Happy Birthday to my older sister Laurel in Rochester, Washington.

 

The above picture is the last one taken of us together, and probably always will be.  She says she won’t be coming here to visit, and I have no plans to return to the United States (even as a corpse!).

 

But it was a marvelous final meeting. We hiked part of her property, shared a delicious lunch, and got all my legal affairs in order (will, POA, etc.).  It was probably one of our most pleasant encounters, ever.  A good parting, the way it should be among family members.

 

LAUREL SUPPORTED MY AMBITIONS AND ESSENCE

 

I credit Laurel with launching me on my lifelong journaling journey at age 15. She hand-made my first journal: a hardback, small three-ring binder that she sewed a cloth cover all the way around. It was 1966.

 

If not for that journal and the subsequent 285, I would not have the materials I needed to write some of my books, especially the most lucrative of them all:  DeForest Kelley Up Close and Personal: A Harvest of Memories from the Fan Who Knew Him Best and Let No Day Dawn that the Animals Cannot Share. 

 

I honed my writing skills creating those journals!!!  My teachers encouraged me with their praise and assistance. Mrs. Alpha Rossetti got me two years of THE WRITER MAGAZINE when she saw what a writing fool I was, complimented me, and then when I asked,  “Help me to be better!” she paid for my sunscription, knowing that my poor farm family wasn’t able to get a publication that only one family member would read. (We had subscriptions to Reader’s Digest, Life, Look, and Newsweek in our home at various times, but no crafts-type publications.)

 

The journal Laurel made for me isn’t in this image and I can’t find it in any other images.

T’is a pity…

I burned the originals after saving them digitally.

It half-killed me to do it, but nobody wanted them

and they took up a lot of space, needless to say!!!

 

Laurel also was my champion when I came out to Mom at 18 or so as “lesbian”, the only term I had back then for a male-brained individual who fell in love with girls, but my anatomy didn’t match, so lesbian was as close as I could get to the truth of the matter back then. According to Laurel, the revelation threw Mom for a loop.  Laurel calmed her fears and talked her off the ledge of “where did I go wrong?” and all the other thoughts a parent has when one of their children isn’t “normal” (cisgender and straight). Eventually, Mom was able to write me a note saying she was glad I could find love with someone who loved me back wholeheartedly.

 

How I wish I knew enough then to tell Mom I was trans!

 

Mom would have loved having a son. She had always wanted one.

 

Alas, she gave birth to one, well disguised as female, and she didn’t know it.

 

But I was without a doubt her only tomboy. I was never in a dress unless it was mandated.  Back then, it was mandated — for school, church, pictures, etc. — but not at home. At home I wore Roy Rogers outfits, cowboy hats, cowboy boots. Thankfully, I was allowed to present as male even up until I started to develop breasts, at which time Mom put the kibosh on shirtlessness and insisted that I start wearing a (much despised) bra.  At that point — puberty — I felt I was doomed.  Sabotaged by my own body.  But that story is in WOMB MAN: HOW I SURVIVED GROWING UP IN A BOOBY-TRAPPED WORLD, so I won’t belabor the point here.

 

I also remember that Laurel told me I should feel “blessed” and “fortunate” that a disembodied ghost had visited me in my bedroom. I was so traumatized by the event — which seemed to last for-freaking-ever — that I was afraid to tell anybody. But when I finally told Laurel what happened, she calmed me down and made me feel that I should be less afraid and more accepting if it happened again.

 

And as I thought about it, I realized that the ghost had a kind, concerned countenance and had leaned over my prone figure as a doting father would over a beloved child… and I knew she was right, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to fully accept a see-through apparition again, no matter how kindly disposed he or she looked.  But I did try to adopt the possibility that I wouldn’t duck under my covers and think, “I will literally drop dead if he touches my body through the blanket!!!”

 

I have many unpleasant memories of Laurel, too. She was a verbal  and physical bully to her siblings when she babysat or  addressed us when vexed — “fatso,” “retard,” “Bucky Beaver” were oft-used slurs — and extremely argumentative and oppositional at times. (The argumentive nature serves her well as a  civil attorney. She can be a real bulldog when the occasion requires it.) But those memories pale when put alongside the times in which she was my mentor, encourager, consoler, and helper.

 

All in all,  I’m very glad she was — and still is — my sister.

 

 

Laurel on Stormy, front and center.

Me, on Sugar Babe, dressed in my robin’s egg,

fringed-toy Roy Rogers regalia

 

Me, Laurel, Jackie, Grandma Smith (my dad’s mom)

Laurel and me circa 1953 or 1954

 

In Other News:

 

This morning I walked again, as always. I’m up to 7152 steps so far today. I’ve ordered groceries, too, because my fridge is looking mighty bare again. They should arrive around noon.

 

Walked with Luz and Noelia again.  That was fun.

 

HAPPY HOUSEKEEPING

 

I’ve become quite the housekeeper.  I enjoy keeping this place looking as good as it did when I moved in.  That will probably make my landlady happy, but it makes me even happier.

 

It’s such a small place that it’s easy to keep pristine. The patio requires frequent washing and sweeping because the birds stop by all the time to eat (and sh-t!) on the railings and floor, so I usually spray wash every couple days.  (White bird poop on dark railings sticks out like a sore thumb!)

 

I also water the plants (one of which lives indoors) and remove any of their leaves or stems that begin to die, so they stay looking “nursery new”. It doesn’t take long. And I’m truly retired, so I have the time to take more loving care of this place.

 

WATCHED THE LAST CLASS LAST NIGHT

 

Last night Elliott Kirschner, Heather Kinlaw Lofthouse and Robert Reich hosted a live viewing of their film THE LAST CLASS. People tuned in from all over the world.  It is a very touching, inspiring, hope-filled film.

 

I think teachers especially will enjoy seeing it, because it exemplifies their passion for their chosen calling. Robert Reich considers teachers true heroes.  I do, too.

 

Without the teachers I had, I would have done so much less and given so much less than I’ve been able to. They were the people who portrayed what I felt “normal” should look like: kind, patient, encouraging, but strict enough (without being bullies) to keep a bunch of livewires well grounded.

 

I was lucky enough to have had all good teachers except for one. And even she was fine for other students, but not for me. She was absolutely tone-deaf when it came to my actual need to feel approved of, listened to, and respected. I won’t name her, but she was my home economics teacher in Cle Elum.

 

I had nightmare experiences as a result of her insistence that I “model” a dress during a school assembly that I had stitched together in her class after she had altered the size 18 pattern sufficiently to accommodate my then-bulging body. I looked like a hippo in a tutu in it, and knew it, so I vamped it up to make the onlookers laugh for all the right reasons instead of for the wrong one. She was livid.  But fuck her feelings: I did it my way (the Jerry Lewis way!) to survive the humiliation that doing it her way would have brought to me.

 

Both of my grandnieces, Casey and Jamie, have entered the profession. I know they’ll be wonderful mentors and encouragers.

 

That’s all for this time. Who were your favorite teachers, and why??? Respond in the comments section on my Facebook page!