Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma (24 page)

Once the sun was fully awake, so were we. We continued on our trek west toward Los Angeles. We drove through Zion National Park then onto Highway 15 that took us across the desert to Las Vegas. The desert was hot, really hot. Over 100 degrees. I was so tired from not sleeping the night before that I was groggy and possibly experiencing heat exhaustion. I thought I needed to drive faster, hurry up to Vegas and cool off in a hotel pool. It didn’t occur to me to just pull over, drink some water, put the top up, and turn on the air conditioner. By the time we got to Las Vegas, Kim and I were collective wreaks, both overheated and completely sleep-deprived. Sarah desperately needed to exercise her legs. We pulled into the Flamingo Hotel around 2 P.M., got a room, catered to Sarah’s needs, then went to sleep until the next day.

After a good night’s sleep and a refreshing dunk in the pink pool at the Flamingo, we became shameless tourists. We ate everything in sight at one of those pig-out buffets, and had a fun time at the slot machines. The following day we headed out on the last leg of our trip, the five hour drive to Los Angeles. We arrived just in time to meet my parents and the moving van at my new apartment near UCLA.

Kim stayed for a couple of days, helping me get settled in Westwood. We spent hours walking around Westwood Village in search of celebrities. After several successful celebrity sightings and a good visit with my folks, Kim flew back to Kentucky. She talked about moving to Los Angeles to be with me. I loved her and missed her but I knew I would make her life a living hell if she moved out to LA. I can be terribly high maintenance, and Kim was too gentle a soul to have to deal with the likes of complicated drama-queen me. But to this day, Kim is one of my all-time best friends. I am so blessed to have this wonderful woman in my life and I’ll road-trip with her any time, anywhere.

29. Marathon!

Six months after I had turned 50, I moved to Los Angeles to work at UCLA. As part of my seemingly on-going mid-life crisis, I decided to run a marathon. I’d not done that before, not that I ever really thought about it, but I had run a few 5Ks and once even came in second in my age group in a 10K in Jacksonville. After a few months of contemplating such a ridiculous feat, I went to a running store, The Starting Line in Marina del Ray. If I had any real intention of running a marathon, I’d need running shoes.

While in the store I noticed an advertisement for the National AIDS Marathon Training program. I had been away from AIDS work for six years and this seemed like a good way to do something for the HIV community while remembering those far-too-many dear friends I’d lost. The advertisement guaranteed that I’d be prepared to run the Marine Corp Marathon in Washington D.C. in six months. Yeah? Prove it! I signed up.

I did indeed run the Marine Corp Marathon six months later. What a great way to enjoy Washington D.C.! I saw every national monument in town because I peed behind each one on the route! I subsequently ran three Honolulu Marathons and the Los Angeles Marathon, plus four training marathons over the next eight years, all part of the National AIDS Marathon Training Program. People always asked about my time. How did I do? Frankly, I didn’t care about my time. If I finished a 26.2 mile marathon on the same day I started, standing up, I won! And I did, every time!

I’m hyperactive, so I can—and did!—become bored during marathon training. Usually by about the twelfth mile tedium would set in, so I started running with a tape recorder in my hand and talked to myself as I trained. During my few years as a marathoner, I wrote one book and six articles, and then reminisced about my life, much of which was the material for this book. As I prepared to write my memoirs, I read the transcripts from those tapes and thought: Really? Glad I remembered that one!

I quit running marathons when my feet rebelled at the thought of one more event. I remember being at about mile 24 in the 2004 Honolulu Marathon, running back up the Diamond Head Road hill towards the finish line at Kapiolani Park, thinking, I am NOT having fun, even in this beyond-gorgeous setting. This is it.

In the spring of 2008, I began to review the transcripts of my tapes that I made while running. I sat at my desk with my left foot in a cast from the surgery to repair the nasty heel spur I acquired because of my marathonly accomplishments. As I wrote, I pondered this question: why doesn’t anyone ever tell you that marathons are 26.2 miles long because that’s how far the first guy, Phedippides, ran from Marathon, Greece to Athens in 490 BC, before he dropped dead??? I think I’ll stick with golf where I can ride in my purple golf cart and not hurt my feet any more.

30. Reunion: Perspectives of Mother and Son

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1998

U.S. President
: Bill Clinton

Best film
: Titanic; Shakespeare in Love; Elizabeth, Saving Private Ryan, Life is Beautiful

Best actors
: Roberto Benigni, Gwyneth Paltrow

Best TV shows
: Dawson’s Creek; Sex and the City; The King of Queens; Will & Grace; Felicity; Becker

Best songs
: My Heart Will Go On, Ray of Light, You’re Still the One, Crush, The Boy is Mine

Civics
: White House sex scandal between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; House impeaches President Clinton

Popular Culture
: Titanic wins a record 11 Academy Awards; Citizen Kane tops the American Film Institute’s list of 100 all-time top films; Viagra approved by FDA; last episode of Seinfeld; The Hours by Michael Cunningham published; Matthew Shepard, gay University of Wyoming student, killed.

Deaths
: Gene Autry, Sonny Bono, Frank Sinatra

_________________________________________________________________

The letter began, Dear Dr. Sanlo or Mom. I don’t know what to call you, but in trying to find myself, I need to find you. I hope it’s okay… My son. My Erik. No contact for 13 years and now a letter. My heart beat hard and my hands trembled as I held the paper. My son, who I had not seen since he was nine years old. My son, now a 22 year old man, needed to find his mother. Me.

Erik was such a sweet little boy, tender, smart, quick to laugh, deep with feeling. He didn’t cry when he was born. He just seemed happy to be where he was in that moment. I used the then-popular Leboyer method of childbirth which prohibited any forcing of the birthing process. We used minimal lighting while a Mozart violin concerto played softly in the background as Erik made his way into the world. At 9 pounds 11 ounces, Erik was a large baby, but ironically he, like his sister, was a small child, the smallest among his peers in those early years of school.

Erik was three years old when I lost custody of him and his sister. I saw my children intermittently until he was nine and his sister was twelve. While I maintained contact with both children with cards for every occasion, accompanied by checks that I knew were cashed, there was never a response from either of them. I knew, though, that it was not a response I needed from them so much as it was my desire to let them know they were in my heart. I always included my contact information so they could find me if they ever needed me. It worked. That’s exactly how each found me years later.

~~~~~~

I have wonderful little-Erik stories. He was a beautiful baby and I have the first-place ribbon he won at a Beautiful Baby contest when he was a year old to prove it! When Erik was nearly three, he modeled a little-boy Pierre Cardin tuxedo in the Burdines Department Store Easter show. How he loved that tuxedo! As his sister Berit modeled a pretty frilly pink dress which she detested, Erik knew he looked like a million bucks. He followed Berit up the stairs to the runway, strutting like a little pro, that is, until he saw the giant Easter bunny sitting at the far end of the runway. As Berit was trying to figure out a way to jump into the big bunny’s arms, Erik was terrified of that giant furry bunny-monster! Erik froze at first, then screamed. He turned around, ran back down the runway as fast as he could, all the way to the dressing room. Ironically, though, for as upset as he was about that gargantuan bunny, he went ballistic when it was time to take off the tuxedo. He simply would not do it! He loved how he looked and felt in it. Fashion trauma in the toddler set! His sister, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get out of all that pink material and back into her play shorts!

I remember one day in the Downtown park of Disney World in Orlando. Erik was about five years old. He climbed a Jungle Jim apparatus in the children’s arena there, slid down the pole, and ran to me in a grassy area from where I watched his acrobatics. He jumped on me, grabbed my ears, and kissed me all over my face, so happy to be with his Mom. Mothers nearby said they wished their sons were as demonstrative as mine. What they didn’t know was that my son and I saw one another only periodically, so this day was special for us.

Erik loved Michael Jackson, the pop singer. In 1984, Michael Jackson performed in Jacksonville. I couldn’t afford to take my children to the concert so eight-year old Erik asked if he could have something that at least looked like Michael Jackson. We went to the mall. Erik selected black nylon balloon-material pants, a tight black mesh tank top with silver thread running through it, silver socks, a spiffy black-and-silver belt, and the glove, the silver Michael Jackson glove. Erik was so proud! He loved that outfit and wore it the entire weekend, even when I returned him and his sister to their father’s parents’ house.

Two weeks later, because I had visitation every other weekend, I noticed that Erik was very sad. He told me that his grandmother Cynda made him take off his Michael Jackson clothes. then cut them up with scissors right in front of him. How cruel! I was so angry! Angry with Cynda, angry with myself for not being able to protect my children from her. I did the only thing I knew would get her attention: I charged her with abuse. I won the case but the battle was lost. The Southern-cracker legal system was securely in place, with cronies and office partners as lawyers and judges. It took only a few more months before the children told me they weren’t going to see me anymore.

Fast forward thirteen years to Thanksgiving, 1998. The Los Angeles International Airport. My mind’s eye saw a nine-year-old boy with a quick smile and a gentle spirit. I had no photos of Erik as an adult, had no way of knowing who this young man was or how he looked beyond the fact that he was my son.

When I received Erik’s initial letter several months earlier, I wrote back to him immediately. He had no email and he wasn’t ready to talk with me on the phone, so we used the old-fashioned snail-mail method of writing letters for a couple of months. Finally, we spoke on the phone. His deep voice didn’t match the nine year old boy in my heart’s vision. I invited him to come to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving. He accepted. He had a large family in California—grandparents, aunts, uncles, a cousin, and a mom who remembered the wonderful little boy and who missed him beyond words. When he told his father’s family that he would not be with them for Thanksgiving that year because he was coming to see me, his grandmother Cynda said, “I just don’t understand why you want to go there. Your mother will just take you to West Hollywood and make you gay.” Right. The magic wand with the lavender fairy dust.

It was 1998, before Homeland Security and heightened scrutiny at airports, when families and friends could still greet travelers at the gates of arriving planes. I was there, at the gate, looking for my nine-year-old boy, or at least a man who looked like the nine-year old who lived in my heart. I was excited and frightened and anxious, knowing that soon I would see my baby child, my precious son.

I recognized him immediately. He was still a small person, still had some of that nine year old impish gleam in his eyes. My beautiful son walked right into my arms, no words spoken. When Erik finally pulled his tear-streaked face from my neck, his first words were, “Every time I smelled that perfume, in the grocery store or the mall, I looked all around to see if you were there, Mom.” My son, finally home in my arms…

The Meeting: Erik’s Story

(written by Erik)

The nervousness took hold once I boarded the plane. It was a flight I’d taken half a dozen times before, long ago, when I was a small child. I knew everyone I was going to see there, but I didn’t really know them, not after all these years.

Thirteen years since I last saw her. I found my seat on the plane. What do they think of me? I’m the one who rejected them for so many years. What was I about to walk into? Seriously, what could they possibly think of the son, the grandson, the nephew, the cousin who ignored them for thirteen years, and now it’s Happy Thanksgiving, pass the yams? But it felt right, so here I am, on the plane, the flight. It all starts in five hours.

I was the one who took the first step. I had to be the one to do it. There had been no contact between my mother and me since I was nine years old. Nine years old at the breaking point. Nine years old. Whom do I choose? Which parent do I pick? Do I choose my mother, who I barely knew and who moved so often from place to place? Or do I choose my father and stay in the house in which I grew up? After all, my mother lost all rights. You’re out and you’re proud, Mom. Congratu-fucking-lations.

During my teens years, all that I had of a relationship with my mother were the cards I’d receive on each birthday and holiday. Barely anything hand-written in them. I always figured that the real purpose for the cards was my mother’s way of making sure I had her address. My grandmother was so paranoid that she made both my sister and me save every card as potential evidence, fearing some impending lawsuit to come. You know, the big one. That actually helped my mother’s intentions because there was never a time when I did not know where to find her. Not that I would, though. Not for years to come.