Celebration of Community: Amy Lane and Kim Fielding

Monday April 30, 2018

So, you know those flights where you end up talking to somebody in the airport and they feel like your long lost sister, and then you end up sitting together on the flight and you get to talk to them while you’re flying, and you end up spending the entire trip together, and by the time you get to your destination you’ve made a friend that you’ve never thought you’d make and you can’t wait to talk to them again?

Kim Fielding and I had actually been at the same event together—was it DSP Weekend, Kim? Or Romantic Times? I don’t remember which event it was—but I remember talking in the airport and then, happily enough, on the plane. By the time we split up—and I don’t think we went all the way to Sacramento together—I knew I was so glad to have the chance to talk this person, who was funny and who got my jokes and who made me smile.

We’ve traveled a lot together since then. We’ve driven to San Diego and Las Vegas for conventions and conferences, and once we even got our kids together and went on a ghost hunt in the Gold Rush towns of California. Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus? We’ve been there. Lunch at Dantorel’s for our writing group? Been there too.

Kim is the person who dared me to write an epic poem based on the theft of frozen horse semen—it’s on my blog; you can blame that on her. But then, I can text Kim with pictures of a skull museum in Old Sac, and she’ll send back WHY HAVEN’T WE SEEN THAT?

I don’t know why we haven’t yet, but you can bet we’ll have plans to visit sometime in the next year.

I count myself so very fortunate to have made friends with Kim Fielding, and while we probably would have run into each other—and stuck—eventually (we do go to the same events a lot!) my life is so much better that it was sooner rather than later!