Let's Make Some Magic

So then I said to her, oh no you di'int and she was all whatever sucka, I di'id. And then I was all well you just don't even know...

This broadcast has been interrupted to bring you this special report:

It has come to my attention that there's a very real little girl that needs our help. Tara from Faith In Ambiguity and her husband Mike are raising money for a sick little girl and her family in their community who really, really need it. Read more details from Tara here.

Here's the thing. There are the bell ringers, there are the folks who send you the free address labels with the puppies and kittens and ask for a donation, around here there are people from every cause imaginable who come door to door, or who stop you on street corners. Everywhere, it seems, there are people or causes that want our time and our money. Most of them are valid. (Except I never did get my subscription to Garden & Gun that I ordered from that man who came to my door. I hope that he used my $40 well. I didn't really need the magazine, I just wanted to help out. Oh no you di'int! Girl, you a sucker! Hush. That program has been interrupted.) We all have our own stuff going on, I understand that. But this is something so simple, so tangible, so immediate and necessary. Take a minute and read Lidija's story and you decide.

I'm going to go all Sally Struthers on yo' ass now. (I apologize for that. I don't know where that keeps coming from.)
My chips and queso, if I get them on sale (and I always do) cost me about $5 and last me a few days. Depends on how hard I'm hitting them. So, that's my fun money. $5 every few days for my little gastronomic indulgence that I neither need, nor is it good for me. Here's the kicker, though: I can actually eat chips and queso. Lidija can't. She can't eat anything except one specialized formula that (of course) isn't covered by insurance. We can joke about overeating on the holidays and chocolate and all the ha ha funny funny stuff that gets trotted around the barnyard every holiday season or we can seriously think about a six year old who can't eat cookies. Send her your wine money, send her your coffee money, send her the change you found in your car floor and your cushions, just do something to help this family.

If you can't spare a dime (I know how this can be) then use your influence, spread the word. Make social media worth something more than mean jokes and hedgehog pictures. You probably know generous people who would jump at the chance. I don't know them, Tara doesn't know them, Lidija doesn't know them. You know them. Let's make some magic.

Act Now!

Monumental Tooth

My last post was honest, difficult to write, depressing as all get-out and necessary. It can't remain as my home page, though. Why not?

Here's why not:

I dare you to look at this picture and not at least smile a little bit. Besides the hilarity, besides the casual arm flung around her little brother, look at my jBird's giant front tooth. That, my friends, is a monument.

It is a monument of tooth-bone to change, to growth, to shedding childish things, but not quite growing into the permanent things, either. I love that huge, solitary front tooth and sometimes I just want to touch it. My jBird is a patient girl, but she rarely indulges me in this. I don't blame her, but still. Look at that thing!

Her teeth will all eventually come in and straighten out (hopefully without a whole lot of orthodontic intervention) but for now, I secretly cherish this giant front tooth that is so awkward, so strange and out of place in her face, but a talisman of more big things to come. For now this is more beautiful to me than any movie-star-perfect smile in the world.

These two - with their life and their energy and their constant vibration - these two wear me out and they worry me and they drive me straight up a wall sometimes. But look at how they laugh. They lean into each other and laugh. With their messy hair and hand knit sweaters and heads full of nonsense and of course the giant tooth, they laugh. I can fume around and stew and boil about things that are so much bigger than they are, but you know what? These are the biggest people I know. They have virtually no control over their lives, they have very little say in the things of the world; they get told what to do, where to go, how to behave and to go and pick up all their Legos. Their mother is moody and somewhat unpredictable, she's intense and she's insane and she loves them with all her heart. And still they laugh. With eyes closed, without self-consciousness or guile - so hard, they laugh. This is their default mode.

And that monumental tooth. Well, you know how it is. It brings me to my knees and it makes me laugh, too. So hard. 

Earthen Vessels

I tried. I try all the time. I keep the outside input to a minimum. I work hard to create a bubble of peace, of love, of joy, of forgiveness, of grace,  and of simple humanity around my home. I fail sometimes. I slip up and I crack. I have never shattered. I tried.

I can distance myself when I need to. I can look reasonably at terrible things. I can try to see all sides. I can seek honest solutions. I can always find hope. I can always look for good. I tried

I constructed a fragile peace this weekend; made of Christmas candies, ice skating shows, Lego skyscrapers, knitted hats and lots of snuggles. I constructed a fragile peace around what was becoming a towering rage.

I don't have a hot temper. The rage came blowing in like an arctic squall and froze me, empty, hollow and brittle as ice. I tried to warm it. I tried. Instead I let it shatter me.

I just wanted to make some hot cocoa. I wanted something warm inside me.
The mug that bears my son's name hung limp and empty from my hand and my face buried in the front of my husband's sweatshirt. Shaking howling sobs.

So many children... their parents... they were the same age as ours... they're saying - the gun people - they're saying we should arm the teachers... everyone is saying such horrible things... I don't want to live in this world... this shit just keeps happening... I don't want our kids to inherit this mess... I give up... 

My husband wordlessly absorbed my snot and my tears and my rage through his sweatshirt, directly to his heart. He held my shattered pieces while I shook and he didn't say a word. He has never heard me give up. The next morning, he silently handed me the keys when the hymns stuck in my throat and only the words I can't do this came out. I sat in the car in the cold and tried so hard not to cry. I don't like to make an emotional spectacle of myself. I applied the patches of reason, of calm, of faith, of love as best I could and went back inside. My husband squeezed my hand before he went up to speak. He read from 2 Corinthians:

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.

He stood in a pulpit and reminded me, along with the rest of the people gathered there that we are, in fact, earthen vessels. That we are fragile and sometimes we shatter, but that those cracks should allow the light to shine through. His voice broke a little when he explained that no matter what terrible things may happen to us or around us, we can be a source of light, of love, that we contain power. I sat and let the tears come; I let them slide soundlessly again and again down my face. A warm, baptismal rain.

I thought suddenly of our wedding ceremony. At the end of the service, we dimmed the lights. We lit our candles off of the larger one in the center and turned to light our family's candles, too. They turned and lit the people next to them and so on. The flame passed around the dark room until it was on fire. A candlelight vigil to love, to faith, to the community that makes love possible. We were young and we were poets and we wanted to set the world on fire with our love. We believed we could change the world. We exited that room into our life together triumphantly, buoyed on a wave of flame and music - Ode to Joy.

We are older and a little more weary. We have lost some of the hubris of youth. But yesterday, it was as if my husband had again, with shaking hands and voice, re-lit my tiny candle. And now I hold it out, fragile and tenuous, behind a cupped hand, to assuage this towering rage.

Rage has no place in my world. My rage is from the same source as the rage that pulls a trigger. My judgement and fear are no more productive than that of those who would arm the whole world. I shake my head and say I don't understand evil, but I do. I have had my share of destruction, of evil, of tearing down when I should build, of lashing out when I should seek help. I know that what keeps me from ever reaching that point of tipping into the unthinkable is love, is conscience, is support, is this tiny candle of hope I hold in my hand. May it never be snuffed out. May I instead use it to light the flames of others. May I never give up.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." -Edmund Burke

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.

I am only an earthen vessel. I am fragile and sometimes I crack to the point of shattering. I will not be destroyed.

Day 6

A long time ago, while I was between lives, I worked at a large book retailer. For $6.00 an hour I could stand for eight hours and point breathless housewives to the giant shelf of Oprah Book Club books that they had just walked past in order to demand that they hadn't seen it anywhere. I also got to clean the restrooms.

One day, someone did something unspeakable to one of the restrooms and we were all back in the break room fighting about who would have to clean it up. A very cute boy with whom I had never had a shift before, finally sighed and said: "You all are useless. I'll just do it," and walked off with rubber gloves and a mop. I sat and watched him leave and wondered at this boy who would calmly step up to take responsibility for a vile and disgusting task that no one else would touch. I wondered at this boy as I watched him in the days to come, flirt with the middle-aged ladies who ran the office and make them blush. I watched him draw customers in conspiratorially to find the title of a book. I watched him dress up as Waldo from the Where's Waldo book series and entertain a room full of screaming children. I just watched for a while, though, remaining mute and trying to melt into the background.

I watched him save me a seat on a bench for my lunch break, with a cup of hot coffee waiting for me. I watched him dance to Birdhouse In Your Soul in a deserted parking lot in the middle of the night and tell me I was the only bee in his bonnet. I watched him ask my dad important philosophical questions and listen carefully to the answers. I watched him make my mom laugh. I watched him hand over money to my sister so she would quit the job where her boss sexually harassed her. I watched him while he drove us in midnight circles, listening to music and talking about all the world. I watched him introduce me to his friends and family. I watched him leave work to go and sit with his mom at the hospital when she had an emergency hysterectomy. I watched him take his little sister to dance lessons and pick her up again, turning the music up loud and laughing at her junior high silliness.

And then one day I watched him through a plate glass window after the store had closed, as he got down on one knee in the cold and showed me a picture of a ring.

I have watched this boy over the last fourteen and a half years grow into a man - become a husband, a father, a lawyer, a leader. I have watched him get up every day and shoulder responsibilities that the people around him have refused to do. I have watched him walk boldly into unspeakable messes and try to clean them up because it had to be done and no one else was willing. I have watched him work as many hours as were necessary to support us. I have watched him study long into the night for finals with a newborn baby on his shoulder. I have watched him take care, take action, take part, take responsibility. I have watched him bestow fatherly gentleness and affection that he has never received. I have watched him smile just for me. I have watched him dance, I have watched him cry, I have watched him survive, I have watched him live, I have watched him give and give and give.

I sat in a crowded room last night and watched him tell a group of people that his marriage is a tiny piece of the divine. I have watched this man over so many years and I hope for many more. I renew my vows every morning with such humbling gratitude that this man has let me watch him all these years and that he shares his magic with me. 

Far To Go

Today is Wednesday. It is a rainy day in October, but above all, it is my birthday.
I am thirty-eight today.
I have a lot to do today; a lot of Wednesday things to do. This is how I love to spend my birthday. I love to walk around with the private knowledge that it is the anniversary of my birth and do things that I would do on any other day.

I putter and bake myself a birthday cake. My house smells like a bakery - warm and sweet with a side of coffee. I will share this cake this evening with two friends who also share my birthday. Happiness in triplicate, with cake. I putter and I clean and I take stock. I am here and I am healthy. I am happy and I am content. Those are two different things, and when they collide, there is magic.

There has always been magic. I have not always seen it so clearly. I see it today and that is enough. I saw it yesterday and some more yesterdays that I have forgotten to count. I hope I will still see it tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow for me. Life is long and it is short and it passes so slowly some days and then years slip away. I cannot get a grip on the slipperiness of time; so I stand here now, in the rain on my day and call it mine. I will taste it and smell it and wonder about it and I will be thankful for it. I will blow out the candles this evening and my only wish, as it has been for years, is that I live right now and find love in it.

The autumn wind chills and whips the leaves into a wet frenzy around me. I think of the frenzies of my life that come and go and remind myself to relinquish the illusion of control. I cannot any more stem the tides of good and bad that come in my life than hold the wind in my hands. I am free now to examine the purplish green leaves as they flutter past. I am free now to appreciate the warmth of my kitchen after the soaking, bone-chilling outside. I am free now to smell the wood smoke in the air and think of apples. I am not a victim of circumstance, but an active and acquiescent participant. I have lived enough of this life to know that things do change, that I can change if I want to, but I don't always need to. I look back down those thirty-eight years from now and see the pieces that have built this strange and wonderful life and I love them all.

Today is Wednesday, but I was born on a Thursday. Thursday's child has far to go. That's what the old rhyme tells me. I remember it every year and hold it close like the numbers 10 and 24, and the new number, 38. It reminds me how far I've come. It reminds me I've always got more to go. Today as I stand here with the rain and the warm cake and the day of mundane things to do in an extraordinary world, I remember to keep walking, one step and then another, taking the time to look around, switching directions when I need to. Nothing is assured, never perfect or painless. I don't want these things. I am Thursday's child and I'm busy wandering. I have far to go.

Half-Mast

We were driving somewhere a few weeks ago and I noticed all the flags were at half-mast. I asked the Chief Lou about it because he works for the U.S. government, you see, and he should know about such things. They probably sent it to him in a memo.

"I don't know," he said. [This is where your tax dollars go, my American friends. They help feed my family and they are not wasted on memos explaining half-masted flags.]

I may be a socialist, but I know that when the flags are flown at half-mast, someone of national importance has died. I know it wasn't a former president, because the Chief Lou gets the day off to attend their funerals. So I wrack my brains trying to remember who has died recently.

"It is because of Phyllis Diller?" I ask.

"Um, yes. It's because of Phyllis Diller," says the Chief Lou, "Pretty much everything is because of Phyllis Diller." [I think he maybe is being sarcastic, but you never know with him. He's got an awesome deadpan and he's also a bit of a closet conspiracy theorist.]

"Oh wait! It's because of the astronaut guy!" I suddenly remember. "That makes more sense."

"The 'astronaut guy'?! Would that 'astronaut guy' be Neil Armstrong? The first man to walk on the moon?" [Obviously, his conspiracy theories do not include the one that posits the moon landing was a complete cock-up. He's not a complete nut-bag.]

I try to explain that I said "astronaut guy" because whenever I go to say Neil Armstrong's name, I am gripped by this rapid succession of doubts: Is it Neil Armstrong? Not Lance Armstrong? No. That's the bike guy. Neil Diamond? No? Why not? I even accentuated my argument with my best Neil Diamond impersonation, singing this song. I think it's perfectly understandable how all that could get garbled up in my melon, what with the patriotism and stuff.

I noticed today that the flags are at half-mast again. This time even I know why. I don't have much to say about it except this:

If we are going to remember, let's remember how for a few fleeting days we forgot that we were Democrats and Republicans, we forgot that we were men or women, gay or straight, light or dark, rich or poor, Neil Armstrong or Neil Diamond, and we stopped and mourned together. We watched horrified and dumbstruck, heartbroken and scared. For a few hours we forgot our differences and even if we sustained no personal loss, we stepped into the shoes of those who did. We understood what it was like to be a friend, a parent, a spouse, a lover, an employee, a boss, a child, a person and the terror of not knowing if your loved ones are all right. We held hands and we cried with strangers; we hugged our families and reached out to our neighbors. For a few short days, we were united. Will it take another national tragedy for us to do that again? Don't we still want to know that our loved ones are all right? Don't we still understand that other people have loved ones that need to be all right, too?

I Dreamed of This

I am puttering. Putting things to rights after a weekend of ignoring most of everything except the people who live here. I am surrounded by piles of paper demanding attention, piles of clothes that must get clean, piles of dishes that need to be scrubbed and then refilled, piles of words that must be rearranged and sorted out and written again. I am tempted to groan. I am tempted to complain. Instead, I am drinking my coffee and thinking about my younger self. The one with larger jeans and smaller frame and longer, darker hair. The one who sat and looked half-starved at families in public places and snorted with derision to hide the aching want. The one who spoke of selling out and giving in and letting oneself go.

This younger me could not let herself go then. She was tightly wound and afraid the broken parts would fall out on the floor. An upturned purse with tampons, gum wrappers, empty pens and cigarette lighters splashed around for all to see or avert their eyes and gingerly step around. This younger me would never have given in to the soft places inside, the ones that lie curled and fetal around another sleeping body that is small and dependent and cries out in her sleep. This younger me mocked the selling out because she didn't understand that she had anything of value to trade for her dreams.

Today I give that younger me a hug. I reach back through time and space and tell her not to worry. It will all work out. I tell her that things will be hard and then lovely and then hard again and lovely still. I tell her that is just what it is like to live. I tell her that things will not go as she has planned, but they will be better than she ever dared imagine. I tell her to relax and enjoy the steps ahead.

She bristles and doesn't listen. She's not supposed to. She was supposed to ignore the advice of wiser souls and come smashing, whirling, prickly and hard through her path to get to here. She was supposed to test the very fiber of her body, her faith, her mind, her soul. She was supposed to dash herself against hard places to break open and see the soft light that was hiding inside. She was supposed to do that. She was supposed to etch these canyons and these valleys of scars so they would heal and overflow with the rushing joy that fills them now. She can't have known that the inundation would come and bring verdant life to the desolate places, that her harvest would be so bountiful that she had plenty to share with friends and strangers alike. But she'd secretly hoped.

This younger me looks up from that well of time. She winks and hunches down further around herself. To protect from the cold that seems to permeate the skin tightly wrapped around bones, to protect from the coming days of confusion and making one's way, to protect from herself and from the wishes she dares not make.

She glances at the piles of paper, clothes, dishes, and words.

She whispers quietly with breath of smoke and sadness:
Enjoy it for me then. This is the life you have dreamed of.

Gratitude

The sky that twinkles. The bite of fall in the air. The people who read, encourage, comment. The way my transplanted hydrangea has shot out new leaves all over the place. The smell of little sweaty feet. The smell of yeast bread rising. The Phillies shirt from a friend that wears like a hug. The wonders of the internet, text-messaging, telephones and easy communication. The kind of difficult communication that makes us stop and think and wonder how we can do better. The kind of silent communication that comes in hugs and glances and a casual patting of my arm or playing with my hair. The health of my family. The answering of prayers. The spaces of light and openness. The consolation of friends. The common experience. The history of a love. The funny things you did when you were younger that make you giggle today when you need to remember that things are fun. The people who will call you and remind you of those things. The buoyancy of life. The hope. The faith. The possibilities. The small excitements that add up to general joy. The pain. The defeat. The opportunity to get up again. The love. Definitely the love. In all of this, love.

Please add more of your own. It will be a river. It has nothing to do with page views, number of comments, good writing, right or wrong, personal or universal. This is a tribute. To life, to gratitude, to connection. Deepest gratitude to Tara who reminded me today of why I really keep blogging.

On Being a Tool

If you sent me to my room and told me to get dressed and I walked out with pants on my head, you would think me either insane or five years old.

If you asked me to dust the blinds and I went in search of a circular saw, you would lock up the tools, myself included.

If you wanted me to make you some tasty guacamole and I reached for the bag of marshmallows to fold into the mashed avocado, you would likely gag and remove me from the kitchen.

I clearly could not be trusted.

These are not difficult things to grasp when one is not insane, nor five years old. There are times, places, tools, ingredients for success. Not name-in-lights-fame-and-fortune success, just simple get-up-and-live success.

How often do I walk around with my figurative pants on my head? How often do I make myself ridiculous by attempting to wear myself wrongside up? How often do I shatter and destroy something that only needs some gentle attention? How often do I serve up something completely unpalatable and expect people to just choke it down? I'm not sure of the exact answers to these questions. That's why I ask them.

We have these tools for living: love, humor, time, talent, loyalty, fear, doubt, sensitivity, drive, ambition, conscience. We have recipes, instruction manuals, purpose and utility. It should be simple. Use the screwdriver to twist things in, to hold them securely. Use the pants to cover up your bum. Use the garlic in just about everything. Use a damp sponge and mild detergent to get out that spot. Use your love to comfort and heal and build. Use your fear to spur you on. Use your conscience to guide your steps. Somehow, though, we sometimes find ourselves sitting on the floor with a potato masher in our hands and wondering why it won't draw a straight line and why there are all of these extra parts lying around. You've covered your love with fear and gotten righteous indignation all stuck in it. You've mortared your bricks of ambition with the grape jelly of doubt and somehow misplaced your talent.

Sometimes it feels like we've constructed these lives out of chicken wire and bubble gum. The wind howls through the holes and you stand up to shut the door and realize you've got your intentions stuck to your shoe and you go to light the fire with a spaghetti noodle and wonder why you feel so tired.

Somehow it holds, though. We muddle through. We choke down the marshmallow guacamole and realize that while it was a textural nightmare, at least the avocados were nice and ripe. My favorite jeans have almost more holes than seat, so when I put them on my head and play the fool, if I turn my head just right, I can see out of them and find my way. Sometimes the shattered places, while essentially unnecessary and uncalled for, let in a different light and some fresh air.

I clearly cannot be trusted, but yet I am. I am again and again and by all kinds of people. It is in this spot of grace where I make my messes, build my rickety structures of hope, I wallow and I bumble and I break. But sometimes, whether by luck or by concentration or by divine intervention, I grasp the hammer and hit the nail on the head. And while I congratulate myself, the people who love me quietly sweep up the debris.

The Redemption of Facebook

Sometimes I get tired of people. Sometimes I scream inside my head and despair. Sometimes I think that we are regressing as a species to some kind of grunting, knuckle dragging, nit-picking (and eating) people. Except in sweat pants.

I don't like to feel like this. I love people. I love the infinite variety of experiences, perspectives, oddities, ambitions. I love the idea of people just walking around doing their things and living inside their heads and loving intensely and being grossed out by things and getting tired, getting excited, getting angry, getting dressed, just living.

But sometimes the cacophony of humanity wears me out and I want them all to go quietly home and stay off the internet. That's usually when I go quietly home and stay off the internet. Those times that I feel like if I see one more picture of a chicken sandwich, one more article about parenting styles, one more grammatical error or misspelling, one more kitten picture, one more Mason jar, I will tip into a specific breed of rampaging madness that frightens children and small animals and is bad for the electronics.

But then...

Let me tell you a story.

I dated a guy my freshman year in college. He was large and handsome, had played football in high school, rode a motorcycle, did things like rock climbing and played sports for fun. In other words, so not my type. He wasn't a particularly bookish fellow but I really liked his motorcycle, so we went on a few dates. He was a nice guy, we were both immature, I was kind of a jerk, he was a jerk back, it ended badly. I ran into him again about three years later and we dated a little more. It ended badly again (not entirely my fault this time) and I haven't spoken to him since. No hard feelings, really. I have maintained over the years that he was really a nice guy, we were just woefully unsuited to each other and kind of idiots for not seeing that... twice.

Yesterday, in the midst of one of my "I am going to blow up the internet" moments, I was just logging off of Facebook when I noticed this guy's last name in a post by a mutual friend. I was sick to discover that My Motorcycle Guy's younger brother had just been in a horrible accident at work. Younger Brother's life was in the balance and prayers fervently requested. I monitored for the rest of the day and was both relieved to hear that he would make it, but crushed to learn that after three emergency surgeries, he would lose his leg four inches above the knee. I messaged our mutual friend and told him to tell Motorcycle hello for me and that I was praying for the whole family.

By yesterday evening, two separate friends had set up websites to raise money for Younger Brother's family. You see, he's self-employed and under-insured and has four small children and he has a long, long road to recovery ahead of him. By this morning, there were hundreds of messages from all over the world on the websites, thousands of dollars have been raised so far. There was an eloquent and moving piece written by Motorcycle about the incident, about his love for his younger brother, his gratitude for all the support, and his faith that they would all get through this. Yeah, I cried.

As I sat and stared in awe at this massive outpouring of love and prayer and financial resources for a person who found himself suddenly in need, I was humbled. So many of the messages to Younger Brother started with "I've never met you, but..." and then went on to chime in their support and encouragement. The words of my Motorcycle Guy - so sincere, so well-written, so thoroughly full of love and respect - brought tears of joy and relief. That he is a good guy, he is out there living his life, being a devoted husband and father and son and brother and living with strength and faith that just shone through his words.

I was humbled and restored. Sometimes I get so tired of people. I get tired of the constant yammering. But then when good people use the tools of social media well, I get to see that my cynicism is unwarranted. I get to witness the swelling of thousands of hearts, the giving of thousands of hands, the pouring out of rivers of encouragement and love. I get a small window into a funny little jagged piece of my past and can put it in its proper place; close that chapter with satisfaction and love. I can feel my own smallness in this ocean of goodness that quietly surrounds us. I can dissolve my petty criticism and despair in this ocean. I can let it buoy me up and fill my ears with its ringing beauty. I can look and see it stretch from horizon to horizon, endless, unspeakably vast, quiet, powerful and certain. I can remember why I love people so much.

I Hope I Never...

There was a great big cloud that filled up the Sound and stopped right at the water's edge where we stood in the sunshine.

I hope I never get used to things like that.
I hope it always surprises me how the stones on the beach are worn so smooth and how the tides lay them out like expensive landscaping, only better.
I hope I never grow tired of watching my wee girl drawn to the water as if by magnetic force.
I hope it never stops amazing me how even with a fever, she will be silenced, energized, mesmerized by the surf while she communes, picking around in the seaweed, burying her toes and watching, watching, watching while the tide rolls in.
I hope I never forget that if there are objects near a body of water, my small, burly boy will throw them in, brush his hands with satisfaction and turn to throw some more.
I hope it never ceases to amuse me how he must find the largest rock and try to lift it, how he calculates strange distances behind his eyes and asks me if we can do impossible things.
I hope my breath never stops catching over the mountains and valleys and lakes and rivers and the trees, so invincible and fragile and huge.
I hope I never lose the butterflies that swim in my tummy when we lie down to sleep under the stars and laugh into the night as the fire dies and tell each other the same jokes that no one else would understand.
I hope I am never immune to the dirt between my toes and the smoke in my hair and the magic of fresh, hot coffee in the middle of the forest.
I hope these eyes of mine never stop seeing the endless beauty, the possibility, the minutiae, the bare and open hearts, the magic, the good, the life in all that surrounds me.

The cloud stopped there on the edge of the Sound and we stood in the sunshine and we watched as the waves rolled in, unexpected and broke at our feet. Through a sightless fog, these waves just kept rolling in.

Little Girl

Today is my dad's birthday. He would have been 66. I mark the day every year because it is almost impossible for me to forget dates. Unless they are happening in the future, and then it's almost impossible for me to remember them.

I resembled my dad physically when he was alive, and our personalities were very similar in a lot of important ways. The kind of ways that enabled us to enjoy an amiable relationship and not push each other's buttons too much. One time when I was getting in very bad trouble for some indiscretion in high school, he sent my mom out of the room and he said, "A father isn't supposed to have favorites, and I don't. But I think you and I understand each other, we think alike in some ways." I've always been his little girl.

My dad and me when I was a little girl.

I think about him every day. Before he died, I used to hear people say things like that and think "Oh, how morbid." It's because I didn't really understand. I didn't understand how you can miss someone, but not be sad all the time about it. For the first year after he died, I didn't understand how anyone could miss someone and not feel like they'd been punched in the stomach. For a year I saved up most of my tears all day and then cried them into the sink as I washed the dishes after dinner. I don't really do that any more.

I was thinking about his hands today. He had big, broad hands - full of scars. They were the hands of a much younger man. My sister said she would never marry someone who didn't have strong hands. She didn't either. The last time I saw him was in a hotel room in San Antonio, Texas. He was sick. He was waiting for open heart surgery. He was going to die. I think we both knew it, but we wouldn't say it. I sat with him on the bed and he held hands with my jBird. Her tiny white hand in his big brown one. Even sick, he was tanned from working in the yard. She sat and she petted the curly red hair on his arms. Sometimes he would slip and call her by my name. He sometimes had a hard time relating to me as an adult. I was always his little girl. It drove me nuts because I'm not a little girl.

"We never talked to you kids about dying," he said. "It's nothing to be afraid of."
"I know," I said.
"Papa, will you die?" jBird asked.
"Everybody dies, baby. It's part of life. It's why you live your life well today, so the dying is all right," he said. I'm not sure if he was talking to her or to me. I could only sit and listen. I had no words. I didn't want to lie or say something ridiculous and comforting.
"I want you to know I'm not afraid to die," he said. "I want you to know that whatever happens, it's all right. I should have talked to you more about this while you were a kid. Then you wouldn't be afraid."
"I'm not afraid," I said. "You did talk to us about this. It's just hard to know how to think about it until it happens. I'm OK. I want you to focus on getting better. You and Mom can move out West. You need to be near us."
"Yeah, Papa! You can come live with us!" jBird piped up.
He laughed. He always had a marvelous laugh. "I'd love that."

The Hooligan wasn't quite two yet and he was rolling around on the bed with my mom, showing how he could count backwards from 10. We watched them play for a while, because his big old pumpkin grin is somewhat irresistible. He looks so much like my dad. We didn't talk about this dying business any more. I sat and held his hand and I could almost believe that everything would be all right.

You know, everything is all right. He died. Three days after his surgery, just as the doctors said he was getting better. I'm not angry with them. They did their best. They were surprised and grief-stricken as well. But everything is all right. Sure, I miss him. I think of him every day. I think of him at milestones. I remember his birthday. I think of him today, his birthday. Tomorrow we go and get our new house inspected. It is our first house. We will be moving to someplace my dad has never seen. He would have been out of control with excitement. He would have driven me nuts. He would have had all sorts of advice about things I already know. He would have double checked that my husband knew what he was doing and it would have infuriated us. He would have had to have been restrained by my mother from coming immediately and painting every room and digging flower beds and fixing every loose screw in the place. He would have pestered my mom to look at the pictures of it over and over. I would have been irritable and flattered and I would have known that he was like a kid when he was excited about something and that he didn't really mean to intrude.

So I think of him especially today. I'm not very sad, though. I laugh at the silly things I remember about him. I laugh at how he would have been so excited to see this next step in my life. I wonder if where he is, he can. I don't wonder about it too much, though. Because he is where he is supposed to be and I am where I am supposed to be. And because he told me not to be afraid. Because I knew he was ready to go. Because he told me it's part of life. Because he told me to live the best I can now.  He told me everything would be all right. And I believed him. Because I've always been his little girl. And because I'm not a little girl.

Links of Love

This is not a post about sausage. Although, I guess it could be.
I've been digging around in people's love lives for the last several weeks and have made some interesting discoveries. I was talking to my love and doing that thinking out loud thing that I do and I was telling him that there are about five topics about which I find it difficult to write without resorting to cliche or maudlin, sappy nonsense.

"Really? What are those?" he asked.
I ticked them off: "Love, death, parenting, coming of age, faith."
"I don't believe you," he said. "Have you ever read a story that wasn't, in some way, about one of those things?"

He's right, of course. He and his orderly, lawyerly brain are good at pinpointing things for me that I've muddled all around into a panic. He challenges me and believes in me and so when I told him about my baby idea - my little wobbly, new fawn - he said "Write it."

So, you can blame him for my muddling about in your affairs.

I've been collecting love stories and here are some that you've offered up:

Larissa at Papa is a Preacher "Because I promised myself to not shy away from writing of things I'm scared to write about... Because I want to. Deep in my gut I want to. But I will admit, I don't know how."


Michelle at Buttered Toast Rocks "It's the story of two kids who felt older than their years, who came together like perfect connecting puzzle pieces, who knew that to say yes to this big adventure was a forever kind of deal."


Sleepy Joe at The Life and Writings of Sleepy Joe "Meeting my other half was not the happiest time of my life. I was 8, my father was ill and we had just moved to a bungalow because of his mobility issues..."


Tara at Faith In Ambiguity "My mind settles on the second boyfriend, the one who ended up with a part of my soul in his back pocket forever."


Masked Mom at Masked Mom "How could I have thought, even for a moment, even under the duress of there's nothing to be done about it in any case, that our renewed contact resolved things in any permanent way?" [I might add that this is only a teaser of a post that is yet to come, so stay tuned.]


Word Nerd at Word Nerd Speaks "Then there was the guy that all of my friends thought I would marry. Thought I should marry. The first serious guy. He was nice looking, stable, educated, and came from a good bit of money. If I was a checklist sort of girl, he’d have scored very well. The thing was, I didn’t love him."


The M-Half of the M-n-J Show  "Knowing it could never last, but that maybe it would if we worked hard enough. If we paid enough attention, if we learned the right words, took the right classes, and tried hard enough, maybe it would last."


Lucy at The Trans-Gentle Wife writes a whole blog about her love story and the twists and turns it has taken. "We tried on ruby rings surrounded by diamonds. Something not traditional. Something with deep quality that is impossible to break. Something still simple. Something perfect."


Jane in Her Infinite Wisdom writes of a first love found: " It was the next weekend Andy and I would...I don't even know what. Talk late into the night and remember only later that other people were in the room with us...but only as a memory...an intellectual exercise." And then lost and lost again: "And then? Then I got mad. Madder than maybe I've ever been with him. I wanted to yell and scream at him...maybe even kick his shins for being such a damn dunce! And also for being dead. I can't seem to forgive him for that."


There are more. Infinitely more. If you peruse your favorite blogs, you'll find love stories of every description. If you look around, you'll see them: in your own life, walking down the street, in your families, in your neighborhoods, churches, workplaces, underpasses, back pockets, everywhere. Love manifests itself, is the basic fabric of our lives, will not be contained by the heart-shaped boxes in which our culture tries to place it. 


Everyone has a love story to tell. Thank you for sharing yours with me.

Derailed

You should have seen my to-do list this morning. It was epic. It rhymed in spots and it was a monument to ambition. But then there was this house...

I know, you're tired of it. I'm tired of it. Derailed. Drop everything, jump and run, feed the Hooligan a hot dog in the car. He gets to sit and eat a giant hot dog and read Calvin and Hobbes instead of cleaning up his junk. Best day ever for him. That's OK, though. It's all OK.

It has to be.

I suppose that I could whine and complain a bit. Wah. Things didn't go as I'd planned today. Wah. I have the luxury of a flexible schedule. Wah. My husband wants to buy me a house. Wah.

Seriously. Starving kids. Not just in Africa, in my city. I'll keep my guffing on the down low.

So, my Love Train got derailed. There were checks to write and paperwork to gather and cuticles to bite and Hooligans to feed and one thing led to another and I was just now standing in my kitchen making Muddy Buddies feeling like perhaps there was something else I should be doing. Is there really ever anything better to do than make Muddy Buddies? I think not. Not in the grand scheme of things.

But then this song popped into my head:

And I was transported to Michigan Avenue in Chicago about ten years ago. We'd gone on a weekender with some dear friends of ours and we were, of course, shopping. This song burst out of one of the store fronts and Alain started it.

I know it was him because it was so surprising.

He was usually so proper and French and intellectual and he suddenly clapped his hands, raised them over his head and started to dance down Michigan Avenue... people all over the world... and then Edward scooped me up and we followed ... join hands... arms aloft, beckoning the Chief Lou, who executed just about the finest Water Sprinkler you've ever seen on a Saturday afternoon... start a Love Train.

We danced in our motley parade of four amid tourists, amid shoppers, amid families.
Just a few steps of exuberance down the street. Love train.

Thirty seconds on a sunny afternoon amid a weekend away with friends, amid the chaos of a time full of stress at work and school, amid a whole lifetime of memories.
Thirty seconds of pure abandon that will likely stick with me forever.

We all moved on from there. We finished our shopping, we went back home.
They moved to California and eventually split up.
We moved on to law school and children and on and on.

All of us are always moving on. That's the nature of things, isn't it?
I could whine and complain about that, too, I suppose.
But the idea of standing in my home, getting ready to move on again, making Muddy Buddies and suddenly feeling that train again.
This idea sustains me sometimes.

The idea that these golden moments come and go, like the flash of sunlight on a river.
The river keeps moving, but it carries the sunlight with it. I don't want to be a stick in the mud of this river. So I'll move with the currents, see where it takes me, bask in the sunlight when it comes.
 I'll get swept into a brief dance and then go back to work.
It's all part of the same thing.

This is my Love Train.
This moving, this chugging forward.
 The dancing, the holding hands.
The dropping everything and running.
The hot dog in the car and the Calvin and Hobbes.
The making of Muddy Buddies and the signing of large checks.
The memories and the future.

Let it ride, let it ride, let it ride, let it ride.

Some Light Housekeeping: Have Book, Will Travel

All right, my lovers. Remember when I said I was working on a project and some of you wrote wonderful things about your first loves and some others of you said you wanted to and I haven't heard from you yet? Well, I'm planning to do a whole link up deal on Monday (or let's call it Tuesday, shall we?) of next week, so you still have time if you wanna.

I have so very much enjoyed reading the posts people have sent me so far. I love a good love story. I love a sad love story. I love a gross love story too, sometimes. I am working on a project that is combining all of these things. Do you know anyone who has a love story to tell? One that you love to hear? Do you think they would like to be interviewed? Would you like to be interviewed? Let me know.

Check out the author's website here.

Speaking of love stories... Jane in Her Infinite Wisdom has been so kind as to share some love in the form of a book with me. Remember that, folks? Creative is a Verb. 


[This is a small digression: as this book has been lying about the house, jBird has been fascinated by it. She is also quite concerned that I am reading fallacious material when she's not supervising me. "Mom. Creative is not a verb." She knows this because she is studying it in second grade. So, either her teacher has misinformed her, or I have. Hmm. I have had to explain the notion behind the title and she grooves it; she really does. But this flexibility of rules is unsettling to her straightforward little soul.]

Anyway, the book came to Jane from Melanie at Is This The Middle, and Jane decided to turn it into a travelling bit of love. I have been the custodian of this fine book for far too long now and it's time for it to have a new home, to provide someone else some new inspiration. It's colorful and beautiful and chock-full of encouragement and gentle kicks in the pants.

Here's how we play: You leave me a comment here if you want a stab at the book. I will roll the dice and see who wins (this will be a totally random kind of thing like having a monkey draw a number out of a hat or something.) I'll let you know who the big winner is and send this book on its merry way. If you are the winner, you are under no obligation whatsoever to FedEx me chips and queso or new jeans. You only have to agree to send it on to another person when you are done. Sound like fun? Of course it does.

Also, if you should notice a distinct change in tone and feel around here this weekend, it's because I will be featuring a guest post by the lovely Tonya Vrba, who contacted me and said she'd like to guest post for me. Hers is an article about her view of the changing nature of relationships and what that does to traditional values. I thought that sort of  fit with the whole love thing we have going on here and goodness knows, I get tired of the sound of my own voice.

There are some things blooming with the spring, folks, and they are causing more than seasonal allergies. Drop your comments below, tell me about your day. Do you want to win a book? If you've already won one, you can comment anyway and tell me not to include you in the fun and games. Be well and adore your lives, folks.

Brighter Than The Sun

"Tonight, we are young. We can set the world on fire. We can burn brighter than the sun."

Driving home tonight in the setting sun. Full of tandoori chicken and saag paneer and sunshine and all the good things this life holds, we chatted quietly in the front seat while the monkeys thumb wrestled in the back. The radio played as a backdrop, mostly ignored.

And then we heard a steady, catchy beat. We are not the hippest of cats, not caught up on the latest of everything new. What is this? we wondered and listened on.

The song, as a whole, had little to do with our lives or our loves. But there in the hook, it carried us over its bridge and we listened. Somehow in the fading springtime light, in the center of a stranger's voice, we found a spot we've been forever. We found the space where it is us and we are together and that is all that matters.

The last few years have been hard. The last few weeks have been full of stress. It's so easy to lose the beat of things that matter. The heartbeat of your love. The rhythm of the life you've built together. And sometimes, in a moment of doing nothing much important at all, it comes back. You're in the place you vowed you'd always be. By your true love's side, holding hands while he drives, and discovering new music together.

"Tonight," we sang, "we are young."
"We can set the world on fire.
We can burn brighter
than the sun."

Chocolate: A True Story

Once upon a time in the land that social consciousness forgot, there was an aqua blue Chevy Beretta. It carried them on long drives fueled by conversation and Venti coffees and mom's gas card. They talked about a future when there would be things like vintage homes tastefully renovated, a coffee shop with cats, and books and books and books. They were a complete unit and they and their turquoise V-6 bullet of dreams could go anywhere.

They stopped at a RiteAid and like the map with the big, black X, it was full of treasure. Beautifully packaged boxes of sweetness, two days past their prime and waiting for them there. The red cellophane, like lipstick, promised such soft and delicious delights within. Unable to resist the scarlet sirens that called like emergency, they bought the lot of them: piles of hearts and plastic flowers, I love you's in fancy script; shining with possibility and promise. The store had overstocked on love and they were the beneficiaries, purchasing this neglect at thirty cents on the dollar.

They bundled back into the car, breathless and laughing; unbelieving of their good fortune. Best to make a quick getaway before someone noticed the error and recalled such bounty. He drove while she ripped at the stubborn plastic with the shaking, impatient fingers of a lover. And finally opening that heart, she delved and reveled - the intoxicating smell, the neat and tidy rows of the beautiful morsels each in their own frilly paper skirts. Where to begin? Greedily, at random she grabbed the first with a reckless abandon and shoved it in his mouth. She watched as he chewed, waiting for the relief of satiation to soften his features.

"What was that?!" he choked, and spat it out his open window. "I think it was filled with dish soap!" Horrified, she grabbed her own and took a bite. "Blech! This one is cough syrup!" The garish, gooey center stared back at her with its wicked teeth-mark grin. It mocked her with its indecency and frightened, she threw it out the window. "Let's try another one," she said and went back in for more.

Photo credit

They sped the afternoon away through hill country and subdivisions alike, partaking of this strange sacrament. A bite, a chew, a judgement, a toss. Their fingers and mouths were sticky with disappointment and chewy, artificially flavored bites of love. Their heads were spinning with cloying sweetness and false promises. Yet still they tasted and licked and sniffed and hoped. This one will be better, they thought. This will be the one that changes the rest of what went before. Sick with trial and error, they worked their way through boxes and boxes of misbegotten gain. The red became leering and cheap, no longer an enticement, but a tiresome bore, motions to go through to inevitably reach that empty discouragement of dashed hopes.

Finally they parked, ill and afraid that taste would never go away. They sat amid the destruction of wrappers and the heart boxes all opened now, their insides prodded and shoved aside, revolting, distasteful. They sat and they laughed. They laughed until the tears came and they laughed some more. The tears for the miles of road with jettisoned promise that lay behind them. The bites and bites and bites of all those little loves, tasted and discarded, now melting in the gravel on the side of the road, forgotten or collected by birds. They laughed because now it was just them and the wreckage of a failed experiment - all those paper candy box hearts. They laughed and they promised never to believe that lie again. They laughed and she kissed him, tasting of coffee and all that had gone before.

One Love

He wasn't the first, nor was he the worst. He certainly wasn't the last.
He just... was.
He was neither good looking, nor smart. He was a tedious and dull conversationalist. He didn't have any passions, to speak of. He didn't believe anything. He wasn't a very hard worker, but he wasn't spectacularly lazy, either. He wasn't particularly good-hearted, but he wasn't evil. He didn't seek any kind of greater good; he didn't really seek anything at all.
He just kind of... was.

He was a friend of friends. We ran loosely in the same circles. He was always just kind of... there. He wasn't particularly outgoing or funny. In fact, the only reason I noticed him at all was because I found him vaguely repellent. He had bad skin. Not acne, per se. Not the sort of grotesque acne that, when outgrown, would give him a certain pockmarked ruggedness. He just had random pustules. Mammoth whiteheads in odd places that would stay around for days. I couldn't talk to him without wanting to reach out and pop them. His chin was minimal and it seemed like all of his teeth grew in on top of each other right in the front. He was a little bit shorter than I am, and a little bit pigeon-toed. He laughed at his own jokes and did Beavis and Butt-Head impersonations. We had nothing in common. Except Bob Marley. We dated for six months.

He bought me a One Love bumper sticker for my car, which pretty much guaranteed my getting pulled over all the time. He said we had that One Love. That universal, all encompassing, gather up the world in a happy ganja haze kind of love. I nodded and averted my eyes. I am not a Rastafarian, but I do understand One Love. It's the kind of love that sees a boy whose parents are in the midst of a messy divorce, whose lifelong friend and older brother-figure is dying of AIDS. A boy who dropped out of college because it was just too hard and it made no sense to him. A boy who loved a girl who was maddening and foreign to him. A boy who was trying to be a man and had no idea how. A boy whose heart had been broken by people he loved the most; a boy who needed love. It's the kind of love that sees through the pimples and the pigeon toes and commits to six months of excruciating boredom and squalor because she wants to help this boy.

But people are not puppies or kittens. They cannot be gathered and cared for and fed and then released back into the wilds of their own lives. I mistook my compassion for humanity in general for commitment to this one particular person. For six months he tried so hard to be someone he wasn't, could never be, for me. He hurled himself against the wall of my expectations over and over, always coming up short. Even worse, I degraded him with my loving efforts: I paid his rent, I gave him rides to work when his own car got repossessed, I tried to dress him and feed him and convince him to read. I didn't let him be who he was, find his own way, make his own mistakes because I was so intent on improving him. I am ashamed by the sheer hubris of this notion as I write.

I was young, inexperienced, reeling from my own broken heart. Rather than face my own mess, I went about trying to keep someone else's house. In my effort to hide from myself, I coated my intentions with love, with generosity, with compassion. When he asked me to marry him, I almost threw up. I told him no, that couldn't possibly happen. When he sobbed and said "Where am I supposed to go?" the ornate Emperor's clothing I had constructed fell away. I stood there in my naked cruelty and had no answer for him. He wasn't an intellectual, but even he could see that I had never really loved him. I was in love with the idea of transformation. I was in love with myself. I had been using him for half a year to tell me the things I didn't believe about myself: that I was beautiful, that I was good, that I was lovable, that I was loving. I told myself I was helping him.

I shared this story with a friend who said I made my ex-boyfriend sound pathetic. "I think you should talk more about his good qualities, in more detail. The way you've described him, nobody would want to date or be him." I didn't disagree with this critique. In fact, I spent several hours trying to think of good qualities to balance out the portrait I'd painted. I couldn't think of a single one. Not because they weren't there, but because I had never bothered to see them. I spent six months of my life in a relationship with someone I found repellent, someone I didn't see except for his flaws. I spent six months of my life looking into the mirror his adoration held up for me, admiring nothing but my own warped reflection. I never looked around the jagged edges of myself to see the person who stood before me. No, he was not the pathetic one in our scenario.

He moved across the country after we broke up. I have no idea what happened to him. I haven't thought about him in years. As I remember him now, this half a person I dated but never really knew, I wish him well. I hope he found someone who, unlike me, treated him well. Someone who appreciates him for who he is. I hope that he continued to believe what we used to sing along with Bob Marley: "Every little thing will be all right."

She's Ba-ack!

Didja miss me?
I doubt it, with all of these wonderful guest posts to read. I am having such a good time catching up on the five-day love-in that has taken place here on the Periphery. What do you all need me for?! This is just so fantastic.

I'm waterlogged and I'm exhausted in the best sort of way, so I will leave you with a few of my favorite things from the last few days:

I love that I got to drink all of my coffee from paper cups.

I love how our car turned into a shuttle of us. Just a pod of the people I love best, piled in with snacks and books and crayons and knitting and lots of music.

I love how everything disappeared except hanging out, celebrating each other and having fun.

I love how much people watching I got to do. People are so appalling and strange and wonderful. All these people I got to gawk at, see their tattoos, watch them interact with their families, eat their dinner, drink their coffee, fight and play and get sick and just be in all of their glory.

I love the fact that I got to eat not one, but two pot roast sandwiches in the last two days.

I love that I had to talk the Chief Lou out of buying me a T-shirt that said "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner" at a roadside cafe (although I kind of wish I hadn't.)

I love coming home, taking a shower to wash of the gas station bathrooms, putting on clean jammies and curling up on my own couch.

G'night all. And until next time... winner winner chicken dinner!

Guest Post: "Will You Trash My Vibrator?" and Other Secret Pre-Mortem Pacts With Friends

OK folks, I have left the planet. For the next few days you will be treated to a parade of creative talent from some of my dear, patient, talented readers. The Grand Marshall of this parade is Red Dirt Kelly and this beautiful, brave piece. Thanks so much Kelly for all you do!

 The last time I visited my comrade Cathy’s dying friend in the hospital, we talked about angels. “Cathy” was also the dying friend’s name which made for some confusing conversations in the ICU unit.

The dying Cathy looked very much like Susan Sarandon. She rested her head on the hospital pillow and toyed with the IV entry area on her arm while she whispered that she believed an angel had visited her on an Indian Reservation in New Mexico to deliver the message that she was ill. Her arm was hard to look at, having turned approximately half purple by that point.

In my mind, the warm sunlight streaming through the window lighting up her auburn hair was the Light, and the disease turning her arm…and the rest of her body purple…was the Dark. But the Light won when she breathed her last breath because the dying Cathy finally smiled and the tension left her face. She could rest now.

But my friend Cathy was a different story. That night she got drunk and I sat in her living room listening to her repeat stories about their friendship over and over. At one point, I found some rollers in her bathroom, brought them into the living room and begin putting them in my hair as a painfully weak way to cause laughter and break the sadness.

Needing to walk around at some point, we picked up a second bottle of wine and crossed the street, knocking on the door of a female Methodist minister who had a labyrinth in her back yard. We all three laughed when she answered the door with rollers in her hair. The three of us, rollers dangling at all angles from our hair and clothed in our bathrobes and slippers, began to walk through the labyrinth in her back yard, singing drinking songs. The minister and I watched our grieving Cathy as her sadness gushed forth well into the morning hours.

I thought about that night and my undone friend for three days. I was riveted by her ability to announce her utter unraveling in front of the two of us.

Had I ever openly wailed and shown my soft underbelly and pain so plainly to another human being? Even before I finished articulating that question to myself in my head, I knew the answer was: I have not.

The answer was still rolling around in the soul-space of my brain like an echo around canyon walls when my phone rang. It was my grieving friend and she needed help clearing out the house of the deceased.

So I helped her in this task, all the while observing her lingering hesitation over every object with some degree of meaning attached. I was in the middle of observing her decide which of the fifty potted plants to keep when she said, “Can we go get dinner? I need an emotional break.”

Once again, she had exposed her humanity by telling me she was at the limit of her “feeling” capacity, brought on by the process of sorting her dead friend’s belongings. And for the record, vulnerability does indeed breed vulnerability. Each time my friend opened her soul to me, I felt more like I could open mine to her.

So there we were, see, sitting across from each other at a restaurant table spread with heavy cream and butter pasta, grappling with the pieces of our lives which were floating in the air around us. Somewhere around my head “my own thoughts about death” drifted by, close to my speech center. It was being levitated by my growing trust toward my dinner mate.

So I blurted, “If my husband and I die simultaneously, will you PLEASE trash my vibrator? Cathy, I can’t let anyone find our vibrator when they’re cleaning out our ‘death things.’”

Her expression was a classic double take followed by a grandiose belly laugh.

“Oh my stars, yes!!” she replied.

“Okay, you HAVE to remember this…it’s in the bottom center drawer in his dresser, behind the socks. Will you please remember??” I was intensely ensuring that the entire pact would indeed be managed.

“Yes…” she started. “Got it. Bottom center drawer, behind the socks…” Her face was cracked with a full-blown smile and her eyes danced mischievously. “And will you PLEASE come into the funeral home when they’re preparing my body and pluck ALL the fuckwit hairs growing from my chin? I hate my chin hairs and would be SO mortified if they were sticking out of my face when people viewed my body!!”

“Absolutely,” I replied. “I. Am. IN. I will pluck your chin hairs. Happy to do it.” I felt better because I now also had a post-mortem task to contribute to the dignity of my own friend’s future death.

The conversation took a hairpin curve and by the time we walked out of the restaurant, we had talked about how body fat could be disguised in caskets, how to manage crazy family members in the funeral audience and what to make sure our children knew should they falter from time to time after we died.

In other words, we managed all of our personal anxieties about dignity and death over pasta, wine and the essence of our dead friend’s memory floating about in the restaurant air.

The bits and pieces of emotional processing still remaining around our table – buoyed by our own insecurities, were slowly descending to the floor when we left. They did not follow us. Rather, they were swept up with the bread crumbs by the wait staff after closing that night. We were finished with them. For now.

That particular dinner conversation happened three years ago. I still update her on any geographical change in “the location” of the vibrator. And, she’s sent me no less than two pair of excellent quality tweezers… “in case I’m without a pair should she kick the bucket.”

Our promises are intact, as is now our posthumous dignity.

Or, at least the pieces that about which we are most concerned.