Valentine’s Day is a day of significance for me. It is directly connected to the two most important
women in my life, my mother notwithstanding.
On Valentine’s Day more than half a lifetime ago, I had my first date
with the woman who would break my heart (and I hers) time and again for the
next three decades. Her name is Karen. I think we may be closing in on double heartbreak
digits, but it just isn’t worth keeping count anymore. I loved her from the beginning and probably
always will. I accept this as a part of
my life’s reality much in the same way I have blue eyes. This love is a part of my genetic
composition.
Also, on that very same Valentine’s Day more than half
a lifetime ago, I met another woman; the woman I would marry, Amy. In time, we would buy a home, create a
homespun commitment ceremony long before the days of civil unions, have a
daughter and then a son, separate after 16 years, battle fiercely for what we
perceived to be the children’s best interest, and, finally, thankfully, settle
into peacefully parenting our children, separated but aligned. Most importantly, we would also regain the
friendship we had had at our start ~ kind, supportive, caring, and funny. We laughed a lot in the end and told one
another “I love you.” I remember feeling
connected to Amy from the first time I met her.
She was a friend at first sight, my partner for a time, my children’s
other mother, my longest standing friend, and she died far too young.
On that Valentine’s Day more than half a lifetime ago,
Karen and I went on our first date. I
had no way of knowing that Valentine’s Day and the events that ultimately that
came of it would irrevocably change my life, in more ways than I can
count.
On that first date that would change everything, Karen
took me to meet her ‘mature’ friend, as I recall it being said. She wanted her friend, Amy, to meet her new
girlfriend, me. Yes, on that first date,
I rated the label ‘girlfriend’. We were
twenty-something lesbians after all and of the ‘bring a U-haul on the second
date’ ilk. So, I met her mature friend,
Amy, and fell for her immediately. To be
clear, I didn’t fall in love with Amy,
but can honestly say I loved her in some definition of the emotion from the
very start.
Karen left. I
used to blame her for this, but as The Little Prince had to leave his Rose
to seek out new adventures, experiences, and relationships, so did she. Except I wasn’t her Rose and she wasn’t The
Little Prince.
Amy and I became friends, very close friends. We talked a lot about the world and its many
inequities. We talked about her mother,
who was involved in the fight for civil rights in the 60’s. Her mother spearheaded learn-to-read
campaigns and voter registration drives and I was impressed with the mother I
had yet to meet. We went to hear the
Indigo Girls in their early days…the days when there could be 20 people in an
audience, long before they filled arenas.
We’d also go see Michelle Malone, Kristen Hall, Dede Vogt, Caroline
Aiken, Joyce and Jacque and a host of other Atlanta musicians. We had fun and we laughed a lot.
As with many twenty-something relationships, it didn’t
last long, at least not the first or second or even third time around. I
believe it was our fourth go-round over the course of a year that I told her I
thought we could have something special.
I told her I wanted a family and I thought we could be good at it. I remember that moment, crystal clear,
standing in the parking lot across from what once was the Little Five Points
Pub while Amy had a cigarette during a break in a Joyce and Jacque performance. I was sitting on the tailgate of her midnight
blue Ford Ranger and basically proposed.
I suppose it could count this as proposing although there was no ring
and, being nervous, I wasn’t exactly eloquent.
Her response was classic Amy.
“Uh….sure…that sounds good.” Just
like that. She was simple in a lot of
ways. Her simplicity made me feel
safe.
We were, in fact, good at it. We moved in together and spent the next 16
years as partners. We moved from place
to place, had a wedding ceremony, bought a home, and had two children. Being politically correct and equitable
lesbians (sarcasm intended), the plan was that each of us would have a child,
first me, then her. So we started with
that plan in mind. As I recall, we
charged the expenses of creating our daughter on my Discover card. Somehow this
seems poetic, to create a life on credit.
We worked together to pick out registry items, decorate the nursery,
attend a shower hosted by and attended by a group of dear and close lesbian
friends. Many of these friends had never
attended a baby shower before. There were
traditional baby shower games and a cooler of beer. It was a homespun lesbian baby shower ‘we don’t
know what we are doing, but will go along with it’ at its finest. After 40 long weeks of anticipation, I went
into labor.
In yet another classic Amy moment, as I was in labor with our daughter and she was driving to
the hospital, she looked over at me in the middle of an eye-crossingly intense
contraction and said “Uh…um….you know, if you want to have the second kid, uh…I
wouldn’t mind.” Even in the midst of
that eye-crossingly intense contraction, I was able to grunt out “That would be
great. Get me to the hospital…now!” Even then, I saw the humor in the situation
and we have laughed about that moment many times since. Classic Amy.
I would like to say that that day was one of the
happiest of our lives. It was, in fact,
the day after that day that was one
of the happiest of our lives. Our
daughter, somewhat feral, not to be rushed, took her sweet time in coming into
the world. After 42 hours of labor and 4
hours of pushing, she emerged purple with the umbilical cord around her
neck. Amy’s mother, the woman who was
about to become a grandmother, was in the room and tells us her first and only
thought was “Oh no….not after all this.”
The medical team went into action and gently, but
swiftly, eased the cord from around our daughter’s neck, and let her slide out
of the birth canal, still purple. The
midwife, in an attempt to honor our overly complex birth plan, offered to let Amy
cut the cord. Being more concerned about getting our daughter the help she
needed, Amy declined. I really don’t
recall much after that other than that the circle of people who had been
surrounding me for the four hours of pushing left abruptly and headed over to
the warming bed. I felt abandoned and
had no idea what was happening. To this
day, I still consider that ignorance a blessing. I am told the NICU nurse went into action,
suctioning, rubbing, stimulating, and administering oxygen to our
daughter. Our daughter’s one minute
APGAR test was a three. By five minutes,
she was a seven and the devastation of driving home without baby was averted. I don’t remember when I was told that our
daughter came into the world oxygen deprived, but I do remember the first
moment I saw her. It lasted for days and
I spent the next two days at the hospital and the weeks that followed at home staring
for hours on end into the face of the baby girl who had been kicking me from
the inside for the past three and a half months. I couldn’t stop looking at her; neither could
Amy. We have a lot of pictures, as if we
would even need them to remember that time.
Following the two-days of hospital rest standard of
the time, we awkwardly loaded our sweet, pink, bundle of a daughter into our
station wagon and took her home. Grandma
was there to meet us and thus began the first week at home of an insular time with
our newborn daughter. Grandma tells me I
kept asking her “are we having fun yet?”
She had often told me about the early weeks with her firstborn spent
with her mother-in-law and how much fun it was.
I suppose I was worried our time might not measure up. It did…and then some.
In the weeks that followed, Karen and her then-partner
came to visit Amy, me, and our new daughter, Scout. Karen had made a stained- glass window for our
baby girl – she called it Scout’s Sun. To this day, it hangs in my home. It
was such a strange sensation seeing Karen holding the daughter I shared with Amy. She was so beautiful holding a baby and my
heart twisted inside my chest. By then,
I had gotten really good at putting on the façade of indifference relative to
Karen when she would come to visit. I
had probably even come to believe that I wasn’t still in love with her. Interestingly, Amy knew better, but she
wouldn’t tell me this until years and years later. She was happy with our life and so was I, so Karen
faded into the background with home, babies, and creating a family taking
center stage.
Life went on, birthdays were had, a son was born (but
that’s a story for another day), and we settled into the day to day of being working
parents with young children. I always
say, half-jokingly, but only half, that parenting isn’t for lightweights. It isn’t.
It can test the patience and stamina of the best of us. When children are small, what little energy is
left after caring for them goes into getting ready for the next
day. Parenting small children and the fatigue that goes with it can be relentless. In this,
it is not surprising that Amy and I lost touch with one another. We stopped talking, laughed less, and fought
more. Although it took some time, eventually,
we separated. Except it wasn’t clean, simple,
or safe like ‘we separated’ …but that
is another story for another day.
In separating, there was no particular agenda for me
except to stop the pain of feeling so far away from someone I had once felt so
safe with. I think back that time and
wish I could have done our separation better and caused a little less grief,
but I didn’t. I also realize that I did
the best I could at the time. Years
later, Amy and I talked about that time and were both able to reach peace about
it and recognize it as being something that needed to happen. We had tried, but parting was inevitable and,
although it took some time, ultimately better for all concerned.
As we were coming apart, Amy once asked me “Are you
going to try to find Karen?” It struck
me as a curious question and I responded “No.”
Karen and Amy had lost touch years before, over a heated fight about me,
in fact. I know the loss of that
friendship hurt them both a great deal.
It hadn’t even occurred to me to try to find Karen, but Amy's question did prompt me to start
thinking about her all over again.
A year or so after Amy and I parted, I had thought about
Karen enough and tried to find her.
Internet searches, dialing 411, and even paying a search firm turned up
nothing. So I gave up, but only for a
while. Six months later, on a random day
while running errands with my son, I dialed 411 again and, incredibly, was
given a phone number which led to a phone not so very far away from me. I called immediately and got an answering
machine. It took a few days to hear back, but in returning my call, a seemingly simple single
act, Karen set off a chain of events, starts and stops, that would span nearly
six years. As I describe it, it was
exquisite agony, both glorious and gory. The love we share runs
so deep it literally is embedded in every cell of our bodies. We imprinted in our youth and in coming
together in our adulthood we collided, we imploded, we reunited, we stumbled,
and on and on, but that is definitely
another story for another day. Finally
though, one day, we both stopped trying at the same time. We ended.
Except, we didn’t end.
Even now, four years after separating, the feelings can be conjured up
with a scent, a sight, or a miniscule flash of a memory. As tragic as it may seem, I don’t feel tragic
about it…at least not most days. Sure,
some days, like Valentine’s Day maybe, I can get untethered and fall apart, but
most days, I believe Karen is in the place she should be. She lives far away and has another
lover. I accept this and am even able to
be happy for her in having someone who is good to and for her. But some days…yes, some days….it still hurts.
But if you tame me, then we shall need each
other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in
all the world . . ~ Antoine de
Saint-Exupéry
Amy suddenly died this past October. I have written volumes since her death; some
pieces I have shared with others. Some
are saved for our children. Some pieces
are just for me. I guess I am still
trying to make sense of it all. This
Valentine’s Day was particularly difficult.
I miss Amy. I miss so many
things, but mostly, I miss laughing with her.
In an ironic plot twist, Amy’s death brought Karen
back into my life, if only for the time being.
Karen was kind, gracious, and gentle during the worst of the days
following Amy’s death, the days when all sound seemed to have disappeared and
yet the world was roaring in my ears all at the same time. She sent thoughtfully written cards to the
kids and a book specially selected for each.
She listened to me ramble on while I was still in shock. She corresponded with me when the shock began
to wear off. She was a friend when I
know it was difficult for her be simply that.
Karen still haunts me and my latest realization is
that I will be in love with her for the rest of my life. I don’t just love her, but am in
love with her. I also realize this does
not mean we should be together. In fact,
most days, I am convinced it is best that we are not together. What I have been pondering lately though is
whether or not there is enough left of my heart to share with someone else in good
faith without cheating them of a real, faithful and true love. If not, then I will need to fly solo...for I
don't want to break another's heart knowing from the outset I don’t have enough
to give. I am, however, an optimist at heart and believe that I was not put on this earth to fly solo. I have too much to offer and, in time, I believe I'll find a worthy co-pilot. The beauty is that there is no rush. I am content right now and anyone else who comes into my life will be an additive, not a distraction or detraction.
In returning to The Little Prince, and thinking about
Karen, Amy, and me, I am really not sure who is the Rose, the Fox, or the
Prince anymore. I suppose everyone of
significance in our lives has a wheat field, a planet, or distant star that reminds
us of them. These two women, Amy
and Karen, are inextricably tied to this Hallmark holiday. I loved them both in their own way. I love you Karen. I love you Amy. You are eternally connected to me and, in
this, to one another. Each of you left your
mark on my life and I am forever changed and thankful for having loved you
both.
~ Mk MIchaels
