The Home For Wayward Cats

I know several people who are struggling with February, in terms of physical illness and mental health; and apparently I am one of them. February has felt like I'm slogging through sand. Or maybe, considering where I live, snow. Either way, I'd like to be done with it.

There are a lot of liberals/progressives out there that are big Bernie fans, but I am not one of them. This op-ed from Teen Vogue by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento perfectly encapsulates why I'm not that into him. (via forests_of_fire)



The problem with losing track of people you were friends with in the past is that sometimes you find out that they died. It shouldn't be unexpected, people die all the time, and as you get older, more and more of your age mates pass away.

It shouldn't be a surprise, but somehow, it still is.



These are my friends Angelique (in the back) and Jen (with the glasses), and their three kids.

Angelique was a friend of my ex's, and I was charmed by her bright personality and accent (she was from Curaçao). I don't remember if we knew Jen before they got together (our college was tiny) or if it was Angelique that brought Jen into our circle of friends. It doesn't matter, in the end.

But they met, and they fell in love, and they were out. This would have been '92 or so, and things were a lot different. New Mexico is weirdly liberal and conservative, and the college town we were in tended to fall on the conservative side of things, in spite of the addition of liberal-leaning professors from the college.

But being out back then, especially for two young women who were trying to establish careers in STEM, especially trying to establish their STEM careers in a state that relies heavily on government contracts, which means government clearances... Goverment clearances that required an in depth background check, and often times, if you were queer, you didn't get a clearance.

It was exceptionally brave. I lived in the little bubble of my college, liberal and open, and it wasn't so readily apparent how much nerve it took to be out.

They graduated, and moved up to Los Alamos to work at the national lab. We drifted apart. A few years later, we ran into Jen at a CostCo in Albuquerque. (New Mexico is a really small state, people-wise, and you were forever running into people you knew when you went to Abq, or Santa Fe, or where ever.) She told us (the ex and I) that she and Angelique had been fostering a set of brothers, and wanted to adopt them, but they were getting a lot of push back because they were lesbians.

I remember standing in a bustling CostCo and being so fucking mad because here were two good women willing to adopt these three brothers (all three of them, together) and they had the means to support them (both were engineers at Los Alamos at the time) and they weren't allowed to adopt because they were gay.

And in spite of promises to keep in touch, we didn't. We'd hear news through the extended grapevine of our college friends: so-and-so had seen Jen and/or Angelique somewhere, still together, still raising the three kids that they'd wanted to adopt. Eventually, my ex and I split, and I left New Mexico after living there for 20 years.

Tonight I was looking up some of the women in STEM I'd know in college, and when I tried to look up Jen, I found her obituary. Which, you know, it was a surprise that hurt. Someone I'd been friends with had died. Add in all the regrets about not staying in touch over the years...

But then I noticed that Jen's name was associated with a landmark legal case in New Mexico fighting for marriage equality. And that before she died, she and Angelique were legally married, twice. And knowing that Jen managed to make a difference, that she got to adopt those three kids and get married to Angelique, all that makes her passing a tiny bit easier to bear.

Representation matters, and I will always remember the courage that Jen and Angelique had in being out. For leading the way.