Fallen

Tags

caution, church, conversation, couple, dating, dinner, falling in love, feelings, guard your heart, guilt, life, love, question, relationship

Her words ring in my ears hours after our dinner is finished.

I just want to caution you, she says, laying her palm flat on the table. This is important enough to unhand her water class, the stems of which we are both fingering in the spaces of a conversation wading between tense and friendly.

Be careful to guard your heart.

I’m certain not to run round and round with my words, saying only exactly what I mean, and in the least amount of syllables. I want to be heard, understood, if accepted and loved.

What do you mean, not snotty or snide, but honest and seeking. I want her to explain, practically what this churchy verbage is all about.

Well, it sounds like you’re falling in love with him, her voice is gentle, as if to lead me in to something that might shock me, startle me, leave me breathless.

That’s the phrase that keeps ringing and ringing.

She’s just learning now. Am I guilty for how I didn’t help her see sooner, or disappointed for how she didn’t read between the lines of my life? I’ve been waiting dinner after dinner after dinner to make sure she knows this. And so—

Oh Ruth, I sigh, both hands on the table, a symbol of frankness, a pause, I already have. Sure not to say that I already am, because it’s not that I am falling, it’s not happening now, currently, today. She missed that. That was in Bible college, on Chicago streets, sushi bars, dark concert halls, at the zoo, on the train, in the lyrics of his songs. There were months and years that built today. Today, there is only commitment.

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I Will

Tags

bridal party, bridesmaid, celebration, eloping, friendship, Las Vegas, love, loyalty, marriage, rejoice, wedding

Yesterday, Paula and I were talking about weddings. She, however, is already married—the single most gorgeous, personal, and relaxed wedding I’ve been a part of to date—so I guess we were only talking about one wedding.

There was a silence in our conversation, where we sat on the couch, our feet tangled up on a love seat too small for every inch of our adult bodies and the nuzzling snout of her black lab, all of which were finding space here.

I had alluded to eloping, not said that I would or was in favor, just alluded, even a little in jest. I had mentioned, even admitted to romanticizing the fact that eloping was something we almost did a number of years ago. I was a touch embarrassed that we’d suggested Vegas. I think I credited him for saying “Let’s go” because he did.

She broke the silence with disgust edged in playfulness. If you ever, she said. If you ever run away and came back married… It was a threat, not a joke. I laughed at the way it fit her character. At the way she so boldly called me on it like that. I will be standing in your wedding, she said.

Delighted in her boldness by which she said, I will stand by you, I will rejoice with you, we will do life together, I tossed the dog’s squeaky toy to relieve myself of his slobbery face and quieted her fears. Oh yes ma’am, you will.

Relationships cannot be maintained by mail.

Tags

chance, change, coffee, communication, effort, envelope, friendship, hockey, letters, life, love, mail, past, speculation, talking, travel, writing

I cannot win you over or back by affixing the self-adhesive stamp.
I will not turn time to hallways and hand-written notes, wide rule notebook paper
With bi-fold cards, sentiment on scrapbook paper, newspaper cutouts, gift cards

If we cannot have a cup of coffee,
Sit hours in uncomfortable chairs to tell stories,
I cannot know that you like the foam extra dry, that you don’t even like coffee
Peppermint tea with soy milk and honey

If I cannot be in the folding stadium seat beside you
On the ice, behind the boards or in the balcony, beer in a plastic cup
Swimming in the sleeves of my right wing who was on the Maple Leafs—
Now the Flyers

I cannot send myself to you
I cannot cross state lines
I am liquid and perishable
I am hazardous and otherwise fragile
I have crossed state lines, I have sent myself to you
I have bore this bridge
Unbroken this chasm, if only now, by mail.
And—

There is the possibility that this cannot be maintained by mail.

When the Lights Go Dark

Tags

alzheimer's, birthdays, dementia, family, feelings, grandpa, grandparents, life, love, memory, visting

He didn’t know my name when I walked through the door and greeted the old man who’s always been my Grandpa. Tick, tick, tick. Empty chatter.

The broken television.
The buttons on the remote control.
Don’t ever touch the green one.
He does, repeatedly, forgetting to read the directions my dad writes and rewrites.

The telephone, with an old recorded message,
From before Grandma passed away.
Bowling today.  He remembers how to bowl
But can’t remember that his bowling ball is in a bag in the closet.
Doesn’t know what we mean when we say bowling ball.

He stands behind me and I know he’s looking at a fridge magnet. A chart with our first names, the grandchildren, and our birthdays beside. His hands fall heavy on my shoulders, and after this half hour has passed he finally says, It’s Linda, right? Yes, Grandpa, you’ve still got it! I say it in jest. I don’t mean it in jest. I’m selfish and harbor hurt feelings.

Always Home

Tags

Chicago, driving, friendship, Gina, grandma, high school, home, life, memory, Michigan, Mom, Nonna, parents, past, streets, suburbs, travel

I don’t live here now. I don’t suppose I’ll raise my family here. Though it would be nice to watch my girls, with baskets on their bikes, ride down to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for cookies and milk, wearing summer skin just like I did when I was a kid. Even still, driving down these roads still feels like coming home.

Taking the back roads, the way our Moms always used to go, past the library and the convenient store. Past the corners where we stole, smoked, swore. Past Nonna’s apartment, where she’s lived for years, had trouble recently to just get up the stairs. Not even my Nonna, but yours. You, my high school best friend. No where but here, our memories, every one, still fresh, dear to me, clear in my rear view mirror.

Three Sleeps

Tags

anticipating, counting, epic, family, friends, friendship, home, life, love, Maxston, past, self-esteem, sleeps, travel, waiting, Walker, weekend, Whitney

Back when Whitney and I were friends, her family would rejoice in my cross-state visits. They were a close-knit bunch and the kinship buoyed my self-esteem (a side effect which wouldn’t be currently unwelcome). Her little cousin Maxston was just a tyke, maybe four, maybe six, then. He took to me in a way my memory covets now that it’s been years since. He’d see me across the church when I met them all there and he’d come running, wrap his arms around my neck–a hug with little arms, the kind that made you feel like family when words and things paled in comparison.  Empty against little squeezy arms like these. I digress.

Maxston, in his six-year-old simplicity, couldn’t rightly handle upcoming excitement. He couldn’t count the days on his hand, couldn’t methodically cross off Mondays and Tuesdays on a calendar before bed, nothing was enough. The days waned too slowly when he had to wait. Patience is an adult game. He couldn’t sit in front of the television without legs shaking, without a burst, a sprint to Mom in the kitchen, asking When? When? when something better was creeping closer with every tick of the clock.

So Maxston starting counting things in six-year-old sleeps. If Whitney was coming home in three days, he would have to go to sleep three times before he could wake up and see her. So, three sleeps. That was easy to understand. I can close my eyes one more time and then the thing I’ve been waiting for will be here before the next time I close my eyes. That’s so soon!

I understand the logic because I, at twenty-five, am resorting to it.

Is it the drag that these current patterns are pulling me through, the weight of responsibility that I want to come out from under, the itch to press fast forward and search for apartments in a new city too soon? The future beckons in all kinds of shapes and colors this Spring and counting in sleeps is the only way to keep things grounded.  And so, too old, I count in sleeps to stay sane.

One more sleep until the only city that’s ever been home.
Two more sleeps until my high school best friend, if I can be so archaic with the term, until a gal I’ll  take any day as my sister, though she’s not, until long-distance gets a break, praise God.
Three sleeps until a day that needs to last forever.

Wedding Season

Tags

change, community, fast forward, friendships, life, love, memory, relationship, wedding, wedding season

It was wedding season when we were sitting at picnic tables at the lake by my house.

I used to bring my bean bags to that lake the year before and play with boys from the waterpark, where I lifeguarded when I was a girl. I sat on the tree when I was even more of a girl, the tree that was bent down, the branches actually drinking from the lakewater, like the tree in the movie My Girl, where those kids fall in kid-love. I sat on the tree with a boy, in kid-love, too. He lived behind the lake. We stole a boat once in the middle of the night. Didn’t get caught, what a rush.

It was wedding season when we went to dinner at the Greek restaurant you loved.

It was nice outside and I didn’t wear a jacket. I hardly ever wear shoes that hurt my feet, but this night, I adulterated my own philosophies while we ate Mediterranean cuisine. I wasn’t being myself with you yet, hadn’t let my guard all the way down. Not sure if I ever, all the way, did. I love the way the Greeks set the cheese on fire and cry Opa! but we didn’t order it. You said no because I’m allergic which is better than how I would’ve said yes, ignoring my best interest.

It was still wedding season when we were caught in the bookstore, in the downpour.

I could stay in a bookstore all day, even a corporate warehouse like this. I want my memoir to be chronicled in a new section, want it to be sitting appropriately in “Creative NonFiction,” instead of tucked in Biography where it shouldn’t be. I lost you, lost in the pages of a book that chronicled decades of album covers. Doyle Brahmall was in there and I asked you if you knew him, but we can’t seem to find any of the same music that resonates between both our ears. There was a picture of Jim Morrison that looks like a tattoo I knew—

When everything is wedding all around, it intensifies the wedding inside of you. It intensified the wedding inside of you when everything around us was wedding.

Like the night we surprised Paul at Promontory Point, which I could hardly find, even though I pretend I’m from that city. In the cab, you called to inquire and I promised I was on my way. To be your pair, so everyone was paired. To give you a girl for your arm to wrap around while the fireworks painted a clear sky with celebration stars. For you to take home, plan the weekend around, surprise with send-off picnics.  We weren’t getting married, but everyone else was and I see how it put you in fast-forward for me.

Engagement Announcement

Tags

change, engagement, friends, future, God, love, marriage, proposal, relationship

In the picture, they’re dressed nice,
both in black sweaters, she in tights.

Frosted with glass, there are cupboards behind,
Mom and Dad’s kitchen—Iowa—both families intertwined.

We all met in seminary, intermingled with one another
She fell so gently, his steps so slow, so measured toward her.

I, so impatient, watching them come together
But now, it’s too soon, knowing they’ll spend forever.

Talking Talking Talking

Tags

betrothed, bride, change, engagement, feeling, friends, girlfriends, groom, growth, husband, love, marriage, respect, wedding, wife

I remember sitting in the kitchen, when Anne used to live in The Atrium, that old apartment complex where I could never get in without jumping the fence or following the neighbors inside like a stalker. Sitting at the kitchen table with Josi and Rachel, with her roommate Alayna, in front of my syrupy breakfast plate, talking, talking, talking. I was being intentional, taking that trip into the city to hang out with my girls and some days, I was so sick of talking and talking about James. I was selfish. I am. There were days we talked until there was nothing left to talk about. And even hours and minutes beyond.

I remember: I didn’t want to talk about him anymore. The syrup hardened to my plate and the edges of my heart hardened in their selfish ways. But it needed to be talked out. We needed to explore the emotions, the mental complications, the way it all felt. For Anne. For us all. It’s exactly what I’m expecting them to do for me. What is , some days, lacking. Where the Body is not always perfect. Where we remember that we are, in fact, human. Unfortunately.

And it was then, I realize, that I did not yet love him like I should have. I didn’t love him then. I didn’t love Annie’s fiancé during all that talking talking talking. I do now, but I didn’t then. It’s been a slow process for me to understand how he loves and cares for Anne in the lifetime-together kind of way. He does, I know that now.

They’ll be married soon. This is real. Name-change, move to Indiana kind of real. When Anne told me, I felt the joy spilling over and out of me. My feet were socked and curled up in my driver’s seat, the pedals driving themselves. I was squealing like I don’t usually, sounding like a girl. Sounding like a little girl because I love him now. And I want him to be the head of her, her husband, her leader. I want him to have her.

Betrothed was a definition that my middle schoolers needed to remember a few weeks ago. Many of them made a mistake and thought it meant “rejected”. Which is so far off. So far from the promise and commitment and lifetime sense of stay that betrothal elicits. Come May, they will be betrothed. And, I’m alright with that.

Heart is Greater Than

Tags

answer, equation, future, God, heart, journey, love, Love wins, math, money, relationship, result, school, science

My new wallet has graffiti on the front—a chunk logo of NYC, spray paint dripping to the edges on a brick wall in some hypothetical back alley. There are no back alleys in the brick and mortar NYC. Front is back and up is down.

And graffiti on the back, too—a math problem, to be true. It shows: misshapen heart is greater than money sign. That’s the equation. I suppose the heart is love. Or love and relationship, interaction between people. All of that represented by a heart. The expression of, feeling of, act of one engaging with another in the interest of love. I can level with that. I imagine that my wallet means not the aorta-pumping, artery-clogging, triple-bypass kind of heart, but the mine is broken, I give you my, you make mine go sort of heart is greater than the money sign. Than the stuff we buy, the things we have, the paper inside our wallets.

And I agree that it is.

Now the giver of this East Coast souvenir and I, we ascribe to this math problem, both agreeing that the arrow is pointing in the correct direction, that full credit should be awarded to the solver of this problem. In the intricacies, in the blank space where we show our work, we pull from different equation sheets. And I’m coming to understand, as the Teacher of this math class takes us through the lessons in the book, that those equation sheets just might be able to beautifully complement one another.

The way Chemistry informs Physics. The way Algebra informs Trigonometry and Calculus. Different cheat sheets on the test, x’s and y’s all tangled up in the show-your-work space, and the same answer in a box at the bottom of the page.