Our Grand Adventure, 2016

Every couple of years, Barbara and I go on Grand Adventures (aka big trips where we are quite active.) This year, we are hiking the 100 miles around Mt. Blanc, the largest mountain in Europe. This hike is commonly referred to as Tour Mont Blanc, or TMB.

What makes hiking/backpacking in Europe extra scrumptious is that YOU DON'T HAVE TO CAMP!

Camping is an option, but you can also stay in refugios/gites/hotels in the mountains. You get a shower, a bed, dinner and breakfast for about $50./person

One of my favorite parts of hiking this way is that part way through the day, you can stop at a refugio for a hot drink or a piece of cake. When we hiked for 5 days in the Dolomites (the Italian side of the Alps), I sampled many varieties of apple strudel. In France, I understand it will be chocolate cake. 

But I digress. 

On our Dolomites trip, we took a self-guided trip through a company I recommend- Distant Journeys (https://www.distantjourneys.com). They made all the arrangements for transfers, hotels, rifugios, etc.

This time, because TMB has a lot of infrastructure, and is a well-travelled, specific route, we made the arrangements ourselves. A book that helps a lot with this is: Trekking the Tour of Mont Blanc by Kev Reynolds. We are taking 13 days to make the trip: 12 days of hiking and one rest day, in the Italian town of Courmayeur. Where there is a spa with natural springs. 

When Distant Journeys planned our hike, they had connections that enabled us to stay in the nicer refugios, and we almost always had private rooms.

This time, we will spend some nights in dormitory rooms with up to fifteen other people. 

Truth: Snoring, both my own and others' is the part of this trip about which I feel most anxious. I am taking lots of earplugs to pass around. (Ambassador of Good Sleep.)

I am excited about meeting people from all over who are also hiking all or part of TMB. Perhaps the universal issue of snoring is an untapped avenue into world peace.

Besides seeing all the stunning natural beauty on trips like this, (and being fed) I also like that it offers a lot of solitude/coupletude  blended with the conviviality at the rifugios. It is a good balance for the introvert + extrovert couple that we are.

If you want to see the kind of scenery through which we'll be hiking, I recommend going to YouTube and watching any of the TMB videos.

Will the hiking be hard? Yes, and I'm sure there will be at least one day when I can barely make it. But hiking in Washington, where extreme steepness is common, is great preparation!

When we are done with TMB, we will spend ten days exploring the Provence region. First, we will take a train to Cassis, on the Mediterranean. Our plans there are loose. I hope to swim, explore calanques  I don't quite understand what they are yet; fjord-like, and perhaps visit other towns. 

After five days there, we go to Marseille to rent a car and then drive to the Luberon region, which is famous for it's lavender. Home base  will be the town of Rousillon.

Our last two days will be in the French town of Annecy, which we discovered almost by accident.

Towns, Mountains, Wandering, Water. And food I don't have to prepare. Yes.

Let me Tell You About my Friend Jane.

My beloved friend Jane Berkman died on May 3, 2015, after eight years of all that goes with ovarian cancer.
Let me tell you about my friend Jane.
In 1987, we met in the U.W Masters in Social Work program. I didn't have any classes with her for two quarters, but admired her beauty and high energy and colorful, flowy hippy clothes from across the boring, beige school of social work hallways.

In our third quarter, we took Introductory Group Process. During the first class, our professor told us to find someone to talk to. Very potentially awkward and group processy.
Jane and I made beelines for each other.
If memory serves, we bonded quickly about feminism, love of musicals, and shared humor. Probably  about food and body image, too.

For our second year internship, we both worked at the Sexual Assault Center at Harborview. It was a bad fit for me, for a lot of reasons. My confidence was in the toilet and I couldn't sleep. But every day, Jane was there, smiling at me, laughing, wanting to spend time with me and know me. She was like a sunny "Annie You're Adequate" vitamin supplement of friendship love.

When Barbara and I decided we wanted to become moms, Jane found Keith for us, the man who eventually helped Barbara make Corey. That of course, was a gift beyond measure. We called her Corey's Fairy Godmother.

Seventeen years ago, when I suffered a major depression and thought I might break up with Barbara, she was the one who said "I think you'll figure it out." We did.

Unfortunately, she later had her own experiences with major depression. I was able to support her in getting through that thing that's often so hard to understand unless you've gone through it.

We laughed a lot. We saw at least a dozen musicals together, at high schools, in Leavenworth, at the Fifth Avenue, and elsewhere. Sometimes we two hippy Jew-ish gals felt pretty out of place with the rest of the audience.

Jane and I weren't best friends, because neither of us is a best friend kind of gal.  We both have many friends whom we cherish. But of all my friends, Jane was the most like me temperamentally (Meyers-Briggs ENFP, for those in the know.) It was enormously comforting to spend time with someone who was relaxed in the same ways I am- kind of messy and disorganized and highly friendly and not totally prompt, and sometimes "too much" for people, and for whom grooming was pretty much an after thought every morning.

About a year ago, I had an unsatisfying party experience that left me feeling awkward in a way that doesn't happen much at this point in my life. Afterward, I realized part of the problem was that my preferred conversational style could be called "Early American Therapy Group," Not so everyone, of course!
Jane knew just what I meant and said that she was the same way. So comforting.

Jane never talked about her prognosis, so I didn't ask. But in early 2014, I got the impression that things had taken a turn for the worse, and we started having Comedy Night on Wednesdays. Because of children, schedules, travels, there had been many periods during our 27 years of friendship when we didn't see each other much, so to see Jane weekly was a total treat, even though the reason we could do it was horrible.
We gave each other weekly updates, ate something, and watched sitcoms as old as Mayberry, as silly as The Flying Nun, and as current as Modern Family.

I hoped laughter would be the best medicine.

Of course, our weekly mini-vacations didn't save her, but I'm so glad we tried.

I love you Jane, and I'm going to miss you so much. Already do.












 

Thoughts on the Morning of my Marriage Day

So.
I'm getting legally married this afternoon.
To my partner of 28 years.
Twenty-four years after we had a commitment ceremony in which we publically acknowledged our love and commitment to each other in front our our families and friends. While it gave us no legal advantages, it was meaningful and important to our hearts.

Maybe after we've had the ceremony with the judge, in front of a few family members, and after we've celebrated with friends at Mama's Mexican Kitchen, where we had our first date, it will seem more meaningful and important to me.
But so far, it's just seems kind of funny. We've been together for so long already. Calling each other "wife" is something we've occassionally done in irony. Now it's going to be real.

Marriage is not something I've longed for, not a lack I've felt.

My friend B.T., on the other hand, dressed up as a bride for Halloween when she was five. It was a true representation of her longing. (And yes, she did marry.)
(Not me, I was a ballerina in a pink tutu. Later, I was Miss America  with a glittery sash. I longed,for soo many years, to be famous: a dream I eventually rejected.)

I told a classmate in 6th grade that I didn't want to get married and have children because I wanted to travel. Around the same time I noticed that if I tried to imagine marrying a man, the dots didn't connect.
I dreamed of having an exotic life, preferably modelled after that of Dashiell Hammet and Lillian Hellman. Only without the alcoholism. Or the tortured emotional states. And perhaps with a bit more money and stability, and nicer friends. But very romantic and garret-y.

Along with coming out when I was twenty, I learned about ways in which the institution of marriage has not served women well.
Marriage, shmarriage, I didn't need it, and once I figured out I was a lesbian, I wasn't allowed it.

I heard the horrible stories of same-sex couples who were forbidden access to each other in hospitals, or in which one was forced to deport, or whose financial situations became dire when one of them died. Legal marriage could protect against that and I understood how important it was. But same-sex marriage seemed like a possibility for the far-off future.

Personally, we were careful, healthy, privileged and lucky. Our unmarried status wasn't something we thought much about and no harm came to us because of it.

Fast-forward to the new millenium.
All this talk about gay marriage and marriage equality! Where did it come from?
Barbara reminded me recently that we were asked to consider being one of the couples who would sue for the right to marry. We said no; it just wasn't an issue we felt passionately about. We certainly supported marriage equality. It was exciting when same-sex marriage became legal in Washington state last November and thrilling when DOMA was overturned this summer. I recognize that these as huge steps for our country.

But marriage still wasn't something I yearned for.

So why am I marrying Barbara this afternoon?

As far as I can tell, I'm getting married because I can.
Because it seems like a smart thing to do for legal and medical and financial reasons. Because people worked very hard for us to have this right and to not take advantage of it seems ungrateful.
Because others had greater imagination than I and believed we could have marriage equality now, instead of in the vague and distant future when we also had, say, jetpacks.

I'm getting married because I have a choice. I'm getting married because I can.
Do I want to? Thanks for asking.

I do.






 

Talking About a Taboo Topic

In the movie 8: A Mormon Proposition, a Mormon leader says "These people imagine they are attracted to the same sex," or words to that effect. I've found that view repeated, usually with vitriol, in many comment threads on FB and blogs.*

What arrogance, I thought. How can they label someone's experience "imagined" just because it's different from theirs?

Especially enraging is how this attitude completely dismisses the anguish many youth experience as they struggle with their sexual orientation. That Mormon leader's point of view is arrogant. And the Mormon church, parts of it at least, has been extremely hateful and hurtful to sexual minorities.

However, she is certainly not alone in her arrogance.
My own arrogance in giving credence to beliefs I don't understand is something with which I continue to struggle.

Disclosure: I'm (almost) completely uneducated in religion. But I've been exposed to it enough to have opinions.

My unvarnished take on religion goes like this:
I don't get it.
A lot of religious beliefs strike me as delusional.
Religion seems to provide an artificial source of comfort and security.
I'm confounded by what people believe in the name of their faith.
Since people of different faiths view their particular faith as "right" then how can any of them be "right?" And where does that leave them since religion isn't supposed to be an opinion like politics, it's supposed to be a truth passed down from (the one and only) God?
Religions provide hope for some kind of after-death eternity. While I have some loosy-goosy ideas about reincarnation, I wouldn't say I believe in it.  I just like the idea. How can people think they actually know what happens after we die?

As my smart partner once said to me, "I think that's why it's called faith."

I could go on. The list of ways I don't get religion is long.

Growing up, I didn't know many religious people. And right down there with golf, (that's another story) it was something the Gages just didn't do. I was taught not to "use the Lord's name in vain," but behind the scenes there was a fair amount of eye-rolling, pursing of lips, and talk of "religious kooks."

As I said, I'm (almost) as uneducated about religion as a person can be. I've tried, but it's so not my language, right along with that of auto mechanics, financial investments and football.

In adulthood, especially since I've become connected to the Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators, I've come to know and respect a handful of deeply religious women. Some, I love.
And we all treat each other lovingly.
If there was a Sisterhood of Big Hearts, we'd all belong to it.

I've talked about religion a little with some of them, but I don't I "get" it any more than I used to.

However, I've come to understand that, since I respect them, and think they are smart, and want to be a good friend, (the language of friendship is one I understand,) I want to have faith in their religious faith.
I want to challenge my arrogance, to the best of my ability.
I want to live by the Golden Rule.

If I don't want people to believe I'm "imagining" an important part of my life, it would behoove me to stop thinking, just because I don't get it, that there is something kind of delusional about an important part of theirs.

Maybe comparing my biases about religion to a Mormon leader's arrogance isn't a very good fit. But in the Sisterhood of Big Hearts, there is a lot of space for compassion, understanding and personal accountability, and I am going to keep trying to get it right.

*Yes, I usually avoid reading these, but they are a good way to get a pulse people's reactivity. Interesting sometimes.

Innocence, whose? Changed, what?

On this tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, I feel sad when I remember that day; the sorrow, the horror, the confusion about what it meant for the future.

I remember the contrast between the sweetness of life with a first grader: lost teeth, Legos, learning to read, and the rage and fear and sorrow from all sides that were wrapped up in the attacks.

I also feel cranky; alienated and at odds about two phrases that were used often at that time and have returned as news media remembers.

There was a loss of innocence.

Whose innocence? About what? No one really said.
I assume this refers to a sense some folks had, before 9/11, that the United States was invulnerable to outside attacks.

But that kind of innocence only seems possible if one identifies so strongly with one's own country and point in history that the suffering of people from other parts of the world, or in this country at other times, never made any impression.
How can anyone have felt "innocent" if they knew about slavery and Jim Crow, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, apartheid, rape as a tool of war? The Oklahoma City bombing? I could go on, but...duh.
I think of myself as a positive, cheerful person, and I've lived a privilege life, but honey, my "innocence" was lost a long time ago.

Nothing will ever be the same.

Again, I wonder, for whom? And from what? This statement strikes me as histrionic.

On Sept. 12, 2001, we went to pick up kitty #2 from the Animal Shelter.
Gotta tell you, things were the same there. Animals in cages, needing homes.
At my son's school, there were happy kids at recess.
The traffic on I-5 was still bad.
I didn't have direct information about this, but am 100% sure that women in abusive relationships had been living a nightmare and continued to after 9/11.
If "the same" meant life had had a certain glow and security, life hadn't been "the same" for lots of people for a long time.

True, I had a stronger emotional response to the 9/11/01 attacks than I have to other terrorist attacks in other parts of the country. But I consider this due to my own ignorance, U.S. chauvanism, and lack of imagination. If I paid closer attention to other attacks and thought about the people they affected, and watched news reports about them, I imagine I'd have a similar reaction.

I guess it isn't exciting and dramatic enough, doesn't make people feel important enough if we say, simply; This was a horrible loss and trauma; the shock from that and  the time it takes to recover are universal experiences. Some things will change, some things will stay the same.

That, however, is what is true for me.

The Dragonfly and the Virus

No blog posts since April. Not that I haven't had ideas. It's just that I flit. Like a dragonfly.

I've identified with dragonflies since I was 30, because I thought they modeled being patient about making my mark on the world. My BIG mark. The one for which people would remember me.

Dragonflies? Fame? Not an obvious association. Let me explain.

I caught the wish-for-fame bug early; in second grade, I dressed as Miss America for Halloween. After watching the Academy Awards for the first time, I wasn't sure about acting, but I sure did want to make an acceptance speech on t.v.

In sixth grade, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In was the show everyone watched on Monday night. Tuesday mornings, at Stanford Elementary School, we regaled each other with our impersonations of Lily Tomlin. If I could do what she did, I thought, people would love me the way they love her.

Two years later, the memory I took from seeing the Stuttgart Ballet wasn't the dancing or the music, but the piles of bouquets tossed to the prima ballerina by her adoring audience.

I wanted that kind of love! Four years of ballet followed.

The reasons are many, but my subjective experience of childhood was overwhelmingly one of feeling inadequate and anxious. I perceived myself as not pretty enough, smart enough, or clever enough. My environment was full of ambitious, striving, workaholics, and it stressed me out. 

I didn't have the words for it then, but I longed for a balanced life, one in which there was such a thing as "good enough," one which had time for evenings, weekends, and vacations

At the same time, I developed an unspoken desire to "show them" by becoming famous.

Immediately after college, I began writing and performing comedy. 

I became famous enough, in an early-80s, Seattle lesbian community kind of way, to understand that I didn't like having strangers recognize me at the grocery store. Furthermore, recognition made me paranoid. Just like the comic stereotype, I made people laugh then went home alone to stew in my sorrow.

Two years later, I was out of jokes, out of money and out of a relationship that had crashed and burned,  I gave myself a geographic cure to Minneapolis where I worked with a theater and learned to distinguish gradations of below-freezing and windchill.

When the theater no longer wanted my questionable talents, I returned to Seattle where I could be wounded and confused among people who knew and loved me

Just before I turned thirty, I got a Masters degree in social work and believed I was a late bloomer.

Enter the dragonfly.

Sitting on a dock at Greenlake, I noticed a brown stick. It began to crack open. Then it changed color. I had no idea what I was seeing. As the brown shell fell away, a moist, fragile, gangly green thing emerged, a dragonfly nymph. It was a powerful moment which I felt privileged to witness.

A little research informed me that  dragonflies spend years underwater as larvae before emerging onto land and becoming the beauties we see flitting about.  The brilliant, darting period of their lives, the part we know and love them for, is brief-around two weeks long.

They are late bloomers, too. I found much comfort from this.

Although I'd already explored and rejected a certain type of public recognition, I still had this sense that I was destined to do something "great." As with many of the ways we cope with childhood pain,  felt less like a choice than like  a virus I'd caught and couldn't shake off.

When it became apparent that I wouldn't become famous in the field of mental health, developing groundbreaking theories which I would write about in prestigious journals, I was okay with it.

However, I still carried the virus. So when  I began writing for publicaton, my acceptance speech fantasies returned full force, unbidden, like flurries of sneezes..

(When I imagined myself receiving my Newbery, my speech wasn't very gracious; it was  always about how accolades and awards are less important than process and living with integrity. I believe that, but it just isn't what's said in an acceptance speech.).

As friends wrote books, sign contracts, and got their books published, I knew something was changing for me because I didn't feel jealous, I just thought it was really cool to get to see people's dreams come true. 

Last year, I finally expelled the last of the virus. I know I'm done with it because I don't daydream about acceptance speeches anymore.

I was sad about the dragonfly thing, though. Since I no longer aspired to  late-blooming brilliance, did I have to give up my connection to dragonflies, and all the dragonflyanalia I'd collected?

Heck no! Dragonflies flit. And flitting is something I've always done well, whether I've wanted to or not. Lately I've been flitting in my garden quite a bit, and to Seattle Mosaic Arts. I'm lucky to have a job that takes me all over a big school, where I get to flit from room to room. I flit to SCBWI events, even when I'm not writing, because I like to see my friends. I light down at home every night and gain love and stability for the next day's flitting.

It's my dream come true.

Aging Gratefully

As I was paying at Value Village this afternoon, the checker asked if I had a coupon.
Nope, forgot it.
Senior discount? she asked.
Not yet! Another three years. Or is it eight here? I'm 52.
Ten, she said.
In other words, I had just passed for 62. Ouch-ish.
I commented that since so many women color their hair now, those of us who show our grey probably look older than we are.
She was quiet. I think she was embarrassed.
This isn't the first time I've been reverse-carded, as I like to think of it. I spent the drive home pondering...do I look older than I am? Do I care?
A few lifetimes ago, in the early-80s, I spent two years pursuing, then discarding, my first career dream- as a comedian. I called myself a Feminist Comedian because my comedy reflected my feminist values, including  honoring the wisdom of elders. One of the skits I performed was a commercial for "Oil of Old Age, for the woman who's proud of her years."
However, I was in my early twenties, what did I know about how it would feel to face all the changes that we're constantly told are bad and ugly?
Ab-so-lute-ly Nuthin'!
It's not like I've ever been highly groomed  or ravishingly beautiful. Even so, accepting the spots and lines and sags has been more difficult  than I expected. Especially since inside, I am forever ten.
My mom used to talk about aging gracefully, by which I think she meant letting time take its toll without doing too much to resist it.
Every time I consider some of the costlier ways to "reverse the signs of aging" I think about women in other parts of the world who have to walk miles every day just to get water. The imbalance between my easy narcissism and the effort they must exert to meet their basic needs shakes the vanity out of me and reminds me that, like my mom, I want to age gracefully.
Even more, I want to age gratefully.
One hundred years ago, I would have already passed my expected life span; my probable longevity (my parents lived to 89 and 91) are profound gifts. I am grateful for the opportunity to grow older.
I spent many long years,  Many. Long. Years. struggling with depression and horrible feelings of inadequacy. For eleven years I've been free of those debilitating emotions, and the good times build on each other in a lovely way. I am grateful for the time to recover and continue to grow.
While my outsides are being mistaken for ten years older than they are (California childhood, sunscreen hadn't been invented yet; you do the math!) I seem to be in good health. I am grateful for a body that works.
When faced with the barrage of messages about how awful it is to look our age (or older!) it is hard to remember what growing older really means: we are still alive, we are wiser, we have a chance to do even better tommorow.
Let's be grateful for all of it.