These Women

 

On our sojourn in Santa Fe, we stopped in at this Native American Modern Art Gallery to use their facilities to change our babes, relieve ourselves and thaw out for a few moments.  

On our way out we passed a walled garden with various statues in it.  The above statue of a woman was my favorite.  It struck me in the moment and it became an image that I've come back to again and again in the past couple of weeks.

I've often felt like that.  Alone and windblown.  And yet, I've nearly always found myself wrapped up and protected by these women.  My mother.  My sisters.  Whimsy.  Samwise.  Rachael.  My Sarahs.  Emily.  Kristin.  Mary.  Mona.  Debbi.  Brett. Celeste.  These women of extraordinary kindness, of warmth, of patience, and tolerance and courage.  These women who acknowledge that I am not always the nicest girl, but they love me just the same.  These women, who if pressed, would probably admit that I make them crazy, that I exasperate, frustrate and annoy; but they stay with me all the same.

I find myself trying to purge the trappings of friendships, tired and sad and thinking that I'd be better off going my own way.  I let go, I drop off the radar, I don't answer the phone or emails; always assuming that they'll give up and leave me.

And they never do.  For they are wiser than me and they recognize the world for what it is, a cold, hard place that is best served by good friends and warm blankets.

Sometimes we keep in touch better than others.  We confide fears and anxieties and hopes.  We cry on shoulders and laugh ourselves into headaches.  They sit back and let me ramble on and on and they shake it off when I sit in awe and wonder of their creativity and perseverance. 

I'll never understand what I did to deserve so many worthy women in my life.  I question it constantly.  I am humbled and grateful for them.  I struggle for the words to express myself adequately, and when I struggle and stammer and mutter and pull my hair they sit and wait, and sometimes fill in the gaps with their own words.

But as I emerge from on of those restless cycles, I hope that I can wrap them up and shelter them as they have so often sheltered me.  I'm resolving to try to be a better friend, a better daughter, a better sister.

To do it justice

Coming to you LIVE from New Mexico and the High Desert, it is M!  And the Boy, so fully two-thirds of Burnstopia!

We are exhausted.

So here's the back story. 

Six years ago last August our triumverate disbanded.  I moved to the South for grad school and eventually the faithful Samwise would leave to work a WIC clinic in North Carolina followed by a stint in Okinawa.  Whimsy alone of all of us has remained constant.  Then we went and got married in our separate corners of the states, Whimsy to Chip in Seattle, me and Chris in North Carolina and Samwise and her Joe in the desert southwest.

And then we went and had children.  The charming and disarming Alice, followed four months later by the Boy followed a year and bit later by the Newbie:  London.  (Though ingenue would probably be the nicer and more sophisticated term.)

We haven't been all together for 6 long years. 

So when Whimsy came East last Spring we concocted this PLAN.  The two of us and our two children would DESCEND on the unsuspecting Samwise in New Mexico.  We would admire each other's children, we would talk, we would laugh and we would oooo and aaaahhhh over the Newbie.

And so that's what we're doing this week.  In case you were suffering The Morbid Curiousity.

The Boy and I flew from Jacksonville to Atlanta from Atlanta to Phoenix and from Phoenix to Albuquerque from whence we would meet up with Whimsy and Alice and rent a car and drive the long miles into the desert to a small casino/resort near our Faithful Samwise.  And that's what we've done.  Crossed time zones and state lines, soared and descended, hurried and rushed and finally rested.

I have many stories to tell you all, stories of bravery, of kindness and tender mercies, of patience and mellowing.  But I can't tell them just yet.  I haven't quite finished living them. 

Be patient.  More is coming.

An Open Letter to Whimsy

Dear Whimsy:

My thumb hurts. I was nervous about the somewhat social event last Thursday and I was chewing on the skin around the nail, you know how I do, and I peeled it back too far. Well, and then, I can't stop doing everything that I have to do just because I have an open wound, so it got infected. On Friday and Saturday I would pull the swollen, red and scabby flesh back from the nail and pour peroxide into it, it would sting and burn and then foam, but after that it started to heal. I was laying in Bed Sweet Bed on Saturday night and it was throbbing and I would periodically get these shooting pains from the knuckled down to the tip of my thumb. Sunday night I realized that that's what the corner of my heart occupied by you feels like right now. I miss you horribly. And in thinking of you, I get these sharp, stabbing pains that shoot from that corner of my heart out into my chest and stomach.

I've already told you this, but I know that I should call. I want to call. But then, what I really want is to have you in my living room, or to be in yours. To crack open a diet coke and slouch at your dining room table and chat. Or to lay my head down and have a good cry while you play with my hair. There's really not much to talk about, I just miss you. I miss having a friend that I feel comfortable with--enough to be goofy and odd with. I miss laughing the way that we do until our bellies hurt. I miss being understood without having to explain myself constantly.

So, in this state, I have pulled down Sight Hound to read. Remember you gave it to me for my birthday a couple of years ago? I couldn't read it then (Chris forbid it) because I knew it would make me want a dog so much that I would do something rash, like actually GET a dog. Anyway, I pulled it down Sunday night. I reread the inscription from you--I love how hard you press on the paper when you write, so that the back sides of everything (letters, postcards, lists) have ridges--it's like Whimsy-Braille--and I started the book.

It's lovely.

Remember how I told you that when I read Harry Potter now, I hear it in my head in Chris' voice? Because he's read them aloud to me so often--on trips from Athens to Savannah, from Durham to Savannah, at home in Bed Sweet Bed. But when I read this book, I hear it in your voice. It's like a conversation with you that I can hold in my hands. And that is a wonderful gift.

And this: "It's funny how love is both harder, and easier, without language."

You wrote it about our friendship, and yet. I read it and I started to think about you and Alice. About me and the Boy. About Samwise and the soon to be Girl. About my sweet sister and her children. About so many lovely women I know and their children. About all the mothers and their children. About how hard it is to love them when they can't communicate with us what they want and need. About how hard it is to love them when they can communicate and we cannot possibly live up to what they want and need from us.

I started to think strange things about how maybe this is one of those burdens of humanity--our blessing and our curse, if you will--I was again amazed that we, as a species, have survived for as long as we have. That we continue to carry on. I was thinking how all of these burdens seem to imbue our life, and our choices with so much more meaning that we think when we're making those choices.

Thank you. Thank you for the book. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for accepting me flaws and all. Thank you for loving me even when I feel like the strangest girl on earth. Thank you for creeping into my heart and my mind and shining light, and enlightenment, into the dark and dusty corners. And thank you for this book. I'm sorry if I've been weird lately. I'm sorry for not keeping in touch as I should. I love you whole and to pieces.

Am Cracking Myself UP!

So, I've been exchanging emails with one of my bestest friends for a few days now. It started about the doldrums but now it's just spiraled out of control.

Example:

She emailed me because she is setting herself up (legally speaking) to do dietary and nutrition consulting and she was soliciting ideas for a business name, something appropriate to put on a business card.

I started thinking of everything I know about one of my best girls and this is what I came up with:

S____ S_____, RD: It's ok to eat M&Ms for dinner sometimes.
Dietary and Nutrition Consulting

OR

S____ S_____, RD: I drank gravy once on a dare, and so can YOU!
Dietary and Nutrition Consulting

Knowing her, she'll be tempted but end up doing something sensible, so HURRY! Vote for your pick for what you'd like to see on a nutrition consultant's business card! She reads the blog, so she'll see them and you never know, she just might take you up on that dare! (For she is awesome!)