Living True

Somehow I’d forgotten the particular shade of blue that is sky. That blue that defies duplication. The blue that speaks the word “yonder”, by inviting eyes to see further.

Today, I saw it, and knew the wonder.

I’ve missed the caress of wind in my hair. The feeling of freedom. A space in time whose only accompaniment is the dull roar of the engine in front of me, competing with wind whipping through an open window.

Today, I felt it, and appreciated the gift.

It’s been a while since I’ve really looked into a loved one’s eyes as she spoke, or shared air, or a fork. I’ve missed the abandon of shucking my shoes under the table before resting my heels on the booth beside her. “That’s a lovely shade of blue on your toenails, honey. It looks just like you.”

Today I took the time.

Today I saw sky, and felt wind. I memorized the eyes of a friend, and held my daughter close for no reason. I stretched out, barefooted, in a booth at a restaurant and laughed loudly, with abandon.

Today, I knew the gifts of those who truly live.

From First to Last

I’ve had occasion, lately, to consider my “firsts”; my first kiss, my first sleep-over, my first job…

Days after completing the survey, I find myself still considering. While applying make-up, my first pair of boots walk through my mind. They were black patent leather, and the sound of those heels on institutional tile transformed me from a twelve year-old, angst-ridden seventh-grader into a confident, edgy, prepubescent force. While driving to work, I hear the sound of horses’ hooves on pavement as I relive my first carriage ride. It was mid-afternoon. We were in Chattanooga, on streets packed with tourists. But, the fact of him beside me dimmed the sun, stilled the crowd, and isolated our love to a single point in the middle of a busy thoroughfare wherein we were the only two souls that mattered.

I wish I’d appreciated my “firsts” more. I wish someone had reminded me, before I turned back to make sure no one was watching through a front window, that I would be allowed just one first time to surrender to Jimmy’s embrace. I wish someone had been there to whisper in my ear, “This will be your only first date.” It would have been helpful if, before placing her into my arms for the first time, the nurse had looked at me knowingly as she said, “This is your first, and only, daughter.”

I’ve reached the age when thinking of “firsts” leads, naturally, to consideration of a growing number of “lasts”. I’ve birthed all the children I will ever bear. I will never again feel the sweet pull of infant lips upon my breast, or feel the rush of emotion in realizing the miracle inherent in our relationship.

Since the age of twenty-one, sex has been a repetitive act. And, while each encounter offers a new and wonderful experience, nothing is like the first time; the virgin time. As synthetic fibers scratched against my bare back, I wish I’d had the wisdom to consider; is this the right place, the right time, the right man? Are you ready to be a mother?

What if, before you first stepped onto your college campus, a guide stopped you, taking you by the arms? “Stop!”, he might have said. “Stop, and look around. This is the only first time you will walk upon the ground that will change your life. Your next step will forge your destiny. The decisions you make now will determine your life course, because tomorrow will be your second time.”

I enjoyed driving my first car, but might I have enjoyed it more if I knew that I’d never see another one like it? Would I have relished the feeling of pumping the clutch, and finding the gears, if I knew I’d never feel that again?

I will never again reap the harvest from my first garden. I can never again get my first perfect score in English, or Math, or Spanish, or bowling. I have already baked my first birthday cake.

I know there are more “firsts” ahead of me; my first stress test, my first colonoscopy, my first AARP card. And, I hope for more; my first published book, my first trip overseas, my first healthy dill plant. I can’t grow dill. I’ve tried, and tried.

One day, I know I’m going to find just the right spot…

Traditions in Transition

My family’s Easter traditions became lost in the cry of gulls over pristine white sand. My sister travels to Destin to spend the holiday with my father who, understandably, welcomes the opportunity to visit without travel. Often, as finances allow, one or more of us join them. More often, we do not.

For years, my older children traveled the seventy-five miles between my house and theirs to participate in smaller scale celebrations. This year, my daughter is grateful to have the extra hours at work, and after putting in eighteen hour days for two consecutive weeks, my son is looking forward to an afternoon spent resting on a riverbank, watching the water ripple around his fishing line.

I assembled my final Easter basket last night and felt the finality. The look of wonder left Shane’s eyes years ago, but I’ve continued the ruse, for both our sakes. I admit to feeling just a little ridiculous as I fluffed plastic grass and poured jelly beans into plastic, egg-shaped baseballs. Next year I’ll limit myself to a nice card, and maybe a bag of chocolate-peanut butter eggs.

We’re not a particularly religious family. While my father could be called a religious scholar, given the hours he has spent reading various religious doctrines, only one of his four daughters attends church regularly. I’ve decided that this lack of structured piety is partly to blame for our lack of celebration.

As a child, Easter meant a new dress and a fine white purse to match my shiny, new, white shoes which I would wear only to church. It meant traveling across town to share dinner with a family of friends from Chicago, who marked the occasion by molding butter into the shapes of lambs and crosses. Our Easter baskets were always grandiose things; large and round they were stuffed with chocolate, before being wrapped in pastel-colored cellophane, cinched with matching ribbon. Easter morning found four of them, arranged in a grand display upon the kitchen table. The trick was to slide your hand into the flap created by the cellophane in order to pilfer a peep before Mom and Dad woke up.

By the time my children were born, Easter dinner had become a strictly family affair. Easter egg hunts were added to the celebration, meaning my children usually had at least two opportunities to load their baskets. The hunt at my parent’s house was always conducted outside, while I occasionally chose to nestle my children’s loot against window sills, behind curtains, under a lamp, or between two books on a bookshelf. The children seemed to prefer the indoor hunts. I like to think they enjoyed the intimacy.

“What are we going to do today, Mom?” Shane’s question left me wanting. We settled on a trip to the park. He and his Dad will play pitch and catch, while I walk the dog around the track. It should be a good day for it. The weather is beautiful. Later, we’ll cook out.

But I can’t help wishing there was something more…

Same As It Ever Was

“I’m a table sitter, just like my Mother.”

Knowing she wouldn’t be joining me allowed me the freedom to stretch out on her well-worn sofa.

Hallie eased herself into her usual spot next to a blinded window. A heavy sigh accompanied the release of her weight onto a vinyl captain’s chair, and the years washed away in my anticipation of her next move. Both hands went to her head, grasping at gossamer wisps which had rudely escaped the band she’d swept them into that morning. Another sigh and her hands went to the tabletop. Her lips pursed as her hands moved about the table, straightening a pencil against the edge of a writing tablet, carefully lining up book spines along their mitered corners, and touching each of three small stacks of paper.

As she took assurance in the precision of her surroundings I remembered rows of pencils, sorted by color and length, lying alongside a notebook in the laboratory where she worked. On quiet days, and sometimes just during a lull, I took particular delight in flicking one end of the pencil closest to me and watching the others careen like pick-up-sticks. She feigned disgust, but I understood the satisfaction she took in realigning her environment.

As she sighed, and sorted, and sorted, and sighed, I searched her face for change. Other than a slight gravitational pull around the corners of her mouth, there was none. Despite her claim of green, her eyes had always been of indeterminate color. They snapped just as they always had, behind eyeglasses whose shape demanded the word “spectacles”. The freckles that had always danced across her cream-colored skin were just where I’d left them, and her small, colorless mouth pursed between spurts of speech enriched with invectives.

“Remind me to give you a blow job later!”

It was the fall of 1992, the year the Braves won the pennant. Both of us had followed the Braves throughout the season. We knew stats. We referred to the players in such a way as to suggest we might have had them over to dinner the night before, and each of us had our favorites. John Smoltz was mine. We both agreed he bore an eerie resemblance to my wayward husband, who Hallie described as “poetic looking”. Hallie appreciated the talents of the wiry Otis Nixon and the second baseman, who she referred to as “Little Lemke”.

Sometime over the course of the Championship series, we had begun to watch the games together, by telephone; she ensconced inside her cozy duplex less than ten miles away from my little farmhouse, filled by the sounds of soundly sleeping children. The call usually came sometime after the seventh-inning-stretch.

It was the bottom of the ninth, and the Pirates were up two to zip. In an era free of steroid controversy, we thought nothing peculiar about the guns on Ron Gant, as he took the plate with the bases loaded. He sacrificed, making the score two to one. Brian Hunter popped up, leaving us with scant hope as a little-known pinch-hitter, named Francisco Cabrera, loped towards the plate. He singled, scoring David Justice, and an oft-traded, unlikely hero named Sid Bream. As Sid slid into home, securing the pennant, Hallie shouted her reminder into the receiver. I remember collapsing with laughter, and would recall little else about that game, or the ensuing World Series.

“I thought you were bringing Shane!”

Hallie stood on the steps leading to her front door.

“This can’t be Shane! Shane’s just a little guy! Who is this tall boy you brought with you?”

Color seeped into Shane’s cheeks as he shut the car door and walked, sheepishly, in the direction of my friend.

“Hi, Aunt Hallie.”, he said into his chest.

He walked, obligatorily, into her waiting arms and hugged her back. There was less than two inches difference in their height.

Gathering the few things I needed before leaving in search of a hotel room, I left the car and replaced Shane’s body with mine. My arms embraced her shoulders as hers encircled my waist. Time had carved precious inches from her already diminutive stature.

“Come in, honey.” She always calls me “honey”. “Be careful with that door. I need to fix the latch.”

Our love for each other spans twenty years, one birth, two marriages, two divorces, and the deaths of two children, both our mothers, and her beloved Aunt Flo. As I study her face for change, I realize mine is the one that is different. I am where she was when I left her to start over, again. Her changing was done. Mine had just begun. I shifted against the soft fabric of the sofa I rested upon, uncomfortable with the knowledge.

“I see you’ve changed your hair.” She made no effort to hide the disdain in her voice. “You’re wearing it like everyone else; like you haven’t combed it in days.” Ill health forced another sigh. “I don’t know why you want to do that. You have such nice hair. I liked it when you flipped it back.”

The fingers of her left hand weaved themselves into my hair.

“Oh, it’s very soft. It doesn’t look soft. It looks hard, but it’s very soft…just like it always was.”

And, it is…just like it always was.

“You’re my touchstone…”

Service Sector Sagacity

Our trip was unexpected, unplanned, and unbudgeted, which helps to explain my presence in the drive-thru line at McDonald’s at 11:47 a.m. We rolled to a stop in front of a daunting menu of gastronomic atrocities too crowded to read. I allowed my eleven-year-old to order for both of us.

“Please drive around to the first window.”

A heavy-set girl with long brown hair manned the register, behind a small glass door that seemingly opened and closed of its own accord. I hit the mute button on the stereo as she logged another order. She turned in our direction, and the door opened as she extended her hand, palm up. I laid several bills inside with a smile that went unnoticed as she stashed them before collecting my change while focusing, intently, on the LED display of the register. Her left hand extended again, dropping my change while her right hand hit a button on her head set, and I rolled to the second window.

A hundred miles or so later, my cup was empty, but my bladder wasn’t. I searched large, green, roadside signs for another iconic fast-food restaurant that would offer relief for both. As I rolled into the Krystal’s parking lot, my son sat forward on his seat.

“Are we going to eat again?” Shane’s voice sounded exactly like you would expect it to sound, given his usual diet of whole grains, fish, and fruit.

“No, honey. Just the bathroom and a drink!”

As I entered the bathroom, I was accosted by an odor that said “Turn back!” in a deep, unnerving voice. Shaking it off, I pushed open the painted metal door, expecting the worst. I considered myself lucky in not uncovering the source of the odor and attended to the matter at hand, post-haste. I rinsed my hands hurriedly, and opened the door with my elbow. Shane was waiting outside.

The counter was clear of customers, allowing us to stand, unimpeded, in front of the register. A large woman, whose hairstyle must have cost at least a day’s pay, approached from the back of the restaurant throwing one hand in the direction of another woman as her eyes glazed mine.

“You got customers.”, she said as she walked by, carrying a sheaf of paper cups.

The woman she addressed stood at the other end of the counter, bent at the middle, her face just inches above a laminated paper.

“You really got her worried ‘bout that schedule!”, the female voice came, complete with laughter, from the grill area.

A painfully thin, uniformed young man approached from the dining area.

“Whatchew doin’?” He mimicked her posture so that their visored heads met.

Shane and I stood with necks arched; studying a menu we had no intention of ordering from, until a man wearing a white shirt that said “I Am The Manager” approached, carrying a bundle of bags.

“Can I take your order?” I was relieved to hear self-consciousness in his voice.

Sunlight did nothing to enhance the pallor present on my friend’s skin as we sat around her picnic table. We sipped, and laughed, and talked, and laughed. The telephone rang, and she answered it. I made my decision while she assured our friend I had made the trip safely.

As she pressed “End”, I eased myself off the weathered, wooden bench.

“We’re going to get a room.”

She argued despite my tone of finality.

“It’s just two miles away….” I ended the conversation.

I hit the button, locking my son safely inside the car before walking towards the lobby. A blonde woman who hadn’t yet accepted the reality of her morbidity manned the desk.

Her expression never changed as she managed, “You want a room?”

I leaned both arms on the desk as she typed, wondering if she knew that the boxed-blonde curtain hanging down either side of her haggard face failed to hide the collection of chins the years had provided her.

Tiny cowbells rang, and we both turned. Shane entered, mute. He approached a display of brochures while I felt validation.

“How old is the child?”

“Eleven.”

Several minutes and colorful invectives later, I tapped Shane’s shoulder and left with credit card-shaped “keys”.

“Mom?” I pulled my sweatshirt closed as we walked against a cool breeze.

“Yes.” Shane hurried to catch up to my stride.

“Aren’t there a lot of people looking for jobs?”

“Yes.”, I answered, not sure where he was going.

“Then why does everybody act like they hate their job? Don’t they know they’re lucky to have one?”

From the mouths of babes…