All the riches

It was pouring rain when Marian, Brenna and I left home at noon on August 2. But by the time we reached Mount Forest, the small Ontario town where Brenda and Judy live, and where their wedding would be held, the rain had stopped.

The Rainbow Chorus met under the tent at 1:30 so we could practice the two songs we had been asked to sing. A little more than half the choir, about 25 members, managed to attend despite summer plans and the Civic Holiday weekend.

I knew Judy and Brenda had a farm. They had invited my daughters and I to camp overnight if we wanted. I used to drive through Mount Forest. I thought I knew that part of Ontario. I was unprepared for the beauty of the place where they have lived for the past 20 years.

I hadn't been invited to a wedding in at least eight years. They used to depress me. They showed me a fantasy of happiness I never thought I could attain and made me ambiguously aware of my unspeakable loneliness.

Since then I have been deeply in love. I am single now, but having once felt such belonging with another person is somehow enough. Seeing two other people happy makes me happy, not miserable.

The wedding was attended by 155 people. Sarah and Laurie's adopted son, Richie, was the ring-bearer.

At 3 p.m. the sun came out. Brenda and Judy stepped out of the back door of their house in black tuxedos and approached the tent, hand in hand. Who would you expect to give the bride away after a relationship of 30 years?

They had written their own vows. Judy's were variations on traditional ones. Brenda's were entirely original. She is a jolly, friendly woman. Even with promptings from the minister, she could hardly squeeze the words out between laughter and tears.

During the ceremony, a small, brown butterfly danced over their heads, never quite landing anywhere.

These two women are obviously cherished by their families. It was wonderful to see. I have never attended such a joyous wedding. With all the other emotions, one of the proudest moments was when they went to sign the register, legalizing their marriage. Everyone cheered.

While waiting for the reception to start, Marian learned poi from Margie, a woman in the choir who lived in New Zealand for a year.



The reception was held on the lawn beside the stone and wood house Judy and Brenda built themselves with help from friends and family. They sat at a table with Brenda's cousin and Judy's sister overlooking the guests from the edge of their back patio.

The usual speeches were made, without the usual disparaging or off-colour humour. In fact, the speeches were far from usual. Instead of reflecting two separate lives, they recounted the relationship of two young women who met at University of Waterloo.

Judy needed a place to stay. Brenda offered her single bed to share. Judy knew what was happening first. She liked Brenda's motorcycle. That was 30 years ago.

They hid their feelings from their families for many years. When relatives came to stay, Judy would "give up" her bedroom and sleep in Brenda's. Having watched their easy rapport over the past year that I have known them, and now seeing the warm, welcoming home they have built together, it's hard to imagine anyone was ever fooled.

In fact, it's hard to imagine anyone could discount such relationships as somehow less sacred or valuable to society. But some people do. A Western Canadian Catholic Bishop claims Prime Minister Jean Chrétien will burn in hell for not opposing gay marriages.



After the reception, Brenda's sister gave a line dancing lesson on the patio. As darkness fell, the remaining guests drifted down to the lakeshore for a bonfire and singalong. Terrilyn and a couple relatives played guitars. Marian picked up a drum and kept beat to the music. Margie did fire poi in the dark. Brenna came and laid her head on my shoulder.

I was surprised when somebody asked to sing One Tin Soldier. Then something happened that has never happened before: I was the one person in the crowd who remembered all the words. I must have learned it for an assembly in primary school or something.

So the people of the valley sent a message up the hill
asking for the buried treasure, tons of gold for which they'd kill.
Came an answer from the kingdom: "With our brothers we will share
all the secrets of our mountain, all the riches buried there."

When I see how much Brenda and Judy mean to each other and the people like myself whose lives they have touched, I am happily reminded that homophobes simply haven't got a clue.

Auto-Haiku

This machine lifts phrases from your LJ and creates haikus out of them. The first one is so brutally true, I think it must have been written by a bunch of monkeys in a server somewhere.

I.

a date with myself
it all started because i
needed to get some


II.

this week yesterday
before the show the girls and
i left home at noon


III.

born in a poplar
bluff at night we can see the
lights of sandusky


To create your own haiku go here. I got this from classics_cat.

The morning after

The morning after Brenda and Judy's wedding I was wakened by green frogs croaking in the nearby lake. Brenna and Marian were still asleep, so I left them in the tent and explored the property. It was a damp and misty dawn.



Judy, a farm girl, likes to grow vegetables. The flower beds are Brenda's.



I wandered down their long farm lane and along the gravel road.



Mullein and queen-anne's-lace bloomed on the verge of a roadside marsh.



By the time I got back to the house, other overnight guests were emerging from their rooms and tents. We had a breakfast of leftover ham, potato salad and dessert pastries. Judy and Brenda got the last two pieces of chocolate cheesecake.

One by one, the guests bid farewell and left the newlyweds to tidy their stone farmhouse.

Dorset, Ontario, August 4

Jake

My friends Bob and Mark joined my daughters and I at the cottage for a couple days on August 3. They brought Jake, who is half Schnauzer, half Airedale terrier. He is a pleasant, quiet, easy-going dog, but likes to chase cats, so Potvin's relaxing sojourn at Lake Fletcher got disrupted for a couple days. He already spends half the summer under the bed anyway.

Mark says, if he could choose, he would like to be reincarnated as the dog of a gay couple. It's generally a pretty good life, certainly in Jake's case it is.

Robinson's General Store, Dorset, August 4

Lake Fletcher's dam

At the lower end of Fletcher Lake is a manmade dam. About 10 feet high, it exhibits the sole apparent purpose of keeping the lake's water level stable. Fletcher is about 1,300 feet above sea level and near the top of the local watershed. In high summer there is not much water overflowing, perhaps two or three gallons per second.

This part of Ontario lies near the southern edge of the Canadian Shield, a vast sheet of Precambrian rock covering more than half of Canada, most of Greenland and Northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. It was formed about 500 million years ago, and is the largest exposed landform of this age on Earth. It has been repeatedly uplifted and compressed and consists mostly of rolling hills. Repeated glaciation has left only thin topsoil.

Most of the bedrock around Lake Fletcher is pink granite, but a nearby extrusion of minerals has been quarried. It sat idle for many years and we used to collect rocks there. It contains white quartz, pink feldspar, biotite and some other minerals. Two years ago, a new owner started operating it again, and posted signs forbidding the unlawful removal of materials.

The quarry isn't far from the dam. If you look carefully in the streambed below, you can still find interesting minerals, particularly plates of black biotite mica. The river has worn the chunks smooth, but they easily split apart, exposing smooth surfaces shinier than glass. You can peel off thin, pliable, transparent sheets.

We visited the dam on August 4. While Mark picked through stones below the dam, Marian, Brenna, Bob and I explored the course of the stream. If we had all afternoon and the energy to cross rough terrain, we could follow it for miles through marshes and forests. It eventually drains into a larger body, Kawagama Lake.

Mark and Bob selected some interesting rocks to take home for their garden.

Above the dam



Pickerel-weed



Marian following the stream



Brenna at the dam

My favourite time of day, my favourite place