You and No Other

by Jane Weiss

  One day you finally knew

  what you had to do, and began,

  though the voices around you

  kept shouting

  their bad advice—

  though the whole house

  began to tremble

  and you felt the old tug

  at your ankles.

  “Mend my life!”

  each voice cried.

  But you didn’t stop.

  You knew what you had to do,

  though the wind pried

  with its stiff fingers

  at the very foundations—

  though their melancholy

  was terrible.

  It was already late

  enough, and a wild night,

  and the road full of fallen

  branches and stones.

  But little by little,

  as you left their voices behind,

  the stars began to burn

  through the sheets of clouds,

  and there was a new voice,

  which you slowly

  recognized as your own,

  that kept you company

  as you strode deeper and deeper

  into the world,

  determined to do

  the only thing you could do—

  determined to save

  the only life you could save.

  I deeply resonated to her idea of saving the only life I could save—my own—and held that as my truth. The poem helped me put my actions and my family’s responses into a broader social context after all that time. There were other wives and mothers who had to reclaim what they had given away of themselves, to the detriment of their mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health—other women who listened to an inner call to evolve and change. Like them, I wanted to trust that, as I relinquished my self-sacrificing, forbearing, and self-hating role and began to nourish my spirit, this would support change for my daughters and granddaughters after me.

  Even You, Mother?

  Managing myself in the face of my parents and extended family’s reactions to being in a relationship with a woman, and to not living with my children, was another major learning hurdle for me. In my own confusion and fear about how to tell my mother and siblings about my true reason for moving in with Bonnie, I put off calling them. However, within a few days after I left Eagan, Charles contacted them, telling them in detail what the past six months had been like for him and the children.

  My mother was the first to call me. Her initial response, after asking what had happened, was in keeping with my extended family’s usual pattern of shame and hurt. She said she was not surprised that I left Charles, but really felt I had gone too far. I knew better than to expect her understanding, or even for her to ask how I was faring.

  Her primary concern was for my children—her grandchildren. That seemed understandable, but I wasn’t prepared for her heartless remark, “I would rather have heard you had cancer.”

  I suppose she thought that leaving my children in death would have been more honorable and easier for them to accept than the path I chose.

  That might have even been easier for me, too!

  I explained that I could not live with Charles any longer, and wanted my father’s and her help in urging Charles to at least share parenting with me, and to discontinue his demeaning comments about me to the kids. But Mother said I was asking too much of her too soon.

  She must have struggled with how to relate to me, for our usual pattern had been for me to assuage her by supporting her viewpoints and doing whatever she asked. In a letter I received shortly after her call, Mother wrote:

  I am trying to gain an insight into where you are. But that means the exclusion of the Word of God and all the principles I have tried to instill. Those are the very traditions you’re coming out from under in order to get somewhere. But where?

  Just maybe I could understand your theories, if you were single, and Daddy and I were not here, and you had not voluntarily brought four dear children into being. But without taking drastic and illegal measures, all of us are much in evidence. So that all this search for inner peace at the expense of all of us, boils down to one thing—selfishness.

  I’ll keep on praying for the day when you return to all of us. Maybe someday I will be able to say again, I’m proud of you, Janie.

  – Lovingly, Mother

  It’s easier for me in retrospect to understand that Mother’s generation could not support a woman finding her own truth and living out her soul’s desire. That was hard enough even for most women my age.

  Conforming to family rules for women and to fundamentalist dogma, Mother had only known suppression of those “Godless urges” that led to self-expression. The alcoholism, depression, and phobias that she suffered bore out to me the penalties for denying oneself. My actions and her response to them created a breach between us, for we no longer shared a common language or values to reach an understanding. And my extended family could not love when they did not understand or accept.

  I knew I wouldn’t hear directly from my father, as we rarely spoke. Since my childhood, Mother had been our intermediary, consoling me when I thought his aloofness meant he didn’t love me, and interpreting me to my father when he became annoyed with my exuberance and expansiveness.

  My younger sister Carol reacted with shock, which precipitated a surprise trip to Minnesota to see how the children were faring and to find out for herself what had happened. However, after she returned to Pennsylvania, her initial grief turned to judgment. She complained bitterly about how self-serving my actions were. Aligning herself with my mother, father, and Charles, Carol became another wedge between my children and me.

  My younger brother, Allen, was concerned that I was losing my mind. He typically distanced himself from what he didn’t like or understand, and cut off communications with me. My nieces and nephews, who once admired our family and looked up to me, were forbidden to make contact with me. From the perspective of my family, I committed a societal crime by falling in love with a woman and choosing to live with her—a crime that stripped me of my rights to mother my children.

  Most of my friends couldn’t abide, accept, or understand what I had done. I found that for those who did remain in contact with me, over time, we no longer corresponded with one another. The past was slowly being replaced with the present.

  Work Emerges as a Focus

  The law of attraction was surely at work when Walker Methodist and I found each other at the perfect time in February 1982. Walker had recently broken ground for a new nursing home, with plans to move nearly four hundred residents from an outdated residence for aging Methodists, to a state-of-the-art nursing home next door. The huge transition was symbolic of Walker’s expansion from a reactive matriarchal, to a proactive entrepreneurial company. Everyone—staff and residents—were moving from the old building to the new within the next six months. No one would experience life as it had been. I deeply understood that concept and process.

  I was eased into my new director job by spending the first three days with coworkers on a planning retreat in the woods. Ironically, the retreat’s focus was on managing the stress and rewards of change, with an emphasis on how to incorporate education as a means for coping with change into all areas of the company. We blended the business of learning with leisurely fun and conversation. From the outset, the Walker family warmly embraced and supported me.

  Although I wasn’t new to long-term care, I had never functioned as an educator, so my new position required learning about a whole new field. Bonnie, who had developed Methodist Hospital’s education department, became my beloved mentor, coaching me as I designed the philosophy, structure, and requirements for setting up the centralized education department that Walker needed. The department I created would become a model for other nursing homes, as it incorporated sorely needed career steps for nurses’ aides, on-site continuing education for nurses, community education, and staff wellness programs.

&n
bsp; My absorption in work was rewarding and palliative. On most days, I could step up to whatever was required of me, from teaching a class, to presenting information to a board committee. It was soul-satisfying to be deeply connected to the cause of improving the last stage of life for the elderly, and gratifying to find Walker staff eager to learn new and better ways to meet the holistic needs of our clients.

  Knowing I was making a difference helped ease the painful aspects of my personal life. Some days, the strain of managing my inner turmoil about my children, while meeting the workplace demands, was too taxing. On those occasions, I escaped to the classroom storeroom, and in the dark, prayed that my body tremors and tears would stop before I was missed. More than one morning, I left for work, but returned home midway because my anxiety level was so high that I was afraid to continue driving.

  No one at Walker knew about Bonnie and me. I presented us as friends who conveniently shared the expense of an apartment, so that we could afford to separate from our husbands. There were no pictures of Bonnie on my desk. I never spoke about our trips or happenings; news was carefully relayed so that I appeared to be alone. No one imagined that when I slipped away at lunchtime, I was meeting Bonnie for sandwiches and snuggles at our apartment. However, she occasionally accompanied me to large events, and eventually, those “women-identified” (another term for lesbians) folks at Walker came to suspect us, and asked me about Bonnie. I didn’t feel it was safe to satisfy their curiosities.

  Chapter 8 - A Time for Tears

  Bonnie

  My move from our family home in Minneapolis remained incomprehensible to four-year-old Erin, as evidenced by her first visit to the apartment. Soon after I transferred much of my clothing to our new place, Erin walked into the bedroom at the apartment and saw my slippers next to the bed.

  “Look, Mommy!” she exclaimed. “Jane has slippers just like yours!”

  Try as I might to explain that those were my slippers and that I would live here with Jane in this apartment, Erin kept saying, “No, Mommy, you only stay here sometimes. Jane lives here in this ‘repotement.’”

  I fought back tears as I searched for how to help her precious child’s mind grasp what was happening. If only I had enough clarity myself, perhaps the task of helping Erin understand might have been easier. Still, not knowing what the long-term situation would be for Jane and me, I knew I was not very specific about why or how long I might be living apart from the family. If our relationship didn’t work out, and I ended up alone, would I really stay separated from Brian and, thus, the kids? I simply didn’t know.

  Soon my three younger kids were spending every other weekend and one or two days during the week with Jane and me. David was heavily into “senioritis” by that time. Between school, his work at a local bakery, and socializing with friends, neither Brian nor I were privileged to spend much time with him. However, with the younger kids spending so much time with Jane and me, I knew I had to be honest with them about my feelings for Brian, and for Jane.

  One day, as Edward and Moria were eating ice cream at the dining room table and Erin was napping, I told them that though I loved their father, he and I had grown apart, and I didn’t think I would be able to live with him in the future. I further explained that Jane and I loved each other very much, and we hoped we could continue living together, which then required another conversation about “couples.”

  Edward and Moria were then in sixth and fifth grades respectively, so I asked them what the kids at school called two men or two women who loved each other. They giggled and fidgeted uncomfortably, looking down at their bowls and at each other to see who would be the first to say a thing. Finally Edward blurted out, “Gay!” and they both erupted into nervous giggling.

  “What else are they called?” I asked.

  “Homo and queer,” Edward again ventured, followed by more raucous laughter.

  “What about faggot or lesbian?” I was pushing them still farther.

  “I heard those words before, but I don’t know what they mean,” Moria finally offered.

  We did a primer that day on homosexuality—defined for them as two men or two women who loved each other—and all the ways people refer to couples of the same gender. I told them that with Jane and me loving each other and living together, people might call us any of the names we had talked about. I remember Edward’s expression growing somber as he said he didn’t understand “why people can’t love whoever they want.”

  This, of course, necessitated yet another lesson on mainstream society’s negative views of homosexuality, which somehow legitimized using demeaning or demoralizing names when referring to homosexuals. I wanted to make certain the kids wouldn’t be caught unaware if any of their schoolmates used this language, and I wanted to be equally sure Edward and Moria wouldn’t use such terms when referring to others. At the end of our conversation, Edward repeated his earlier pronouncement. He still didn’t understand why people couldn’t love whomever they wanted.

  Moria rarely shared her feelings about anything even when directly invited to do so. During our conversation that day she remained unreadable.

  Almost from the day Moria arrived from Korea, she had been an enigma to me, though she was precisely the child we were looking for—a Korean-American girl who was younger than Edward, then two years old. Moria was a darling almond-eyed, twelve-month-old with her hair pulled into a palm tree ponytail atop her head. Yes, she was most definitely our daughter to be!

  Only four months after that first adoption agency meeting, we were at the airport awaiting David’s and Moria’s arrival. As children and escorts deplaned, I immediately spotted proud, striking David, walking beside the escort carrying Moria—the most beautiful child I’d ever seen.

  “You have a gorgeous little headstrong daughter here,” the escort remarked as she handed Moria into my waiting arms. “And your son is a saint. He had to care for her all the way from Korea. She wouldn’t let anyone else touch her. He slept so little; he has to be exhausted!”

  The deeper meaning of “strong-headed daughter” soon became apparent to us. At the tender age of sixteen months, Moria flew into rages and carried on two-to three-hour temper tantrums, complete with kicking, screaming, and head-banging. If she was unhappy about something, she forced her fingers down her throat until she vomited or spit up blood. She pulled her hair out by the handfuls, especially at night. She often played by herself, looking like a sad and lonely little waif. Brian and I carried her in our arms as much as possible, hoping to break through her self-imposed isolation, but it was many months before she showed even rudimentary signs of attachment to either of us.

  Moria didn’t walk when she first arrived, but within a few weeks of watching Edward zoom around, she began toddling about on her own. By age two, she had almost no language development, rarely even attempting to speak. Even with the help of a speech therapist, it was two more years before non-family members could understand her.

  Moria had a soft sweetness. One day, she and I were having lunch together after one of her speech therapy sessions. As if she sensed my anxiety about her progress, she took my hands in hers, looked me in the eyes, and said in her most reassuring voice, “You no worry, Mom. I talk good some day. You no worry.”

  As Moria grew, she had a penchant for being private and secretive. For example, I found cute pictures she’d drawn and hidden under her bed without showing anyone. During her preschool years when she was not at her Montessori School, she spent most of her time playing alone in the house with her Barbie dolls and dollhouse, or looking at books rather than interacting with neighborhood children. As she got older, she wrote stories that were also hidden away, until I inadvertently came upon them in closets or drawers while cleaning. She kept mostly to herself even in our family unit. She was developing into a beautiful preadolescent, and when she began menstruating—though I had purchased supplies and we had frequently talked about her first period being imminent—I only learned about it when finding her stained u
nderwear in the laundry. When her dad and I separated, she was finishing fifth grade, and I was particularly concerned about how she would be affected over time.

  When the kids stayed overnight on weekdays, the next morning, Jane and I needed them up, breakfasted, dressed, and delivered to three different schools by 7:30, so we could get ourselves to work. Since they were several blocks from their York Avenue neighborhood, they had to be transported everywhere, including to school. Anytime they were with us, we scrambled to keep up with their myriad extracurricular and social activities. In addition to taking them to and from friends’ houses and birthday parties, Edward always had some type of ball practice or game, Erin had tap and ballet classes, and Moria had piano lessons.

  Though Jane didn’t try to actively parent my children, she quickly became a vital support to me as I struggled with planning for and managing the logistics of their busy lives. The kids developed a deep fondness for Jane, and soon depended on her as much as on me for help, hugs, favors, transportation, and anything else parents typically provide.

  Jane and I were settled into the comfort of our apartment routine within a few weeks. Both of our jobs required eight to nine hours at work, and frequent “briefcase time” at home in the evenings. Though we each might have remained at our offices at day’s end to finish up preparations required for the next day, we preferred to load up our homework, head for the apartment, and sit snuggled together on the Jenny Lind daybed or in our bed to read and write. Since we were now doing very similar work, we’d bounce ideas off each other as we prepared new proposals or teaching plans, and sometimes we practiced doing presentations we developed for high-stakes audiences, such as boards or administration staff.

  Although Jane and I once again found our lives incredibly busy and full in many ways, they were starkly empty in others. Jane’s children would not, or were not allowed to, spend any time with her, and most certainly not with me. She was rarely able to speak with any of them by phone when she called, and they didn’t phone her. So, though she became busily involved with my kids and felt their affection for her, she desperately missed her own.