On a hike along the river, stepping on a soft floor of dropped red and orange leaves, my romantic heart fully opened to my friend Katherine. Her angled smile, navy beret, and ever-present scarf set my heart in tiny flames. The two months since the hike had been imbued with a growing intimacy; frosty morning runs, cooking grand meals which were abandoned mid bite by love making and laughter, quiet days studying, and evenings unfolding our life stories to one another. This intimacy, with another woman, was what I’d been dreaming about for so long.
Thanksgiving week arrived and we separately headed home from college in upstate New York. The drive home was usually six hours too long, but immersed in sweet memories of Katherine, the time flew. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving of 1974, I planned to tell my parents about my revelation. I thought they’d be happy for me.
When my mom and I were sitting on her bed talking about life, she shared that her work as a therapist was thriving. Her days as a social worker at an agency were now over, and she loved having her own practice. She even took some Fridays off. She seemed more relaxed overall.
Suddenly I blurted out, “I met someone at school, and we are dating and it’s been about two months and it’s going well and I’m so happy.”
“Oh, that’s great. Tell me about him.”
A big pause ensued.
“Well, actually, it isn’t a him, Mom.” I paused again. “It’s Katherine, a woman.” As I said these words, I witnessed the light and energy recede from my mom’s face like the eerie disappearance of the tide before a tsunami.
“What . . . what do you mean, she? My mom sat up, buttoned her cardigan and folded her arms over her chest.
“I thought you liked men. You and Daniel were in love for years,” she said.
In my mind’s eye, each word she uttered was perched on a stage. When she finished enunciating, her face tightened, and she gave me her serious stink eye. She wasn’t just unhappy, she was angry.
“How could you do this to me? Don’t you see how this will ruin my life? If our friends find out, they’ll reject your father and me. And, this could destroy my new therapy practice.”
What people thought of my mother, and by extension her children, had always been ultra-important to her. At the same time, being a working professional was what she cherished most, and in suburban New York in the fifties and sixties, she stood out as a rare, colorful bird. And she faced constant backbiting, gossipy criticism just for being a working mom. It fell on me too. Whatever my teachers didn’t like about me- my tomboyish nature, my average grades and my outspokenness-was linked to having a working mother. To her credit, she modeled a lot of resilience about it. My dad, to his credit, supported her unequivocally.
I stabbed at my overdone green beans and dipped them into the cranberry sauce as I sat stewing about the day. From morning to night my parents had yelled at me like an unstoppable car alarm. I pushed more food around my plate and stared at the wall clock which still read 4:27 at 6:30. The battery was dead but the family fuse was blown; none of us were able to change it.
“Have you seen any good movies lately?” I asked, knowing this was always neutral ground. When no one answered, their silence became a physical force; I felt like the cerulean blue walls of our small kitchen were crushing me.
“I get it, you’re very upset that I’m gay. You’ve yelled at me like a hundred times in the last twenty-four—”
“We are more than upset,” my mother wailed. We are furious. How could you do this to us? You have ruined our lives. You’ve threatened our livelihoods’.” My mom was beautiful and was always meticulous about her presentation. Tonight, she looked wan and drawn.
I felt awful and guilty. I was blindsided by their response to my news.
The fight continued all Friday. I was returning to school Saturday morning and I hoped the worst was over. That morning my mother was sitting in her bed drinking her coffee when, she summoned me to make her a second cup. In the kitchen, I leaned into the filter and inhaled the aroma of the coffee grounds to steady myself.
“Here’s your coffee, Mom. It smells so good.”
“I have more to say,” she said. Her brown eyes were narrowed and already glaring at me. With vigor, she pointed her left index finger to the edge of the bed. Her anger felt like scalding vapor on my body.
“Sit down now,” she said. “If you tell people that we know that you are gay, or if they find out, it could be very bad for me. Do you think the Rayson’s would still be friends with your father and me if they knew? You love them, but we know what they say about gay people. They wouldn’t still love you, trust me.”
That comment exploded my nineteen-year-old sense of self. I felt ambushed, hurt and my heart was on fire. I couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe it. The Rayson’s were a second family to me. My mom read my disbelief.
“Don’t doubt me. I know what these people say behind closed doors. If you tell another living soul you are gay, or someone finds out who knows us, we will never forgive you.”
1974 was a time when it was quite acceptable to evict your children from your life for many reasons, and being gay was certainly one of them. My parents would continue to spew their anger at every phone call and visit; it was like we were now floating on separate icebergs that had once been interdependent parts of the same glacier. There was no evolution of acceptance on their part, just more entrenchment on their iceberg. When I visited home, talking with friends was a high wire act of withholding or lying about my life to stay within my parents’ parameters. Soon enough, I felt spliced apart from the community of kids and parents I grew up with.
By March of 1975, I started cultivating a new adult life for myself in California. In June, my parents showed their jubilance and relief that I was relocating three thousand miles away by helping me buy a 1971 purplish-blue Volkswagen bug. With ease, I named her the blueberry pumpkin.
It was true that California had been tugging at me since fifth grade, when my class studied the National Parks. The rugged Sierra Nevada mountains, the mammoth sequoia and old growth redwood trees had left an indelible impression. I had been active with the United Farm Workers on the grape boycotts since age thirteen so I headed for their epicenter in the San Joaquin Valley. There, I could also attend Fresno State University.
Katherine was accepted at her chosen graduate school on the East Coast so we were now headed in opposite geographic directions. Ultimately the friendship that had undergirded our relationship from its inception, was what we leaned into. During many phone calls she lent ample encouragement for me to make the brave move. By early August, I began my exodus westward in earnest, in the blueberry pumpkin. What had started sweetly with Katherine, in the
bold orange of fall, had given me a glimpse into what my life could become throughout all the seasons.
The trip was hot, dusty, and long. After six days of driving, I reached an offering, in the form of Yosemite Valley. The morning sun was rising and spreading luminescence onto the aged white-and black-speckled granite faces of El Capitan and Half Dome. This land of unfathomably towering formations, angled, sharp boulders, and glacial ravines formed the gateway—the entrance to my new independence. The universe was already a much larger place than I imagined. An hour and a half below Yosemite lay Fresno. With my biological family receding in the rearview mirror, I turned and headed southwest.
*****
Meg D. Newman, MD: Until recently, Meg’s published writing was all medical. She spent decades caring for people living with HIV/AIDS in SF until serious illness interrupted her. Now, she’s writing a collection of essays and short stories. Her essay “Dragon on the Way In, Lamb on the Way Out” was published in the Avalon Literary Review in August 24’ and her lead essay, “Excerpt from a Memoir” was published in The Healing Art of Writing: V1 (Baranow). She now lives in NH with her wife and sibling cats Mango and Moonlight.
