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Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Thursday, February 21, 2013
WWRWP—"Nineteen Forever..."
We have a sweet ritual here at the Beach of honoring one another on our birthdays with written wishes, sometimes as many wishes as the age being turned. The wishes go out to the birthday girl (or boy) and then, as you write, the wishes naturally expand and contract, creating universal wishes for all...
1. love and kindness for the dandelions.
Yesterday, one of the Wednesday gals, our baby, turned nineteen. Nineteen! This moves me for a couple reasons, mainly because we have been writing together since she was fourteen and she was a brilliant writer even way back then.
2. Unlimited minutes to talk face-to-face with your friends and family and loved ones.
3. Freedom to tell anyone you love that you love them. 4. Daily cake. 5. dessert always.
The other reason is... NINETEEN! Do you remember nineteen? Do you have nineteen wishes?
6. homecooked beautiful meals using every color found in the natural world. 7. a bouquet of marigolds. 8. Marigold honey. 9. Free Lunch! It's everywhere!
10. A conversation per day with a stranger.
When I was nineteen I took the year off before going away to Evergreen. I stayed at home with Ma and worked at the frozen yoghurt shop and took classes at the Improv and got into Theatre Sports.
11. writing for the love of it. 12. singing as loud as you wish and feeling it massage your insides.
13. cartwheels across the greenest grass. 14. a lindy hop beneath the bluest sky.
Late at night I'd come home and find Ma still up watching TV in the dark, swallowed in her big bed with the layers of soft, white comforters and blankets, puffy with Ma love. I'd make her switch it to Star Trek and throw myself into the creamy softiness, merge with it.
"You smell like cigarettes, Roc, Ish! Go brush your teeth!" I'd been at Dolores', our coffeeshop on Pico. Like most work nights, Sus and I smoked and coffeed ourselves into optimism, before coming down and heading home. After dropping Sus off in Bel Air, I'd head back down the hill toward Ma, blasting Blondie's The Tide is High over and over, fighting off the despair.
"K," I'd say and not move. Maybe at the commercial.
We'd watch young Kirk, thin Kirk, with his globular muscles and tight space pants.
And we'd dream.
"Roc! Honey, wake up. It's over. Go back to your room. You can't sleep in here."
15. Nineteen days of silence. 16. Nineteen days of silliness. 17. Nineteen days of inner-reflection. 18. loving your reflection in the mirror. 19. loving your reflection in others. AND * one for GOOD LUCK... Nineteen Forever, Baby!
Thursday, February 14, 2013
WWRWP—What do You Love?
What do you LOVE? ...
...even if it's just one thing, part of a thing, one person, part of a person, one memory, one moon, one June, one color, or the other, one time of day, shade of sunray, one time of night, a summer somewhere bright, a type of food, a wacky mood, Dr Seuss, Mother Goose...
eighties music, Sound of Music, Krisna Das, The Boss... dancing swing, your diamond ring, your gray cat CC, your childhood pet FIFI, a sweater you wear, the feel of your lover's hair, the smell of Paris, Bueller (that's Ferris!), sleeping in, your dad's pointy chin, the feel of fleece, laughing geese, yoga and drumming, football or running, singing and chanting, tingling and ranting... lover and lovee (which more are you?), romantic, pedantic, poetry, harmony... your child's laughter, happily ever after, being silly, getting jiggy, dressing frilly, hot diggity, eating yams, hoarding Spam, biking cross town, standing upside down, yoga, toga, taichi, tacky, under, over, sideways, wonder....
What do you LOVE? ...
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
WWRWP—The Time of Your Life
A few weeks ago I was having lunch with the tall, dark, handsome young Jew companion with whom I had been spending a great deal of quality time for the past nine months. His parents had joined us and in between bites of jellyfish salad, I was asked by the father, "So, Rox, what is your happiest memory?"
Admittedly, I was taken aback. It was 11 am on a Saturday morning. I wasn't even hungry yet, let alone hungry for jellyfish or introspection. I was still too close to sleep to consider any other source of happiness.
"Hmmmm...that's a toughie," I said. "I don't think anyone has ever asked me that before." I looked at my companion. I figured by now he could answer as well as I because in some ways it felt as if we'd known each other forever. He just looked back at me with that cute face that is way too cute.
"Besides," I continued, "usually I'm the one asking these sorts of questions! Then I give people time to write out an answer in the way of a story..."
Why had I drawn a blank? Were there too many? Not enough? Or was it simply that I loved loved loved being asked this question? An invitation to revisit. To live it over again.
The easy answer would have been: "the moment my son was born." But that's a different kind of happy. A no-brainer happy. And then I could have gone on and on about the countless happy moments we've shared as mother and child, but again, that would be cheating.
Eventually, I committed to the theme of bike riding. How when I first moved here I rode endlessly into the warm summer nights, delighting in the quaint flatlands, the small town, wide-streeted easiness and openness of touring my new home, taking in this earnest Midwestern culture that was entirely new to me and realizing how much childlike glee it awoke in me: the fenceless backyards, grass so green I wanted to lick it, porch swings (porches!) flower beds, cicadas, street lamps, the way people pronounce car and refer to Coke as "pop"...
I was on a roll. I talked about biking with my dad in various parts of the country. I confessed that I still have Jude in a bike carrier in the back so I can keep him close as we descend into the magical greens of Minnehaha Parkway, singing our favorite songs as we fly through the curves and jungle, racing the flowing creek beside us. "I'm a bit of an adrenaline junky," I admit, "which goes well with parenting."
Then I put a hand to that cute face, the face of this man's son. "Of course laughing with this guy makes me happy."
My companion's father smiled, obviously pleased. In that moment, he looked a lot like my father—there are some touching similarities between the two. I think I may have thought for a moment I was actually talking to my dad. That made me happy, though I did not know it at the time. Now it is a happy memory.
I could have said more. A lot more. I don't know why I didn't. I don't know why I hesitate to write what that "more" would have been. Perhaps it's because on some level I suspected things weren't going to work out. That if I asserted myself too far into the fabric of this family I would inevitably mourn for it too much when it was gone, longing for another mundane, obligatory, way too early Saturday morning meal out in a dingy kitschy basement eating pickled jellyfish on Eat Street.
Or maybe it's because we were sort of in a fight and I was feeling stingy.
I volleyed the question back to the father, a man who has lived almost twice as long as I.
"Gee," he said, "I never thought about it..."
"SEE?!" I said, "it's harder than it seems."
But it wasn't long before he was off in memory bliss. A light went on, one I'd not yet seen or thought possible, but there it was, radiating from his entire being when he talked about being a young father to my companion. It was as beautiful as a rare sunset, a real rayon verte. It remained as he described a childhood memory with his sister, one of the few he recalls of actually being allowed to be a child, a rare freedom to play, which I get the feeling was so scarce that he actually had to sneak it behind the backs of overly stern parents, the same way I had to sneak pot and cigarettes, but realistically, not really.
Eventually my companion took a turn, then his mother. I believe I took another turn as I simply could not help it. Honestly, we could've gone around the table for hours. Well... at least me and Too Cute Face's father. It was reminding me a lot of being around the table with my parents and how much I missed that. How much we all loved those lingering times around the various dining rooms of our separate homes, restaurants, vacation places, etc, where we could always find a place of peace and neutrality, because, as in any family, we had our family history. Even though my parents were divorced and I'd been twice so, we all gathered year after year, entertaining one of my dad's many random questions (Do you prefer Washington or Lincoln?), which inevitably led us down some happy memory lane or another.
Life is really funny, isn't it? Funny ironic, I mean. Because if ever comes a time when you are really struggling to remember a single happy memory, you will likely fail to recognize that you are in the midst of making one.
What's your happiest memory?
Admittedly, I was taken aback. It was 11 am on a Saturday morning. I wasn't even hungry yet, let alone hungry for jellyfish or introspection. I was still too close to sleep to consider any other source of happiness.
"Hmmmm...that's a toughie," I said. "I don't think anyone has ever asked me that before." I looked at my companion. I figured by now he could answer as well as I because in some ways it felt as if we'd known each other forever. He just looked back at me with that cute face that is way too cute.
"Besides," I continued, "usually I'm the one asking these sorts of questions! Then I give people time to write out an answer in the way of a story..."
Why had I drawn a blank? Were there too many? Not enough? Or was it simply that I loved loved loved being asked this question? An invitation to revisit. To live it over again.
The easy answer would have been: "the moment my son was born." But that's a different kind of happy. A no-brainer happy. And then I could have gone on and on about the countless happy moments we've shared as mother and child, but again, that would be cheating.
Eventually, I committed to the theme of bike riding. How when I first moved here I rode endlessly into the warm summer nights, delighting in the quaint flatlands, the small town, wide-streeted easiness and openness of touring my new home, taking in this earnest Midwestern culture that was entirely new to me and realizing how much childlike glee it awoke in me: the fenceless backyards, grass so green I wanted to lick it, porch swings (porches!) flower beds, cicadas, street lamps, the way people pronounce car and refer to Coke as "pop"...
I was on a roll. I talked about biking with my dad in various parts of the country. I confessed that I still have Jude in a bike carrier in the back so I can keep him close as we descend into the magical greens of Minnehaha Parkway, singing our favorite songs as we fly through the curves and jungle, racing the flowing creek beside us. "I'm a bit of an adrenaline junky," I admit, "which goes well with parenting."
Then I put a hand to that cute face, the face of this man's son. "Of course laughing with this guy makes me happy."
My companion's father smiled, obviously pleased. In that moment, he looked a lot like my father—there are some touching similarities between the two. I think I may have thought for a moment I was actually talking to my dad. That made me happy, though I did not know it at the time. Now it is a happy memory.
I could have said more. A lot more. I don't know why I didn't. I don't know why I hesitate to write what that "more" would have been. Perhaps it's because on some level I suspected things weren't going to work out. That if I asserted myself too far into the fabric of this family I would inevitably mourn for it too much when it was gone, longing for another mundane, obligatory, way too early Saturday morning meal out in a dingy kitschy basement eating pickled jellyfish on Eat Street.
Or maybe it's because we were sort of in a fight and I was feeling stingy.
I volleyed the question back to the father, a man who has lived almost twice as long as I.
"Gee," he said, "I never thought about it..."
"SEE?!" I said, "it's harder than it seems."
But it wasn't long before he was off in memory bliss. A light went on, one I'd not yet seen or thought possible, but there it was, radiating from his entire being when he talked about being a young father to my companion. It was as beautiful as a rare sunset, a real rayon verte. It remained as he described a childhood memory with his sister, one of the few he recalls of actually being allowed to be a child, a rare freedom to play, which I get the feeling was so scarce that he actually had to sneak it behind the backs of overly stern parents, the same way I had to sneak pot and cigarettes, but realistically, not really.
Eventually my companion took a turn, then his mother. I believe I took another turn as I simply could not help it. Honestly, we could've gone around the table for hours. Well... at least me and Too Cute Face's father. It was reminding me a lot of being around the table with my parents and how much I missed that. How much we all loved those lingering times around the various dining rooms of our separate homes, restaurants, vacation places, etc, where we could always find a place of peace and neutrality, because, as in any family, we had our family history. Even though my parents were divorced and I'd been twice so, we all gathered year after year, entertaining one of my dad's many random questions (Do you prefer Washington or Lincoln?), which inevitably led us down some happy memory lane or another.
Life is really funny, isn't it? Funny ironic, I mean. Because if ever comes a time when you are really struggling to remember a single happy memory, you will likely fail to recognize that you are in the midst of making one.
What's your happiest memory?
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