Putting a human face on the unfamiliar
Yesterday some friends of mine stopped by out of the blue – I’ve been meaning to get together with them and tell them the new developments in my life but time has gone by without taking the opportunity to do so. They are both in retirement mode – he retired last year, and she was supposed to but stayed on another year to help her boss through a transition. When they came to the door, I was just starting to make a bolognese sauce and T was working on her copyedits at the dining room table. I sort of ushered them to the screen porch dangling glasses of cold rose to entice them to follow me. Once we sat down, glasses in hand, a toast to finally catching up, I told them about T and me. They paused, and one made the comment that I “would be back to men in five years.” She snapped at him: “no she won’t, this is a life commitment” and then she looked at me and said, “Rachel, Rachel, you of all people I would have never for a million years suspected you would be with a woman because you are the most man crazy person I have ever met.” As they digested the news, T came onto the porch and sat down, and as usual, within minutes, her warmth charmed them and when she went back to her work, they both said, “I really like her.” You fall in love with the person, not the ideology. I fell in love with T the moment I saw her and lucky for me the getting to know her has made that love explode exponentially – I could say it doesn’t matter what her gender is, but I can’t imagine her being anything but a woman.