It was a perfect June evening to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival; it was the summer solstice in fact, and Father’s Day, as well. We gathered in my son and his wife’s new garden to admire their work: an intricate series of vegetable beds surrounded by flowers and berry plants, a fire pit in the middle and a play yard for three-year-old Nora. Two months ago it had been a grassy yard.

While my ”upstairs children” cavorted with their little cousin, who was completely captivated to have them in her yard for a change, we adults drank our adult beverages and talked over the intermittent motorcycles roaring off from a nearby stop light. “Another life saved,” my son remarked as each sped by. Conversation briefly turned to sound-deadening hedges and how long it would take to grow one.

But we weren’t here to talk about loud motorcycles. We’d come to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, along with the solstice and Father’s Day.

Falling on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month (June 14 this year) we were close enough. It’s an old holiday in China, 2,000 years old, commemorating the suicide of an admired poet, Qu Yuan, who threw himself into a river in despair over the capture of his city.

The local people raced out in their (dragon?) boats to try and retrieve his body. When they couldn’t find it, they dropped balls of sticky rice into the water to dissuade the fish from eating him.

Every culture certainly has it’s own unique stories. Think about some of our Western ones.

Hanji had fixed zhong zhis for us, the traditional sticky rice balls served at the Dragon Boat Festival. I’d first had them when her mother made them for us several years ago. She assembled uncooked rice, a cube of beef she’d simmered with spices, a hard-boiled egg and a mushroom onto a dried bamboo leaf, rolled it up and tied it with string into a little triangular package, dozens of them, then boiled them for hours in a big pot.

Sammeh’s were delicious, and so were Hanji’s last night. We topped them off with s’more’s around the fire pit, a nice blending of East and West, don’t you think?

When surrounded by my family these days, all of them a generation younger, I do more listening than talking. References to music, to movies, to friends, to Facebook skirmishes go right over my head. I’m grateful to have Don sitting next to me, a fellow traveler so to speak, from the same1940-50s childhoods. When the conversation shifted to the more substantive – to be honest, I may have brought it up – it definitely felt like “us against them”.

Just in the past week or so, I said, two self-described middle-aged white women spoke about the way young people introduce themselves these days as “a cis-gendered, white male”, or “a queer, black woman” or “a non-binary Latina” or whatever, adding “my pronoun is he/him” or “they/them”. As if the white male or black woman wasn’t obvious. Or for that matter, wasn’t their own designation of “middle-aged white women” just as obvious?

What’s going on? Why so much emphasis on gender identity? Or, as my friend and I said to each other privately later, “why should we care about anyone else’s sex life?”

These beloved sons and D-I-Ls of mine explained in the kindest way, how important it is that people – trans people particularly – are known for whom they really are. Not what we may think they are, but who they know themselves to be. “There’s deep emotional hurt when someone isn’t recognized by others,” my therapist son explained.

I certainly get that. Inclusiveness, acceptance is a theme no caring person should ignore. I hope I don’t. Still. Does it really need to be so public?

LGBTQ ­– Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning. Wow. And what’s cis gender? I thought I knew, but checked Wikipedia anyway: cis meanswhen a person’s identity is the same as their birth sex. None of this is new; it’s always been there, through history these variations in sexuality, in gender identity – how people see themelves – has been part of our humanity. Native tribes understood the concept and even had a name for those who manifested it: two spirits in one.

Just as I had to learn to use a computer as an adult, understanding the alphabet of gender identity is a pretty new concept. Not so for my offspring in their 40s. What is a foreign language to me is a comfortable second language to them. To their children, reaching into their teens now, it’s their mother tongue. Though I’m pretty sure little Nora doesn’t get gender identity yet, she has a better understanding of YouTube than I’ll ever have.

I do understand the need for a young person, finding herself unable to relate to the “opposite” sex in the “normal” way society expects, to reveal herself. Because she can. Today she can. When I was her age, if I’d been confused or uncertain about such things, who could I have told? I’d have felt abnormal, frightened, and ultimately would have buried feelings that allowed no outlet. Society offered no support.

Either that or veered off the track my family expected of me, as did the brave men and women I’ve met along the way, the ones who chose to follow the path that led to their own true selves. I can only imagine what they must have endured as they revealed their sexuality to their own beloved parents and siblings.

Sitting on the deck overlooking Hanji and Andy’s brand-new garden last evening as my offspring and I struggled to understand each other’s point of view, it could have been 1968. There we were, my brother and I, fresh out of college and full of the certainties of that time, arguing with our elders about the wisdom of Vietnam. Tempers were escalating until finally Aunt Eileen burst out, “My country right or wrong!” Or something to that effect. Discussion over.

We thought we knew it all. Free love, civil rights, the generation gap. Our parents would never understand what was so clear to us. Some families fractured for good over the upheaval of the sixties, but most survived the tumult. Mine did. It probably was the first generation to really challenge the certainties that governed society then. Duty and obedience to elders, learning from their wisdom. My parents, most of our parents, had themselves been raised by the Victorians, that rigid, rule-following crowd of early 20th century life.

As usual, I no doubt exaggerate and gloss over a lot to make my point here, and certainly there were no announcements of “my way or the highway” last night. No, I think we have learned to listen better and to try to understand the changes that are coming faster and faster. One thing I do know for sure is that one day my children will hear similar words, though about issues I can’t even imagine, from their kids. As my mother told me more than once, “I’m going to be laughing up in heaven when it happens to you!”

Vaccination Sweepstakes

If you’re a Maine resident and have received at least one dose of your COVID-19 vaccine by the end of June, the State of Maine is offering a Vaccinationland Sweepstakes. The winner will receive $1 for every person vaccinated in Maine by July 4.  The current prize amount is $882,879.  You can find out more details and register here. Again, you can register for the sweepstakes no matter when you got your vaccine up until the end of June.  Apparently, since the sweepstakes prize has been announced over 100,000 more people have signed up to get their dose, meaning the prize money keeps going up!

Library

The Library is almost back to normal with current hours of Tuesday, 3-6 p.m., Wednesday, 2-5 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. to noon. Needleworkers, you’re meeting Tuesday, 3-5 p.m.

The Library’s book group is up and running again with the following books this summer:

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. Winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize, the novel is based on the extraordinary life of Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and helped lead the fight against Native American dispossession. Discussion date: Tuesday, July 27 at 5 p.m.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. Poignant and charming, the book could have readers both laughing and crying as it tells about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears, and eight extremely anxious strangers. Discussion date: Tuesday, August 17 at 5 p.m.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, a powerful novel that begins with the stories of two half-sisters born in different villages in 18th Century Ghana and traces the lives of their descendants, from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi.  Discussion date: Tuesday, September 21 at 5 p.m.

Soup Cafe

Soup Cafe will be held three Thursdays a month going forward, not on the first Thursday of each month. Join us at noon on the other Thursdays at the Community Building for a bowl of soup and company at the table

Condolences

I was so sorry to hear of the unexpected death of Tom Sadowski last week. Tom’s great sense of humor kept us laughing, starting with the day he appeared at the Bicentennial Committee meeting at the Town office back in 2000 with the first of his many designs for the new Town Seal. Those efforts live on in the form of T-shirts so many of us saved. The book he was working on with his Free Press columns will be coming out soon. Tom will be missed.

Tornado?

Many people were startled Saturday afternoon by their phones alerting them to a possible tornado. Though a brief, violent thunderstorm blew through town (1/4” of rain in two minutes was reported on the LBB), at this point meteorologist Margaret Curtis of the National Weather Service in Gray/Portland says at this point they are not categorizing that storm as a tornado. So far, reported damage and photos/videos don’t support a tornado. However, several photos of what appears to be a tornado over Nortons Pond have been sent to the NWS. Ms Curtis says they would be interested in any reports of damage that occurred from that storm that might show that the tornado did touch down. Call her at 688-3216.

By the way, as most of us know, tornadoes are quite rare in Maine; about two a year are reported for the whole state.