Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma (22 page)

Now, in December of 1994, on my porch in Ypsilanti, Michigan, I was looking into my daughter’s big brown eyes, for the first time in ten years. I always knew in my heart-of-hearts that my children and I would reunite. I anticipated it happening much later, perhaps when they were in their 30s. But here was Berit, at age 22, standing before me. As I opened the door, she looked me right in the eye.

“I’m pregnant and I have strong feelings for my baby. I want to know if you had the same feelings for me when you were pregnant with me.” She was defiant! It was the gutsiest thing I’d ever heard, and I had no doubt that she knew the answer long before she ever asked the question.

“Yes, I did, sweetheart,” I answered quietly, slowly. Tears welled up in our eyes as she gently, lovingly came into my arms. I pulled my daughter, my baby girl, against my body, into my heart and soul.

“Berit, I love you so much, and I’ve missed you terribly. The hole in my heart has been so huge without you.”

“I love you, too, Mom, and I’ve missed you, too.” As we cried, the others with us, Berit’s husband Bill and my partner Paula cried with us.

Berit and I spent most weekends together for the next five months, rebuilding a relationship from such a strong foundation during the first six years of her life. When  she  went into labor in May of 1995, she called me from Sloan Kettering Hospital in Dayton. I raced down I-75, arriving at Kettering in less than three hours.

I was in the birthing room with Berit as she pushed and panted and pushed again. I breathlessly watched in awe as my granddaughter’s head became visible. Her face, her shoulders, then her whole little body slid into this world. The doctor handed the scissors to me. “Cut the cord, Grandma?” I did, and then I held my first grandchild in my arms while the nurses did their work with her. I held her because I’d heard that the first hour of a baby’s life is “angel time.” If you hold a child during angel time, she’s yours forever. I could not, would not, lose another child from my life, so I held my granddaughter, my Ellie, during her angel time. To this day there is a special bond between us. We both feel it without a doubt. Berit and Bill and Ellie moved back to Florida the next year. I went to Florida often to see them, and in 1998 I arrived just minutes after the birth of my second granddaughter, Candace.

Berit graduated cum laude from the University of South Florida, after overcoming tremendous challenges such as having two small children and no money. She was always an outstanding student as a child. Because education holds such value for her, she found a way to go to school part-time for eight years, and to graduate with honors. My parents, my sister Bebe, and my son Erik and I were there to celebrate with her. I hosted her graduation party at our hotel and invited her father and his family to join us. Jake and his parents chose not to attend his daughter’s hard-earned graduation nor the celebration party because I was going to be there. Jake never resolved his anger towards me though we hadn’t had contact in over twenty-five years, and his hateful feelings prevented him from sharing in his daughter’s accomplishments. What a shallow jerk!

Berit and Bill divorced several years later. Bill was intimidated by Berit’s growing intellectual life and success at the university. They were unable to communicate any longer in any meaningful way. Berit needed to talk.

“Mom, when you come to Florida next week for Grandma Mae’s 100
^th
birthday, can we carve out a few hours of alone time?”

“Of course, Berit,” was my immediate response. I wondered—no, I was intensely curious about—what was on her mind. I played guessing games with myself. My first thought: did I screw up somehow as a mother or grandmother? My second thought: is she considering divorcing Bill? What about the children (remnants of what my mother wrote to me when I was divorcing Jake). My third thought, good lesbian that I am, was: is Berit coming out? I suspected the second, hoped for the third, couldn’t think about the first. It was the second, divorce.

Six months later Berit shared with me that she’d started seeing Matt, one of her undergraduate religious studies professors (she was in graduate school now). They married in a very private quiet ceremony the following year.

I was there to support my daughter, for the birth of her daughters, for her graduations with her bachelors and masters degrees, for her divorce, and for her second marriage. I am deeply proud of Berit and I love her beyond words. I suspect she has her own set of struggles around my having left her as a child but at least we remain close. The door is always open as we each need to talk. In the meantime, I visit Berit and Matt and my precious granddaughters often, and my granddaughters know without a doubt that their grandma loves them fiercely!

26. In Search of History

__________________________________________________________________

1995

U.S. President
: Bill Clinton

Best film
: Braveheart, Apollo 13, Babe, Sense and Sensibility, Dead Man Walking

Best actors
: Nicolas Cage, Susan Sarandon

Best TV shows
: Cybil; The Drew Carey Show; Caroline in the City; JAG

Best songs
: Kiss from a Rose, Water Runs Dry, Runaway, Candy Rain, Only Want to Be with You, I Believe

Civics
: Oklahoma City bombing; O. J. Simpson found not guilty of killing his wife

Popular Culture
: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opens in Cleveland; Steve Fossett makes first solo transpacific balloon flight; first cloned sheep; University of Michigan hosts first-ever Lavender Graduation; Canada ends sexual orientation discrimination; Florida Baptist Convention boycotts Disney for extending domestic partner benefits to same-sex partners

Deaths
: Howard Cosell, Jerry Garcia, Rose Kennedy, Mickey Mantle, Ginger Rogers

_________________________________________________________________

The Weekly News, or TWN as it was called, was Florida’s statewide gay and lesbian newspaper for decades. I remember looking forward to reading each issue those many years ago: the drama du jour, the politics, the AIDS epidemic, Jesse Montegudo’s book reviews, Bill Watson’s editorials, Bike Daddy’s ranting, and my own pathetically sweet articles and antics from when I was the executive director and lobbyist with the Florida Task Force, Florida’s lesbian and gay civil rights organization. There were the far-too-numerous obituaries of young men, including my old Burdines Department Store friends Tony and Richard, each of whom died before they were twenty-five years of age. For nearly 30 years the TWN faithfully documented Florida’s lesbian and gay history.

My doctoral dissertation, Unheard Voices: The Effects of Silence on Florida’s Lesbian and Gay Teachers in the Public School System, was going to be published by Greenwood Press but some pieces of Florida gay and lesbian history needed further documentation. I was especially interested in reviewing the Bush-Trask era of 1981-1982. I contacted long-time editor Bill Watson at the TWN in Miami.

Bill was gracious in opening the archives of the TWN to me, none of which was computerized. He located the volumes of old papers I needed, then left me to my own devices in a private room. I was searching for specific information for my book but I found so much more. My own history as a lesbian, as a budding leader, as a Floridian, danced on the yellowing brittle pages of old TWNs.

I saw names and faces of people I had adored, some whom I idolized, others after whom I simply lusted those years ago. I saw photographs of myself—a newly-out angry lesbian who had lost custody of her children and who jumped smack into the political fray as a result. I read about my early role as a leader and realized with time-trained eyes what I could have done, should have done, differently. But back then, thirty years ago, I simply didn’t know. Like so many of my contemporaries, I was thrust into politics by an intense anger, fueled by the loss of my children. Without training, without role models, I led by ego, as so many of us did. Passion, and a need to create change, were deeply ingrained in my soul but my ego was the driving force, and it was my ego that eventually caused me to burn out. I’m grateful that I learned to do it differently. Over the years I’ve learned to lead through service rather than by ego, a concept I teach and try to model for my students.

As I continued my review of the TWN that day, I saw TWN’s first article describing an “unusual pneumonia striking gay men in San Francisco and Los Angeles,” quoting the Center for Disease Control’s June 5, 1981 Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report. Reading that article took me back to a meeting in 1981 in the Coral Gables home of Jack Campbell, the owner of the now-closed Club Bath Chain. Many of us who directed gay and lesbian organizations around the country gathered that day to strategize about how to deal with this frightening new health issue looming over our heads like an ominous thunder storm.

I also saw the photo of the handsome face of my friend, Dan Bradley, who had been the president of the National Legal Services Corporation and the highest-ranking federal official to come out as an openly gay man. He died of AIDS at the age of forty-seven. I saw the 1981 photograph of the obnoxious fraternity boys at the University of Florida, my alma mater, who showed their butts in a collective moon-shot towards members of the UF student group called UFLAGS: the University of Florida Lesbian and Gay Society. The photo captioned the group as UFAGS.

That photo, in turn, caused me to recall a meeting with a group of students at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, my graduate alma mater, in about 1991. The students wanted to stage an action at UNF without regard to the history that had paved the way for them to gather there in the first place. They were unaware of the consequences of similar previous actions. As I discussed the issue with this group, one impatient young man said, “You’re too old to tell us about this stuff. What do you know anyway?” His words struck me hard, like a baseball bat to my head. Those words drove my need to teach young people about our history and about the giants on whose shoulders they stand. It is both imperative and critical that our future leaders know our—their—history. There is much to be researched and much yet to be written. Lesbian and gay history isn’t really hidden, as suggested by the title of the book Hidden from History by Martin Duberman and Martha Vicinus; it’s available for the searching, in archives like those of TWN, the Stonewall Archives in Ft. Lauderdale, the ONE National Archives, the June Mazer Archives in Los Angeles, and other similar places around the country.

When I said goodbye to Bill Watson and left the TWN office that day, I felt a deep sadness for the passing of people and of time, yet I felt warm with the nostalgia of seeing photos of beloved faces from a time long past. I drove over to Haulover Beach on Collins Avenue where many years earlier I could be found waxing my surfboard, waiting for Miami’s most perfect, albeit small, waves. Haulover, to my surprise, had become a clothing-optional beach (try hard as we might to remove the clothing of our lust-mates those decades ago). I did the only thing that seemed appropriate in the moment: I removed my shirt and let the sun wash over this old body as I fondly recalled yet another time and place on this road to freedom, and made a promise to no one in particular to continue to honor those who came before me by keeping their memories alive.

27. Stalked!

I’ve been stalked twice. Not the run-of-the-mill call-me-a-dyke-on-the-phone-and-hang-up annoying kind of thing—though that happened in Jacksonville, just days before the cross was burned on my yard and my car spray-painted with D-I-K-E by an ignoramus who couldn’t spell dyke—but by real live people, requiring police intervention. Astonishingly, both of my stalkers were gay. Go figure!

Michigan has tough stalking laws so I rarely heard about anyone actually being stalked. My first stalker was a “typical” stalker who was acting out of “love,” even when making very serious threats. Stalker #1 was a 68-year old woman who I had met about a year after I started working at the University. She was employed by the University but I didn’t know where.

She seemed enamored of me right from the start. I looked different back then. I wore dresses and heels and makeup and contact lenses. I was once told that I was the best dressed lesbian on campus. I probably was, thanks to my partner Paula’s tasteful assistance. Today I’m the sensible lesbian: no heels for which my back and legs are thankful, no dresses, no stockings, no makeup, and no contact lenses. Just me in all my comfortable glory as nature intended! Ah, the privileges of getting old!

Anyway, Stalker #1 started off casually by visiting me at my office every now and then. Since she was older, worked at UM, and seemed to be lonely, I always welcomed her. We would chat for a few moments and then she’d go back to work. Her visits, though, were becoming more frequent and she started bringing gifts to me, none of which I accepted. I asked her to consider making a financial gift to the Lesbian and Gay Office rather than spend money on gifts for me.

One Saturday as Paula and I were digging up tulip bulbs in our yard in Ypsi, I saw Stalker #1 drive by. She circled the block several times then drove away without a wave or acknowledgement. That baffled me so I racked my brain for the Perfectly Logical Explanation, that PLE we talk about in our social justice classes. I could think of none.

On Wednesday of the next week I received a package from Stalker #1. It contained very expensive winter boating gear—she knew my love of boating from our conversations in my office. A letter accompanied the gear. It read, I know you’re going to return this to me. There’s only one way to do it. You must bring it to my house on Saturday (a map was included). If you do it any other way, you’re going to make me do something we both are going to be sorry for.