Thanksgiving

I don’t want to think about her today…I don’t want to think about her sitting in her kitchen, her face stoic but her eyes bright and mischievous, teaching me how to clean the green beans from her garden while she told me stories from her colorful past.  I don’t want to think about her laughing quietly and winking every now and again to seal the pact of love and affection and secrecy between us…I don’t want to think about her vaguely smoky voice calling me by the name no one but she was allowed to use.  I don’t want to think about her at all.

And I don’t want to think about him today…my greatest champion and my most pernicious foe…I don’t want to think about the times we laughed and the times we cried and the times we shared secrets and the time we fought like…well, like Cain and Abel…I don’t want to think about his theft of pieces of my youth…I don’t want to think about his unrealized potential seeping away on a cold, lonely street in Los Angeles.  No, I don’t want to think about him at all.

I don’t want to think about my boyhood friends…one lost to time, forever wearing his silly grin and his almost gaudy blue suit as we left Louis Pasteur Junior High School and spent one last perfect afternoon together before parting, unbeknownst to us, forever; one lost after Alexander Hamilton High School turned us loose on the unsuspecting world and found…fleetingly…smiling with his family in a photo sent from a distant shore…before being lost forever to the arms of the blessed Universe.  I don’t want to think about them at all.

And Lord knows I don’t want to think about my baby girl…tiny and inquisitive and quick to smile whenever she saw me…my sweet girl who grew into a troubled woman, a lost and angry soul who I felt, foolishly, that I’d abandoned when life took me from my hometown to another town down the coast (her 5 year old self had said, quite seriously, that when she grew up she was going to marry me and take care of me.)  I don’t want to think about how her heart failed her and took her back to the light from whence we all came.  I don’t want to think about her at all.

I certainly don’t want to think about my best friend and most stalwart companion, in my life for too brief a season and in my life forever and a day…I don’t want to think about the sad, brilliant soul who lost himself in bottles because life was sometimes much too hard to face…I don’t want to think about the girl who gave her strength and comfort to us even though she was losing a battle with an invader in her own body…I don’t want to think about any of them. 

I don’t want to think about them at all.

And yet I do.  I do think about them.  I do want to think about them.  I want to think about them and all of the others who’ve come into my life and left, lingering indelibly even in their passing.  I want to think about them.  I do think about them.  And I give love and blessings and gratitude and humble acceptance of their grace.

I think about them…and give bittersweet thanks.   I miss them…now and always…and I give love and blessings and humble acceptance…and heartfelt thanks.

A Whisper Lost in the Echoes (a fable)

One day he just vanished.  A whisper lost in the echoes, an afterthought that most people he knew didn’t bother to explore.  No one noticed at first…why would they?  He sought comfort in the shadows, solace in the golden realms of imagined nostalgia…he was a beloved nobody, a legend in his own fool’s dreams, a nightmare of self-sufficiency and aching, futile longing.

One day he just faded away.  A lost soul clinging to slippery rocks of love on distant shores and in dark welcoming corners until he let go and let the water…the always welcoming arms to the roiling seas…melt him away…one with the fickle Universe at last.

One day…one day he was less than memory…less than an sad whisper lost in the echoes…one day he was less than all of the dashed hopes and imaginative lies, less than the fleeting times when he was informed by the laughter of babies and the bittersweet tears of women and the faithful companionship of men, less than all of the memories…real and imagined…that colored and molded his time in the material world.

One day…or so the story, told in dispassionate whispers among the uncaring echoes, goes…he just vanished. 

And, of course, the world moved on.  It always does.

My Baby

It was just a glancing blow…on one level it barely registered…on another level it rocked me like red thunder…my baby hit me…my baby’s eyes filled with acid tears and uncoiling rage…my baby hit me and then tried to hit me again.

I put a stop to that…my baby was strong but not as strong as me…by holding my baby off.

“You’re mean…you’re a selfish bastard…you’re…you’re….”  My baby lost words and tried to break free.  I held my baby tight.

“You’re right,” I said recoiling inside at the naked truth.  “You’re right…”

My baby glared at me and then relaxed.  I let my baby go.  “I hate you.”

It was just a glancing blow…on one level is bounced right off…on another level in stabbed deep into my being.  “No you don’t.”

My baby’s lips parted but she could work up no venom.  Silence mocked us and then my baby looked away.  “No…I don’t…but one day I might...”

“I know…”

My baby looked into my eyes.  I nodded.  My baby stepped into me letting tears stain my chest.

I put my arms around my baby, wishing I had more tears to offer.  “I know…”