Urban Myths and Mich Lights

She told me dozens of times, the colored yarn twined between her fingers, crochet hook zipping up and down...."How you bring in the New Year is how you spend the year"....fingers flying, eyes down.

I laughed.

Smudged out another cigarette, and told more stories.

She meant it.

I brought it in upside down, sideways, sound asleep. I burned up the old year, sent it ashes to ashes into the wind in the middle of the tiny paved street. I buried it in the back yard, stuffed it in a suitcase and set it out for the garbage man. I danced to Stones. Danced with fossils. Danced by myself. I made resolutions, promises, threats to an empty sky. I cha-chinged it, cheered it, clinked it, feared it. I tried it everyway but right.

And then I put on my cowboy boots and that damned dress I had to have and sashayed it right in through the kitchen door...

Sometimes you've gotta put on your kickers to get that dust off of your petticoat....

Writing on the walls....

I woke up to sunshine and followed the trail of abandoned combat boots, clothes, helium balloons asleep on the floor, to the kitchen.....to the first New Day of the New Year. Confetti is still fallin' from my hair, joining the cat hair in a midair ballet. It's nice. This promise of tomorrow. I open the windows and smile at the unkempt yard and the free newspapers piled at the edge of the driveway. I clink! my coffeecup to the blue sky and throw a kiss... "Good-bye friend" I whisper to the old year, the tried and tired and true year. I'm not being unfaithful, it's just time to move on...

I run my fingers over the broken blue tile and Michelob caps, the fresh sandy grout.....and smile again. My Dear John letter to 2007 and love letter to 2008 etched forever on the walls of this old house. Let there be peace.......

Kiss the sky at Midnight

New Years....

I’ve tried it everyway. As a child, we hooped and hollered, twirled Nana’s noisemakers in the air! Teetered on the top of the bamboo barstools, feet dangling, arms flailing Wheeeeeee! It’s New Years! Along the way, we started sneaking down to the basement, having James whip us up Suicides….coke and rum and vodka…. Gag me with a spoon! But it left us breathless, and sitting in circles, watching midnight grab the sky, singing…Sha Na..Na…Na…Na… Hey…Hey. …Hey…
holding hands, and sometimes upchucking heads. I ache now. We are not all here now. Those were the New Years we should have hugged each other harder and left the toilets to their own.

And then we were legally “grown up”. And we hung from Balconies and French kissed at midnight. It was still good. Even the year Greg Fishowitz overdosed and sentenced himself to a life pacing in an antiseptic aquarium plugged into IV’s for eternity. It was still going to be a good year. That was the year Christian came out of the closet, called off his engagement to Juliet, and rocked his parent’s world. We applauded him. The year that Kimbies got suspended for smoking in the bathroom and the year that my boyfriend, in a death defying act of jealousy , flipped the camaro upside down and I LIVED! It’s all good.

And then we were on our own, and dateless, and all piled up in a “too expensive” “too cramped for comfort” apartment and “What the hell?” they were having a Champagne and Caviar Party at the clubhouse…… So we tooled our size six fannies over and swallowed fish eggs and pink bubbles and left with the first three cars that fled the scene….

And we married our rides….. (Some of us for better or for worse, one of us just for the ride)

Time flies when you’re having a good time, and we must have because it’s a blur that I really don’t remember…. And suddenly….

Its another life and
I’m at the airport and I’m watching as my soldier lumbers down the ramp and it’s late, far too late to bring in the New Year, and I’m thrilled….
He’s alive and He’s home and I’m in love and jet lag is an urban myth….
We set the clocks back four and a half hours and embrace the New Year just before the sun comes up. On our own make-believe time.

Years pass.

They bring their blessings and their curses and we survive it all.

I’ve cheered New Years and blessed it out. I’ve welcomed the New and buried, literally, the old. Dug mammoth holes in the flower beds and put the crap to rest. . I’ve burned it. And run out into the street and tossed it’s ugly karma to the sky…ashes floating aimlessly, landing on the curbs. I’ve kissed the sky and wished on stars, I’ve gone to bed……

Two years ago, we started this Resolution thing again…. The time had come. A million things to resolve to, to amend to, to agree to, to give in to. But we picked only three. Kimbies and Butch and I. We must have known then. WE CHOSE PEACE. WE WANTED PEACE. And, oh yeah, they would get a dog and I would get a boyfriend. We just sort of threw that in. We just wanted peace.

“Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes if you try, you get what you need” MJ and the Rolling Stones.

On New Years Eve, we made reservations. Resolutions. Wore hand me down dresses pinched a little here and a little there to fit just so. Kimbies was mannequin beautiful in her hippie bandana with her priceless husband at her side. We cheered. We cried. We danced with strangers. Had exactly one too many drinks. We hugged. We all held hands at some point and fell to our knees on the dirty little floor and thanked God for the noise of rock and roll, and the healing, and the Angels that brought us there. At midnight, we turned and kissed.

I’m so glad even resolutions give you second chances.

I’m doing it all over again this year. And this one is a keeper.

Peace.

Your Mama wears Combat Boots....

These are the ones. I had to decide between construction boots and the spanish formal or combat boots and the little black dress. The little black dress won. My date, whom by the way I asked out, for New Years Eve, is one of my dearest friends. Charming, conservative, intelligent and 23 years my senior, he'll be wearing impecable taste and a smile.

Jonah, my eldest and youngest, and only son, stopped by this afternoon...We played catch-me-up on the porch, me stringing love beads and he, checking voice mails and text messages one right after the other. Claiming too little sleep and a too bright sun, he lumbered through the house collecting hand me down towels, a bar of soap, and a frozen pizza..... pausing on his way to thumb through the Halloween pictures piled on the microwave. "Ya had fun, didn't ya Mom?" "Yeah, son we did, we really did...." "Ya goin' out for New Year's again?" "Oh yeah, wait, I'll show you my boots......"

His hollywood chin tipped to the left. One eyebrow raised just a hair. "You're doin' it again, Ma....." smile "People are gonna talk".... full grin now. "I know, son, but I have a broken foot....I can't help it, and I wanna dance" "They're gonna talk....."...... huge grin now.

"Love ya, Ma"....words tossed over his shoulder as he clanked through the screen door, and down the drive way....

And now it's my turn to smile.

Cinderella, and then some....

"You gonna sit with me for New Year's?"
"Course I am"
"Dressing up again?"
"Yeah"
"Did you already get your dress?"
"Yup"



"Is it long?"
"Mmmmm....hmmmmmm"
"Pretty, huh?"
"Mmmmmm...hmmmmm"



"You wearing those boots?"
"Yup"
"With your dress?"
"Yup"
"Are you kidding?"
"Nope"



"Okay"
"Okay"



"Can I have the first dance?"
"Yup"

If the walls could talk....

It was the dawning of 1992. We sat barefooted at the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes, twirling little locks of straight blonde hair in our fingertrips. Babies laughed just out of our reach, tumbled on the empty carpeted floor.

Love beads, our millioneth set, baked slowly in the oven. We believed. The ugly years behind us, it was time to rock and roll. To love. To pray for peace. Again.

We celebrated slowly....the coming of hope....the deliverance of 1992 into our welcome arms. "It will be a good one" we clanked, bottles bottom up in cheers. We smiled at the promise and even, laughed at the past. "Hell, it's what got us here, isn't it?"

In the wee hours before dawn, I peeked at my sleeping little ones, chubby fingers and toes, protected, for now, from the chaos of the outside world, by the quiet hum of Led Zepplin .

Paigey and I started then. Took the last of the beads from the slow-cooking oven and covered the beerstained kitchen table with cardboard. Out came the cigar boxes filled with trinkets, shoestrings, old crayons. The water colors, the markers, pencils, pens, and india inks.

We blobbed and dripped and dribbled, shot acrylic paint through straws, drug dirty shoelaces through puddles of color until it happened..... Peace on the kitchen table.

The words just happened. A quiet after thought. A signing-off actually. Tiny little words lacing the circle.

"May the wizards work their wonder...
May the children laugh and dance with each other in a world with no man-made storms.
May we wish on stars and believe enough in ourselves to reach out to them.
May we always believe in magic and be brave enough to enjoy it.
May the guardian angels spread their wings and keep us near
and may we never forget God is watching us.

To peace and love and laughter in 1992
and
as always,
to dreams and the promise of tomorrow"

justgivemepeace.com

KEEPER

A heart shaped shell, tumbled in a thousand tides, grainey and wrinkled, tossed at my barefeet...a keeper

An abondoned birdsnest, delicately woven, lined with glad-bag trash and the neighbor's Christmas tree tinsel...a keeper. I pruned the tree and left one branch up and three branches down, a tribute to peace, and a Mother's determination. Even empty nests bring comfort.

Marbles, twirled and swirled, blown glass spun in a circle...pocketed by little boys, rolled on wooden floors....found 23 years later buried in Georgia clay... a sister's keeper.

Silver shoes, 3 inches high, scuffed just at the toe... glitter faded, straps stretched out....toe prints on their soles...Keepers

Pisces man with a wrinkled face, and a wrinkled smile and a Coors light in his hand....reaching over, diving in, embracing his "you still look 21 to me" gorgeous wife collapsing at his side....and saying "WE CAN DO THIS. IT's OK. I LOVE YOU".... Keeper

Christmas card with a Magpie poem ....Keeper

Wedding album, mildewed and tossed, pages eaten by hungary moths and uninvited roaches, chocked full of random papers, the key to your past...A keeper....meant to be lost for 20 years and found on a rainy Friday..to be wrapped up in Christmas paper and bows and passed onto my child with so many questions.....I apologize if i haven't told the stories right...memories are sometimes made-up as you go, but I love you, and unedited, this book, stuffed with the truth is a keeper....

Beer bottle caps. Damp from the chill. Tossed in a painted gourd. Collected year round, from Friday nights out, Sunday night cries....And later touched by the pen or the brush of a Magpie...reincarnated into jewels and sillies and ornaments...tossed amongst loved ones like fairy dust...keepers

Tattoos....You're stuck with them. Love it. Because you damn sure can't leave it. A permanent salute to the moment....keeper.
(And I am at this moment contemplating a yellow butterfly...come Paigey, and Kimbies, and Corinne, Linda, and Judy and Curty and Haley and Noah and Christine and Anna and Amber and Arianna Olivia and Peyton and Alana and Kyle and Stone and Tami and Dad-O and Grand-C and Chancellor and Scott and Annie and Nadine and Stan and JR and Jimmy Mac and Peggie and Badri and Sheila Anne and Tim and Papa and Nicky and Rumors and Joe and RCK and Vicci and Anne and Orhan and San Marino and everyone and everything that makes the butterfly effect so very very yellow...)

Keepers...May the New Year be Blessed with all we cherish....
and all we've yet to discover.................

On Borrowed wings....

On a borrowed computer, on swiped internet...from the porch....
I miss you guys! Miss Vicci, can't wait to see Kim's beautiful smile when she is gifted with your treasures...Anne, I can't begin to tell you....SLB, can't wait to see you, I mean CAN'T WAIT!.....C, Hope you and family have a beautiful Christmas blessed with peace, love you girls!... Orhan...God, i miss your posts....Everybody, wishing you peace, love, and a blessed New Year!


RESOLUTIONS....

I've tried it everyway. New Year's, that is. As a child, we hooped and hollered, twirled Nana's noisemakers in the air! "It's New Years!" Along the way, we started sneaking down to the basement, having James whip us up Suicides....coke and rum and vodke, pepsi and OJ swirled in iced tea glasses....gag me with a spoon! But it left us breathless, and sitting in circles, watching midnight grab the sky, singing...."Sha Na Na Na...Hey...Hey...Hey...Good-bye... holding hands, and sometimes upchucking heads. I ache now. We are not all here now. Those were the New Years we should have hugged each other harder and left the toilets to their own.

And then we were legally "grow-up". And we hung from balconies and french kissed at midnight. It was still good. Even the year Gary Fishowitz overdosed and sentenced himself to a life pacing in an antiseptic aquarium plugged into IVs for eternity. It was still going to be a good year. That was the year Christian came out of the closet, called off his engagement to Juliet, and rocked his parent's world. We applauded him. The year that Kimbies got suspended for smoking in the bathroom and the year that my boyfriend, in a a death defying act, flipped the camaro upside down and I LIVED! It's all good.

And then we were on our own. and dateless, and all piled up in a "too expensive" "too cramped for comfort" apartment and "What the hell?" they were having a Champagne and Caviar Party at the clubhouse...So we tooled our size six fannies over and swallowed fish eggs and pink bubbles and left with the first three cars that fled the scene...

And we married our rides....(Some of us for better, some for worse, and one just for the ride)

Time flies when you're having a really good time, and we must have because it's a blue that I really don't remember....and suddenly....

It's another life and

I'm at the airport and I'm watching as my soldier lumbers down the ramp and it's late, far too late to bring in the New Year, and I'm thrilled...
He's alive and He's home and I'm in loe and jet lag is an urban myth...

We set the clocks back four and a half hours and embrace the New Year just before the sun comes up....on our own make-believe time.

Years pass.
they bring their blessings and their curses.

I've cheered New Years and blessed it out. I've welcomed the New and buried, literally, the old...dug mammoth holes in the flower beds, and put the crap to rest. I've burned it. And run out into the street and tossed it's ugly karma to the sky...ashes floating aimlessly, landing on the curbs. i've kissed the sky and wished on stars...I've given up and gone to bed....

Last year, we started this "Resolution" thing again...The time had come. A million things to resolve to, to amend to, to agree to, to give in to. But we picked only three. kimbies and Butch and I. We must have known then. WE CHOSE PEACE. WE WANTED PEACE. And oh yeah, they would get a dog and I would get a boyfriend, We just sort of threw that in. We just wanted peace.

"Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes if you try, you get what you need" MJ and the Rolling Stones.

So we buried our friends, and Kimbies has cancer, and the first boyfriend in 14 years didn't work out.

On New Years Eve, we have reservations. Resolutions. Dresses. And a limo. Kimbies will be mannequin beautiful in her hippie bandana with her priceless husband at her side. We'll leave little Nay-Nay, the Chihuahua, in her pink tutu at home. We'll cheer. Probably cry. We'll dance. We'll have exactly one too many drinks. We'll hug. We'll all hold hands at some point and maybe fall on our knees on the dirty litle floor and thank God for the noise of rock and roll, and the healing, and the Angels that brought us here. And at midnight, we'll turn and kiss...

I'm so glad even resolutions give us second chances. This one is a keeper.

Peace

The Mermaid's Gate-Singleton-Outsider Art

Our painted house. Here at the end of the hall, is the Mermaid's Gate, doorway to my own private domain. She was born on New Year's eve. From the deck, the sky above us exploded like a giant bag of jiffy pop...and electrical parades of color rained down upon us.... The endless night was strobed with dancing technicolor stars and it was beautiful.

Then the bats came. They swooped and plunged too close for comfort. Perhaps frightened by the noise or the thought that the world was ending, they were zig zagging madly through the spectacular light show. Casting dark shadows, their swooshing, flapping sounds drowning out the celebratory cannon blasts and static-like explosions. Finally, they won. The fireworks just ceased to exist. Only the smell of burnt resolutions lingered through the night.

I came in and flicked on the lights. It seemed the world outside was satisfied with their sky shattering farewell to 2005. All was quiet. I pulled out the paint and made my New Year's resolution: This year I will be a Mermaid. And I will float in peace.