White · Hiatus

I used to write often. Now not so much. I don't even recognize my own style.

I think that I am kind of a personified moth. I begin, spin my chrysalis of words, then sleep, later to emerge as something new. Not as glamorous as a butterfly and unbearably drawn to flames, doomed to front end collisions with the porch light until I cease to exist.

What ever you have read into my writings, this is the real me.

I want you to imagine the impossible. Not 'winning the lottery' impossible - because although the odds are sorely against it, statistically it IS possible to do. I mean the truly impossible. Like going back in time to visit someone you've lost or reliving a childhood memory or correcting a mistake that you have had to regret... that type of impossible.

Now imagine someone coming to you and telling you it COULD happen. I could happen without doing anything illegal or hurting anyone. It could happen without taking a second on the house. Not that it would be without consequence, but that this would be only to yourself and risks easily calculated. Like, for instance, you might have to take a pill and it could give you the worst acne you can imagine for about a year. Or perhaps you might feel very weak and tired for a few months... or worst case scenario you could die...

Would you do it? Would you dare the impossible?

What if you met someone with the worst acne imaginable and discovered that they HAD done the impossible. Would it change the way you saw them? Would you judge them differently to know that they had braved the unknown?

Or would the deed itself be the yardstick?

This is a natural phenomena called a sun dog. It occurs when ice crystals high in the sub zero atmosphere reflect the light of the sun causing reflections that themselves seem like independent stars.

This is my first blog in over a month; there is a fire in the sky, don't look away, if you must you may find an old card board box and poke a pin hole in it like we all did when we were kids and had a chance to see our first eclipse. I doubt this will be as thrilling but it promises to be one hell of an oration.

In previous blogs all of you have had an opportunity to slip momentarily into the unusual subset of experiences that have formed my less than interesting life. But to get to the core of it, to see the heart of the matter this is the one story that you must know...

My Grandmother died last week. It feels strange to type that, like there are parts of me that still have not absorbed it as reality. I was there though, I flew down to be with my family and to attend the funeral. At the visitation my nephew, Tanner, took my arm to walk with me to view the body that once housed my Grandmother's soul. There was a crowd of people and I thought a line, but it was really just a group of people chatting. When they cleared I was there, with my nephew beside me and Her before me. I almost fell down. I wasn't ready for it. At that point I am sure that no part of me had really accepted it as reality. I was near fainting when my nephew escorted me from the room. He said to me "yea, it is weird to see a dead body, huh?" and I realized that this, his great-grandmother was not really someone he knew or understood as a person. All I could say was: "that isn't a body, it is my Grandmother."

We walked together for some time, my nephew and I, talking about life and death and what happens when you die. And then together we looked at two large collections of photographs telling the story of my grandmother and grandfather's lives. I found myself explaining many of the photos as my young nephew did not really know the history of his family, until at last we came to a photo of someone he did not know, a story he had been hidden from, perhaps paramount in importance but deeply buried in the familial archives. But to understand the present we must look to the past and it was time for Tanner to know the truth. This was hard for me as it is a truth that I hide in, am lost in, and share only in quiet hours when my illusions die away and nothing is left but cold, hard, ME that is.

You see, long ago when I was younger than Tanner is now, my family... all of it... seven uncles, five aunts and gaggles of children... we all pretty happy. In fact you might have mistaken Christmas for a Courior and Ives painting, it was truly that picturesque. My memory then is one of myself and my sister, sitting duo on the top bunk peering out over a snowy landscape watching and waiting for Santa. I remember a phone ringing. Peaking out of the bedroom, certain there had been some problem at the North Pole, only to see my father reduced to tears. I had never even considered that he COULD cry. That was the moment I became an adult.

My father's youngest brother was murdered that night. The story is perhaps irrelevant except to say that the event has spun my family off in to an alternate time line from which we all cannot escape. My father pulled away from us, except in situations where he could save face my being a good dad. My grandfather receded into darkness, and passed away far too young. My grandmother became the Matriarch, holding the family together as best she could while herself slipping into the oblivion of Lewy Body Dementia. The aunts and uncles split into two opposing factions, concerned with money and familial status. In worst case scenarios they abused each other to the point of estrangement. The children lost touch with one another drawn into their parent's wars or simply taking safety in lives apart from the FAMILY TIES THAT BIND AND GAG. I chose to separate my life entirely, putting distance and experience between myself and my past and in many cases reporting my family, with a few exceptions, as dead.

But the truth, the real down, dirty, nasty, truth of it all is that since that snowy Christmas Eve no one has grieved. No one has healed and thus the pain lingers. It is baked into cookies and served on trays of cheese and crackers. It is tucked into blankets with the next generation of children, like Tanner, who don't know why something is wrong, only that something is... terribly.

And then here we all are again, standing before a casket, with my grandmother in a pink dress, too much make up and cheap jewelry. And over us all was a pervasive feeling that this might be the last time we found ourselves together. There was a moment when I found myself reduced to tears and one of the aunts chimed in as if tears were unnecessary, even wrong. And I thought to myself, though my reasoning was beyond what I could enunciate at the time, that I was mourning not only the loss of someone I loved dearly but also re-discovering my family only to witness it's final hour.

Flying home, my grief was unbearable; for most of this week I have been detached and living in a world as flat 'as the world before Columbus.' But then, on Thursday morning driving to work I saw on the horizon a glorious sun dog. And I found myself reflecting on how the sun in my family had gone out. And then with the sun's rising new sun dogs formed. And I saw generation after generation of the sky born and die and awaken to rebirth and I knew that I was here, now, nothing more than an ice crystal high above the Earth awaiting my brief moment to shine.

I am sticking needles in myself tonight. I feel like the world has betrayed me yet again, or - more correctly- I have betrayed myself. I may be a bit stream of consciousness tonight, my thinking is all jumbled and so we are damned to deal with my abject incoherence.

There is something though about being someone people see as capable. In charge, in control of it, whatever. For some reason people stop believing that things can be difficult for me. A foundation never needs support -or some thing...

So there I was, dressed in a business suit and summer shoes bent over the hood of my truck which is more than waist high to me even in heels, in the pouring rain soaking wet and covered in oil, stranded on the side of the freeway. In near hysterics I used my quickly dying cell phone to call for any kind of help or advise that might find me; a friendly voice, any kind of reassurance that I was not standing there all alone. No answer anywhere. So I used the only trick I knew and with some luck it worked enough for me to be able to start the engine and go in search of any shop I could find open that might be able to diagnose the truck at that hour and hopefully fix it as well.

Freezing, I wandered traffic filled streets or drivers irate at my obvious confusion as to where I was or where I was going. I kept choking back tears, telling myself 'you can handle this, you can handle this!'

And then the phone rang. I felt I might be saved. I didn't need someone to rescue me, just a friendly voice, someone to ask 'are you okay? do you need help?' A little ray of light through the clouds, an emotional shelter from the storm. It seemed so little to expect, and in the fashion usual of my life, I landed myself sorely disappointed. I got a "it could be this, call me when you know."

I hung up the phone. It rang again. Another friend who was busy and who would call back... then didn't. Still alone at sea. As usual the only shoulder to cry on was the shoulder of the road. It hurt. It really hurt.

I found a shop, I had them fix the alternator. I froze for several hours in my dirty, wet clothes. I came home alone. My home that has no food in it because I gave away my grocery money. I sat on the floor and I finally cried.

What is the price of reassurance? And who do you pay to get it?

I suppose the only thing worse than being raised in a closet is discovering that perhaps you built it yourself. The prospect of lesbianism was almost inconceivable to me, I had known only one homosexual in my life and though I had no sense of his sexuality as unnatural, I was not exactly ready to face the reality of it being part of my own skin. I decided, in my own Scarlet O'Hara way, that I would think about it tomorrow - and went about my life as if I could ignore the blatant possibility. But sometimes it would crawl into bed with me late at night like a mental closet monster set free. I would try to imagine myself with women I had seen that day and I would feel nothing but confusion: if the idea failed to excite me, which was often, I would wonder if I was making myself disinterested in order to deny who I was. If the idea excited me I would wonder if I was forcing the excitement to be what I thought I was supposed to be. Ultimately I was clueless.

Making situations more complex was the recent up-rooting to a suburban Chicago town. My first public school attendance as a senior in high school, my first class with actual boys, my first day of school without a uniform... there was trouble brewing around every city corner and I found the most of it in first period Calculus.

You see, there was a young woman in the class, not an interest, in fact she was so quiet and mousy it is nothing short of amazing that I knew she was alive. I am sure you have met this girl, she is almost an apparition fading into the pale green semi gloss paint of the walls with chalk dust still clinging to her skirt where she had faded into the chalkboard on her way to her chair at the back of the room. The human chameleon. The first character of this real life human drama spoken in whispers as any thing louder might cause her to disappear all together.

Add the second character, a young man, obviously compensating for smaller things by having an all too big mouth. Rough and tumble, this boy has surely grown into the inmate who wants you for his bitch or a rather fine politician. My role in this theater of horrors was to stay put and be a good girl, not get involved and somehow survive one semester then escape to college. I have never been good at listening to reason though, and one day it was fated that these two people, no matter how diametrically opposed to one another, would act their way into the chronicles of my life for you to read.

It was any day, an idle Tuesday, unremarkable in almost any way except perhaps that two other pubescent boys had decided to have a hall way rumble and the Calculus teacher was called away to play referee leaving the class room the quiet captives of the big mouthed red neck boy. At first opportunity he began his accosting of the mousy girl. No finesse. No precision. A tasteless assault that began with a bold accusation that our little girl had been seen kissing another girl outside of the gym.

As his attack progressed, becoming ever louder and meaner and less and less palatable to myself, our little female creature became fainter, tears filling her down cast eyes, her text clutched so closely to her chest that the type face inside was surely staining her pale skin. She never spoke a word to the boy. It was another voice that broke the evil diatribe...

Mine.

Having had enough of this creep I told him firmly to sit down and shut up and leave the girl alone. I have this memory burned to my brain: his brutish hands and dirty nails gripping the edge of my desk. His puggish nose almost pressed against mine. His rotten breath and his words directed to me, eye to eye : "IF YOU ARE DEFENDING HER YOU MUST BE A DYKE TOO."

I didn't look away, I didn't shrink from him, no. I found this place, this angry, frustrated, frightened place in my body that I had stuffed to the brink and ignored for too long and the lid had finally cracked and all the ugliness burst forth. I remember the burn in my hand, the sound of the metal legs of several desks scratching linoleum and the hallow wooden thud as they fell over. I remember the boys eyes finding mine again, this time full of fear as the blood rushed down his cheeks.

As I walked home later that afternoon, fearing the reality of my own rage, astonished at having broken some strange person's nose, I had to wonder if my words were there to protect that girl or if it was the content of the conversation, the use of the word DYKE, that caused this reaction.

But I made a decision right then: if I were to live in a closet it would have designer hangers. No matter what my destiny was to be, I would not live in shame. I would not hide in my emotions until they became dangerous. I would be. Just as I was. Whatever it was. And I would find a way to make the best of it.

I give myself a little pat on the back each time I recall certain memories: paying off divorce debt, school debt, buying my first car and always updating the sticker on time, getting my taxes into the mail well before the do-or-die date. Remembering to get cash before a night out (so I am not stuck going to the grocery store to pass a $25 over check while buying a pack of gum), remembering that Tuesday is trash day, going to the grocery store once a week, and recalling when I changed the furnace filter last. All these little triumphs that equate to the reality that, yes mom I am finally a grown up.

Now most grown ups (I suspect) read this and think, Good God, Woman you are hardly together if you must celebrate such minor inconveniences. But you see, as with all things in this life of mine, anxiety reigns supreme. There was a time in my life (embarrassingly not so long ago) when simple things like calling directory assistance could send me into a full bore panic attack. So today, of all days, I should be celebrating.

It was scarce 0900 when I entered the bank, a few carefully chosen documents in hand (and exactly twenty minutes after taking an ativan), dressed to the nines to await my time with the banker man. He had met me before when I purchased my truck, and handed me endless tissues while I cried my eyes out after discovering an identity theft that he graciously helped me repair. He had a lovely smile and was patient with my fits of uncertainty and unending questions, and though I had expected him to scream and claw his face at the mere sight of me, he grinned when I told him I was ready to buy a house.

And then the drone of numbers began. I watched them flow from his pen in an uneven scrawl spelling out my future and my life in merciless blue ink. I might have been pleased to see that I could afford so much just with my own glamorous nurse's salary. I might have been overjoyed that I was walking out of a bank with a mortgage application in hand. I might have been at very least proud that I made it though over an hour and a half of basic economics (MY economics) without crying, shaking, or falling into a ball of gelatinous goo.

But I was heart broken. The house I want, the perfect house, the place I have so often imagined spending my life was just a few numbers out of my reach. Now I stare at the legal sized envelope, I finger my way through a thousand unsigned affidavits. I review the tax law information and the blue scrawl from the Banker. I imagine talking with the seller of my perfect house and convincing him that he should drop the price for me. I get frustrated. I put the envelope away. But I know it is there, a phantom on the coffee table, calling me back over and over again to try and think my way into something out of my reach.

What is worst of all is that, like with all little set backs, it has me re-evaluating my life. Am I ready for this? What if I am making a mistake? What if I go through with this and I can't find a home? What if another Repugnant is elected and I am forced to move to Canada? What if... what it...

ANXIETY. My little prison cell made for one. Am I disappointed because of the house, or is it more that I am disappointed that I cannot be more than I am?

The Earth laughs in flowers; Perhaps it is why the past few weeks seem over come with joy. Each barely audible first breath of each tiny new leaf asks, each green sprig a miracle full of curiosity: will I be a wildflower or a weed?

I spent my Easter in a perfect place, surrounded by family and young children. I cannot remember the last time I colored Easter Eggs, but it all held true to tradition and form. The attempted use of the octagonal piece of bent wire provided by some multi-million dollar company to retrieve the egg from the dye at best, or at worst give every person over the age of 12 an exercise in futility. The never ending battle to be the one holding the clear wax crayon. The blue pellet inserted into the mouth of a little one, the quick retrieval and deposit of the remnant into an odorous coffee cup full of vinegar. Little eyes peering over the side to watch the fizzy bubbling, the fascinated glare followed by a smile full of still blue teeth. I am sure that I ate my full share of color pellets in my time, and to see another do the same... well it gives the Universe a sense of continuity, of solidarity between the present and the past.

Later, after running in a large, green yard in my Sunday shoes pulling one enraptured child after another in a red wagon down a hill and around the bushes (do it agian! This time I want to ride with my doll), and pushing same said children one after the other on a swing, and then collapsing into a giggling mass while they tried to capture bees and butterflies in their magic bubbles, I came to understand a great truth about spring: growing things have no cares about what they will become. They feel only the warmth of the sun the sweetness of the breeze, the tickle on their skin from dew drops and friends passing by. And what is a wild flower and what is a weed has no translation to that medium. It is a creation of minds too old to see that the miracle is GROWING- not becoming something. The miracle is BEING -not manifesting. The miracle is LOVING - not being loved. The miracle of spring is joy for it's own sake. It think there was a time when I new that, and I am so glad that Universal continuity refuses to let me forget.

So after you read this, do this storyteller a favor... go to a place with soft fresh grass, take off your shoes and wiggle your toes. Take a deep breath and remember that this IS life. Right now.

The years that followed "the Big Ben Occurrance" were actually... unremarkable. Many factors were responsible for this: my mother's illness, my scholastic focus, and though I hate to admit it, my own fears. These left me closed off to my own sexuality for some time. Although my appetites were healthy and exercised through regular masturbation, I rarely found myself drawn to another with the anticipation of physical intimacy. Although I have tried these years later to ascertain why, I seldom come up with any agreeable answer. Primarily I was overwhelmed with adult responsibilities and so, not only was I focused on those priorities I was unable to connect with anyone of my own age.

And so it came to pass that the summer between my junior and senior year in high school my family relocated to the Chicago area so that my mother could receive treatment at a better hospital. There is great emotion here. Fear for my mother's life, apprehension of departure from my Grandparents, the prospect of a public school full of strangers with a big city way of life I knew nothing about, sorrow at not graduating with my friends, all the pain of leaving the only home I knew and the only place that I truly felt safe.

On the eve of this relocation several of my friends threw a party in my honor. On a full summer's night we met beneath a blanket of stars on an out of the way vacant tobacco field to view the Perseid's. We tossed out our old sheets and picnic baskets and contra band beer and wine and vodka. We kicked off our shoes, chased fireflies, and sat enveloped by the vast, unending drone of cicadas; mesmerized by the glory of nature and the deep underlying sadness no one would mention. When all were gone but the last of us: myself and two of my closest girlfriends (we'll call them Iris and Calla), the topic turned to all the plans we had made for our lives. Plans of going to college, of shared weddings, of sitting on the porch watching the garden and our children grow. Of being who our parents were (only much cooler - of course), of dying on the same day. We reminisced about the blood pact we had made in the first grade... about all the experiences that made our friendships eternal and why they would survive even my displacement to this foreign land called CHICAGO. I did not speak to them my feelings that there would be no such future, that I had at that point lost all hope and abandoned all of my own dreams, seeing only the dismal reality of my life, such as it was.

I remember looking off into the night sky, not paying attention to the banter of these loved ones, lost in my own abyss as deep as the sprawl of those heavens, and wanting to disappear. It was Calla was drew me out of my thoughts, not with a word, but with a kiss. A deep passionate kiss that resonated through out my body. Iris soon joined her in the kissing, and before long the three of us lay twisted together, kissing and touching and exploring. Lovingly, as if this physical act were the only thing that stood between ourselves and the perfect bond of undying and never departing friendship.

Hours later as the sun released it's first rays over the horizon to reveal a beautiful, misty Kentucky morning, we lay still tangled together, exhausted and excited from the throws of our passion. Occasionally embarrassed, but continually intrigued by what had happened between us, what we had done, and how we would ever be able to bear the reality of a moving truck that was soon to arrive in my yard, collect up my little things and haul me away forever.

Later as I sat in the back of the car watching that same sun sink into the west, I wondered... could it be that I have never been with a boy because I am a lesbian?

"Oh, Shit."

Those were the first words of the enlightened season. We might as well have called it 'National Be Late Week." Almost everyone I know has a story about how Daylight Savings Time got one over on them this year. Look behind the wheel of any car to see it's zombie driver, and watch as the police cars go racing to and fro. Certainly some clever sociologist (or a clever thousand of them) has taken the time to study and record for all of human history how this little glitch in our clocks, internal and external, throws a monkey into our entire society for a least a good week. A monkey the size of King Kong. I can personally vouch for having been the ALMOST recipient of several good fender benders this afternoon, and my disposition was less than cheerful about it. And yet no one seems to have a respectable reason as to why we do this to ourselves.

After rolling over to hit the snooze button better than 12 times this morning at 4am (previously known as 3am) and racing out of my home in crumpled clothing and bad hair, I cursed the dreaded Daylight Saving Phenomena. I didn't care so much about the being late as I did about getting to my coffee and feeling like it was half way morning. When I arrived at work, the girl who usually makes my coffee also overslept and so there was not a warm pot of life giving bean juice waiting for my impatient paws. Nurses can be a cranky lot. I was a spoiled cranky lot tearing the coffee package open with my teeth and a snarl. The dish person hadn't washed my coffee mug, so I was damned to styrofoam. All in all, Monday was off to a banner start.

I had planned an in depth look at the history of DLST, from Ben Franklin to energy savings, but alas I am too tired. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe, dear reader, you would care to elaborate.

(Coming soon, Fornication pt. VI)

For three days now I have been flat on my back with the flu. Misery mixed with feelings of bliss, pain and pleasure and dreams hot with fever and memory. Tonight I am feeling more like myself and cleaning my house I putting on my favorite AIR music to lighten my mood. In the midst of the music I fell upon a favorite song. Before long I was dancing and twirling and back to my carefree self. No more Flu! Hurray!

Progressing into my teenage years and the thrilling exploration that accompanies the new rush of feelings and hormones that come with them, I found myself the victim of under/over education. I had learned from my friends at Planned Parenthood about the mechanization of the human body. I had taken the time to look again in that damned Wold Book Encyclopedia, I had even secretly borrowed books from the public library on human sexuality (finding myself inexplicably excited by words like 'penis' and 'insertion' and 'ejaculation') But none of these things taught me about the reality of sex beyond the classroom. That lesson would came in a much different form:

It was a Friday night. A co-ed party held at the typical parent-out-of-town household of a public school girl who had the sense to invite the Catholic kids (we were able to get the best weed, you see). Leaning against a darkened bar stocked with liquor from who knows where, my friend Joanna came skipping up to me to offer me a shot from an almost empty bottle of Maker's she was graciously sharing with everyone. I was not shy of the shot glass, being raised in a home where Maker's was a nightly grown-up treat, and I let the burning liquid settle my nervous stomach so I might better relax into the scene.

"HE has been looking at you all night," Joanna said taking back her shot glass. "WHO?!" I asked, embarrassed and thrilled at the same time. Across the room she guided my eyes until they fell into the eyes of a beautiful boy. He was tall with wirey muscles, a runner for the public school track team, dark, soft, curly, wild hair and a finely boned face with a huge smile that lit the room. "His name is Ben," Joanna said, taking another shot herself from the quickly disappearing bottle,"and I hear his penis is fucking ENORMOUS! They call him BIG BEN." Joanna broke into a roll of drunken laughter and sauntered off into the crowd with her little glass.

If Ben's lean stature, glowing smile and hypnotic eyes were not enough to compel me to cross the room, the prospect of 'bigger things' certainly was. I finished my beer, leaving the pony necked bottle on the bar, took off my cardigan so that my breasts and arms would be better appreciated and made my way over to the body of BIG BEN. We talked a little with a mix of nervous giggling and the occasional stolen touch, and then BIG BEN took my hand and lead me into a darkened back bedroom already scattered with bodies twisted in embraces. We found an unclaimed corner and with little ado the deep and wet kisses began. I could feel that hardened object of my curiosity and desire pressed against my thigh and though everything in me wanted to touch it, feel it, hold it, explore it like the forbidden and unknown territory it was for me, I simply could not bring myself to do so.

Lost in my own blissful state of arrousal I barely noticed when Ben took hold of my top and in a quick motion moved the material aside and grasped onto my breast with his mouth. I am sure the gasp that escaped me startled the other busy couples in the room but I was delirious with painful desire, holding his head, wanting it never to end. No one, you see, had ever touched me there, let alone in that way. It was then that Ben's big eyes looked up, one hand firmly around my swollen breast the other now caressing the soft places hidden under my blue jeans, and asked "do you give head?"

Suddenly we had lost cabin pressure. I did not know what this meant. I tried to ignore the question, hoping he would go on with his caresses and forget the whole thing, but he persisted, "will you give me head?"

I told him that I needed to use the ladies room first, and he rolled off of me into our little corner to await my return and the giving of this mysterious thing called 'head'. I tried for some time in the bathroom to reason out what this might mean, yet for the life of me I could find no connection between the clinical terms of my self education and the word 'head.' At last, another group of girls came to the bathroom to apply lipstick and smooth hair and talk about other boys not in dark make-out sessions. I put forth the question to them: "what does it mean to give head?"

The group of girls giggled and gasped, "DID HE REALLY ASK YOU THAT?!" and another: "girl, did you hit him?!" But I needed to know, and none of these remarks told me a damned thing until at last a boy standing just outside the bathroom called in, "He wants you to suck his dick."

And there it was. Black and white.

I never returned to the corner of the bedroom. My head ached with the painful realization that I had some how crossed a line into feelings I did not understand. I replaced my cardigan buttoned full to the neck and walked home hoping my dad would not notice the hickeys from neck to nipple. I was embarrassed and ashamed and all to aware that though my body was ready for much it was made for, my heart still had a lot of learning to do.

And because you have touched me deeper than the stillest waters of my heart, and because only you will know who you are, and because I can offer you no more than all that I am, I give to you this list of all things I find splendid, elegant and remarkable...
1. The cool, crisp feel of fine paper and the flow of ink and idea. The masterful minds of poets; the pity of poor Byron and the tragedy of Frankenstein.
2. A table set with china, linen and fresh flower. The expectation of a guest, the reception of friends, of hands and arms and cheeks made for kissing, long hellos, slow goodbyes, and far too much wine.
3. A young child eating strawberries on a summer's morning, knees wet with dew drops, lips stained with appetite and joy.
4. The smell of a wood fire on a cold winter's eve, the warmth of a blanket and a new lovers arms. No where to go but heaven.
5. Riding in the back of a truck with the wind in your hair, eating fresh plums from a vendor on a cool country road. Boiled peanuts in a bag warming your fingers. The joy of a new fishing pole.
6. Children curled together like puppies, arms and legs twisted willy-nilly, mouths agape, soft and lost in the safety of dreams. Tucking in the quilt someone made by hand. A quiet house.
7. Standing at a high point, looking over a low point, feeling small and connected, vulnerable and powerful and ALIVE.
8. Standing at a low point, looking up to the highest point, and knowing you will get there somehow. Being POSSIBLE.
9. Catching snow flakes on your tongue.
10. Looking back every five years or so and having the courage to laugh.
11. Sliding in your sock feet on a newly polished wood floor.
12. Strolling a city street on an autumn afternoon, sipping coffee, smelling leaves as they crunch beneath your feet, eating fresh bread stuffed with fine, dark chocolate and not caring a bit that you can't find the museum.
13. Monolithic architecture.
14. Swimming naked in the moonlight, the salt of the sea on your lips, the cool of the breeze on your hair. Leaving a few things behind on the beach so that you will have an excuse to return.
15. The first crocus of spring peaking through the snow.
16. Falling in love. The smell of the one you love on your clothing after they have left you. Abandoning yourself to something mysterious and unforgettable. SURRENDER.
17. A good stretch!
18. Fine port, amber at the bottom and glowing deep and red in the glass. The taste of age and love and years gone by warm in your belly. The glowing tingle of it in your head. The smell of maple, of honey and of time.
19. Riding on a merry-go-round waving at someone who isn't riding on a merry-go-round.
20. Finding someone who inspires you to the core of your being.

The smell of fried chicken used to excite me. Not the smell of chicken frying in the kitchen next to a big steamy pot of mashed potatoes and warm bowl of garden grown green beans. No. No. The smell of the greasy slick mess you find after wards when your tummy is full and you drag yourself lamenting back to the stove to collect the dishes. AH! Sweet heaven was in that smell. This is not because of some weird fetish for fried food. It was because that is how my first love smelled when he got off work at a local fast food chicken restaurant. And it was after work that he would ride his bicycle past my house, down a darkened street littered with falling oak leaves in the fresh autumn evening in some bad polyester shirt, ball cap, and a tag that said 'My Name is..."

Pure bliss came with that awful smell. I could smell it in my clothes after he left to ride the remaining route home and I would gather my sweaters to my face and breath it in as if life itself was contained on the fabric. It was in those evenings that I started to understand my Grandmother's secret smile. The coolness of the night air on my face, the flush of cheeks and redness of lips, the dreams that came unprovoked about a boy who could make me laugh until I thought the stars themselves twinkled only when he smiled at me or poked a jibe in my direction. Even in his shabby state the world stopped for him.

His family was not wealthy as mine, nor was he all that smart, but he was kind and genuine and he listened to me with an intensity in his eyes that the mere memory of would cause a blush the next day, or a week later (even now?). His mother had passed away a few years before and he worked to help his father who was himself not well. The boy never had much time to spend with me, but I waited every night by the oak on the front lawn if only for a few minutes to hear about his day and to see that wonderful smile. I lived for those stolen moments on the lawn always aware of the eyes of my father or mother watching through a window or from the screen door on our porch.

How quickly I learned to hold my body in such a way as to hide myself from their view so that, one night when he chanced to touch my hand and then later to hold it in his for that small but precious time, it remained our devout secret. I would stroll into the house in a launguid daze or run like a wild horse up to my room in the pure ecstasy and lightness of innocent puppy love and lay on my bed wanting to hear nothing, feel nothing, speak of nothing, until at last I was with him again.

And so it was night after night, hands touching and then hands holding, fingers meshing in sweaty excitement, until one night it came to it and the boy, this boy, this love who made my heart beat as if it would jump out of my chest, chanced to find a moment when my father had stepped inside and quickly he leaned in and kissed my lips for the first and most wonderful time. I still remember how stiff I was at first, frightened to rigidity, and then falling into his body, letting go and disolving into dew, pliable, malleable. It was total surrender.

Of course, my father returned all too soon and catching us in this standing embrace opened the door to call me inside. I remember his eyes as I turned to go, I remember the rusty bike chain grinding as he disappeared into the night air. I remember the lecture from my father and I remember not caring a lick for a word he said, too lost in my own joy.

It is in the memory that I know the secret in the smile. The truth that you can hide a child for a little time from sexuality but they will find their own way to true intimacy in due course. Nothing prepares you for it: the highs and lows of love. The heart finds its own way- even though it knows not where to look or what it will find. It imagines itself in the full glory of a white knight who sometimes arrives in polyester ;)

It is the deep breath before the plunge. Outside my window a deceptive world of calm and quiet: nothing moves. Neither breeze to stir the brittle branches nor rain to damp the frozen ground. No snow brushes the earth, no crystals to prism the window's glass. On the table the lamp burns low, in my hand the coffee mug I bought from a little shop in Amsterdam back when I was young and thought I knew what love was. Look to the sky though and feel it churning. I know what secret it brews, what heavy lashes it prepares for the earth which will soon bleed white. The coffee burns my lip, too hot the false wisdom of foolish children. Inside prepares it's own storm so that the forces of nature and the forces of emotion are creating their own energy. The flame in the lamp flickers. I am waiting.

*****

I can be a bit of a megalomaniac. I opened my eyes today to a ray of sunlight crawling in and feeling that it just would not do. I closed my eyes for a few minutes to reopen them to a low gray ceiling of clouds and the promise of a record grade snow storm. 'Much better,' I thought, since I am in a sultry, sad mood and of course all the world should revolve around me. If this be the case, I would prefer you keep it between us though, since there will be about a thousand people who wont make it to the office or who will get stuck on the side of a road, and I really don't feel up to negotiating a lynch mob at the moment.

Ah, yes. The cup is refilled with lovely hot coffee and Billy Holiday is crooning on about a broken heart, the first few flakes are softly falling & the cat is asleep on my lap. This is what I need. The day is perfect now. Life needs a "do not disturb" sign for days when you just need the Blues. I just want to soak up all my heartache and savor it today. It is sort of like having a craving for a food you don't really like but just...crave once and a while. How is it that feeling bad can sometimes feel good? It is one of those things we wish life gave us, I guess. The chance to feel nothing when it hurts, everything when it doesn't, and to chose our feelings in between times. It doesn't really work like that, but it is nice to pretend. Like pretending you can will a snowstorm for your own amusement. Megolomania: the home game. Try it yourself sometime.

When I was just a young girl, my Grandmother and I would make jam. It was a day long or more process of selecting the fruits, cleaning them, cooking and straining and sweetening and then carefully pouring that sweetness into jars we had sterilized and then sealing the whole process off, labeling it, and putting it up on the shelf for later. There was always something magical about fetching a new jar from the pantry. Finding the precisely written label & breaking the seal months from the day we stood sweating in the hot summer's end kitchen. Some scent would rise off the contents, perhaps experienced only by myself. It was the scent of my grandmother. The scent of her hand cream and tears and the tiniest dab of perfume she left upon her wrist. It was the scent of a hundred thousand perfectly prepared meals, of bactine on a scraped knee, of the wind through the steamy kitchen windows on a spring evening after the rain. It was love in a jar. Put up on the shelf to find me on any idle day. Preserved against time and the world and any trouble or fear.

I had a day today. A day I wish hadn't had to end. A day of unexpected, random and wonderful events. Of feeling safe in my skin and comfortable with the world. How I wish I knew Grandmother's secret for canning emotion, so I could hold on to this feeling forever.

Can I climb under the desk and pretend I have died, or just evaporated into a thin red mist of embarrassment? Should I explain my latest humiliation?

Dr. X is an incredibly nice man, who I have the distinct honor of working with. Admittedly I work with many distinguished physicians, but Dr. X is special in a couple of ways. Firstly, he always answers his own phone, knows his patients histories and problems without introduction, and is a very caring man. This singularly makes him an almost extinct grade of doctor who earns the respect and reverence of just about everyone. Secondly, he seems to trust my judgment as a nurse and that makes him all the more special to me. Thirdly, he is quite handsome, though admittedly married and probably old enough to be my father.

This last fact is particularly important, not the married or age part... but the handsome part. All the nurses adore him and he is the subject of many the imagined tryst about the water cooler. To be sure, I have always played on the team that keeps work professional and thus refrain from the imaginings f Dr. X. But, like all true Southerners, I love a good joke. It is this love that has lead me under the proverbial desk.

One fine day I had the occasion to place a call to Dr. X regarding one of his patients. I had to search out his number due to a clerical error and this had me in a feisty mood. One of my coworkers approached as I was dialing his number and stated 'wow, you had to look up the number? You don't know it by heart?" And I said to her, "of course not! At home I have him on the speed dial so I can call late at night and breath heavily into his ear." Then, to my complete mortification, Dr. X stated: "You sound like you are having some fun today!" He heard me. Dear God! He heard every sarcastic, just kidding, word. I asked my little question and went quickly on my way red as a beet.

For many, many weeks Dr. X did not come to my unit while I was working and I was sure that I had probably managed to completely alienate him. I kept all calls short and sweet to avoid any further confusion. Then, today, Dr. X came to my unit while I was on duty. There was lots of talking and happy chatter, as you find at shifts end. As Dr. X was leaving the unit I bid him a good afternoon and my friend gave me a side ways look. Knowing Dr. X was gone I said to her "what? was I supposed to say talk to you tonight?"

You guessed it. He had come back. He again heard me.

I could die. Just die.

"When choosing between two evils...I like to try the one I've never tried before."

I have been a bit if a hermit of late. A recluse. A loner. Enjoying my independence, accepting my reality. I have been content with my reading, my writing, catching up on my favorite movies. Taking joy in the words "ticket for one please" and not having to share the ju ju bees or the arm rest. I came to a conclusion that perhaps I will live to be old and alone and for the first time feeling really okay with that. I can step out into the night air in my fuzzy red slippers with a cat curling round my legs and think, "the stars are still beautiful with out another set of eyes to admire them with." It was glorious in some ways.

But into my solitude came my little Daisy who had a whole lot of other plans, most of which involved me getting off my butt and rejoining the world. Daisy had a splendid plan involving a dance club, my favorite girls including my Rose who I never get to spend time with at present. So I acquiesce. I put on the heels and the make up and head out into the world of others expecting to have a nice time, expecting to see a lot of good friends, expecting pehaps to drink too much, stay out too late and over all regret the night come the morning.

It started out fairly normal. Dancing, drinking, laughing too loud. But then... well, who knows why the light falls differently on one person in a room of many?

You have to ask yourself, when you find yourself accepting reality, are you accepting it -or hiding from it.

As you can imagine in the culture of my youth it was not considered appropriate to teach any method of birth control save that of abstinence. Interestingly, most of the girls at my school had no idea what they were to abstain from and many a young girl I knew fell pray to the lies of young men who took full advantage of this fact. Many found themselves in the nightmare of early, illegitimate pregnancy, expelled from school and sent to God only knows where in shame.

Another moment in my youth is that of the day I became known as the “Condom Girl.” The story goes something like this:

One bright spring day as I walked to my school, a boy named Mark gave me a letter he had written to me. I did not open this letter, though it was neatly folded to look like an envelope of many pages, but rather placed it into my purse with intent of reading it during a study hall, or math class if it was particularly boring. Except that this particular day there was to be no study hall or math class or any other class that might have been scheduled. You see word had spread among the student body and eventually amongst the Sisters that someone had been dispensing condoms in the girl’s lavatory. The entire world came to a halt and each and every student was herded into the assembly hall and later the chapel to be interrogated about WHO this young woman might be. For hours we sat listening to lectures about how this girl and any girl who collaborated with her would be sternly and immediately punished as well as spend an eternity in hell for this mortal sin. No one confessed. No one knew a thing. At the time I found the whole ordeal rather dull.

After the release of the student body and returning to my home room for further lecture I discovered that somewhere along the course of the day I had lost my purse, and within it the mysterious love letter from Mark, who I found creepy at best. Frightened by the loss of my girlish treasures (chap stick, student ID, etc.) I quickly excused myself to the school office to see if it had been turned in. At the office the clerk greeted me with a sour smile, stating that she was just about to send for me and that the Superior was waiting for me in her office.

I was confused and terrified, never had I seen the inside of the Superior’s office and few who entered ever spoke of it again. I remember the large polished desk upon which sat my purse, fully open and rummaged through. I remember the smile of pure satisfaction on the Superior’s face as she handed me the letter from Mark unwrapped from it’s envelope like fold asking what I knew of it’s contents. I explained I had not read the letter yet, that it was given to me by a boy from the public school near by. She asked me to read the letter. I read only the first few lines before I became brutally aware that this was not a love letter. It was a letter to Penthouse. A long drawn out sexual fantasy of Mark’s in which I was violated in ways I had at that time never even imagined. Mortified I sat, I am sure red faced and quivering.

The Superior looked down at me and then asked “what do you know about the events in the girl’s lavatory.” I suppose it was only natural that a young lady who carried sexually explicit letters from public school boys must also carry condoms to pass to her classmates. I was damned for lying before I even opened my mouth. The Superior then informed me that my parents had been contacted and that I would not return to school until I had been cleared of any offense. The following hours in my home were a level of hell I wish not to relive, I can only tell you that they were beyond anything you know of torture.

After all this I went to see my Grandmother and sobbing so hard I could not breathe I relayed the events of the day. My Grandmother did not look at me like a liar, fornicator or criminal… but as the victim I truly was of an out right witch hunt. She took her purse, her hat with the bird nested in fake flowers and my hand and back to the office of the Superior we went. I do not know what took place within the walls of the office, only that I was back in my classes the next day with a full apology from the school.

Despite my unusual pardon I spent the rest of my career at that school known as the “Condom Girl” and under the careful eye of every Sister worth her rosary. Years later my Grandmother and I would laugh at how grateful we were for one thing: I hadn’t brought any condoms to school with me... that day ;)

Perhaps the most telling turning point in any young woman’s sexuality is the achievement of her first menses. To all my male readers I apologize, but it is perhaps the key point in my personal sexual revolution. And so it was that one fine afternoon I excused myself from Algebra class to seek out the ladies room, and with horror discovered something I was unprepared for. Being young I was the first of my friends to cross this threshold, and as it was not discussed prior, I interpreted the entire event as a portent of my near demise. To the school office I ran, loosing no time, to call upon my Mother to whom I bravely announce that I was bleeding to death before an entire audience of nuns and clerks who seemed more than a little shocked. My Mother then retrieved me from school and I was filled with the traditional Catholic rendition of how this monthly experience was nothing less than a punishment from God for Eve’s temptation of an apple.

Shame was my first feeling as a woman. I look back now and feel shame for those who would have had me to believe such nonsense.

It was in those days that I ran with a group of young ladies who are locked into my life even now as eternal friends. I told them my sad and sorry tale of blood and each felt unsafe in her body that soon this curse may befall them as well. Becky I believe even went quickly to confession to purge herself of the possibility if it could be done.

Time passed and month in and out the Curse arrived and with it the sense of shame and discomfort. Especially as I was a member of the swim team and still the only girl I knew experiencing this ailment. On the eve of my decision as to whether to quit swimming, my girl friends and I attended a party that had many older and more mature people, and perhaps most importantly, boys. Now we attended a private all female school and so the opportunity to share our time with the other sex was a rare treat. Lisa, in particular, enjoyed the attention and after a few snifters of someone’s Fathers peach tree schnapps she fell into the arms of an older man.

The following day the three of us sat discussing the party and ribbing Lisa about her tryst, and to our astonishment she revealed an overwhelming fact: this young man had touched her… under the shirt! “Am I still a virgin?” she asked. Each of the four of us looked at one another in pure confusion. We didn’t know. All we knew of sex was that we weren’t supposed to do it. Not anything more than that. So where was the line between virgin and whore, saint and sinner?

A few days into this query Becky joined the group with an outrageous idea. Her much older sister had once been in trouble for going to a place called Planned Parenthood, which was just a mile or so into town. Perhaps there might be someone there who could answer our questions. And so we set out the next day after school on our bikes to fulfill a most dangerous mission. To be caught in such a place would mean grave consequences, but we felt that the consequences of not knowing more would be far more dire. We hid our bikes behind the building and covered ourselves as much as possible as we ran through the door of the forbidden women’s clinic.

To our surprise we found the people warm and kind and a woman sat with us for the longest time. There was a group sigh of relief when we discovered that we were all in fact still virgins and my two partners in crime even more relaxed to know that you cannot get pregnant unless you have had a period. But for me this fact called up all my recent shame. In tears I told this woman of the Planned Parenthood of how I had in fact been cursed. She was calm, but quick in setting us straight on this unfortunate misconception.

After over an hour of listening to the full tale of our bodies, the magic of the time of life we were living, the truth in secrets within us, the power we had to create and to renew… we all left the building with our heads held high, at last excited about all the mysterious things we were thinking and feeling. Each of us carried the woman's words within us like a dark and fantastic secret. I continued to swim and never lamented my monthly again. My friends, rather than feeling sorry for my unfortunate state of womanhood had a new respect and a cheerful anticipation of their own ‘flowering.’

My Grandmother said, in her ever wise way, Damn them and that stupid apple!


*************************************

I am eternally grateful to Planned Parenthood for the gift that they gave me that day. As you may know due to certain socio-political factors much of their funding has been jeopardized. Please support them. I know I always will.