What about me?

Usually when I am asked why I have undertaken this project, I provide a simple answer: How could I not? My great-grandmother’s married life is fascinating. Even when all I had to go by was a few facts and a lot of innuendo, I wanted to know more. For a good while after her son-in-law/my grandfather told me about her past, I was rather stunned. After all, a person does not learn that his great-grandmother was married seven times every day! (And during the research, I am already up to eight marriages.)

I believe I was in graduate school at the time, because upon my return to school, I recall a conversation I had with my friend Esther and a couple of other folks at a party. I don’t know what prompted my revealing this newly learned information, but doing completely altered the conversation. That’s all Esther in particular wanted to talk about. She was fascinated, she’s quite an erudite person and her own life was filled with intense drama. If she could drop everything to learn more about Leta, then there was something there to explore.

However, my life circumstance meant that while I had this powerful initial reaction and incentive—thanks, Esther—I needed to put my knowledge, notes and curiosity into my writer’s “trunk” for the time being. Graduate school, making theater, working, writing for a magazine, going to the theater and simply surviving were enough to occupy myself for the time. Of course, from time to time, I did think about Grandma Eckman’s life, especially when I began to put together family trees for my aging grandparents and as several friends began to share their own family history projects.

But it was not until years later, after I had been through a great number of life experiences, that I began considering Grandma Eckman’s life again. Truly, I cannot recall an instigating moment, but I do know that a burning curiosity began to grow inside of me. And it had a pivotal connection.

Was I like her?

Leta, greatgrandsons Jeff & baby Jerry.

Was my own relationship (and I use the word loosely) and sexual life akin to hers? Were her feelings about her life and herself similar to mine? Of course, there are hugely different expectations and standards for a gay man in our age than for a woman living, loving and marrying from 1916-1963. Most specifically, I don’t have to get married to have a sexual relationship or even a tryst. However, the internal emotional life, the search perhaps, and/or even the concern for satisfaction of desire fascinates me. And we are both devout Christians with the prevailing understanding (basically oppressive) of proper sexual behavior being slapped in our faces.

Why did I start writing this book? Here is the most honest answer I can think of right now: I wanted to learn about and investigate my beloved great-grandmother’s life, because I want to know more about myself. Now that I am in the midst of it, there is far more going on than that.