I should have known better than to play with matches....

We were pretty in polka dots. Kimbies and I. She, tall and Indian dark, French braids cascading down her neck. Me. Toothless. With my dirty-mop colored hair chopped off to match my Barbie doll. Our mama dressed us in identical little dresses so we could swirl and smile and impress the masses… “the company”.

I cringed. My knotty little knees were always dirty and scraped from crawling in spaces and places best meant for cats, my fingernails were frayed and fringed, not from nail biting, but dirt digging. I liked to dig in the dirt. Kimbies just smiled. Like a good child should. I grinned. And showed off that “I yanked it out myself” toothless overbite . There aren’t a lot of pictures to back up this story…….

Our parents partied. They had cook-outs and poker games, they drank cocktails and champagne, they danced in the living room. And they had “company”. People that came to visit in long black cars. People that smelled good. Tanned women with cleavage. Men with cigars.

We were allowed to smile…..

And never, ever interrupt……

The “warming” was on a Saturday. The unveiling of the massive addition to the back of the house….the den with its hand carved bar and baroque antique cash register, the “guest rooms”….

I was getting out of it. Only had to wear the pink velvet empire waisted dress for about 20 minutes. While the “company” arrived. Then I could go…

I flew back to my bedroom, peeled the scratchy thing off my bony body and tried on my Trainer. Mama had brought it home for just this occasion. I adjusted the tiny little triangles. Tugged on it a little. Perfect. The elastic straps flopped from my shoulders. Yup, that’s the way it’s supposed to fit.

I grabbed my plastic Brownie pocket book and put the price tags from my very first Bra in it. Keeper. Pulled the uniform over my head, plopped on the floor in my "Saturday" underwear and yanked on the dirty brown socks and a pair of filthy Ked sneakers. Grabbed the musty ole sleeping bag from the corner of the room, borrowed, not bought for the occasion, and started to lug it all out of the house…..

“Sweetie, could you turn the bacon wraps onto low?” my Mama purred at me, as I passed. ’Course! I plunked the stinky sleeping bag down and reached up and counted the little white push buttons. Hit the one next to the red one. OFF!

“It’s almost time for the camp-out, Mommy” I hollered into the empty part of the house. Voices, laughter, cigar smoke, billowed back at me. But not Mama.

I grinned. Drug the dirty sleeping bag out the kitchen door and kicked it down the drive way. Waiting on my ride. I sat on the concrete, legs unlady-like, and waited. Scribbled elementary graffiti onto the bleached white surface with a stick. Chewed my feather-like fingernails. Every time I heard a car engine, I jumped up. Waited. Plopped back down on the concrete. It was taking FOREVER to go on my very first Brownie camp-out ever!

The cigar smoke was getting thick. It sort of crawled out the kitchen door. It was yucky and black. I got up and trudged up the slope to SLAM the kitchen door.

And then I saw it. Felt it. Heard it. The flames. Orange and alive. Licking the kitchen cabinets. Snapping, crackling, making Jiffy-Pop noises. Painting pretty psychedelic designs on the curtains. And it was hot. Really hot.

I ran fast, without tripping once, to our pretty-in-pink bedroom and bellowed at Kimbies…. "The damn kitchen is on fire!” Her brown eyes, like frozen chocolate donuts, pasted themselves onto mine. Her dark little fingers dropped the perfect Barbie with her hair still in the plastic sleeve into the little pink convertible and…..

We ran.
Fast.

And stared.
At the fire.

And then we tiptoed through the new French doors. Holding hands. Past the bartender. And the lady with the big boobs. Out the back door into the moonlight. Where the “company” was in full swing. We searched the hemlines and toe rings (yup, our Mom had one of those), the wing tips, and sports jackets….the voices in the night air…..for Mom or Dad.

We found him first. Flocked by three handsome “Are you a movie star?” men, engaged in hearty conversation. We tugged on his pant leg. He rubbed my chopped off hair. I did that thing with my legs that I did when I was gonna wet my pants in exactly twenty seconds. They kept blabbering.

Finally…….

With that woo-you voice, he bent down and tenderly took both of our chins into his massive hands and whispered “My dearest, darling daughters, what can I do for you?”

And we yelped and welped and jumped and leaped …..

“THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!”

Love stories and left-overs....

I whipped the twice-baked potatoes out of the oven and slung them as hard as I could at the cold tile wall above the kitchen sink. I watched them stick, cheese glued, to the riveted grout, and then slide, like lazy slugs , down the wall, and plop into the stainless steel sink.

I hit the button.

The disposal devoured them like a pit bull on a pile of baby rattle snakes.

THE BREAK-UP.

He freaked. Had never seen me so volatile. So Alive, really. Had never seen me so…“So what?”

It was raining, summer sleet….the sliding glass doors were covered in a hard-water stained film, the rain pounding on the other side….steam rising off the concrete patio. From the kitchen, where I stood, Michelob in hand, he was just a shadow on the other side of a dirty shower curtain…..

I watched, cat-eyed, as he mounted the bike and rode off into torrents, the rain pelting his face….

“God, I hope he’s okay…he makes it home safe”

I glanced at the sink. Little dribbles of bacon, aged Wisconsin cheddar, and remnants of potatoes tattooed the stainless steel.

“I’ll worry about it tomorrow”

I plunked my skinny little fanny onto the corduroy couch and finished my beer. “There!” I waited for the tears to come, the wailing, the flailing, the “Oh my God, I just called off a wedding" blues to come……

I drank another beer. And looked at the clock. Got up and looked at the sink again.

It’s twenty years later, and I’m still hungry for those twice-baked potatoes……

Butterflies and Hurricanes......

I downloaded the song without a clue….And it freaked me out, kind of spooky at first, then I sunk into the 28th row of the orchestra pit and melted into it. I don’t know who the artist is, or where they were coming from….
just know my keywords….
that day, my feelings….
butterflies and hurricanes….


And that’s life….

The yellow butterfly, with her translucent wings, barely visible from the kitchen window, flits across the yard, dancing from blazing begonias to rotting pot of cigarette butts, she’s careless and wreckless and feminine and dainty, pointing her toes like a prima ballerina and strutting her stuff like Tina Turner….she spirals and twists and makes up her mind as she goes……


I lived through three hurricanes in a month’s time. And never saw the like of this. The damage done.

In the aftermath of the storms, the hot dirty days that followed, we drank hot beer and bathed in tepid water ladled from the neighbor’s garbage cans. We feasted on Slim Jims and hardened bagels. We slept with the windows open, the night air wailing through the broken glass, and awakened to the sun blazing and chain saws ripping through our borrowed peace. We filed insurance claims and waited, lugging our lives, as we once knew them, to the curb…

splintered, broken, waiting for the fix…..


Butterflies and Hurricanes…..

Sometimes, in the debris, stacked like pick-up sticks…we find what we were looking for all along….



The calm after the storm...
Thanksgiving leftovers…



The wish-bone .


And Butterflies are free……..

Daytripping.....

The sun started a riot. Smiling from the sky. Rising on her own. Flipping lazy clouds, like pancakes, out of her view. She whispered on our cheeks, and cackled kind of haughty as she kissed us on our knees...."Follow me, for free".....

We put the top down . Buckled up and took off.....

Hugging the highway, feeling her heat.

Past the row after row of make-believe castles, shuttered up for the winter, with their chain-locked gated lives.....past the private little yachts, Carnival Cruise size, with their tacky little names....."Octopussy" and "The Mare-in-her", past the tennis courts, the Valet parking attendents in bermudas and jackets....

We revved the engine at red lights and bolted on green.....

...Shot the peace sign at housekeepers dusting the cans, tourists in rick-o-shays rattling the streets, and "married-for-money's" toting their tribes....

We snaked between the palm trees and cocacabanas, banged U-turns in Membership Only Concrete worlds, and played chicken with the draw bridges and uniformed men....

We followed the sun ,with her bright blue petticoat, 100 miles south.....

Until they would let us in.......

Where the beer was ice cold, and the barstools were crooked. Where the ladies room door was propped closed with your foot. Where the "We sale sea shells" played music we could dance to. Where the people were comfortable wearing their skin.

"Theres no place like home......."

Dear John....

Once upon a time….

I lived another life. I dressed up and paraded around in pointy toed high heels and wore perfumed matching pantsuits and pretended to be an Administrator. And then I woke up one day, hacking and coughing from the Channel #5, with bunions on my toes, and pulled my T-shirts out of the closet and my love beads out of my bra…and said “This is Me…”

He didn’t fire me.

He cringed a little. Grimaced, maybe. Feigned annoyance in my direction. Held his breath and prayed it would pass.

It didn’t.


Once upon a time…
You lived another life.
That was then and now is now.

Cringe a little. Grimace. Feign a little annoyance in my direction. Hold your breath and pray it will pass.

It won’t.

You’ve danced in the kitchen…..

Scarlett O'Dare-Ya

I’ll worry about it tomorrow….

Ok, I could do it today. I could bite my fingernails, grit my teeth in the night….I could pace back and forth on the cat-hair- covered kitchen floor, taking deep moaning groaning emphysemic breaths. I could worry about it today.

I could sleep in purgatory, tossing and flailing, kicking the sheets off , mad dogs biting at my heels, and then yank them up around my neck again, cocooning in their cotton comfort, until it’s time to kick them off again…

I could suffer….

But I decided to live.

To laugh.

To be free, if even for only seconds….

So I banish you…
Gloom and doom,
Bill collectors,
Insurance agents,
Lawyers in your suits and ties with your billable moments,
Handsome doctors with your million dollar smiles and your million dollar
“the odds are a million to one, but don’t you want to try?” come-on lines ,
Sentimental Suitcases stuffed to the brim with black and white photographs of how it was meant to be,
Cryptic Karma, waiting to jump out of the closet and haunt me…

I banish you all until I look you in the eye and dare you to make me decide, to face your cheap little threats. Dare you to face me, facing you, and listen to yourself. It’s life man, live it….

You can’t wreck my world if I’m speeding, running faster than you can catch me. If I don’t look forward and don’t look back. You can’t rain on my tacky little Saturday morning parade, if I barricade you off, make you get in line behind Santa Claus and his 8 tiny reindeer….

Until then, I’m dancing.

Catch me if you can……

And then, guess what?…

Tag,
you’re it……


I'm going to the beach.....

Will work for beer....

18 years have passed since I walked out the front door of my first little house, drove in reverse down the dead end street....

And started over again....

No map, no plan, no stick, no bandana....just an unairconditioned car piled with youngin's
and
the belief that I could do this.....

And we did.

Some of the best times of my life, hunkered down in our "Are we homeless, yet?" days.... Skinny and I at the kitchen table brewing up "there must be a way" dreams....

Moon Stars and Paper started a chain of love, dig up a picture from 20 years ago, and feel the love. I spent five minutes plundering through the suitcases of memories, but before I made it back that far, my fingers fell on this one, and I knew. It's exact copy has been plastered on my refrigerator door for 17 years.

Skinny on the right...
It's a hot, hot Sunday morning and we're packing up. When we get there, we'll plop down in the the old wooden chairs, arranged in a perfect circle, stretch our legs out in front of us and stack our barefeet in the middle of the cement meeting place, toe to toe. The flakey ole paint, pink, aqua, yellow and green will stick to our bikinied rumps and our Ban de Solie'd thighs and we'll smile at the sky and the passers-by, the regulars, the waitress, and Tony and Joe. Ice cold beers arrive and disappear. Evaporate by the heat and our unquenchable thirst. We'll laugh and tell stories, make friends, dare each other silly , maybe even cause a ruckuss.... We'll order a giant hamburger, all the way, with greasy fries, and a dill pickle, that will sweat in the sun. We'll ask for a knife and divide it into thirds....

This sign was good for two and half Sundays at the beach. "Do Not Jump The Fence" sat propped up in the garage, we'd pull it out, toss it in the trunk and gift it to Joe when we ran out of credit.....

When I run away....

When I run away....I want to live by the sea....

In a salty little shanty....with the night air blowing through the rusty screens. Where the terazza floors are etched by the sands of time and gritty under my feet. Where sandspurs grow in the yard and probably nothing else, but terazza pots of potpourri and spices are lined up like little soldiers, crooked little soldiers, in the window sills....

Where the wind howls at night and wraps her loving arms a thousand times around "my house", threatening to whisp us off into the oceans, but really.....just playing with my mind. Where the sun is tempermental and scorching and she spits her rays onto the rooftop like laughter .....and the tar between the shingles simmers and smokes at noon.

I want to run barefoot to the mailbox.....playing hot potatoe on the driveway....collecting postcards from loved one from the rusty ole box, flag up to the skies....

I want to dive onto clean white sheets at night, too small for the double bed, and too thin to hide the mattress seams, stretched to their limit and fresh from hanging on the line, soaking up the salty air....

I want to walk , heels first, toes scrunching, in the early morning sand.....the moon falling with the tide and the sun peeking her little pink nose over the waves, playing hide and go seek.....

I want to dance under the endless sky. Drinking up laughter and wishing on random stars. I want a rusty ole fridge in the carport, chucked full of Michelob light and watermelons I thumped at the produce stand.

I want to pop jiffy pop late at night and watch black and white re-runs, static and all....feed the neighborhood cats out the back door....

Until then.....
I live here.
In my house.
My little love.

And every now and then I drive to Blakely
and pretend
I'm gonna move to the middle of nowhere
and
sit on the porch
and drink beer
and wave
at
friendly passers-by....

Just give me peace......

I miss the red lights.....

I’m running the roads now.

And frankly I don’t like to. I abhor traffic and was perfectly comfortable when Florida practiced “Arrive Alive….Drive 55”…. I could take in the scenery and didn’t suffer from shake-syndrome every time a semi passed the VW. I hate pumping gas and spending money on anything other than beer and beach passes, so charging a full tank onto the company card to be extracted from my pretend paycheck is painful. I don’t like tailgaters, lane-changers, U-haul-its, or trailers. I’m not crazy about SUVs (what if they flip?) and I’ve never understood East and West and North and South….

I can’t see the speedometer without my glasses on and can’t see the highway with them. If I wear my contacts, I have to squint the left eye to see the car in front of me, and the right eye to flick my ashes in the ashtray and not my iced tea. So I drive naked. Blind as a bat.

My kidneys have highway hypnosis. They don’t function at all as soon as they realize we’re going on a trip. I’m Tinkle Bell of the toll roads. I spend more money getting off and on the byway than most folks spend in gas. And don’t even get me going on the public potty phobia…………

Nope, I don’t like to travel. I like to park it and party it where I land.

But, I’m running the roads now….

And I can’t wait to get there…..

Trust me......

It's my favorite movie. "A chic flick" he said, lazily swooshing the margarita in the oversized, salted glass. Mmmmmmmm.

"We're watching it" I purred, flopping on the leopard skin rug just behind him. The first afternoon of the Long Hot Summer had arrived and after floating in the hammock and lolling around in the pool, it wasn't quite time to throw the steaks on. "We're watching it" I whispered, reaching around him to hit play.

Sometime during the can-can, boredom left his eyes and without an audience to notice him, he drifted into the story. Margarita in his right hand, absentmindly swished just every now and then. He didn't notice when I topped it off again.

Mmmmmmmmmmm.....

I scooched the markers closer. Snuck them into my space behind him. NOW, I thought. I traced a word on his back with my finger. "Know what that says?" Mmmmmmm, noooooo"...blue eyes following Satine's every move.

The markers followed her every word......

Saturday afternoon at the movies.
Trust me, you're gonna like it.

The Final Room

By Fate and By Chance....

I found a friend.

Sweet, soulful Baron.....
May the butterfly wings that carried you on this everyday roadtrip,
now grow stronger and mightier with everyday....
May the faces and the hearts you touched
smile bigger and ache deeper, live fuller everyday....
May the gifts you gave
be opened
over and over again....

Wishing you, hoping you, eternal peace in a place called home....The Final Room. Love you Man!

Tink me once, Tink me twice.....

Tink. The art of touching someone, drenching them actually, by thinking of them. O.K., I made up the word, but I checked. Webster hasn’t gotten there yet. Tink.

Angels do it all the time. Lovers do it often. Twins invented it. I believe in it.

A cigar smell that creeps into the hallway without explanation and suddenly you’re 7 years old and riding in a Thunderbird, pushing the Bobby Vinton tape into the 8 track. Dad-O reaches over and says” You wanna drive , don’t you?” And you leap off of the garnet plethora seat and into his lap to guide the steering wheel toward the Pak-n-Sac. No seat belts, no rules. Just the dotted lined highway and the cigar simmering in the ashtray.
40 years later. Tink. You’re Daddy’s thinking’ about you…..

The sound of the magnolia leaves rustling. Wet. Night rain dripping off their fat paper-plate shaped selves. I heard them Saturday and knew. I was 10 and had just climbed up the seven 2 x 4 wooden levers to the heart of the tree. We were monkeys. You had to stretch your arms, and lank your legs to make it in seven steps. Adults would’ve needed 23 resting spots. My bare feet cradled the soggy soul of the old tree. Dark leaves lined her heart like a bird’s nest, drenched in May rain. My skinny little arms jiggled out into the open air, standing on tip toes, waiting for the swing to fly high enough to catch. Brad swung it once, I reached and teetered, its wooden seat and hemp rope teasing me. He swung it hard this time. The rope swooped and then danced in front of me, I curled and lunged, almost fell, but couldn’t’ catch it, soft wet bark scraping my shins. The third time, I snatched it, and Brad backed away. “She’s flying now” ……

I’ve never parachuted or sky-dived, but God, I’ve jumped from that tree. You plummet to the dirty earth, FAST! The silly frayed rope saving you at the last minute, a make-shift bungy cord, and you bounce for just a second. And then you swing. So high your underpants show. And all you can feel and all you can see is the magnolia leaves rustling. In Nana’s backyard.

43 years later…It’s spring now. And I’m explaining love bugs on a sun-peeled deck, in the middle of an “It’s so HOT” day, in the middle of an “I’ve loved you forever” conversation and I hear that sound. The magnolia leaves rustling. Nana. Tink. She’s nudging me.

I grab the rope and jump.


To be continued…..