October 1 , 1999 * Joat M E 4 g
Georgia on my mind
Remembering a dear friend and taking comfort
in knowing the love of old friends never dies
love older women.
That’s a button lesbians wear. It’s also the
truth.
I
Scooter sent me a birthday card that
depicted a silly-looking couple swing dancing.
“Two minds with but a single thought,” read
the caption. Inside, the same couple appeared
to be doing the bump, posteriors crashing.
That caption read, “Or is it two butts with
just a single mind?”
Fresh, that’s what Scooter is,
and I love it. Norma was the same.
If I suggested that driving 60 in a
35 mph zone was illegal she’d
answer, “Illegal is just a sick bird.”
Upriver from us live two retired
gals, one of whom used to run a gay
bar. They had us over to pick hot
blackberries in the sun with them
last week. I love older women.
The only problem is that when
friends get way old, I lose their
companionship.
Georgia died this week. She was
completely
unlike
Scooter, Norma or the
Blackberry Gals. Depen­
dent on wheelchairs and
walkers, Georgia didn’t
go out. She sat in her
small cliff-top home
overlooking the Pacific
and welcomed guests.
Georgia’s home was like a
salon. I can’t believe she’s
no longer presiding over
it.
Georgia loved strong
cheeses with exotic crackers. She’d
traveled in Europe. She was a Mid-
westerner migrated as far west as she
could get. She was also a horse­
woman with zero tolerance for the
beasts that plodded by bearing
tourists across the sand, or for that
eyesore of a new house out on the
point.
She loved visitors, but she’d shoo
us down to the beach, explaining
that she loved watching us there.
Around the same time her lifelong
partner, Jeannie, died, Georgia broke
a hip and never walked or went to
the beach again.
Rings were a particular passion of Georgia’s.
She wore them on most of her fingers, big bold
rings with colorful stones. At the end, when
she couldn’t communicate, or read, or enjoy
much of anything, she’d struggle to hold her
hands in front of her face and gaze at her rings.
One visitor called her “the woman with the
rings and the Calder in the hall." Georgia
loved that.
She loved art. Her walls held not just the
Calder, but Braque, Monet, O ’Keefe, Dufy,
Hockney and so many others. Yet Georgia was
always enthusiastic about my tastes, encourag­
ing my love of art, not overshadowing it with
her preferences. I wouldn’t think of visiting
Georgia without lugging along my latest photo­
realism find or art criticism from The New
Yorker.
Her house was filled with gorgeous paper­
weights displayed side by side with Mother
Nature’s art— baskets and trays of polished
agates, jasper and petrified wood. I would come
up from the beach with a pocketful of finds,
and Georgia would quickly sort them into
stones and lowly rocks.
Georgia was an editor when she retired. She
loved books as much as art. Poetry, biography,
literary fiction. Her shelves were full, her tables
piled high, books tumbled off her bed. Many of
them were art books: huge color volumes, small
monographs, Impressionists and contemporary
women artists, the books lay everywhere.
Georgia’s partner Jeannie had been a poet,
her mentor the anthologist and poet Oscar
Williams. Georgia was so proud of her that,
after Jeannie s death in 1980, she published a
chapbook of her poems.
Georgia was closeted, but there was no feel­
ing of paranoia about her, she just came from
the era of the closet. In her youth she acted,
playing the male leads at an all-girls school.
Her gay niece, Barb, moved in with her and
coordinated Georgia’s care in her last year.
She adored her cat Jasper and he adored
her, sleeping on the hospital bed Barb wheeled
into the living room so Georgia could look
toward the sea.
For all their variety
and experience and
loving ways,
For all the comforts of
somewhere other than home
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She loved, she adored. The words repeat
and repeat for a reason. Georgia was filled with
passions, enthusiasms, with love. She was gen­
erous with the objects she loved and with love
itself.
I always carry one of her stones in my pock­
et. It’s like holding Georgia’s hand, or holding
love.
Getting used to living in a world without
Georgia is going to be tough. I have one of her
beloved paperweights on my desk. It sits beside
the miniature typewriter Valerie Taylor gave
me not long before her death. Norma’s clock is
on the wall, chiming every hour, like Norma’s
voice urging: “Go get ’em, tiger."
Scooter called on our shared birthday. The
Blackberry Gals planned a dance at their place
on the bank of the river. For all their variety
and experience and loving ways, I love older
women.
■ LEE LYNCH is a writer who lives on the Oregon
const and cherishes her friends.
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