danced with girls...

I had just asked for a divorce before my darling J turned 21. No, not my child, one of my student workers with whom I had become good friends. I took her out to the Art Bar downtown where our friend DJ Vella spun old eighties on Saturday night and he got us in free. When doubleJ and I went dancing it was always an odd group. Me the elder by umpteen years, J, any one or two of her girlfriends that I always thought of as kittens because they seemed so untouched though I knew their lives had hardened much as mine. There was also always a young man in tow. I don’t think the same one went twice actually, but they were fun, no moves to be made, just out for the night. Especially the Russian, Boris, he was the best fun to dance on, to say vodka every time he did, mimicking his slur. They were J’s boys, they flocked to her like a moth to a flame as did I. That winter on until she graduated the following May we hung out off and on. She stayed with me a month before moving to Cali and I helped her buy her first new car. I miss her, she’s my little sis where I never had one and I’m her older sis in the same way. We email and write, but it’s not the same thing as getting a call at 11:30 at night to go dancing, not the same as getting drunk and playing DDR…drunk enough we murmured silly things about boys in Japanese because we suddenly couldn’t remember English. It’s not the same as making sure she had enough to eat or hugging innocently on the couch, saying I love you and meaning just that and nothing more. That J, she is a force of nature. Knowing her story, I see my strength in her quiet beauty. It shines unfalteringly. When I think of that time while my divorce was pending I will always think of it in innocence smiles. I will think of it as the time when I danced with girls.

donna...

I am all that
Beautiful when I cry
It’s a soul deep thing
From knowing
Such loss few
Can stir to thought.

I was lovin’ you
Like a child
In all innocence
Everywhere you went
My true friend…

It’s ok
Everyone is
Always leaving me

Anyway…

They retreat into vagaries
And sweet memories

I can only love them true
When I have them
As I love you…

turn around bright eyes...

Plain grilled cheese and mayonnaise, sliced tomatoes with corned beef hash, left over rice the next day with milk and sugar, sitting on the front porch drinking ice tea late into the sunset. From my roots I may have found some form of gentility and grace and even discovered I like fine things as well. But yes, I am still that girl grown in the seventies when times were not always so good and we would wait in line for gas, when the city had more country close by and there were no pit stops on the highway, you drove straight through. I may have learned proper diction and poise, but that is only my southern self, my southern voice, smooth and languid, sensual and pleasing to even my own ears. That I have come into my own is a surprising thing and one in which I revel. Knowing myself so completely is what allows me to bring a sense of awe to everyday, to laugh in my giggle-box way, and to face each day bright-eyed with hope.

on death...

Flash…
Maybe we have come too close, my crew and I? I cannot say. I only know they saw me through death and divorce; JD through two deaths and the daily struggles of marriage; X through health struggles; JS through the stalking by weird ex-boyfriends of a girl he dated and finally to his wedding of another. It may not be professional to hug and cry at work but we acknowledge we are only human, both frail and strong. If I walk in the office and say I need a hug, six arms surround me. If I see tears forming when passing by, I know to stop and lend a shoulder or provoke a smile.

And when the day is gay, we laugh it up, no holds barred and HR be-damned. JS calls “witness” and I say “oh no, no witness here”. And when I come in grinning, JD says, “don’t you look like the cat that swallowed the canary?” and I say “um yes, I swallowed the canary." Laughing like school girls, JD old enough to be my grandmother in years, young enough to be my sister in her wry wit.

Grief and joy have no time frame; emotions do not understand an 8-5 work day. Sometimes they hit like a ton of bricks and sometimes in gentle smiles. In this life I can truly say I am human, I am a woman and I have not been able to conform to the depths that some desire. In breaking norms and breaking molds, someday I can die knowing I lived in honesty and truth to myself.

Flash…
The man in the back was tall, rail thin, skin hardened and weathered. He was a country man with his gentlemanly ways. I recalled meeting him once, twice I believe and I suppose, like a few others, my simple kindness made an impression as it had on the deceased. The deceased, that I was the bringer of food on the occasion of his wife’s death was cause enough to ask after me time and again, certainly made an impression on me. Well, this tall thin man nodded in kindred spirit, in recognition. I drew hugs from the sister and the niece and nods and smiles from others. The deceased was the father-in-law of one of my employees of almost three years. I had only known her for five and met him as much as his kin. Yet somehow I had been inserted into her life and she in mine. Funerals are not for the dead, they are for the living to come together in common cause, to support, to grieve, to show respect for the deceased I suppose, to talk about faith and god. So JD clung to me with words of love, not my employee, my friend.

Flash…
I cry at funerals, when they finally get around to god. “Whosoever believeth in me shall not perish but having everlasting life…” what the hell, I just bust out. In reading a bit on Buddhism, I have learned that the greatest joy comes from the greatest pain. Maybe that’s why I’m always so happy, so giggly? I have known more than my share and still believe in magic, in spirits, that life is beautiful. I have lent an ear the past year to so many friends who have had losses and each time I am reminded of my own. Daddy says some people are meant to sit with death, to be there for the dying. I have perhaps inherited this from him in a way only I am there for the living.