Travis Street Circle

Since someone bought my old blog address and won't relinquish it, I'm going to publish some of my old blog posts here. This is one I am particularly  proud of and one that won a nice award.

When my mother moved back to Dallas in 1989 she bought this town home. It's a gorgeous place, one that almost takes your breath away when you walk in. The street was one that had been taken over by architecturally designed town homes that were mostly higher end and populated by people without children. In general, the people in those town homes were older, retired, or better off young professionals. It was close-ish to the predominantly gay area in Dallas, so there were several gay couples as well. The street was named Travis Street and it was also the street on which my first home stood, 40 years ago last month.
We used to see one of those gay couples out walking every day. Well, one would walk and push the other in a wheelchair. Their love and devotion to each other was clear and I remember thinking that I hoped I would find that sort of devotion someday, too. Unless you've experienced what it's like to take care of a once healthy partner, I don't think the sacrifice is truly imaginable. This couple continued to take their walks, to slowly make their way down the street to get a glimpse of the life outside, traveling the street as any couple would who had been together for a long time.
And then, the man in the wheelchair died. This was sad enough and devastating, I am sure, for his partner. But the sadness was not to end to there, nor was the devastation going to be small. Instead of being allowed to grieve in his own home, surrounded by his own memories of times had in loving company, the family of the man who died, the man who owned the home and its contents in legal name only, unceremoniously kicked the grieved partner out onto the street. How could they do such a thing? Easy: with all legal recourse. They didn't care that the man they were throwing out onto the street has cared for their relative when they were nowhere to be seen; he had assuredly cleaned up after the inevitable failures of the man's body and had still found a way to push him down the street every single day. They didn't care that the man they were throwing out had loved their relative as they clearly never had, nor did they care that this man was a human being. No, what mattered most to them was that they had legal right to their relative's property and they were finally allowed to force their sanctimonious judgment onto the man who had deeply loved someone they were a part of through biology. It was more than sad, it was heart wrenching.
I was 20 when my mom moved into our Travis Street town home, and so very glad to be back in Dallas. I had so much family here, you see. Not "blood" family, but adopted family. These were people I had known my whole life and had loved deeply for as long as I could remember. Two of those people were a couple that had come to define the truth of lasting commitment and love to me; coincidentally, they had lived on Travis Street when I was a baby and had also moved back to Travis Street when I was in my teens. These two people had helped raise me when my mother had no idea what to do with a teensy baby and they had loved me as their own when I was a lonely kid without brothers and sisters. They had always taken an interest in me and my life and there was never a harsh word from either of them in my direction or anyone else's. When I married, Uncle Jack gave me a piece of his mother's chrystal since they did not have any children of their own. It meant more to me than any other gift we received and I am afraid I was not able to adequately put that feeling into words when I saw Uncle Jack at my wedding.

That was the last time I saw him. We went back to Santa Fe then moved to Montana, where I learned that Uncle Jack had died. It was as if someone had punched me in the gut and then kicked me repeatedly when I heard the news. Unfortunately, I was not the only person left to mourn for Uncle Jack, far from it. Aside from the multitude of friends they had made and loved through the years, there was the person who meant the most to him and the other half of the couple who had taught me what it means to stay together because there is more love in the world united than there is apart. This partner of Uncle Jack's was my darling, wonderful, Uncle Travis.

I still think of them as "Uncles" because they were closer to me than any of my blood relatives. I'm far too old to call Travis or Jack "uncle," but it still comes to my mind first when I think of either of them. I am ashamed to say that I don't know how Travis has been outside of the odd cursory email, though I think about him often. I owe them both a huge debt of gratitude for being such a large part of my life, especially the formative years of my childhood. I don't know if I would have turned out to be as accepting and compassionate if it had not been for Jack and Travis. I certainly wouldn't have had an intimate portrait of true commitment since my parents and the parents of just about everyone I knew divorced when we were kids. Not Jack and Travis, though; they stayed together through it all.

The ironic part of the commitment shared by Jack and Travis is the fact that they were never allowed to legally marry. They were never recognized as loving, devoted partners by the country in which they lived, having to rely on the grace of their friends to understand the deeper meaning of the love they shared. They didn't need a legal ceremony or recognition to share that love, but they should not have been forced to do without it by people who did not have a stake in their lives. It is deeply shameful to think that we live in a country where something as sublime and rare as lasting love is treated with such contempt. Love is not the weapon; love is the only salve.

Going back to Travis street, there was another gay couple who lived on that street whom we knew and still know. I won't name them as I do not know if they would want me to, but they are still together, still in love, and still living on Travis street. They are another testament to the power of love over the power of rejection and hatred from people who clearly do not know better. I'd like to think that the people who would condemn any of these men (and women) I've known would do so simply because they do not know better. I'd like to think that if they had the opportunity to know a Jack or a Travis or any of the others from my life they would be better for it and their lives would simply be more filled with love and happiness.

I have hope for our future as an accepting society of autonomous individuals. I have hope because I've seen what we can do when we need to and when we want to. It is for Uncle Jack that I will never stop fighting for the rights of all people. It is for Uncle Travis that I will never stop proclaiming that civil liberties are not liberties if they only apply to some people. It is for every gay couple who has been harassed and told their love was not true because it was not "traditional" that I will continue to hold onto the hope that we are good people; we are people who will learn. We will learn because we know what it is to have to hope and we know what it is to see our hopes turn into actuality. I have this hope because I've known Jack and Travis. I call the hope they gave me love.