George Hodgman Quotes

Every week or so, a gay kid somewhere jumps off a bridge or slashes his wrists. I am told that a boy near here hanged himself because his father could not accept who he was. On television, I listen to the things they say, the right-wingers, and fundamentalists, and all the people who consolidate their power by hurting other people. I want to cover up the ears of kids and say, "Do not take it in." I took it in. I really did. I heard everything that people in the world around me said about who I was. It hurt me, but I thought I had no right to say anything because I was wrong. I didn't know what silence would cost, how it would change my life. It takes a long time to outrun the things that the world drills into you. Our

old people who are failing get the angriest with those they are most attached to, the people who make them realize they are no longer themselves.

I want my mother to know that I may not be what she expected, but I am someone who tries to be good. I cannot give my mother the kids we might have liked with Mammy's eyes or Aunt Bess's crazy, gentle ways. I cannot bring her the child who sings with my father's voice. But I can wait with her through these strange days for whatever is going to happen. I can sit on a chair by her bed when she is too flustered to lay her head down on her pillow and stay with her until she can close her eyes. .

He loved me, as so many have loved the children who turned out to be so different, "in spite of." I didn't want "in spite of.

Politically, I have a lot of differences with many I encounter here. When visiting the homes of reactionary friends and neighbors, I enjoy hiding their copies of books by Glenn Beck and other lunatics around the house while my hosts cook or adjourn to relieve themselves. Ducking into a garage to deposit the latest ravings of Ann Coulter into a bag of aging peat moss lifts the spirit as unfailingly as a summer tent revival. But I am trying to behave. I

If Betty turned against you, she would take you on, but if she loved someone, they would never stand alone.

Sometimes I think of all the people who have travelled on their own across the world, people who have gone far from home, from villages to sprawling cities where nothing and no one is familiar. My mother has also travelled - across time for more than nine decades, from one era to the next, from a world she knew to another where much she was taught does not apply. Things are changing so fast; there is no period of adjustment now for anyone. My mother tries to keep up, but it is such a complicated trip. The faces that time taught her to trust are all missing. She lives in a foreign land where it is up to me to try to make her feel at home. She has walked so far, through time.

Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, Lionel Hampton, the Mills Brothers, Woody Herman, and Nat King Cole. "Mona Lisa, men have named you,

Things My Mother Does Not Do 1. Complain. 2. Dispose of almost anything, including years-old margarine tubs possibly hoarded for the dispersal of emergency rations. 3. Ignore a coupon. 4. Put anything away. 5. Allow me to talk "long distance" for more than three minutes without yelling in the background. 6. Give up without a fight. O

This is why she has stayed, why she has waited, watching out the window, always looking out for the moment when I will turn into the driveway, always trying to look her best for when I come in the door. She has struggled to keep on, trying not to fall. To try to help me. She has not wanted to leave me alone. She has always wanted to be here for me, to do what she could. .

...I think of all the people quietly doing so many things that are hard.

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The thing about being a watcher is this: You are never really a part of things, especially if the person you must watch is yourself, always, just to make sure no one ever really sees you. .

She is of a generation who existed before feelings were spoken of.

Thanks to Steven, I rode on a bus with the Gay Men's chorus, which he and the doctor had joined. All the way they sang. When I looked at Steven and made a face, he looked offended, but I didn't care. It was way too early in the morning for anything from Sweeney Todd.

When I let my mind wander back that far, what I see is how hard we tried to be our best for one another. In

People forced to live by conventions are always the first to enforce them.

I am an unlikely guardian. A month ago I thought the Medicare doughnut hole was a breakfast special for seniors. I am a care inflictor.

I can never be a person who has not made mistakes. But I can be someone honest who has lived through them: one of those who look you square in the eye and say, 'This is how it has been, and it is okay.

People mean well; they just aren't here enough to get what we are dealing with or what home means to my mother. Everyone thinks they know what should be done, and their suggestions make me suspect they must consider me an idiot who doesn't comprehend the situation.

I am doing my best here. I will make it back to New York, but frankly, to spend some time in Paris, Missouri, is to come to question the city, where it is normal to work 24/7, tapping away on your BlackBerry for someone who will fire you in an instant, but crazy to pause to help someone you love when they are falling.