You put your right foot in.....

When you wake up and you are five and the sun is shining through the dirty venetian blinds in little exacto-knife slivers of light across your bedsheets, it's morning time. A new day, long as ever. The sun shines for half your life.

Your eyes pop open, a wide mouthed bottle slurping down the morning. The cereal bowl is good and cold, no matter what the flavor, and then the bowl is empty and you're and out the door, calico dress and bare feet flying.

Pedal the pink spider bike with the fluorescent streamers and poker carded spokes ninety to nothing down the hill. Dig in the dirt. Scratch your name in a tree. Scoop tadpoles from the birdbath. Hide in the trees and wallop "falling stuff " at passing cars. Catch a firefly with a hangover and poke him in a mayonaisse jar. Play so hard you forget to go tinkle and have to ride home, perched like a lady, cross legged, on the pink spider bike..... ninety to nothin'.....

When you are five, you live hard. You chase boys around the trees until your lungs are a boom-box and the breath choo-chooing from your mouth is cold. You forget to brush your velvet teeth. You wear knots in your hair. You have dirty feet. You clean up good in the morning.

When you are five, you are free.

And the price you pay for freedom is bed-time.


Thank you justme, for the title!

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….

Burn, baby, burn....

The terrazzo floors were cold. It didn’t matter that it was August. And gritty. Sand under my fat-padded little feet. I ran on my tip toes. A plastic bag of cheerios in my right hand. From the kitchen to the TV. Laughing.

The cartoons were on. In black and white.

He sat on the floor. In pajamas, too. Humped over. Scrunched close to the TV. I ran up behind him, behind the plaid flannel shirt and matching shorts, the greasy black hair . And flung myself. Bammm! Laugh! The rabbit ears on the TV matched his hair and for a moment, from the back , I had crashed into a giant Bunny! He made a sound, “hmmmmmppphhhhh”, and scrunched further into himself. He wasn’t fun. But he was here. Sometimes he smiled. Squinted his eyes and smiled. Most of the time, he didn’t.

Mama finished the dishes. Set the coffee cup upside down into the plastic drainer and sighed. “I’m gonna hang the clothes out. Don’t leave the room”. I didn’t know then that living at the beach had it’s drawbacks. We didn’t have a dryer.

“I was only gone a moment” she would later say. She had toted the wicker laundrey basket out the back door into the sandy yard, and just two or three swimsuits later, realized that the clothespins were in a little plastic basket in the house, leftover from the “take the laundrey down” game we had played the day before. She sighed and her barefeet prickled and high-heeled it through the the hot sand and back into the house.

She was horrified.

I stood silently screaming …

melting….

In the middle of the terrazzo floor….

pajamas engulfed…..

The back of his black head, wearing the silhouette of the rabbit ears, never moved. He reached over and turned the volume up……

Don't pack lighters in your Suitcase....

Chey has a lot of luggage. She has stories and nightmares, family trees with hanging moss and empty nests, credit cards in other names….She has a lot of luggage. She smiles easily and hugs heartily. Welcomes you into her world and as you take that first tenuous step onto the other side, you trip…..everyone does. Dozens of half empty suitcases are scattered everywhere, their Samsonite security codes busted wide open, their latches pried apart. Contents of a chaotic life flung haphazardly across her living room floor. And still she smiles. Throws a few beloved trinkets in an overnight bag and faces another day….

Amazing woman….What you don't know won't hurt you...

We all tote our weight. Histories we’d rather not share. Blood lines we can’t trace. Moments we can’t forget, and those we can’t remember that haunt us in the night.

It makes us who we are. And why.

It’s how laugh lines are painted on our faces, and scrowls scribbled on our foreheads. Why we develop silly little ticks like hair twirling, foot tapping, gum chomping. Why we smoke so much, drink so much, stutter once in a while. Sometimes, why we smile....

Why some of us choose our paths, and some fall fatefully forward…

Suitcases. Secrets. We all have them. Stuffed full of all we are and all we’ve been.

Some are neatly packed briefcases, organized and alphabetized, bar-coded for a rainy day or a funeral parade. Some are rancid garbage cans left out in the sun for the neighbors to puke over and stray dogs to rummage through. Some are designer labeled, lined with potpourri…..all haughty-taughtied up. Some are nothing more than a tattered levi pocket, it’s contents so comfortable and at home, a pencil rubbing on our back hip…

There are really really big suitcases and really really little ones. But we all tote ‘em.

I just stuffed a lifetime in a really really tiny one.

I can take it anywhere…




to be continued...

Secret Valentines.....

You couldn't walk into Winn Dixie to buy toothpaste without having to swat through a curtain of irredescent strings. The weightless kite tails to bobbing heart balloons. Gypsy tents were popping up in abandoned parking lots, giant red and white teddy bears stuffed with sawdust plopped on the pavement. "Be my valentine". This hocus pocus holiday was raining on our parade. Three chics. No valentines in the making.

We were silly. A little creative. A little brave. And a little bored.

And then we decided to fix that.

Einna, Pia, and Scarlet O' Dare Ya. Yup, those were the names we decided on. Skinny rented the post office box after explaining in detail to the "Pack and Ship" manager the need for annonyminity, the need to be able to slip quietly into the building, and exit gracefully, without getting busted with the keys in our hands. It took a little cajoling, but finally he was in cahoots!

So here was the plan. If we weren't going to be getting Valentined, probably a lot of other folks weren't too. So we sat at the kitchen table, beers in the left hand, markers, paintbrushes, and cigarettes in the right hand, and started to make a list..... But who wants a pity party card? Hell, we didn't even want one of those. Nah, we had to come up with a better idea. "O.K., girls, this is the deal. We're each going to send out 10 valentines, to 10 guys we don't know."

And we did. We made our list, checked it twice. It's technically not all that easy to valentine people you don't know. We had to do a lot of research to find out the plumber's helpers name, the name of the guy in the third row of Skinny's economic class, Annies upstairs-three-doors-down neighbor's name . The name of the insurance agent, that we didn't buy policies from, arrived on a follow-up letter just in time to be included in our mischief. And the list goes on. The billboard boys, the thirty-something doctor with an attitude, the lonely boy, the pompous Cosmo Boy with his picture on the glossy pages, etc, etc, etc....

We stuffed the giant red envelopes with Colored cards, puzzle pieces, and all that glitters, everything a Valentine should ever be. Cupid ain't stupid....

And bopped them in the mail.

And waited.

And waited.

Skinny would sneak to the front doors of "Pack and Ship" and the night manager with his night eyes would just shake his head. "not today, girls".

We waited.

And then they came. Mountains of makeshift cards. Hallmark hellos. Penned and penciled valentines. There were dares and scares and "I don't know who you are, but I love you"s. There were confessions, proposals, and "why are you stalking me"s. There were pictures and postcards. But most of all, there were smiles.

In the end, we got busted by a few of them. Dated two of them. Had to hide from one of them.

Sometimes, even secrets make you smile.....

Happy Valentines Day!

I know who you are and saw what you did....

There were five of us. Kids. And a natural order of Age. Me, four years, Kimbies, 4 more years, Curty Boy, 2 years, Skinny 2 more years and then Chanty Boy.

For the most part we were passive, a wandering tribe of gypsy souls. Rarely did we scrap. By our teen years, Kimbies and I were given lots of freedom as long as we toted a little one with us. Thus, Curty, Skinny and Chance were introduced to Rock and Roll, fast cars, and secrets early on.

And that would be how the natural order of things would change.

Skinny, when not digging in the dirt, was the first to bop up with "Take me, Take me", often elbowing her way into the front of the line. Which wasn't really hard to do. Curty was passive and frankly,not really interested in cruising with the big kids on Friday night. Happy to just stay home, perched indian legged in front of the big old console TV, watching reruns. And Chanty, with no words to make his wishes known was often at our "take em or leave em" mercy. While I love Skinny dearly, being the oldest, I often opted to take Chanty. We'd plop him on the center console of Million's van, and venture into the week-end, Deep Purple blasting from the 8-track, windows rattling. See, Chanty, dumplin' of a sweetie, is down syndrome...born with a forever smile and dancing eyes. And in those little eyes you have to read the world, because he doesn't speak The Kings English. His tiny voice box was just born jumbled up and the sounds and noises he makes are endless streams of babbling, sound effects, noise....but never words. He early on, became the keeper of secrets. Never one to tattle tell.

Not the case for Skinny.

Her endless arms and legs piling into the week-end, also meant her wishing well eyes were there. Soaking in every word, every sight, every secret. She would be elbow deep in a bag of Lay's BBQ chips, singing, WATCHING. Gathering. Later, on occassion, trading sssssshhhhhhhssssshhhhhhs for candy bars. A business agreement. A lucrative and viable business agreement. "Don't tell Mom and Dad"

As the years grew and her legs grew, we settled into sisterhood. Trading secrets for secrets. Trading the spoken for the unspoken. Trading the order.

Sometimes now she leads.

And I quietly follow.

Oh.....the secrets Chance could tell.