My Little Gypsy Butterfly....

The room is quiet....the occasional sound of the Cuckoo's Nest behind the door....on the other side...and the whispering on the inside.  Mama speaks in another tongue, endless sentences macrame~ed together by her little fingers flying, kneading, pointing, reaching, touching ours....and we lean closer and listen.....every now and then gathering familiar words like heart shaped rocks, clinging to them like sentimental souvenirs. 

She cries.  Frets.  And talks to faces only she can see, spirits in the corners...And we shoo them like dusty cobwebs, because she's not ready, and they're dancing in our dirty laundry, stirring up too many memories or make~believes or gonna~be's.  They can join the parade later, but not today....

Today we're butterflies....
and we're gonna rest.  Flutter our wings every now and then, just a teensy tiny bit, and snuggle in a little closer....
When she's ready to fly....
She won't even need these silly ole wings....

She'll be Gypsy free.....

The Twisted Trip to here......

We tripped over tree roots....Their sprawling, snaking, climbing age old fingers pointing into  the woods...
and stumbled one step, two steps deeper into the peace...
Just the sound of water bubbling, running, falling...
and sticks breaking under our steps....


I breathe differently now....deep...and slow and on purpose....

Because every moment matters....

And in the midst of insane chaos....
my body a war field...
my mind on fire....

I feel the presence of the reason.... I can't name it, touch it, explain it....but I know somehow, I was meant to come here...
to fall,...
to tumble....
blindly
into this crazy 
wrecking ball...

It must be the butterflies....

Running Away....

Today, I'm pretending. All day. I decided that before I fell asleep last night, so I wouldn't have to wonder about it at all this morning.

I woke up to bedhead hair that's now half way down my waist, make-believe dreadlocks the colors of a drip castle at sunrise. I stood up and stretched, slowly padded through the house, the old cold congoleum covered in cat hair, sudden beach sand on terraza floors. I smiled.

In a little while I'm gonna whip up Bloody Mary's, ice cold and freckled with black pepper and then on the little splintered deck, I'm going to the Tiki Bar...the tinny sound of Rolling Stones dribbling from the little amfm radio will fill the Air....Amps the size of Winnebagos will hang from the sky, and for a little while, there won't be anything at all but the music and the movement and the moment.

When the Sun reaches Noon thirty, blazing, I'll bop over the ring of the blow up pool and fall face first into the ocean....A giant salty tidal pool just my size. When I open my eyes underwater, the coquina will be six inches deep, thousands of teeny tiny shells....a treasure chest under the sea. My little pink float will be a peace kayak, and I'll paddle out of my puddle and down to the river where the water runs up, up, up and away....

At dusk, I'll drape my long flowy girly swirly hippie dress over my head and fall asleep on the hammock, barefeet dangling in the overgrown grass, that for just one night, will be wild sea oats tickling my toes.

I'll dream paisley colored thoughts until the light show in the sky nudges me awake...an electrical parade just for me....

Peace....sometimes we just have to make it happen.....

Fairytwinkle Soup and Other Short Stories...

I remember when Skinny was little and she used to run away. She'd have on the same little dress she wore for years and a quickly swiped pack of gum, maybe a marble or sidewalk chalk ,and she'd hit the trail. Long legs flying, hair dancing in the wind. And she never looked back. Not once.

Eventually, we'd have to go and fetch her. Find her in the cubby of an oak tree limb...periously dangling over traffic, or squatting at the lake edge, stirring the brown water with a magic stick....

And so it goes that we all grow up, grow old, and forget how to runaway....We pack electric toothbrushes, cell phone chargers, cowboy boots and crayons. Bayer aspirin, cold packs, and dirty laundrey. We take it all with us....

And then some.

Next year, I'm going Naked.

The Wrath of Love....

It's five o'clock. Midgit cars zig~zag through the traffic train, dodging 18 wheelers. A mid~life crisis hovers next to me, engine idling, vinyl topped dream come true, naked to the sky. He winks when I notice him. A southern pick~up truck revs his engine. Any minute he's gonna climb over my hatch~back and ride right over me. I know it.

I turn the radio up. Dig to the bottom of my purse and find the last piece of gum. Smack it. Smoke another cigarette. Hang my left arm out the window and pretend I'm a seagull.....
flying.....

And there, in the pretend sky, I fall to my knees. I should have scooped him up. The dragonfly on the sidewalk. I touched him. And he hummed. Fluttered his wings....just a little. I scooched him. Just a little. And he hummed in pain. I fetched a paper towel and a red cup and tried to pick him up, and I swear he sang to me....in sad operatic wails. And then I left him there. Wings fluttering in the breeze. Smack in the middle of the sidewalk where some busybody in the morning will kick him with their "I'm late, I'm late for a very important date" high heels. Left him there, with his wings fluttering from the "It's a cold snap" breeze. Because I didn't have the nerve to cause him anymore pain. To move him to the safety of the nondescript cool mulch where he could have died in peace.

And now,
frozen in the five o'clock gridlock,
I realize....
I should have just stayed with him....
Plopped down on the sidewalk and listened to the heartbeat of his wings...
Because
even if he wouldn't let me touch him...

He touched me....

Love Letter

It was storming. Lightening flashed through the little hand painted curtains in the breakfast nook and I picked up another one of Nana's cheese straws, crunched down hard, and spyed intently over her shoulder. She had the winning hand. She scooped up the pennies, nickels, dimes with her knotty oak tree hands and slid them to the tables edge. "Penelope" she beamed. I scribbled it on the yellow legal pad under her name. She was winning. Penelope was right behind Prudence. We were naming a baby.....

And then she was here. I wore patent leather shoes and was in charge of Kimbies in the lobby. Curty Boy was with Nana at home....waiting. Every magazine had a Norman Rockwell picture on the back. Kimbies stood with her face pressed against the glass of the dirty aquarium. She stood on her tip toes, stretched, wanted to put her fingers in the green water and "pet" the fish. I wouldn't let her. I knew that she would scoop one up and bring it home to sleep with her in the pink princess bed and in the morning Robbie would flush it down the toilet. I let her stare while I did whirly twirls on the hospital terazza, scuffing up their buff job and my patent leathers. They didn't let us see her....but the nurse with the cardboard cap came out and told us we had a sister and that our Mommy said "I've had this baby before"..... We jumped up and hooped and hollered, spun in tired circles....having no idea whatsoever what that meant....

"She looks just like you" Mom whispered to me on the phone, the eldest, in charge of getting the hoo~hah, and I beamed. When they brought her home five days later, I stared. Chinese eyes, wild black hair with static electricity.....fists punching the air, feet kicking. At night I would do my homework, scribble on my notebook, brush my teeth, say my prayers, and then sneak down the hall to stare at her......"the baby just like me, so different....I've had this baby before"....

There were ten years between us. She cooed, I said "cool". She crawled, I scrambled on my Sting Ray bike. She tried vienna sausages, I tried raw oysters. She pitched fits, I pitched girlscout tents....

And then it became a blur.....
My teenage years, Kimbies, Curts, hers....Chanty's
Our lives pretzeled, circled, quilted...

And we grew up.

Peace~love
"I've had this baby before" she whispered....

Peace where you can find it....

I'm too many people. Our dictationist, Sweet Sunny Anne, had a stroke in January, and I hauled her little machine home and took over where she left off. Everyday she goes to Rehab and every night I type on and on and on.... She's learning to walk again and talk again....and maybe one day, live again.... Until then I'm typing....

My right arm, Emily, is finally on the kidney transplant list. It's her turn now. We watch the clock and wait for the beep.... "It's your turn now"..... and I pray it won't be long. She's irreplaceable, so when she retired at the early age of "I have to", I didn't even try.

Chey got offered the moon and the stars on some crazy undiscovered planet, and after 17 years, flew the coop, feathers flying. I miss her. The good Doctor misses her. The patient's miss her. And if I didn't have straight blonde hair, I could pass for her...

I wake up kicking, tossing, flinging, flailing. remembering everything I forgot to do the day before. I grit my teeth. Make endless lists that I forget to read and plop them on the empty refrigerator.

Today, my part~time help quit. She was an angel. She wants to live her life. Not spend it clockin' in..... counting change....X-ing off days on the calender for being free. She wants to be free now.

I smiled. She cried and told me it was OK to cuss her. I hugged her.

Tonight I came home and pulled out the markers, the pencils, the pens..... and colored. For the first time since hell broke out at my house , a mermaid the color of a 1000 tadpoles surfaced on the bent pages of my notebook. Her peace sign, tethered to her neck, floating up.... up....up....free....

And I remembered,
in the end peace wins....

You gotta live it, to know it....

These boots were made for.....Peace

I'm just a hippie. I wear flipflops and combat boots. Converse sneakers without laces. I go barefoot. But I broke my foot. And whether that's a haunting or the butterfly effect, I'll never know. But I know this. Every now and then I fall. Just call me Grace.

So I have a secret weapon. Little stilts that hold me up. Prop me up like the plastic ballerina in the mahogany stained box. A brace. But by damned, I'm gonna hide it. So on Friday when the band went Country, I hauled my hippie buns to the Country and Western Store and fetched home a pair of cowboy boots. I can't wear combat boots every Friday night. And Skinny smiled.

"Scratch 'em on the concrete" she said, not wanting me to slide. "You can wear 'em with anything" she said, knowing that I would. And I did. We danced til dawn and I woke up to them abandoned on the porch. Toes scuffed, and heels already lazy. They did me good.

"We're just goin' for burgers and a beer" he said and I climbed right in. Saturdays are like that. I didn't wear my armor.... And never saw her coming....

She snuggled right in behind me, beside me, a Marilyn Monroe wanna~be, plopped up on the picnic table to my right. I turned. "Who in the hell is snugglin' up to my show?" And there she was. Bullet Bra. Smiling... A toothy sort of "I'm gonna getcha" grin....and then she wriggled with glee. The only woman whose ever threatened to whoop my fanny.

I almost shook.

Payback is hell....

And I've been there

so

I smiled back. Stretched my fingers. Made a fist. And before she ever saw it coming,

I bopped her good.

Two fingers to the sky.

"Peace"

"You shoulda worn your cowboy boots" Skinny whispered in my ear....

Counting....

I opened my back door on Sunday and could feel it. Smell it. Almost hear it over the weed-eater next door and the sirens. The beach.

We're counting days. Week-ends. Pennies. Nightmares. And then....

We're going!

Seven days and seven nights blurred together, smudged together, tethered together.....measured only by sunrises and sunsets.

And I ache for the peace.

The constant humming of the tilted window unit shuddering, puffing artic asthmatic breaths. Dripping onto the sidewalk, rusty little puddles I can splash my feet in....one good rinse before I plow into bed at midnight or morning.

The crisp white sheets, sandpapered with coquina and periwinkles, and cozy~comfy, sprayed with sea salt....littered with wet swim suits and towels....and beer bottle rings.

The three o'clock huddle, the housekeepers hunkered down, hiding behind my door, clinking beers and sneaking in ice.

The first sunrise. Kimbies in her long nightie, waiting at the seawall.... The second sunrise, Kimbies in her long nightie and five of our new best friends waiting at the seawall....

The Brotherhoods of Death. Another year older. Wiser. And still aching for their friend, their brother, embracing us on the seawall. Dipping, diving, dancing....Remembering...

The starfish with three legs. Still moving. A ballerina with only one shoe. "It aint over til the fat lady sings" we tell her, and whisk her back to sea....

Pots and pans and dishpan drains filled with shells. Treasures for the keeping.

Feral cats strutting in the moonshine, plucking crablegs from the garbage and bellowing 'Hallelujah"....

The sound of Skinny's car crunching gravel in the make-shift parking lot. 400 miles and 3500 smart cars dollars later.....

The yellow butterfly of San Marina.....

You dirty rat....

We were talking. Like sisters do. About silly things like why they call blondes blonde , about Mexican food tasting better in dives, googling the meaning of the word “occlude” and bantering the definitions.. Verizon to Verizon. It’s free, so we kept yacking. Wandered past the “did you know?”s to the “remember when”s and settled on the story of meeting soul mates from behind a shower curtain. I’m not gonna tell you the story because neither he nor he was a soul mate, but it happened nonetheless. It wasn’t until we got around to the “palmetto bug and rats” reminiscing that I started to get the heebie jeebies. Started to feel that familiar “something’s crawling up my leg” phobia.

Skinny is spooked by roaches. With wings. And rightfully so. She was only six when they invaded her space, laced up her legs like fishnet stockings and started giving her nightmares.

I’m haunted by Ben.

David Bowie was spinning for the last go round, the whisk~me~away, the nighty~night, and I prayed I would fall asleep before the needle hit the spot where it stuck forever, carving grooves into Diamond Dogs with it’s diamond tip. I piled into bed, crumpled under the hand-me-down quilts from Mamaw’s house and rolled on my side. My face fell into the down pillow like yesterday, like everyday before this one, and I snuggled in. Buttons pawed at my shoulder. Scratched for her space. I groaned and made room. “Jesus, could somebody cut her nails” I thought….as I hmmmmpppphhhhed and readjusted for her comfort. She pawed again.

Clawed actually.

I turned in the dark to give her the “settle down or sleep somewhere else” eyes and she glared at me…..beady eyes balanced between a pointy nose ….brillo pad hair glowing in the dark. I flung the covers off, flailing, leaping…..and it hit the wall.

Smack!

Yelping!

F'n Rat! In my bed!
On my body!
Breathing my breath!

For three weeks, I hauled Mamaws quilt and my first down pillow into the Jack and Jill bathroom and slept in the tub. Convinced I could hear him scurrying across the green and pink tile, crawling up the porcelain. See him in the full length mirror before he rounded the corner. Convinced I would know ....before he got to me.

For thirty five years I’ve known better.

You never see ‘em coming….