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....

The After Party

I don't do funerals. I don't like mourning and crying and reciting lives in ticker tape in front of crowds.

And so I didn't go. To the Last Night. The buy-one-get-three unexpected lemondrops-for free night. The night they stood the barstools upside down on the counter and threw them in the dumpster the next day. The night they said good~bye.

I couldn't. I had a cold, an old broken foot that came back to haunt me, a lover that deja-vued me, a crick in my neck, nothing to wear, no money to tip the bartender excessively. I had an excuse.

It was a lousy excuse, but I wore it well.

As Big Dad-O would say, "thats my story, and I'm sticking to it".....



Rest in peace little corner bar...

"You can't preach peace...."

he said. Pacing across my living floor. Soft shoes padding over the dirty leopard skin rug.

Arms up, he did a 180 and turned, sighing, Counselor at law, giving up on his client.... Muttering under his breath...

"and live like this?"

Arms waving now, casting a shadow over my world....

Cats on the bartop, disco light flickering, chewed up flip flops on the floor.....

Cellphone chiming....1-800 messages waiting...

Dirty clothes spilling out of the bathroom closet, the sunshine only shines when I'm not home....

And then he rested his case with Perry Mason words...

"Chaos is not a peaceful place"......





"Choose your peace, friend" I whispered to his shadow.....

Fortune Tellers....

We went to Cassadaga. Held hands and tripped over broken sidewalks, stepping hugely over every crack, laughing....that "Oh my God, I'm gonna fall right outa this roller coaster" laugh. They saw us. Knew us.

Instinctively, for 50 bucks, they could predict the future. See it in a crystal ball.

And so we ran.....

Choose Peace

I can see him clearly through my early morning windshield, love bugs and pollen peppering my view. He faces me in traffic, unshaven and brusque in his little fleet truck. We are at a stand still. I can't budge an inch and he wants to snake through traffic, dart actually, to get his morning coffee. He sneers. Lifts his hands from the steering wheel and abruptly motions me to get the hell out of his way. I smile. This aint no helicopter, baby. He flips me off. I smile again and the light turns green. Peace. He guns past me. I thank him for the 30 second delay it took me to welcome him through traffic. You never know when the butterfly effect begins....

She fidgets with the credit card machine. Slides my card through it again and again, upside down and backwards. Wiggles the cord. Checks for a dial tone. Clears the register. The lady behind me in the three inch heels clicks her feet on the terazza floor. Clickity clickety click. "I'm already late!" she pecks into the air, a skinny little bird waiting on worms to fall from the sky. I smile. The cashier tries it again, apologizes, and it takes. I thank her, and on turning, wish the high heeled haughty behind me a better morning....."Once you're late, you're late..... enjoy the ride..."

Tiny little rhinestones keep fallin' off my favorite shirt, the peace sign slowly crumbling , disappearing. I touch the remaining few. This tye-dyed comfy cozy gift from my oldest grandaughter..... from my heart, is fading. I cross the parking lot and a raspy six year old voice follows me in the wind. "Mommy, look, I found a diamond, a diamond! Mommmy, Look!" His face lights up, glows up, beams..... and his chubby little fingers coddle the treasure. Climbing into the car, I smile.....

The butterfly effect......

Choose peace, people.....

It's priceless.....

The Circle....

I don't know where we got it from or how it started. The peace~love thing. I don't remember a beginning and I hope I don't live long enough to know an end. There are 12 long years, a borrowed make-shift umbilical cord stretched to the max, between us. My brothers and sisters and Me.

The five of us...straight from the pages of The Glass Castle....digging for peace in the damndest of places.....

Chanty boy, my charge from early on.....riding the hump of Million's green van (Long before car seat laws, my friend), rocking out to Deep Purple and Led on the eight track.....unable to speak the King's English then or even now...."How old are you, Chanty?" and at five or six or seven, he would splay two chubby fingers and cheer! ......and we would chorus "Yes! Two! You are peace, sweet Baby!" His china doll face fixed forever in a crooked smile, drooling, sometimes croaking.....His mere presence in a society that still held hospitals for babies of his like, startling. And the beginning of change.

Skinny with her flowers....knocking on doors....."The little angel" they used to call her....the neighborhood shut-ins, the eccentrics, and ghosts..... She'd borrow from the best groomed lawns and the roadway median....bundles of finely pruned roses and wild catch~me~if~you~can's....and pass them out like summer showers.....sudden and welcome. Love. Full of spit and fire.

Kimbies, with her open arms....always, anything, everything. Tadpoles and Mama Frogs, hermit crabs and puppies with patches, conch shells and bait fish. She'd fetch them all home, scooch them into the circle.....Love them until their wings were mended. Or until we buried them rightly in the backyard, popsicle stick tombstones and all.....At thirteen, she started fetching home people.....
And the door is still open.....
Screen door banging in the wind....Crabcakes and cupcakes on the barbeque grill......
Willie Nelson and the Beatles on the hi-fi, blowing in the breeze....

Curty Boy with his big brown eyes, humming. Smiling. Toting luggage ten times his size. Teaching us, if not the world, that "it is what it is". And sometimes you just have to live with it. Be brave. And strong. And fearless. "Peace~love for you" .....his only salutation, his signature devotion.


Peace~love

Everything in between is just a roadtrip......

"Big wheels keep on turnin'..."

Sunday morning. Two insomniacs sleepin' in. Counting. Waiting on it to be late enough or early enough to make coffee, let the dogs out, dial each other's numbers....Kimbies and I. "Whatchya doin' today?" "Ah, dunno. It's cold. I wish we could just go to the beach" "yeah" "Soon sister, soon...." "yeah". "Hey, you think we should get bikes? For the beach, I mean?" "To like ride at sunrise?" "Yeah....yeah, I do"

Sunday morning. 10:45. Two sibs in painted pajamas and sock feet waiting on the sun to do it's job. "What's you're agenda for today?" "I dunno. Wanna go bike shoppin'?"

So we did. With Papa, Kimbies hub, in tow. We made the rounds. Walmart, K-Mart, Target, (Sears doesn't sell 'em anymore) We tooled around toy departments, balancing on pegs, braking fast for little old ladies with buggies. We cruised up the sock aisles and banged 360's in "I accidently got here" automotive departments. We shimmied on seats and "grrrrrrrr'ed" the handlebars. We posed for pretend pictures. "How cool do I look on this one?"

We left empty handed over and over again. Dreaming of the perfect ride. "It'll have a cushy seat, tilted a little forward" "I wanna basket" "Not me, I wanna beer rack, a little fender in the back with bungy cords" "Hmmmmm, I just wanna be able to ride facing the sun, not the sidewalk, all crunched over" " I wanna banana seat" "You said that already!"

And then we went there. The "Sports" store! The doors opened automatically. Beeping. We passed rows and rows of boring clothes, water bottles, and neon colored nerf balls. Rubber tires were lined up one after another like wet noses poking through a fence. The bikes! We looked around. Unleashed them. All of them. "This one's mine! Mine! Mine!" Papa's little ride was deja vue, and after three trips around the cleats, he was slingin' Sunday morning papers with his right hand....Cha!Chink! "Morning, Mrs. Robinson!" Kimbies wobbled. Teetered. Smiled. Gained speed. "Clink~Clink"~ her right hand tinked the handlebar, "gonna get a little bell soon" ! I climbed on from the back, no sissy bar on this baby, straddled the black and red and tan Freedom Flyer, and took off. Big wheels turning. We waved when we passed each other. Two fingers raised for peace....Kimbies clinking!

And then we parked them.

Got in the car and drove home.

Thank God we turned around......

Tonight on my way home from nowhere, big wheels turnin', I heard New Orleans in the wind. And then, there around the corner, up the hill, broken sidewalk between us, was the trumpet player....

One door closes....

And another door opens....

It's been six months since I went splat in the middle of a Mick Jagger routine and broke the hell out of my foot. Six months and five pounds ago actually. Six months and a lifetime ago.

I have a new bike with a flat tire now. A new grand~baby on the way. A new pair of boots just the right size, just the right height to hide the damn brace and dance like it never happened....

"You have keys in your door" he smiled as he left.

"Of course" I whispered to the night.

Coloring the sky

I pushed the magic button, automatic ignition, and Cla-Plump! Bang! it shifted gears, lurched, and died. Like the lady stranded in the Winn Dixie parking lot, ice cream melting, beer getting warm, I tried it over and over and over again. Then I kicked it. Once for good luck. Swung my good booted foot around and kicked it twice for "try that"! Sometimes, it just takes a good wallop to get everything back in order.

Nothing.

She just sat there, too old, too cold, too dead to even groan. I felt bad for being a bully, and apologized. It was too late. On Wednesday, the neighbor and I will haul her, one heavy inch at a time to the curb. If she's lucky, a body snatcher will come in the night, and whisk her cumbersome remains off to be reincarnated into something grander....otherwise, she'll be laid to rest at the top of a mile high mountain of likened souls, teetering at the top, until she's buried under the next week's refuge.


Good-bye, sweet little dryer. Hello blue skies!

The baby with the old soul......

She didn't know. Couldn't know. And so she slept in peace. Fluorescent lights flashed frantically to the rhythmatic noise sounding down the halls....sirens....doors sliding, locking, the padded footsteps of nurses hunkering down...yanking little ones from the tentative first time arms of their Mommies and wheeling them to the safety of the glass cage. No, she didn't know, that there amidst the chaos surrounding her first little breath, puff of sweet, sweet awaited air.... peace was born....and neither did we.

She had come to us by surprise. Concieved early and accidently, the gift of a rocky rebellious teenage romance. We gathered together, girlscouts around the ever needy campfire, and kindled her, watched her grow....watched her Mama, 16 before her birth, 40 after, grow.....

Her eyes opened, as if in surprise, at everything. Ceiling fans were giant ferris wheels doing cartwheels from the indoor sky. She oooohed and ahhhhed. Our mouths, each word spoken, were enchanted tunnels to places she wanted to travel. She stared. Studied. Leaned closer, until her little eyelashes kissed our lips, until she could almost crawl down our throats and touch the words before they left our hearts. And perhaps she did.

"Me'Me', it's time to rest now".....she tells Kimbies. All of three, and bouncing. But knowing. Me'Me's treatments leave her tired, and thirsty for just a moment's sleep.....She arranges the pillows just so on the couch, and with one shoe off and one shoe on, beckons her grandmother near. Pats the pillow. "Here" she whispers. Her little fingers trace her Mommy's Mama's face.

Love grows.....
She knows......

I married once...

He kept asking. Over pink champagne at New Years. Slurping raw oysters and leaning over pool tables. Doing the helicopter dance on Friday nights. He just kept asking. And one night, over steaks and an HBO re-run, I said OK and we picked a date.

Of course, it was a catastrophe. The pony-tailed redneck and I, but what the hell, we loved to dance, he was a great cook, I was a starving artist and....

he had her...."Baby Dumplin'".....And I fell in love with her hopelessly, and forever, and instantly. My first born daughter, seven, blonde hair ~long and tangled, cheese curl toes, and green eyes.

In the third grade, she had to draw a family tree for art class. The teacher called me. I still have it tucked away, it's roots wild and scattered, it's limbs heavy and old, and names hanging everywhere, like wild laundrey whisped from it's line.....the intricate scribblings of a child....connecting the dots between the people she was born to, and those she was fated to.

Tonight, I dug it out, and saw what she saw....the endless constellation of dots...

What is and what is meant to be....

Red Velvet Cake...

“Have you ever been in love before?” he asked me, knowing full well, I was old….

And so I answered him,
With the tell-tale truth…
“yes….
Once….
A very long time ago,
And forever”

We were sitting at the leather chair,
Me curled up, winter style , wrapped in the arms
And cushions.

Him, perched,
Visitor-like,
On the ottoman….
Blue eyes Morse coding…

“I wanna be him” he said….
“Who?” I whispered at the walls,
Twirling my hair in tiny spirals….

“Him. The one you’ve loved forever”

And I gave him that. That free for all, that tumbling, take-me-there.

But I believe In addendums…
So I hope he doesn’t think I wasn’t telling the truth,

I just changed my mind….

I wish you peace.....

Plopped on the couch for days like a skinny little jelly fished washed a shore, I've had a lot of quiet time to myself. The incessant hum of the TV lugged into the living room for the occassion, lullabyes me back to sleep, again and again. I don't watch TV, but the parade of Angels tip-toeing in and out of my kitchen door, find comfort, I think, in flipping it on, tilting the screen toward the couch. I have no idea how to work the remote, so it's warm humming, a swarm of purring bees, rocks me back to sleep.
And I keep waking up with revelations.

Perhaps because Orhan reminded me how blessed I am by guardian spirits, I awoke today drenched with gratitude, and the overwhelming desire to write thank-you notes to the random angels in my life. The one's that don't get to see me smile, the ones I've never hugged or will never get to hug again, the one's I've been blessed with by chance..... The folks who have stepped both in and out of my life so quickly, and changed the butterfly effect forever.... I clink! you all, and thank you......

I start with these.....

Sweet Mothers of my daughters.....There are no words big enough to thank you for your trust, for gifting into my arms, your first born children. I see you everyday in their faces, their toes, the way one throws her head back when she laughs....the way they both think in black and white, siblings by chance, sisters by fate. I pray you know we love you, that we hope you believe in me, in us, in them, and know by trust, or faith, or visions from above that they are beautiful, headstrong, independent, and as in love with you as any Mother's child. I thank you often, but not often enough. And I just pray you know it. I can't send postcards to heaven, and I can't send them by first-name-only through general mail delivery. You were brave. You were strong. You loved your children so very, very much that you gave them emerald wings and they became my children....my dreams come true...my first born children, my precious daughters. There are no words big enough to wrap you in, to thank you with.....

Father of my children, Dad, Daddy.....We'll never sit next across from each other having heart-to-hearts, we don't speak the same language. And so I can't tell you this. And you would never understand. But I thank you for being there, the butterfly effect, so our family could be gathered. And I thank you just as much, for straying, for wandering, for our differences.... for pushing me to the bridge when it needed to be crossed. I thank you for leaving when I asked you to and trusting me to do right....to raise them, to love them and teach them to love you. I thank you for our freedom. For our wings......The girls are flying and free and Jonah keeps trying them on for size. One day, he'll find his fit and soar.....

Our lives have been rocky. And roller-coasterish. And wonderful. We've been broke and sometimes even poor. We've been afraid and sometimes terrified. We've been weak and sometimes broken. And we've been soldiers. Surrounded by an army of Angels. And that has made us rich, and sometimes generous. Brave and sometimes daring. Stronger than we ever imagined.

I wish you all peace and love,
and thank you....
endlessly

Drug Induced Dreams and Thank God I have a couch

I woke up. Just like that. 36 hours into la-la land, I decided that having psychedelic dreams and tingling, ewwwwwwey-ouweeeeey numbness, was kind of boring. I grabbed the RX bottle and tossed it into the cat litter bucket~makeshift coffee table~instant plastic garbage can that had followed me through the night. Everytime I woke up, the plastic Tidy Cat box was there. Cigarettes and ashtray, RX, and cell phone perched on it's lid. 36 hours later the cigarette pack was half empty, the ashtray half full and the cellphone dead. 38 hours later, my heartbeat was beating like Eminem on cheap speakers throughout my foot. I gritted my teeth, chugged down iced tea and swallowed two Advil. Cocooned myself in the blankets on the couch and started counting.

I always think there's a reason for everything. Some unknown, yet to be discovered reason lurking in the shadows. I rarely hunt for it anymore, I just know it's there, waiting to show it's "Are you watching me, now?" face.

I believe.

So I never questioned why jumping up and down in my sister's living room telling the fairytale story of the little magpie "pwincesses" at hippie daycare would find me splat! on the floor, broken and wailing. I mean, the whole scene did divert another crises, so hell, maybe I didn't have to be so dramatic, but it worked! It was just meant to be.....

And that's why, now that I'm straight (yeah, you aren't believing me, are you?) I'm just pondering, not questioning, just pondering, the meaning behind my most vivid drug induced dream. I keep watching it over and over again in technicolor memory, in slow speed....thinking I'm supposed to get something from it.....

I was on the ground, or below or under anyway, and I saw her way up above, toward the peak of the roof. She was just there suddenly, in silly Pippi Longstocking clothes, sneakers and socks and mismatched leggings and skirts and shirts and jackets...

and she was sliding down the shingles, bumpety bumpety bump and then flipping, twirling, skinny little arms flying and then bouncing, pouncing onto the roof below and then dune-rolling somersaulting cart-wheeling down to the next roof, rump bumping, knee knocking, crawling face first so fast her feet flipped over her head and she was spider walking in a back bend, faster and faster....
to the next roof
and the next roof
and I no longer stood below panicked
or gathering sheets for a fireman's net
or yelling for help
I was just watching in awe
as
her colors
my colors
flipped furiously
through the shingled sky
and from where
I stood
in spite of the road rash
the skint knees
the bonked up forehead
and
tangled hair
she
looked like she was having fun.

I can't wait to dance again......

Ask...

I was devastated. I believe in what is meant to be, and what never was, and if something doesn't happen, something else will. But I was devastated. "Are you kidding me?" "A thousand dollars to just spruce up the juice to the wanna be studio so we can make a condo out of a boys-night-out?" "Well, yeah, if you want it to be safe, and good, and to work right".....

I was devastated. We had recruited an army of willing arms to swing hammers and dig trenches. To barbeque chicken. To run ice. To hang drywall and pour concrete. We had scavenged the streets for donations, asking for the world, and being gifted over and over again. And, then, "are you kidding me?" we couldn't make it safe.....

Strong enough to power the air conditioning in triple digit heat, the coffee pot balanced on the makeshift counter top.....
the oxygen machine when it came.....

"Are you kidding me?"

Today, we shifted gears.

We started asking strangers.

Peace~love

Tomorrow everything we need to wire up the sound will be neatly packed in the back of Chey's pick-up truck. Friday night we'll pow-wow. On Saturday we'll tear the walls down. On Sunday we'll put them up again.

May the circle be unbroken.

Sometime soon,
I'll have a friend in the backyard....

And he will
have
an
army of new friends...
clinking!
Praying for the healing.....

The Window Whisperer

"Why are you whispering?" He said, leaning in. I tossed my head back and laughed from the throat, not from the belly, not from that place where he learned to live again. He smiled. It didn't take him long at all to learn to read my lips when mid-syllable the husky, raspy, cigarette lined words disappeared and no sound at all came out. Silence can be very, very loud when you're listening carefully. He listened very carefully.

I perch backwards,balancing on bare feet, on the porch bench. Stare through the wide open walls at the wind sneaking between the houses, at the squirrels changing lanes in 5:00 traffic on the broken fence top. "You're a bird, balancing on a wooden wire" he mumbles. The time has come. He knows it. I smile.

I reach over and push him out. It isn't me that's been caged. Caught in a wire meshed pre-fabricated world. His wings are working now. They were never broken, just taped together, leaving him motionless, toddling in circles, at the bottom of a wallpapered world. He turns and pleads with me, but I nudge him further...down the drive-way, the highway, into the very sunset we fingerpainted in the sky.

"Be free" I whisper. "That's what they made windows for".....

Clink! Tink!

I’m addicted to Michelob lights and Winston 100’s and dancing. I tried to quit smoking, took up chewing Eclipse , and now I’m addicted to that. Smacking, chomping… the instant rush of flavor, and then, the repetitive, soothing, comfort of the gum tucked just so, nashing on it instead of grinding my teeth. Just cut a huge chunk of my thinning hair off, no amount of ice or peanut butter would free the wad of last night’s gum from my morning bed-head. I didn’t care. It was worth it. I fell asleep with mountain air swimming in my lungs, and I slept in peace.


I’m addicted to the beach. To the chafing sand, tiny Styrofoam balls of salt , crunching under my feet, clinging to my skin, falling from my hair. To the tired broken shells….washed up finally, from fatigue or fate, waiting in the cheese line….praying to be found, scooped up into a plastic bucket, a pocket, an open palm…..and to finally rest in peace. To the rheumy tide. Tattled on in the Farmer’s Almanac. But not predictable. Don’t ever let her fool you.


I’m addicted to crayons and colored makers and pencils and ink. I’ve collected a thousand colors in as many shapes and still it is not enough. I’m sure I am missing opaque shades of the sky, the skin, the soul…….


I’m addicted to signs. Little nuances that point me in the right way….yellow butterflies, perfect songs, license tags that spell out my fate……and billboards that knock you down and drag you down the wrong road , kicking and screaming, and loving every moment of it…a sunshine charm found in the sand, red wine on sale, the car clock stuck on midnight, hurricanes….. I’m really, really good at twisting them into my own make believe meant-to-be’s….

And I'm addicted to laughter. Something I "cold-turkeyed" a long time ago. Gave up. Just like that. They were good years,I smiled, I nodded, I danced in line. But I didn't laugh. Didn't get the Sunday School Giggles that can't be tucked under your petticoat, the "Yes, Sir, Officer" "No, I was just sneezing, looking for my registration" hiccups...I just smiled....lived...settled. And then I fell out of a hammock, on the perfect day, and started laughing again. And it was perfect. A helium high. Cheap thrills for the soul. A little rock and roll. And damn, I love rock and roll....

I’m addicted to peace and love. And understand I might die before I see them through. But I believe, and for that….

I have passion….

“They have support groups for people like us” he said; stubbing his cigarette into the dirty ashtray,
Laughing…..
and clinking .....

The Highway Man

“Are you a transient?” I asked, leaning in…..laughing…..

“No, no, I just moved here…” the words spilled out of his Saturday night smile.

I asked to see his driver’s license. You never know. “Hmmmmmmm….” I toyed with it for a moment, scanning the picture for tattle-tales…. “Yeah., it looks like you”….smiling at the obvious tourist, with his polished deck shoes and button down shirt. I slid the laminated ID, face down, into his hand…..and he casually tucked it into his wallet, next to the pictures of his other world. Upside down.

That was a zillion years ago.....

Peace~love, baby.


Everything in between is a roadtrip......

Excuses....

My Mother groaned and moaned, sighed really big and slow like a Southerner. .. “A lady always sits with her legs crossed”….. “Practice, you can do it”….

I was skinny, and gawky, and bendy. Like a wish bone.

I folded myself up like a paperclip to watch TV. Sprawled all over the place, like a limp spider, to read a book. Crouched Chinese style to dig in the dirt. Tucked myself neatly into an accordion to sit on the floor and draw. I was bendy. I never sat like a lady.

“Don’t run” she bellowed as I flew out the kitchen door, nose first, ankles trailing behind me. “Don’t run” she begged me when I was finally pregnant and in early labor. “Don’t run” she pleaded when I took up ballet for the seventh time at thirty-five.

“You’ll fall” she whispered. "It's not ladylike..."

I tried.

To cross my knotty knees. To not let my panties show. To not hike my ankles up in the air so my toes could reach the stars. To not tuck my feet under my fanny and plop on the floor. To not loll around in my body …
free…..

To go slow…

I tried to be ladylike.

But I was hanging from trees, and climbing out windows, sliding down dunes and scuffing in the dirt, dancing on dirty dance floors and skating in ditches....


And I was laughing.

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……