Babies, like lovers.....

Arrive when you least expect them. I'm gonna be Mimi again. A little sooner than we thought, we're gonna be blessed with toothless grins and sleepless nights, first words, first falls, first "blow me a kiss"es..... meant-to-be's......

And so....Friday night we did the Drano test. Yup, made the midnight run to 7-11, "Nope, they don't have it" "O.K., try Walgreens, they're open 24-7" "Ok, they've got it...gel or foam?" "Hold on, it's been a long time, lemme look it up...." "Crystals, it's gotta be crystals" "Arrrrggggh....they don't have it. Are you sure it's gotta be crystals? " "Yep, you're half way to Walmart, keep driving"......

One thirty A.M.... And we're standing barefoot in the driveway, mixing chemicals and karma.....watching..... when....

KABOOM!

It's a boy!

If they don't believe me, I'll do the pencil test.....

The Day I put my foot down.....

It started out all routine. In my sleep. But then I overslept, Deja pounced on the snooze and she did it again, and I guess again, because when I rolled over and clomped out of bed, I only had thirty minutes before I had to climb in the shower and race down the driveway. I need forever. Not to put on make-up or do my hair or anything like that. To drink my coffee. Stare out the kitchen window. Watch Georgia do round-d-rounds in the backyard. Blog a little. Day dream. And then I put lemon juice in my coffee instead of creamora. But it was all good. Not the coffee, just the fact that it was a new day....

I don't know what happened, but somewhere between Mickey Dolenz belting out "I'm a Believer" and Mick Jagger's throaty reminder that "Tiiiiiiiiiiiime is on my side, yes it is".... I started to stew. A good kind of, growing, gutteral, strengthy, kind of stew.

When I hobbled into the office beltin "Good Mornings" at 9:00 (yes, we have banker's hours) and Chey answered me in her raspy "morning after" voice, I pounded both hand's down on the counter (to get her quick attention) and then I started. "O.K. Enough. Enough of being exhausted, worn out, tired, and spending the day catching up on hell. Enough of being whipped, beat up, and ringered. Enough of growing old. Your boyfriend doesn't love you, he's addicted to you. Like Coke. He's gotta have it, and when he doesn't get it, or get it his way, his mad. Mean. And that's not love. I've thought about it long and hard (And I really hadn't, it happened sometime between just those two songs) and we're just not gonna do it this way anymore. We used to have fun. We used to laugh. We used to raise hell, not live in it"

She stared back at me in silence.

I started again. I ranted and raved and paced, watched the clock and the front door for the first patient.....watched the back door for the good doctor. It took all of seven minutes to convince her. Life was short and we were wasting it.

At lunch we took a cigarette break and lounged in the doorway. We watched the telephone repair man park under a tree for lunch. He ambled out of the van, put his parking cone in front of his right tire, and hiked over to the Dairy Queen for ice cream. It wasn't polite, but we stared. We kinda need a parking cone for Halloween. It's on our list. Chey took her right pointer fingered and motioned for him to come over. He smiled and shook his head.. "Nah".....he was enjoying his ice cream. She did it again. He did it again. She snubbed out her cigarette and started out across the black asphalt. I watched from the doorway. Silent movie conversations. He threw his head back in laughter and she lifted a fluorescent cone off his bumper and started our way. She set it gently in front of her truck, tossed a two fingered peace sign over her shoulder, and walked back into the office.

"Anything else we need?" she whisper smiled as she passed me.

Put your money on the table....

And feel the love.....

It's amazing what an army can do....

Sunday morning, the dirt parking lot of our corner bar was swarming, purring, rumbling.....black boots, ponytails, bandanas, lots of leather, tattoos, and engines revved......a baby needed surgery, and the poker run began.

At 2:00 the masses came. The Indian, there, frying fish from all his early mornings out. Pink stuff has him whipped, but not enough to keep him down for this. The circle is in need. The band, after an early morning catnap, back again to play for love. And deep pockets everywhere. Smiling. Toasting. Giving.

One day.Two precious toddler twins. One in desperate need. Two parents. 60 bikes. 300 people. Ten thousand one hundred dollars by dark.

Two heads shaved: one male, one female. Sheared for the tiny sum of $3,300
Two locks of love....priceless.

One pair of 1970's men's disco shoes auctioned for $3.00. Price to watch the first guy they fit tap dance to Eric Claption: $300.00

Matching polyestor suit $15.00. Price to watch the tallest biker there strip down to his boxers and model it, $300.00

I have never felt so much love inside the same four walls in my life.

Perhaps, that's why, when the band climbed over the tables and shelves from the auction and started warming up....and a sea of arms and legs rushed behind them to clear the dance floor.....we all knew what the first song would be....

"And the house is rockin' tonight....."

May the spirit of yesterday carry on, the circle be unbroken, and the little one heal and laugh and play.....

Love grows.....

The Feather.....

We called him The Indian. Never heard him coming. In the rowdy Friday night turbulance of our litttle corner bar, he snaked his way through the crowd, quiet and slow. I caught his eyes once or twice in the early days, small and dark, penetrating if captured, just under the brim of the cowboy hat. I always smiled. At The Indian. And he would nod. I watched him going as often as coming, the long dark braid down his back. We traded expressions for words. And it became a ritual.

When Kimbies was well enough and spirited enough to join us for Friday night beers, she slid through the crowd like Cinderella. Smiling, waving, "hey, how are you?ing" to everyone. She had heard their stories through the sister~grapevine, and recognized their faces from the hand me down tales. When Ronnie whisper footed past her, she embraced him....."The Indian". And they leaned in closer to each other, and whispered folklore stories and traded......phone numbers. Kimbie's hubby smiled. "She does that you know", "gives out our number"........ And that would be how we came to know The Indian as our friend.

He's doing the pink stuff now. The bad stuff. The chemo cocktail that poisens your system and maybe the cancer, that knocks you off your feet and makes you pray you fall off the earth and it ends. Kimbies knows. She's been there, viciously drugged by the "let me slowly kill you before I offer you hope" medicinal toddy. She waits. We all wait.

This morning I wandered, brick footed, into the backyard, tripping over mountains of construction debris and empty bottles. At the door to the shed/studio/condo/cottage/castle in the backyard, I found the feather. Held it up to the sunlight. And then placed it indian-quiet inside the doorway. For Ronnie's cowboy hat. When he hangs it here, in his new home.... "Gimme Peace".....

We're down to the finals. All the pretties are in, and done. Just waiting on the pro's. Some windchimes. And The Indian.....

Ready to Fly.....

The fat little wren wobbled, teetered, fell over rolly-poly on it's side....little chicken feet scrambling straight up into the air. I tiptoed closer. No Mama in sight. A barely-grey plethora of feathers fluffed and puffed, accordian~like, gaining strength, and plop! He was upright again, waddling, swooshing the bent and broken wing to no avail. I gave him a little space, backed up two steps, and he charged!


Up, up, up and
down
again!

I sat on the bench and fished my cigarettes out, blew mindless smoke rings into the suburban sky. And watched him. Struggling. Imagined him cussing in toddler babble. He was so damned determined. I wanted to scoop him up in an old worn towel, fetch him on to the porch, and tell him......things I know.

And without knowing it, I daydreamed myself right out of the front yard and he waddled out of my "I'm gonna let you give it all you've got and then bring you in for the night" protective gaze.

This morning I saw dozens of them. Scurrying, hopping, flitting and flirting on the dirty front lawn. I tried to pick him out from the crowd. Squinted my eyes and searched for the tell-tell limp, the tiniest fold of the fluffy new wings....but, I couldn't name him in the line up.

He's strong now. Probably stronger than the rest. If the name wasn't already taken, and he wasn't really a little grey wren, he would probably call himself Jonathan Livinston Seagull and people the world over would talk about him over coffee and under the stars.

I tucked my crutches next to the broom I never use. Put my key in the door and said hello to the morning.

Me and ole Jonathan should be dancin' by Friday.....

Black and Blue

Okay, Eric, we absolutely have to stop talking and drawing in come-true circles......

So tonight, when I went bolting out the door, hippie love child on the run, because Kimbies called me, and needed me....and she rarely ever asks for help....

I flew into her drive-way like super sib

and we clanked a beer, she in her jamma's and me in my dirty jeans, on the front porch, and put on our "everything's gonna be okay" faces and went to face the troops....

We had to smile first, to gain the strength, the ammo, the "we can do this if we have to"....

And it was then,
at the last second, when I was ("yes, she was jumping up and down") pantomining the precious little magpie fairies I spent the day with Saturday, that I lept up in the air just so.....("yes, she was acting like a four year old") and landed, firecracker pop, to my foot, my shin, my "oh my God, I'm going to throw up"...("Yes , she turned white as a ghost, but never cried, shook, but never cried") and ("Yeah, we had to get a bucket") ...

And it was then,
that poor Kimbie"s hell week
took a nose dive on the living room carpet
with
super sib
crumbled
and
white....
And then
that they called the good doctor, the blessed man I work for, and said....
"Should we meet you at the emergency room or the office?"

It's midnight now, and God bless Kimbies and her commotion, I wasn't any help. And Chey and her own private hell, for driving two towns over to click the x-ray button, hold the bucket, and mix the plaster. And The Boss for always being there. And my precious child for being home from college and being ballet strong enough to pick her Mama up and tote her over the threshold.

"Nuts and bolts" he said.
"And we can put you back together"

Arrrrrggggghhhhhh!

In the beginning.....

She was just a shed. 48 hours later she takes slow learning-how-to-breaths. Her old skin, the one riddled with hooks and nails and plywood shelves has been peeled away, tossed in a giant heatwave to the side

An army came. The tiniest little feel-good soldier 4 years old, digging, painting, sweating. The oldest, 73, hauling, carrying, digging in the dirt and digging in his pockets. We had hippies and hippies, redneck loves, 3 piece suits in blue jeans, a nursing Mom, three generations of Chey's family. We had wayward sons, daughters home from college, neighbors, and friends from the bar. And they never stopped.

I watched for a moment, an orchestra in the Saturday heat:

One on a ladder pulling wires, hanging boxes...

two toting drywall again and again, another piece, appearing from nowhere,

One pouring concrete,

One hanging a door,

Three digging ditches,

Two cutting out new doorways and window spaces,

One right behind them framing.

Two on the barbeque grill.....jerk chicken juice mixing with sawdust in the wind....

Night came hard and fast. Just like the beer. At dusk we partied and told stories and the sweat turned to sweet dust, powdering our skin. We wrote in the concrete. Because we could. The children colored there. Because we let them.

And we all watched. The little shed slowly coming to life.

"You should name her" Eric said....."Gimme Peace".....and I smiled. This morning with my coffee, I sat on the deck and she smiled back at me through her new window to the world. Her walls are insulated and her cieling hung. 12 sheets of drywall are up, only 4 left to go. Her new doorway is waiting on visitors to knock and her old doorway, waiting for it's new face. Outlets are ready for Christmas trees and microwaves. Water is just inches away.

On Monday, Ronnie starts his next round of treatments. The pink stuff. The bad stuff. Hopefully the good stuff here will make it all a little better. And he'll have a place to hang his cowboy hat.

Thanks to all you all for cheering, clinking, sending good thoughts our way. We're tired soldiers today.....

Behind the gate......

It was ugly. A big box tucked in the corner of the yard. One window and an old splintered door. I peeped inside and fell in love. Rickety metal shelves lined the walls. Giant penny nails were hammered everywhere. A box fan was wedged into the one window, cranked open and crooked, it’s electrical cord dangling like a dead snake hooked to the windowsill. My studio.

The lawnmower fell in love with it too. And the leaf blower, the rocky horse, the old pie safe I’ve lugged around for years. My tile collection, scavenged by the truckload, took over the floor space, stacked precariously and dangerously high. Eventually my album collection, the old wedding gown I saved for ….(What child of mine would want to wear the gown gone wrong?) , Jonah’s baseball cards, the hand-made stilts, and the leopard skin couch I scarfed from an abandoned house, all took up squatting rights there.

The boys used to sneak cigarettes and the occasional Budweiser there, adolescent legs dangling from the stacks of tile, pretending most probably to be perched on Hooter’s barstools. From the graffiti on the walls, on occasion they got lucky. In the clubhouse.

Three summers ago, after the hurricanes pealed it open ,naked to the skies, I decided I really didn’t want a studio in the corner yard. But she lived. She got all new walls, concrete this time. A beautiful new roof to match the house. And we stuffed her to the brim with coolie cups and neon floats, giant inner tubes and coolers, and called her…..well, we called her The Shed. The little dream whose time had never come.

Tonight, the measuring, marking, making good things happen for good people crew is coming over. We’ll clink and take notes and knock heads. The Angel driven trucks will roll in and gift us with drywall, insulation, lightening fixtures, a sink, maybe even air-conditioning. We’ll light the fire and toast to love and when we’re done…..

The little shed will be called home.

To a friend.

And maybe, this is all she ever dreamed of….