Seventh-grade Friends

Beginning seventh-grade made me more than a little nervous. It was in seventh grade that young people in our community first changed clothes for P.E. and showered afterward. In retrospect I was making a mountain out of a molehill, or was it vice versa? As with many young people that age I was insecure about my naked self. I had an ectomorphic frame (tall and skinny) and I had no idea how my personal physical dimensions measured up to my peers. Once we all got in the changing room I undressed so quickly and avoided looking at others I was still pretty ill informed.

The changing room was not the only place I should have been worried about. I had experienced a growth spurt that made it difficult for me to place one large foot in front of the other without tripping. Expecting me to run and throw a ball simultaneously was beyond optimistic.

In 7^th grade, we also began moving to different rooms for different classes. So in the course of a single day we changed classrooms, changed teachers, changed clothes. It was a lot of change for a young person. Fortunately I moved to the seventh grade with a band of friends, loyal stalwarts. When I think back I realize I made a lot of difficult transitions, and good friends had eased the way. We expect a lot of our friends and my friends have come through, overlooking my weaknesses and walking shoulder to shoulder through the transitions.

The Dream

I had a dream one night while I was in high school. In the dream, my dear friend died in a motorcycle accident. I woke up in the morning and I was still crying. My pillow was soaked with tears. The dream was so real I sat in bed that morning trying to figure out if he was really dead or not. It wasn’t until I was at school later in the day and I saw him in the flesh that I could relax and let go of the dream.

The dream made me painfully conscious that I was in love with him. He was a fabulous young man, intelligent and athletic and funny. But he liked girls. I had listened to him for hours while he mooned over girls in our class. I could never tell him the true nature of my affection. So I loved him in silence, and dreamed my tragedy in private.

As I reflected on this private, personal memory, I thought about all the high school students today who are secretly in love with someone of the same gender. One of the most important tasks of adolescence is learning to fall in love. And yet for gay and lesbian youth, there are very few safe places to talk about it. Should they go to a teacher or parent? And what if at 16 years of age, this young person gets rejected, ridiculed or kicked out of their home? Could any of us have survived that?

There’s been a lot of media attention to bullying in high school. I believe it is time for parents and teachers to do the hard work of creating safe places for coming out. That means teachers and administrators saying publicly ‘our gay and lesbian students have a right to fair and kind treatment by everyone’. What a world of difference that would have made for me and the tender sprigs of love that I was learning to nurture.

Skip

Some people say there is no love as pure and generous as the love between our dogs and us. When I first met Tom he was cohabiting with a dog named Skip, a terrier of mixed ancestry who Tom adopted from the humane society. Skip tipped the scales at 15 pounds and was just tall enough to scavenge for snacks left on the coffee table.

Skip wasn’t sure about me at first. I seemed to be moving in without spending that required time in the pound. He looked at me as if to ask, “Do you have all your shots?” When I sat next to Tom on the couch Skip would bare his teeth at me and growl… grrr. But with time and cookies and walks, we won each other over.

I disrupted their idyllic life when we moved to Ventura, then we moved to that awful little two bedroom apartment in San Diego, and finally to a home that was worthy of Skip’s lineage. By the time we moved downtown Skip was getting pretty old. Cataracts obstructed his eyesight; his gait was uneven and wobbly. But then I was in the early stages of MS so my gait wasn’t all that commendable. I had a walker and found that the easiest way for me to take him outside was to put him on the shelf in my walker and push him in front of me. After a while, he began to lose his orientation and just wandered around the apartment bumping into the walls like the pinball Wizard.

It was hard for us to know if he was suffering. It sometimes took him a long time to stand up. And he would stop and stare, for many minutes at a time, as if in a trance. Tom and I had long talks about Skip’s quality of life. He had been such a vivacious and adventurous little dog; the contrast with this lame, old Skip was disturbing.

We took him to the vet early one morning.The Doctor met us at the door and ushered us to an examining room. He was very kind and reassured us. “ It won’t take long and it won’t hurt him”. It was just one injection and his breathing stopped. The tears ran down our cheeks and we sobbed out loud. The vet left us alone in the room with Skip while we cried. We hugged him and kissed him goodbye and hugged each other. Is it their innocence and loyalty that makes their passing so painful?

We wrapped Skip in a big beach towel, and carried him out through the waiting room, now filled with people and their dogs, cats and birds. They all silently watched our solemn procession go by.

We placed Skip on the back seat of the Volvo and began our funeral cortege through the places he had lived and loved. San Diego, (Beverly Hills, he liked the window shopping there), Thousand Oaks, Ventura, Santa Barbara and finally back to the humane society, where he started.

A month later his ashes came back to us in a wooden box, and it sits now on a shelf in our home, next to his picture and some of his teeth. It remains a wonder to me that such a little fellow like Skip could have such a big heart, and could so effectively fool us. All the while we thought we were taking care of him he was actually taking care of us.

Barefoot In The Park

In 1969 I played the role of Paul in our high school production of ‘Barefoot in the Park’. This was one of Neil Simon’s most popular plays on Broadway with over 1000 performances in the 1960s. Mine was the role played by Robert Redford in New York and in the film. I didn’t look like Robert Redford, but never mind- no pressure. It is a very funny script and we had a lot of fun keeping them rolling in the aisles.

Playing opposite me in the role once played by Jane Fonda, was a lovely high school senior girl named Kevin Crooks. She was terrific. And the script called for us to kiss each other at several points in the play…on the lips. I was a high school sophomore. Tall for my age but in most ways not experienced at all. You get my drift? The only women I ever kissed were my mom and grandmothers, and that was not the kind of kissing the script called for. When it came time for our characters to kiss, Kevin was very patient. She tutored me to kiss like a real heterosexual. (I suppose it helped that her name was Kevin, I could just close my eyes and imagine kissing anyone I’d like; Kevin Costner, Kevin Bacon-you get the idea.)

The play was set in New York City in the 60s so of course there were jokes in the script about gay people. I knew what gay people were, kind of. But they were mostly the butt of jokes even to Neil Simon.

The real balm that the play provided was the laughter. It was the first comedy in which I had acted. And I was surprised by how luxurious it felt to be the recipient of all that laughter. It billowed up from the audience and rolled over me. As long as they kept laughing I could do no wrong. You can be sure that Neil Simon is a genius when he puts words in the mouth of a high school sophomore and makes people laugh for hours.

Tomato Farming

When I was in college I came home to the desert to take summer jobs. One summer my brother and I worked for a hydroponic farmer putting in tomato plants. Hydroponics is a style of farming that avoids the use of soil. The plants are situated in gravel or some such inert composite. Nutrient rich water would be washed through the roots of the plants several times a day. It was a way of farming that helped to avoid plant damage by disease and pests. If you've ever seen a tomato worm, you know how important it is to avoid them.

We started at the site just before sunrise every day, shoveling gravel, pushing wheelbarrows full of seedlings, tying up tiny tomato plants and other tedious and laborious jobs in the hundred-degree heat. Our supervisor on the job was an old farmer who wore overalls and a straw hat and was in the habit of sitting in the shade and pointing and shouting at his younger slaves. I'm not sure how we got the job. I must have unknowingly hurt the feelings of one of my friends who, for revenge, recommended me to farmer John.

I had worked at other summer jobs; lifeguard at a pool and lake, usher at a movie theater, supervisor for a recreation playground. But never anything as hot and difficult as hydroponic farming. That summer job became a touchstone for me. When later in life I fell into some work that I didn’t like, I could always say to myself: ‘at least it’s not hydroponic farming in hundred degree temperatures.’

Italy

In 1998 Tom and I took a trip to Italy. I had been diagnosed with MS the year before and we decided we had better travel sooner rather than later. We chose a bus tour of Italy with a company called Perillo and they put us on a bus with a driver named Stefano and a tour guide named Anna. On our flight to Rome we met a couple that, it turned out, were active in the PFLAG chapter in Portland, Maine, and they spotted us because we wore matching rings. So we had made friends on the tour even before the tour began: An auspicious beginning.

Our tour guide, Anna, talked about life in Italy as we drove along in the bus. She was married with a couple of little children and she had the Italian point of view on everything from frozen pizza to the Pope. She noted the Italian national car was the FIAT, which stood for: “Fix It Again Tony”. Two particularly memorable sights on our trip included Capri and the Amalfi Coast.

From Sorrento we took a boat to the island of Capri. We thought it would be a good idea to take the little funicula to the top of the island and then walk back down the hill, but we got a bit lost and missed the funicula station -so we ended up walking to the top. It was a lovely walk past walled private gardens with luscious lemon trees. When we got to the top we were hungry for lunch. So Tom went into a little neighborhood market and stood with a gaggle of Italian homemakers in front of the refrigerated case. It was an interesting sight, Tom was about 2 feet taller than all of these women who were dressed in black and speaking excitedly in Italian; but they kept careful track of who was to be served next. They all pushed him to the front of the group when it was his turn to order. It was like having a dozen Italian mamas taking care of him. For lunch we had some cheese and salami and fresh bread, it tasted like it had been imported from the Italian deli in heaven. We also sank our teeth into a couple of peaches that might have been picked from the gardens we walked by on our way up. We were amazed! The peaches were so succulent; the juice ran down our chins as we delighted in the flavor. The Ralph's grocery back home never carried peaches quite like these.

After Capri, Stefano drove our bus along the Amalfi coast. I don't know how that road is today, but then it would barely accommodate two passing vehicles. If the bus came upon a car wanting to go the opposite direction we both had to stop and pull the rearview mirrors in. Then creep by each other while all the passengers held their breath, looking down the cliff to the Aegean. The Cathedral of St. Andrew in Amalfi was beautiful resting in its stone niche above the sea but I think the real lesson of the trip was: be sure you’ve got a good bus driver.

Gratefully Yours

As 2011 begins, I find myself counting my blessings. It requires a lot of helping hands to keep me rolling along. My husband Tom prepares food for me, lifts me into and out of bed everyday, pays my bills, and does the thousand little things my hands can’t perform anymore. Our friend Duane gets me through the shower three times a week and shaves and dresses me. A fresh shave is something I took for granted for many years, but now I particularly appreciate how it helps me put my best face forward.

I go to a local hotel to get my haircut and a doorman at the front of the hotel always opens the door for me. I used to be a little embarrassed by that much attention, but now it's just about the only way I can get in.

I had some trouble with my computer last week so we called our friend Mike. It wasn't just that his hands were better with cables and keyboards, his expertise got me back and running in a couple of hours.

Last week while Tom was out of town, our friends Jim and Pat brought over a meal they had lovingly prepared themselves. Carl stayed with me all week to take over the responsibilities that Tom usually fulfills. Last month I was home alone during the day and I really wanted something to drink. I had a small bottle of cranberry juice but I couldn’t open it; my hands just weren’t strong enough. So I put the bottle in my lap and rolled to the elevator thinking I might find a friendly neighbor eventually. Before too long an electrician, repairing some lights in the hallway, came along and provided a helping hand. The list goes on… but you get the idea. Happy 2011, may you know even half the generosity that I do this year.