Rollerskating In The Driveway Of Life

My oldest sister told me that the day I was brought home from the hospital, after I arrived on planet Earth, she was rollerskating in the driveway.  I love that image as I feel that my sisters are such amazing people.  As today is my birthday, I am thinking of my family.  I am very fortunate to have such heroes that came before me.  My sisters have been right there for me many, many times and though we are survivors of very troubled childhoods, we have accepted and loved one another through troubled times.

I went to work today and I am also very lucky to be employed.  With unemployment at 11% in CA, I can say I am lucky to be working and very grateful to my employers and to my stalwart, fun, patient and hard working co-workers.  This afternoon they all hid in the office and I was beckoned there to receive their Happy Birthday song, a great card and ice cream cake.  I cried at their kind, thoughtful and generous love.  I am very fortunate and I know that every day because there has been such a drought before Prickett's Nursery gave me a chance.  Thank you David and Deanna.

I am deeply touched by this spot in life and I want to pass on the love I have been receiving and I hope that, even in troubled times, I give to others as I have been so freely blessed.  To my family in Texas and my new family in New York, and my wonderful partner, I send you love and cake and let us meet up in the driveway for some rollicking rollerskating!

Lady Liberty And A Long Journey Homeward

We are home tonight back in California and I am strangely awake.  I should be jet lagged and maybe I am.  It is 1 AM in NY but I am here at my computer.  The dirty laundry we trucked home has been done along with watering the roses, feeding the dogs and sorting our trinkets.  I am very awake and thinking about the many strange and wonderful things that I experienced over the last week.

To say that New Yorkers live a frenetic life is not exactly true.  They certainly drive like maniacs and we got lost several times coming back to Long Island from Woodstock even with the GPS.  The interchanges of freeways seemed utterly insane to me and made my heart race wildly as we could see the next decision to make looming on the GPS screen.  My partner was amazing at the wheel, driving through all that chaos at breakneck speed.  I was horrified by that part of our vacation.  I am a wimp in traffic but I have an appreciation of our Northern California ridiculous freeway now!

We stood in line on Sunday for two hours in order to take the ferry to Liberty Island.  A childhood dream of mine- standing at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty, we decided to join the teaming masses and wait for her.  We ate street made pretzels with salt-yum!-and people watched in the sun and humidity.  I could see the top of the Empire State building as we shuffled along and one of the Freedom Towers being built near ground zero.  There were people of many nations there in line with us and we all waited to see her for about two hours together.

Needless to say, even with a child's excitement alive and well inside of me, I was in awe as we walked around the base of the statue looking up.  How can I explain something so inspiring, grand and imbued with meaning?  You just have to see her, in the flesh, to understand. 

We then drove to upper New York state and it was absolutely beautiful. It is lush and brimming with an effervescent green that I have never seen.  The humidity was torturous though which seems to create all that green.  Just the same, I was amazed. We stayed in a B & B run by very quiet people who we later found out are Buddhists.  No wonder the house was so still.  Their calm pervaded even with a house full of New York guests for the Memorial weekend. This home was built circa 1700 and then turned into a B & B. They fed us like royalty and I left feeling full in many ways.

We got lost coming back to Long Island but made it thanks to my sweetie.  It was arduous and tense.  New Yorkers aren't any more generous than Northern California drivers it seems.  Yet we had dinner with my partner's family and packed up our stuff to come home today. It was fun and we laughed together as we ate.  They offered us a way to make a deeper committment to one another and that was such a sweet gift.

On the plane home I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep, waking up at different points and falling back into that pool of fatigue several times.  The flight was bumpy but I slept through it.  That is a miracle and I am grateful for it since I am terrified of flying.  Onto the bus at SFO and then to our car finally in Sonoma County, we are home now.  It is hard to adjust even though we are tired and re-entry can be difficult to bridge back into our lives. My partner may lose her job soon and I am only working for the summer. However, I have one more day off and I am going for a run first thing and feel my lungs stretch and the cadence of my stride bring me back to earth.

I am so very grateful to New York for the chance to join others who wish to gain the simplest of civil rights others easily enjoy.  I am honored to have been able to marry and there were many obstacles that tested us along the way.  We adjusted and found fun and adventure nonetheless. Not bad for a couple of country girls from Northern California.  Not bad at all.

Judge Tingling And A Sunny Day In NYC

Today we got married in New York City.  It was a long journey to this point with more than a few obstacles that started to make it seem like we would not make it to the court today.  However, as in life, our love prevailed and the generosity of my partner's sister and her husband, native New Yorkers.

In NY gay men and lesbians are allowed to get married by the justice at the New York City Clerk.  One must wait 24 hours after filling out the application or get a waiver.  Yesterday, we spent half of the day getting there to file the papers and waiting for our number to come up to complete the task.  We also went to see Times Square and Central Park and all that and just being a country girl in NYC was over the top.  Unimaginable really and just like the movies. 

On the train back to Long Island where we are staying, we got on no less than three wrong trains, then the cab got lost too and home to a bit more drama than we each could handle.  Almost.  Maybe that was the shining glory test of our devotion.  Funny how knowing one another for many years before today can make it difficult and also perfect to weather storms that are part of life.

We  woke early and went to NYC.  When we got there, the court bailiff told us that the judge was available for about 30 minutes more to do our marriage ceremony.  We just made it and walked into Room 321 and into an almost empty courtroom with worn wooden tables and chairs and an enormous group of words above the judge's bench that reads: IN GOD WE TRUST. Indeed. 

One couple was there to be married and we watched as Justice Tingling entered and summoned them to the front of the bench.  He was funny, erudite, insightful, real and very loving.  We, their audience of four, cried and clapped when they pronounced them husband and wife.

Our turn came and we came before Judge Tingling who stood and joked with us to ease our tension.  He directed our commitment to one another and I started crying.  Judge Tingling's message, above everything else he said to us, is that many people come before him, and many same sex couples from California.  He encouraged us to take our love and spread it to the rest of the world with pride and strength.

We cried, we committed to one another for life and we hugged and left Judge Tingling's courtroom better humans. We had a big lunch together and met another couple who had been married the day before.  Two men from North Carolina who traveled to NYC.  From all corners, we come to NYC to be recognized and respected and we received a blessing much bigger than we could have dreamed. I thought of my own family in Texas and how much their love heals me and made me want to make sure they know that.  To all of you in Texas, I love you!

We then walked to the World Trade Center Memorial and spent the next few hours in a place of reverence that surely met our spiritual leapfrog.  I have always wanted to see that sacred place and remember the many who died  that day and gave their lives saving others.  For me, the heart of NYC is within a simple truth that rings loudly in every corner of the city.  Love, respect and compassion are everywhere in as much as the exotic, beautiful faces of multi-ethnic brides and grooms in the clerk's office of the New York City Clerk. 

Thank you New York.  Bless you!

Start Spreadin' The News

We are flying to New York tomorrow to see my partner's sister and her family, and to get married.  Since our home state, the lovely but retarded California, made same sex marriage a no-no, we are flying off to find the people who are willing to challenge their assumptions and do the right thing.

For me, I am so glad that it is somewhere else, somewhere they had to deal with jets flying into buildings, somewhere people from Europe came on ships to start new lives, somewhere they don't take anyone's crap but somewhere that they also feel passionately.

For me, California is all I have ever known and it is beautiful here.  Northern California especially and we all know it.  However, the state taxes are killing us and they are about to increase.  Living here has become a place I want to leave because affording it fuels stress that is endless.  I am sick of my home state saying I don't count because I am a minority class of humans.  Not even.

So, Frank Sinatra has been singing in my head this week as we get ready to travel to NY and I hope that my fear of flying and adventuring out into the world is met with the kind of joy that committing further to the one I love can only bring.  We shall make "a whole new start of it" and thank you for that, New York. 

Donna Summer And Knocking My Head On A Brick Wall

Donna Summer died today and it has added to quite a few desperate, aching events.  It just isn't right.  Yet another grocery store had turned me down, and though I am working, I just have to wonder, what the hell.  I am just gonna leave it at that. 

God speed Queen Of Disco-my favorite time in life.  What a voice, what an incredible voice.  It just isn't right.

Riding The Armadillo Into Mother's Day

All of a sudden I am working.  I had an interview last Thursday and by day's end, a job offer and a starting time on Friday.  The busiest weekend of the year for Mother's Day, I have attempted what seems like doing an Olympic swim without any training.  At the end of day two, tired but showered and fed, I shall be back at it in the morning. 

I work with many young, very kind humans which is taking some getting used to and howdy.  I am the old one, though they have all welcomed me, checked on me and kept me afloat with their brilliance, kindness, patience and interest.  This may be the first time that I have felt that in a work place and that is such a travesty. I am making less per hour than I have in decades and at times, I wonder if my old brain can memorize anything. However, my understanding of the kindness of (former) strangers has been tested each day with just that-their kindness. 

This appears to be just a summer job for me and I am fine with just working an honest day and doing the best I can to do well, stay afloat, be present and earn some much needed greenbacks.  I feel very humbled and oh so grateful to a nursery where I shopped as a child with my mother.  That's right, more than 45 years later, I am hustling to stay up with my co-workers as an employee at the same place where I walked the aisles looking at plants with my mother.  Kinda weird actually.

Today, I wore my Armadillo  Hill Country Classic T-shirt in honor of the 18th Annual Armadillo Hill Country Classic which my family was a part of today.  I thought of them as I was scooting all over the nursery and missed them terribly.  We are lucky here in California in many ways including the weather and it is lonely at times to be so far away without a clan.
However, I feel kind of like I have ridden an Armadillo itself into Mother's Day as tomorrow promises more customers who are seeking the perfect plant to honor their mother or just make her happy so she doesn't complain that we never call her.  Actually, my partner's son's could use a good talking to in that department but for me, I am grateful to have a job, at least for the summer, and an opportunity to be a part of something that makes me feel that I am a part of someone's happiness.

Happy Mother's Day and may it be just that for you wherever you are in life.

Miner's Gold

A gold miner's struggle to find
 the mother lode,
Texas is rumored to have
 more jobs than people
 ready to stand in line for
 them,
damn the heat and humidity for
 a chance to work again.
Texas, of all places, attempts to claim
 us
 with its' largess and the promise of
 a new beginning there
 as if all it took was to
 load the car with our few
 worldly possessions and
 move on.
God knows that I long for fresh
 ground
beneath my feet
 and a chance to be with my family on
 the weekends,
work,
run,
live on with hope.
God knows
 and yet I remain here
 in
the land of make believe.