Happy Pride Month.

I brought a stack of my mother’s personal files home from Indiana last month, including one with clippings and copies of her letters to the editors of various papers over the years. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, on a wide range of local and national topics, from neighborhood land use and development, local ordinances, a rails-to-trails bike trail (her pet project—Mom and Dad were avid bicyclers), endorsements of town council candidates, abortion and birth control, separation of church and state, racial justice to school funding (her only stance with which I disagreed), and lots of letters regarding gay issues. It think every time anybody said anything negative about gay people, my mom wrote a letter. She took it very personally. I knew she did this, she would often send me clippings, but seeing evidence of the extent of it, over so many years, was moving.

The one below, though it’s a personal letter she sent to a columnist, not a letter to the editor, is my favorite—a personal letter allowed her space to share more of her thoughts and feelings. I love her portrait of my brother and me as boys. She was a very clear, concrete thinker. Her sense of justice was never abstract. I always knew how much my mom loved me, how she got me, how she felt especially protective of me, but reading her thoughts here, expressed so open-heartedly to a near stranger, is a special gift now that she’s gone and I’m old.

In the file, there’s also a copy of the columnist’s thoughtful reply, accepting Mom’s invitation. I sure wish I’d been witness to that coffee date.