How A Choir Leader And A Conscious Girlfriend

Academy Zoom Class Changed Margaret's Life

When her husband Charles died, Margaret began to walk. 

Not just strolls through the neighborhood, but long, looping

pilgrimages out beyond the edge of town—past where the

trees leaned close enough to listen.

Charles had not believed in God or "signs," but Margaret did.

After he died, she felt messages whispering to her from

corn stalks, and in the sudden hush after a train passed. It

was in one of those hushed moments that she remembered,

"As a girl, I liked to sing."

So she followed the corn stalks to a church called All Souls,

where a woman about her age was leading the choir. Miriam

was short, with a compact body, a wild bush of gray-black

hair, and a voice that made the floorboards hum.

Normally, Margaret would have been intimidated. Instead, emboldened by a part of her she didn't even recognize, she

asked Miriam if she could join the choir. 

Miriam said yes. Then she laughed, said, “We need more

altos with guts.”

They sang together. They drank coffee. Often they'd each

take some snacks after practice and go into the corner to

chat. Margaret found herself leaning toward Miriam, drawn

to the warmth radiating from her hands. At night, she could hardly wait for the next day to come, so she could see

Miriam.

Winter passed and the church held a peach festival.

with tables and chairs scattered through the orchard, and

young girls carrying pitchers of iced peach tea. Sitting at a

picnic table, Margaret and Miriam found themselves alone.

Miriam was eating a peach, unselfconsciously catching the

drops of peach juice with her finger and bringing them to 

her mouth. Margaret felt a sudden impulse to lean forward

and kiss the peach juice from Miriam's lips. 

Instead, she forced herself to speak.

 “I think I’ve fallen in love with you,” she said. “I don’t know

what to do.”

Miriam put her hand over Margaret’s and held it there. “That’s

an honor,” she said, softly. “But I can’t return it."

That night, there was a sudden temperature drop. As the chill

wind blew outside the house, Margaret sat by her husband’s

urn and wondered if grief could be a circle, if you could ever

walk far enough to leave it behind.

I’m too old to start over, she thought. I should have known

better. Maybe I don’t belong anywhere anymore.

She opened her laptop without knowing why, typed blindly

into the search bar:
 

“lesbian late in life grief help”
 

Among the links, one stood out:
The Conscious Girlfriend Academy: Courses for Women

Coming Out Later in Life.

The page glowed like a candle in the dark. You're not alone,

it said. There’s nothing wrong with your timing.
 

Impulsively, with the same part of her that wanted to lean

forward and put her lips to Miriam's face, Margaret pressed

the button and signed up for a course called Coming Out & 

Coming Home. A course, a community, a place

that wouldn't ask her to explain the years she hadn’t known

what she’d wanted.

She showed up bright and early when the online class began. 

She didn't know what she'd expected, but the women in all

the Zoom boxes onscreen seemed like women she would

have met anywhere -- kind, thoughtful, regular-looking. Most

were in their 50s and 60s, but there was a handful in their

70s, and one who said she was 81. 

She could have met them in church or at a volunteer event

at the library, and never have known the one thing they all

had in common: the desire to experience romantic love

with a woman.

"I've known since I was five," one said, "But I had to wait till 

after my parents died because I couldn't face disappointing

them."

"I never even thought about it until after my husband died,"

another said.

"I never thought about it either, until I met a choir leader and

we sat together under a peach tree," Margaret said to her

surprise, and all the women laughed -- but it was a good

laughter. They got it.

"Mmm, romantic! No wonder you fell for her!" said Jean, the

woman who was 81. She was vibrant and looked younger,

with a warm, kind face. Margaret found herself blushing.

After that first meeting, Margaret thought back to her

grammar and high school years. The female teachers

she'd had crushes on. Three girls in a row who'd been her

best friends, and how hard it had been for her each time

one of got a boyfriend and left the friendship behind. 

She hadn't dated much. She'd never been boy-crazy. When 

Charles came along, he was kind enough, and it made sense

to marry him -- but now she saw he'd never made her heart

skip a beat the way Miriam had... or even, she realized, that

woman in the new group, Jean. 

When she walked that night, she was struck by all the 

greenness everywhere -- fields, trees, bushes, the perky 

leaves of tulips and daffodils. It seemed like the entire world

was blooming. On impulse, she cut a red tulip, put it in a 

blue vase, and placed it right on the center of the kitchen

table. "You are my heart," she told it. "And you are blooming."