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.....

Wild horses and other love songs

The very first ever kiss. A 5th grade feather on the cheek. Double-eye winking, looking away. Feathers falling everywhere. Down our arms, down our legs, in a heap on the dusty playground. I laugh and run. Gangly arms doing the breast-stroke in the lunchtime wind, running faster….toward the girls….away from Ronnie-freckled-McCartney.

Eskimo kisses. My father’s broad Indian nose touching mine. His black eyes, small and shining, locking mine. He lifts me up into the air, nose to nose and I flail...kick my skinny legs in every direction, giant Ked sneakers banging his shins, and shriek in laughter. Eskimo kisses on a hot summer night.

At the Bayou….I’m in the eighth grade and I’m not allowed. My Father said so. I’m all dressed up in borrowed shoes and a chopped up make-shift dream-come-true dress and he scooches in closer and kisses me hard. I love it. “Take me home” I obediently mutter ….. It’s midnight, now…..

“Have you ever been French kissed before?”
“Yesssssss” I whisper, eyes closed …….
“Oh my God, this is it” my heart screams…….

Chubby little cheese curl toes. I touch them. Marvel at their perfect imperfections. Smooch! I pucker up and kiss the little pink soles hard. “You’ll never ever be too old for Mama to love you”…….

Grimy glass covered in hand swipes, nose prints. Snot. Standing like a barbed wire fence between us. They lift the steps up and the engines roar. I search frantically for his face in the little oval windows. I kiss my own fingers and lift them up… blow. Praying he sees me. Praying it reaches him. Praying for an end to war…..

I’m next to her now. Trying hard to breath in rhythm. Counting in between her sudden gasps for air, for life.
1, a million, 2, a million, 3, a million……15, a million, 16.…….
I don’t want to stop her going. I don’t want to save her now. I want nothing more than peace so I’m trying to be very, very quiet. We’re breathing in labored sync. I can’t stand it. Roll over and kiss her fragile little forehead, “it’s okay. You can go now”…..
And we start again…..
1, a million….2, a million, 3.…..
“I’ve loved you for a million years”……. My sweet, sweet, Nadine…….

My hands cupped around his sweaty block-head. Holding on. Grasping at the real live HIM! I squeeze. Lean in and kiss him, Italian style, on both cheeks. Muah! Muah! My fingers, shaking, trace his nose,His I-just-recently-could-grow-this-stuff chin. My son. Free. I hold on to him for dear life.

Floating in the lazy round river. It’s hot and his eyes are blue. Then teal and green and yellow… an endless ocean… frothy beer suds on laughing waves.
Without ever touching…..without ever letting go…….

The kiss goes on and on….

I'd rather be flying.....

I used to fly. At night. Suspended in fast forward, out of control.

I would lay awake in bed. Praying for peace. For sleep. For respite. And I would fight sleep, the only real get-away. "Keep your eyes open" "Keep singing, humming, thinking, wiggling your toes". And then I would feel it. God, I hated to feel it. The falling. Asleep at your toes. As if a thousand wasps had stung you. It hurt so bad and it crawled. Filthy little winged things chewing up your legs. Numbness. Taking over your body. And when I was totally encased in the vibrating, tingling," oh my God I have to leave this body"feeling, the body would leave me.

And begin to fly.

To bat really.

To zoom over the furniture furiously. Frantically zipping through the house, slapping walls, just skating the ceiling. Searching, searing desparately for a way out. Sometimes I would just fly faster and faster in endless lopsided figure 8's, nearly cracking my head on the fireplace mantle, bouncing vases off the coffee table. And sometimes I would leave. Find an open window. Soar into the night. Free. Fast.

And I would fly so high there would be no oxygen. And my lungs would expand until they felt like a leaded x-ray tank embedded in my chest. When my hair would wire out with energy and be alive, crawling, flapping at the sky. And I would fly over roads, and memories, and yet-to-be's, sometimes diving, nearly crashing onto crowded highways, headlights blinding me.

And then I would come home.
And crawl into my body.
And say a prayer.
"Oh, I'm done. It's over for tonight." "I can rest now".

And the humming would start again...........................................

I haven't flown in years now. I later learned it was a syndrome. Psychotic actually. Symptom of those out of control. Dreams they called them. Those that didn't fly......

I awoke with eyes cutting, eyeballs wide open, but glass, there must be glass in my eyes. I can't read the clock. The open doorframe is casting a shadow. And it's a monster. I sit upright. In my yesterday's clothes, I forget to breathe. The dog is growling. At the shadow. "Oh my God, what if she dies from eating crackers and cheese for two days. I have to look that up on the internet. Is it safe to feed Georgia Triscuts and cheese?" I listen. She's growling. She's living. Deja pounces on my forehead, running circles in the dark. She has no claws, my only one, so I know I am not bleeding. She runs in circles. " I fed them right? The cats. They still had food. " I listen. "Isadora, Tallulah?"

It's so dark. It's three A.M. I wander down the hall. What is Georgia growling at? And I remember. It's the hauntings.
I haven't paid the
phone billl
the car insurance
the second mortgage
the attorney's fees....

I'm being sued. You were perfectly fine. But what would your husband say when he found out the 14 year old station wagon that ran perfectly fine until you got bumped would be totalled and they would only give you 750.00 for your BESSIE? He would say sue her. For your teeth that you never bumped, but should have been crowned 20 years ago if you could afford to go to the dentist. Sue her!

"I've loved you for a million years". The voice. The blue eyes. His. Hers. The funeral. The not funeral. The "I'm trying to tell you something, wake up! and listen to me" messages I KNOW they are sending. "I can't understand you, I can't see you. God, can't you just stand in the drive way smoking cigarettes, sit at the kitchen table and TALK TO ME ANYMORE?"

I bop the coffee cup in the microwave. Hit 2 by instinct.

I'm up for the day.

Those Fateful Blue Eyes...

It happens sometimes. I’m parked in sweaty -bumper- to -vibrating -bumper traffic and the license tag in front of me reads….3J9 SEA….and my feet are scooped out from under me, and I’m getting road rash from the rush of crushed shells swirling under me as I try to stop myself from giving into the …

Undertow.

One tiny word embedded in a bent up license tag and I’ve left the five o’clock traffic and I’m drifting into a never forever land where the seaweed is wadded up in my hair, and the sticky yicky surface under my toes is an oriental rug of dancing jellyfish, and I’m bouncing madly in a sea I have no control over. My elbows bounce over thousand year old conchs and I flip and swallow water and spew at the sky like a hump back whale. I’m floating now…..

And then we move.

The Toyota in front of me shifts lanes abruptly.
I pound the brakes. And we are frozen again.

Bored, I hit the scan button on the radio. Search for the traffic report. The digital monitor blurs past a dozen channels. No news is good news. It stops.. Flashes.

Jethro Tull is on the radio.

This is news? The traffic report? I’m standing in a dirt driveway, skint knees and peasant blouse, leaning on a BF flyer, smoking a cigarette. “ Don’t mind me crashing at all. Nice to meet you”. I’m 17 again, and in the tainted sunlight of the bumper in front of me, I see Chris smiling. And I hear him saying “Nice to meet you, too”. I’m watching him, his face on the tailgate, distorted by the slowly rolling UPS truck in the lane next to me.

The light changes and he disappears.

It happens sometimes. I’m in the damndest places and I feel it. It’s not deja vue, it’s not a memory, it’s an umbilical cord…..tethering me back to where I belong, where I came from…it’s a cord cut short in an instant . A moment suspended by circumstance, left standing at the alter, waiting…for ressurrection or reincarnation or as a just reminder that life goes on…

I saw her that day at the corner store. My dear missed Nadine. Clicking her tiny high heels in front of me, faster than I could ever keep up. Flicking her ashes in the wind. Eating black eyed peas on New Year’s day. Reminding me over a static filled phone line that she would call me when she needed me. I saw her that day in your fateful blue eyes. I hope it’s not too much of a burden.

Scrapbook House

Through my daughters eyes...


I guess you could say I was eavesdropping. I was in the next room chatting away on the computer. In the kitchen, my Mom and her friend sat opposite each other sipping hot coffee and chain smoking. Conversation bouncing back and forth between them like a volley ball game. They were good at this. They had been having kitchen-table-talks for years. They knew when to interrupt, when to change the subject, when to sit quietly and just nod. They were friends. Old friends. Honest friends. Most of the morning, their words just trickled by me, nothing more than background static, like the continuous hum of the ceiling fan. I wasn’t even aware that I was listening until the words that casually tumbled out onto the kitchen table began to break my heart. “You know, sweetie, if you ever sell this old house, someone will have to spend a fortune gutting it”. My Mother laughed aloud and their continuous bantering once again became background noise.

Very quietly, I gazed around the room. Gut it? Did she mean tear down the walls? Rip out the cabinets? Take down the doors? Gut it? Peel up the floors? Yank out the windows? Pull down the lights? Yes, I thought, that is what she meant. Craning backwards now, I peered down the hallway toward the bedrooms. Thousands and thousands of pieces of broken tile danced and swirled up the hallway walls, then snaked around the corners….a meandering mosaic that crawled up my bedroom walls, around the windows and back out my door again. Deep mysterious symbols are concealed in the intricate patterns. My Mother’s art. Grouted for eternity into the walls that divide our home.

My eyes are hurting. I have a headache, right there behind the part of your heart that you see with. I want to put on sunglasses. Rose colored sunglasses. Because I do not want to see our house the way other people must see it. I want to see it the way my Mother sees it. There are nineteen cabinets in our kitchen and seven drawers. There are green doors, lavender drawers, pink cabinets, yellow shelves, blue cupboards. Every inch of every surface intricately embellished with flowers and ribbons and cascading designs that either flow perfectly or abruptly end…as if she were stopped mid sentence. Pastel Pointe shoes , painted in honor of my first solo ballet, are tangled into the quirky design. The ratty satin ribbons blending into the background.
Our kitchen door is psychedelic. As is the laundry room door. The steps are painted. The doorframes are painted. The baseboards are painted. The cobblestone porch is painted. The garden gate is painted. Some of our windows are even painted. Carefully executed in reverse, with the good side to the world. Tiny voids of paint…the center of a flower, the eye of a storm…act as peep holes. At first sight, it looks as if someone has gone mad and collaged the entire house. There are archways of a zillion shells, all priceless treasures the tide was kind enough to share with my Mother. And amidst it all, there are words buried everywhere. I suddenly remember a remark a friend of mine once made: “Be careful what you say around here, her Mom will paint it somewhere”. It’s true. It’s called Graffiti. Our entire house is like the back page of a children’s Highlights magazine…find the hidden objects. I wonder now, if she envisioned this concrete scrapbook as one big blank canvas when she first discovered the “For Sale” sign in the tattered front yard. I take a slow breath and wonder if she’ll live to fill every page with color…if she’ll still be painting when I’m forty…if my children’s first heralded birthdays will be recorded here also.

I have grown up here. I turn around and my life is splashed onto every surface. The summer at Ballet Camp. My first boyfriend. Homecoming. My Mother’s tiled, glued, painted house are proof we have survived it all. I run my fingers down the baseboard.

Storyteller house.
Scrapbook house.
Home.