A love story

I was in the third grade
collecting badges
and A pluses on papers that didn't matter.
I lined the cigar box,
ever just so,
Tipparillos gone,
with black velvet from the hem
of my Mama's dress,
and laid them to rest there....

the butterflies....

The glue didn't stick
and the teacher,
Miss Swanson,
"fixed" them for the fair....

I couldn't wait....
my torn pink ticket in my pocket,
to see my butterflies and the ribbon
she promised me....

But,
all I remember
are the green and gold and blue and red

hatpins through their hearts.....

Kiss the sky at Midnight

New Years....

I’ve tried it everyway. As a child, we hooped and hollered, twirled Nana’s noisemakers in the air! Teetered on the top of the bamboo barstools, feet dangling, arms flailing Wheeeeeee! It’s New Years! Along the way, we started sneaking down to the basement, having James whip us up Suicides….coke and rum and vodka…. Gag me with a spoon! But it left us breathless, and sitting in circles, watching midnight grab the sky, singing…Sha Na..Na…Na…Na… Hey…Hey. …Hey…
holding hands, and sometimes upchucking heads. I ache now. We are not all here now. Those were the New Years we should have hugged each other harder and left the toilets to their own.

And then we were legally “grown up”. And we hung from Balconies and French kissed at midnight. It was still good. Even the year Greg Fishowitz overdosed and sentenced himself to a life pacing in an antiseptic aquarium plugged into IV’s for eternity. It was still going to be a good year. That was the year Christian came out of the closet, called off his engagement to Juliet, and rocked his parent’s world. We applauded him. The year that Kimbies got suspended for smoking in the bathroom and the year that my boyfriend, in a death defying act of jealousy , flipped the camaro upside down and I LIVED! It’s all good.

And then we were on our own, and dateless, and all piled up in a “too expensive” “too cramped for comfort” apartment and “What the hell?” they were having a Champagne and Caviar Party at the clubhouse…… So we tooled our size six fannies over and swallowed fish eggs and pink bubbles and left with the first three cars that fled the scene….

And we married our rides….. (Some of us for better or for worse, one of us just for the ride)

Time flies when you’re having a good time, and we must have because it’s a blur that I really don’t remember…. And suddenly….

Its another life and
I’m at the airport and I’m watching as my soldier lumbers down the ramp and it’s late, far too late to bring in the New Year, and I’m thrilled….
He’s alive and He’s home and I’m in love and jet lag is an urban myth….
We set the clocks back four and a half hours and embrace the New Year just before the sun comes up. On our own make-believe time.

Years pass.

They bring their blessings and their curses and we survive it all.

I’ve cheered New Years and blessed it out. I’ve welcomed the New and buried, literally, the old. Dug mammoth holes in the flower beds and put the crap to rest. . I’ve burned it. And run out into the street and tossed it’s ugly karma to the sky…ashes floating aimlessly, landing on the curbs. I’ve kissed the sky and wished on stars, I’ve gone to bed……

Two years ago, we started this Resolution thing again…. The time had come. A million things to resolve to, to amend to, to agree to, to give in to. But we picked only three. Kimbies and Butch and I. We must have known then. WE CHOSE PEACE. WE WANTED PEACE. And, oh yeah, they would get a dog and I would get a boyfriend. We just sort of threw that in. We just wanted peace.

“Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes if you try, you get what you need” MJ and the Rolling Stones.

On New Years Eve, we made reservations. Resolutions. Wore hand me down dresses pinched a little here and a little there to fit just so. Kimbies was mannequin beautiful in her hippie bandana with her priceless husband at her side. We cheered. We cried. We danced with strangers. Had exactly one too many drinks. We hugged. We all held hands at some point and fell to our knees on the dirty little floor and thanked God for the noise of rock and roll, and the healing, and the Angels that brought us there. At midnight, we turned and kissed.

I’m so glad even resolutions give you second chances.

I’m doing it all over again this year. And this one is a keeper.

Peace.

Peace~love to all, Happy Holidays!

Spinning....

Telephone Tag. That's how we do it. No Sirens, bullhorns, weather radios. In the pitch black sky the phone rings, too early in the morning to be a late night "I love~love~love you" call, too late in the night to be an early morning wake up call....

Seven minutes....
to pass the word, run barefoot onto the porch and yell for the neighbors..."You up?" "You?" "Yeah" "See ya when it's over".....
to gather three cats and the dog, the birth certificate box (which also holds a toothfairy letter, two shells, a butterfly wing, a zippo lighter with my initials on it, and the titles to cars I don't remember owning....
to wake up my sleeping child, now with child, and in five words or less, convince her to grab her pillow and crawl into the bathroom closet...
to say the quickie prayers...
to try Jonah's phone number one more time, again, and again....
to race back out of the closet and grab my Ruby Red's, construction boots for the afterlife....
to dive back in when I heard the sky fall.....

Three minutes in the rumbling, tumbling, swooshing, dipping, diving, tilt-a-whirl darkness....
and then unfolding,
paper dolls still stuck to the perforated edges,
bending one stretch at a time,
breaking free of the make-shift cellar...

Yup, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

Let there be peace.....

I've watched the mailbox for days. I knew it was coming. Everynight I've emptied the leaning, rusting, box at the end of the driveway, thumbed through bills, and bills, and bills, and "why don't you buy me's?", waiting on this.....

The Christmas card from the baby with the old soul....



One World
One Word
Peace.....

It came today....

May the circle be unbroken...

Your Mama wears Combat Boots....

These are the ones. I had to decide between construction boots and the spanish formal or combat boots and the little black dress. The little black dress won. My date, whom by the way I asked out, for New Years Eve, is one of my dearest friends. Charming, conservative, intelligent and 23 years my senior, he'll be wearing impecable taste and a smile.

Jonah, my eldest and youngest, and only son, stopped by this afternoon...We played catch-me-up on the porch, me stringing love beads and he, checking voice mails and text messages one right after the other. Claiming too little sleep and a too bright sun, he lumbered through the house collecting hand me down towels, a bar of soap, and a frozen pizza..... pausing on his way to thumb through the Halloween pictures piled on the microwave. "Ya had fun, didn't ya Mom?" "Yeah, son we did, we really did...." "Ya goin' out for New Year's again?" "Oh yeah, wait, I'll show you my boots......"

His hollywood chin tipped to the left. One eyebrow raised just a hair. "You're doin' it again, Ma....." smile "People are gonna talk".... full grin now. "I know, son, but I have a broken foot....I can't help it, and I wanna dance" "They're gonna talk....."...... huge grin now.

"Love ya, Ma"....words tossed over his shoulder as he clanked through the screen door, and down the drive way....

And now it's my turn to smile.

The butterfly effect.....

It started with the coffee pot. $21.95 at Winn Dixie. I don't even like brewed coffee. I like mine strong, one cup at a time in the microwave, or so hot they could-sue-you at McDonalds, but I was there in the check out line....and it was on display....and the freeze dried bag of beans on display next to it, smelled so good....

I plugged it in, and stuffed the basket with coffee, filled the retainer with water and stared at it. When would I hit the button? 8 cups of coffee registered on the little resovoir reading. Good to go.... In case I ever needed to make coffee for an army....

It was that night, that we hit send. In the kitchen, Chey and the stranger I'd known forever, laughing. That night that it percolated, gurgled, giggled, french toasted us....that night the silly coffee pot and three cups left in the sink told our fortunes....one empty.....two half full.....

It died in November. The countertop brewery that I never wanted in the first place...spit water on the counter and choked on it's own coffee grinds. And I cried. I know it's silly, but I thought in it's going, it was symbolic. I paced. Pined for the taste of my good ole instant Maxwell House. And paced.

Walgreens is open 24 hours. I came home with the only little baby I could afford, a four cup (two at my house) miniature model of all before it.....

Tomorrow I'm throwing it out.

I don't drink alone....

"Our house was a very, very fine house"

This is where we grew up. Not where we spent the majority of our childhoods, Kimbies and I, but the mostness of them.....Here, in this thirty-two room playhouse.

I remember the very first time we saw it, empty except for the furniture that had been custum made to fit the nooks and crannies....that came with the deal...the giant round satin couches filled with goose down.....We tried them out fannies first, over and over again, laughing as the brocade spit feathers flying....the toy box under the windows, wrapped in a semi circle, empty, except for a few old crayons and the scribblings of children before us.....my beds, set head to foot lining the east wall, wrapped in a meandering wrought iron grapevine.....I took my fingers and traced the walls....New Orleans was there, in all her dark and smokey taboo....hand painted on the walls....

We moved in and rocked the neighborhood. Our parents were beautiful, he, handsome and successful and rarely home, she, whispy and blonde and "different". It was here that Curty learned to crawl, and babble, and ride a bike, that Skinny and Chance were born. It was here that we first learned to believe.....

in happenchance
and fairytales
and to dance to our own music....
it was here that we learned there were a set of tracks that
were laid right side up and wrong side down
and that it was okay to cross
them,
skinny legs flying on spider bikes with banana seats and spokes spiked with poker cards and clothespins.....

here that we learned unconditional love.....
to not be afraid of poltergiests or ghosts or things that goes bump in the night....
to take in strays, because they're not really stray after all,
they're just waiting for you to open the door....
that man could really walk on the moon....
if he wanted to.....

It was here that we were free.....
That we lived our Pippi Longstocking childhoods......
riding bikes down hallways,
depositing each other, clinging,
down the laundrey shoot....one story, two, three into a mountain of dirty clothes.....
swimming in Mom's leftover calgoned bathwater until it was tepid and filthy....
Coloring on walls, higher than we could reach and down halls that led to eternity....
flying in cardboard box race cars down spiral staircases....bumpity bumpity bump until I broke my nose and
a big toe
and somebody had to stop us,
playing bartender with this wine and that and some soda to make it all fizzle,
building forts in the flower beds
and tree houses with mattresses, seventeen strong kids in a line to lift it,
digging tunnels to nowhere
and China
and downtown....

And here in this house,
Kimbies slept with goldfish and hermit crabs
in a pink princess bed with a pink princess phone
and
I slept with ghosts at the end of the hall....

When we caravaned out in the middle of the night,
took flight
with empty suitcases
to our next adventure
we didn't know to say the words....

"Thank you, house"......

you hippie, gypsy, haunted little house.....

When the Angels Call...

I'm drinking Champagne. Left over from a good time a zillion years ago. Recorked and shoved in the back of the fridge. I pulled it out and denied it the opportunity of a memory, popped the cork...a gunshot in the kitchen, a snapping bone in the living room, and it bubbled....

I poured it into one of the mismatched antique champage glasses Mary Cook gave me for a wedding gift as many years ago. And clinked her.

I'm waiting to hear from Skinny.

I'm waiting to hug her over a Verizon phone line, to sit indian style on the living room floor smoking cigarettes in tandem, hundreds of miles apart, waiting to explain to her why she heard the christmas bells, the jingle bells, the beckoning blue eyes of Nadine calling. Waiting to tell her, "I understand now"..... Waiting to tell her "I love you" again.... and again... and again....

I almost went dancing. Could've, would've, almost did. But then I wouldn't have been here. Wouldn't have heard the angels calling.....