It won’t surprise you to know that my parents were the first people to hold and nurture me. But it might surprise you to know that the next people were my gay “uncle” and lesbian “aunts.” As things goes, Uncle N-, Aunt M-, and Aunt R- weren’t blood relatives but they had such a loving and warm impact on my family that, for as long as I can remember, we accorded them familial standing without reservation and with much affection.

And why not? After all, they had welcomed a young air force couple, my parents, who’d been called to English soil as part of the NATO alliance. Then in their early twenties, my folks had been uprooted from the fast-lane moderization of post-war America and transplanted into a country of thatched-roof cottages, European antiquity, and quiet English reserve, still under post-war rationing and rebuilding. They found themselves adrift in a country that, in many ways, matched America in language only.

Perhaps my aunts and uncle watched my parents trying to navigate their way through English society and intuitively understood what it’s like to be different from everyone else around them. Perhaps they noticed my mother, alone for the first time in her life without the bustle of her large family to surround her. Or perhaps it’s because they saw a convivial young couple who offered friendship without judgment or reservation. Regardless, they adopted my parents and made them a part of their lives.

And they became a part of ours. Although my parents returned to the U.S. roughly four years later, Uncle N and Aunts M and R were always with us in some form or other. My aunts taught my mother how to make Yorkshire pudding and Sunday meals for us were almost always British in flavor. My mother picked up the habit of tea-drinking and included me in its traditions once I reached puberty. Plus, countless stories about life in England -- life with Uncle N, Aunt M and Aunt R -- were part of my parents’ nostalgia. Even the stories my uncle and aunts had shared with my parents were passed onto us, becoming part of our family history.

More tangible things were passed along, too. Letters passed regularly between my aunts and my mother, keeping each other abreast of their lives. Mom always read the letters aloud, sharing their words with us kids. I remember holding their letters and marveling at the paper-and-envelop, all-in-one packaging that meant posting a letter was an expensive measure. I remember marveling at how different English handwriting was and longed for such a penmanship myself. But mostly I remember their words -- how their quiet lives were proceeding, how Uncle N’s career was advancing, how England was. Because my mother had read us enough letters through the years and had told us countless stories, when I finally met our aunts at fourteen, I already knew them to a good degree.

Uncle N also kept us informed and personalized our aunts for us. With rare exception, he visited us every time he had business in the U.S., often flying up from Washington D.C. -- an extravagance in our eyes and always a cause for celebration. Without fail, he always brought us some Whitman chocolates and for decades I assumed they were an English confection. Uncle N was kind and patient with us over-excited children, always willing to allow an interruption from us, knowing that a moment given to us now was a memory later.

But for all we shared, one thing went unsaid: the truth of their orientation. For most of my life, I didn’t know about their gay and lesbian lives. It wasn’t because my parents were ashamed -- anything but -- it was because my aunts and uncle had demanded a quiet discretion. Fact was, they were at least a decade older than my parents and discretion was both the way of their upbringing and a way of their times. And my parents respected the boundary their friends had set.

In fact, on more than one occasion, us kids had wondered out loud -- in purely and innocently straight terms -- which aunt Uncle N loved best and why hadn’t they ever married? I remember that once my dad grew visibly uncomfortable with our speculation. Now I can look back and realize that we had tread too close to violating that discretion that my parents had long honored, but at the time, my siblings and I were intent on creating our own romantic mythology about our uncle and aunths. Ultimately, we decided that both Aunt M and Aunt R were so special and so loved that Uncle N couldn’t possible choose between them. And so they had vowed to be friends for life, arranged an unmarried heterosexual triad, and took care of each other.

The heterosexual part aside, some of that mythology was actually true. One of the most valuable examples my aunts and uncle set before us was the practice of life-time loyalty. It’s my understanding that they had met, serving on a volunteer ambulance crew during World War II and they became inseparable friends from then on. After the war, my uncle went on to have an illustrious career in the government defense industry while my aunts held quiet domestic jobs, common paths for unmarried men and women back then. But when my aunts’ domestic work came to an end, Uncle N bought them a laundromat to ensure them work and income, which it did right up to their retirement into the 1970s.

I now realize they cared for each other as family and I’m thankful their model was part of my awareness, even if the words “gay” and “lesbian” were unknown to me for many years.

Perhaps the greatest lesson we learned from my aunts and uncle (and my parents) was the value of accepting friendship and love, without restriction, without qualifications. In the early days of their friendship, my parents were blissfully ignorant of homosexuality. As my mom tells me, “What did I know? I was a poor kid from the midwest. I didn’t even know the word ‘lesbian’ existed.” And when she did know, it didn’t matter. Her love for my aunts and uncle was too strong to be undermined by social influences.

It didn’t matter. That’s the message I grew up with. The people you love, you love because of the joy you bring to each other. You accept people into your life because they enrich it and ennoble it. And that’s the message that my parents imparted to us kids, applying it across the board to all peoples, regardless of race, color, creed (well, except creeds of bigotry) and orientation. And we practiced that message with our British loved ones, not knowing for many years that that’s what we were doing.

But eventually we knew. Eventually, long after my aunts and uncles passed from our lives, my parents felt comfortable in telling us about their friends’ orientations. At last they could speak without wholly betraying a life-long unspoken confidence.

My mother told me recently of the many sublties they’d seen that spelled out what life was like for gays and lesbians in 1950s England. Although it was socially acceptable for Uncle N to be a bachelor, it was not always acceptable for him to attend high-level functions without an escort. When circumstances called for it, he asked Aunt M to accompany him. She was femme to Aunt R’s butch and, for better and worse, a more acceptable female personality to straight society. I never sensed any resentment about this situation from Aunt R in her letters or during our rare visits; it was simply what was called for and I suspect their deep loyalty allowed them to make the occasional personal sacrifice for their own professional and private safety.

Another clue: For many years, Aunt M and Aunt R were the caretakers of Sir Frederick Ashton’s country properties, first at the home next to my parents’ cottage and later at his much bigger home in Eye. I'm almost certain they were hired because they could be trusted -- Sir Frederick Ashton, director of the Royal Ballet, was, for his time, rather openly gay. Even so, some level of discretion was needed, especially among your help. After all, the last thing you needed when you decorated your living room in a circus tent motif to entertain your salon, The Circle of Eye, were the wary and condemning eyes of your own help.

Stories of “Freddy” as my aunts would call him also became part of our family's common history. For as long as I can remember, my parents would tell me stories of Sir Frederick visiting for tea and how he was the first famous person I met. Of course, he pinched my cheek and made coochy-coo with me, telling my parents what a delight I was. My dad’s face still lights up when he tells of helping Sir Frederick prune a particularly devilish pear tree and later to hear from Freddy that he got the best crop ever off the tree that summer.

My aunts and uncle enriched my parent’s young days in England in more ways than we’ll ever be able to articulate. But I can recount one final example.

When I was ten months old, my parents were relocated back to the U.S. At our departure, my aunts gave me a small bracelet as a keepsake. It was brass-like, expandable, with a striated motif engraved on its outside. Inside, it was inscribed with my name and a date, 25th March 1957. Someday, it will belong to my daughter.

Today, I look at that bracelet with great tenderness. It was the only jewelry tomboy me would wear and wear it I did until, at ten, my hand had grown too big to accommodate it.

Today, I look at the inscription with a grin on my face and much thanks in my heart. You see, my aunts saved me from a tomboy fate worse than death. As an aspiring high femme, my mother wanted to name me Priscilla, a name which had put my aunts in a tizzy. Wisely, kindly, they asked my mother to reconsider her choice.

“Every one will call her Prissy,” my Aunt R had counseled, “except the bullies. They’ll call her Pissy.”

Horrified, my mother quickly changed my name to Debra.

In a very real sense, my aunts were responsible for forging the very start of my identity. Their advice helped form the foundation of who I am -- and who I am is far happier as a Debra than I ever could have been as Priscilla. And that's why I offer my thanks: to my aunts for my name, to my aunts and uncle for the memories which follow me through life, for the lessons that I have passed on to my children.

Thank you. Two simple words, but words rich in history.