The Porch Party and other floating fairytales

I peek out the little aluminum door at sunrise....watch for wayward wild animals, slithering snakes, strangers....and then barrel out into the morning... Two black pups...nose to the ground....send me flying past curtain number one, two, three..... of fog, leaping over little foothills, make believe bridges, potholes...and into the damp darkness of morning on the river.... To Paradise.... To the sun rising over the muddy water.... To the lazy ripple of old water stretching, rolling over one more time before it has to rise.... And then finally, home again... To This... To Peace Porch and the promise of another Day....

She wore french braids....

I was four. The only child. Skinny and bruise kneed. Blonde. She was born with auburn curls. Lipstick. Beautiful. I crawled into her crib and slept next to her. Once. I wasn't allowed to do it again. She was a baby. But I was mesmerized....

By the time I was seven, she was as tall as me. Mama dressed us alike. Me with my Mia Farrow "I just cut my hair in the bathroom" hair doo, and her with her french braids. We swirled and twirled in matching green polka dot tent dresses, her in baby dolls and me in platforms. I listened to the Beatles, scratchy lyrics, grinding on my stereo into the wee hours, and she slept with her pink princess phone in her pink canopy bed. We were opposites. A zillion years apart. Night and day.

And then we went on the bike ride. Two spider bikes from the sheriffs sale, spray painted pink for the princess and purple for the "I'm gonna be a hippie when I grow up". We raced down the sidewalks, through the dirt alleys, over the tunnel the boys built in the park. We tulled past the Mayor's son with his three speed smiling, and huffed and puffed to keep up with Zanne and her ten speed. Nicky clacketed past us with blue and white poker cards clothespinned to his spokes.

That did us in.

We flew like the wind, standing on the pedals, home to top their "brag". We plowed through the laundrey room hunting anything we could tie to, tassle to, dangle from our handlebars. We grabbed the crayons and Mom's oil paints to decorate our seats and the fenders. I buried my head face first in the library trunk, the place that all the "gotta save" "important" "memory" stuff was kept...and dug up the Motherload....a pile of Playboy magazines...

Kimbies grinned from ear to ear. And we caught on quick to where the centerfold was. One. Two. Three. Twelve. Taped together, three pages long. Times six. The ultimate handlebar twizzler. And we flew...

Naked ladies following us. Butterflies in the wind....

Of course we got in trouble. The neighbors were apalled. Their children not allowed to play with us. And still, we rode. Faces fast to the wind. Unified....

Saturday we went out for drinks. 40 something years later...

"How cool are those old ladies?" the "probably not yet 21 year old" belted to the DJ.....

and we danced on.....

Cupid Ain't Stupid, that's for sure.....

It's in the air. I know I'm holiday hoppin' here, but I mean to. I want to jump from one "feel~good" to the next, and nope, I'm not racing through 'em... I'm racin' to 'em! It's kind of like getting a good seat on the sidewalk for the next parade, you gotta get there early.....

So here it is, St. Valentines Day, parked right around the corner. Pretty soon I'll have to trip over giant red hearts in the grocery store just to buy beer. Helium balloons the size of space ships will be hovering overhead, their bobbing ribbons tickling my hair while I shop for macaroni and cheese. The jewelry stores will all get together and come up with some new" have-to-have": a ring, a chain, a bracelet, that will brand any woman without one on the morning after as ......well.....valentineless, or soul mate to a poor man. A million red roses will be sacrificed for the moment, bundled and jumbled and sold for a fortune. The writers at Hallmarkwill collapse from exhaustion, worn out from feeling the love and padding their pockets.

Here in Hippie Holiday Land, we do it a little bit different.

"Patty cake
Patty cake
Baker's man,
Role em' and a dole em
and throw 'em in a pan".....

Ta! Dah! Love beads everywhere!

You wanna feel the love? Email your postal and I'll bop a string in the mail to you! Yeah, Cupid Ain't Stupid, she's got blonde hair and wears hand me down jeans....





Here's mine, almost twenty years later.....We started with three little beads, peace, love and hope, and they grew.... The colors and stories have changed, but I still feel the love.....remember the night we sat at the table a lifetime ago, Skinny and I, making love beads, saving the world......

Something always gives me away.....

They were two beautiful people. Right off the glossy pages of magazines I never read. His hair just just so, matching the square jaw and tiny little cleft chin God had given him. His nails the color of the very, very heart of a conch shell....lacquared by nature. He was tall and I imagined, quite in shape. I could see him only from the waist up, and her from the Magic Bra line up.

Her teeth were mighty whites. Almost shocking. I couldn't help but, well, kind of stare. Her little tongue toyed out from behind her painted lips and traced her upper deck. I imagined she was testing to see if she could feel the flaw of lipstick there. Accidently smeared across her platinum pearls.
She fidgeted.

He smiled this huge "I'm not really a Doctor, but I play one in print ads" smile, leaned over the counter, fanning the Patient Sign In list off his imromptu podium and started his speel......

"We're just stopping by this morning to offer you ladies a complimentary day in paradise. Our salon offers solutions to all beauty concerns, an escape from the ordinary, and all in a blissful, all female environment. Our staff is fully licensed and trained and offer the latest in innovative techniques to improve your body and soul. The Perfect Passion offers mud baths, waxings, hair design and coloring, laser and non surgical face and body lifts, passive muscle toning, all in a feminine and friendly environment......"

I smile. Slouch a little more perfectly in my chair. Plop the grafittied cast up on my side of the counter. Chey leans in. Listening. She's always wanted to have her ear fixed, the one with the tear down the center of the lobe, a little reminder that when she was 16 she got in a tiff wearing really, really big hoops.

The "Hi! I just turned 21!" pretty girl to his left fidgets again.... leans in just a little.... and then when he takes the slightest of breaths, she blurts out in a barely-more-than-a-whisper "I just saw Santa Claus" woosh.....

"Ohhhhh....."

"Are you a hippie?"

I smile a little broader.

Handsome one gathers up his glossy print tickets to Paradise, clears his throat, and mutters "You ladies have a nice day" .....

Sheesh......

How do you think they knew?

Faces.....

Tomorrow I will paint my face. I will put on "erase" to white-out the black martini moon under my right eye. And "blush" to blend it all together. I'll be glad that I haven't trimmed my bangs in forever, and they hang in my face and I have to go "poof" to see out through them.

Tomorrow, I will wear a mask.

Probably, by Tuesday, I'll bore of it
and just be another
hippie chic
with
a black eye....

and love beads.....

Spray paint...

My house is graffitied. I’m allowed to paint on the walls. Years ago, I started with a simple little scribble board in the bathroom. That’s where everyone is inclined to ink it. And it just grew. Down the halls, up the walls, carved into the tree trunks and benches, stick drawn into the wet concrete. The things people say. Thoughts. Moments. Memories. Souveniers glued in crevices. Shadows spray painted on the curtains.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t add to the property value. I had to bribe the appraiser recently with beer and stories and sunshine to find tiny un-vandalized corners for his photo shoot, and judge me on my cover and not my contents…. But, he did me good…. “My sister is a hipppie in California" he winked at me when he left…..

But it adds to why I value my house….
Why I call it home….
The painted house….

And why the people that visit here
Are free

To be themselves…..

The long, long week-end

"Ooooooh.......ice..........cream...... " the chic in black leather purred from the table. Her eyes steadied, locked with ours, as we ambled by. We nodded hello's, southern style, and raised our beers. Clink! She didn't blink. She purred. Stretched her legs out, siamese cat style, from under the shadow of the umbrella...

"She likes you, baby" ...I laughed

"She likes you, baby".... he laughed.


Two more steps and we were lost in a sea of bikers. Beer and leather everywhere. No Tequila Sunrises , Bloody Marys, Gin and Tonics.....just a sea of leather boots, stub-nosed, at the best....bottled beers ....and tainted tattoos.

I swam in it. Bask in their Cher and Sam Elliott ambience. They stared at us. Him with his groomed "he's such a nice boy" looks and me, hippiesque and smiling. But there was something Woodstocky here. The way they all bonded together, swayed together, drank together, clanking empty bottles. The way they smiled. The way their laughter rose like smoke rings over the orchestra of revving engines. I liked it.

Hours later we wandered back through the blue-jeaned, black booted crowd, hugging our last beers. She stretched her leg out one more time on our way back..... " ice cream" she whispered.


Pinching my belt loops and leaning in...his words brushed my Sunday afternoon cheek..... "I'm your ice cream man, baby"...


It's Friday.



I'm standing in the drive-way, rolling the crumpled dollar....listening for the rinky dink music..... waiting on the ice cream truck...

On Borrowed Wings

There she is. The Angel blessing my house. She moved in first. When the walls were still sepia smoke stained plaster. When the shag carpet crawled up your ankles and made you feel like you needed to shave your legs AGAIN with every barefoot step you took. She moved into the curtainless house and lived here for weeks by her self. From the street, she was a billboard. "Stay tuned". And the neighbors did. They watched. Actually they peeked. They walked their lap dogs, made obsessive trips to their mailboxes. Waiting. Eventually we did move in. Hauled our haphazard lives into the living room in cardboard boxes, and started to unpack the past. We marked our territory like a chihuahua with "little man" syndrome. This is "our" house. This is home. Over the years, it has been called a lot of names.... "Clown house" when the little ones were in kindergarten...."House of Nudes" when my pubescent son and his friends actually noticed the tattooed mannequins.... "California hippie house"...when I applied for a second mortgage.... but really, it is just "our house" and we landed here on borrowed wings.