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...

Sometimes you can tell....

I’ve been on the phone for hours with Chey. She’s ripped. (Not the 5 beers and two shots ripped, the beating heart pulled from your chest ripped). Her boyo proposed. Her dance-together, grill-together, laugh until you cough or choke together, have mad passionate-the-neighbors-will-report-us-sex boyo. He comes with luggage. A lot of it. I tried to explain to her the difference between a lot of luggage and really, really BIG SUITCASES. That’s another post.

Finally, I pulled the ole soul mate sticker out.

“Yeah, Yeah, we are” “But we’ll always be broke” “and what if……?”

(This is where I think I should be hearing Danny’song, Loggins and Messina... if he really is her soul mate….but that’s just me. I listen. …

Static......)

“I dunno, baby.” “But here’s the deal, if you love this man and he’s the one you choose, I love him and I wanta like be your maid of honor. Don’t throw the damn bouquet at me, but I wanta be your maid of honor. And if you think it ain’t right, I’ve got your back. And if you ever just wanta poke his eyes out.…. I’ll do it…..”

(I’m supportive like that, go with the flow…….)

Damage control is always saved for later.

He beeps in.

The Soul Mate thing got me going. Hell, you don’t always know it. I don’t know why I even asked her that. Sometimes it just grows. Love does that. Sometimes it just slap knocks you down.….Sometimes you’re wrong. And sometimes you’re right.

These are the soul-mates I know….

Nana and Popdaddy
There are not enough words, enough languages, to begin to explain their connection. She, in her go-go boots and yellow patent leather pocketbook and he, white haired and proper in his three piece suit. Him at the 2:00 card table with his Mona Lisa poker face, and her at Rosie O-Grady’s betting bartenders for rounds.

“Never wear panties to bed” she said. ( Our eyes the size of Oreo’s. )

"Let me tell you one thing child, when you're young you have resources but you don't have the balls to use
them. When you get older, you have the balls to do anything but you don't have the resources.” she said. (Skinny’s string bikini)

They spent lifetimes together. These two opposite sides of the coin. She’d smile at him with flirty eyes and he’d Mona Lisa her back. Soul Mates.

Kimbies and Papa
Oh, love grows. Nah. She didn’t know it the night they met. Or on the ride home, her hand clutching the aimed cannister of mace at his 15 -years -older face. We made her ride with him. He grinned. God, he loved her immediately. Even if she was gonna douse him in chemical rejection if he made the first wrong move.

I witnessed their soul-matedness grow. Watched it. Felt it. Was standing in the hallway for monumental growth spurts. Stop signs. U turns. Dances. Hugs. Silences. Soul Mates.

John and Linda Lou Lollipop
Children.
Innocents, in love.
How could they have ever known? All of this?
29 years later?
Soul mates.

The phone tweeps. It’s Chey. “He’s coming over”.

" Damn, I think. That means she won’t be meeting the fireman on Friday. "