Rise Again

My Gigi

May 3rd, 2009 | Memorial, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

My grandmother has always been my rock.  My mother and I are unusually close and I appreciate that relationship in a way that’s difficult to explain.

My grandmother is different though.

There’s nothing I could do or say-she never yells at me, she’s quick to lend me $5 or $10 or $100 whether I need it or deserve it, which I rarely do deserve it.

Today after we went to Longhorn’s for my aunt’s birthday, filled with sweet margaritas and medium rare filets, my grandmother-or Gigi as she has affectionately become since the birth of my son-went and had pedicures and manicures at a nice salon in town.

We didn’t talk about anything life changing, in fact, she practically fell asleep in the deep tissue massage chair, but just the comfy air between us two, with the nail tech busy below, was nice.

We always did everything together, she taught me to read, walked me to the library twice a week during the summers when I was small.  She would push my hair back and tell me what a beautiful forehead her sweet angel had…

Our days are getting shorter.  I see the orange and red in the sky.  I get busy and she gets tired chasing my fair-haired baby boy.

When the sun sets, my face won’t be dry for years afterward.

Senseless

September 16th, 2008 | Memorial | 2 Comments »

Wet and heaving, catching my breath is more difficult than I expected.

The day started out simple enough.  A minor battle with a middle management moron at Martin’s.  They don’t have changing tables.  What.  The.  Fuck.

Is the world filled with “family” establishments or what?  So annoying.

Kept MGR out of daycare today-those croupy coughs make me so sad.  I hate to see him sick.  No sense in getting everyone else sick too.   Met my friend from my old job, my good job, my I’m so bitter I didn’t deserve to get laid off job.  Two Long Islands and I’m certainly feeling better about that.

I told J I would call.

No sense in pretending it isn’t here.

No sense in convincing ourselves that failure isn’t multiplied by the number of days we are in the month.

No sense in acting like it didn’t come this year.

No sense.

Totally fucking senseless.

Failure.

When I wipe his tiny tears away from those big blue green but somehow so dark eyes, alone, in the night light glow…failure.

Failure because savior isn’t an option.

It’s not on the list.

Not possible.

I thought it might just pass by.

No sense in that.

Really.

Just senseless.

September 16th

September 15th, 2008 | Memorial | 5 Comments »

As time ticks closer, I can’t believe it’s been two years.  We should be celebrating together.  Taking stock of all we’ve done, the child we are raising, the goals we’ve accomplished.

I’m in this limbonic state of complete confusion.  Am I happy? Am I sad? Am I content or mad?  Just about the time I’m feeling better-the calender puts it’s plan of reminders into motion.  Evil mastermind or cyclical nature of the universe?  I’m having a hard time remembering.

I guess I could try to go back.  Maybe.  I’m pretty sure it’s too late for that now.

I should have listened to myself before instead of after.

The hours are counting down and instead of doing something, I’ve just resigned to doing nothing.  A part of me dies with each second passing because I know this anniversary isn’t.  It’s just another day.

Night Air

September 12th, 2008 | Memorial, social | 6 Comments »

Night air is different than daytime air.   It’s thick, like meringue, except milder-the smoke from a good cigar and I hate meringue.  I always ride with the music loud.  I’m a singer, a has been if I ever had been in the first place.  My car is my concert hall, the Cd is my symphony.

But at night…

Ah, at night.

I can ride with the windows down and the music up.  Sing as loudly as possible and yet…

no one can hear.

I taped myself this evening.  In hopes that you would all see, you would all hear and be enthralled.

Eh.

I really can sing, though I’m not sure a point and shoot version of discography is the best way to express that.

I think I’ll youtube it anyway.  It’s me, after all, who cares what the fuck you think?

Because, as I was saying, the night atmosphere is quite different from that stifling, sticky film, the August dog days.  Even though we’re in September, it might as well be the beginning of July around here.  There’s certainly a magic to it, a romance.

I forget that I have, at least in some ways, abandoned my dreams of musical stardom and settled for another type of life.

But at night, in my car, the air carries those notes and makes me feel like a…

The Obligatory Sept. 11th Post

September 11th, 2008 | Memorial, election | 9 Comments »

I’m going to be honest here.  I have no idea the best way to write this post.  I’m very patriotriotic, but that type of memorial has been done a thousand times on our way from That Day™ to this day.   This year, it seems we really have some distance between us and That Day™.

I feel somehow fake when I see the memorial pictures.  Like I have this unrealistic connection to That Day™.  This happened hundreds of miles away from the safe, warm bed I was in.  I was in no danger.  Do I have a right to feel sad?  A right to feel angry?  It wasn’t my friends and family-so who am I to offer up pretend and pretentious emotions?

I keep coming back to the question, “Where were you when?”  It’s been asked before.  Kennedy, Dr. King, the Moon Landing.   It’s a very important memory to preserve.  

Well, I was laid up in the bed with my ex-boyfriend.  He lived in Inman Park.  I was supposed to go to class That Day™, instead we watched the news all morning.  My mom called to make sure we were okay and to ask me not to go to school.  They cancelled classes That Day™ and the next anyway.

That man now has a child of his own and a long term girlfriend.  It’s always a shitty realization that it’s not commitment he’s afraid of, it’s commitment with you that’s the problem.

Anyway, the first building had already come down by the time we got on the ball.  To be honest,  I even think we had sex during all this-but, that was during my drug days, so my memory is kind of fuzzy.  Very sacrilege, looking back, but users are not generally known for their character or appropriate response to stress.

I remember watching Building Two fall-wanting to somehow reach through that old tv and catch it.   The building on the tv was small, compared to my real life hands.  Certainly there was someway to stop this ridiculousness and get on with our day.   If I could just hold up that model sized building on the screen, I could change the course of the next seven years.

*sigh*

But you can’t reach through the tv, otherwise many a game show host would have been choked by me already and we all know that’s not true.

We’re here, seven years later.  It’s still such a fresh wound.  I wonder how our grandparents felt on December 7th?  How helpless they must have felt.

I still feel helpless.  We’re seven years later and no closer to justice it seems than we were the next day.  In fact, I’m sure we were closer then.

Of course, that’s all politics, but it still makes me angry. 

I wonder about the babies born to mothers who’s fathers died That Day™.   I wonder if they wonder when they’ll get justice for their daddies?

Maybe if we just put enough years between now and then, the justice won’t matter so much?

Nah.  I think I’ll still care, won’t you?

Anyway, let’s hear it, good, bad, ugly, embarrassing.  Where were you that day?