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, love, and here's my phone number.....

I had just gotten off the bus, my patrol belt, neon orange, wound into a wad in my right hand, and my denim notebook covered in blue inked grafitti (And a book cover because it was private school) tucked under my left arm, when he threw it out the window. The tiny football of blue lined paper thunked me on the head and pelted out into the road. The exhaust fumes from the bus camoflauged it, and then the next 17 cars whisped it flying, invisible quarterback at work. The love letter.

I opened it carefully. I wasn't crazy about this kid. In fact, I barely knew him. But his words were inked so carefully, so thoughtfully, and, well, who was I to read it carelessly? His heart, tossed out a moving window. Gangly legs flying, I wadded it up in a ball and hid it in my room...I never responded, in fact never looked him in the eyes again, and no, I didn't dial the number laboriously etched at the bottom. I hope he forgives me. Richard Hill.

I learned to write love letters well into late life. I wrote them to lovers, strangers, voices on the other end of the phone. And I wrote them well, but it was years before I ever recieved a love letter the likes of the one from Richard Hill.

He left one here. Propped up against a temple of all our keepsakes on the porch. I tore the envelope open and sped-read the words. "Chicken F'n Noodle Soup!" I belted. Stomping in circles, flailing the card. I showered and stewed, and put on my make up, made my mind up to never respond, when he showed up all gangly, skinny legs and arms smiling, "Wanna sit on the deck and have a beer?" "Are you kiddin' me?"

But we did, and he was devasted, his first and only love letter penned at 43, trashed and lonely on my kitchen table...."Save the last dance for me" he cliched at the end.....

And I was apalled,

that was apparent

and we clinked to even my

dismay because he's like

that and knows that

he doesn't know

what I'll

do

next

but the last dance

is the last chance

and i wasn't about to trade it

for prose.....

or promises

There's magic in that old umbrella....

She wouldn’t let me do it. Post it to her blog. Copy the words and share them on the pages of Hand-me-down Levi’s where she is the biggest contributor, and has only ever typed thank-you's and love you's in the comment boxes. Where the walls are painted with love. She only let me listen. And in the quiet Sunday morning after, I sighed and tried to take it all in, one big whoosh of love….tried to save it in my mind, freeze dry the words in a forever state of limbo….

Love letter to my oldest child from Kimbies…..
Shared moments before she sealed the envelope and sent it sailing, a paper kite…..

It won’t be the same here, because I’m not the author and the words were fairytale perfect, captured just as they happened, as they were felt, as they became magic in the making, but the story is so beautiful and if the world, for just a tiny second, could capture life in their hands, the way Kimbies does in her heart, we would all know……peace and love…..

Dear Sweetest Child,

How could I have ever known that day, in the sandy gritty parking lot, when you lugged that old umbrella, stuffed into it’s sack, and plopped it into the back of my mini van, the gifts it would bear? But you knew, didn’t you? Keys in your hand, checking out, counting heads, pulling away from the beach…..your babies faces smashed up against the windows blowing kisses as you drove away, you knew……

And there it lay, on the carpeted floor of my van, waiting….

Thank you , sweet child…..

For shelter from the sun I love so much, for the little tent we’ve camped under over and over again. Alana and I. Sandy peanut butter sandwiches squished between her fingers, sippy cups melting in the heat. Our toes buried under treasure sand. For the rooftop over our heads, Grand-C in her long sleeves, shadowed from the very light we love, protected. We drag the umbrella closer to the water’s edge. A squiggly trail of where we’ve been left in the wet sand. And dig to China. The ocean sees us there. And comes to greet us. Three generations of girls. She knows I can’t come to her and so she plays birthday party at our feet. Dropping trinkets, a thousand years old or older, just within Alana’s reach….And Alana names them all….. “Umbwella chells, buttafwy chells, fingahnail chells” and drops them in her tiny plastic bucket. “Twehsures”…… she chases the frothy bubbles of the mermaid’s breath at the oceans edge, catching them with her butterfly net…..and we splash, and laugh, and precious, precious memories are made…..

When it’s time to go, when the tide reminds us by climbing a little higher, talking a little louder, pushing us a little harder, we follow the squiggly trail of the umbrella’s footsteps, back to the car…..and turn around, amazed at the vastness, the bigness behind us.
Alana raises her little fingers to her lips and blows….softly, butterfly kisses to the sea…..
“Tank you, ocean, Tank you……”

I thank you sweet child, for the gift you’ve always been….


In April of 2006 Kimbies was diagnosed with breast cancer, Stage IV, and the last year and a half has changed all of our lives forever, the sun became taboo and the race to live began. We are celebrating remission now, in all it’s hugeness, but the treatments continue, the mountain climbing an always present task. Kimbies is going to the beach again. Hand in hand with her tiny grand~daughter and in the sand, right behind her, our Mom. Love grows.

DO NOT HIT SEND!

This is the warning my friend Linda bellows into my ear. My Boss echoes it. Peggy preaches it. Spontaneous words. I am compelled to let them fly. A fleeting thought becomes a giant break-through in spiritual self awareness , and suddenly it all makes sense and I have to share it.... SEND! DONE! SHARED! Of course, the morning after, I might not feel the same....

"Mom! Tell me you DID NOT just break up with him on text message?"
"Ummm. yeah"
"Arrrrrrggggghhhhh. Do you think you're 18 again?"
"Ummmm. yeah.... kinda"

I do that. Dirty little fingers. Draw it . Write it . Type it . And hit send! I've written 3:00 in the morning love letters to strangers (well, almost strangers .... Kimbies surgeon for example) and walked them to the leaning mailbox, placed the flag at high mass, at 3:45 AM. In the morning when I wake up, trudge down the gravel drive way, back up and see the little red flag waving at me, I cringe a little.... "Oh God, I have to take it out...snatch the words from the runway before the postman finds them and sets them free" and then I turn the music up louder and keep backing out. Put it in forward. And drive off. It's a love letter for crying out loud. If he thinks I'm a nut so be it. He saved my sisters life. I can write him love letters if I want.

I've painted billboard revalations..... giant banners of "Do you get my drift yet?" and left them annonymously staked on obvious corners like "We Buy Houses" Signs or " Speeding fines doubled when workers present" signs. (Skinny, I remember the night we hauled off with the Beach Bag sign.... Paul McCartney on the radio... "Baby you amaze me"..... We laughed all the way home, high from the "WE DID IT" "WE GOT THE LAST WORD IN!")

I hit send.

If I have something to say at the moment. And it feels right. I hit the button. I might have better manners, or be more reserved, or more inclined to keep it to myself in the morning, but if it feels right when you think it, share it.

Last night my internet was down.
This morning it was down.

I wanted to hit SEND so bad I couldn't stand it.

For once in my life,
I'm glad I couldn't.

Must be that "Baby, you amaze me" thing.