Happy 15th & 34th Anniversary to Pat & Me

I still marvel that I’m qualified to write about relationship longevity.

Everyone wanted to date me because I was cute, but for most, once was enough. Apparently, I was intense—a nice way of saying sort of scary. I don’t feel like trying to explain it. You’d have to ask them. But somehow, a great miracle happened in Chicago:

 

Tomorrow is Pat’s and my 15-year wedding anniversary. Fifteen years legally, as wife and wife, and nearly 34 together. When I met Pat, I figured I wasn’t ever going to find anyone who would get me and love me for life. Including Pat.  

 

Pat looked like a British royal to me when I first saw her at Or Chadash, which was Chicago’s LGBTQ synagogue (and she still does). Shabbat services happened on Friday nights at the Unitarian church on Barry because the church wasn’t in session then.

 

We said hello, but I was afraid I wasn’t accomplished enough and Pat was scared she wasn’t young enough. Eighteen months in, a fun night disarmed our fears.

 

After Shabbat services one Friday, a small group of men and women, including Pat and me, decided to go to Big Chicks. The bar featured painted murals of Rubenesque women.

 

Pat and I were seated across from each other at a big highboy table. Pat was being her most hilarious self and for a microsecond, I scanned from her eyes and mouth to the red Polo logo on her black polo shirt. Or was I peeking at her chest? Years later, Pat told me that she was emboldened that night after she clocked me looking.

 

I’ve told this story before, but I had despaired of meeting anyone anywhere, including Shabbat services, and so I signed up for solitary entertainment—a weekend rental of a TV and VCR from the Rent-a-Center near my apartment at Argyle off of Sheridan. I had also rented several Blockbuster VHS videos.

 

At Big Chicks, I invited everyone over to watch one of the films, “Jungle Fever.” Only the three women, including Pat, said yes. I ran into the galley kitchen and washed a big cluster of green grapes and set it on the floor in a colander, turned on the movie and the four of us sat side by side on my frameless futon. To convert it into a quasi-couch for the show, I shoved it halfway up the wall.

 

The seating arrangement turned out to be Pat, then two women whose names I don’t remember because they didn’t come to Or Chadash routinely enough—and because I wasn’t focused on them at all—and then me.

 

We all hugged goodbye that night, but Pat’s hug jolted me. It’s hard to remember that electric current three and half decades later. After graduate degrees, cat parenting, promotions, moves, layoffs, mothers’ deaths, cancers and sundry illnesses, triumphs, passionate avocations, including nurturing animals, trees, and writing, there’s a lot that physical desire has to climb over to reach us anymore.

 

After last week's hospital-bout for an obstructed bowel, it's even harder to take myself seriously as an object of Pat's desire anymore, but apparently, our love can outlast the grossest of gross times.

 

I don’t have to explain our enduring success as a couple. I’m reminded of an Elvis Costello song, “Such Unlikely Lovers:”

 

There were no magic spells
You can keep the flowers and bells
They just don't seem right
Can it actually be?
Me and you and you and me
Though we're like day and night

 

We are like day and night, except with the same values, which gives us a lot in common after all. Our love is both still mysterious and prosaic “till death do us part,” which I hope is a long time from now.

 

On the Occasion of Our 10-year Legal Marriage Anniversary

Twenty-nine years together

A decade of legal marriage

Pat's tapered hands

Can't wear our wedding ring

During swims.

On our first date, Pat said,

"You'll never find anyone

Better than me."

Pat doesn't get poetry.

Maybe if she's the subject,

It will make better sense.

Paris, a Chicago dance club,

Was the site of our earliest

Classically romantic moments.

Pat would slow-dance with me,

her eyes, messaging mine.

Pat says she lured me with

Her cooking, and that's partly

True.

All these years, and four homes

Later, she encouraged me to 

Continue loading water into the

Redbud gators in the deep sun of

This Memphis July morning by

Calling to me from the front step,

"I'm making you an omelet with

Baby bella mushrooms."

Lesbian Life BCE (Before the Cat Era) and Beyond

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.


Crystalizing My Lesbian Identity

The other morning, I was finishing up stretching after my indoor-rowing session in our house in Montclair, New Jersey, in the sunny room downstairs with the triple-glass doors. Just then, Randy Crawford's "Wrap U Up" began playing, according to the algorithmic personalization of the free music that boomed from the black Bose box on the floor.

I sat down in one of the four Carolish-era Herman Miller Eames shell chairs I had inherited when my mom (z"l) died 20 months ago, cracked open a Costco bottle of water and swigged as I looked out into our half-snow-covered garden. Listening to Randy Crawford's molten voice, I remembered a winter-night date more than a quarter of a century ago, back when I was renting an efficiency apartment near Ashland and Addison in Chicago. The apartment wouldn't have had room for a rowing machine, even if I could have afforded one then.

At a friend's party the prior weekend, I had met a tall, Midwest-born-and-bred classical musician with classically beautiful features. Our first date included dancing to late-'80s music in all its glory at a then-popular-and-now-extinct Chicago North-Side lesbian bar. After a marathon of songs, we paused only to go to the multi-stall Ladies Room. I was ready to return to the dance-floor when she kissed me for the first time. Against the sinks, in the bathroom.

"I don't want this in here. It makes it seem dirty." With her graceful hands and tender mouth, she tried to change my mind, but I was repulsed. We were too beautiful to be doing something so gorgeous in such an unappealing place.

"Let's go for a walk," she suggested and I was relieved. We left the club and walked out into sub-zero wind. We walked against the wind all the way to the Lake. No one else appeared to be there in such forbidding weather. I could hear my teeth, tapping together. She smiled at me and took the mitten off of one of my hands, and warmed each one of my fingers, in her mouth.

CE - Cat Era

Thrilling as it had been with the musician, and a number of other remarkable Chicago-area women in my twenties, Pat emerged as the kindest, funniest, most appealing, brilliant and magnetic among them.

Yesterday afternoon, on our way home from an afternoon ride in our station wagon to Chester, New Jersey -- which my wife Pat and I had read was quaint, according to Yelp -- we stopped at a grocery store and I whispered out of the side of my mouth, "Pat, look, sisters." For the first time, she didn't turn to look. We kept walking and I said, "I guess it's no longer such a big deal, huh?" Throughout our nearly 24 years together so far, the term, "sisters", had been code for whenever we thought we saw an apparent couple of two women. It was always exhilarating to be reminded that we weren't alone.

Pat always said I could blog about whatever I wanted, as long as I didn't invade her privacy with my postings, so I'll step gingerly around this point: For our first decade and a half together, I could enjoy intimacy in our relationship practically whenever I wished, and then we adopted two sister-cats, one of whom sleeps with us routinely. (Just ran this paragraph by Pat and she acquiesced to my including it.)

The post-rowing Randy Crawford tune and the book *Carol*, and the movie -- which I felt improved upon the book -- awoke my BCE memories. And then Pat gave me an article by Frank Rich, where he wrote: "Even today, Todd Haynes’s mesmerizing adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s classic novel comes as a shock—mostly for how much lesbian culture remains invisible to America at large." 

This post is my humble contribution to increased lesbian visibility.

Sixteen Days Later

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Poor Me

Pat & I were going to go to shul, so I could say The Mourner's Kaddish publicly, but the service tonight honors LGBT Pride, so as I posted in a Facebook status update earlier, I opted out, thinking it would feel more festive than I felt. Instead, we finished binge-watching Derek, a superbly poignant series about an autistic man who works in a home for the aged.

Here are the last books my mom ever read or considered reading with her book group:

• The Fallen Angel
• A Lucky Child
• A Walker in the City
• The Canterbury Tales
• Jews Without Money
• I Married a Communist

Here are the books I've taken out of the library since her death:

• The Orphaned Adult
• Matters of Honor
• Rose of No Man's Land
• How Animals Grieve
• The Other Side of Sadness
• Healing Your Grieving Heart for Teens: 100 Practical Ideas - Simple tips for understanding and expressing your grief
• Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve

The two best book recommendations my mom ever made to me were The Crock of Gold and Cutting for Stone. The first novel was about magic and love and the second, about yearning and grief, and living through both.

That's where I am now -- grateful for the magical parts of my life and for all of the love I experience and express, but living through yearning for, and grief around, my mother (z"l).

I wish I could check out of real-life till I finish reading all seven of the books I listed above, if not also the ones from my mother's book group list (though I don't want to re-read *The Canterbury Tales*).

Suddenly, I was jealous of my age when my dad died -- 17 -- as I thought about how many fewer responsibilities I had then, but that's not really true. I had to continue showing up to high school and had to do well enough to get to go to college. I also forgot to consider how love-lorn I was as well; I had a secret girlfriend then, who was already a freshman at a too-far-away college, and I knew my attachment wasn't requited, not really.

So compared to when my dad died in November of '82, I didn't have love or meaningful work then, but I also didn't have to settle my parent's estate, like my sisters and I do now, now that we're the only adults left in the upper-part of the chain. My other responsibilities, to Pat and our kitties Phoebe and Toonces, and to my management and the team I manage at work, and are more welcome than not at this time. I can always renew the library books....

Top 10 Things I Appreciate About...

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Pat, My mom, My Sisters Deb and Kayla

In today's "New York Times", Bruce Feiler wrote an essay that inspired me to tell the four people with whom I am closest in the world -- my wife, my mom and my two older siblings -- what I appreciate about them. He talked of Dr. Shelly Kagan's point to tell our loved ones what they mean to us sooner, rather than later.

Feiler also quoted film critic Roger Ebert, who reminded us that we shouldn't try to compare ourselves to similar scenes in the movies, since, "...those scenes are well-written, directed, and performed by professionals." In that spirit, I'll try to be fearless or at least less self-conscious in creating and posting these lists:

Pat, you are:

1. The funniest person I know, and without being cruelly so
2. Inclined toward doing g'milut chasadim (acts of loving kindness), for example, suggesting that we use our prayers that we were posting in the Western Wall in behalf of the sick granddaughter of a couple in our Israel tour group (who had been strangers just days prior)
3. Lovely physically, including your green eyes, dimples, pretty mouth, tall height, appealing gait and more
4. Jewish like me
5. Nearly photographic with your memory; you know the answer to almost any question I ask because, "I read it somewhere," you say simply
6. Action-oriented -- which has rubbed off on me and made me more disciplined, for example, with completing chores -- and your related, dedicated work ethic; you even treat volunteer-work like a job
7. Innocent, rather than cynical, that is, you prefer naïveté over suspiciousness
8. Accomplished, including having earned an M.S. in Pysch, an MBA, and an M.S. and Ed.D. in Education, and multiple executive jobs in Higher Ed. with giant responsibilities before retiring, and the incoming president of Essex County Master Gardeners
9. Well-coordinated -- a great dancer and graceful in sports
10. Attracted to me.

Mom, you are:

1. Vocally proud of me, which makes me feel good and validated and encouraged and emboldened
2. Available whenever I want to talk with you, including offering encouragement when I need it
3. Funny and also readily amused by the world around you, including me
4. Intellectually curious and interactive/interrogative, especially during Q&A's at lectures, always contributing a nugget as well as asking the best questions
5. A good arbiter of what makes for interesting art/cultural experiences, including movies, music, lectures...
6. Creative, for example, in:
   • Amassing the Jewish folk art collection you have over your lifetime so far
   • Designing cultural programs for the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Stamford and the Stamford Museum & Nature Center back in the day
7. Stylish -- you have more flair than anyone I know
8. Invested in my development since my babyhood, including exposing me to more experimental pursuits than any other parent I know, including tennis, acting, golf, needlepoint, oceanography, clarinet, guitar, piano, journalism, cartoon art, sculpting, skiing...
9. More intuitive than anyone I know and routinely, you say the kindest thing at just the right time, even to people you've just met
10. Supportive of me unconditionally, for example, though you might have wished I'd have done like you and married a man and had children, you love me actively even though I did neither, including always introducing Pat appropriately when you're acquainting us with your friends.

Deb, you are:

1. The most original person I know, including your continual creation of unique, cool and useful silver and copper Jewish ritual objects
2. Along with Kayla, the most dedicated sister I could wish for, including reading lesbian literature to understand me better
3. A devoted mom, exposing your kids to cultural experiences galore and letting them be who they are, including artists, skateboarders, and Latin and Greek students
4. The person who most informed my music-appreciation other than me, including Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, The Crusaders, Michael Franks, and even Madonna, who you spotted super-early; I acknowledge my debt in this blog entry
5. A great mother-by-proxy, including giving me shampoos via your "Magic Mask" invention when I was little
6. One of our family who showed me Israel at its best, including rowing me down the Yarkon River in Tel Aviv while you had bronchitis when I was 15 and you were 24 -- I hope we didn't know it was bronchitis at the time
7. The world's best birthday-card writer, always including a message that shows your love specifically of me
8. The most adventurous fiction reader I know, including authors from around the world; your example inspires me to be more wide-ranging in my choices
9. A gifted singer with a gorgeous voice, who along with Kayla, always makes me sound better at Pesach Seders
10. Proud of me.

Kayla, you are:

1. The best rhymer I know, including profound and hip poems tailor-made for poetry slams and publications
2. Along with Deb, the most dedicated sister I could wish for, taking care of us whenever we got lost as children, including in the Bowery in New York City when I was five and you were 10 and a half
3. A devoted mom, encouraging Zach to pursue whatever makes him happy, including years of playing the sitar and schlepping him to New Jersey for lessons and buying him his own sitar till he became good enough to be paid for gigs at the nicest Indian restaurant in Brooklyn
4. The person who taught me three essential skills, to:
   • Ride a bike
   • Recite the Ma Nishtana
   • Play Chess
5. My mentor as an educator and you inspired me to pursue a Masters by your example
6. A brave leader who, as a high school principal, leadership consultant and vice-principal, has helped hundreds and hundreds of new immigrants and refugees have a better, more meaningful life in America than they would have had if they had not met you
7. The first person to:
   • Teach me The Facts of Life, when I was seven and you were 12 and a half, while we waited for our school bus
   • Learn of my non-heterosexual sexual orientation, when I was 15 and visiting you at college
8. Our family member who first taught me the value of immersing ourselves in other cultures by living in multiple countries, going to Israel for six months at 14 with our school, and then to Finland for a year on AFS at 17
9. Resilient, surviving cancer while unwaveringly contributing to others' well-being
10. Like Deb, proud of me.