I grew up in an immigrant household, both my parents and my parents recently arrived from a country far away. In my house there was a sharp division between males and females, and as a female you were expected to learn your place, especially before your father and grandfather, but also with your brothers and male cousins. It is just the way it was, and as a young girl I was treated very harshly for not following the rules. I was told, from the time I was old enough to remember that if I didn't learn how to behave I would never have a husband. A woman in my culture without a husband or children is not accepted, better said she is shunned from the house. As my behavior was not correct I spent a lot of my early childhood and young teen as an outcast in my own house. I was given an older brother to take care of and life for me was very sad.

My brother, he was twelve years older than me, was very harsh with me, and I was severely reprimanded and punished, as I grew older the punishments became more severe and my brother, who was responsible for me was at wits end. I was sent as a fourteen year old to live with a distant aunt who lived in Montreal.

In Montreal things were better, my aunt was a self proclaimed woman of the new age and she was unmarried and without children, it would take me a good while to learn that she was also a lesbian and that all of her friends were lesbians too. This was an age of respect and although they were lesbians it was not outwardly exhibited, not like later. MY aunt's favorite friend, Miss Sofia, was a younger woman who worked as an art restorer, she was always very nice to me and she introduced me to so many people. She introduced me to this young woman who had just returned from studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. She was so smart and so urbane, and she took me out and she held my hand and she kissed me and she took me to bed. Somehow being with her especially being with her around my aunt and Miss Sofia, and being much younger my new friend was not scared to show emotion or intimacy or demand exhibitions of intimacy from my aunt and Miss Sofia.

It was at that time that my aunt told me that I had been sent to live with her because of my behavior, and it was obvious to everyone in my home that I was one just like my aunt, a lesbian. My friend, I will call her Dani here because she is very well known, made me her lover and she became the love of my life. I was barely 17 and I was all adult, with an all adult relationship, with one hundred percent support from my aunt. I was encouraged to sleep with Dani, to learn all about myself, and in Miss Sofia told me to enjoy my body, every curve, every nerve, every element of my soul, to demand from Dani full exploration of all aspects of my maturing femininity.

Those were my happiest days, before I went to college and of course before I graduated with my degree in Art History and had to become financially responsible. Dani and I played, and played and played. Dani was also exploring and discovering all her femininity and she was just as generous with me allowing me to explore her body and give her pleasure. Dani and I did what we could, we had our names secretly tattooed on our hearts, giving ourselves forever to eachother.

In my mid twenties my father came to see me, not that it was his first visit, he came often to see me and his sister, but this time he came to see me and to tell me that he had made arrangements with a childhood friend of his for me to meet his son. I was to be properly married and he had given his consent for my hand and that was that. My aunt felt for me, but she could not ask me to rebel against my father's wishes, and her older brother. Dani would just have to understand, perhaps we could remain friends in a very special way, but I was to go with my father and meet this man and get married.

I married with tears in my eyes. I succumbed to him with tears in my eyes. I bore children with tears in my eyes. I longed for my Dani and my love, but I respected my father's demands for me to be a good wife and to bear lots of children and not embarrass him or his family. For twenty years I have lived this life and walked as my father wished. I raised my children, and I raised my two daughters in the family tradition. I did not want them to suffer marriage like me, I wanted them to go into marriage and accept their place. You see, before I took that view, as I first experienced my marriage I had a long conversations with my aunt and Miss Sofia, and both of them told me of the great loneliness of their lives, and the bareness of their existence. A choice they made, but a mistaken choice. Better a husband and a family than unfulfilled loneliness. I would not send my daughters to that life, and after twenty years of marriage I have come to accept my family's ways.

My Dani is alone, without a husband and she longs for that. She owns my love, but it is not the same. Many nights we stay up late and talk about our beautiful days before I became married but we know that is for that age only. We love eachother but we respect my marriage. I am not confused as to who I am, nor am I confused as to my responsibilities. Dani has had to accept what was inevitable. I share my children with her, I wish she would have children to share with me. I often wonder what I would have felt if Dani would have brought a baby boy or girl to my house and invited me to love the baby as my own. That is the one regret of my life, that Dani has missed out on the one true happiness that life can bring. I give her everything I can, but I cannot give her that.