Best of Lesbian Living

As I write this, school will start in three days. A glance at my class rosters tells me that my classes are full and I have a total of 100 students. My first thought was ‘how am I going to learn all those names?’ My next thought was how am I going to read all those essays alone? The college where I teach has recently increased class sizes. It didn’t happen to make things easier for me or for students. But there you are; money is tight. Most of my students aren’t English majors; they are afraid of writing; they dread it; they have to take the class because it’s required for almost every degree, so I often use humor to make the class at least tolerable for them and to be honest, for me.

Humor is nothing more than tragedy plus time, and an element of the unexpected. When we talk about clichés, I ask students to translate so they don’t show up in their essays. They never get a stitch in time saves nine, but many of them can get out of the frying pan and into the fire. I tell them it’s like my second marriage and the relationship that followed it. One of my favorite second marriage stories is about a canoe trip. I was working at a bank and had been married to my second husband for eight years. A group of employees and their spouses were going to go to Crawfordsville, Indiana, to canoe on Sugar Creek. It was a two day trip so we had to carry our gear and camp one night. To be honest I don’t remember why I signed us up. I’d never been camping and neither of us had ever been in a canoe.

We pushed off, sitting low in the water because we had a lot in the canoe between me and him, both big people, and the gear we had to carry. The first thing that happened was my ex and I got in an argument about who was supposed to steer. He maintained it was me and I thought it was him. So he said something totally stupid, and I threw my paddle at him. Bad idea. Paddles are necessary. I hear, “I’ll get it for you, honey.” Like I had let it slip from my hands or something. I really was trying to knock him into the water. Bad idea. If he went into the water, I’d go too. Finally another canoer came up to him and showed him how to steer.

The first day of the trip was white water. We spilled several times and people came over and helped us get ourselves and our gear back into the canoe. By the end of the day, I had learned how to fall out of the canoe gracefully. That night we camped and it rained. We were exhausted. I’d brought a case of beer, but by then I didn’t even want it. I should have left it at the camp site for someone else, but we carried the damn beer to the end.

The second day was the scenic part of the trip. It had been a while since we had spilled and I was enjoying the splendor of the riverbanks on a sunny day. I said to my ex, “Isn’t this a beautiful place?” And he said, “Just get me off this fucking river!” I was busy absorbing that when he said, “And another thing, I don’t like your chili.” I had been making chili every week for eight years. I love my chili. Then to punctuate what he’d said, he let us drift into Suck Rock. It’s called this because of the way it pulls the water under. So we spilled again.

That marriage ended for a lot of reasons that had to do with my sexual preference, but to this day, I see the chili remark as the beginning of the end. Many years later, SALO had a Chili Cook-off. My chili won. When Girlfriend and I moved in together—I made sure the chili was not going to be an issue. She told me she loved my chili, but didn’t want it so often. What a diplomat. But I could deal with that. So I make a big pot and freeze individual portions for me on days when she wants Chinese, which I hate.

Anyway, students love that canoe-chili story. They crack up when I say “…and another thing, I don’t like your chili.”

One TV program that I alternately love and hate is “Hoarders.” The producers send a team of psychologists, organizers and laborers into a person’s home and they all work on cleaning the place up. I often think that if I had all of that help, I’d get something done around here. But then I see those poor people going through their things one item at a time, trying to decide whether to trash it, donate it, or keep it. Their anxiety gets so high that they wig out, and I wonder what it would be like to have to decide on every bit of stuff I have all in one day.

I’m sitting here in a valley between two mountains of stuff as I write this. On top is a Lands End catalogue opened to pea coats. I’m thinking of buying one, but I have to wait until I get my new glasses, so I’ll know how much money I have left for a coat. I do have other coats—but I think that a pea coat is the perfect attire for a lesbian. So, like the hoarder on TV, I have my reasons for keeping that catalogue on top of the stack. I tell myself that at least I’m not as bad as the Hoarders on TV. At least I don’t have infestations of bugs or dead cats in my garage. To my right is a stack of email. Here’s how this happens. I get an email that looks like it might be important, so not wanting to read it right then, I print it out for a time when I can give it my full attention, but I never do read them. So this email printed stack just grows.

Last summer I read “Homer and Langley,” by E. L. Doctorow. It’s a pretty good book if you like literary fiction. It’s based on a true story of the Collyer brothers who were found dead in their 5Th Avenue brownstone amid tons of stuff. In the book, the story is told by the brother who is blind. So even though he knows they have accumulated a lot of stuff, including a car in the dining room, he can’t see it. The brothers eventually descend into madness, as over the years the walkways become narrower and one by one the rooms become uninhabitable and are locked.

In 1975, the documentary “Gray Gardens,” won several awards. It’s about two women, mother (big Edith) and daughter (little Edith), who lived in a mansion in East Hampton, New York, that is full of trash, fleas, cats and raccoons. They were about to be evicted when their plight got some publicity, Jackie Onassis-Kennedy and her sister Lee Razwell (they were cousins) arranged for the place to be cleaned and repaired, but it eventually filled up again. In a 2007 film, based on the documentary, one of the best lines comes when the guy from the Health Department shows up and Drew Barrymore (Little Edith) hangs out the upstairs window, and says, “Well, things just seem to pile up after Labor Day.”

It’s true; things do seem to pile up. I guess I’m a “selective” hoarder. I have no trouble throwing away junk mail unopened or fast food containers, but I do have a problem with books and clothes. I’ve been working on it, but it is hard. Plus Girlfriend often looks into the trash and pulls things she thinks she might use, and I have to throw things away twice, when it was hard enough the first time.

I have read that all clothes that don’t fit should go. But I have the problem of being one size (not always the same size) in the summer and another in the winter, or two weeks later. When I see closets on TV or in magazines (except on Hoarders), I am always shocked that there is reasonable space between the hangers. Joan Crawford would have a stroke over my closet. Every week when I hang up my clean clothes, I have to shove with all my might to get the stuff back in there.

So there must be a line you cross somewhere and it all just gets away from you. I ask myself what’s the difference between Homer and Langley, Big Edith and Little Edith, those people on TV and me. Is it just a matter of degrees? I heard somewhere that there’s always someone better off and someone worse off than you are. Maybe I look at hoarders so I can tell myself I’m not that bad, yet.

I usually get a little depressed around holidays. That’s because of this idea that families should all sit down to a real Norman Rockwell type dinner. The children should be cute instead of tired and irritable and the adults (about three generations of them) all smile and pass the turkey. For me there are three generations that get together during the holidays, and I am the middle one. I think we all try to be nice to each other and the strain is often too much. Back when “Rosanne” was a popular TV show, I always liked her holiday shows. My family wasn’t like “Leave it to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best.” My family was like Rosanne’s. I sometimes have students write holiday essays. Not one of them mentions Rosanne Barr. But they seem puzzled about grandmas, who have everything they want or need. How do you shop for someone like that?

Often times their Grandma doesn’t even put up a tree or decorate. Students don’t see that Christmas is different when you grow old. Actually, this is the first year that I don’t want to go all out with decorations. It’s just too much work. Our neighbor across the street leaves his Christmas decorations up until it’s time to put out his spring stuff. We actually enjoy this because it gives us an unearned sense of superiority, which is rare when it comes to decorations. Last night, on the way to dinner, we drove past several houses along Chatham Road that had yard decorations out, and I noticed the lighted deer (that moves its head slightly) are now in gold lights. I have a deep and abiding respect for the folks who have those things in their yards year after year. Either they have a spot in their homes where they can leave the things in one piece all year or they have ungodly talent in putting things together. We had two of those deer one year. They came disassembled and had to be taken apart when Christmas was over and assembled again the next year. We just weren’t highly evolved enough for all of that.

The year of the deer, we also got the set of three spiral Christmas trees. As soon as we got them home and the box opened, Girlfriend hurried out to the yard and pounded a stake in the ground—it’s still there somewhere. Turns out the trees were held in place by an above-ground stand and the stake in the ground was to give height to the middle sized tree. Girlfriend is not good at following directions. I mean she just doesn’t read them. So we had one tall tree and two short ones. The following year, the tall tree had the plastic things that it hangs it together hopelessly tangled. We put them out anyway. The deer were harder to put up the second year than they had been the first. Probably something to do with the way they were taken down. After two years, they were all history.

One year Girlfriend found a little out of the way junk shop and took me there to pick out some Star Wars memorabilia for my oldest son who is a collector. A second huge room was stacked from floor to ceiling with all sorts of household items. The guy who owned the place said he got the stuff from Estate Sales. He said most people wouldn’t believe how much unused stuff that senior citizens have when they die. I found some side pieces to match an old set of “Vision” Corning Wear (the clear pink stuff) that I’ve had for thirty years. These dishes and pans were in the original unopened boxes. I thought about my students then, trying to buy for their Grandmas who already have everything. But this is how it is; Grandmas don’t want Corning Wear. If we were to ask an old person at the end of his or her life what the most important thing turned out to be—the answer will always be the same—Grandma knows that the most precious things on earth are her family and her friends. She doesn’t want something from them, she wants them. Instead of buying her a gift certificate for a nice restaurant, the kids should take her to that nice restaurant. Instead of a new DVD player, take her to a movie. Instead of another picture of the family, give her some time with the family. These days for me, that’s all I want or need.

I know a lot of same sex couples in long relationships. Girlfriend and I bought a house together in 1994 after a few years of on again and off again dating. We’d both come from relationships that had painful endings, so every time we disagreed about anything, we’d break up. But we eventually realized that if we wanted to be together, we’d have to work through the things that scared us. Currently both of us are in the longest relationship of our lives. I remember a time when I believed all the propaganda about gay relationships. I thought that young couples’ relationships averaged around three years, and as they aged, lesbians became old women who lived alone with their cats. I never dreamed that I’d have a joy filled intimate relationship with a woman who has become the axis on which my whole world turns.

Ironically it’s often things that I broke up with Girlfriend over in the beginning that are dear to me now. She’s a bit controlling. Don’t get me wrong, I like bossy women, but giving up control scared me. These days we have divided the things we control and rarely have a conflict. Neither of us is good at compromise, but in a pinch we can do it.

1.I love the way she’s obsessed about the lawn. I have allergies and a bad back, so it works for both of us. In the summer she will literally sit in the grass for an hour, sometimes with the cat, and pull up creeping Charlie—whatever the heck that is.

2.I always had this aversion to sitting home on Saturday night. So no matter what, we have a date night on Saturday. She has taken me out or rented a movie and popped popcorn for 52 weeks a year for 20 years. That’s a commitment.

3.She loves building things. The first year we were here she told me she was going to build a book case. So she sat up her sawhorses in the back yard and started. I didn’t think it looked too sound when she stood it up, but I kept my mouth shut (no small task), and then it started to lean and next it fell over. So she just left it there and when it was time to mow the grass she dismantled it and stood the boards against the back of the garage. The following spring a robin built her nest on top of the boards. I told Girlfriend that maybe when the robin had raised her chicks, she should move the boards. The next spring the robin came back and used the same nest. I can’t remember if this went on for three of four years before the boards got moved. And you know what? I love her for that.

4.I don’t care much for remodeling projects—living in them, I mean. Sometimes when painting a room she’ll work for 20 minutes at a time and the stuff just sits there until the next twenty minutes that she finds. So mostly she does the big projects while I’m at a writers conference or something.

5.She feeds birds and stray cats. Our youngest cat, Gonzo, just showed up here hungry one day. We took him in without much discussion. She is totally involved with our four pets. She is affectionate and often tells me what they do or what they are thinking. Most recently she’s taught Belle (a dog with a barking problem, a dog who will bark at anything) how to “speak.”

6.She never puts things away when she uses them. A long time ago I bought my own cleaning products and my own household tools. She knows where my cleaning products are and it drives her nuts. But I when I need something, I know where it is.

7.She is always supportive, no matter what I do or how much it costs. When I feel paranoid (side effect of too much pot in the 60’s) she listens to my fears and together we meet them head on. I think this is a miracle. I reciprocate this love and support willingly.

These days they make Valentines for same sex couples. I know; I’ve seen them. I remember all the years I looked at cards from husbands to wives, and they always ended up with the husband being a dope. There were cards for friendship, but she’s much more than a close friend. For me, all I need to do is . . .count the ways. . .I love her.

Thanks to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

According to the writings of Thomas Jefferson’s daughter (another Martha), Jefferson sang to himself while he worked. When I learned this I thought immediately of Girlfriend. We live in a big (for two people) house and often are working in different rooms. But wherever I am, I get a sense of peace and love when I hear her humming to herself in the next room. I’ve never lived with someone who did that. Oh, my first husband used to sing Ernest Tubb songs when he was drunk—but that that’s a totally different thing. With Girlfriend, if I comment on her music she stops. So I’ve learned to simply keep quiet and enjoy.

Like anyone she can be difficult at times. For instance, last night when she tried to blame me for the furnace malfunction. The thing worked all day just fine, but ten minutes before she was due to come home I noticed that the house was really cold. So I reset the breaker (which for some reason got it started again although the breaker hadn’t been thrown). This had happened the night before, and she told me if it messed up again to call the repairman. But it didn’t mess up—that is until late. So when she came in the furnace had failed and I hadn’t called the repairman. She was angry with me. She had it in her mind that I had deliberately waited until it was too late to make a repair call. Nothing I said would convince her of the truth. I suppose she based her conclusion on the knowledge that I don’t like dealing with repairmen.

Actually Girlfriend is like Thomas Jefferson in a lot of ways. She is very creative and is always thinking about how to use a piece of this or that (what I call junk) to make something beautiful. In fact, I discovered quite by accident years ago that she goes through what I throw away and pulls things out. If I want something truly gone, I have to pitch it behind her back.

She also is the political mind between us. She reads the newspaper for hours. I hit the sports page, the comics, Dear Abby, and police beat. But Girlfriend reads it all. She told me that George Bush was AWOL from the military long before anyone made an issue of it. When our neighbor sold her house, Girlfriend told me how much the woman got for it. She said that it was in the paper. I’ve sure never seen that part of the paper. Last night Jay Leno said that Dennis Hastert had been elected Speaker of the House. Thinking I was finally ahead of Girlfriend on something political, I asked her what state he was from and what party he belonged to. When she told me the answer, she asked why I wanted to know. I told her he was elected Speaker of the House. She said, “Good grief, that was the 4th time.” By the way he’s from Illinois—republican. I guess that’s what you get for relying on Jay Leno for the news.

Girlfriend and I are different in a lot of ways. But like old married couples, between us we are pretty high functioning. Just about everything one would need to survive in our culture—and a few things that are totally unnecessary—one or the other of us has a talent for. There are two things that I remember my parents telling me when I was a child that turned out to be dead on accurate. My dad said, “You never get something for nothing,” and my Mom told me that, “Love is being comfortable with someone.” For a long time I thought love was that chill up my spine during a toe-curling orgasm. I thought it was when my heart raced as she walked into the room. I thought it was about wanting to be next to her every minute of the day and night. But it turns out mom was right. Love is the peaceful feeling I have when we sit across from each other over dinner, not talking. Love is knowing what will happen when I throw away an empty coffee can. And love is the magic feeling I have when I am at the other end of the house and I hear her humming to herself. Now, how do you put that into a Valentine?

If you want to read more about lesbians loving or trying to love—check our Martha Miller’s book, Skin to Skin: Erotic Lesbian Love Stories, like her other books (Nine Nights on the Windy Tree and Dispatch to Death) it is available from New Victoria publishers www.newvictoria.com, at Sundance Book Store, Barnes & Nobles, and of course Amazon.com.

Today Girlfriend brought up the thing about cleaning the linen closet again. This particular closet has a dark history with us. It’s in the bathroom—a small linen closet with a full-length mirror on the back of the door. Inside are four shelves and the floor. When we set up housekeeping many years ago, we decided we’d each have a shelf in the linen closet for our personal things. That left a high up shelf reserved for Christmas lights, an eyebrow waxer, and a steam iron—in other words things we don’t use more than once a year. The next shelf is filled with towels and washcloths. I have the third shelf and Girlfriend’s is next. Because she uses fewer hair care products than I do, she also has the first aid stuff on her shelf.

The last time it was cleaned, I did it. And I still have some pretty strong feelings about it. You see, girlfriend has some pack rat behavior. She wants us to live sparsely and simply, but her behavior is inconsistent with that desire. She will hang on to a bottle of Vitamins or some almost empty store brand hand cream for twenty years. She sometimes digs things that I’ve thrown away out of the trash; for example, empty butter tubs, mayonnaise jars and coffee cans. This is not a problem with me—she has her shelf and I have mine. But a couple of years ago she asked me to help her clean the closet because it was simply too overwhelming for her. I took a couple of boxes and emptied the closet. Then I only put the things that we use back in. I learned this on one of those HGTV shows about getting organized. She was so happy that my life was heaven for a day or two. Gradually things built up again, but never to the extent that it had been. That would take ten years.

Then one day I opened the closet, and it had been ransacked—especially my shelf.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“You took my tooth paste.”

How my question and her answer were connected was hard to see. But this happens a lot. She’s often three lines ahead of me in any debate. So I said, “I beg your pardon?”

“My Ultrabrite was missing and I found it on your shelf.”

“I bought the tube that was on my shelf.”

“You don’t use that brand,” she countered.

“I changed,” I snarled. “Give me my goddamn toothpaste.” While I glare at her, I am setting shampoo and cream rinse bottles back up. Okay, maybe I was slamming them down a little. But this woman has a deferred comp account large enough to buy a sixty-foot yacht, not to mention the CD’s and IRAS. I fail to see why she could be so upset about a ninety-nine cent tube of toothpaste that she can’t find.

To tell the truth I don’t know why I can’t let go of this. She’s a good woman for the most part. And, let me tell you, you never appreciate a good woman until you’ve had the other kind, and I’ve certainly done that. But it’s always the small stuff isn’t it? I often ask myself, why couldn’t I just give her the darn toothpaste and kiss and make up? I mean, how much is it worth next to my own serenity? I couldn’t buy a yacht, but for some peace of mine, I sure could afford another tube of toothpaste.

And here’s the deal, we’ve raised two teenaged boys and launched them into adulthood. We’ve buried two dogs and one parent. We’ve been through at least one major illness each and two major surgeries. We’ve dealt with our aging mothers and raised two more dogs and two cats. We’ve supported each other through problems at work and problems with ex’s. We are pretty good at the big stuff. But the business of the linen closet is a tough one. I want to say, “Let sleeping dogs lie, sister,” with that edge to my voice that says, ‘don’t go there.” But instead I glance into the closet, and then I tell her that it doesn’t look that bad to me, and for the moment it works. —Martha Miller

You know how sometimes things don’t happen when we want them to, and then later if they do happen it turns out to be just what we needed all along? That’s how it’s been with the first book I ever wrote. My author’s copies of Tales from the Levee came yesterday. The Genesis of this book, or you might say the labor and delivery, goes back some 17 or 18 years. Looking at those days objectively (hind sight is often 20/20) I see a woman who’d taken on a drastic change rather late in life. After a 15 year marriage and two children, after going to gay bars on intermittent weekends for years, I was in the process of a messy divorce and was living openly with a woman. Last summer when I read the galleys for the book (it was the first time I’d read the whole thing in several years) I saw in the text the raw emotion of finally accepting that I was gay and all that that meant. I don’t write that way anymore. At least I don’t think I do. But I didn’t change it because there was some stark and genuine truth cradled in all that anguish and joy. Of course, leaving all of that untouched, I know I am also leaving myself open to criticism from those who believe it poor taste to let ones feelings show so unabashedly.

But when I started the first stories, I was new to it all, and what I tend to do when I’m confronted with something that scares me is ask a lot of questions and learn all I can. That’s how I stumbled on to the first story. My first live-in lover (who’d had spent more time in gay bars than most people) told it to me. When I wrote the story down, I didn’t dream it would eventually be in a book. The story is “The Queen of Tanqueray” and it’s about a fight in a bar between a two lesbians—a prostitute and her butch lover. The second story I tried to write was “Lady Verushka’s Lover.” It was a difficult one because I wanted so much in it. I knew I wanted it to reflect a sense of community, introduce the drag queens, and interject some humor. That turned out to be a pretty tall order. What do I remember about writing that story is—my writing instructor at Sangamon State (who always loved everything I wrote) told me the story was hopeless—I conducted the first of several Levee interviews then (with Verushka herself)—I painstakingly revised the story several times—and finally, when I read it to my writers group (all straight except for me), I had to read over the sounds of their enthusiastic laughter. Both of those stories were published. In fact, they both hit the first place I sent them. And I began to have the idea that the stories were important somehow.

So one afternoon we invited Miss Pauline to our apartment. And I’ll never forget the way we sat laughing and talking about the old days, and if I do forget, I have it all on tape. Out of that interview came the story “The Arabian Nights,” about the days when Pauline managed a massage parlor. This was followed by a somewhat longer and more complex story called “Bulls.” However, by the time those four stories were finished, my rocky first lesbian relationship had ended, and I was sure that I’d written the last Levee story because I had only been a visitor to the bars in those days. And I certainly didn’t know the people I needed to talk to. Besides I was in a lot of pain. That was when I learned my second significant lesson about being gay. There was nowhere to talk about this painful break-up because everyone I knew either didn’t know I was gay, pretended they didn’t know, or didn’t understand the deep feelings that one woman can have for another. Moreover, the few gay people I knew were her friends (or so I thought). Suddenly that sense of community that existed on the Levee seemed very important. So to keep the project moving, I wrote a story that was completely fiction (the only one in the book) called “The Cajun Dancer.”

When the dust finally settled from the end of that first relationship, I saw that interviews had a momentum—and they were far from over. In fact, people wanted to talk to me. I don’t remember the order of the rest of the stories—except I wrote the first one “End of an Era” last. Next I put the stories in order by the approximate years the events might have happened—some were easier to nail down than others. The stories at the end of the book about a murder, I’d gone to the archives of the State Journal-Register to get exact details. Other stories are composites of events that happened over a period of time, pulled together for the sake of literary form. Anyway, when I put it all in order, I saw the “Tales” were not only telling the story of gay life in the 1960’s and 70’s, but they were also telling the story of Springfield and how (and sometimes why) the downtown area developed. The era I described started with the destruction of the Orpheum Theater and ended with the destruction of the buildings along North Fifth Street to create a site for the Near North Plaza.

I don’t remember how many times I revised the manuscript—let’s say it was a lot, but the day came when I thought the book was complete. I looked back and discovered that 8 years had passed. Next I started sending the manuscript to mainstream publishers and started accumulating rejection slips. They were usually hand written (if you have to be rejected, this is the best, most complementary way). I remember an editor at Norton told me that she was sure I’d find a publisher for the book. She said it was too regional for them.

In 1995 I submitted Tales from the Levee to the Friends of Lincoln Library as an entry for the Writer of the Year Award, and I won. The book got so much publicity locally as a result that I easily could have sold a thousand copies out of my trunk. But still I had no publisher. The original Levee manuscript that won the award is still in the Sangamon Valley Archives. Since it can’t be checked out, I didn’t think many people would read it. But I’ve heard, in fact, that people have gone up there and spent the whole day reading it.

Anyway, discouraged by mainstream presses, I started sending the manuscript to University Presses. I didn’t get rejected from many of them—they simply didn’t respond at all. That is except for Indiana State University Press. The book got past the first and second readers there. But a change in management resulted in another hand written rejection. A note on top of the returned manuscript from one of the readers said, “I’ve never read a book like this. The only one I can think of that is even close is Stone Butch Blues, and this is much better than that one.” Following the University presses, I tried the independent gay and lesbian presses, and I learned from trying to place Tales from the Levee with them that there are publishers for the boys and there are publishers for the girls, but seldom do the gay presses publish both genders. Tales from the Levee, of course, is the story of a community that included both men and women.

In the mean time a member of my writers group managed to place her lesbian mystery with a lesbian publisher, and I realized mysteries were big sellers in the lesbian market. So I started writing a mystery. When I sent the Levee manuscript to New Victoria Press, I got another hand written rejection. This time the note said that the book wasn’t right for them, but if I had anything else they’d love to see it. I pulled a bunch of erotic short stories (that I had been writing since I finished the Levee) together and sent them to New Victoria. They accepted the book and it became Skin to Skin; Erotic Lesbian Love Stories. For me this was a bitter sweet experience. Having a book published was thrilling. Not having the Levee stories (that wanted most to publish) accepted was a letdown. Anyway, the erotic stories were followed by two mysteries: Nine Nights on the Windy Tree and Dispatch to Death. While I was writing for New Victoria, I put the Levee on the shelf, telling myself that most writers have a first manuscript sitting in their closet.

Then a few years back, Buff Carmichael published some of the Levee stories in The Prairie Flame, and the gay community’s reaction to them was inspiring. With a renewed determination, I took the manuscript out and started sending it around again. My decision to send the Levee to Herrington Press had to do with the fact that they seemed to publish both gay and lesbian books—albeit under different imprints. I didn’t hear from them for over a year. I actually forgot about the submission. Then one day I got this contract in the mail—strange as it may seem, from the male imprint, Southern Tier. And now it is another year later and the book is sitting here on my desk.

I recently realized that by writing this book, I not only put down some tales, but I did the thing I set out to do in the first place—I learned what it’s like to be a homosexual in the Midwest. I see the stories now as being about a time when we were young—a time when there was a place where we lived and laughed and loved—and sometimes died. It was a time of sequins and wigs, of a drunken drag queen swinging from a beer sign, of women, their bodies pressed together, swaying in smoky barrooms to a ballad by Patsy Cline. It was a place where we drank and laughed together, where friendships were drawn, and no matter how crazy some of us behaved, we were part of something bigger than our individual numbers. I look at the students in my writing classes (19-year-olds with tattoos and pierced tongues) and I read their papers about all the excitement in their lives, and I want to say to them “Honey, you have no idea...”

—Martha Miller

I love to travel. I’m just not very good at it. My joints hurt. I get constipated. And when I’m tired or hungry I’m incoherent. Case in point, there’s a pair of size 9 cotton underpants in the floor of a hotel room in Las Vegas. During one of my early trips with Girlfriend, we flew into Vegas and stayed a couple of days and then rented a car and drove on to Huntington Beach California to visit my sister. Things were kind of new with us. We checked into a hotel and on the morning of the second day, I noticed a pair of Girlfriend’s underpants (they’d been worn) in the floor over by the dressing table. I just thought it must be one of those quirky things about her, so I just wrinkled my nose and kept my opinion to myself. We rented a car and started out across the Mohave Desert. The drive was pretty quiet for a while and then we needed gas. I pulled into one of those places that say “Last Gas for 300 Miles.” I think the price was about $1.69 a gallon. Girlfriend said, “Pull back onto the road. I won’t pay this much for gas.” I said, “Do you want to run out of gas in the damn desert?” She said, “I WON’T pay this much for gas.” I growled, “I’ll pay for the gas.” So that was settled. When we got to California, I was telling my sister about the trip. Maybe I was griping a little. So in her defense Girlfriend says, “She left her underpants in the floor at Vegas.” I say, “I thought those were your underpants. I’ve been wondering what kind of woman you are.” All these years later we are still arguing about those underpants.

One Valentines Day Girlfriend got me a card. When she handed it to me she said, “Try to think about our first trip to Key West.” So, I’m hoping as I rip open the envelope that there are a couple of plane tickets in the card. Nada. On the front of the card is a cupid splat against the radiator of a Mac Truck. And I laughed as I remembered all of the road kill on that trip. Everything was new for us. There’s nothing like driving for thirty hours together to get to know someone. South of the Mason/Dixon Line I noticed that they never clean up their road kill. So I said, “Gee, they sure have a lot of road kill in the south.” She looked at me crazed and said, “Don’t talk about it!” Of course, the more I tried not to talk about it the more I noticed it and the bigger this got in my head. I started classifying it: household pet, rodent, wild animal, unidentifiable. . . .Then south of Miami where we were looking for Route 1, and I saw this big brown thing with one leg sticking up in the air. I just blurted it out, not thinking, “My God, is that a kangaroo?” She glared at me. She may have snarled. When we drove over Deer Island they actually have a chalkboard with the number of deer hit so far that year. It was February and the number was eleven. After we got to Key West and got some rest, we decided to take one of those tram rides around the island. We were coming around a corner, looking at the gingerbread architecture when our tram hit a dog. We were the only ones in the tram who didn’t have something to say about that. Anyway, we always counted that vacation as having a theme. And she remembered it on Valentines Day.

It wasn’t that trip, but the next when I fell asleep driving in the mountains around Chattanooga. I heard her say, “Martha!” And I opened my eyes and saw we were headed off the edge of the mountain. I swerved the car and straightened it out. She asked if I wanted her to drive. But to tell the truth that woke me up. So I kept driving. She couldn’t sleep after that either. Then on the way home we were on the Florida turnpike, and I was sleeping while she drove. I rolled my head to one side and opened my eyes and saw a tractor tire right in our lane about 50 feet ahead. I looked at her. She didn’t seem to see it. I looked back at the road; we were getting closer. Finally, I reached and grabbed the steering wheel and turned it quickly to avoid a crash. I heard horns blowing all around us, and tires screeching. While Girlfriend fought for control of the car and tried to avoid a collision, I realized that I had been dreaming. There was nothing in the road in front of us. Even though I apologized a thousand times, I feel like she still holds that against me.

Our trips are always good for a story. There was the winter we accidentally went to Mardi gras. I just wanted to stop in New Orleans and shop at the French Market. Out of 52 weeks in the year, it happened to be Mardi gras. So we spent the day walking around, and that night when we started to go back to the car we forgot where we had parked it. Of course, all the parking lots looked alike. I think you’re supposed to remember your lot letter.

For several years we’ve not taken a big trip in the car. I missed the traveling. The other day Girlfriend told me that she’s going be retiring soon and she said we would take a long trip afterward. I am thrilled. I just hope that I’ve gotten better at it. At least after all these years, we’ve come to recognize each other’s underpants.

On the last day of class, I have students write an essay about what they have learned. I believe it helps them see that they’ve done more than earned another notch on their transcript. When they reflect on what they knew on the first day of class and on the new skills they have developed, they tend to appreciate what better writers they have become. But teaching is a learning experience too. No matter how many times I’ve taught the same class, I come away knowing more then I did when I started.

The past few weeks, as usual, I have learned a great deal from reading student papers. A lot of it was stuff I could have lived without knowing. For example, I had a woman who wrote about the business she owns. She does quality control tests on foods. When I read the words, “chocolate is the dirtiest food one can eat,” my day went into the sewer. To test chocolate for foreign items, she adds a little warm water and melts the chocolate down. Then she strains it. Usually she finds parts of insects, rodent hairs, and various other equally disgusting stuff. In spite of this, chocolate still meets the FDA standards.

Another time she wrote about Spring Water, which is full of bacteria. You would think that since you paid over a dollar for that bottle of water, it would be cleaner than what you get from Lake Springfield, Decatur or whatever. I already had stopped buying ice because a sixth grader’s science project determined that ice has more bacteria than water from the toilet. Then I find out that just because a label says the water was bottled at a spring, doesn’t mean the water came from the spring. Spring Water is not FDA regulated, so it often goes out untreated, unfiltered, and full of bacteria. From now on if I buy bottled water, I’ll pay the extra for name brands that are at least filtered. This is one case where generic is not the same as the name brands.

Next, I learned that hydrogen fuel is impractical for running America’s vehicles because the making of hydrogen fuel involves, among other things, burning coal. In addition, a tank of hydrogen (equal to one gallon of gas) takes about 10,000 pounds of pressure. Most of us wouldn’t want to sit in a car with 10,000 pounds explosive gas beneath us. I’m probably not the only American who had been hanging my hopes on Hydrogen fuel cells to get us out of the current fossil fuel crisis.

In addition, I learned that Americans use 16 million barrels of oil a day, and the projected amount of oil in the Alaskan Nature Reserves, is only enough to last us less than a year. Also, the existing pipeline is in need of repair. Recently there was a leak that went undiscovered for a long time and thus became the largest spill in history. When repairing the pipeline, workers discovered that there were several places that had eroded to a paper thin density.

Then I learned that mechanics who work on commission don’t want to be promoted to the foreign car section of the shop because foreign cars rarely break down. I learned that other countries are far ahead of us in auto design and due to recent fuel costs, Americans are jumping the “American-car-only” ships like rats.

Another area in which America trails foreign countries is prescription drugs, which are at an all time high in this country because while we’ve been trying to find a way to help people pay for them, countries have simply regulated the costs. We have sense enough to put a cap on professional athlete’s salaries, but it hasn’t occurred to anyone to do the same with the astronomical cost of prescription drugs.

This semester, for the first time, I ran a PBS film called Two Days in October, which is about the Viet Nam war and the student protests here at home. Actual people that took part in the events are interviewed now 40 years later. And grown men, strong men and women, break down in tears talking about the ignorance of those in authority who tried to make an avoidable ambush appear to the media to be part of a bigger operation. Ranking officers told the surviving soldiers to lie to CBS who was there covering the war. Thus the reports we got at home were 53 deaths out of 1,200 men. In fact, there were 73 deaths out of 135 men—of the men who lived, most were wounded. The men from Delta Company considered the ambush a waste of human lives. That day I also learned that average nineteen-year-old knows very little about the Viet Nam war, and most have never heard of the draft. Many of them refused to believe that the government could do something like send people their age to the other side of the globe to fight whether they wanted to fight or not. I asked them to look for similarities in the Viet Nam war and the current war in Iraq. And students (who usually are trusting of the government and its institutions) decided that the largest common denominator was the lies.

It never fails that on the last day of class a student comes to me, usually a student who has been very quite and has simply shown up and done the work. This student tells me how much he or she enjoyed the class and how he or she will keep writing because I’d taught them to love writing. And I sit there a little surprised because I hadn’t noticed anything special about this student that I’m about to lose. And mentally I kick myself for the amount of time I spent trying to control the squeaky wheels. Then I vow to never let that happen again. But it usually does.

I don’t know what all this knowledge adds up to. But I do know that it’s easier to keep my focus close to home than think about the larger things I can’t control. That’s how I reconcile the fact that the thing (in this list of new things that bother me) what upsets me the most, is my new knowledge about chocolate.

I always thought that teachers coming out of college should get drafted by the big universities the same as universities draft collegiate players for the NBA. Teachers should be making the big salaries and basketball players, even the best, should make about $50,000 a year. Some may say this would cause players to gamble or cheat. But where would we be if some underpaid Professor took a bribe? The only advantage to a life in academics is tenure. I imagine NBA players would envy that as they age. But if they’ve been lucky enough to avoid an injury, and have been big stars, many other doors will be open to them like: coaching, announcing, or endorsing under pants. Imagine a professor emeritus walking around in their bloomers.

Anyway, the belief that professional basketball players were just millionaires in short pants didn’t help me much last winter when the sun started setting at about 5:45 in the evening and I realized my depression was going much deeper than some seasonal affective disorder. An anti-depressant I’d gotten along well with for several years had gradually stopped working. I tried new medication and my feelings went lower than ever. I was tired all the time and unhappy. I couldn’t do the things I loved. I couldn’t write or read for pleasure. I couldn’t walk my dog in the park. I couldn’t cook a meal. This depression was a little worse than others I’ve had because it was complicated by some health problems--especially sleep apnea and arthritis. With no exercise my weight went up and the arthritis in my knees became excruciating. I was angry when I needed a nap in the afternoon to make it through the day. I’d try to read a book and fall asleep after reading the same page six times. Sometimes I awoke when the book fell out of my lap, sometimes not. I’d try to grade student essays and nod off leaving a big mark across the paper. I forced myself to keep moving. I didn’t miss a single class in the spring semester. But I’m not sure who my students saw standing in front of them.

The less I did, the further down my self-esteem spiraled. But something changed one cold dark evening. I was flipping channels on the TV and found a Chicago Bulls game on WGN Chicago. I watched for a few minutes. I don’t understand football much and baseball moves so slowly I found it boring. But when I was in high school, I went to basketball games and enjoyed them. Then the WNBA started, I became a fan. I even drove to Indianapolis a few times to see the games live. So, when that ended, I turned on NBA. There I was, tired and feeling like something the cat dragged in, and one of the players threw an air ball, then the announcer said something funny about it and I smiled.

Of course, when I like something it’s never a small thing. I have an obsessive-compulsive personality. For my part I think this makes me a good research paper teacher—works cited pages, periods before or after a citation and, God help me, those spaces between the dots of ellipses. This structure makes me feel like the world is in order and I am safe. But I digress.

So, I started watching this game. Chicago had traded for a new player by the name of Jerome Williams, from Toronto by way of the Pistons. His nickname was the “Junk Yard Dog.” This is because he plays any position well—from the bench or starting, he’s a good shooter, and he’s always there to clean up other player’s mistakes. He’s big and gristly and resilient. This guy is black, six feet nine, and about 206 pounds. He has a shaved head and a big smile with crooked teeth. At first I think, ‘Dog, if I had a million dollars I’d get my teeth fixed.’ But nothing seems to get this guy down, and gradually I come to love his goofy smile. In fact, I have come to love everything about him. I’m ready to have his baby. This is a big stretch for a post-hysterectomy, fifty-six-year-old lesbian, but it’s been a long time since anything felt as good as watching this guy do his thing.

The winter evenings take on a sameness. I watch basketball while I grade papers. I talk basketball before classes start. Don’t ask me how, but I even work it into lesson plans a couple of times. My students tried to talk me into watching college games, but I am loyal to Jerome. I watched the Bulls play every time I could find a televised game. I didn’t care if they won or lost, they did both with dignity, and the Junk Yard Dog rarely lost that smile. On weekends I start watching other teams. I like the Pacers, but I think the Lakers, play like mercenaries rarely showing a love for the game. I decided that Shack was too dammed big to defend. He backed his way toward the net, bouncing the ball each step, while the other team threw themselves at him in vain. I absolutely loved the Timberwolves and their star MVP player Kevin Garnett, but no babies. Later when he was with the Celtics, I start confusing him with Kevin Durant. I buy a Basketball for Dummies book and learn the rules. I learn about defensive fouls and offensive fouls, technical fouls, and the flagrant foul for which there are two free throws given as well as possession of the ball. I learn the positions and what each player’s job is. Five players are two guards and three forwards. The boss is actually the little guy, the point guard—like Jason Kidd of the Nets. The Bulls have a great point guard, a white guy named Kurt Heinrich. Some say his stats look like Jason Kidd’s did when he started. That went to hell when D. Rose showed up.

Anyway, the winter drones on. My life outside of basketball is grim. I start thinking I am tired of living. I mention this to a psychologist who is doing an assessment for a weight loss program, and she asks if I have a suicide plan. I say no and that is the end of the discussion. I figured if she wasn’t worried about it then I probably shouldn’t.

When I dove back and forth to the community college where I work three days a week (a 100 mile round trip) I have always listened to books on tape or Teaching Company lectures. But sometime over the winter I took my Nirvana Unplugged CD to the car and I start listening to Kurt Cobain over and over and over. I cranked up the sound and let the music blast to keep me awake. Often I have to eat to stay awake on the trip. This is detrimental to weight loss and thus to my health, but it’s the best I can do.

The days and weeks pass. I have started crying at least once a day over something. Finally, I call my doctor and get an appointment, but she can’t see me for three and a half weeks. The woman who makes appointments asks, “Is that soon enough?” I don’t have the self-esteem to say no. So, I wait three and a half weeks.

A couple of things happen around the same time. The basketball season ends and the playoffs start. Every game is intense and the stakes are high. Passion renders more technical fouls. When a player messes up, I can see his fiery anger. But there is also more high-fiving. Sometimes after a particularly good play or basket I notice two players run at each other and slam their chests together grunting like rams doing battle. They shake hands and this turns into a bump of shoulders. They pose and do-little happy dances when the ball goes in. When they dunk, they hang there for a second. Their muscles bulge and their tattoos show all shiny from sweat. They fly through the air in movements I could swear were slow motion. Sometimes they stop mid-air and, defying gravity, they change the direction of the shot. In mid air! In the post-season games, Basketball becomes a ballet.

One Friday night I pulled into the garage and shut the door. The depression was worse and I’d had a very bad day. I was tired. I’d fought sleep the last several miles and barely made it home safe. I faced a weekend that looked grim. Rain had fallen off and on all day and the skies were dark. When I got home, I sat in the car for a moment listening to Kurt Cobain, thinking I was just too tired to go on. Then I realized that I was sitting in the closed garage with the motor running. I had my suicide method. Just like that. I could crank up the music and go to sleep.

I’m not sure why this happened. I didn’t see Mother Theresa or a burning bush. I just realized that I didn’t want to die because there was still one thing, I could do that didn’t make my knees hurt—one thing I still enjoyed. Double-header playoff games were on that night. With two games in a row, I could watch basketball until midnight if I wanted to.

Leaving my purse and book bags, I turned off the engine and deliberately got out of the car. I got a diet soda from the fridge and went to the family room to wait for tip off.

Last week I saw my doctor and she changed my antidepressant. She told me my new meds would take a couple of weeks to get into my system, but almost immediately, I felt the fog lift. Suddenly I’m writing again. I’ve stopped crying and feel somewhat hopeful, though a little stressed by the weight I’ve picked up. To tell the truth I am embarrassed that it wasn’t teaching, or Shakespeare, or the Coen brothers that saved my life. It was basketball—ten millionaires in short pants pounding up and down the court— professional athletes full of heart and sweat, and, yes, even grace. Next season Junk Yard Dog was gone. I hear nothing more about him. Did you ever meet just the right person at just the right time? Did you ever wonder where they came from or where they went?

Years ago, I worked at the bank with a woman named Lois, who had stage four colon cancer. She didn’t have the option of living or dying, but she could control several things. Instead of staying home and waiting to die, she came to work every day. I didn’t know what to think of that. Certainly not my first choice. I’m sure she had her reasons and some help. Her best friend helped her fix dinner or brought food over. One day two tellers got into a squabble, and she squared her shoulders, went between them and broke it up. I watched as she confronted them and sent them back to work. She turned toward me, saying, “Life is short, you know?” I nodded. Truth is, I had no idea. Those issues float to the top in old age, casting colossal darlness. What had I learned after all this time that seemed like no time at all? The story ended up that after she died, her husband married her best friend. Would she have wanted that? In a way, I think she did.

Seems like, I’ve been old all my life. I had years that lead me to this age. A whole life and I can remember very little of it. The thing that I don’t like about old age is the lack of surprises and the consistent disappointment in people who seem to act out cliches.

For example, in the last few weeks of 2021, the college choir preformed the annual Christmas program, but the music wasn’t Christmas Carols, not one reference to the season. No birth of Christ or Santa Clause. The complete program consisted of every American song one could think of. They rang out above the sounds of a heavy rain storm, its drops so large they hit the roof and ran down the windows in single blows. Christmas Carols would have been the surprise. I felt sad that no one could see, nor if they could see understood what a cliché that was. We were whipped when Silent Night hit the carpet. I went home and ripped down the image of the American flag that had been taped to my front window since late September. The flag had come in the newspaper and hung in windows all over town. Late that night, I hung lighted snowflakes all-round the room and created a quicksilver sea of lights. The next morning puddles of sunlight fell through the window, images of snowflakes in the bloody sunrise. Marks left from the taped-up flag remained.

The part about the husband and Lois’s best friend marrying didn’t surprise me nor would it have surprised Lois. She knew that life was short. She would not hold her husband and best friend in content. How could she blame them for reaching for what little joy they found? It was that simple statement, “Life is short.”

I wonder if millennials will ever understand what a dangerous, stress-producing thing “coming out” used to be. For me, if it was necessary or if it was the right thing considering the circumstances, I did it. In the beginning I may have even been militant about it, but even then it made me nervous. The most people I came out to at a single time was years ago when Illinois was garnering support for a bill to prohibit gay marriage, and Channel 20 asked the community for a couple to interview. No one stepped forward, so I did. Ann didn’t want to do it, and it scared the hell out of me. But a few weeks before this, another lesbian couple had been interviewed for the Illinois State Journal-Register. The article was respectful as it told the story of a lesbian family, with children.

Anyway, WICS sent an interviewer and a cameraman to our home and they started rolling. I barely remember it, but the way WICS couched the interview with, “They say they’re in love and they want to get married,” offended me. I felt it took something that was precious to me and turned it into a gaudy roadside attraction. Probably we weren’t the best people to do the interview, simply because I hadn’t learned to count to ten before I let people know what’s bothering me, so I offended Channel 20. The next day everyone at Ann’s work thought it was great. At my bank job, most people wouldn’t even meet my eyes. But I didn’t get fired, as one of our community members had been after being open in the media about his life.

I’m older now and I really don’t care what others think—frankly, there’s no reason to. While this paradigm shift seems to have come quick, people of my generation know the battle was long and hard. I’ll never forget the day I came home from work and Ann jumped up to meet me, asking if I would marry her. Gay marriage had become legal in Illinois. I never thought beyond the long hard battle to gay marriage. Like most of us, I hadn’t considered what gay marriage would be like, or what would be required of me.

I recently retired from teaching and had a much needed knee replacement Little did I know what was ahead. Every time I checked in at the doctor’s office, I had to give certain information: my birth date, my address, my insurance and the person to contact in case of an emergency. For this surgery, I had to give detailed information on the person who would be helping me at home. The first day at the first reception desk I was asked who Ann was to me. I said, “She’s my wife.” When I got back in the doctor’s office and the nurse was going over all that information with me, she said, “Okay, and Ann is your sister?” I said, “No. She’s my wife.” Flustered a bit, the nurse said, “But it says right here she’s your sister.” I said, “Please correct it.” Then the doctor came in and he was talking to me about the amount of help I’d need the first couple of weeks post-surgery. I told him, fudging a little, that my spouse (a nice gender neutral word) would be there. The doctor said, “Does he work outside the home?” I told him, “My spouse is my wife and she is retired.” I could see this was the beginning of a pattern. The people I had to come out to were polite. Some said, “I’m sorry,” which could mean all sorts of things. When I checked in at St. John’s hospital, the woman at the desk said, “And Ann is your fiancée.” I said, “She is now my wife.” When I checked in to outpatient services, the nurse said, “I see here you’re divorced.” I said, “I’ve remarried.” And on we went. I had so many different statuses because every time I was asked, there was no box to check for me.

This went on consistently. The best reaction I got was in the hospital late in the evening a young student nurse came in to help me get up. Ann was sitting there reading. The student nurse asked, “Is this a family member?” I said, “Yes. This is my wife.” Without missing a beat the young woman asked, “How long have you two been together?” I answered, “Twenty years.” She said, “Wow, how’d you do that?” I felt kind of warm inside. This millennial actually went straight to the most important part of our love. It’s stamina. It’s endurance despite all the things that life’s thrown at us in an environment that wasn’t supportive. I’m not sure how much history that the student nurse knew. I do know she knew enough to be happy for us.

I wonder if millennials will ever understand what a dangerous, stress-producing thing “coming out” used to be. For me, if it was necessary or if it was the right thing considering the circumstances, I did it. In the beginning I may have even been militant about it, but even then it made me nervous. The most people I came out to at a single time was years ago when Illinois was garnering support for a bill to prohibit gay marriage, and Channel 20 asked the community for a couple to interview. No one stepped forward, so I did. Ann didn’t want to do it, and it scared the hell out of me. But a few weeks before this, another lesbian couple had been interviewed for the Illinois State Journal-Register. The article was respectful as it told the story of a lesbian family, with children.

Anyway, WICS sent an interviewer and a cameraman to our home and they started rolling. I barely remember it, but the way WICS couched the interview with, “They say they’re in love and they want to get married,” offended me. I felt it took something that was precious to me and turned it into a gaudy roadside attraction. Probably we weren’t the best people to do the interview, simply because I hadn’t learned to count to ten before I let people know what’s bothering me, so I offended Channel 20. The next day everyone at Ann’s work thought it was great. At my bank job, most people wouldn’t even meet my eyes. But I didn’t get fired, as one of our community members had been after being open in the media about his life.

I’m older now and I really don’t care what others think—frankly, there’s no reason to. While this paradigm shift seems to have come quick, people of my generation know the battle was long and hard. I’ll never forget the day I came home from work and Ann jumped up to meet me, asking if I would marry her. Gay marriage had become legal in Illinois. I never thought beyond the long hard battle to gay marriage. Like most of us, I hadn’t considered what gay marriage would be like, or what would be required of me.

I recently retired from teaching and had a much needed knee replacement Little did I know what was ahead. Every time I checked in at the doctor’s office, I had to give certain information: my birth date, my address, my insurance and the person to contact in case of an emergency. For this surgery, I had to give detailed information on the person who would be helping me at home. The first day at the first reception desk I was asked who Ann was to me. I said, “She’s my wife.” When I got back in the doctor’s office and the nurse was going over all that information with me, she said, “Okay, and Ann is your sister?” I said, “No. She’s my wife.” Flustered a bit, the nurse said, “But it says right here she’s your sister.” I said, “Please correct it.” Then the doctor came in and he was talking to me about the amount of help I’d need the first couple of weeks post-surgery. I told him, fudging a little, that my spouse (a nice gender neutral word) would be there. The doctor said, “Does he work outside the home?” I told him, “My spouse is my wife and she is retired.” I could see this was the beginning of a pattern. The people I had to come out to were polite. Some said, “I’m sorry,” which could mean all sorts of things. When I checked in at St. John’s hospital, the woman at the desk said, “And Ann is your fiancée.” I said, “She is now my wife.” When I checked in to outpatient services, the nurse said, “I see here you’re divorced.” I said, “I’ve remarried.” And on we went. I had so many different statuses because every time I was asked, there was no box to check for me.

This went on consistently. The best reaction I got was in the hospital late in the evening a young student nurse came in to help me get up. Ann was sitting there reading. The student nurse asked, “Is this a family member?” I said, “Yes. This is my wife.” Without missing a beat the young woman asked, “How long have you two been together?” I answered, “Twenty years.” She said, “Wow, how’d you do that?” I felt kind of warm inside. This millennial actually went straight to the most important part of our love. It’s stamina. It’s endurance despite all the things that life’s thrown at us in an environment that wasn’t supportive. I’m not sure how much history that the student nurse knew. I do know she knew enough to be happy for us.