Pt 43:
Esther LeBaron Spencer
and Lesbian Love

---

“All I am I owe to my mother.
I attribute all my success in life
to the moral, intellectual,
and physical education
I received from her.”

George Washington

Pt 43:
My Mama Esther LeBaron Spencer
and Lesbian Love

In August of 1958,
During a hot as hell Hurricane, Utah
Summer school vacation,
Mumsy lent me her coming of age Autobiography,
An attempt to appease me,
Her 1o-year-old bookworm daughter,
And my incessant complaints of boredom; i.e.:
No books to read, nothing to do,
And missing school entirely too!

But reading her girlhood diary
Added more heat to the summer’s misery.
Mum had some explaining to do!
I’d opened an envelope she’d long ago glued
To the front of her journal declaring:
“Deep-Dark Secret!
Keep OUT!!”

Had Mumsy really expected me
To not open that tempting note?
Or did she want to share with me her secret
So as to educate pubescent me
In a roundabout way
By allowing me to discover
Her most-special tryst –
Her surreptitious love affair
Wherein she’d been kissed …
And more
By her girlfriend next door …
In forbidden love.

I’m only sure she had hidden
Within this envelope
Her skillfully penciled firecrackers
Shooting sparks everywhere in the air–
A secret code only she could crack –
Along with the comment:
“Most wonderful experience of my life!!!”

A clandestine inscription
Then ensued this “ejaculation”
Suggesting salacious sensation –
And a most recent rendezvous
She’d had with her bosom buddy,
Fourteen-year-old Meggy.

She said Meg had initiated moves on her
During their most recent sleep-over –
Moves she implied culminated
In “incredulous fireworks“!

After I questioned embarrassed Mum
Concerning her Journal conundrum
And what was it she’d done,
She opened up to me
In fairly frank discussion,
Probably hoping to soften
Some of the shocking scenes
I’d just read and seen.
But naïve tween me
Couldn’t conceive nor comprehend,
At the tender age of ten,
What actually transpired between them,
My Mum and her chum Meggy.

Here is a paraphrased explanation,
On the part of Mum –
Her attempt to “mummify” and put to rest
Questions lingering in my chest
Regarding her reputation :

She told me:
“When I was in 7th grade [in Colonia Juarez, Mexico],
I was best-friends with an LDS Mormon girl in 8th-grade named Meg.

“She really loved me,” crooned Mumsy ….
“My looks, expert piano playing … everything!
Whenever we were together, she’d request I play
One piano piece after another
While she’d sit ‘n’ listen, paint ‘n’ draw,
Enthralled, in awe
At all the beautiful Piano Concertos
And other pieces I could play from music or memory.

“We were companions for years ….
Spent every moment we could together.
How we loved to read books ‘n’ poetry to each other,
Do our schoolwork together,
And share our dreams ‘n’ interests.
She, like me, was a talented top student.

“Meg often invited me to sleep over,” she continued.
“One night things progressed to where she
Took Off my bra, sucked my tits,
Then removed my panties … and … well …
Like you saw in my journal …

“It was the most glorious experience of my life …
Out of this world! I saw stars!
Later I learned what we done was against the gospel!
So don’t you ever do what I did! You hear?!
Now you know better, no excuse for you to sin the same.

“I’ve long-since repented,” she went on.
“Am tellin’ ya these things ’cause you read my secret entry.
But you must never EVER reveal what you found!
Understand!?” It’s our secret now!”

“Oh, I’ll never tell, Mumsy!” I promised.
{Mum’s the word … Pun intended}
And I kept her secret till now in my Tell-All Memoir,
Cause I’m sick of living in denial, pretense, and hypocrisy.

At age ten, I couldn’t imagine Mum doing anything imperfect.
Hadn’t she always told me she was
The most perfect woman in the world …
That she could do no wrong, my mom!
That’s how she’d raised me to think
About her and Dad …
That they were the “perfect saintly pair“!

“Alright,” Mum continued. “I’m glad this secret is only between you and me. But I won’t tell you any more ’bout it …. ‘cept to say I had some of the best times of my life with Meg. We remained chums up until a few years after I married.

“When Meg got married, I mourned for days, then ended our friendship.
But how I loved her … and I miss her to this day.
How she admired me, my piano playing,
And other things …. like the pretty clothes I could sew–
Which I made from patterns I created myself.
[In her High School Home-Ec Class,
She was taught how to make her own original patterns.]

“I know now what sleep-overs can lead to,” Mum continued.”
That’s why I’ve never allowed my kids to sleep at friends’ homes.
I’ve kept my eye on you kids … making sure you stay pure …
have no chance to play nasty!

“Even so, I was the purest girl in the Mormon Colonies …
And in ALL Mormondom …
And the whole world!
Mormon leaders, when they came to visit our Mormon colony
[in Colonia Juarez, Mexico]
Even told me so.”

Years later Mum confided:

“I’d always hoped to find a best friend like my chum Meg who could be my husband’s plural wife … a companion with whom I could share women’s things – such as all our secrets, deepest feelings … life’s experiences … love …
Stuff like that women can’t share or enjoy with a man.
Sadly, it never came to pass.

“But, when I was growing up, our family’s best friend Tom Jones and his two wives shared a wonderful, loving, plural-marriage relationship.
They lived near us in Colonia Juarez –
He was Osmond Jone’s father.

I had so hoped to grow up and have a marriage like their’s–
a sister wife with whom I could share everything the way they did.
Tom’s two wives couldn’t stand to be apart!
Often spent their nights in the same bed.

“They lived right across from each other.
Only a sidewalk separated their abodes.
But they found even this too big a distance.
They loved each other so much and got along so well,
they spent every moment they could together –
The perfect epitome of how polygamy
should be,” Mum told me.

Much later still, when I was fifty years old,
my sister Mary told me Mother told her
(when Mother was in her late fifties)
“Sex is better without a man.”

Neither I nor Mary know exactly what Mum meant. But it’s most “interesting” … so far and away from Anything she ever brought us up to think or believe,
When it came to sex, marriage, and men! But people change.

I related the above incidents,
Not to titillate but to educate, Inform, and unmask Mum’s perennial deceptions, Denial, double standards, bigotry and hypocrisy – Her Mormon-ocracy.
She wasn’t the perfect Saint she professed to be!

She NEVER practiced what she preached to me.
I can see she was never really sure what she believed …
Nor what was right, in many a case.
What’s more, she changed her beliefs, behavior, and lifestyle as suited her.
Yet NEVER allowed me the same free agency!

I’m fed up with the stories she and other Mormon Fundamentalists told/tell
To make people think they were/are perfect,
Not going to hell …
So as to guilt and control others.
And to convert new people to Mormon Fundamentalism and polygamy.

But also to convince people the reason they,
The Mormon fundamentalists, are “so perfect”
Is that they are Mormon/born Mormon:
Mormons believe they are fore-ordained to be God’s Chosen People.
Whereas, Calvinists believe they are pre-ordained to be God’s chosen people.

But Jews “know” they are God’s chosen people!
Well, doesn’t the Bible say the Jews are God’s chosen people?
Yet the Jews wrote the Bible ….
So they should know. Right?
And on and ON goes the saga of
Ethnocentricity!

Suffice it to say, with age comes wisdom.
I’ve found there’s good and bad in everyone.
Human beings are a weak, ignorant,
Arrogant species in many a way –
But born to live and learn … and love.

If we spurn everyone
Who hurts or harms us,
Or isn’t perfect,
We’ll end up alone.

We must learn to love people…
Faults, failings, and all …
Forgive and let live …
And I’m still trying to.

E.g., Mum, like everyone,
Had her share of
Good and bad qualities.
But she was my mother.
She could’ve aborted me –
Shoved me back in at birth,
Or flushed me down the toilet.
(There are times I’ve wished she had!)
Instead she gave me life and love …
To the best of her inability.

She and Dad drug me up
And put me down …
Till I was sixteen
They kept me around.
Then married me off
Into polygamy
To get rid of me …
And their responsibility,
I, second oldest of their progeny,
Their fourteen kids …
Brats … respectively.

Once I let Mum have it
For all her mistakes,
Wrongs ‘n’ retrograde moves
Made in rearing me.
She cried a bit, then replied:
“I did the best I knew how!”
So what more can I say
But Thanks Mum anyway!

Wow! So now I’ll do it my way …
Make it on my own somehow …
Some way …
From here on and alone …
Even if it kills me!
Just don’t try to control me
With more of your
Doing the best you can, Mumsy!

If that was loving me,
Then I’d say you’ve loved me
Quite enough really!
Now I can make my own mistakes,
Thank you graciously.
And you can’t be blamed –
Not much anyway …
Anymore … anyhow.
And now I exit with a bow.

You may want to Check out
“Family Secrets – The Path from Shame to Healing,”
by John Bradshaw