I was catching rainbows for decades before I came out. What started as a religious symbol in my childhood, God will never flood the earth and wipeout humanity and most of the animals again, morphed into an understanding in my early adulthood that the rainbow was also a symbol, for some, of belonging and freedom in their identity. There was always a reluctant knowing in me that I was different - in a way that religion said was broken. And for a while I avoided everything rainbow or gay adjacent. I’m pretty sure I’m the only lesbian who didn’t listen to the Indigo Girls until she was out at 40.
But somewhere along the road the two meanings got mixed together into a beautiful collage stained glass collage, and I started to see the colors after the rain as a symbol that there might be a Love big and wide, and colorful enough that it would encompass me: a gay girl who was lying to herself about who she really was.
The year I came out, the rainbows did too. I started finding them in the most unsuspecting moments. When all hope felt lost, and I thought the truth of me might ruin my family and forever damage my children, a rainbow would appear on the wall of my bathroom as I wept. When I thought about my own mortality, and if the truth of me had any right to exist, I would walk through the cemetery close to our home and see a rainbow in in a rainless sky. I saw rainbows above front doors and on street corners and bumper stickers and in the children’s Hospital. At my lowest, a dear friend‘s daughter, painted Roy G. Biv in wide swaths of color in the shape of an angel or some kind of rescuer and she sent it to me in the mail. I enlarged that work of art and it now hangs proudly in my home, reminding me that my belonging is not contingent.
In the most delicious display of love and fate coming together to delight me, ever since I cane out, each June I have accidentally stumbled on a pride parade. I have been a tourist in some town, rummaging through old bookshops and asking my beloved what she wants for lunch when the most raucous and joyful display of rainbows has started marching down the road.
This year, it was in Frenchtown, New Jersey, and I laughed out loud when I saw that the locals weren’t kidding - they pride themselves in celebrating THE WORLD’S SHORTEST PRIDE PARADE.
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I laughed as I watched families and churches, and the local nonprofits carry banners, wear rainbow flags as capes, and play and dance to the music, all followed up by one red firetruck. I followed them down into the glenn surrounded by trees next to the Delaware river. I danced along to the music and made a new friend, who happened to not just be a radiologist at the local hospital but also a poet.
I went back to the Airbnb and put on my swimsuit and dove into the pool next to our little cottage and floated on the bliss of it all. later that night I showed friends old and new photos from the worlds, shortest pride parade. I love French town. And I love the bright and beautiful queers who make a home there.
But I know the truth.
For years, I have been celebrating the actual world’s shortest pride parade. One girl, alone in a room, trying to catch a rainbow in the palm of her hand and praying that this kind of beauty and belonging can be hers, too.
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Happy Pride, my loves,
Ash.