Cat's Cradle

Driving home tonight on highway 50. The big fluorescent sign says snow ahead, chains required. I turn the music up and hold my hand up to the wind as I pass the strip club. Feel the wind push my palm and send a greeting to the sad girls inside and the best they could do. Tonight I spent the evening over fish tacos and chocolate chip cheesecake with my friend Charr. We sat beneath plaster pyramids and tuxedo clad busboys. False idols and all, we sifted through the wreckage and helped each other salvage colored threads. Wove them together like children. Cats cradle. She grasps the awkward tangle with both hands and turns it toward the ground. I hold steady til she takes over and try to figure the next move. I tell her of missing cats and upended psyches. She talks over mothers, lovers and the cross between. Crying over diet coke she tells me of seminars and leaving things behind. I hunch over and hike up my load. A good soldier never complains.

The road is slick from new rain and I push down on the gas, wonder if the headlights behind me are a police car. I turn the music up and think of my father, a boy I loved when I was 16. My father hated him and I can’t leave him behind. 30 years earlier and my father would’ve put a shotgun to his chest for not properly ringing the doorbell. 30 years later and I will still wonder why this boy didn’t love me right, why I didn’t get my own gun.

Cats to the wind I sit up straight in the driver’s seat and say hello to the demons. Charr says her father mutters hello to all bad thoughts. Like a crazy old steward he cheerily croaks hello to the TV, the bathroom sink, the cold soup.

Tonight a gaudy glorious dress in yellow taffeta snickers next to me. I think of the first photo Charr took of me. Black cotton on top of a ladder I see her fall to the floor suddenly in this tardy prom dress. Land soft like a drunk all thud, moss and pink roses. The girl in black would’ve fractured and limped for days. This woman in yellow and pink frill would roll easily and rise. Strap on roller skates and take them for all they’re worth.

Happy Birthday

I wish I could think of more metaphors for ‘crossroads’. I can tell this is going to be sticky. I’m rusty, you see. I’ve been writing in my head all day and on and off for months but never actually typing or putting a pen to paper.

I am at so many different crossroads my head is spinning. I’m so confused and so clear on so many things I can’t decide if I am right where I should be or upside-down.

I’ll just start at the moment and branch out. I am sitting in front of my wood stove, my old dog next to me, my children asleep in new bunkbeds nearby. Their room smells of freshly cut wood, the Christmas tree branches I’m burning to keep our little house warm. As a surprise my father transformed their teeny-tiny bedroom with a twin and a closet to a boy’s dream. Built-in custom bunkbeds with pirate sheets, new pillows and quilts and a ladder to scale a dozen times every day. I’m drinking eggnog because it doesn’t expire until January 2nd. It is exactly 8:30 p.m. on December 27 and 34 years ago I was six hours old. Today is my birthday. I can never resist writing on this day. I see meaning in birthdays. Not in the astrological sense – although that whole deal amuses me. I see meaning in the dates. For instance, the day my son was born my grocery checker and my pharmacist bore babies as well. I had no idea until my son was a couple of months old and on the same day both women asked me my son’s age and I asked their children’s birthdates. Crazy. What does it mean? Maybe nothing but it feels like something to me. A close friend had her third baby yesterday and I so hoped he would be born on my birthday. Instant kismet I think. We would be kindred spirits. He would instantly be my favorite. They induced yesterday and now he’s just another kid.

I have been reading my first novel in a year this week and it feels like going home. I have missed reading and pulled the book off of my grandmother’s shelf so I think of her with every page. Wonder what she was doing when she read it. Wishing I could read it with her. Book club with ghosts. I’m thinking of ways to remember her, honor her. Thinking of systematically reading every book in her collection. Contemplating planting a blue garden in the spring. Bachelor buttons, delphinium and forget-me-nots – all her favorites, and mine.

I don’t know if this will come about. I want to honor the dead and celebrate the living but haven’t found the balance yet. Tattooed my own foot to remind me, still escapes. Next tattoo will be a string around my finger, yellow ribbon in my hair.