About Gayle

Cooking:

Gayle was always a good cook and enjoyed it, and liked experimenting. She regarded it as a creative outlet. Once we moved to Vermont, however, her cooking improved even more. We missed the availability of a wide variety of good restaurants, so she attempted to recreate some of our favorites – including Indian, Thai, Mexican, and Middle Eastern cuisines. And she succeeded magnificently! Anyone reading this who was lucky enough to eat her food knows what I’m talking about. Perhaps her most universally enjoyed dish was anything using her pesto sauce. Gayle usually could tweak even a bad recipe enough to make it at least decent, if not actually good.

She developed what she initially thought was gluten intolerance, but eventually figured out that she was really having an adverse reaction to the glyphosate (RoundUp) that is sprayed on most conventionally grown wheat as a desiccant. Once she switched to organic wheat, she began making her own breads and pizza dough and other baked goods. She learned how to make bagels, rivaling those from the best Jewish bakeries. She even figured out how to make a vegetarian version of lox out of carrots (I know, it sounds weird, but is really delicious) just so I could enjoy a cream cheese, “lox” and bagel sandwich again. She experimented with making “bacon” from eggplant and hot dogs from carrots (excellent!), and she made amazing soups.

Here is just a small sampling of Gayle’s delicious culinary creations:

Her Love of Animals:

There were few things in this world that were more important to Gayle than her “babies” – 13 cats (Coo Cat, Amazon, Allegra, Fearless, Tiger, Zoey, Selene, Phoebe, Desdemona, Jasmine, Sierra, Mia and Calliope) and 2 dogs (Samson and Oliver). Calliope, our most recent cat, was the only one who we intentionally went to a shelter to adopt; everyone else either just turned up or we heard about an animal who needed a home. Gayle was completely devoted to them and did whatever she could for them. She used to cook food for them, she would spare no expense to take them to veterinary specialists if needed, she learned how to administer sub-cutaneous fluids when some of our elderly cats required it, got up in the middle of the night to feed a sick cat, and so on. She was always researching information about animal health and subscribed to a number of newsletters and magazines and purchased many books related to the subject. And as crazy as it may sound, one of the reasons we moved to the town in Vermont that we did, was so that we could be within commuting distance of the holistic vet we had been working with by phone for a number of years.

Gayle became a vegetarian in the late 1970s. While there are certainly health and environmental benefits for doing so, her primary reason was an ethical one. In addition to not wanting to kill or eat any animal, she was also distressed about the often cruel ways in which animals are treated on factory farms and confined in zoos. Gayle’s concerns for animal welfare even extended to the insect world. Unless we were dealing with an ant or water bug infestation, she usually tried to catch the little invader and release it outside.

Medical Knowledge:

For a lay person, Gayle knew a lot about the world of medicine (for both humans and pets) – about various diseases and health conditions, their causes and treatments, what various blood tests indicated and what normal ranges are, about medications, correct terminology, and so on. It was not uncommon for a doctor to ask her if she had medical training because of how she communicated with them and understood what they were saying, and the types of questions she asked. I often observed doctors shift their demeanor to treating her with more respect and explain things in a more in-depth manner, almost as if she were a peer.

An example of how Gayle’s knowledge and research helped is that she literally saved my mother’s life. My mother, quite elderly at that point, came down with one of the superbugs – Klebsiella. She was in the hospital and the doctors were trying all sort of antibiotics, but nothing was helping her. I think they had basically given up and were preparing us for her death. Gayle did some research and found a study by a well-respected medical facility, Sloan-Kettering, in which they wrote about success in treating Klebsiella with a natural supplement, Olive Leaf Extract. We presented this information to the doctor and asked if we could try it. He agreed, saying that since nothing else was helping, we had nothing to lose. Based on her research, Gayle figured out the appropriate dosage, and it worked! My mother got better and went on to live several more years.

Gayle was an adherent of alternative medicine and that was always her preferred method of dealing with any medical issue. She even got part-way through a correspondence course in natural health (this was before the Internet and on-line courses). She had no intention of becoming a naturopath, but she wanted to know more for herself. She was not opposed to conventional healthcare, but she did think that there was too great a reliance on pharmaceuticals that had negative side effects that could be avoided by relying on supplements and nutritional modifications and other modalities of treatment instead. Of course there were plenty of times she saw doctors and took prescribed medications herself or for the pets, but she was always looking for more “natural” ways of dealing with any health concerns – either to replace the meds, or in addition, or to prevent them from happening in the first place.

Spirituality and Beliefs:

Gayle was not at all religious, having long rejected the Baptist faith she was brought up in, and she certainly did not believe in the Judeo-Christian concept of god. But she was spiritual in that she did believe that there is some sort of higher power or essence – she thought of it as being some kind of energy. If forced to pigeon-hole herself, she might have said she was Pagan (not the misunderstood and derisive connotation that is so frequently thought of today, but a belief system that reveres nature and believes all things have energy), as many of her beliefs aligned with theirs and she occasionally performed certain rituals. While not necessarily a Pagan ritual, she did enjoy standing eggs on their ends for the equinox (in reality, it can be done at any time). Although we sometimes talked about it, Gayle never tried to convince me to accept her beliefs. We respected that this was something we did not agree on and as such, it was never an issue for us.

She believed in astrology to some extent. Not the generic nonsense you find on the comics pages in the newspapers, but a much more in-depth and sophisticated analysis of the location of stars and planets. Her reasoning, I think, was that if the moon can have an effect on our planet and animals (which is accepted pretty universally to varying degrees), why not other celestial bodies? She certainly didn’t allow it to determine her activities or make decisions in her life, but she did think that it could help to understand why things were happening how and when they did and maybe give some insights as to how to deal with those events.

Whereas I’ve always believed that sometimes things just happen, Gayle believed that everything happens for a reason. We may not be aware of or able to comprehend those reasons, but they are there. She also believed in reincarnation, and that the reason for being reincarnated is that we have lessons to learn and we keep coming back until we’ve learned them all. Sometimes our actions or things that happen to us aren’t for our own enlightenment, but to help others to learn their lessons.

Two of Gayle’s favorite expressions were “thoughts are things” and “put the White Light around it.” In both cases, she was referring to energy. She believed that even our thoughts have energy, so negative thinking can result in negative outcomes. We want to think positively to ensure that good things happen. She believed that White Light is positive energy that can protect and heal, so “putting the White Light around someone or something” is a way of protecting them or helping to heal or facilitate a positive resolution to some challenging situation. 

Gayle believed in some sort of afterlife. Again, not the conventional concepts of heaven and hell, but since we are energy and energy never ceases to exist, our energy changes into another form when we die. She thought it was possible to have communication with those who have died, or “crossed over.” We sometimes joked about what signs or special words we would use to try to let the other one know that the deceased one was there. I’m still waiting.

And Gayle absolutely believed in Karma. A good deed will be rewarded, and a bad deed punished in some way or other. In some cases, Karma might be relatively instant, or it might take a while – years, perhaps, or it might not happen until another lifetime, but it will happen.

At one point, a new manager was assigned to the office where Gayle worked. The new manager was very difficult to work with and many of the employees disliked her. Several of them, including Gayle, decided to try using Patchouli Oil to help to get her to leave. Patchouli Oil is supposed to help eliminate negative energy and remove negative people from your space, so whenever the manager was out of the building, someone would get the little vial of Patchouli Oil that Gayle kept in her desk drawer and put some on the manager’s office door. I don’t know to what extent Gayle really expected it to work or to what extent it was merely a joke to help blow off some steam in a stressful situation; I imagine it was some combination of the two, but either way, it didn’t accomplish what they had hoped.

Playfulness:

Gayle had a great sense of humor and could be very playful. Whether it involved a whoopie cushion or a funny drawing, it sometimes was a little off-color, but always funny. You can get an inkling of her sense of humor just by looking at some of the photos of her. Even as an adult she enjoyed playing with little “things” – she had a little head that she kept at work that would scream when she pushed a button; she had a rubber rat that she enjoyed playing with the cats with. She still had packed away in the attic some of her favorite little toy cowboy and Indians and army soldier figures that she had kept from childhood. We had an eye doctor that we went to for decades, a pretty strait-laced guy in his professional setting. Gayle delighted in bringing him something eyeball-related whenever we went to see him – eyeball candles, floating eyeballs, an eyeball tie, a t-shirt with a protruding eyeball, eyeballs that you threw onto the wall to watch them slither down, among others. We would spend all year looking around for something different for the next appointment. I don’t know who enjoyed them more, the doctor or Gayle.

She liked to play: playing catch, tossing the Frisbee, sledding, etc. If you were playing any kind of board or similar game, you wanted to be on her team because her team usually won. In many ways, Gayle was just like a kid in her playfulness. She would get so excited when she came up with an idea that she thought would be fun – you could just see it in her face, in her body language and hear it in her voice. I used to tell her that I wished we had known each other as kids because I think we would have been great friends since we liked to play the same kinds of games and play with the same kinds of toys.

Halloween was a time that she especially enjoyed. She loved getting dressed up in some sort of costume to surprise the trick-or-treaters. (You can see some of those costumes on the Photo Gallery page.) We sometimes decorated the house (our most extensive effort included a “dead body” with a severed head and tomato sauce “blood” laying on the front porch, and spooky music and sound effects playing through the window) and she got a big kick talking to the kids and asking them about their costumes.

Our Story:

Monday, August 16, 1976 at 8:15 a.m. How many people can recall down to the minute when they first met their spouse? That’s when we began the training class for our new jobs at the Social Security Administration. We didn’t really interact very much in training since we sat on opposite sides of the room, and most people primarily hung out during our lunch breaks with those in closer proximity in the classroom. Gayle told me that she once asked me to explain the difference between Jewish rye bread and other rye bread, but that I didn’t give her much of an answer. She regarded that as me being somewhat standoffish. I have no recollection of that conversation whatsoever, but I’m certain that any lack of informative response was that I had no idea (having only ever eaten Jewish rye). Upon the completion of training, Gayle was assigned to an office in Akron and I to a Cleveland office. Fast forward a few years, and Gayle wanted to transfer up to Cleveland, so she called me to ask about the various offices in the area. I remembered her name but not her face, and actually thought she was someone else from the class! She got her transfer, to a different office but within the same district, and when my office was shorthanded, we had employees from other offices come to my office on detail to fill in. I don’t know if she volunteered or was assigned, but she started coming fairly often. Since she knew absolutely no one else in my office and we knew each other at least a little, I thought it would be courteous to have lunch together so she’d have someone to talk to. And thus began our friendship. Over time, as we got to know each other better, we developed a closer friendship – I would occasionally go hear her and Lisa play music, she and I would play racquetball, etc. Fast forward again to 1985 when we were spending a lot more time together – just as friends – each developing feelings for the other, but each afraid to discuss it for fear of ruining our friendship if the feelings weren’t reciprocated. Friday evening, December 6, 1985, Elias Big Boy restaurant. Supposedly eating carrot cake but too nervous to actually do so, Gayle summoned the courage to finally admit how she was feeling, and I finally did as well. We were a couple from that evening on.

We got married January 23, 2012. We had already been together for over 25 years, so this was merely a legal formality for us. No official document could have made us any more committed to one another than we already were, but it was significant – it finally afforded us the same legal rights and protections that everyone else has always had from the institution of marriage. Not wanting any fuss or ceremony, we got married over the phone by a friend who is a minister. Gayle made our wedding rings; in fact, she made each of us several because she wasn’t happy with the first attempts.

I don’t know if there really is such a thing as “soulmates” but Gayle believed that’s what we were. She believed that we had been connected in prior lifetimes and will be again in the future. There were many times when one of us would say something out of the blue, completely unrelated to anything we had been talking about or doing, and the other one would say “I was just about to say the same thing.” Gayle believed that this was evidence of some kind of telepathic connection between us. I just thought that having been together for so long, it was natural that we might think of the same things at times. But I will admit it did happen enough times that it was noteworthy.

Gayle and I were a really good team when it came to doing projects. Whether it was doing things around the house like replacing plaster walls with drywall, or painting or hanging wallpaper, laying linoleum floor tile or doing plumbing or electrical work, working on cars, putting together furniture or other items requiring assembly, building a greenhouse, and so on, we worked well together and accomplished some pretty impressive things.

And there were a number of weird similarities in our lives – she worked briefly at an optical company right after college and so did I; she also worked briefly at a parking garage, and I did as well as a summer job during college.

No, She Wasn’t Perfect:

About the only thing I can think of that Gayle not only didn’t do well at but actually was really bad at, was her sense of direction. This was despite the fact that she was very good at reading maps. She always wanted to turn left when we needed to turn right. Or we’d be in a mall and she’d insist that the store we were looking for was in one direction even though it was in the other. Even looking at the “you are here” store directory kiosks didn’t always convince her. One would have thought that after numerous disagreements in which she ended up being proven wrong and I correct, she’d have finally accepted that she needed to listen to me. Thank god for the invention of the GPS!

Nor was Gayle a seamstress. In her Home Economics class, there was an assignment to sew a skirt. She just could not do it. So she smuggled the unfinished garment out of the school and took it home for her mother to complete. The irony is that she won the school’s “Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow” award that year! The only reason that happened was because it was determined by a written test which she obviously excelled at, not any practical application.

And Gayle could be stubborn. As irritating as that often was, I knew that she didn’t want to have her way just because it was her way. She truly believed that whatever she was advocating was in the other person’s best interest and was just trying to help. Gayle spent a lot of time researching things – especially related to health and nutrition – and knew more than the average lay person about those subjects. So whether it was about human or animal well-being, she would try to impart her knowledge to help make the situation better. I know that people sometimes thought Gayle was being obstinate, but she really believed in her heart of hearts that her advice – based on her research or personal experience – could help solve a problem and yes, she was annoyed and disappointed if others ignored it.

She could swear to make a sailor blush and she had a snarky side that I actually regarded as being among her best qualities! She could be snide and irritable and impatient. She was incapable of hiding her feelings. I used to tell her that her face was like a billboard because you always knew if she was annoyed or angry by her facial expression. And she would give you “The Look” when she was really pissed – a perfect recreation of the facial expression her father used to make when he was disgusted by something. I don’t think it was ever intentional; it just happened without her even realizing it. You didn’t want to be on the receiving end of that look, but I certainly was on a number of occasions during our 35 years together! I don’t have any photos of that expression, but it is seared into my memory.

Other Thoughts and Memories:

Gayle was very intelligent. I highlighted her academic accomplishments above. She once researched, just out of curiosity, what the membership requirements were for Mensa. She discovered that based on her SAT or ACT scores she qualified, although she never bothered to apply. But more than being smart, Gayle was really grounded and had a lot of common sense. And she was curious about things. She couldn’t just accept at face value being told something; she needed to understand. If something didn’t make sense to her, she’d question it. Not to be difficult or contrary, but just to understand. She was always reading; she usually had at least 4 or 5 books going at the same time – almost never fiction. She was interested in a wide variety of topics – health and nutrition, politics, metaphysics, spirituality, just to name a few. And when she became interested in a topic, she wouldn’t just get one book about it; she usually got at least several.

She could not abide people who said they were going to do something but then never followed through. She was very conscientious and reliable. If she told you she was going to do something, she did it. Gayle hated being late for anything, so we would often leave too early so as to ensure we weren’t late. She hated being unprepared, so she made sure we had every tool or implement or accoutrement that she could think of so we’d have available what we needed. Unfortunately, when the time came that we did need it, we often couldn’t find it and so she’d have to get another one.

Gayle didn’t take herself too seriously. She certainly was very serious about her music and her job and her pets and all of the things she was passionate about, but despite all of her talents and accomplishments, she didn’t have a big ego. In fact, Gayle was somewhat insecure about herself. She did not have a lot of self-confidence or high self-esteem and she often felt ill at ease around people she did not know well. I think she had a difficult childhood and adolescence in that she was always “different” and never quite felt like she fit in, and those feelings stayed with her throughout her life. Obviously being gay and a tomboy was a big part of that, but also she grew up in a household where children were not supposed to express an opinion, especially if it differed from what her parents thought. And as already mentioned, Gayle would question anything that she didn’t understand or that didn’t make sense to her, and that didn’t always go over well.

Gayle always liked kids and took an interest in them. In 1977 she coached her nephews’ Little League team. As unusual as it would still be today to have a woman coaching a boys’ sports team, it was even more rare back then. When we lived in Ohio, we had an 11-year-old neighbor who was a very poor reader and had virtually no support or encouragement from his parents. Gayle found out what subjects he liked (wrestling and the Mafia were tops on his list) so she bought him a couple of books about wrestlers and the three of us would sit outside in our backyard reading those books together. Whenever he came across a word he did not know or could not pronounce, he had to write it down and then we would look it up. He didn’t enjoy the reading sessions, but as his reward we took him to the Science Museum and out to lunch. That he DID enjoy!

Gayle had an incredible memory, which was both good and bad! Her memory was very helpful when dealing with our pets’ various health issues and in discussions with the vets, with our own and friends’ or relatives’ health concerns, or in remembering people we had met years ago, or things that had happened which I had forgotten about. On the other hand, she could remember conversations from years ago, almost verbatim: years after the fact, she would recall arguments we had had and tell me all of the details of what each of us said and sometimes even start redefending her side; I, on the other hand, didn’t remember any of it!

In addition to her many talents, Gayle was very creative and was always coming up with interesting and fun ideas. For example, when I started doing animated cartoons, I was so focused on the technical aspects that I often overlooked the really interesting part – telling a good story. She always had great suggestions for making my animations fun and more like a real cartoon, or adding interesting plot ideas. I can say unequivocally that anything really entertaining was as a result of her suggestions. Her creativity was manifest in so many ways – her music, her art, her jewelry, her cooking. She always came up with something new and interesting.

Gayle frequently established a personal connection with people she initially interacted with in a professional capacity. We became friendly with the previously mentioned eye doctor and would occasionally see him and his wife socially. We also established a relationship with one of our vets, and we went out to eat a few times. The same with the family that ran the Thai restaurant around the corner and our mail carriers (both in Ohio and Vermont). Even workmen – we needed to have some work done when we first bought the Vermont house and Gayle made an elaborate sit-down lunch for the crew one day, and we maintained an ongoing friendship with the head guy for a number of years. It didn’t matter to her one bit where someone fell on the socio-economic scale or any other method of categorizing people; if she liked you as a person, she wanted to get to know you. At the same time, one of her favorite and most often repeated sayings was “I hate people.” She was completely disgusted with people as a group – how horrible humans can be to one another and to animals, the destruction we have caused the planet, how stupid and selfish and thoughtless and cruel people can be.

She was always glad to do whatever she could to help others, especially if she liked you – then she couldn’t do enough. This took the form of helping to fix things around the house or yard, painting rooms, helping pack stuff for a move, and so on. Yet she found it very difficult to accept help from others for herself. There were times when I wanted to call a friend to lend a hand for something and she insisted that we do it ourselves and not inconvenience anyone else.

Gayle was very empathetic and felt things more deeply than the average person. Where most of us would read about or see something bad on the news and would shake our heads and say “what a shame,” Gayle would be in tears. I have thought a number of times how glad I am that she died first because I know that she would have struggled so much more than even I have to have been the one left behind.

Gayle would frequently comment about how boring we were. What she really meant was that there was no drama or chaos. She was down-to-earth, dependable, reliable, and not demanding or needy or chaotic as some people can be. Just rock-steady.

Her Generosity:

But I think that if you were limited to selecting only one thing about Gayle as her defining attribute, it would have to be her generosity. I don’t know anyone who was more generous than she. She was always giving or buying things for others – books, food, supplements, paying for tests for others’ pets, etc. If someone just mentioned that they were thinking about something, Gayle whipped out her phone and had it ordered mid-conversation; even if the recipient could have easily purchased it themself, she wanted to do it for them. She donated generously both to organizations (charities, social justice groups, animal welfare, political causes) and individuals. She sometimes heard about someone in need, usually a total stranger, and would contribute to their Go-Fund-Me or other fundraising campaign. She would make food for people just because. Any time we had to take the car in for service, she’d bring along a homemade pizza for the employees; she’d make bagels for the people who worked in the town office. She truly preferred giving to receiving. It made her feel good to do nice things for others, to help however she could, to give things to make someone else’s life easier or just more pleasant. Whether a close friend or family member, or a complete stranger, she was always eager to give whenever she saw a need.