All I want for Christmas is December 26th

How did this happen? How did this nice jewish girl from Philly end up stuck with Christmas? OK, I admit it. Around 5 PM on Christmas Eve, I usually get the Christmas spirit, and rush around buying jars of fabulous jam made by the Trapist nuns in Italy for everyone I will see in the next 24 hours. And the tree does look beautiful, each ornament individually placed with an invocation for the coming year. I pulled a little wooden hen out of the box and invoked “a chicken in every pot”.

But the next day is hideous. I am far too co-dependent to enjoy the opening of the presents. I hate the “this one’s for you, this one’s for you.” Then, after the presents are over, there is all that dead time for the rest of the day and night.

Even if you wanted to ignore Christmas, it’s pretty hard to do since everything is CLOSED. Except for Chinatown and the movies, which is what all good jews do on Christmas.

I have been begging my non-jewish girlfriend, who just happens to be pagan, to let us go out for Chinese food for Christmas dinner instead of doing all that shopping and cooking and cleaning up. Especially since Christmas comes so close after Solstice. Every year. It’s not like Chanukah, which may come the day after thanksgiving or Christmas eve. No one ever says, “Wow, solstice is early this year.”

So here we are, six days before Christmas, planning two major parties. Solstice we stay up all night on our vigil for the returning light. Then, four days later, the house will fill up with family for Christmas. I think this year, by the time my birthday rolls around on New Years day, I will be content to sit around and watch the college football bowl games and do NOTHING!

come out, come out, wherever you are

Last Friday nite, we were sitting around the living room with an old college friend of Deborah’s and her 53 year old sister from Idaho. The sister, let’s call her Linda, moved to Idaho when she was 19 and had never seen a homeless person until Friday. She has grown children and grandchildren, and looks like Linda Evans from Dynasty. Or was that Dallas?

The night before, they had gone to Mecca and the Lexington Club, your friendly neighborhood dyke bar, which I thought a bit odd for two straight women. I forget exactly what we were talking about when Linda said, “I am in the process of coming out.” Jokingly I said, “As what?” “As a lesbian” she answered.

I almost fell over. Her sister's jaw dropped too, as she realized why she had been on a tour of the lesbian hot spots of San Francisco. Now, I have been a lesbian for a LONG time, and know that we come in all shapes, sizes, ages, etc, but somehow it always surprises me when someone who looks so straight wants to become a lesbian.

So how does a married woman in Idaho go about finding a woman? Craigslist! We sat by my computer, and I showed her Craigslist Idaho, the dyke march 2008 video on hillgirlz.com, and the SF pride website. All of the partially naked women at the dyke march were pretty surprising to her, and she asked me if all of those women were “that way.”

It made me feel so lucky to have come out in 1972 in the height of the second wave of feminism. (As a mater of fact, I just picked the up the 35th anniversary issue of Ms. Magazine. I remember when it first came out.) I moved to San Francisco in 1974, and have probably taken for granted all of the freedom we have here as gay people.

When I toured with the Blazing Redheads in the 1980s, we met lesbians in all these small southern towns, and the only time they could hold hands with their lovers in public was at women’s music festivals. It’s hard enough to imagine being a lesbian in some of these places, but being a 53 year-old married grandmother in Idaho trying to come out!

This woman is tough as nails, and will be happy no matter what she is doing, but I am just reminded of woman all over the world who want to be with women but can’t because of political persecution or their own internalized homophobia. I feel lucky.

settling in

Well, I’ve moved. Luckily, over the past few years I have been down-scaling and down-scaling to the point where this last move took two hours start to finish. Now I am faced with the unpacking.

It’s funny how you move your things-furniture, pictures, tchotskes-to a new place, and there you are-- home. This time it was a bit different, since I had already spent so much time up in the attic room that is now my office/the guest room that it felt like home instantly.

We were just up there for an hour or so with a friend, and she and D were sitting on the bed talking as I was unpacking boxes and showing them odds and ends from my distant and not so distant past. The picture of me in a mini-skirt and long hair at fifteen is always a crowd pleaser.

My passport photo from 1981 when I was off to Amsterdam to play with a salsa band for three months. My collections of cigar boxes, marbles, and colored glass ashtrays. And lots of old photos.

Remembering all of the things that have gotten left behind in all of my numerous moves over the last ten years makes me sad, but the happiness I feel now is worth it. As my mother said when she moved out of the house where she lived with my father for 42 years to move to a retirement community, “It’s just things.” Yes, those things represent memories, but the memories will just have to live in my mind, as there isn’t enough room to cart it all around with me.

So we are now in the process of blending two lives, households, and creating memories of our own. And to borrow a phrase from that witchy woman I live with, “I’m for it.”

l'shana tovah

Yesterday, a new Whole Foods market opened one mile from our house. I know a lot of people don’t like Whole Foods, but I do, because almost anywhere in the country, at least the places I go, you can find organic products and mad-cow free meat. And they hire people with pink hair, tattoos, and piercings. A least in the Bay Area.

When I saw the fliers for the opening of the new store, I saw that there was going to be a bread-breaking at 8:45 AM before the store opened at 9. I needed to be there. My girlfriend thought that I was out of my mind, but I just said, “I like stuff like that”. After all, I was born on January 1^st, and I like to be the first whenever I can, so to be one of the first shoppers in the new Whole Foods was appealing. And I wanted to be at the bread breaking.

I was also on the Golden Gate Bridge that day in 1987 when it was closed to cars to celebrate its 50^th Anniversary, and there were 800,000 people on the bridge, and the engineers didn’t know if it was going to hold all of that standing weight.

And then there was the day in 1989 that the Bay Bridge re-opened after the earthquake, and Tony Bennett was there singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Guess who was there. Yep, me.

So I went to Whole Foods on my way to work yesterday. There were about fifty people there, eager to shop in the new store. The bread breaking was pretty quick, and I realized how much I have been influenced by living with a pagan as I waited for them to call in the elements.

This morning when I mentioned to my girlfriend that there were actually quite a few people at the bread-breaking, she said, “People need ritual.” It gave new meaning to why I like to share momentous occasions with large numbers of people. I grew up as a reform Jew, but I all but abandoned the religious part as one more patriarchal religion. For the last year and a half, I have been a part of the pagan holidays, but haven’t quite adopted them as my own yet. Kind of sad that the bread-braking at the new Whole Foods is what I turn to to fill the need for ritual in my life.

Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I had dinner last nite with friends and am going to the beach this afternoon to empty my pockets of everything from last year I want to leave behind. I realize that I don’t have to go to Temple to honor this holiday, that I can create my own ritual in a way that makes sense to me. As I ponder the meaning of this day, I am thinking about the need for more ritual in my life.

i love seattle!

It is a beautiful city…very green with hills and lots of water. A lot like San Francisco, except the green in the summer part. It is also a very “green” city. One neighborhood library that I saw has a living roof, and there are blue recycling receptacles everywhere, including in the hotel room! And most people here are really, genuinely friendly. There is not that preciousness that people complain about in San Francisco, although from the rate of gentrification, it might not be too far off.

I love the water here. I always thought that the mountains speak to me more than the water, but now I realize that meant the ocean. Here, there are bays and lakes and channels everywhere. It is really a seaport town, and there are shipyards and fishing boats and all the industries that support them. I love it!

Yesterday I went to the Chittenden Locks. Real locks, like we learned about in elementary school. Lakes Washington and Union (freshwater) are 6 to 26 feet higher than Puget Sound (saltwater), so our friends, the Army Core of Engineers, dug out the channel and installed a system of locks. The large lock will accommodate a ship 78 feet wide and 700 feet long. And it is all done with gravity, no pumps.

So if a boat is going from Puget Sound to Lake Washington, the lower gates open, the ship sails in, then the lower gate closes, water from Lake Washington flows into the lock, and the water level rises to the level of the lake. Then the upper gate opens, and the ship sails on its way. I was literally awestruck by how beautiful and fascinating it was. Since I went there alone last evening while I was waiting for D. to arrive, I had to share my excitement with strangers. I’m sure I was the one who appeared strange. The locks are actually one of the largest tourist attractions in Seattle, and I can see why.

D. arrived, we had a great crab and oyster dinner on the piers, and today we are off for more exploration. I love vacation!

sleepless in seattle

One thing about working for “the man” is that you get to stay at fancy hotels for the corporate rate. I just checked in to the Fairmont Hotel in Seattle where I will stay for three nights. My girlfriend will arrive tomorrow evening from witchcamp, so tomorrow I will explore Seattle on my own. I hear there are some great bookstores here, and someone told me that the public library near the Pikes Market is an example of some incredible architecture.

It was a long trip. The plane was an hour late, and there was a long line to pick up the rental car. I arrived at the hotel at 1 AM famished, so I asked the valet parker if there was a Denny’s nearby. He gave me a strange look, as I guess not too many people check in to the Fairmont and ask where the Denny’s is. He said, “It’s pretty far away. Try room service.”

The room is a big as the average two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and there were five chocolate covered strawberries on the desk, which I promptly ate. Now I am eating my BLT from room service, which came exactly as I ordered it. The tomatoes are even heirloom. Now that’s something.

I feel like I should stay awake all night just to enjoy the room!

this kitchen is closed

that’s what my mother said as she walked back into her house at 5:30 AM from the hospital after my father died. It also happened to be their 59^th wedding anniversary, and I was tempted to highjack the anniversary cards from the mailbox that afternoon, but for some reason decided against it.

This kitchen is closed! Mine, that is.

For five days I was in charge of feeding and transporting a 15 ½ year old young man. I started to say boy, but he really is a young man. After five days, I can’t even begin to imagine what is was like for my mother (and so many millions of others, especially those who work outside of the home.)

And taking care of my father for 59 years! He would have died years before if she hadn’t counted out his pills very morning, leaving the evening doses in the little red plastic measuring cup on the counter. That little cup was a fixture in our lives for years.

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I just now took a break from writing this to call a friend who I haven’t spoken to since last November. Her partner told me that her mother died this morning in Toledo, Ohio. I was thinking of my friend all day. Now I know why.

(Now I get this sandwich generation concept; raising children, and taking care of and burying aging parents.)

My friend’s mother was afraid to fly, and rarely came to California. I met her mother years ago, when she came on the train, and we went to Townsend Restaurant for Sunday brunch. I didn’t see her again until a few years ago when she flew out here for her daughter’s lesbian wedding. She was so excited that she had flown, and was planning all the trips she could now take. I’ll have to find out if she ever did. I am sending much love and many blessings for her journey.