[floo-id-i-tee] noun
So does anybody else think making love is like water?
You know, fluid like, and without sharp edges – smooth and seamless – one move flowing into the next move, this fingertip sliding over that curve, the tip of this tongue dipping into that shallow, just motion into motion, without pause until the last drop has fallen.
Or is it just me?
Okay, so I’ll probably be missing for two weeks. No sense in sending up smoke signals. No search and rescue dogs. I’m fine. But the grandsons come on Monday, my birthday coincidentally, and I’m positive I will not be available on the internet.
We will go to a science museum, zoo and aquarium. We will visit a few Roadside America attractions, because resisting a 25 foot rocking chair or a robot made out of car mufflers is damn near impossible. Last year I saw the world’s largest frying pan. I mean, hello. I was making plans for whitewater rafting but I saw photos this morning, that Mom and Dad beat me to it! Those snakes! 😛 But the boys look like they are having a blast, and that’s the goal. So now I’m thinking definitely zip-lining will be our big adventure. And of course the lemur center because, hey, we can’t forget to visit our kin, the animals.
We’ll also be making a bench out of pallets, and making our own Camp Grandma tee shirts, as well as numerous other craft projects. I haven’t found my camera yet, but hopefully there will be photographs, lots and lots of them.
Two weeks of nonstop action, nonstop laughter and hugs and love, unconditional love. If I don’t survive, at least you’ll know – I went out smiling.
Love this…and if you love her too, then watch this next video, from 1987, when she was 13 years old and got booed on the stage of the Apollo on Amateur Night.
Confession is good for the soul, and, deep breath, here goes…
I just called my son-in-law and told him I put $50 in his bank account just now. Well, in his joint account with my daughter. I didn’t have to tell him why but I did and he understood because he’s a great guy. And I told him to make sure she understood that this was important for me to do.
In 2006, I stole $500 from my daughter’s bank account. It was so simple really. The bank knew me; I’m a flirt, what can I say? So when I walked in and pretended I could not remember the account number, they said, “No problem” and it was really no problem. I did intend to redeposit it in a few days when I got paid but my ex-girlfriend stole my paycheck and spent it on drugs, which was what the $500 was for in the first place; really I can’t place the blame at her door for I am an adult and guilty as well. Yes, I know. I’m a royal piece of crap, or I was then. I’m an entirely different person now.
Needless to say, my daughter did not speak to me for…well, at least four years, although it felt like a much longer time. In lesbian years, that’s actually about 17 years, I think. These days we talk at least once a week, sometimes more, and she is bringing me my grandsons on my birthday, June 30th and I get them for 12 whole days and I couldn’t be happier.
Why this act of conscience now? Well, suddenly I’m not so sick anymore and I’m making more money, being productive, and this seemed like a good time to give back. And $50 every few weeks will mean a lot to my self-esteem, and to them as they struggle to recover financially from first a flood in their house and then to my daughter’s accident in January.
So, dear friends, that’s the deep dark truth. And I cry as I type because I can not change the past. I can only accept my personal responsibility for it. Go on, throw feces at me like the other monkeys would if I were in the zoo; it’s really no more and no less than what I deserve. I feel so stupid sometimes, ashamed really, and not at all perfect like I was going for.
She walks into the room and I smile.
She leans over to kiss me and my heart flutters,
just as it did the first time she practiced this lost art
of loving me tenderly.
Without warning, she wounds me with subtle words,
seemingly innocent conversation
gone horribly awry in an instant,
and my eyes erupt,
betraying me (why?!),
and my misunderstood ire bubbles over
but it’s simply a mask for my frustration
that she doesn’t know me as well
as I want her to,
without me saying a word.
My unintentional love for this fair maiden
leaves me chronically disabled,
wanting, always wanting, more and more of her,
willing her to be clairvoyant
so that we might never argue, ever again.
When she leaves, the room darkens a little
as though the light is now gone.
She walks into the room again and I smile.
Her dismay still lingers, staining the moment,
and I want nothing more than to rewind
that previous moment again and again and again
so that her smile will never waver.
I will myself to learn but I never learn.
This is a song from the movie, “The Fault in Our Stars”.
“Not all of life is cruel,
Not all of life is so untrue”….
So every now and then, I look up people from my old neighborhood, just to reassure myself of where they are, what they’re doing. Oh by looking up, I don’t mean Facebook or any of that, I mean the jail. Arrest record. Time served. Stuff like that.
Today’s excursion started innocently enough. I was working and happened on one of those unusual names. You know, not Bob or David or Mary, but different. Benita was the name today. The mother’s name of one of the boys who “had his way with me” one New Years night when I was 16. I hesitate to say rape. I mean, I know now that it was rape but back then, it seemed like drunken sex, just not of my own invitation. I mean, one was my boyfriend’s older brother and the other one was the older brother’s best friend. I couldn’t tell. My boyfriend would’ve gotten mad, his brother would’ve beat his ass, you see how that goes. And my best friend was my boyfriend’s little sister. It would have been a giant mess.
I wasn’t supposed to be out drinking, for one thing. I was allowed to go out to a “babysitting job” that night. But I went to my boyfriend’s house and his mom was mixing Harvey Wallbangers for all of us almost old-enough kids. I got commode hugging drunk, as I had never drank that much before. Vivian was kind and patient. She held my hair, walked me around the yard until I could walk upright. Everything you would expect a good woman to do, I mean if you consider letting your son’s underage girlfriend drink at your house on New Years eve something a good woman would do. And wouldn’t you know, Benita was her best friend. Very tight neighborhood community. Then she asked her oldest son and his best friend to walk me home, make sure I made it safe. Very responsible thing to do. She didn’t know they would rape me. I asked Steve to go with us because the other two were not boys I liked but he was in a snit about something and said no.
We cut through a trailer park and instead of the left to my house, they went straight to a field next to the woods, needing to “show me something”. Okay. Field trip! I saw quite a lot of a few things actually. Then dutiful sons that they were, they took me home, saw me to my yard, asked me not to tell their girlfriends, who were also friends of mine. I was so relieved it was all over, I would have agreed to anything. Never told a soul about that night, until right this minute. I didn’t tell my boyfriend, nor his sister. I didn’t tell their mom, or the Old Lady. Not a soul. And then today, Benita’s name comes across my desk, prompts me to look them up.
The older brother is a chronic in-and-out of jail guy for drugs, paraphernalia, petty theft. I didn’t find the older brother’s best friend, maybe I don’t know his real name. We called him Rusty. But I found his little brother, Shane, who’s been arrested for drugs, paraphernalia and prostitution. Shane was five when this happened to me. And I moved soon after. I wonder now if his older brother moved on from me to raping him. I mean, rape is about domination, not who you’re dominating, not what sex you’re forcing yourself on.
So this morning I’m wondering – if I had of told, pissed off the whole neighborhood, pushed the truth down everyone’s throat, took the ass-beating for being out drinking, stood up for myself, withstood the embarrassment and shame, the ostracizing from my friends – would Shane still be listed in the jail system? Would he have went to drugs? Prostitution? Of course I don’t know that my silence caused any of that, for certain, but we all know that events lead to other events, that things fall into place from previous situations, that what will happen often depends on what has happened. That for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction and so on and so forth. Would Newton be proud that I am part of his statistical theory? Hopefully not.
FROM MIGHTY GIRL: Today in Mighty Girl history, we remember Anne Frank on what would have been her 85th birthday. Anne’s posthumously published diary has touched the hearts of millions with her experiences of hiding during the Holocaust of WWII. Her early life, however was not much different than that of many children. Born in Germany in 1929, Anne lived with her family, attended school, and was known for being energetic and outgoing.
In 1942, all that would change, as the Jewish Frank family was targeted during the anti-Semitic reign of Hitler and the Nazi Party. At 13 years of age, Anne joined her older sister and parents in hiding in what she called “The Secret Annex” — hidden rooms within her father’s office building in Amsterdam. Before long, the Frank family would be joined by four Dutch Jews, similarly trying to escape persecution.
These eight individuals spent the next two years sharing a space of approximately 500 square feet — 24/7, with no visits out of doors. During that time, Anne kept a detailed diary of her life, including her emotional and physical development, and her observations about the people within the Annex as well as the political climate outside. Remarkable on many levels, Anne was also extraordinary for her strong belief in the essential goodness of humanity — a belief that comes across in her writing including in her famous statement that “despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”
Anne’s diary survived the ordeal, although Anne did not. Tragically, she died in a concentration camp just before the war’s end; she would never have a chance to discover how profoundly affecting her words would be to millions of people around the world. The diary of Anne Frank has been translated into more than 70 languages, transformed into plays and films, and has educated many about the realities of a genocide through the eyes of a young girl. Eleanor Roosevelt famously called her diary “one of the wisest and most moving commentaries on war and its impact on human beings that I have ever read.”
Daily life, this and that. Ambiguous 