Here's to Act Two; Here's to You

Through the encouragement of a friend, a loyal reader (thank you my dear), I've decided to revisit this picture with a little more text to support the sentiments above. Andy Warhol, whose style I stole, wouldn't approve of the venture though. The man who omitted any sort of direct explanation for his art; he let it rest in ambiguity as the unknown offers itself up to many different interpretations...but somehow, I figure, even if I tell you what I think you can still go on thinking your way too. Alas...

In high school I remember the intensity of the melodramatic yearning. I would write in my journal (journal writing existing for me at this age because NOBODY UNDERSTANDS me) "Please send me someone to love me, someone I can love. I have so much love to give." Dance after dance, date after...actually, there weren't that many dates, I would return the pen to the page and reiterate the same wish.

The summer before senior year of high school I was sent an answer. His name: Patrick. His passions: Notre Dame football and fried chicken (specifically the chicken-fried-chicken at Cracker Barrel). Qualities: Humor and relaxed disposition. Ambitions: History major. Although I wouldn't come to know all this until a while later. What I knew first and foremost was just how absolutely adorable he was.

I remember the first night I met him. Friends of friends, isn't that a well-known story? How we come to be in the right place at the right time, seems to indicate a higher force of some kind, no? There was a bonfire. There were smores. There were good laughs with girls whom I had run cross-country with for three years now and felt were my family. And then, there were boys. Catholic school boys. No more smores. Nervous yet hopeful laughter. And him. Jovial. Comfortable. Someone who seemed to know who he was and where he was going.

If you ask him today, he doesn't remember that night well. But I did. He face, burned in my brain as brightly as the bonfire that warmed us on the chilly June evening. The summer went on, and I continued to think about him and melodramatically write about it in my journal. "Do you think he thinks about me too??"

As August approached and pre-season training started for cross-country, I asked my running family what they *thought* of him. More specifically if he was dating anyone. This line of questioning always causes an eruption as the implications are obvious. "YOU LIKE HIM! YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DATE!" Those girls, committed to making it happen set up a gathering at one of their houses. Patrick had been told in advance about me, a discussion I had okay-ed, but I have feeling my approval wouldn't have mattered. Once these matters fall into the hands of teenage girls, your individual weigh is 0.0. No pull whatsoever. It was reported back to me that Patrick was excited. And if I decided to ask him to our Homecoming dance he would say yes.

Patrick and I spent the evening on the roof of my friend's detached garage, getting to know one another better. Me. Patrick. And the stars. Conversation murmured below us none of which I was aware of or cared about. I sat with my arms linked underneath my knees, nervously avoiding opportunity after opportunity to ask him to the dance. I couldn't do it. We eventually lowered ourselves off that garage...Patrick possibly thinking I had changed my mind. He left to get something from his car and I was packing up to leave. As he was returning to the backyard I was heading towards my car, we gave each other a passing goodnight and then I said, "WAIT!" We turned and I continued, "Would you, by any chance, want to go to my homecoming dance with me?" He said, "I would love to!" I left smiling to the night sky, he allegedly returned to group with a jump and double click of the heels.

As this post is already nearing narrative hell, sorry dear reader(s), I'll simply state that my high school dances were nightmares. Classically horrific tales, that I tell as tales so that I can pretend they didn't happen to me. My senior homecoming with Patrick was by contrast, fairy tale worthy. (Are you gagging yet? No, then let me include that we even danced cheek to cheek. Surely that did it, yes?)

That moment jump started "Act One" -- this is our terminology for the evolution of our relationship. Act one was filled with lots of hormones, repressed fights and our problem-solving skills lacking. We entered into our college careers unfit to conquer the hurdles that a long distance relationship involve. We parted ways. A decision that never felt right for either of us.

Intermission. Grab a Snack. A drink?

Lights flicker.

Back to your seats.

Act two: Patrick is dressed in colonial gear greeting myself and bus load of rowdy eighth graders to our field trip back to the 1800's. We nervously smile at each other - I ask a brilliant question when we visit the printing press, "Is that where hot off the press comes from," a question he dismisses (claims later that was nerves).

We were reconnected. Right place right time --almost makes a full blown believer out of me.

Give something time and it can be something else. While in many ways we are still that same wildly in love couple from our high school years, (the same picture repeated) - we are telling our story this time using different color bricks meaning we have grown up and yet continue to grow with each other. We've learned how to fight effectively: I no longer hang up the phone when I'm upset - he pushes himself to articulate his emotions. We have learned how precious time is because we felt it slip for many of those intermission years. You can change what is going on in the background of our lives, ups and downs, strikes and gutters, yet here we are. Each others constants.

And I couldn't be luckier. Here's to him. (And to you, for reading!)

xxoo

Beginnings are always good places to start. I can hear Julie Andrews belting so from the mountains of my childhood. As a six year old, I was fascinated with the liveliness of all of those children and the drama of their lives: beloved mother dies, Fraulein Maria becomes the next best thing, proven prominently by vocals of the captain sweetly serenading his children with the tune of "Adelweiss." It was one of my first (recalled) images of searching and yearning for more, one of my first visuals of a surrogate. The movie seemed to answer my question of whether or not success down this avenue was possible, promising and fulfilling.



Cut Scene.

Enter Reality.

Role Film.

"I'm defeated lying there on my new twin sized bed. With a single pillow underneath my single head."

They say a lot of things:

1. They say you shouldn't wear white after labor day.

2. They say that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

3. They say that time heals everything.

4. They say that it is better to have love and lost then not to have loved at all.

5. They say that you should write what you know.

Here's what I know. I know that none of the above is certain. I'm actually not convinced any of it is.

1.) As for the white after labor day... It may just be my mother who is still the sole person perpetuating this phrase. My sisters and I learned to be wary of her word choice rather early on in life. While running around the gym for a warm-up in 7th grade P.E. class, my sister's scrunchy came loose. The annoyance of her hair slapping her in the face urged her to scream out, "Ugh! My hairpiece!" Surely having survived middle school you know that it takes less than a series of milliseconds for just about any utterance, event, moment, to be distorted, fabricated and then shared by all. My poor sister and her middle school balding rumors.

I remember making a little vocabulary chart in one of my puffy heart-covered diaries:

mom's word ------- actual word
hair piece ------- scrunchy
boom-box ------- radio
cream rinse ------- conditioner
thongs ------- flip flops
do-hickies ------- just about anything

So I vote that you wear the hell out of that white, no matter what the day.

2.) As for the second...They also say it takes one to know one. Yeah. No shit. Why do you think I know where to aim the stone? And you know what, if I could, I'd throw one at my own house too. Sometimes it just feels good to throw the goddamn stone.

3.) Number three and four are personal favorites. In my corner, time isn't really doing much for me, which is what brings my fingers to the keys.

4.) With each letter I can feel the weight of that love that is no longer and the weight of the wonder if it ever was at all. I'm reminded of one of my all time favorite poems by Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art."

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Bishop knew that when time couldn't keep up its end of the bargain there was always writing. "Write it!" she screams at me. So here I am. It's not as if my story is something new, something you haven't heard before. But it is mine. And maybe, if my words can find your mind, perhaps even your hearts, you can be the they who say, it will be okay. Because let's face it, they always say, it will all be okay (or at least one illusive morning it will appear that way).

5.) Here's what I know to be true...people will disappoint you for a multitude of reasons. But instead of picking up stones, or waiting for the healing hands of time or even weighing whether or not the love was better had and lost then never at all...write it!

write it!

Write it!

Write it!