bethofalltrades: (love is not all)
posted by [personal profile] bethofalltrades at 03:12pm on 31/08/2007 under , ,
Ten years since my mother woke me up with the words, "We've had some sad news from France."

A shared anniversary gives way to a personal one.

I spent much of my childhood in the woods with three children who belonged to my mother's friend, Rachel. Tommy Lee was two years younger, Echo was four and Cody was eight. Echo was my compatriot. I looked at her like a little sister. She was perfectly fine with letting me dress her up and take her picture and there are many photographs of her at age 9 or 10 in old bridesmaid dresses and her mother's shoes. (Her mother put a stop to our little hobby when we started staging and photography murder scenes in the basement.)

Their father was a drunk who was in and out of jail, for varying lengths of time. He was released a few days after Diana died and, once again, Rachel took him back, even though she'd said again and again that she wouldn't.

My mother had had enough and we stopped going to see them. I don't know if I knew how final it was, but days became weeks became months became... ten years. Huh.

My mom still runs into them every now and then.

I see the time of Princess Diana's death as the end of my childhood. Three months later I would start to come out, first to myself and then to others. I can't imagine how my life with "the kids" would have continued to exist after that. I suspect I wouldn't have come out at that point in time, had my time in the woods not given way to email and chat rooms where I found other gay people to guide me.

The timing of Diana's death and my break from my youth was a coincidence, but time has welded that coincidence into solid form.

I was too aware of Diana's death, but oblivious to the other things that slipped away from me late that August.

Love,
Beth

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