Going Home

     We moved a few times when I was young- at 6 and 9- and we often acted as if where we lived was not our home.  Our home was in Vermont, in the summer cottage my great grandparents built on a campground  on an island in Lake Champlain.  That cottage was haunted, teeming with history and stories, and  it had an emotional weight far heavier than the brick house we lived in in Ohio or the pre-fab ranch we owned in Vienna VA,  where we knew no one, and where we knew we weren’t staying.  Home was the  cottage in VT, where my cousins and uncles and aunts stayed next door, where the books on the shelves were my great-grandfather’s books, where I played with lead toy soldiers  that had been my grandfather's.  For two weeks every summer, we went home.
            Home was a long drive away (12 hours from Cleveland, 11 hours from DC). It was a punishing drive, with few rest stops, sandwiches in the green cooler and an increasingly grumpy and tired pair of parent-drivers, who sometimes grew weary of my sister and me. But in the final miles, when we crossed the ferry boat, when we turned left at the old red barn with its rusty silo, when the paved West Shore road gave way to  bumpy, dusty gravel, when I saw the Fincke’s  grey house on the left, or when we passed the Hoagg farm where five year old me first learned about cows, the butterflies in my belly would start to rise, a tickling sensation of excitement and expectation and arrival, all at once. 

And the climax was the left turn, onto the family driveway, passing between two rows of trees, looking past my parents shoulders and through the windshield to get a glimpse of the lake.  My great grandparents and their siblings planted a long row of Cedar , hiding their cottages from the main road.  But  they had carved out a horse shoe at the end of the driveway so you could see the lake as you arrived, the lake through the trees, framed in an arboreal horseshoe of cedars.  As our car jostled down the driveway, the excitement and relief and sense of belonging was so powerful.  I was coming home, no longer in exile in some suburban sprawl.  This is where my people lived (or at least spent part of the summer).  This was who I was and where I came from.

Letters to my Great-great Grandfather

Cleaning out my house this weekend, I found a stash of old correspondence I inherited years ago.  Inside the bag, I found a number of letters my great-great-grandfather received when he was a Trinity College Divinity student in the 1840's.   I'm going to share a  few of them here, just because it gives me an excuse to type them out, and I think it's kind of fun to see what correspondence looked like 160 years ago, pre-Internet.

The letter receiver is Gemont Graves, born in 1827.  He was 21 and in college at Trinity.  The letter writer is Charles Emmit Graves, born in 1830.  Other siblings mentioned in the letter- Emily, born in 1837 and Lucy, born in 1843.   Gemont's parents had 8 children- two died in infancy, and another died at age 7.

On the front of the envelope, the year 1848.

 "Rutland, April 8th, Monday AM

"Dear Brother Gemont,

Mother this morning received your letter, and I thought I would take the opportunity to write to you.  We had for a long time been expecting a letter form you and were relieved from much anxiety, when your letter arrived.  Perhaps you may be somewhat surprised to find that I am yet at home. I have been waiting for Emily to get ready and to get ready myself.  I shall go tomorrow, but I am sorry to say, without family, for she is not able to go, she was taken sick Saturday afternoon.  She is now sitting in the rocking chair with a loose dress on, she sends her love.  You will probably perceive before you have read thus far that I am writing this letter in great haste to do this, that I may finish it before I stop, for if I stop I am afraid it would be sometime before you would get this letter, consequently, I shall write as I think, not stopping for order or looks.  I was glad to hear that you are to one of the speakers Junior Exhibition. I hope you will do honor to yourself.  The Junior Exhibition passed at Middlebury passed off fine, it far exceeded my expectations.  Enclosed herein I send you a Schedule of the same Peesy's conference was excellent and also Pellibone piece in short I may say so of all, the orations, by the way Pellibone has left Middl Coll, he is going to Union.  Sergeant's dialogue did not come off as he was sick at the time.  Things go on about as usual at school, we have a very good officer to our class though he is pretty strict, which makes to the Sophs rear a little once in a while.  Our class have to write our own orations to speak, you may imagine to your self how I make it go.  You ask what I am a going to do next year,  I shall probably stay out a year not because I am absolutely obliged to on account of my health but because I think it would be far better for me for I think I can do more the two remaining years of of my college course with good firm health, than I can do with my present state of health in three years.  But there is also another consideration, perhaps it will be necessary for me to stay out and help Father, in order that he may able to meet the expenses which you incur so that your college course need not be again interrupted.  Father seemed to be much surprised to learn that you yet needed so much money and that you were no nearer square, notwithstanding all the money he had sent you.  I trust you do not spend more than what is really necessary for your comfort and convenience.  One can not very well help strictly warding against extravagance when he considers that the wherewith comes from  the sweat of another's brow and not his own, most especially if from a dear Parent's  . . . We are going to study Tacitus this term I wish I had your book.

"Mr Curtis was to Manchester the other day he says Hollister formerly your classmate has returned home.  I wish to say to you now while I think of it, when you write (which I hope will be soon) be sure and tell me where I shall direct a letter to Stephen  I have one written to him, which lay in my desk all last term, as I did no know which place to it.  Miss Helen Semple's health is quite feeble, I should be at all surprised, judging from what I hear, if she never recovered.  I think Rutland is improving, though I have not now time, noone nor disposition to give my reason for this opinion.  All the family, I presume as a matter of course, send their love.  Mother sends her love, and says she was very glad to get your letter as she was getting quite anxious concerning you, she thanks you for those flower seeds you had the kindness to send.  Marg Anne is here yet want of room prohibits me from writing farther.  I hope you will write as soon as you receive this.  Most Fraternally yours C.E. Graves

"Mother just told me that she had never written to you of the death of Royal Fowles  I believe you knew that he as sick last summer, he died of the consumption the fore part of last winter I did not hear of it until Last term.  I went up there sugaring this spring had a very good time.  IN haste since dinner is ready  Yours in haste   C E Graves

"PS  We have all had our miniatures taken there were taken Thursday last by a man who moves about he brought his apparatus here and set it up in the house, selling room mine looks awful You If you should see Lucy's your could hardly refrain from kissing it.  Sister Emily just came and looked over my shoulder and said this was written awfully, 'but looks ain't nothing'!!

"Most affectionately and respectfully Yours- CEG

"Please write soon------"

relationships

a poem- inspired by Bill N

It's a draft- so I'd love feedback


At 18, I took that job
pumping gas,
full-service.  Sunoco
gave me a shirt-
"Jeff"- (he'd worked there
many years).
Pumping gas was not that bad.
I excelled at washing windows and
making change.
But once a day, you
would ask me to
check your oil.
I'd pop the hood and look
around, unsure, unable
to find what I was looking for.
I'd count to ten,
slam-shut the hood and come
round to your open window.
"You're doing fine, but next time
you might need some oil."
You'd drive away, never
knowing who I really was,
and I hoped
you'd do better next time, find
an attendant
who knew what
 he was doing.  Now,
I'm better with cars, but still
fumbling under the hood,
pretending I know how and when
to give you what you need.

Potential speech for a school assembly

Each year, the school I teach in has a Day of Dialogue to discuss LGBT issues. I usually get asked to speak, as an out teacher on the faculty. I always feel a little ambivalent about it. This is what I am thinking of saying this year.

I never know what to say at these assemblies. You put a teacher in front of students and he thinks he has to give a lesson, or share some wisdom. I’m not sure I have a logical lesson to share today.

Each year at these events, I think I’m supposed to be some sort of gay role model. I hear my colleagues introduce themselves, and they almost all tell the number of years they have been with their partner. “I’m gay, and I’ve been with my partner 16 years!” “I’m a lesbian and I married my partner last summer and we have two kids.” Thunderous applause. We all (including me) love to cheer our friends and teachers who have loving supportive relationships and/or families.

Then it’s my turn. “I’m gay, too . . . I’ve got a cat?” Courtesy applause. With no husband, no partner, no engagement ring, no kids, I wonder what kind of gay role model I turned out to be.

When I was in HS, out gays and lesbians were much more on the edges. They had fewer legal rights, fewer community resources, and less mainstream acceptance. They were carving out their spaces in society, sometimes in traditional, but oftentimes in nontraditional ways.

In the last 30 years, Gays Lesbians Bisexuals and Transgender people have worked hard to get a place at the mainstream table. Now, some of us join the military and others send our kids to schools like Brookline High. We pay taxes, we work “normal” jobs, and we fit in. We’ve come a long way, baby. But I wondered if we were trying to hard to fit in. We are just like everyone else, right? We’re NORMAL!

I got so paranoid about this, that one year I imagined my colleagues were saying “I’m gay, BUT I’ve been with my partner for 16 years.” Or “I’m a lesbian, BUT I married my partner last year and we have two kids.” I imagined that we whitewashed our difference and emphasized how we were like straight society- we have partners! We have families! Look, we’re just like you!

But coming out as gay and lesbian also involved saying- guess what? I’m not like you, and that’s ok. I’m going “to do me”, thank you very much.

And “doing me” may mean different things. It may mean living on your own or finding a life partner or several life partners, simultaneously or one at time. It may mean raising children or not. Maybe it will mean owning hundreds of cats! But it doesn’t have to look one certain way; there are lots of ways to do it. Sometimes I want to take the mike at these assemblies and say, “You don’t have to get married. You don’t have to raise children. It’s ok to live differently.” It’s ok to be whatever you end up being.

Time for a true confession- When I was your age, I thought I would be married and raising children at this point in my life. I’m not. It may happen; it may not. I don’t know. It’s possible what makes me uncomfortable when my colleagues talk about their partners and families isn’t that we’re appearing too normal. It might be jealousy. I know part of me wants what they have.

But part of me doesn’t, or I probably would have gotten it for myself by now. I know it’s complicated, and my explanation is a little messy. Sorry. I told you I didn’t have a clear lesson for today.

Do you, whatever that means. Figure out what kind of life works for you, and live it