Well, Mother Goose Knew

Well, Mother Goose Knew

Mother Goose knew. So did the teachers, the priest, the nuns, all the aunts and uncles. They all knew and not one of them had the decency to tell me. Mother knew too, but she kept holding on to the idea that she could be wrong. As for me, I finally knew about the time I finished the sixth grade. I didn’t know that it had a name, because 1958 wasn’t a good year to use words like lesbian. All I knew was that girls were the thing for me and boys were just taking up space. I don’t recall having any interest in boys, except for the one who lived across the street from our house, but he really wasn’t a “boy” boy to me, he was a pal, someone to hang out with, but definitely never someone to hang on to. When a dark haired, brown-eyed girl moved in next door, well, I lost interest in him too.

I was born on a sunday, and just as the nursery rhyme goes,"Sunday's child is bonny and blythe, and .."