No Kids of My Own

Okay, so, I don't have kids of my own so maybe I don't fully understand it and being gay with no kids has definitely made me an outsider from my family with the exception of my eldest brother who is also gay with no kids. 

What I don't understand is why this means that no one in my family except my eldest gay brother shows any interest in my life whatsoever and those that have kids can only talk about their kids and not themselves. When their kids grow up, they seem to have no self with which to engage others and then just start asking for grandchildren or start talking about other people's kids. 

It is odd that I have friends with children who are perfectly capable of talking about themselves, subjects that interest them and, lo and behold, they are entirely capable of asking me about the myriad of activities and interests in my life. 

So friends, I thank you and to my family, who are entirely unlikely to be reading this, tell me about you and, if the spirit moves you, ask about me. I'm kind of awesome.

With love and frustration,

-Gillian Cornwall, March 2012

Vision

Today I walked home from the eye doctor, grateful for my vision. This is what I saw:

 

Work - Creative Non-Fiction by Gillian Cornwall

Work

The head volunteer for the silent auction was the least silent creature I'd encountered in ages. She entered the hotel lobby like a comet entering the earth's atmosphere - impossible to ignore and inciting fear amid the mere earthlings. Yes, she was an asteroid (emphasis on the "ass") made of Lucy Ricardo instead of stone and mean instead of funny. She terrified me at first but I quickly learned that while her trajectory was inevitable, I could choose to react to the circumstances in any way I pleased. My shoulders dropped from their position about my ears and my usual smile of contentment returned to my quiet face. 

It astounds me when I see volunteers engaged in a humanitarian effort, raising money for a nation that has been through earthquake and tsunami, vying for power and control.; particularly since they are not even being paid for the effort. As I said, I spent the day veering from the course of this Lucy asteroid and expending my energy on tasks such as skirting tables and making jokes about being unfit for such a task, not having put a skirt on my own body for at least a decade. 

I stood back and let the asteroid sputter and spit as needed, responding calmly and kindly to her spark and shrapnel with the hope that an infinitesimal ripple of calm might slow her path to a self-destructive heart attack. Perhaps my tactic worked. After she barked "You have to get past me first!" upon announcement of my imminent departure, she actually hugged me upon leaving. This left me gob-smacked. 

What does each person with whom we interact carry away with them and what do they leave behind with us? Millions and billions and trillions of energy exchanges occurring in each fleeting moment, changing the story of the world each and every time. Still, we speak of chaos as though it were something separate from ourselves , something for which we aren't, in fact, completely responsible. A large part, if not all, of this chaos we fear, this chaos we are trying to  align, is a direct result of our own words and actions. 

Are we simply creating the mess in order to give ourselves something to do, something to clean up? If so, it's not so much chaos as it is job creation.    

-Gillian Cornwall   c2011