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."