Dancing The Polka — #memoir excerpt; #fathersanddaughters #amreading #LGBTQ

I’m delighted that Thimble Literary Magazine published my memoir excerpt “Dancing The Polka.” This is a piece for my memoir that I am currently shopping around, titled LOST: a daughter navigates father loss and discovers what it means to belong.

Dancing The Polka

BY JANET MASON

“It’s beautiful out here! Watch the ground—it’s bumpy,” I cautioned as I walked over the lawn—which I suddenly realized was a hazard—with my hand in the warm, pliant crook of my ninety-seven-year-old father’s arm as I steered him into the day. It was late summer in the year before he died. Usually, my father sat quietly in his trash-picked chair in Jean’s living room which was decorated in a way my father described as “artistic.” Years after my mother had died, my father met his lady friend Jean.

We came to Jean’s house that afternoon, like most afternoons, after we ate breakfast at the Diner. Jean’s house sat on a large lot where she had planted ivy on the front lawn. Also in her nineties, a few years younger than my father, Jean loved to garden. Since it was a corner lot, there were only neighbors on two sides, and they divided her yard from theirs with chain-link fences. She had planted flowers on both sides next to her side of the fences. Magenta chrysanthemums were about to burst into bloom. In the back left of the yard, behind the clumps of flowers lining the fence, she also had a well-tended vegetable garden behind a homemade wire fence (“to keep the bunny out”). My father usually sat in the living room, but he came out to the garden with me this one time.

We were in Levittown, the land of working-class suburban conformity where I came from. I, along with my partner Barbara, was on one of my weekly visits to see my father. My father still lived in the same house where I grew up, around the corner from Jean. I grew up feeling different—and I was—and it wasn’t a place that was easy on people who were different, so I got out as soon as I could. When I was there, I felt like I never belonged. But I never would have questioned my place in the world when I was with my father.

My father died when he was ninety-eight, so he was elderly for a long time. When I was with my father, his well-being was my only concern. I didn’t think of it then but looking back I see I belonged then. I belonged to my father. I see now, in my single-minded focus on him, I also belonged to myself also.

I first started holding his arm, years after my mother died, when he was about seventy-five years old. He was resistant at first, insisting he could do everything by himself, without any help.

‘You’re pushing me. You’re pushing me,” he said loudly once when I was holding his arm on a ramp in a crowded community theater. He was in his late eighties at the time. Since I was larger than him, I was concerned people would think I was committing elder abuse. Over the years though, I kept holding my father’s arm and helping him. Eventually, he began tolerating my help. In his nineties, he would hold his elbow out so I could take his arm.

When Jean came along, I welcomed her presence. Many daughters might have been threatened when a potential love interest showed up for their widowed father. But I loved my father and wanted him to be happy. In the beginning, my father was happy. Later, they began to argue-Jean was very critical—and my father pointedly told me they were “just friends.”

Jean was very different from my mother. For starters, she was tiny. My mother, who died more than two decades before my father did, was the same height as my father. Both of my parents were almost six feet tall, a few inches shorter than the height I grew into. My mother was broad-minded and intellectual. Jean was conventional but inquisitive.

My partner, Barbara, usually came along on our visits. She had a close bond with Jean because she reminded Barbara of her late mother. Like Barbara’s late mother, Carmella, Jean loved to garden. Like Carmella, Jean also loved to get gussied up and go out. Jean, who was Polish American, also loved the polka, something Barbara’s mother didn’t relate to. Jean recognized a kindred spirit in Barbara, though.

“You’re Polish, aren’t you?” Jean kept asking Barbara even though Barbara had told Jean repeatedly that her mother was Italian American. This may have been early dementia. Jean developed dementia and died in a nursing home a few years after my father passed.

We couldn’t go to the home to see her because this was in 2020 during the pandemic when things were in lockdown. But Barbara commented that Jean might have dementia but “she would probably still remember the polka.”

Since Barbara is a musician, she recognized how important dancing to the polka was to Jean. Jean remembered dancing at the Polish festivals in her youth and was disappointed my father couldn’t dance with her. He was blind in one eye and had glaucoma in the other. Since he couldn’t see that well, dancing with her could have been dangerous. He might have fallen over and broken something. But Jean didn’t think about that. She just kept saying how disappointed she was.

That’s how Barbara ended up dancing the polka with Jean in the afternoons. As a drummer, Barbara also had experience dancing since her stern drum teacher had required her students to take African dance classes. Although, she still was taller, Barbara was closer in height to diminutive Jean. They both had long flowing white hair and were both enjoying themselves—especially Jean!—as they went round and round until the afternoons spun away.

Janet Mason’s book, Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters waspublished by Bella Books in 2012. Her novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders was published by Adelaide Books (New York and Lisbon), also the publisher of her novel The Unicorn, The Mystery late in 2020. Her novel Loving Artemis. an endearing tale of revolution, love and marriage was published by Thorned Heart Press in August of 2022. Her work has been widely anthologized and has been published in numerous journals, including the Brooklyn Review and Sinister Wisdom. “Dancing the Polka” is her first piece in Thimble.

Read Thimble Literary Magazine by clicking here

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

Read Full Post »

The Power of Intersectionality: vegan #DragQueens; #GoVegan; #intersectionality

I was getting caught up on the news today when it hit me: the power of intersectionality. I often think that being vegan/plant-based is an advantage. My brain works better and being on a non-alkaline diet means I have a tendency to have less bone issues as I age. I am also much healthier than I was in my pre-vegan days (just three years ago).

In my case, being vegan/plant-based is an open secret. Going vegan/plant-based certainly saved my life, and I am not alone. My partner has gone vegan with me resulting in her being much healthier and the number of stories I’ve heard about people going to a plant-based diet and overcoming health issues are beyond many.

In doing research on trauma, I began to understand how the tendency toward obesity in lesbian and bisexual women makes perfect sense. We are women who don’t care about appearance–especially in regard to attracting the opposite sex. We are women who have learned to respond to inner beauty. The problem is that obesity leads to so many diseases. The problem is that we are dying.

The news of the day, the attacks on drag queens, trans people and LGBTQ rights, makes me furious. It also makes me feel determined. We are living through a very difficult period of history and it’s important to be as healthy as possible.

I was delighted to learn about vegan drag queens. It makes sense that marginalized people understand oppression. There is no denying that what is happening to the animals in unconscionable. What the Standard American Diet is doing to the human animals is unconscionable also.

This is the power of intersectionality. When we share our rage, it is contagious and powerful.

What is happening to drag queens and the trans- and the LGBTQ community is not separate from anything. It is just the beginning.

So, take a stand. Be vigilant and go vegan.

To read about vegan drag queens, click here.

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

Read Full Post »

Finding the Light — a #UU talk by Janet Mason #amwriting #inspiration

I am reposting this talk that I gave last year to mark the occasion of Hanukkah which comes early this year and starts on Sunday, December 2 and ends Monday, December 10. The talk was a Unitarian Universalist (UU) service that was called “Ringing in the Light.”

I talked about my childhood memories of being touched by Hanukkah and my experiences in celebrating the Winter Solstice and with the Gnostic Gospels. You can see my words below on the YouTube video or read the reflection below that.

As far back as I can remember, the light beckoned.

The sun was a ball of fire in the sky.  The light changed into vibrant colors in the morning and the evening.  It filtered through the branches of trees.  The sunlight had, in fact, shined down and helped to form the trees.  So the light was in the trees (along with the rain and the earth).

Even when it was cloudy, I knew the sun was there. Sometimes I could see the ball of sun outlined behind the gray clouds.

The first time I remember being drawn to the light in a religious context was when I was in elementary school watching a play about Hanukkah.

Despite its nearness to Christmas on the calendar, Hanukkah is one of the lesser holidays in Judaism. Hanukkah, also called The Festival of Lights, began last Tuesday at sunset and ends this Wednesday, December, 20^th, at nightfall.

When I asked my partner what Hanukkah meant to her, she responded that it is a celebration of survival, hope and faith.

The holiday celebrates the victory of the Maccabees, detailed in the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud.

This victory of the Maccabees, in approximately 160 BCE –  BCE standing for Before The Common Era — resulted in the rededication of the Second Temple.  The Maccabees were a group of Jewish rebel warriors who took control of Judea.

According to the Talmud, the Temple was purified and the wicks of the menorah burned for eight days.

But there was only enough sacred oil for one day’s lighting. It was a miracle.

Hanukkah is observed by lighting the eight candles of the menorah at varying times and various ways.  This is done along with the recitation of prayers.  In addition to the eight candles in the menorah, there is a ninth called a shamash (a Hebrew word that means attendant). This ninth candle, the shamash, is in the center of the menorah.

It is all very complicated of course – the history and the ritual – but what I remember most is sitting in that darkened auditorium and being drawn to the pool of light around the candles on my elementary school stage.

I am not Jewish.  I say that I was raised secular – but that is putting it mildly.  My mother was, in fact, a bible-burning atheist.  Added to that, I was always cast as one of the shepherds in the school’s Christmas pageant since I was the tallest child in elementary school.

Also, I had Jewish neighbors – and as a future lesbian and book worm growing up in the sameness of a working class neighborhood — I may have responded to difference and had a realization that I was part of it.

Then I grew up, came out, thanked the Goddess for my secular upbringing, and celebrated the Winter Solstice with candles and music. This year, the Solstice falls on December 21st. The Winter Solstice (traditionally the shortest period of daylight and the longest night of the year)  is this coming Thursday in the Northern Hemisphere of planet Earth – which is where we are.

One of our friends who we celebrated the Solstice with is Julia Haines. Julia is a musician who has performed at Restoration.  She has a wonderful composition of Thunder Perfect Mind which she accompanies with her harp playing. You can find her on YouTube. Thunder Perfect Mind, of which I just read an excerpt, is one of the ancient texts of the Gnostic Gospels.

The Gnostic Gospels were discovered in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.  Originally written in Coptic, these texts date back to ancient times and give us an alternative glimpse into the Gospels that are written in the New Testament. They are so important that they are banned in some conventional religions.  And in my book, that’s a good reason to read them.

Reading them led me to think of myself as a Gnostic – meaning one who has knowledge and who pursues knowledge – including mystical knowledge.  The Gnostic Gospels have provided me with inspiration for my writing, particularly in my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders, soon to be published by Adelaide Books. And they also inspire me in the novel I am currently writing — titled The Unicorn, The Mystery.

I am inspired by the Gnostic Gospels in part because they let in the light.  In particular, they let in the light of the feminine.

As Julia says in her rendition of Thunder:

I am godless

I am Goddess

So how does finding the light factor into my experience of Unitarian Universalism? Later in life, after fifty, I found a religion that fit my values.  I found a religion wide enough – and I might add, secure enough – to embrace nonconformity.

In finding a congregation that is diverse in many ways – including religious diversity – I have found a deeper sense of myself.

And in that self, I recognize that the darkness is as least as necessary and as important as the light.

As a creative writer, I spend much of my time in the gray-matter of imagination.

It is in that darkness where I find the light.

 

Namaste

To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders ( published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.

Read Full Post »