We are the change we've been waiting for.

A little "art" I created in a Naropa class last week:  Anna
Dickinson, the 19th century Quaker abolitionist and
orator (and lesbian) observing 9-year-old (lesbian) me.

While Facebook friends and my classmates and professors at Naropa's Summer Writing Program celebrated the SCOTUS marriage-equality decision last Friday, I struggled with anger.  What were we celebrating, really?  The Supreme Court's decision that my fiancé and I deserve basic human rights?  I thought about the 1954 Brown versus Board of Education decision, and wondered if African American families felt celebratory or exhausted and angry when it was announced.  Of course my child should get to attend school with your child.  It's about time.  Or the 1919 passing of the 19th Amendment, which enfranchised women in the United States 143 years after Abigail Adams pleaded with her husband John to "remember the ladies" as he helped write the text of the U.S. Constitution.  I've seen the photographs of women celebrating the amendment, victoriously holding their placards aloft.  But surely they felt anger, too.  One hundred and forty-three years?   The fight was painful, vitriolic.  Opponents hurled insults at the suffragettes:  she's really a man, she neglects her children, she's a Sapphist. Many suffragettes did not live to see their dream of the vote realized.  When justice takes so long, how can we forgive the time frame and just celebrate?

I carried these brooding thoughts with me to a table at the Naropa Café, where my poet-friend Val was gesturing for me to join her.  Val is much older than I am:  short gray hair, life-worn, a poet shaman who wears bright scarves, believes her dreams, and talks openly of a difficult past she barely survived.  We're connected because we're both writers and we're both lesbians.

"I can't shake this anger I'm feeling today," I told her.  My bones felt heavy.  I told Val what I'd been thinking about Brown and Abigail and celebrations, and she nodded, agreeing, but I caught the glint of loving amusement in her eyes.  And suddenly, I heard how young I sounded.  I came out as a lesbian at age 28, in 2005, after famous people like Ellen had begun to come out (1997), after the last sodomy law was overturned in Texas (2003), after Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage (2004).  I was born eight years after the Stonewall Riots (1969).  And I didn't feel like celebrating?  In the middle of my own sentence, I burst out laughing.

Val grinned.  "The world is changing," she said.  "It's our work to be midwives to all this change.  We've got to celebrate.  It's our work."

It's our work.  I celebrated the rest of the day without hesitation, cheering with all the rest when Anne Waldeman introduced our Friday colloquium with a joyful fist in the air and a "How about that Supreme Court decision?" I checked Facebook more often than usual, and felt only glad to see all the rainbows.  Meredith texted from the World Series of Poker in Vegas:  "Because of the Supreme Court decision today, I've already won!"  Determined to be a midwife for all this change, whenever it arrives, a friend and I toasted Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer at dinner that night.  What does anger accomplish?  The change is happening.  People who struggled with police at Stonewall never thought they'd see this day.

This morning, I sit outside on the front porch with my coffee, the sprinklers nourishing the new plants in our garden, and contemplate change in my own life.  In four years, Mitike and I have moved three times:  Juneau to Fort Collins, Fort Collins to Boulder, and now to Denver. Four years ago, Ali died.  Only two years ago, I emerged from living all the time inside grief.  And now, in this past year and a half, as if something in me was finally prepared to midwife good, life-giving change:  I met Meredith, I got a few pieces published, I earned an MFA, I found a good high school English job, and I got engaged.  When the assistant principal at South High asked me why I was moving to Denver, I told her I was moving in with my fiancé, and that she lives just a few miles from the school.  It wasn't long ago that it was dangerous for a teacher to come out to an administrator.  The assistant principal just smiled and said, "Congratulations!  Will the kids have to get used to you having a new last name next year, then?"

This morning, I feel only joy.  Yes, these changes that seem obvious take too long.  Yes, we have a long way to go in this country to craft a safe and equal world for people of all races, backgrounds, sexual orientation, etc.  But this morning, I'm watching the sun glint off the droplets of water on my new yarrow and coneflower plants.  In a year, I'm hoping these plants fill this garden, but they're still new.  They're waiting for the soil to be right for their roots, for the sun and rain to nourish them just enough.  Then they'll grow tall and full.  For now, I'll stand nearby and write, a midwife for all this good change.

Musings on Time

Time.  I'm no physicist, so I don't conceptualize of time in equations or formulas, along a line or in waves.  I've been thinking about googling it, but I don't have time.  I'm always running out of time, or I'm just in time, or it's about time.  "Time keeps on tickin' into the future."  Time to go.  Time to let go.  When the time's right, you'll know.

On mornings when I have a meeting before school, Mitike moves the most slowly, tying her little pink New Balance shoes with especial care, deciding against the pink shirt she's wearing for a lighter pink one.  The other mornings, she's dressed and ready with her backpack (pink) on her shoulders.  "Momma, do we have time or not this morning?"

For an entire year after Ali died, I woke in the middle of the night, a time traveler.  I thought she was next to me in the darkness and wondered, when I found only empty space beside me in bed, if she'd gotten up early to grade papers.  Sometimes I woke and thought I was in New Mexico in the house beside the pomegranate tree.  Sometimes I sat bolt upright, certain I heard the whir of the generator outside on the Iowa farm where I was a little girl.  Time shifted.  I was unmoored.  When I opened my closet in the mornings to choose clothes for the day, I was surprised to find everything on shelves and hangers, still.  The house hadn't tilted and rocked in the night, after all.

I stared at the woman in the mirror.  She looked young, in spite of the shadows beneath her eyes.  I felt 85.  Brittle.

We don't have much time.  Enjoy your time.  Timing is everything.  It was her time to go.  "The time is out of joint."

Lao Tzu taught that time is a creation, that if we say "I don't have time," we mean "I don't want to."

I have time.  I'm 37.  My grandmother lived three times as long as I have so far.

Lately, when I've woken in the mornings, I've felt happy.  I'd forgotten how the air can be lighter.  I cradle my coffee in the cool mornings and love the pink hue of the early sky.  I want to run through all the crunching leaves hand in hand with Mitike.  But now time moves even more strangely.  A weekend in the mountains begins and ends in a blink.  Two days in a row when I'm alone in my quiet apartment at night feel like weeks.  I think these beautiful moments are blossoming slowly around me until I remember it's only been a short time since grief was my constant companion and I said I'd be alone forever.  When I look in the mirror, I see I'm young again.  Sometimes, I glimpse that lanky girl who sat watching the sunset over a vast cornfield.

What did Thoreau say?  "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in."  Georgia O'Keefe said no one sees flowers because they don't take the time, like being a friend takes time.  Virgil said our sweetest hours fly the fastest.  I love when my middle school students say sometimes, at the end of class, "It's time to go already?"

It's time.  But how much time is right before. . .?

I'm dizzy.  Sorrow and joy mimic each other, in that they both tangle time.  But maybe I love this kind of bewilderment.  Maybe I want to get lost this time.

Talking to the past. . .

This weekend, I went out for dinner and drinks with an old college roommate, S_____, who was visiting the Denver area for a conference.  It has been over fourteen years since we graduated from Luther College, and we haven't seen each other since that day because of life -- travel, relationships, work, parents, deaths of people we loved, graduate school, geography, births, adoptions.  And anyway:  we graduated from college in the days before Facebook and iPhones (though S____ and many of our other college friends, like B_____, who also joined us for dinner, have stayed in touch fairly well).  It's mostly me.

I've always had this flaw.  Put me in the moment with a person, and I'll be a good, loyal, present friend.  Take me out of the moment -- to Alaska, maybe, or Guatemala -- and I'll forget to check in regularly; I'll forget to write.  Not even email or Facebook have really helped.  Ask my mother.

But what I had to confess to S____ this weekend is that I HAVE talked to her more recently than fourteen years ago, and that our conversation will be in print for people to buy after January 27, 2014.  I told her within minutes of hugging her hello, while B____ drove us to Mateo's, where we planned to have dinner.  "So. . . S_____, you're a character in my novel!"  What a strange confession to hear from a woman you have not seen for fourteen years.  S_____ took it well, asked how she'd been portrayed, what part her character plays in the story.

Then we went on to dinner to catch up in real life, as real women drinking real white wine.

As the night continued, I realized just how accurately I had portrayed S____, when I had really just imagined that I had based a supporting character on her.  She is truly a sensible, trust-worthy friend with a grounded sense of humor, just like my character Trace.  In my novel, my protagonist, Tara, risks talking to Trace about what she's just beginning to understand about herself:
      Tara:  "But how do you know you're a lesbian?"
      Trace:  "I just know."
      Tara:  "But how do you know?"

How would my life have been different if I had figured out I was lesbian in college?  So many lives' trajectories would have changed -- not just mine, but my ex-husband's, A____'s, her ex-husband's, their children's.  Wouldn't I have gone east, or to a foreign country?  Wouldn't the self-knowledge have calmed my restless wandering?

In the real Mateo's, drinking real wine, S_____ tells me that she never guessed I was lesbian in college.  "Me, neither," I say, shaking my head.  "If I had, it would have solved so many problems."  S____ shrugs.  "But you didn't know."

I didn't know.  That's why I wrote the novel, because I wanted to find out what would have happened if I'd discovered it then, instead of at age 28.

S____ and I never talked about being lesbian in college, though.  I was far more ignorant of the world than my protagonist, and I was certainly more ignorant of myself.  I had a boyfriend; I had a 4.0; someday, I expected to have a good job and be married with children.  I don't remember thinking any further than that.

Does it matter?  I could (and will) write a hundred fictional alternatives for my life, and this is still the one I've lived so far.  This one, the one in which I raise my wine glass to toast my friend S____ after she listens carefully and gently to the long complicated story of my last fourteen years.  In fiction and in real life, she is a damn good person and a steady friend.

And maybe "staying in touch" by crafting fictional characters isn't so different from Facebook. . .

I'm Lesbian and So Are You

Tonight, a friend invited me to her house for dinner, and I went, since I often go to this friend's house for dinner.  She wanted me to meet a visiting friend of hers, which is also fairly usual.  But the conversation was academic -- my friend and her husband and the visitor are all in the same field, all PhDs -- and I couldn't figure out how to get into the conversation intelligently; they talked about people in their field and projects on which they are working, and I felt painfully young, under-educated, out of my league.  And then the visitor turned to me and said, "So I do have some lesbians in Boulder you should meet," and I knew.  I had been invited because I am lesbian and so is this visiting friend, and everyone hoped she would be able to introduce me to other lesbians.

Straight people don't experience this.  Can you imagine?  "Hey!  You should come over for dinner tonight!  You and Stanley are both straight, he's a man, you're a woman!"  To be fair, people do set friends up like this, but they do not invite them over primarily because they are straight.  Of course, the world contains a higher percentage of straight people and it's more difficult to find other lesbians, so it does make some sense to introduce them to each other.  My friend Lynn:  "I'll have to introduce you to _______; she's lesbian, too."

However, this isn't how people fall for each other.  Romance doesn't stem from the fact that we're both wearing purple, or that we are the same age and have the same three hobbies on a dating website.  The world is more complicated than that.  It's nice to meet you, but just because we're both attracted to women does not mean we're compatible.

I'm not being fair.  My friends are trying to help.  But I cried the entire way home (silently, so my daughter in the backseat didn't feel alarmed).  I'm not ready, and if I were, I wouldn't proceed in this way.  My friend T___ worried aloud last weekend that I'm searching for "everything to happen like it does in the movies".  So?  My story with A______ is better than any book or movie I've read or seen; why shouldn't I hold everything else to that standard?

Until then, I just want to make friends who have real commonalities with me:  hiking, literature, travel, cooking.  Now I've just made my blog sound like a post on a dating website.  Time to go to bed.

in passing. . .

Ali and I used to talk about how the process of making new friends is oddly like dating:  the initial meeting, the awkward discovery of each other's likes and dislikes, the more awkward arrangement for the next meeting.  Now that all feels painfully true.  I can be friendly, but I'm not adept at making friends.  Today at the Boulder Farmers' Market, Mitike spotted another Ethiopian girl and marched right over to her, introduced herself.  I followed reluctantly.  I don't feel like I know how to function well in new social situations.  Of course, I had to awkwardly name that:  "Hi, my daughter's far more social than I am, but I decided I'd better follow her lead.  My name's Sarah."  The other mother seemed glad to meet us, relieved even to find another mother of an adopted Ethiopian child.  Of course.  Most people want connection.  Why can't I remember that?

The awkwardness goes on, though:  I feel compelled to sketch my difficult history immediately, to warn people about what they will be taking on if they enter into friendship with me.  My partner died two years ago. . . we were in Fort Collins and now we're here. . . I didn't intend to do this alone. . .   I out myself, too, making certain that I mention Ali's name or use the pronoun "she".  There.  Do you still want to be friends with me?

This woman does, I think.  She emailed me later to say she was glad we had met.  My daughter is two years older than hers, but they connected fairly well.  Maybe I've found a friend in Boulder.

Regardless, I needed that interaction to nudge me out of the sadness I had cradled all morning.  I woke from such sweet dreams of Ali, dreams I can't even remember except for the longing and the early-morning light and how content I felt.  All morning, as Mitike and I biked along the creek trail and then wandered the Boulder Farmers' Market, I thought how unfair it is that Ali is not here in this life she wanted all along.  Then suddenly Mitike announced she was going to introduce herself to the little girl across the grass, and it all catapulted me into now.  This is where I am.  Time to make friends.  My name's Sarah.  Do you want -- to get together sometime?