I just wanna go round and round

"There are four walls and you have to dance to each of them" the instructor said as she animatedly pointed to each wall. "The Budweiser sign, the bandstand, the barstools, and" (here she takes a deep breath and waves at the masses ....maybe five tired cowboys and a few 40-something majorettes in denim skirts) "and the audience!".

I knew I shouldn't have done this. Come here in my hippie clothes with my leathered charms and peace signs. But okay, we're here now. I'll try.

To dance in a line.

The concept is odd to me. We all lined up like little soldiers (except most of them had on costumes) Tight jeans cinched at the waist (guys and gals!) with a thick tooled studded belt of some kind and Pointed boots (Do you have to buy them two sizes larger than say your sneakers, just so there's room to fit all your toes in?) Anyway, there we are, the three of us lined up with them and the music starts. Our first lesson in line dancing.

The music starts, George Strait, I think, but I'm not sure because we had to count. And I hate counting! Don't count my beers, my cigarettes, my gray hairs, or my money. DO NOT COUNT! And now there is this incessant chanting on the "dance" floor. One and two and three and four and pause and one and two and one and two and .......

"No sweetie, we always start on our Left foot, the left foot always"

Are you kidding me? I always start feet just a flying and now I've got to count and remember to ALWAYS start on the left, and only the left foot, and keep track of which wall we are dancing to? 30 minutes later, I am disoriented from parading back and forth and sideways facing north, count to 8, facing east count to 8, facing south count to 8, facing west count to 8, and again....and again...on this endless game of follow the leader. And WHEN do we get to move our hips? Or our arms? My hands are going numb from just dangling off my shoulders. Could we at least do the hokie pokie?

"And now we'll take a little break and let all of you winded folks have a cool one before our next session"

Please, please, please will someone put a quarter in the juke box and please, please, please, let Mick Jagger's voice rumble through this barn?

Winded? We haven't been doing anything! We've been marching in a square, but I welcome a cold one. And decide I will sit the next session out. Squirming in my seat. Counting time.

It started somewhere near my toes. The music. I could feel it. And then I was in the chair, blonde hair flying, feet just a going, kicking up the dust under the old table. Rocking out in the audience. They were still counting and shuffling when the song ended. They never heard the music end. One and two and one and two and....
I was winded.

I'll try anything once. Maybe even twice. Sushi and raw oysters for example. I didn't feel the love for either one until the second time around. But line dancing? I'll leave it to the cowboys...

Rock on.

Happy Birthday Precious Child of Mine

20 years since I prayed you into my life. 20 years since fate placed you into my arms, 5 1/2 hours old, beautiful, meant to be. 20 years since you spent those first amazing days of your life in a doll crib, bundled up with Aunt Kimbies. 20 years of amazing me with your every step, your every word. I know there are many times you have uttered "but I'm not like you"...and I want you to know that the blessing here is not how much alike we are, but how different we are, and so....how much we have each learned from one another. You darling, are my tree-top angel..."Lift me up, Mommy...."

I swear I saw this today

I wonder what would make a grown man take his 30,000 brand new Ford pick up to the paint shop and have these words emblazoned on it? BIG BUTT BUBBA!

I could not have heard the world end

I don't know what compelled me to go here tonight. The charges were dropped. 10 days of maximum security later. It was just two boys, two best friends, fighting over a bicycle they built together. There were no black eyes, no broken knuckles. They were laughing before Jonah ate the mud. Before he had foot prints on the place your kidneys live. The officer was dismissed two years later. It made the papers. Something about manhandling women. On routine stops.

June 12, 2002

Jonah has a cold and has busied himself indoors all day, Nicholas joins him in the late afternoon and when he telephones me to check in, it's raining and I can hear the ga-boom, klink, zip of a computer game in the background. They are two lazy boys in the afternoon. The sun peeks out and he calls me at the office to let me know they are going "riding", pre-teenage verbage for cruising, roaming the neighborhood on two wheels, hanging. It's a Wednesday and Shiloh has left the office early, it's just me, and for some reason I have lead feet this week. I e-mailed Aunt Rachel that I was "blue, as Nana would say. The drizzling rain and 5:00 traffic didn't change that heavy feeling. I came home and Holly was wrapped up on the couch, lounging, beautiful, watching re-runs from her nest. Johnah hadn't checked in, but not to worry, it was early. I putzed around. Finally kicking off my shoes and socks (Pre-Menopausal, my feet are always hot anymore). She beckoned me closer..."Mom, FRIENDS is on, come on and watch it with me". I think in my few short months of watching TV, I had already seen this re-run and commented so, but settled in nonetheless, quietly comfortable, next to my gifted, talented, finally resting, child.

I think HE knocked on the door. I don't remember. Maybe we have a doorbell. I don't remember looking out the window behind me, but I must have, because I went flying out the kitchen door. (It's not our nature to open the front door, STRANGERS go to that door.) I remember not much of the conversation, except the words "Your son has been arrested for strong armed robbery" and seeing, somehow, through the rain, a pile of black metal at the officer's feet. My son's bicylcle, his gleaming white helmet. My first response was of relief, thank God, Jonah had not been hit by an automible, was not being helicoptered away, was alive. And then seconds later, disbelief. Shock. And then movement. Sound. From the front sidewalk, I was bellowing for Holly to bring me my shoes, and she did, and then bellowing louder for my socks (why i don't know) and then finally my purse. I was digging frantically through the debris that had collected in the old leather bag for money. i would need money. A checkbook. An I.D., cash, perhaps.

I was pacing, Up and down the rock driveway. The officer kept babbling. "Your son should be out playing football". The "victim" wasn't hurt badly. The "victim" called 911. Something about Jonahs rims. He wanted them back. He handed me two business cards. You can call the officers anytime; they will call you back. He wrote down a phone number.

They were taking my son away. He had been arrested. I later found out he had been thrown to the ground and handcuffed. I later found out a lot of things.

It is now five nights later. The rain continues to fall from the heavens, weeping steadily. Side by side Mother Nature and I sob uncontrollably, intermitttently, pausing occasionally to take a deep breath, regain our strength. Only to begin again. The sunshine fools us. Or makes fools of us.

I ache from my toes to the bleached, split, tangled ends of my hair. And yet it is not enough. On Friday, I mowed down the rock drive-way, daring the pebbles to pounce from the blades, fly by and pummel my legs. I plugged in the electric weed-eater and whiled and trimmed and edged like a maniac - taunting the wind and the rain and the mighty bolts of electricity to search me out by some giant magnetic force and strike me dead standing there. I would defy it. I would survive even that. I had to and I would prove it. My body oozed from every pore. Sweat. Tears. Pungent rain. I glared at the street. I waited. I begged and pleaded with the skies. I wished on stars. I prayed. I crossed my fingers. I whispered. I gasped. I SCREAMED. I turned the radio on and when I heard 30 year old lyrics... "Paronia strikes then. Stop, people, what's that sound? Everybody look what's goin' 'round!", I cranked up the radio so loud, I could not have heard the world end.

My child has not been tried for these charges, and yet he has been sentenced. My miracle child that I breathed life into one frantic breath at a time, has been snatched from my arms, my home, our lives. He has been kidnapped by the sytem and held hostage. Like my Father before me...I read, I know, I fear.

On Saturday, Joe made a cross for Oliver's grave. A big primitive cross. For my tiny little, precious Oliver, 4 pounds at 6 months. The angel of orphaned kitties. I spent hours and hours and hours painting dots, and swirls and tiny hearts over the entire cross. And then I painted over the dots and swirls and tiny hearts. Again and again and again. I painted Oliver's name ornately and then shadowed it and outlined and painted it again. Ang again. On Sunday when JP brought me home from visiting Jonah, I asked him to mount the cross to a spike so I could place it in the garden, suspended in the air above the grave. I didn't want the wood to rot. He did as I asked and then reproached me for erecting such a big cross. "It's a mighty big cross". I remembered an old man that used to walk the streets when I was a teenager, traveling miles and miles and miles, often in circles, toting a giant wooden cross. "He's a bum" everyone said. "He toted a mighty big cross" I thought to myself.

It's quiet here now. Our tiny house, piled full with still four cats, Holly and myself, is void of any sound except the clickety clatter of this keyboard. I have begged God many times for "peace and quiet". I thought I was so tired. I thought life was too hectic. I thought I was too frazzled and worn out. I was wrong.

I was resting and didn't know it.

One Million Seven

I drew maps today. Intricate little cross hatches on scraps of paper dotted with circles(lakes) rectangles (houses) dashes and arrows (This is the way we went) and X’s (it happened here). I can’t remember what flippant remark got me started on the neighborhood thing, but I grew up there (well actually I was already a teenager, but isn’t that when you really grow up?) and I was compelled to set everyone straight on the geography of my childhood . BECAUSE they absolutely cannot understand how all these little bungalows on these bumpy broken brick streets could be worth millions now.

Well, I can.

I, of course, can’t afford to go back and live in my memories, but anyone with a buck in their pocket that wasn’t brain fried from the 70’s and therefore CAN’T remember the magic of those roads, would be 40 something now and nostalgic for “that place”. So gotcha! Prices have skyrocketed and it’s a phenomena and the “address” to have….

But anyway, this is how I remember it…..

Flying down Grove Terrace, bumpity bumpity bump on the bicycle my Mom bought from The Sheriffs sale (stolen bikes spray painted, confiscated, and never claimed), blonde hair flying behind me leaving trails, flip flopped feet embedded into the spiked pedals…..Can’t wait to make it half way around the lake, past Paiger’s little friends house, to light this cigarette! Now I can! It takes two hands, one to flick the bic, and one to shield the wind, I’m going down hill, looking down, on a bumpity bumpity bump brick road!

The road burn was instant. The elbow and hip thing came later. The smell of my hair, scorched for a fleeting second hovered throughout the introduction. “Wow, you crashed, dude”. I stared at them. My eyes were running. Away. I’m 17, tanned, thin. Two beautiful guys are crouched next to met, splat, on the road. They’re older. 20 at least. I’m dying. “Hey, you need a light?” I laugh.

Best Friends.

30 years later they bulldoze Christians house to build three more. One million seven.

God, didn’t anyone remember we danced here? We painted the bathtub in psychedelic colors with Saturday night hands and turned it into an aquatic rescue unit. People would wait in line to sit on the toilet and watch the fish swim. We painted the glass panels of the French doors psychedelic too, embedding little peep holes into the glow in the dark menagerie…..The better to see who had rambled up the rod iron stair case onto the balcony. It was never the cops. Not in our world. Where Terry would sit on the third story roof and play the harp with the sky. Where we would all sit, blue jeaned legs dangling through the railing, toasting the angels that came out to listen.

And then, like little soldiers, we would straighten up our eyes. “Must be the stiff wind” that made them that way. And pile down the steps to the real house. The big house. One million seven.

And we would dance in their kitchen. And toast to their stories. And give them gray hair. And they loved us. And we loved them.

And they’re gone now.

And the house with the first swimming pool in town is gone. And the 47 cats that lived under it are gone. And my name, carved in a door frame, next to 32 others is gone.

And Christian is gone.

One million seven.
And worth every dime.

Untitled

This is the list, the pros and cons, the
love and hates....I want to write it
down so that I remember
to not
forget....

I hate that you took me to visit your
hell and wallow there and I shared it with you,
open armed,
hugged you tight
held you up by the collar...
And you never ever asked
where i had come from...

I hate that you made me hate her,
before I would have,
And you made her hate me,
before she would have
And that you mistakenly thought
a cat fight
was affection for you

I hate that you preached and suffered
and rambled on and on about how you
made vows and wanted to keep them
and you never ever
acknowledged
they were already
long ago
destroyed
And pretending they were anything less
is a mockery
of what they were meant
to be.

I hate that you threatened me with
mainpulative words
"if you walk out that door,
don't ever come back"
when I was just squemish and
scared
and by the way, right.

I hate that we held hands and rescued each other,
running barefoot to the wet edge of the earth
scavengers
hunting for treasures
and there in the seaweed,
tangled on the shore...
you just dug up more trash

i loved your smile...when you
really smiled...when you weren't
learning HOW to smile again.
Before you painted it there.
Pasted it there,
Showed your teeth.

I loved your blue eyes
before you lied
to yourself, to me, to
your make-beleive world

I loved your skin.
Because I could.
BecauseI wanted to.

I loved your raspy, too many cigarettes,
voice...soft on my neck....
Singing sweet serenades in the
kitchen, the car, the driveway

And I hated the way you played DJ and threw in the
other songs to see if I noticed...
to see if I could smell it, see it,
hear it, feel it when it crept in.

You're not so f_ _ _ _ n french

Turn the Radio On

I forget. That I’m an old soul. That my bikini days and summer blonde magic are memories. Thank God. So in my naiveness, my “I can’t see to look in the mirror, anyway” blindness, I haven’t noticed that I’m not 18 or 29 or 32 anymore. I don’t mind blowing out a zillion birthday candles, as long as they don’t light my hair on fire. I have never suffered through a birthday. I don’t even understand that. I’ve had good days and bad days, good years and bad years, but birthdays? They don’t mean anything, except by the grace of God, you just had another one. And you might need to renew your auto registration.

And so it goes, that today, my body is crumpled. Not from osteo, backaches, heartaches, palpitations or anxiety. From forgetting that I’m getting old. Or older, to say the least. So last night, with three beers in my belly, 20 dollars in my pocket, contacts in these rheumy brown eyes with blue rings, we went out dancing…. My neighbors and I….

And we rocked and we rolled and we dipped and we shimmied and we shook and we twisted and we bumped and we grinded (I think everyone else was line dancing, I can’t really remember) and we closed the bar down (I’m sure they were glad to see us go! This motley crew flicking our bics on the darkened dance floor) and we moved the party here, dancing on the leopard skin rug in the couchless living room ….until it was so late that if you were 18, you would have made mistakes…..

Pardon me, while I have a relapse.

More please

Razor ribs. Skinny little white chic. Spaghetti legs. Anorexic. Skeleton head. Terms of endearment. You’re kidding me, right? I don’t stick my finger down my throat after steak and potatoes (God, I cherish a take- home from Outback….a friend with the talent to light the easy-light gas grill I paid a fortune for!) I don’t weigh my food on digi scales, skip seconds, run on the treadmill, or even weigh myself! And we have an eating disorder? I’m ranting tonight because my sib got cat -called! Someone with the inability to recognize a family trait, a metabolism mechanism, a true- blue thin blonde, went out of their way to hack into our world and TRY to make it look like there is something WRONG with being a skinny little blonde! Hell, we were born that way! I don’t get it.

IN OUR WORLD, you don’t point, it’s rude. You don’t judge, you never know when you will wear those shoes. You don’t cry wolf when you don’t know where the wolf if camping. Why would anyone , I mean anyone above the age of adolescence , a grown stranger at that, go off on my precious sister because of her weight, or in THEIR WORLD, lack of it?

This much I know is true. When you are skinny, you just are. It is as hard to gain weight as it is to lose weight. Because you are what you are. Our knees will get wrinkles sooner. Our laugh lines will be louder. Our bikinis will fit longer, but our fannies will disappear. At some point in our lives, the juniors department will probably be inappropriate, but we’ll have to shop there anywhere. We have to wear A-OK bras and they don’t make a lot of them. We don’t tan in our wrinkles. Skin stretches and we’re not that tall. We can’t wear pantyhose, they droop.

But we can dance until the sun comes up. Laugh until the hiccups or tears take over. Be your best friend. So WHY? WHY on earth would someone trapse into OUR WORLD and trash us ? Because at 37, Paiger can still wear a belly ring and it shows, isn’t hidden behind some midlife fold? Because she’s just a whisp of a thing, flitting around, being the yellow butterfly, touching a zillion lives?

Shame on you, silly little stranger, barging in and being a bully.

Peace, love, and pass the dumplin's please

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.

Morning after eyes

Or, in otherwords, I got contacts!

I can do this. I mean, what could be so difficult about poking your finger in your eye? Well, nothing, really. Except I can't see the microscopic lens on my fingertip, which is WHY I am doing this in the first place, and so when I drop it I can't find it. Or when I squash it into something that resembles an invisible taco shell, I don't know it until it feels like I just rubbed mashed potatoes or a wad of gum into my eye socket!

Ah, the glory of finally, being able to see. But, they're in and I have flitted around all day long basking in my new "mono vision". Incessantly grappling at my lovebeads, searching for my frames....GONE! Because I don't need them! Tooling around in the car going "nanny nanny boo boo" at all the big bad traffic because hey! I can see the highway AND THE speedometer at the same time! Check this out, floating in the pool and getting a suntan (burn) over the frame marks! This is so cool! Oh, but, wait. If I ever want to go to sleep, I have to take them out? Last night I came this close to using tweezers....Tonight, I might just try the vacuum!

The list of Five

Five (5) Things I love to do…

Stay in my pajamas all day
(Not because I have a 104 temperature or because everything I own is in the wash and I forgot to put it in the dryer three days ago, but because I can and it feels good and I have pajamas!) Which I don’t, but I would if I could.

Swing
Like in a porch swing, a yard swing, a park swing, a tire swing, you understand….
As high as my dirty little heels pushing off from the sand can send me flying
With hair swooshing and a tummy full of “I’m afraid of heights” butterflies…

Sing
Loud
Guttural.
Very off key.
Because I can.
And in my world the louder you play the music, the better you sound.

Dance
In the kitchen, on the porch, in the street, on the beach..
Anywhere
Anytime
For any reason

Float
Belly up on a pink Wal-Mart raft
Finger-painting in the water
Eyes watching God….
Waiting on Peace….
In my little vinyl nightmare, the lazy round river… my backyard oasis
(OK, in My World it’s an oasis…to everyone else it’s a blow up pool)

Five (5) things I hate

Linda (An Angel who wears blue jeans) was aghast when I told her I was going to write down the five things I hate. “But you don’t hate anything! All that peace~love stuff, you know you don’t hate anything!” Well, I want to! And I do!
So here they are:

1. Prejudice.

2. War.

3. Eating octopus. Who ever heard of anything so cruel.

4. That there are, or have ever been, Children without hope. Don’t give me that “they can rise above the hate and the poverty and become a President” garbage. Odds are they will just grow up with the overwhelming feeling that they are not loved and that is heart wrenching. Everyone deserves to be loved. You don’t have to have opportunities served to you on a silver platter, but you have to know in your heart, you BELONG and then you can BELIEVE.

5. I’m going to really think about this one. I mean hate is a really big thing. I wouldn’t want to make a mistake.

Stupid Red Sky at Sunset

I've had enough time to not think...
to let the love affair settle...
busted tea leaves at the bottom
of an almost empty cup
And from here I can
almost see the things, the tiny
little moments of love
that swept me
like wet magnolia leaves in October
swirling, twirling,
Landing in a pile, stacked
haphazardly
against the lines I draw...
property lines...

You took nothing of me with you...
I snatch back all I ever offered...
And toss it on the porch

Leftovers

Road Trip

I'm home. I've just survived a roadtrip. Georgia and I. She could care less that we survived it, doesn't even know that we might not have. Since she gets car sick, she spent the last 6 1/2 hours laying face down on the back seat panting and drooling on the "still smells like new car" upholstery. My two attempts to take out a brand new mustang (one red and one blue by the way) that landed her on the floorboard, we're just hiccups on her journey. Since she didn't SEE the two semi trucks toting GASOLINE stopped in the middle of the interstate, she didn't have that instantaneous flash of fear I did, as we almost drove over the little Ford Mustang in front of us. Neither did she see the 21 car collision, that by the way, I didn't see either, which is why I almost parked us in the trunk of the 2nd Mustang. But being a dog and all, she kinda felt my fear so for the 10 miles or so after each incident, she did what any best friend would do....She growled.

And then of course, there was the rain. The instantaneous flash flood that said "Hey, idiot, you've just entered Florida, the hurricane state" and sent all four wheels hydroplaning. That, by the way, feels somewhat like riding the Zipper at 17. Your stomach is suddenly swirling with a zillion butterflies, your otherwise perfectly manicured hands, are sweaty and clammy, and your'e gripping the steering wheel for sweet life. The semi truck next to you is a psychedelic blur. So I did exactly what I did on the Zipper. I closed my eyes! Gotta love the florida rain. It stopped.

And the sun came out. The blinding beautiful Florida Sun. I've been staring straight into her face for several lifetimes. That's why I have "frown lines". Yep, My mother always told me to wear sunglasses, a big hat and sunscreen. I didn't. I basked, baked, rolled in the sun. Face up. Frying. Summer blonde. The only difference now, is that I'm blind on a good day. Have to wear Readers to see anything. So driving into the deep south, on top of asphalt mirrored by blazing puddles from a summer hailstorm, with a banging hangover...is like looking into ...hell!

And speaking of hell, try traveling with Georgia. Oh, she travels well, I mean with her carsickness and all. She just doesn't STOP well. You see, she has "seperation anxiety". Which is akin to having a lover with stalking syndrome. From INSIDE the wayside station ladies room, where the toilets flush and the sinks run and the blowers puff on their own and it sounds like you are at an atomic energy plant, I could hear my precious Georgia May wailing, howling...pitifully yelping at the saliva smeared windows. Endlessly. I have never tinkled so fast in my life. Except in the woods.

But we're home. And we had a great time. And Paiger and I met just where we said we would. In Georgia. And we danced to David Bowie and Guns and Roses on the wrap around porch. And we laughed. And did what we always do, we cried. Because we can.

Because we're sisters.

Peace, love, and corner stores.....

The Yellow butterfly of San Marino

SUMMERS, SISTERS, and THE SEAWALL

She wasn't a figment of our dreamy sunburnt imaginations. She really lived there. Her salty wings somewhat summer blonde, a little tattered on the edges. She'd flit and swoop and dance in the baking florida sun, this tiny little sun goddess. At night, like a firefly, we would catch glimpses of her, swirling, twirling in the moonlight (And don't you dare say butterflies don't fly at night!) She was always there. Everytime. At the seawall of SanMarino.

There, with our eyes to the ocean and the heavens, and our sandy bare feet propped on the seawall, we dreamed. We met the sunrise and watched her fall. We spent days and days, nights and nights, lounging at the seawall of SanMarino. We met strangers and best friends. Old souls and newborns. Lost kitties and lost kites. Lost souls. We made promises and we made pacts. We built sandcastles and made periwinkle soup. We drank coffee, then bloody Marys then beer. Bottles and bottles of beer. We sang, and danced, and told stories. We made up stories and laughed. We began to believe.

To believe in borrowed peace. To believe in the promise of tomorrow. To believe that we could make it no matter what. We spent stolen days and stolen weeks during stolen summers at the seawall of SanMarino. And the yellow butterfly, the tiny little oceanic ballerina, was always there. Reminding us to believe.

And then "poof it was gone". Our precious, tacky little paradise plowed upside down for high rise, concrete condos. God, it almost killed us. Where would we go? How could we escape everyday hell if there was no place to run to, to hide, to accidently stumble on?

And then, we saw her. The yellow butterfly of San Marino. And we remembered. To believe.

When this is all over, when the world as we know it is well again...we will have peace, and we will laugh and dance under the serious moonlight in barefoot sandals....

We will follow her...as she has followed us....

To a place called peace

"Tell Me About Your Rings..."

"Tell me about your rings..." he said so quietly, staring at my hands and the mismatched collection of meanings displayed there. This stranger, that I had known for only an hour or so curious as to the stories displayed on my fingers. Why did he want to know? What was he looking for? I looked down at my hands through his eyes..."What love story goes untold here?"

Instinctively, I reached up and touched my love beads, old and oiled with the patina of a thousand thoughts, touches, moments. I'll tell you about my rings, sweet stranger, but these trinkets, closest to my heart, that is where the love story lies...at peace....at rest....

For 19 years, this tattered string of leather (oh, it's been reincarnated a few times!) has been tethered to my neck. The three little clay love beads, once a swirling kaliedescope of color, now muted and sepia at best, were sculpted at my kitchen table, late late at night. Paige and I on an endless mission to spread peace and love to the world at large. We wove peace grapevine wreaths in those days , did string paintings of the world at war with peace watercolored across it's face. We believed. If we loved, we hoped, we prayed, we dared.....peace and love would come to all.

For a million moons, only the little love beads, strung like lonesome soldiers, dangled here. The soldered welded Peace symbol was a Sunday afternoon gift from my neighbor, Joe. God bless my Joe. I was hot, and tired, and trudging through knee high grass fighting a lawn mower with an adolescent attitude. I was overwhelmed with life and bills and the endless, never ending,rocky road trip that my life had become. In the blazing Sun, with tears and sweat fighting for first rights on my cheeks, I screamed at the sky above, at the random birds....at the top of my lungs....."I just want Peace!" The raspy choking lawn mower I was sure had camoflouged my impromptu rant. I kicked the dirt and kept mowing.

Joe never explained himself that day. He didn't have to. When I rolled the mower to the gate, he met me in the driveway. The little Peace Symbol still warm in his hands. I touched it. Felt it. He passed it to me. The first trinket to join my love beads. In the weeks to follow, it began to rust and I worried. Joe had sculpted this for me on a hot Sunday afternoon and I wanted to wear it forever. I rubbed it. Never ever took it off. The rust gave up. In the end, peace wins....

There is a tiny little "I love you Mom" charm. I can still see my daughter's eyes, 8 years old and so excited she had to help me unwrap her little gift. I hope that for as long as she lives, she can still see the look in my eyes. Love.

An Italian horn. A gift from a friend when all my good luck spells were broken. When peace was lost. When I had not yet discovered the yellow butterfly of San Marino. She dug it out of her jewelry box. To her, it was the yellow butterfly. To me, it was and always will be, reassurance, a reminder that hope is sometimes all you have....don't ever, ever let go of it.

Four hearts in the shape of a clover. This little one is etched with the markings of sand and time, a little jewel lost to sea and washed up at my feet by the tides. A precious promise from Paige, lost almost immediately, I ached and searched and finally, too many beers later, cried. Not because the little charm was lost forever, but because I wouldn't have it there, to touch, when I needed to remember, to hold real, her thoughts. And so it was meant to be, that when we least expected it, a little glint of silver glittered, and in the miles and miles of salty sand, I reached down and there she was. The mermaids charm.

May our lives be blessed. With simple things.

Peace and love

Love story to Joe in the January archives of www.Justgivemepeace.blogspot.com
Self portrait in love beads and Joe's precious Peace symbol all over the pages of Just Give Me Peace

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.

The Leopard Skin Tan

Artwork (c) Singleton 2006
SOLD

The blue lagoon is vinyl and blows up and is balanced perfectly on the edge of my world. It cost exactly $218.00 and is worth a million lotteries. The hurricane tarp, draped over the leaky roof for months, is the perfect palette for paradise to plop on, and I have an orange and green sponge wedged under the PVC ladder to “prevent tears” in the liner. Ahhhh….cheap and tacky….and peaceful…. The lazy round river, 3500 gallons of water in a giant fishbowl in my back yard. You see, I am a mermaid. An old dried up one, but a mermaid nonetheless. Kind of like when you have a party and accidentally leave the can of open sardines out on the counter overnight. They’re not quite what they were the night before. Neither am I.

The backyard is private (not as private as it used to be), but it’s mine. There is a fence all the way around it that says “holler over” or “stay out” depending on the time of day. And back here, I can parade around anyway I like. That’s the law. (I think) So back here, I roll my tankini up to become a makeshift bikini and I bask in the Florida sunshine. I float in lazy circles in the blow-up pool, padding off the vinyl walls. I hold my breath and open my failing eyes and stare at my underwater toes….I used to have a mermaid tail and these forty something toes with red polish look silly on this temporary ocean floor. I try it with my glasses on. Big Bad underwater Blur. I float. Eyes to God. Rump drifting vicariously close to the river’s floor. I am a mermaid. And when my fingers wrinkle and the phone rings, I plod up the ladder and park my “out of water” body on the deck. All washed up. Periwinkles and sandspurs at my feet.


By night, the only tell-tale sign of the real me is the leopard skin tan. Mermaids tan evenly. Old ones don’t tan in the folds.

It’s raining. Giant jelly-like plops of fat delicious summer rain. Pummeling the roof top. Slicing through the trees, splatting on upturned leaves and bouncing joyfully off of others. Pooling on the ground. The constant banging of new drops churning the mud puddles into dirty little rivers.. wandering aimlessly through the landscape.

The sound sneaks in and suffocates all other noise. As if the mouth of everyday life has been covered with a plastic bag…until it can no longer utter a breath. The rain takes over…roaring in her downfall, a train passing through the lazy afternoon. And then she rests and becomes music, wet wind chimes falling from the sky. Methodical constant sound. A Mother’s soft lullabye. That sound must be the one that coaxes rainbows into dancing. That lures the sunshine out again. That soft hypnotizing sound of fading rain….

I thought about crying today.

And then I heard the birds……