Tag: Sapphic Canada

Breaking Out: Phi’s Story

Leave a comment

Four months before my wedding, I was in full planning mode. Seating charts, handmade invitations, handmade ceremony programs, finalizing caterers and place settings, the works.

One evening, my fiancée, the man of my… parents’ dreams, was scrolling the TIVO, looking for the next show we should watch. He said, “Hey, what about this show? You heard of it? The L Word?”

My insides burned. “Sure,” I managed to say aloud.

I did not tell him I had already seen the series.

I did not tell him I knew The L Word inside out, that certain scenes were burned into the folds of my brain.

You see, long before living with him in Silicon Valley, I had lived in another valley, Lynn Valley, with my parents and sisters.

One of my sisters had brought a pirated copy of the whole DVD set back from China after a year of teaching abroad. One afternoon, sitting in our parents’ basement, I was thumbing through her giant folder of DVDs, and found this show.

With the first sex scene, my entire body responded. All the kissing. Touching. Fucking. Back then, I wasn’t registering the problematic parts of this series: how most of the actors playing lesbians were straight. White. How the sex scenes were so hetero-performative. I just saw boobs. And I liked it. I found myself sliding my hand down my pants and touching myself. Right there in the family basement. Afterwards, I was flooded with shame.

And then I pressed play and kept watching. I wondered how my sister had watched this show with her two roommates, wouldn’t it have turned them all on like it did me?

In the next episode came the next sex scene. And so did I.

Each scene whether it was sex, touching, a glimpse of something, gave me such massive, full-bodied orgasms, that getting through just one episode was quite exhausting.

All this flashed through my mind as my fiancee loaded up the show. I was anxious as shit. How was I supposed to navigate this situation? What would happen when we started watching this show and it started doing to me what I knew it had done before?

As far as anyone knew, including myself, I was straight. The fact that I’d been binging the L Word on loop since my mid-20s was not something I dwelled on.
The fact that I’d been binging sapphic erotica since my late teens in that same basement didn’t even make a dent in my mind.
Everyone had their secrets, I figured. I never once questioned my sexuality. I just locked it all away in the closet that I didn’t know I had back there.

When my fiancee hit play and the first episode showed the first sex scene, things worked out in my favor. With that first sex scene, he kinda did that straight guy thing of “ohhh” at the sight of two women having sex.
He looked at me and I probably made a face like “____” like a desperate attempt to match his turn-on without betraying the depth of my own.

After the episode ended, he began to touch me and I was all too ready to comply. I jumped onto him and came so hard and so fast it left us both shocked. I had had roughly one to two orgasms with this man in the three years we’d been together. But this too, I put away.

The next day, I went back to wedding planning. I stood in the ribbon aisle at Michael’s, contemplating ribbons for the ceremony programs that I was hand-making. Snippets of the night before came unwanted to my mind, right there in the tubelit aisle at Michael’s.

I drilled down harder: lace or satin? I could not go there. Cream or white? More flashes of the night before, the intensity of my orgasm: nope. Not going there.
I knew what I needed to do: more sequins for my invitations. And off to the next aisle I went.

That night, we watched the next episode of the L Word. Same turn on, same raging orgasm.
Night after night, we watched, I came. And the following day, back to the crafting project that was my wedding.

Finally, my fiancee asked the question I did not ask myself. “Have you ever been with a woman? Have you ever wanted to?”

I caved inward. Memories of all those years of my basement self-pleasurings burned inside me and I fought with Herculean effort to say, “Nah,” and try to sound normal about it. And then neither of us knew what to say. So we just watched the next episode.

One afternoon, back at Michael’s, I studied the cardstock: plain or textured? The question came:
“Phi,” a voice inside said, “These nightly sex romps are great and all, but should we talk about what this means?”

But here was where that vast black void kind of clouded my vision. I didn’t know how to examine this. Or who to examine it with. Everyone I knew was straight. Everyone I knew was getting married or was already married.

But each time I asked myself, “Should we examine what’s going on here?” I would think, “Welll, it’s four months till the wedding. People have already bought their plane tickets. It would be rude to cancel.”

This was the actual thought that would go through my head: you can’t cancel a wedding. I have to get married because you can’t cancel a wedding. Back then, I lived by these rules. The you can’ts and you musts and you shoulds.

But the deeper truth, the truth that I would not piece together until years and years later, was this: the idea of listening to my body, the idea of following my desire, at that time in my life, four months before my wedding to the perfect straight brown man, uh uh. I couldn’t.

Because to listen to my body, to follow my desires would make me different. And different was bad. I was already way too different: being a writer, a traveler, wanting to birth novels instead of babies. I was nearly 30 and try as I might, I was not doing a great job at following the script that everyone around me seemed to just slip into so easily. Now my body wanted to add queerness to the list? Queerness was definitely not part of the script.

But getting married? That meant I could fit in. That I would belong. That I had finally done something right. It was all right there within reach. And at that time, I needed to belong, to be like everyone else, more than I needed to be my true self.

We can intellectualize our lust, we can tell ourselves “everyone reacts to the L Word that way”, we can talk ourselves out of what we desire, but sometimes, the body gives it all away. And you can still shove that shit down, and that’s okay too.

It would be years before I would leave my marriage, before I would come out and come in to my full queer self.

It would be years before I would see QUEER community with my own eyes. People who were queer and trans and poly and kinky and thriving.

But that day did come. Literally the same day I left my marriage, I came out. To the person who would become my best friend and my greatest unrequited love. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

He was stir-frying broccoli for our dinner and I burst out with: “I think I like … girls.”

He nodded, fully accepting of this news. Over the following weeks, he guided me on my great coming out journey, starting with queer films I had to see.

“Hey, have you seen Blue is the Warmest Color?” he asked, naming an extremely sapphic film.
“Ummm… yes.”

Shame crept up my neck and into my cheeks. But he just laughed and said, “Oh friend, you’re so gay.” Not in a shaming way. In a way that felt like, “I get you, welcome home.”

Breaking Out: Sarah’s Story

Leave a comment

It’s six pm on a rainy Saturday in January and I’m driving alone up Mount Seymour in the dark. My heater is on full blast but even so my windows keep fogging up. My windshield wipers fight furiously against the rain that turns to wet snow as I drive higher. 

When I’d signed up for this event, I thought a full moon hike sounded like a lovely, romantic idea. It was my first outing with a hiking group I’d dared myself to join – an antidote to scrolling through dating apps or missing the ex who had recently broken my heart.

Immediately after signing up, panic washed over me. Willingly going out with a group of strangers is as far out of my comfort zone as, I don’t know, kissing an octopus. 

But I knew I needed something different. My life as a single mom in the suburbs felt small, limited, and I was starting to feel small with it. 

So I cobbled together a hiking outfit, packed a backpack with the things I thought I might need, and said yes.   

In the weeks leading up to the hike my anxiety came in waves. I almost cancelled a dozen times. I worried about pretty much everything – would my raincoat look cute? Would the other hikers be boring? What if I was stuck for hours with annoying people? What if they thought I was boring? I scrolled through their tiny photos looking for clues of compatibility.

I hadn’t even thought to consider practical things like, for example, the weather. 

So of course, the morning of the hike dawned rainy. With that Vancouver winter rain, ceaseless and daunting. It just kept coming down.

From my couch I alternated between refreshing the weather report and refreshing the event listing. As the day went on, the attendee list dropped from 12 to 8 to 6. I wondered if the hike would be cancelled, if I should pull out. 

The more it seemed like it might not happen, the more I realized I really wanted it to. 

“Fuck it,” I said, my backpack into the trunk.  

As I pull into the parking lot, there might as well not be a parking lot – it’s just a wall of fog. Doubt crowds my mind. Am I the only one stupid enough to actually show up? Why did I think this was a good idea? 

Finally, near the end of the lot I spot another vehicle. I pull up beside it and roll down my window. “I’m here for the full moon hike?” I say, cautiously, ridiculously, as wet snow pelts down. 

Three women climb out of the car. One, a few years older than me approaches with a welcoming smile and an outstretched hand. Cute braids stick out from under her toque. I like her already. 

“I’m Linda,” she says. “This is Joy, that’s Gina.” I recognized them from the photos, but here they were for real, organizing things in their backpacks, pulling on layers. 

“You’ve got your ten essentials?” she asks.

I smile and nod like I know what that means. 

I feel like such a fraud. Not knowing what to wear, I wore everything. A long sleeve shirt covered by a fleece covered by a down jacket with a raincoat over top.

I try to look like I know what I’m doing. I pull my Value Village rainpaints from the trunk and layer them over my sweatpants. 

These women seem effortlessly technical – they have those backpacks with the water hoses to drink from, and Gortex jackets, and carabiners that rattle from their bags like Christmas ornaments. I guess it takes a certain kind of person to come out in these conditions. 

I slide my feet into my old hiking boots, tighten the laces over two pairs of socks. 

We throw our backpacks on, adjust our headlamps, and head out into the dark night. For awhile there’s nothing but the crunch of our feet on the snow and the wind whistling through the tall trees.

They’ve all met before, chat easily together, and I feel the familiar self-consciousness creep over me. Do I have anything to say?  

A little way up the trail, we stop to put our microspikes on over our boots for traction. I pull mine out  – cheap ones I bought on Amazon, with little grippy dots. Theirs have big metal teeth. Where they walk, I slide. 

Have I mentioned that this is my first hike in months, if not years? That in all of my excitement to get out of my comfort zone and have an adventure, I forgot I’d be lugging my body along with me? You know that expression ‘your eyes were bigger than your stomach”, when you put more food on your plate than you can eat? 

This was that, but adventure was the food and the limit was my neglected muscles. 

Before long I am huffing and puffing, sweat pouring down inside my many layers. 

When they ask about me, it dawns on me that I’m meeting people who didn’t know me before I came out. People who haven’t witnessed my transition from being partnered with a man to becoming comfortable as a queer woman. 

I’ve gotten used to defining myself by what I felt I’d failed at – a marriage, keeping my family together. 

But here, and now, I can be whoever I want. 

The further we climb, the easier conversation flows. One of the women just got back from a trip to to Peru and tells us about her hikes there. I talk about the time I spent living in Chiang Mai in my twenties, and as I do memories come rushing back. Not just memories of tuktuks and pad thai, but of who I was then, independent, confident, curious. 

A woman with a taste for adventure. 

Near the top we stop in a sheltered valley to discuss our options. We’d planned to climb to Pump Peak to have our snack at the viewpoint. The snow is coming down hard now and visibility is next to nothing. Maybe we should turn back. “But we’re here,” I say, surprising even myself. “Let’s go for it.”  

So the four of us, like trekkers on the ascent to Mount Everest, set off up the icy bank for the climb towards the peak. There’s no path, just a sheet of white and shadow under the beam of our headlamps. We are comical, occasionally losing our balance and knocking each other over as we slip backwards.  

Finally we make it. The wind whips around us and we search in all directions for a glimpse of the elusive moon.

Instead, it’s almost as though the clouds thicken – we howl with laughter at this epic failure. 

I pull out my granola bar, thinking that will suffice as a hiking snack. Not with these ladies. Joy whips out a stove and manages to light it in spite of the wind and rain. She finds her pot and starts cooking gnocchi, of all things. Linda makes hot chocolate and someone produces a bottle of whiskey. Gina lays a tarp on the snow for us to sit on. 

I feel like a kid, giddy with the novelty, the make-your-own-fun of it. 

This is so much better than a mediocre first date on Commerical drive. 

I’ll be honest – originally I joined the group because thought I might meet a woman. 

Instead, I met women. Strong, independent women who climb mountains in the dark for fun. Women who see terrible weather not as a reason to stay home, but as part of the adventure.

On the way back down, certain sections of the trail are perfect for sliding and so we do – our feet up in the air like kids. Our screams and laughter echo across the valley, up to the dark sky. 

Driving home that night, I am soaked, exhausted, grinning and eager for more.

The moon never appeared that night. 

But I felt something else come into view: a version of myself that was still growing, still exploring, still willing to say yes to things that scared me. That night, somewhere between the parking lot and the summit, something had shifted. 

For the first time in a long time, my life felt bigger than the boundaries I’d been living inside.

A few months later we returned to Pump Peak for the Strawberry Moon – a larger group this time, the fairweather hikers – and we were treated to a spectacular moonrise over the mountains. This time I brought my newly purchased hiking stove, my backpack with a waterhose. This time I was the one greeting newcomers with a smile and an outstretched hand. 

Beauty: Robyn’s Story

Leave a comment

It’s not a beautiful dog park.
That’s the first thing to understand.

There’s no charming fence or wildflowers or benches. The grass is mostly dirt. The mud never fully dries. Someone has zip tied a broken gate shut in a way that feels unsafe and sincere. The sign says CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG, clearly replaced too many times.

And yet.

Every morning, we arrive like a loose congregation. Names learned accidentally, through repetition, through dogs yelling them across the field.

My dog drags me in, nails clicking, vibrating with the promise of chaos. She does not care that I am tired or half inside yesterday. She believes in the dog park with a devotion I haven’t felt since my early twenties. Her faith is absolute.

Beauty shows up first as sound.

A chorus of barks, each one a dialect. The deep woof of the older shepherd patrolling the perimeter. The shrill yelps of a tiny dog who has no business being this brave. The breathless scream of my dog when she sees her best friend, a grey Frenchie with the face of a warm croissant that grew opinions. Love is loud.

Humans trail behind, holding coffee, leashes, grief, the last threads of sleep. We look worse than our dogs. This feels important.

At the dog park, no one asks the questions I am used to answering. My haircut, my clothes, the way I move through the world—none of it requires translation. I am simply the person with this dog.

There’s a woman with a shaved head who always wears the same hoodie. She throws a tennis ball perfectly. There’s a couple who move in orbit. An older man talks to every dog like they’re his nephew.
No one blinks at anyone else. Bodies arrive as they are.

And then there’s the person I notice every day.
They arrive late, jogging a little, apologetic. Their dog is a disaster, ears too big, body shaped like a comma, heart outside their ribcage. The leash is always tangled. The dog park hums when they arrive.
They are not beautiful in the way magazines understand. Their hair is often wrong. Their clothes are practical. They move through the gate with the posture of someone who has learned how to take up space carefully.

I recognize that posture.
I have practiced it.

But beauty does not care about permission.
It shows up when they kneel to untangle the leash. When their face softens as the dog barrels into another body and they wince, not with embarrassment, but with awe. You’re alive, that wince says.

Dogs do not perform gender. They do not care if you are hot, impressive, healed, or legible. They smell you. They decide. Relief settles into my shoulders when I unclip the leash.

I do not have to be careful.
I do not have to be palatable.

I watch my dog play with a three-legged husky who runs like the wind learned a new rule. Beauty, right there, without a lesson attached.

A trans kid, maybe seventeen, maybe twenty, comes sometimes with their family’s dog. The dog wears a rainbow collar. The kid keeps their hands in pockets, shoulders tight, chin tucked, bracing for impact that never comes.
Their dog barrels back, mud streaked and ecstatic, and stops inches from their knees. The kid flinches, like they are used to being collided with in ways that do not feel like love.

But this is love.

The dog sits, trembling with joy, tail sweeping the dirt. The kid hesitates, then kneels. Both knees in the mud. They bury their hands in the dog’s fur and press their forehead there like it is an altar.
The sound that comes out is not careful. Not small. A laugh that breaks open and turns into something softer, almost a sob, almost relief. No one stares.

When they stand, their shoulders have dropped an inch. 
Beauty, sometimes, is that inch.

Someone always brings too many treats. Someone always forgets bags. Someone always steps in something and says a word they regret. We forgive each other constantly, in ways that do not make the news.

I realize, standing with mud on my cuffs and my dog’s leash wrapped around my wrist, that this might be the only place in my day where my queerness is irrelevant. Not erased, just unremarkable. Just another fact, like the weather.

The person I do not stare at sits on the cold bench and scrolls their phone. Their eyes follow every movement. When the dog comes back, muddy and triumphant, they open their arms without hesitation.

And I see it, before I mean to.
Their dog does not leap or demand. It circles, then presses its side against their shins, leaning its full weight there as if gravity has chosen them.
They crouch slowly, and the dog tucks its head beneath their chin like it has found the exact place it belongs. No spectacle. No audience. Just contact.
Their hand moves along the dog’s back. Tension leaves their shoulders. Their face softens. They close their eyes.

And that is it.

No performance. No apology. Just a body leaning into another body and staying there.
Beauty is not loud in this moment. It is steady. The choice not to pull away.

The moment lasts maybe three seconds. Someone calls a dog’s name. A fight almost starts and does not. A tennis ball sails overhead. The world resumes its ordinary chaos.
But something has shifted in me.

I think about all the places I have been told beauty lives. Mirrors, approval, before and after photos, the quiet violence of almost. How often queer people are taught to earn beauty, to present it correctly, to make it legible so it does not scare anyone.

And here, in a muddy, imperfect dog park, beauty is unbothered.
It rolls in dirt. It drools. 
It shows up late. It loves badly and openly.

When we leave, my dog is exhausted, happy, ruined. The sun has crept higher. People wave. The person I do not stare at meets my eye for a second and smiles, not performance, just recognition.

On the way out, my dog pulls back toward the gate, unwilling to leave this temporary, holy mess. I let her pause. I always do.
Because beauty does not live in perfection.
It lives in places where bodies are allowed to be what they are.

Even here.
Especially here.

Beauty: Lou’s Story

Leave a comment

It’s been an exhausting day of travel and emotional upheaval to make it to the musky back seat of a stranger’s used minivan in the parking lot of the massive hub that is the Cleveland Airport. It’s 2013, I’m 19 years old, going into my third year of college, and I just completed my first solo flight. Well, technically, first two solo flights, if you include the short little jaunt to my neighbouring Province and then the connecting international flight to the States. I’ve been preparing for months and months for this day.

Every early morning shift at the pool, every denied invite to go out, every bring-your-own-lunch-to-school dollar has been saved to get me here. Here, now rolling along Ohio’s highways, letting the bare landscape whizz on by. The sky is bright and expansive, the emotional forecast… not so much. In the time that it took for me to sprint from my first flight to my connecting flight, the terrifying turbulence that had even my phased-by-nothing seat mate gasping, and now this backseat’s “eau de B.O.” sitting with 4 other strangers who have come from God knows where, has me convinced me I do not want to be here. I want to be the opposite of here. I want to be home. I want home. I am so far from home.

The barren rolling hills start to turn green as we drive through forests that look nothing like the dense and mighty cedars of the Northwest Coast. Sunlight streams through the branches with ease and everything within looks aglow. Somehow this is both mesmerizing and multiplying my aching homesickness. The roads wind as the minutes tick on by. Small talk has arisen amongst us strangers as we share where we are coming from and how we first heard about this retreat. People seem nice. Polite.
Typical church personalities. I know this type well. I am this type. My Christian resume is thorough. Take a look at my contributions to its contents from the last week: I have five scribbled prayers in my notebook from the two boarding lines I have waited in today. I have checked off my communication responsibilities to schedule someone back home to cover my spot on the church Praise Team for the Sunday services. I am fully backed by the leadership of my Presbyterian roots after seeking the blessing of my pastor, his wife, a Christian mentor, and a member of session… just to cover my basis. And I have whole-heartedly believed that this, this one-week International Prayer Retreat, this is the path that God himself has made for me. And if it wasn’t for this divine calling, this clear conviction, that tenacious little flame of faith I have been fanning for the last 6 years, I would have already been on my third flight of the day, my flight home.
These strangers are my people, and I know how to “people” well. I know how to present myself and hide myself at the same time. I am so good at it, that I genuinely can enjoy the connection despite the storm I keep at bay inside. But today, these whiffs of a middle-aged man’s unwashed workout gear resting in the confines of a tightly packed automobile, these foreign roads with their foreign colours of green in their foreign sunlit forests, and the choppiest of internal waters, the crashing waves start to pool at the corners of my. smiling eyes and I am not sure how long that smile of mine will convince these strangers that I belong here.
In actuality, this minivan commute is just under an hour, a fraction of time amongst my travel day, but within those 57minutes I have entertained the fear that drives almost all that I do; I DO NOT belong here. But if I don’t belong here, if I don’t hear from God, if I don’t get answers and nothing changes, if I don’t change, if I leave just as broken as I have arrived… I won’t belong back home either. Not in my church, not in my family, not in my circles, not in myself. And if I don’t belong at home, I do not have a place of belonging. The truth will become loud and clear… I DO NOT belong.

I’ve only let a few silent tears leak down my cheeks. Subtle enough to wipe them away like the sweat I see the elderly man named Everett in the first row of seats attempts to wipe from his brow. I have observed his leaning posture and shaky hands. His voice deep but raspy as if it held strength before his muscles atrophied. My guess is Parkinson’s, muscular dystrophy, old age? His wife, sitting beside him, fanning her also flushed face, sees his fable attempt, pulls a tissue from her bag and wipes his brow for him. God, that is all I crave and yearn for. To sit in the discomfort of it all, in any state, in all circumstances and turn to look into the eyes of my love. My person. And see my belonging. Please God, let this bravery of coming here lead me one step closer. Not one more step closer to the man I grew up thinking I was going to marry, I have prayed in the depths of this closet far too long for me to believe in this Pray the Gay Away scheme anymore. No, I desire something far more reasonable. This is my last-ditch effort to get close enough to God for him to give me the grace to not desire what I am not supposed to desire. Celibacy, a current coffin of a closet, I need desperately transformed into something I do not mourn. Please God, please won’t you do this for me. Or maybe, just maybe, could there even be a fragment of a hint of a hope that this retreat could get me one step closer to finding her?

The minivan rolls to a stop at the far end of a pull-through driveway. Through the tinted windows, amongst the towering maple trees, lay a small lodge with a trail of cabins off to the right-hand side. The main building, larger than the rest, is framed by dozens of windows, which allow me to see through to the other side, where the wrap-around deck borders the rushing river beyond it. It is stunning… and yet, its beauty does nothing to calm me. How many tears can I pass as sweat? The sliding door of the van is rolled open and we pile on out, gathering at the top of the gravel pathway that leads down to the lodge. My mind is busy. I bet that the lodge has the phone I will need to call my parents. I bet that the lodge will have the computer that I will use to search for flights home. I bet that the visa in my orange Velcro wallet will be able to cover the expenses of making my way back to my precarious belonging. Once I am home, then I can figure out some way to pay off the bill of this mistake and figure out a new way to earn God’s favour.
As we unload the trunk of all our luggage, I’ve run through my exit plan 18 times; it’s foolproof. We are instructed to meet in the lodge to meet our mentors and other fellow retreat goers, so down the path I go. I am certain I will not be meeting anyone who doesn’t have practicality in my purposed plan to skip introductions and make my leave. Before making it down the tiered steps directly in front of the lodge, my mental preparations are interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps approaching. I look up to see a mammoth of a man walking up the steps. Blue denim overalls and a buttercup yellow golf shirt that encompasses his big, round belly and wide shoulders. When I look up to see his face, I see sweet blue eyes hiding behind half-rimmed glasses and a trimmed white beard circling his beaming smile. Undenounced to me, Santa apparently lives in Ohio during the summer months.
In the smallest of moments between my observations and festive judgements, this jolly man meets my gaze, raises both arms above his head, joy radiating from his face and exclaims…

“LISA!!! YOU MADE IT!!! I AM SO HAPPY YOU ARE HERE!!!”

If ever there was a single moment that has defined who I want to be in this world, it would be the welcome I received from who I now know as my beloved friend John, endearingly known to many as Papa John. In all the wonder and awe I have found in this world, who knew a big old white guy with a certified twang from the South would become my definition of beauty. I did not call home that day. I did not book an emergency flight home. Instead, I spent a week in the bright green forests of Ohio redefining the God I thought I knew. Those seven days of prayer planted the seed of my belonging. Not to religion, not to church, not to celibacy, not within or outside the guise of rights and wrongs, my understanding of sin or the work of earning and deserving love. I began the work of believing in my own inherent belovedness, learning and leaning into the wisdom held within my body, the power of my imagination, my creativity, my goodness. I started to find belonging in myself.

Beauty came to me. Beauty showed up when bravery said, “There is a different way.” Beauty befriended me, not because my eyes were open or my heart was less hard, but because of the softness of the heart who was willing to see me. Papa John saw me. Freeing himself from expectation and norm, he chose to love with arms high above his head.
I’m 32 now. I graduated college. Moved out. Became a teacher.
Branched out with my bravery. Found queer community. Found more of me. Loved more of me. I spend my days living in the beauty of belonging to myself. I fell in love with the woman of dreams I never allowed myself to have. And our love, this love that found me, is an arms-high-above-the-head kind of love.
Beauty came to me, became part of me.

And I belong to me. To her. To a love I now endearingly know as beauty.

Beauty: Kailey’s Story

Leave a comment

I’m floating – what feels like 100 feet above the river – suspended and looking out at its brownish winding path, lined with grassy knolls, dotted with picnicking couples, dogs sniffing the air, and work-out groups walking.

I fall – back down, the trampoline below meeting my feet for only seconds before I’m joyously flung back up to catch another glimpse of the afternoon scene in Vienna, Austria.

Years of competitive dance training never leave the toes; Mine, pointed, and experimenting with various split jumps, star jumps, and toe touches – making fun shapes in the air with each bounce – tears flowing from my eyes, but drying almost immediately as the wind pushes up and down against my cheeks with each bounce.

The ukulele mashup of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole guided me here – ‘oooo mmm ooo mm-mm-mm-mmm, oo oo oo’ – playing on loud speakers at the base of this floating water trampoline on this rather plain river.

I spent all morning taking in classically beautiful art and music – a Mozart concert, and several art galleries and museums over at the aptly named ‘Museumsplatz’ area of Vienna. It was all stunning, but somehow this day had even more beauty in store for me.

With no real itinerary, I asked a stranger what I should do with my afternoon and they said to ride the train out to this river – so I did.

I had been solo backpacking around Europe for a few weeks before this particular day. The year was 2010, I was 21, and I had refused to bring a cell phone with me on this trip. “I want to do an old school Euro trip, with pocket dictionaries, printed maps, and forced conversation with locals” I told my poor mortified mother. I was flying by the seat of my EuroRail pass, hostel hopping, and checking in with home via 10-minutes of computer time at the hostels. Smart phones hadn’t yet seized our attention as humans at the time – so I was all spongy, ready to take in what Europe had to offer. The feeling of complete freedom on this trip remains unmatched in my life since … No one really knew where I was, no one in these places knew who I was … I could be anyone to anybody, trying on a new version of me any time I wanted.

After my 2 euros ran out, my 8 minutes of glorious jumping time was done and I left the trampoline, stumbling slightly as I readjusted to the solid ground below.

“Servus!” I hear from behind the fenced-in exit area. I caught her eye. “Servus, Hallo!” she repeated. Mmmm… could she be talking to me? I checked around me before offering a wave and a meek “Me? Hello?” back. Apparently my Canadian was showing in that response as she promptly switched to English.

“Are you a cheerleader?” she asked, adding “you’re very good. I was watching you.” I assured her I was not, but that I danced a lot growing up, and appreciated the kind words. I figured that was the end of our interaction but she continued walking with me as I exited the gates. She said, “My cheerleading team is rehearsing for a competition and we’re down one girl for practice today… Can you fill in for her?”

After trying my best to convince her that I was not at all skilled in cheerleading moves, lifts, stunts or tricks, I agreed to help out for the day.

We walked along the riverside for a bit, speaking very little, before she veered off into a forested area to the side. Following her I suddenly felt a bit nervous… Was this young woman plotting to kill me? Or bring me to some cult leader? Or was she maybe hitting on me? Was this going to be the beginning of a sapphic screenplay I’d write someday?

We came to a clearing in the forest where two other girls waited. They weren’t your stereotypical Hollywood cheerleader types – they seemed a bit like a group of misfits – which made me feel immediately at ease. They taught me some lifts – I was to be a base support for the flyer. The trust they placed in me, a random stranger girl from Canada, was pretty unbelievable.

I did my best, but I honestly think I was a bit of a let down to the girl who scouted me. It was tough work! After about an hour of practice, we wrapped up. They asked about my availability for their competition in a few weeks … and I had to break it to them that I was due to be in Spain to teach drama and dance at an English summer camp. But I did for a moment consider leaving everything behind and joining this cheer team in Austria.

We snapped a crappy photo on my digital camera – one of the best shots of the day – capturing the true beauty in the real people, the real connections, in Vienna – rather than just the “beautiful” things set out for tourists’ eyes.

I never spoke to the cheer girls again… And I sometimes wonder if this magical day had happened today, how would social media and our obsessively connected world shape this memory… What are the ways in which it would become distorted? Or the ways it would be enriched? How many shots of my split jumps would I need to take before landing the perfect one for instagram? Maybe I’d still be in touch with the girls, planning visits to one another’s countries. Looking at a photo of how I was only really 5 feet in the air might crush this memory of flying. If this was just another story I posted, would it have remained interesting enough to be told here tonight?

Not being tethered to a device that summer, I’ve always stored the memory of the river trampoline and accidentally joining an Austrian cheerleading team purely, and vividly in my mind.

Jingle Tales: Sarah’s Story

Leave a comment

My story starts, as all good Christmas stories do, with a divorce.

Specifically, the divorce of my parents, who split up when I was six when my mom fell in love with another woman. In 1982 small-town Ontario this was a bit of a scandal, and when the homophobia proved to be too much, Mom moved to Toronto to be with her new girlfriend.

My brother and I would hop on the greyhound bus every other weekend to visit her, swapping our big house for her tiny co-op apartment in the city. I loved taking the subway, going to art exhibits, visiting the big library with books I’d never find at home. We were introduced to interesting new things like the lesbian softball league, Take Back the Night marches, and drag shows.

Mom was a vibrant, passionate woman who threw herself into this new life. I hated leaving her at the end of the weekend, and I hated that at home her gayness was still largely a secret.

Under her charismatic exterior mom was also insecure, and sometimes sad. Her new relationship was chaotic, with undercurrents and breakups I didn’t understand. As a kid, I watched helplessly as her moods rose and fell.

My story takes place during one of these break-ups, and it’s low. I was about eight, that my brother and I went to Toronto to spend the holidays with Mom. It was her first Christmas without a partner in years. In our family, Christmas had always been a bustling, cheerful affair, with turkey dinner, grandparents, cousins, the fancy silverware, tablecloths.

But that year, mom surprised us by announcing we’d be going out to a restaurant for dinner on Christmas day, just the three of us. She wanted us to be excited, but I felt disappointed that we weren’t doing our regular things.

Maybe she was trying to make new traditions, or maybe she didn’t have the energy to cook a holiday meal. I don’t know, but whatever the reason, there we were on that brutally cold Christmas day, bundling up to walk to the restaurant she’d chosen. I remember zipping our coats up to our noses and pulling our toques down almost over our eyes for the walk over.

The streets were empty – I imagined everyone else gathered around big tables with big, happy families. As the snow crunched under our feet, I missed home, my dad, my dog, the feeling of being part of something bigger. This didn’t feel like Christmas.  

Once I saw the restaurant she’d chosen, I was even more disappointed. It was a stark, low budget kind of place with metal tables and fluorescent lights. A chalkboard outside said Turkey Dinner in a messy scrawl. Inside, several sad-looking people ate alone. The smell of grease hung thick in the air. Even the Christmas music playing through the tinny speakers didn’t make it feel festive.

I nudged my brother and pointed to one of the diners – a large man with a big round belly and a long white beard, though it was kind of yellowed and dirty. He wore a thick, moth-eaten blue sweater.  “It’s Santa,” I whispered jokingly. My brother rolled his eyes. The waitress brought the guy another beer and a plate of fries. His weathered hands shook as he ate.

No question, this place was depressing. 

Still, I knew that my mom was trying to make Christmas special, and I wanted her to be happy. She said we could order whatever we wanted, which was unheard of – mom was always on a budget.

The waitress came by – an older woman with a greying ponytail. “What a special night!” she said.

We were trying.

I ordered a milkshake, then wondered if I shouldn’t have because of the cost. I built towers out of the little jam and peanut butter packets that were still on the table from breakfast.

Mom put on a smile, but behind it, she looked tired. I kept talking, telling her everything I could think of about school and my friends. My brother was quiet as usual, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

Mom lit a cigarette and smoked while we waited for the food to come. She kept opening the menu – I could see her scanning the prices, doing the math in her head.  

We drank our milkshakes, then ate our dry turkey with lumpy mashed potatoes.

Mom asked if we wanted dessert, but we both said no, not wanting to stress her out any more.

The bell over the door jingled, and I looked up to see Santa leaving, pulling his ratty plaid jacket on as he went out into the cold.

Not even Santa wants to have Christmas here, I thought.

Finally, after what felt like the longest meal of my life, mom pulled out her wallet and motioned for the check.

The waitress came over to our table and smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s been taken care of.”

Mom blinked “What?”  

The server pointed to where Santa had just been sitting. “That gentleman asked if he could buy you dinner.”

Mom blinked again, tears in her eyes, still unsure of what was happening.

The server patted her hand, said “Merry Christmas hon. There’s pie on the way.”

The smile that slowly filled mom’s face brightened to a thousand watts. And with that we had her back, laughing as we devoured our pie with whipped cream.

We left the diner giddy, talking over each other about how we’d seen the real Santa that night. It was still cold, but now I noticed the holiday lights twinkling from people’s apartment balconies.

We may not have had tablecloths, or extended family, or fancy silverware, but Santa bought us dinner!

I’ve returned to the memory of that night so many times over the years. It’s like I’m looking in through the diner’s fogged-up window to see two sad blonde kids with messy hair and a mom in a thrifted red sweatshirt trying her best to make Christmas merry. And a guy with a white beard – and probably not a lot of money himself – who sees them.  

This story is a love letter to that man and his unexpected kindness.  

But it’s also a love letter to parents going through hard times.

See I feel a kinship with my mom, with who she was back then, now that I’ve spent quite a few Christmases on my own, trying to conjure magic for my kids, sometimes when I was barely holding on myself. I’ve watched my kids negotiate lost traditions and adjust to new normals. And honestly it’s been hard at times.

I wish I could tell that young version of my mom, she’s doing a great job. That it’s okay to be sad at Christmas. I wish I could tell her thank you for taking us to a restaurant, even if it’s not what I wanted at the time. Thank you for trying something new. And thank you for being brave enough to follow your heart, for falling in love and coming out, even though it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.  

You gave me the courage to do the same.

 I want to tell her it all works out in the end – her queer daughter will grow up knowing the beauty of chosen family and evolving traditions.

That her daughter will be grateful for that night, and how it reminded her to believe in miracles.