Thursday, September 19, 2013

looking up to you

I remember standing in our entranceway in our federalist style house in Virginia Beach. I remember that we were supposed to be doing anything but what it was that we were doing, and I remember loving it. I remember the way that my barefoot feet felt on top of your sneakers and I remember just how far back I had to stand in order to not hurt you as you spun around and around on that wood floor. I remember how great it felt to know how special I was to you. I remember you dancing with me in our entrance way- I remember it because it was there that I learned the truth of your nature.
The truth is, you’re always celebrating your children. You always feel compelled to spin us around and show us off. You respect us more than we respect ourselves, you forgive us before you know what we have done, and you have bigger dreams for us than we can imagine. I know you want a house with a four car garage for us each, but the tiny apartments and trailers we all found at one point or another never made you anything less than proud. You celebrate our small victories and you tactfully fail to remember our times of shortcoming. I’ll never forget that I locked myself out of my apartment and you came and lent me your car because I needed you- but you’ll never forget. I remember all the checks you wrote for me, but you don’t. I remember, though I fail to acknowledge it, just how much you’ve always celebrated me- and the truth is I am lucky that it is in your nature.
In all honesty, you’re absolutely crazy. You’re high mantinenace and unpredictable. You tell way too many stories and you lie too often. Youre too modest and you keep too many secrets. You call your family more than you need to, you give us way more than you have, and you live a top dollar lifestyle on a dime. You make too many excuses for the people you love. You don’t ever protect yourself. You don’t get mad at us often enough. You are too forgiving and generous to a fault. But truth be told, I’d be absolutely proud to take all your bad habits if I meant I’d grow up to be half the person you are.
Truthfully, youre a great role model. Youre an aging man who went back to college, who saved his money for something he loves, and who took in his siblings when they needed him. You’re generous and loving and forgiving. Youre old but you’re vivacious, and optimistic whenever you can be. You love children and animals and you love your kids. You’re a hero and a godsend and I don’t take that for granted. Truthfully, Honestly dad, I still look up to you.

I am an independent adult, but I still look up to you. I am no longer a little blue eyed blonde standing on your sneakers as you spontaneously dance in our entrance way, but I am still your daughter. I still want to grow up to be the woman you’ve always hoped I could be and I want to give you real reasons to be as proud of me as you already are. I want to dance with you at my wedding and spontaneously misbehave when we are both much older and im sneaking you out of your nursing home or letting you drive after they take your license. I want to thank you for celebrating me for no special reason as often as you do. I just want to tell you that I love you, and this is the best way I know how to spontaneously embrace you. This is me, stopping in the entrance way and spinning you around to no music. This is the only way I know how to make you understand how special you are to me. This is my thank you, this is a party for you, this is my father-daughter dance. 

Monday, April 29, 2013

I Won't Mind


I was sitting next to you
With your hand in my hand.
We had no where to go, nothing to do,
Yet I was more content then I’d ever been
In the timelessness beside you.
Therein is a tenderness not everyone does find
So if next to you is the most blissful I can be
I sure won’t mind
I won’t mind.

I was telling secrets with you,
You had stories falling in my ears.
You can tell me anything you want to
As long as you keep listening better than you have to-
To the secrets I let fall in your ears.
Our stories will build us a haven, me and you,
And if for eternity-to you- my truths bind
And no other sould knows a story of me
Rest assured, I’ll still feel heard, and I wont mind
I wont mind.

I am patiently waiting for you
To give me peace of and make up your mind
So someone can finally know what you want to do.
Though so many others can promise titles and security
Id still so much rather be mindless with you.
We’re co-writing a story with no outline
But as long as I know we still have a story-
Then I’ll wait for an ending and I wont mind
I wont mind.

I was doing all the little things for you
Getting you presents, “goodmornings, how are you,”
Not because you asked for them but because I wanted to
I was doing more than I have ever done-
And ideaing up more because nothing is good enough for you.
There is so much gratuity from being kind
And I wish I could get wealthy serving you-
If I could pay these bills with your smiles and “thank you,” I wouldn’t mind
I wouldn’t mind.

I was laying next to you
With your hand in my hand.
Though there were places I needed to go and things I needed to do,
I was too content to move
Because I was blissfully close to you.
Youre a tender timelessness I have been fortunate to find.
So If ours is a story that never sells,
Rest assured, you’ve been heard, and ill buy every copy with a smile and “thank you”
And I sure wont mind. 

Thursday, March 28, 2013

All My Cats Were Strays


My next door neighbor is a miserable woman; I kind of like her. Her house is in pristine condition and her yard is perfectly sprinkled with matching flower beds. She drives a reliable family sedan with racing stripes down the left side past both doors. She paid a fortune for that stripe and the poor thing has seen about as many miles as one loop around a race track. She washes that car out in the driveway once a week. Once, my youngest son asked if he could help her and she let him. My older boy and his friends lost a baseball in her flower bed one afternoon last spring though, and we were paying to have the flowers replaced and a professional to come replant. What is hers is all hers, she deserves, and she holds to the highest of expectations.
She has no children. She has no spouse. We are probably very close in age though we have lived very different lives. My husband is jealous of her. Her five bedroom house has had two renovations in the five years we have lived next door and now has a Jacuzzi room and a fitness center she never uses because she prefers the high end gym on the corner of Fifth and Haydenberry. She works a consistent nine to five job as a foreclosure officer and is home every weekend. She owns a summer home down on the coast in Savannah and asks us up for the Fourth of July every year.  My husband refuses to go and takes the boys out fishing but sometimes I’ll sneak up for a hard lemonade and some girl talk. I think she needs it.
Last fourth of July She told me when she was seventeen her high school sweetheart snuck out in his parents car to run away with her. He wanted to wait till graduation when his BMW was inspectable but she was in love and she was impatient, and he would have done anything to keep her. He was killed by a drunk driver at the top of her street. She said her whole town tried not to blame her but it did no good with a conscience like hers. She hid for three days she told me, not coming out of her room to eat or anything, then rode with her parents to the service in a dress she planned to wear to prom with him that was labeled in dirty whispers by his loved ones as “disrespectful” and “selfish”. She stood through a third of the sermon she said to me, listening to all the chatter, and then she walked out of the church down six streets to Main and Maple, crossed, walked three doors down to his house, dug for the key to his beamer in her bag, and then started the ignition and backed out of the everything she knew.
Since then she has been divorced twice and lost all of the friends she ever had, four women and one man. She has walked out on them all after a fight or a lie or a scene. You can tell in her baby blue eyes that she still doesn’t understand why it is so easy for people to let go of her. She tells me of a time someone hurt her as though the separation that ensued was painful but obligatory on her part and then boasts a little about how she managed a large settlement in her second divorce or about how she got a couple grand off a furniture set for using her married name at the Aaron’s on Ninth because her first husband’s second cousin works there. I chuckle a little to myself.
It took me a while to overcome my jealousy. I earn good money and work my ass off and have substantially less building and property to show for it than most women my age do. But then I remember that I have priceless roses on my birthday and mother’s day cards from hallmark. Sometimes I wish I lived alone and didn’t have a house full of needy people to take care of but as much as I am in many ways the biggest provider for my household, It takes everyone else to take care of me. I wouldn’t trade my husband for one night alone. Despite his two separate incidents of one night stands, his needy family and our constant bickering, without him I’d have to learn what I want in my coffee because I can’t walk into the Starbucks on Peach and say “can you make that with a little extra love today I’m feeling irritable, and can you seal in my flavor with cat hair and chaos?” Without my two boys I never would have paid 1000 dollars to take an adult learning algebra class to help with homework and I could have Sunday nights back to sleep instead of paint. I never would have had my house searched by drug dogs for cocaine my eldest was “holding for a friend”. But without those boys there would have been no tears when I finished my half marathon and saw them out of class early and skipping a game to stand with their father holding a sign with my name inscribed. I used to think without that family I would know nothing of mistrust, disrespect, and heartbreak. That’s true, but also without that family I’d know nothing of responsibility and loyalty, I’d know nothing of pride and appreciation.
My husband and I can barely afford our five bedroom on both of our incomes. We have the two of us, a sixteen year old hockey player mathematician, an eleven year old Picasso, My childhood best friend who needs a placed to call home when she isn’t away on business , my sister-in-law who has a pug dog and a disability check, and three cats that once were strays. We do not have a Jacuzzi or a fitness center. We don’t even have a membership to a gym. We have sneakers and a safe neighborhood though. My husband works as a writer from home and I teach a couple classes and wait table because I love it. We don’t have much time for leisure, much money for saving, or much food for sharing but we always manage and we’ve made ends meet no matter how hard it was for us for over seventeen years. When there is money to spare we trade in one of our three household vehicles for a newer used model or go on a quick vacation. Though my husband always wishes we had more of the tangibles our neighbors do, I just chuckle to myself- “Babe, if I wanted to be comfortable in life I never would have married you” I tell him again and again.
“That lady next door has so much to spend. If we just had more money this month we could take the boys…”
“it isn’t worth the price she pays babe, it isn’t worth the price she pays.” 

Friday, March 22, 2013

Touch

I could live on the way you touch my skin.Never before have i liked to be touched the way i like the way you touch me. I have never been one to cuddle, to fondle, to rest before you. never have the physicality of two people's body been more of an idea to half-heartedly toss around when i casually poke around with a vibrator. That was before you though, before i felt the way i feel about (your) hands on my skin.
I love how crazy you are. I love your tendencies towards fetish kinks and your poetic softness. I love your snowflake in a rainstorm kisses, hard to distinguish and too quickly melted and meshed into the cold concrete that is my skin. It is crazy how you torture and tease me and possibly ever crazier how much i crave that.
I love that you smell so easy. I love that your body and your axe deodorant never come on too strong when i'm buried as deep in the fabric on you as i can be. I love the way you smell my sheets and you smell my hair just to make sure nothing has changed. I love that i have gotten so used to your presence in my air that i cant smell you till i get back in bed, in the car, in your favorite sweatshirt of mine without you. I love the way your hands smell when they have been inside me. i love the sweet scent of your sweat as it drips down the nape of your neck and rolls over my knuckles. I love that your breathe smells so patient and careful. I love all the smells that come from being as close to you as you will let me be.
I love your body when you let me. I love your fingers when you intertwine them in mine. I love your fingers on my wrists, my back, my neck, my ass. i love the way your hands feel on the outside of my clothes as they beckon, on the inside of my clothes as they are invited, and on the inside of everything deeper that makes me myself and makes this body mine- as they penetrate. I love your nose muzzled into my neck. I love the subtle wetness of your moth tickling my skin and acting as a refreshing breeze- never too much to take but just enough to give me chills. I love the bones in your face atop my breast pressing as i breathe and softening as time passes. I love the tender torture of the way your body feels.
I love the way you touch my skin. Never before have i been so alive as when im tangled in your touches.