Tag Archives: life

I Am Ready

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Next month, May, will be the fourth anniversary of my being totally on my own. In the craziness of these past few years of changes in my life, I was so involved in just getting through each moment; I was totally blind-sided by something I had never really felt before… Loneliness.

I didn’t truly realize what it was until I found myself being very envious of a friend who was in the process of buying a home with his partner. I found myself thinking at he’ll have someone with him. That is when it hit me; it was one of the many little things I miss. The lightening speed, rapier sharp jibes and verbal sparring that were a staple of my home where it seemed even the dog had a smart remark (rebark?) at well opportune times. That knowing someone else was home.

Until then I have never been on my own. I did not have the college living on own or even dormitory experience. I went from living with my parents to living with my husband and children. Even if I was in the apartment/house by myself for a time, there is still that sense of knowing someone will be coming home soon enough. There was an odd sense of security in that which staved off true loneliness until now.

It took a while to reconcile the feeling of loneliness with the simple act being alone. I have friends old and new and   have been more active physically and in my spirit than I have been since my teens.  It helps keep me sane.  Still, the most fun day ever with friends cannot replace knowing there is a special someone.  And I do mean special, not a one-night stand, not a friend (or friends) with benefits.  A Special Someone just for me. Hell, even biblically, it seems we as humans have been indoctrinated to want to be with, to share with someone; after all it is not good for man to be alone and while being alone was not solely defined as having a partner, I can’t seem to help stop thinking in that direction of late.

Maybe it’s because it is spring and thoughts… well – you know…

Or maybe, just maybe,  I am ready for love (queue India.Arie)…

I Imagine A Day

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You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
“Imagine” – John Lennon/Imagine

We walk down these busy roads
Each step met with some disdain
Yet we move along through the goad
For we’re still walking harsh terrain
We’ve made a choice in this workload
Not for the grind of the office screamer
We work with those whose hands lay
In not hiding what is during the day
Some may say I’m a schemer,
You may say I’m a dreamer

I was once completely battered
By words that should have been balm
Stung as my feelings hardly mattered
And all along I felt as tender
As a crystal ready to be shattered
Feels like I’m living a life undone
Pieces of my soul I imagine crying
With the all senseless lying
Built upon the company jargon
But I’m not the only one

Feeling the need to get it in gear,
Tired of being the ones just waiting
Let us get a few things clear
It’s time for action, no more debating,
Who else has had it up to here?
What’s with our happiness being zealous?
Why can’t we spread word of our joy?
Just another face as love’s envoy?
Yes, we’re causing more than a fuss,
I hope someday you’ll join us

Even knowing it’s a hard road to tread
I rather be weary with the fight for reason
For the company line leaves me emotionally dead
And I just can’t live with the social treason,
So, tell me, where do you wish this world to head?
Someday we’ll walk in peace under the sun
When the seeds of tolerance to bloom into reality
And there is a fighting chance for us you’ll see
For only then we’ll say our work is done
And the world will be as one

(For those still afraid to open the closet door, have faith, we’re working on it )

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dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Form for All: Paying Tribute, Page and the Glosa

And now what…?

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I was putting out my garbage for the morning pickup when I heard all this ruckus going on behind me where my neighbor’s car is parked in a sort of open area between buildings used as  a driveway. It was seven teenaged-boys at least sixteen years of age fighting. Rather, I should say, four were throwing some serious punches; one was counting numbers and laughing at the fighting with another boy.  I was a little familiar with the basic concept of this. The ones doing the beating only had to the count of one hundred to do whatever they wanted to do to the one getting beat and then they had to stop. Depending on how much the one getting beat was disliked it could a semi-fast count or a really slow one.  If anything interrupted the fight, even if the count was already at ninety-nine, the count had to restart from the beginning. If the ones doing the beating had mercy they could choose to reduce the recount to fifty or twenty-five. My first thought was boys (even ones more than big enough to know better) will be boys.

It’s near 6pm in the evening; I didn’t see any one coming or going on my short block, I did not have my cell on me and above all I was out-numbered by males a lot younger than I. In all honesty , I wouldn’t have gotten involved at all except, this was happening on the property of my apartment building and they were too close to my neighbor’s car. There was a school yard a block away, if they wanted to fight over whatever stupidness it was about, take it over there. Then I saw the seventh one who was getting beat.

He was not a teenager; this boy could not have been older than twelve at the most.  The smallest of the teenagers doing the beating had a good six inches and at least twenty pounds on him and there were four of them.  At this point I forgot about my neighbor’s car. I was worried about the child balled up in a near-fetal position against the fence.

“What the hell are you doing? Get away from him!” I yelled. Luckily for the child the count had just reached a hundred and the teenager counting had called for the break before I yelled. My trying to help could have made it worse for him as I only remembered about the recount rule after I was back in my apartment.

“Yo, mind yo business!” The counter sucked his teeth.

“Boy, don’t even try to act all man up now. You and your friends are beating up on one child nearly half your age. You get no cred for that.” I stared him down, “Besides, you’re on my building property; it is my business.”

If he or his friends were going to say or do anything else; it was cut short by a teen-aged girl who appeared and called him stupid and pretty much said what I was saying.  However she said it, it was enough to get him to relent.  Just then, one of my other neighbors came running out brandishing a baseball bat, and stopped short when he saw me.  From the side window of his apartment he saw the four boys beating up on the one and came down for that, but I was in front of the building out of his line of vision,  he never saw me out there. Not that it would have stopped him.  We all gave each other evil stares as the five of the teenage boys and the girl passed, but no one said anything.  The fifth teenager was trying to help the kid, but drew back when the kid yelled to get the fuck off.  He and the sixth teenager stepped to the side as the boy came out. He was limping, and his face was going to be a series of bruises by the morning, but seemed otherwise alright. I started towards him, but he looked at me with such malice, I stepped back just as I felt my neighbor’s hand on my shoulder about to pull me back. We both watched as this boy limped away in the company of the last two teenager.  I’m not one hundred percent sure but, I believe as they passed, I heard one of the teenagers say to the other that the kid had guts and took it well.  Took it well? What the fuck? The beat down was on purpose?

I can’t swear on it, but I believe what I witnessed was something known as being “jumped in”.   This child purposely let himself get wailed on as a gang initiation rite. If this is true, I am even more scared of that child’s future than I was of what I saw.

Drenched In Rainy Day Memories…

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A couple walks damp streets on a lovely early spring evening that has slowly segued into an equally lovely if rainy night. No rainy was not the right word. Misty; it was that misty rain that you could not see unless you were looking at the drops break the surface of whatever puddles have gathered about. Enough to make you wet if you stayed in it for any duration, yet not enough to warrant use of an umbrella. They talk, joke and tease, as any young couple still in the early stages will do as they learn about one another. On a twist of etiquette, she walks him home.  She convinces him that it was still early enough that she would be fine for the ten or so blocks from his place to hers. Still she promises to call once she’s home to assuage his fears. She is not going to be your average girl and he knows it. They exchange a brief kiss goodnight and he shakes his head musing on the role reversal as he heads in.

She walks a few yards when gut instinct alone makes her turn around suddenly. They both jump in surprise. He at quickness at which she spun on him and she at just how close he was to her before she sensed him. Hands in their respective pockets they stand close to each other, very close. Almost imperceptibly, their heads instinctively turn slightly askance as they lean into each other. Each feels the heat of the breath of the other play along their respective lips, but there is no other contact between them. They stay that way for a long moment, exchanging breaths, before leaning away. Somehow breathless from the exchange, the chill that runs down both spines had nothing to do with the mist falling upon their faces, gentle as the kiss they didn’t exchange. Eyes stare questioning and answering, answering and questioning in complete silence.  Finally, they both turn and walk to their respective homes.  Somehow they both knew, in that moment of saying nothing yet saying everything, they had just crossed that magical line past friendship into something much deeper and they were truly and completely fucked!

>|———-|<

Nearly a decade later, as Bill and I walked off the dance floor at a friend’s wedding, a cousin asks why did it always looked like we were making love when we were slow dancing. I, always the flippant one, quickly responded because we are. Our cousin looked at us befuddled before Bill continues on my comment by adding there are ways to make love that don’t involve sex; like kissing without kissing in a spring rain. I blinked and stared at him.  That night was something never before mentioned between us until just that moment. I honestly thought he had forgotten about it though, I guess, I should have known better. I blushed and then I grinned.  I have no idea what was the look that passed between he and I at that moment, but I do know our cousin sucked her teeth and walked away saying we needed to “get a room!”

>|———-|<

Sunday night as I walked home in an early spring misty rain, those two memories, now intertwined as one, came to me.  Now Monday morning, I am left to wonder if I will be blessed enough to feel anything even close to that ever again.

Life Goes On…

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Some friends tell me I should post a blog;  I don’t know why.  My partial narcissist conflicts with my partial self-critic on this. I suppose I could have and probably should have chosen something more lighthearted for my first post.  I think you’ll understand why my head is where it is once you read it.  I just felt if I didn’t do this now it could be months before I would and sometimes you just have to dive in and see where the tide takes you…

I thank you for taking the leap of faith and riding with me.

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March 1, 2006 -Day 1

“I’m sorry Mrs. …”

I really don’t remember the exact words in which it was broken to me; however, I do remember the doctor’s tone of voice. I remembered I just looked at him waiting for the rest of it, the punch line – something – anything. The manner in which I found out I just became a widow was delivered with about as much compassion as a market clerk informing me they were out of my favorite brand of canned goods.

But the doctor’s delivery of the words was the least of my problems as I suddenly understood why everyone who has ever been informed, hit, hell bitch-slapped with such news is usually asked to sit first. I wasn’t so lucky. “Can’t stand it” takes on a whole new dimension of meaning when you literally cannot stand. I felt the last breath of him being a living part of my life escape me as my back slid down a wall. And I remember hands – hands touching me, hands holding me, hands caressing me; hands unfamiliar and all too sanitary and just wrong. I just wanted them away from me and to see him, recall what was quickly becoming days of old, and feel what remaining warmth he had a little longer before all that I once knew was gone.

My first gallows humor: Bill loved his car and once told my older son he’d be allowed to drive it over his dead body. As this same son pulled off to drive us home from the hospital I found a need to remind him of the veracity of that statement. It was met with a grimace (a grim-look upon one’s f-ace, interesting how even that word also takes on new layers of meaning).

I mentioned somewhere else  how, through my now late-husband, I have learned how to shelve the things I can’t resolve at the given moment and concentrate on the things I can. Somewhere in the eternity between falling and rising (how apropos) I know this is where I started going on auto-pilot. The efficient, organized, take-charge aspect of my personality – took charge, even as my emotional aspect crumbled.

I had about an hour at home to absorb my new reality when the first of the telephone calls began. “I’m so sorry…” How many times can a person hear that in an hour? In two hours? More? Even now, it raises my hackles slightly to hear that from people who say it as automatically as the instinct to bless someone when they sneeze; and it’s almost always equally as heartfelt.

Once my best friend was by my side I simply let go and did the only thing I could do – go numb There are about two whole weeks of my life that are smoky vignettes of emotional moments. Some have since solidified more into concrete memory. I know others will remain forever from my grasp. With the patient guidance of those who have visited the grieving place before me, I understand that now. No, I still don’t really understand it – I just accept it for what it is.

March 1, 2007 Day 1 (of the rest of my life)

I’m now able to read through most my journal without wanting to cry. Although, oddly enough, I find I now have a little trouble reading When Winter Cradles Spring straight through; especially now with the crazy weather we’re having when changing seasons make no sense. I wrote that maybe a year before my husband’s passing, but I find I’m pretty much living those words each day right now. When all else fails the last stanza of a another poem I wrote  Each Day Anew becomes my mantra…

I know I have the strength to cope

I go as heart and soul say to

I sow my seeds of faith and hope

I grow and start each day anew

March 1, 2010 (life goes on…)

I still read Each Day Anew now and again to jump-start a bad day into something better.  My bad days are almost never about him any more.   In fact, except for an odd stretch of days last May when I could not excise thoughts of my late-husband from my mind and it started to freak me out, I’ve been pretty okay in that regard. I halfheartedly started dating a little over a year ago.  I’ll decide how much I want to delve into the details of that in a later posting.   I’ve had a certain India.Arie song stuck in my heart for a couple of months now. If you know her music you can easily figure out which song.  Let’s just say, I’ll be taking dating just a little more seriously and see how it goes…