Leaving the Garden

When Adam and Eve left the garden, story began. When they walked away from the safety of their own small world, they opened themselves to exposure to other ways of experiencing and thinking. Their story became mingled with others’ stories that were different from their own. There was no going back; no putting the story back in the box.

And so it goes still. With the invention of boats and planes and spaceships, telegraphs and telephones and the internet; the stories of one people meet the stories of another and converge into a collective story. Try as we might, they cannot again be separated.

Another 50th anniversary of an opening of story this month: the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was ten years old, living in this same house I am again living in. Then as now, the vine maple leaves were turning red and gold; the sun rose behind the mountain over the fog-filled valley; fir needles, cherry and big leaf maple leaves covered the driveway. What I remember about the days and months following the disclosure of those thirteen days would almost fill a matchbox. “Duck and cover” drills, as if getting under a desk would protect one from nuclear fallout. The information that people were putting bomb shelters in their homes with supplies to last a few weeks, as if one would want to outlive the world. But I knew nothing of that ridiculousness then. We were doing what we could as the story exploded to include new stories that we couldn't understand.

If the Crisis was discussed in my family or in my fifth grade classroom (both of which I doubt), I do not remember. Such things were not talked about with children, perhaps appropriately. There

is an instinct to let children stay in the garden of innocence as long as possible. I wonder if my parents talked about it to each other, or if they wanted to stay in the garden, too. Afterall, they had already lived through the depression and a world war. Didn’t they deserve time in the garden of denial in the safety of their small town, cocooned with their children in their home on the side of a hill overlooking a bucolic valley?

But whatever the personal stories, the world left the garden again when the story of how close we came to ending the narrative came to light. I think it may be true that we have not really been able to return to that particular illusion of safety since.

It is so hard to leave the garden we know. I understood that the Lenten rose in my North Carolina garden would bloom around Easter and the blooms would hang beneath the leaves, changing colors all summer, and new growth would come from the ground in the fall. I knew the winter jasmine would bloom bright yellow in the dead of otherwise colorless winter. I knew the gardenia would perfume the air when it got hot. Then I planted a banana tree. I had no idea how that would change the garden. I had no clue yet how to take care of it. Each plant I added to the garden, changed its story; changed my story. And, yes, it made care of the garden more complex. And the complexity made it more beautiful.

We are just sixteen days from a historic vote in the state of Washington. The 42nd state is poised to become the first state in the union to provide, by popular vote, all people the opportunity to marry. Nothing really will change, in practice, for LGBT couples－ Washington already has a comprehensive domestic partnership law. What will be different is that one more stand for equality will be made. And the story will move on toward the day when no one thinks about discriminating against a portion of the population.

And there is resistance. It is the narrative of our society through the decades. Women fight for equality, and men resist leaving the garden. Blacks fight for equality, and whites resist leaving the garden. People who are gay fight for equality, and people who are straight resist leaving the garden. We want to keep the story simple, familiar, and understandable. And so, like duck and cover, we fight back with ridiculousness; because it is all we have in the face of inevitable change.

Stories, like that my 96-year-old mother told a reporter this week about how discrimination is wrong and that everyone should be able to marry the one they love, won't change minds. Not immediately. But when we articulate our experience, and when it is written down for others to read, it becomes story. And it joins with our neighbor's story. And our collective story transforms the world. When we leave our small garden to join another's exodus from their small garden, we plant a bigger garden－one that holds us all.

Dancing in the Garden of Delight

I arrived early for the ceremony. Two weeks early. I got to help with the preparation for this most special of weddings. It was such a privilege to work side-by-side (though they mostly were 80 miles away) with these two remarkable women﹣one of whom is heart of my heart, born of my womb. Emma took the foundation her father and I gave her and is building a skyscraper. And Wynne, her building-a-life partner, has stretched my heart to bursting.

When one of my sisters asked me if I felt like the mother of the bride, I had to ponder. Of course, I have never been the mother of the bride before, so I don't know what that feels like really. But not like this, I don't think. My other sister, who has been living near the garden through the many months of preparing for this day and has been the on-site mother figure since Emma moved to Washington some years ago, inhabits that traditional role more than I. My mother, who has worked the garden for five decades, has been involved from the beginning, while I was 2500 miles away. Wynne's mother, Carolyn, is the mother of the also-bride; and Emma has been her daughter, too. Emma's step-mother, Laura, has mothered and loved Emma for many years. No, I don't feel like the mother of the bride in the time-honored sense. What I feel right down through my core to my toes is family of the couple.

Wedding day in the garden at my mother's house﹣and now mine again for a while﹣is a spectacularly beautiful day sandwiched between two damp and chilly days. The benches and porta-potties are delivered; the signs that were created over weekends in Centralia on window panes and driftwood, chosen from my family's vast collection over the decades, are placed; round rocks chosen from Washington beaches and kept in crates and cans under the shed for 40 years are pulled out to designate seating reserved for family; tables are arranged under strings of light in the driveway, hung by Emma's dad and brothers, and adorned with candles and flowers cut from the garden or brought by friends from Seattle's Pike Place Market, all placed in cut off wine bottles; reception dinner food has been purchased, and preparation has been done by many of Wynne's and Emma's moms and aunts and a cousin or so. The box for the wine box ceremony, made by Emma's dad, is in its place of honor, waiting to receive the letters of encouragement from the guests, to be read when Wynne and Emma need such words.

The wedding party﹣six of the couple's friends from the stages of their lives; and six children, including my eldest grandson and five of the small people Emma and Wynne have cared for as nannies who, along with their parents, have joined their ever-expanding family﹣are gathered in front of 80 or so friends and family members who have come from all over the country, carrying flowers gathered from the garden and along the road. The minister﹣Emma's youth minister and dear friend ﹣gives lollypops to the six children. And that sets the tone. This is not your run-of-the mill celebration.

The ceremony is beautiful and inspirational, as weddings are. I shed tears as, in the words Katherine speaks as to why they chose this garden to speak their love to one another before witnesses and in their covenant statements to one another, they honor my mother and my father and the place of love they built for me and my sisters and their grandchildren. But above all, it is delightful. The wedding party, including the older children, share the reading of a children's book, beloved by Emma and Wynne; and, I suspect, read often on babysitting days and evenings. 

If I were asked what is different about the love of these two women, I would skip right over the obvious fact that there is no groom. Although the pride of Emma's 96-year-old Nana to welcome Wynne to the family; and the unconditional acceptance by Emma and Wynne's vast (and non-traditional) families and network of dear friends from all parts of their journeys to this place must be noted here. And what does it mean that it is unmissable that they love each other﹣every wedding features a love-obvious duo, hopefully. They clearly adore each other﹣and I love that word. But what strikes me most deeply, that I rarely have seen in other couples, is their delight in one another. The children's book says everything that needs to be said.

I like you
And I know why
I like you because
You are a good person
To like

I like you because
When I tell you something special
You know it’s special
And you remember it
A long long time

You say remember when you told me
Something special
And both of us remember

When I think something is important
You think it’s important too
We have good ideas

When I say something funny
You laugh
I think I’m funny and
You think I’m funny too

You know how to be silly
That’s why I like you
Boy are you ever silly
I never met anybody sillier than me till I met you

I like you because
You know when it’s time to stop being silly
Maybe day after tomorrow
Maybe never
Oops too late
It’s a quarter past silly

That’s because
You really like me
You really like me
Don’t you
And I really like you back
And you like me back
And I like you back
And that’s the way we keep on going
Every day

And I like you because
When I am feeling sad
You don’t always cheer me up right away
Sometimes it is better to be sad
You want to think about things
It takes time

If you find two four-leaf clovers
You give me one
If I find four
I give you two
If we only find three
We keep on looking
Sometimes we have good luck
And sometimes we don’t

I like you because
I don’t know why but
Everything that happens
Is nicer with you
I can’t remember when I didn’t like you
It must have been lonesome then

I like you for so many reasons

On the Fourth of July I like you because
It’s the Fourth of July
On the Fifth of July
I like you too

If you and I had some drums
And some horns and some horses
If we had some hats and some
Flags and some fire engines

We could be a HOLIDAY
We could be a CELEBRATION
We could be a WHOLE PARADE
See what I mean?

Even if it was the twenty first of July
Even if it was the nine hundred and ninety-ninth of July
Even if it was August
Even if it was way down at the bottom of November
Even if it was no place particular in January

I would go on choosing you
And you would go on choosing me
Over and over again
That’s how it would happen every time
Because I like you

(Excerpted from I Like You, a children's book by Sandol Stoddard Warburg)