The Milk of Human Kindness Read online

  The Milk of Human Kindness: Lesbian Authors Write about Mothers and Daughters

  Copyright © 2004 by Lori L. Lake, Editor

  Praise for The Milk of Human Kindness

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Preface 2011

  Introduction 2004

  Train Tracks

  The Tuesday Before Thanksgiving

  A Mother Just Knows

  Hiding in Plain Sight

  Winterreise

  Jeanie

  Color Blind

  Long Way Home

  Mother Memoir: A Coming Out Story

  Grandmother's Cup

  Dangling Earrings

  The Bright Side

  The Awakening

  That Way

  Don't Ask, Don't Tell...The Day My Mother Broke the Silence

  Lost Daughter

  World Without End

  Damaged Goods

  Disconnected

  Ramblings of a Lesbian Daughter

  Girl Talk

  June Hunter

  Contributor Bibliographies

  Copyright Information

  Other Collections You May Enjoy

  The Milk of Human Kindness

  Lesbian Authors Write about

  Mothers and Daughters

  The 2011 Editor’s Edition

  Edited by Lori L. Lake

  Copyright © 2004 by Lori L. Lake, editor

  Individual author copyright notices found at the conclusion

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted n any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Parts of this work are fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, or events is entirely coincidental. The publisher takes no responsibility and will not be held liable for the views and opinions expressed herein in regards to relationships between the authors and their families.

  e-ISBN: 978-1-935053-64-4

  Cover design by Donna Pawlowski

  Art Direction by Lori L. Lake

  Print Version Originally Published by:

  Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC

  PMB 210, 8691 9th Avenue

  Port Arthur, Texas 77642-8025

  Find us on the World Wide Web at

  http://www.regalcrest.biz

  Praise for The Milk of Human Kindness

  The Lambda Book Report

  This collection of [pieces], some fiction and some memoir, about “love and loss, happiness and heartbreak” would be a great gift to any mother struggling with her daughter’s sexuality, any friend with a mother, anyone who has lost a mother, literally or figuratively… One of the great things about this collection is that it doesn’t only focus on daughters. The stories that take into account the mother’s point of view are particularly insightful. Some of these writers are especially adept at showing a mother’s confusion about her daughter’s lifestyle or fear of the pain this path will bring the child.

  Books To Watch Out For

  In The Milk of Human Kindness, edited by the popular Lori L. Lake, lesbian writers use both fiction and memoir to address that delicate relationship between mothers and their dyke daughters. I found the nonfiction essays to be the most moving, including essays by Ellen Hart, Katherine V. Forrest, J.M. Redmann, and Therese Szymanski – or perhaps mystery writers are uniquely qualified to plumb mother-daughter relationships? But romance and adventure writers Karin Kallmaker and Radclyffe also weigh in with insightful memoirs. But sometimes the invented mothers offer more hope? Consider the cheeky advice-giving stand-in mom from the long-time not-heard-from Caro Clarke, the author of The Wolf Ticket (one of my five favorite lesbian novels the year it was published). And perhaps fiction is the best medium for the complex family drama of aging parents offered by Lori Lake, the quintessential closeted family visit described by Julia Watts, or Jennifer Fulton's certainly-not-legal daughter-mother collusion. In any case, it’s a fine collection that addresses a wide variety of experiences.

  Just About Write.com

  Carefully chosen to show various facets of the mother-daughter relationship, The Milk of Human Kindness anthology offers observations, reflections, and experiences from an accomplished group of lesbian writers. Some tales are fictional and entertain and inform the reader. Comparing one's own experiences to those of the various characters provides a special treat.

  Independent Gay Writer

  The Milk of Human Kindness is about the most important relationship of all—our first real relationship that means the difference between life and death—the relationship we have with our mothers. Each author has added her own personal touch and writing style. It was enlightening and enjoyable to read each story as a separate entity and be able to relate to them all. …The Milk of Human Kindness should be included on the syllabus of every Human Sexuality and Women in Literature course; it should be required reading along with Betty Freidan and Simone de Beauvoir.

  The Milk of Human Kindness

  Lesbian Authors Write about

  Mothers and Daughters

  Edited by Lori L. Lake

  Dedication

  Once upon a time, in very recent history,

  there were no books celebrating lesbians.

  We dedicate this collection to all the women

  who never had lesbian stories to read,

  and we hope girls and women never again

  lack for stories that reflect their lives and times.

  ***

  Table of Contents

  Preface 2011

  Lori L. Lake

  Introduction 2004

  Lori L. Lake

  1…...Train Tracks

  Fiction by Cameron Abbott

  2……The Tuesday Before Thanksgiving

  Fiction by Georgia Beers

  3……A Mother Just Knows

  Fiction by Meghan Brunner

  4……Hiding in Plain Sight

  Memoir by Carrie Carr

  5……Winterreise

  Fiction by Caro Clarke

  6……Jeanie

  Memoir by Katherine V. Forrest

  7……Color Blind

  Fiction by Jennifer Fulton

  8……Long Way Home

  Fiction by Gabrielle Goldsby

  9……Mother Memoir: A Coming Out Story

  Memoir by Ellen Hart

  10……Grandmother’s Cup

  Fiction by Lois Cloarec Hart

  11……Dangling Earrings

  Fiction by Karin Kallmaker

  12……The Bright Side

  Fiction by Lori L. Lake

  13……The Awakening

  Fiction by Lee Lynch

  14……That Way

  Fiction by S X Meagher

  15……Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell or...The Day My Mother Broke the Silence

  Memoir/Essay by Radclyffe

  16……Lost Daughter

  Memoir by J.M. Redmann

  17……World Without End

  Memoir by Jean Stewart

  18……Damaged Goods

  Fiction by Cate Swannell

  19……Disconnected

  Memoir by Therese Szymanski

  20……Ramblings of a Lesbian Daughter

  Memoir by Talaran

  21……Girl Talk

  Fiction by Julia Watts

  22……June Hunter

  Fiction by Kelly A. Zarembski

  Contributor Bibliographies

  Copyright Information

  ***

 
Preface

  An Update for the 2011 Electronic Edition

  I have long wanted to make this collection more widely available in electronic form so that readers around the world could enjoy the work of the many amazing women in this collection. But the prospect of securing permissions and converting the book seemed daunting. At long last, seven years after the anthology first made its appearance, I’ve finally managed to work through the red tape. Twenty-one of the original twenty-three authors are featured in this, the “Editor’s Cut” version of The Milk of Human Kindness. To make up for reduction in pieces, I was able to obtain a story from trail-blazing author, Lee Lynch, which I think you’ll find quite entertaining. That rounds out the collection to 22 thought-provoking and compelling pieces about mothers and daughters.

  The contributor biographies have been updated with current information, and all of the author bibliographies have also been updated with new books published through 2011. I have included website information wherever it was available so that readers can contact these writers if they desire.

  I hope you will enjoy this collection as much as I have enjoyed working on it.

  Lori L. Lake

  Portland, Oregon

  August, 2011

  ***

  Introduction

  The conception of this anthology took place in the dark, late at night, in a dream. I awakened at two o’clock in the morning with a directive ringing in my ears: “Put out a call for submissions for stories about mothers, and you will name the book The Milk of Human Kindness.” The voice sounded male. Insistent. And very bossy. I rolled over and fell back to sleep.

  Somewhere around four a.m. the voice awakened me once more, but this time, I was feeling groggy and rather cranky, and I didn’t want to listen to this shrill crank who was interrupting my slumber. My partner woke up and asked me to please stop thrashing around. I tried to, but every time I slipped off to sleep, I heard the voice: Milk. Milk. Human kindness... Call for submissions…

  At five a.m. when Diane rose to get ready for work, I said, “I’ve had some really odd dreams. You’re not going to believe this, but I think I’m going to put together an anthology and call it The Milk of Human Kindness. I’ve been dreaming about it all night.” Diane’s response was to roll her eyes and say, “That’s all you need—another project. But if it means you’ll sleep better, by all means do it. I would certainly like to get a good night’s sleep for once.”

  I didn’t act right away on this message from beyond and continued to have the same dream, so finally I got out my Shakespeare plays and hunted through MacBeth for the phrase, “the milk of human kindness.” The heartless Lady MacBeth, who easily out-evils many male villains, worries that her husband is “too full o' the milk of human kindness/To catch the nearest way.” In other words, she’s not sure MacBeth has the guts to go for the glory. She intimates that she can make any sacrifice and that she will work to move her husband forward under any circumstances. It’s such a reversal of all that we so often expect from a woman, a mother, a wife. A mother is supposed to be unselfish, caring and nurturing, full to the brim with love and kindness. What better typifies that than a woman giving her milk to an infant in a literal sharing of body and self?

  On one end of the motherhood spectrum there are the Lady MacBeths and on the other end are their opposites: women who give their all and would die before any harm came to their families. Don’t most mothers fall somewhere in the middle, though? I came to the conclusion that not every woman is full of the milk of human kindness; and yet, few are as diabolical as Lady MacBeth. What did other writers think? What were their experiences and perceptions? I put out a call and asked for stories, essays, and memoir about relationships between mothers and daughters.

  What I received surprised me. Most authors came at the topic from the point of view of the daughter, but a few told their stories from the mother’s perspective. In every story, there was a straining for understanding, for knowledge and growth, even if the characters in the story or the “I” of the piece paid a high price for it. The contributions to this collection affected me deeply. Some caused me to think about them for days. Others made me chuckle with familiarity. Three, in particular, brought me to tears. I felt in awe of the power of these women’s narrative voices, of what they survived, of what they envision, and of how they can write with such clarity and passion.

  We have in this collection stories of love and loss, happiness and heartbreak. They’re written by women in their 20s all the way up into their mid-70s; some write full-time as a career while others write when they can; all have published at least one book featuring strong female characters and feminist themes. They hail from all over the United States and from Canada, Britain, and Australia and represent many different presses. Some of them are mothers, godmothers, surrogate mothers—and all of them have graciously shared at least one aspect of their ideas, beliefs, and thoughts about mothers and daughters.

  Each author’s contribution is prefaced by information about her and her work. Some of the authors represented here in this collection have written a dozen or more books; some are newer writers still breaking into the field. For the most part, details of book titles and publisher information have been omitted from the preface. To see a list of works for each author and contact information as well, please turn to the bibliography at the back of the book.

  If you are touched by any or all of these stories, please feel free to contact the authors. As I have worked on the stories with each of these talented women, I have learned that each is blessed with more than a little milk of human kindness. And besides, through their efforts, this book has been birthed into being, and I am no longer merely dreaming of its reality—it’s here!

  Lori L. Lake

  Twin Cities, Minnesota

  August, 2004

  The Milk of Human Kindness

  Lesbian Authors Write about

  Mothers and Daughters

  Edited by Lori L. Lake

  ***

  “No song or poem will bear my

  mother’s name. Yet so many of

  the stories that I write, that we

  all write, are my mother’s stories.”

  ~Alice Walker

  “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”

  ***

  ABOUT CAMERON ABBOTT

  One sunny summer afternoon in the late 1970s, Cameron Abbott attended a talk by Rita Mae Brown at the Cazenovia Women’s Writers Center – a talk that haunted her for decades. As Cameron describes it: “Apart from developing a huge crush on her, I found her words inspirational. Here was this dynamic, gorgeous, together woman who could speak with such grace, humor and intelligence on that most elusive of topics – the mechanics of writing. She blew me away! It only took me another 20 years to get off my butt and write a novel myself!”

  A voracious reader of lesbian fiction, Cameron Abbot is a successful lawyer, law professor and arbitrator who lives in New York City with her lover of 25 years, Michele. When Cameron turned her hand to fiction in 2001, she called on her experiences in the world of high-stakes New York City law firms, as well as her passion for lesbian love stories. The result was To The Edge, a coming of age novel set in the 1970s and the 1990s, which quickly became an international bestseller. Her second novel, An Inexpressible State of Grace, followed in January 2004, and was immediately chosen as an InsightOut book club selection.

  Cameron was thrilled when Lori L. Lake invited her to contribute a short story to The Milk of Human Kindness. “Lori is one of those writers whose work I devour,” says Cameron. “It’s a privilege and an honor to have my work alongside hers and the other luminaries of lesbian fiction represented in this anthology.” Cameron is presently working on two other fiction projects – but is making no promises about when they’ll be finished. As she explains, “I love my law practice; I’m just not ready to drop it to write full time. And as the saying goes, ‘The law is a jealous mistress’ – trying cases takes a lot of time, so until someone
can figure out a way for me to clone myself, the work on my fiction projects will be slow.”

  Train Tracks

  Fiction by Cameron Abbott

  THE TRAIN AMBLED south through the lush countryside, charting a course roughly parallel to the New Jersey Turnpike. Well, it was actually much more than an amble—this was the high-speed Acela, after all—but compared to the air shuttle she could have taken, the train was practically crawling. And that’s just the way Kate wanted it.

  “I don’t want to hassle with airport security,” she’d told Ellen while cramming underwear into her overnight bag. She picked up her keys and jiggled them for effect before dropping them into the side pocket. The key-ring had a small Swiss army knife attached too securely for easy removal, and she always feared that some alert security guard would stop her if it showed up on the x-ray scanner. Of course, she could just check the bag containing her keys, but she hadn’t bothered to mention that to Ellen.

  “Anyway, after you deal with airport traffic into La Guardia and out of BWI, plus the long drive into Baltimore, it ends up taking about the same time. And I can spread out on the train. It’s more comfortable for getting work done.”