed. the lighting fell onto the water as counselors, sillouettes against the night sky,  pulled their sailboats to safety. I wondered about their safety, especially when lightening struck the nearby boathouse when such a loud bang that, after checking to see that the sillouettes were still there, I abandoned the dance of light and storm and went back in to my own caccoon.

One tradition in our church's delegations to a sister community in Chaletenango, El Salvador, is a trip with our hosts to the Rio Sumpul. Though the scene of a massacre during their "civil war" in the 1980s and 1990s, it's now a beautiful spot again, and our hosts pack up tortillas and chicken and such and we spend the day celebraing in the river together. On one trip, an American teenager named Graham and his Salvadoran friend Mario swam to a large rock, climbed onto the rock, and talked in the sun for hours. At the time, Graham didn't speak Spanish and Mario didn't speak English, but somehow they managed quite an extensive conversation.

So, as Allison Kraus sings, "Let's go down to the river to pray," which might look a lot like play. Mary

NL #31: Oysters' essential questions

NL #31: "When human beings try to describe God, we are like a bunch of oysters trying to describe a ballerina.We simply do not have the equipment to understand something so utterly beyond us, but that’s never stopped us from trying.” (our minister Jim Carther quoting Barbara Brown Taylor referring to Robert Farrar Capon's Hunting the Divine Fox).

I remember first being interested in the question of what we cannot know because our minds don't have broad enough experiences when a museum educator visited my fourth grade class. She asked us what color things were: our jackets, our socks, etc. and then she used a black light, which showed me that white was purple and that what I thought was clear and immutable was, in fact, just a figment of my eye's experiences.

Maybe earlier than that, Dr. Seuss got me thinking. After Green Eggs and Ham, my favorite Dr. Seuss book was Horton Hears a Who. It still is. I can imagine worlds within worlds, getting smaller and smaller just as space gets bigger and bigger: universes like those wooden dolls that fit into one another. I can imagine not having the capacity to sense those other worlds. After all, I can't hear a dog whistle.

Perhaps because of this habit of mind, I love words that try to capture the unknown. One of my favorite words is "conundrum", a word I first recognized from a Dublin philospher-cab driver.( I went to Ireland because there were so many Irish poets travelling the US circuit and I'd read Joyce and wondered if everyone in Ireland wandered the streets and settled into the pubs speaking lyrically. They do. )

As a teacher, from time to time I would write on the board (first a chalk one and then a white one) Walt Whitman's quotation, "Do I contradict myself? / Very well, then. I contradict myself./ I contain multitudes." If anyone understands the fickle concept of the self, it's teenagers.

We are more complex than we imagine and our God, fittingly, is too. That's tight.

I realize that not everyone thinks that's tight. My brain, having sustained a liberal Southern Baptist upbringing, two tumors, a splitting of my cerebellum and radiation, is not the average brain. Lots of folks prefer answers to questions. A student once asked me, "Why do you always answer a question with a question?" In one of my best teachimg moments, I responded, "Why do you think I do that?" The student paused to think and then brightened, "See! You did it again!"

Perhaps the world is divided into those who love answers and those who love questions. (Yes, I know, the world is divided into people who divide the world and those who do not.) Perhaps we are all either Hamlet the philosopher or Horatio the pragmatist. As Hamlet says to Horatio, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

That's what I want to say to folks who are so clear on knowing the nature of God through literal readings of scripture and those who know human nature through their own lens: "There are more things in heaven and earth,...Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Do oysters have eyes? Could they even see Swan Lake? (Of course, I don't really understand ballet--or opera or baseball--either.)

Mary

NL #5: And the envelope please...

NL #5: How do you prepare for brain tumors? Come out as a lesbian--though coming out, for me, was in many ways harder.

Saturday night Ann and I celebrated our 15th U-Haul anniversary (anniversary of living together.) That means that it was also about 15 years ago that I came out to everyone I knew. It was a hard time.

The hardest part of coming out, for me, was coming out to myself. I’ve never believed in a God who creates beings to hate, so I never had the religious struggles that many gay people have. The fact that some others thought this meant I was “condemned”, I found ridiculous. Clearly, we understood the messages of the old and new testaments, the ways of the spirit and of God, differently. I thank God and the church of my youth for that hippie upbringing and the radical notion that all people are created to be loved.

Still, the notion that I had lived with myself for so many years and had not realized I was gay was hard for me. The realization made so many things clear: why I could not marry the first person I fell in love with, why I always found girls walking down the sidewalk more attractive than guys, why I felt so attached to so many female coaches and teachers, why I was so afraid that I would always feel lonely, not alone, but lonely.

I remember the only line in the final Ellen Degeneres sitcom that I really liked. Coming out to her parents, Ellen says, “Mom, Dad, I know you’ve always wanted me to be honest with you.” Her mom interrupts her to say, “No dear, that’s what you always wanted. We don’t need you to be honest.” Perhaps I was the one who needed to be honest, but I felt I couldn’t really be in relationship with these people if I was hiding an essential part of my life.

I decided that letters would be better than phone calls or in-person conversations. That way, family and friends could deal with their initial reactions and could decide what they wanted to say to me. I mailed individual letters to all of my family on the same day and then mailed letters to everyone I knew. I didn’t want any more pretending; I didn’t want to wonder who knew and who did not; I didn’t want to worry about a hierarchy of who knew first. As my letters travelled east, I received letters from both my mother and my sister asking what was going on. Each wrote that she no longer felt the closeness we had once had. This is especially remarkable in that members of our family do not as a general rule write letters to one another. Though I thought I was just hiding a part of me they didn’t want to see, I couldn’t be close to my family if I wasn’t being honest with them about who I was.

Reactions ranged: my mom called immediately and then came to visit. Not that she was comfortable with it, but she wanted to communicate clearly that her love was stronger than anything else. My dad and I wrote letters back and forth for over a year, dealing with our lives over the years in the context of dealing with my coming out--a different way of living his love. My sister was immediately joyful as she had never really liked my husband. My brother was also supportive, writing a letter saying that he understood that since I could not be with him, he being my brother and all, of course I couldn’t find happiness with any other man. Both my sister and my brother helped my parents come around and helped them to see that if I was going to be part of their lives, Ann would be, too.

Telling my family about my tumors was not so hard as coming out because I could better predict that they would be supportive. While I fell from the Christmas card lists of a couple of childhood friends after coming out, no one said “they didn’t understand” or judged me in any way when they learned I had a tumor.

When I was first coming out to myself, before I came out to everyone I knew, I felt alone with my anguish. With my tumors, without hesitation or explanation, I came out immediately to my family and my community and they embraced me. When I was first coming out to myself, my emotional system was so upset with me that I punished myself: I exercised endlessly, slept little, lost a lot of weight. With my tumors, I took care of myself and so did my partner, my family, colleagues, my community. I felt scared sometimes, but I never felt alone.

After coming out, I eventually came to trust myself and my place in the world and to believe that I could make a positive difference here. I also learned through coming out that I could face a very dark time and emerge from the darkness. I learned that I could struggle and be okay.  I came to believe that, though I could not know the future, I would not be lonely.

This trust and belief, in myself and in my community, has sustained me in this difficult time. I have been stronger in the face of both life and death than I would have suspected.

For your companionship, for this community, for being with me through it all, thank you. That's mostly what I feel: grateful. Mary

NL #4: Everything I need to know about auctions I learned from basketball

NL #4: High school basketball prepared me for auctioning. Friday night we attended our annual church auction. I’m competitive by nature, not necessarily a strength in competitive bidding. Some things I learned from playing high school basketball prepared me for auctioning (now a verb):

1) The one with the biggest number wins. Though I didn't win in basketball very often, I do "win" a lot of times in auctions.

2) If I’m not in the game, I can’t steal or score. This was an especially painful lesson as I sat on the bench for most high school games. When we played weak teams in high school, my coach would say, “We gon’ kill a gnat with a sledgehammah.” I loved the expression, but it’s not really practical. In reality, killing a gnat with a sledgehammah often means you spend a lot of energy, damage walls, but miss the gnat. On our basketball team it meant that our strongest players (not me) always played pretty much the whole game. And some gnats got away. A soft tissue is probably more practical in gnat warfare, and in basketball strategy. I finally quit.
 As in basketball, if I’m not in the bidding war, I can’t win. Even though I’m a lovah not a fightah, I love bidding wars. Sometimes, I bid just to start a war. Years ago, Ann left me at the table with the bidding card while she went to socialize. Lewis had donated two beautiful antique chairs that did not fit in our home in terms of color or size, but the chairs were about to go for a pitifully low price. Bid card up. Ann ran across the room, a kind of OJ Simpson through the airports run (before the days of the slow chase), and ripped the bidder number from me. Someone else won those chairs at about four times the original price. I felt like a good person.

3) It’s important to box out for highly coveted items: in basketball, of course, the ball. In auctioning something more like a framed autographed cartoon of WNBA Seattle Storm players Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson. In high school, this was hard for me. I was tall, somewhat willowy (some often mentioned a long stick) and a little off-balance. Once, when I was walking past a table of boys in the school library, the whole table got quiet. Finally, I overheard one say to the others: “That girl ain’t got no butt!” When walking down the street once, some fellow leaned out the car window to holler: “You don’t even make a shadow!” Yes, I was thin, skinny, which meant that I got knocked around under the boards. Since I have my cane now, I’m wider at the silent auction table, I have a weapon, and I have an excuse to write my name and number slowly.

4) Teamwork is important: Once my friend Jerry and I were bidding on a vacation that we intended to take together (with our partners, of course). We were bidding against each other until we finally realized that we were just raising the price for ourselves. I think alcohol was involved. I’m pretty sure. Maybe I would have had a more illustrious basketball career if alcohol had been involved.

5) As in basketball, the last few seconds of an auction can determine the difference between winning and losing. If I start a silent auction bidding war too early, the price just goes way up, so I am learning to enter the fray as a spoiler. I don’t bid for anything I really want until the end of the bidding period. When the auctioneer starts counting down, I take the final five seconds to sign my name. That way I "win."

6) In basketball, I had to learn when to quit. This was a hard lesson for me and not one that I have yet applied to auctioning.

I have been more successful with auctioning that I was with basketball. Evidence is all around our home: four-foot high Appalachian dolls that I call Grandma and Grandpa and that all the older ladies stop to talk to: “Hey girl. How are you?”, a large blown-glass dish that reflects the summer sun onto the den wall in pinks and purples (Ignore the inscription on the back—must have been someone’s wedding gift), photographs and memories of dinners and trips with friends, Grandma and Grandpa. The evidence of my basketball success is here, too: pictures of other people who play.

Of course, in the end it’s always all for a good cause and a good time. That’s what I say. But to be honest, it’s about winning.

Mary

DAR #29: Genesis

DAR #29: The Southern Baptist church where I grew up comprised an eclectic congregation of hippie Southern Baptists, professors from local colleges and universities, artists and young parents like mine who wanted to attend a church more liberal than they were. We were as likely to sing Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” as any hymn and to read The Velveteen Rabbit as any Bible stories. The church took a stand against the Vietnam War and had a sister church, a storehouse church with a primarily black congregation. Today they also have a sister church in Cuba.


After I graduated, the church tussled with questions of rightness and then decided to ask the minister to perform a gay union ceremony. That was too far. The church was expelled from the Southern Baptist Convention and is now an American Baptist Church. Today, the church has two ministers: a straight man whose intellectual sermons would make many more traditional church-goers cringe and a lesbian who, just by being both a woman and a gay person, makes those same folks cringe.

It is, and always has been, a lively place of spiritual quest, passion for social justice, community. As many Southern churches are, it’s large with a downstairs sanctuary that seats maybe four hundred and three upstairs balconies where my friend Ande and I sat so that we could slip out when things got boring and go to the local park to swing on the swings. We always wore our bell-bottom blue jeans with peace sign patches to church, so we were appropriately dressed for both church and the park.

For such a large place, the sanctuary feels intimate. There are rich stained glass windows and hues of gold, purple and blue that make it seem—somehow—cozier. If you go there today, my dad will probably be sitting on the right as you enter, in the fourth row, behind the Corrells, and my mom will be the one who hits the high note in the choir

I didn’t realize the church was so unusual until I tried to find a home church in Dallas. I assumed Dallas churches would be similar to the church in which I had grown up, but with different people. I visited 17 churches and the closest I found was a Universalist congregation that met in a very brown room. It felt more like college than church, so I gave up on it.

Now Ann and I are part of a Methodist congregation, much smaller but in many respects similar to my first congregation. This congregation, at the forefront of the move to “reconcile” with GLBTQ persons, supports us as a couple and has been a tremendous support throughout our time with my tumors. I am guessing that they are praying for us today as we go to find out if this radiation has been successful and that they will be there for us no matter what comes next.

Feeling grateful and anxious to know the MRI report. I’ll let you know what we learn. Mary

DAR #20: For Crying Out Loud

DAR #20: Saturday night I was so tired I cried. Sobbed. I don’t cry often, which I say not with pride but just as a matter of fact. Apparently, depression is common with people who’ve had brain tumors, so it’s good to cry, kind of like other folks eating their veggies, but I just don’t very often. And sometimes I cry for hope rather than fear. I'm not sure if that still counts.


I didn't cry much before my brain surgery either. I cried from fear when I got married (perhaps I should have paid more attention), divorced and even more when I came out (as a lesbian, not a debutante). I have always cried with that surge of hope when women’s professional basketball team starting line-ups are announced at the beginning of a game (I’m sure some therapist would love to interpret that.) I also cry when our congregation, a mix of folks devoted to social justice including many GLBTQ individuals and families, sing the hymn, "We Shall Overcome." I know it’s not my story, but when I sing, “Deep in my heart, I still believe, that we shall overcome some day,” I get choked up.

So I suppose it’s not surprising that there have been some tears with these tumors. I cried (both Ann and I did) when the eye surgeon told us that she might not be able to restore my ability to see with both eyes. I cried when I got so frustrated learning to walk again that I thought I might never do it. When I had the piggy flu, pneumonia and had started radiation I cried because I felt so crummy and was afraid this might be how it would be from that point on. I cried (we both did) when we learned I had a second tumor. Oh, and I cry at any tv show where someone has a brain tumor (“Six Feet Under”,” Gray’s Anatomy”…)

I cried (we both did) for joy when, after my second eye muscle surgery, the surgeon removed my bandage and I could see just one of Ann with both eyes. We cried when I walked without my walker (but with a lot of weights) the first time. I cried a couple of weeks ago when Ann put clean sheets on the bed. That seemed like the nicest thing that anyone had ever done for me.

And I suspect we’ll both cry if, on April 12, we learn that this round of radiation worked and the tumor is melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.

In this Easter week, here’s to tears of fear and hope--Mary

Day 15: Unreliable Church News

Day 15: Today was my second day of work since radiation. Whew. I'm tuckered. One important concept that we try to help students learn is to identify reliable sources. I'm here to tell you that church isn't always a reliable news source.

The day before my last day of radiation, the prayer in the pulpit was for Mary "finishing radiation and starting chemotherapy" the next day. Apparently, they couldn't quite read my mother's handwriting. I have no idea what she may have written that looked like chemo.

A few years ago, our friends Terry and Marcia and Robbie and Mary were planning to come to dinner. Sadly, Mary's dad died and so we postponed the dinner. My partner Ann called Marcia and Terry, leaving a message saying that Robbie's partner Mary's father had died, so we would need to postpone. Terry listened to the message but didn't quite get it right. He shared the message with his wife Marcia, who said a prayer of concern at church on Sunday for my father who had died suddenly. I got a few awkward calls from good friends and my minister asking if my father had died. He hadn't. Thinking it was hilarious, I told dad. He didn't think it was funny at all.

Hoping for good news and laughter for us all. Mary

Day 14: Inappropriate Laughter

Day 14: I envy Mr. Kotter who could always keep his laughter "inside, where it counts." I am generally able to keep my observations of ironies and absurdities to myself, but often my laughter busts out. In a somewhat serious conversation, someone will turn to me and say, "What's so funny?" Wisely, I keep it to myself and they just think I'm a little weird. I'm hoping the brain tumor rumor will buy me an excuse for this.

Many times my inappropriate laughter is just a cannon shot, a quick burst that we can all ignore and move on. Every now and then, however, I laugh in that way where I gasp for breath, cough, start to cry and shake all over. Mostly, this happens in church.

A few years ago, a friend named Rob got up to read the day's scripture. It was long and had lots of names in it. He struggled through, pausing to take a deep breath and roll his eyes from time to time. At last he finished and sat back in the pew, clearly glad to be there. There was an uncomfortable silence. His wife leaned over to him. He rolled his eyes again and returned to the front. "It's another long one," he said as introduction to the second reading. We laughed so hard we giggled our pew the whole service. It was my favorite reading ever.

In college, my friends Becky and Catherine and my cousin Lori went to State University together and got out for their winter break later than I did, so I went to visit them in their dorm. Becky and Catherine roomed together and Becky was afraid to go into her room because Catherine was in there with a boy (alas!) and the door was closed. Lori, who reminded me of Lucille Ball with her red hair, blue eyes and exaggerated expressions, always specialized in spying and decided to dress as a spy in trench coat and dark glasses and see what was going on. She flung Catheirne's door open, jumped into the door frame, and shouted, "Ah!" Then she gasped, put her hand over her mouth, flung eyes and mouth wide--and ran. I think that was the last time I wet my pants.

As a child in a large Baptist church, sometimes folks would go to the communion table at the front and pass around the elements (that's what they call them), saying to one another in turn, "This is the body of our lord, broken for you." My cousin Lori and I found this hilarious. We were already laughing when we got there. When the bread came to me, I had just calmed down, but could only say to her, "This..." before shaking with laughter again and passing the bread on. Someone else's mother scolded us after church. I thought she took herself a bit too seriously, but this time I didn't laugh.

Here's to a good chuckle, outside where it counts. Mary