Visitors and Visiting

Our second visitor was here for two days this week. A lovely woman who I had not met until she drove through the gate. Beth edited Sinister Wisdom 2 and Sinister Wisdom 11. We had a lovely few days together talking about art, creativity, and writing. It was lovely. My new favorite thing is serving dinner and breakfast on the lanai. It is perfect for entertaining (and will be even more so when I renovate the kitchen). It is fun to sit out there for hours, talking, letting the dogs in and out, listening to the trickle of the pond.

On Friday, I will be visiting for a few days, seeing friends old and new out in San Francisco. Having visitors and being a visitor are two sides of the same coin. Though being a visitor, I will miss the canine and feline crew, but I appreciate the break from their intense love and affection.

Hosting people reminds me of how much I enjoy I having a home where people can gather and how much I missed such gatherings over the past year. It is nice to reconnect with that part of our lives. It is also nice to have problem solving skills back. One of the challenges of the trauma of the past year was losing the ability to make decisions and feeling competent moving through the world. Small decisions too often overwhelmed me. Apparently, no longer. Yesterday, when going out to dinner, my car would not start. Then coming home, the light over the gate went out. Three months ago, this would have reduced me to tears and despair. This morning, I got the car to a mechanic, and it will be all fixed tomorrow. Then the light magically went back on, but even if it goes out again, I will get it repaired. We will have a home where we can happily host visitors and house lesbian books and artifacts and publish new things into the world as well as safely house rescue dogs and abandoned kittens (and I still hope at some point a goat or two and a flock of chicks). All to say, I am invested again in building a home and a life. Visitors are a part of that imagined life.

Visitors and visiting make me think of Barbara Grier and her visitors and friendships from her home base in Tallahassee. My vision of Grier is enhanced by the great new biography of her by Joanne Passet. I reviewed it for Lambda Literary (you can read it here) and commend the book to you. The book is a beautiful object to behold and a delicious treat to explore the life of an extraordinary lesbian. Grier prompts me to up my game as a correspondent, host, and guest. Grier reminds me that there is work to be done in the world on behalf of lesbians and literature and I have to do part of that work.