Ellipsis

Reefer Not So Madness

If my son Zimmerman ever reads my blog, he'll never again listen to me when I tell him to "say no to drugs" or "do the right thing" because the truth of the matter is that I admire his rebellious streak, something I never had, which still haunts me 40 odd years after high school ended (the operative term being "odd").  He recently wanted to get a tattoo - and although I personally could never bring myself to do it - because my mother thought they were "unladylike" - I often regret the fact that I never rebelled against anything.  What was so great about the straight and narrow anyway?  My life was certainly neither in present times.  If I had been wilder then - would I perhaps be more "settled" now? Am I still waiting to do something so wild that I can't talk about it for another 40 years? I'd like to think so, but part of me wonders if that ship has sailed - or sunk - or if there are waters still to be navigated.

Recently, Zim and his friends were picked up for "loitering" behind a convenience store. Beer was present - a 12 pack among 15 of them. Truth be told - when the incident was reported - my first thought was "15 kids...a 12-pack of beer...you're kidding, right?"  But we live in a small town, so it was a big deal for a few minutes.  Thankfully, they didn't get in any real trouble - just had to endure a slap on the wrist and a lecture from the police.  Of course, I was beside myself and had no idea what to say to him or how long he should be grounded or what might happen. He got a lecture from his father about "doing the right thing" - but truth be told - at his age, his father was having secret parties in the house with his siblings.  "We used to find wine corks everywhere," I remember his parents saying as they reflected on raising 5 kids.

But it was different with Zim - he was living with a single working mother - so his friends knew the house was going to be empty most afternoons.  Were they shooting up in my living room?  Was there drug trafficking?  Was he going to grow up to be a hardened criminal?  Was he going to end up in a 12-step program? Worse of all - was I failing him as a mother because I wasn't home to properly supervise him?  Was he going to start (gasp!) smoking pot - and then selling the silverware to make money to support his habit? Or did I just watch Reefer Madness too many times? 

Patrick, a father of 3, is often my sounding board for these types of questions. Although he's the consummate family man, a Republican and possibly a member of the CIA, other than having a harem of nubile high school beauties surrounding him at all times, he looked far too angelic in high school to have ever gotten into any real scrapes.  However, according to him, he and his friends had some wild times.

So, in a panic, I told him what happened with Zim and asked what I should do. He told me that I was overreacting - and shared stories of the times that he and his group found creative ways to dodge police (who were unable to outrun them). This is far too extensive for me to recount; watch for his blog regarding same (names changed to protect the guilty).

Then he said "What he's doing is perfectly normal for a kid his age...but hide the silverware just to be sure."

He wasn't of any help to me, because I couldn't tell if he was joking, but Zim was off the hook to some degree.

"OK, " I said, "I talked to a friend of mine from high school about what happened...he said he and his friends did that when they were your age...and he never served time on Rikers ....so I guess I shouldn't make a big deal out of it - but don't ever do it again."

I was so calm that I think he thought I had dipped into a secret stash of something - but if there was one - I didn't know about it (nor did I want to).

Last week, at a high school mini-reunion, Janine regaled us with stories about wild times she had "back in the day" - like the time she and her friend brought hash brownies to a classmate in the hospital. Others brought up incidents about throwing empty beer cans at cops whom they dodged at athletic fields and about getting school custodians to buy booze for them by offering to share it with him.

I was so wishing I could remember something scandalous to share with them. But there was nothing. I was squeaky clean back then. What was I thinking? Why didn't I experiment? What was wrong with me? I let my youth pass me by...I could have been Natalie Wood in Rebel with a Cause but I was Snow White sans the dwarfs...

"Damn," I said, "maybe I should do it all now...it's never too late!"  I rifled through my cabinets and found a box of Funfetti cake mix.  "Now all I need to do is contact Chef Janice for an Alice B. Toklas recipe," I thought, "she has more than 40,000 recipes - she must have one I can use..."

Then - Zimmerman texted me.

"I'm on my way home from dad's," he wrote.

Of course, I knew immediately that it was a sign from the universe telling me "NO! Don't do it!"

"Well," I thought, "At least  I drink martinis."  And have at least two a week...preferably Grey Goose (with a twist) or dirty (with 3 olives).

However, the last time I had one - I dropped the glass after three sips and it shattered into a million pieces.  That technically could have been another sign...but one that I'm currently choosing to ignore. (Horray for vodka).

 

Life Over Easy (With a Side of Burned Bacon)

Ah...life in the virtual world.  There's a name for the inadequacy, angst and ennui one feels when reading about other peoples' perfect lives. A seemingly innocuous comment like "I didn't know which of my three homes to stay in this weekend" can sometimes set the wheels in motion for a round of self-loathing...self doubt...or unbridled envy.

"How can that mook possibly have three homes?," one might think, "while I'm here playing Farmville and wondering if I should refinance this termite-riddled abode as my inert, drooling spousal unit is planted in front of the television set watching 'Anne of Green Gables' and eating spray cheese?"

I'm a strong advocate of social networking - but know all too well that it's a slippery slope.  In "real life" -during the course of any normal friendship-slash-interaction - there are ups and downs - but it's somehow different in the virtual world.  Status updates hang in mid-air waiting without the benefit of facial expressions or intonation so that everything does - as Paul Simon wrote - look worse in black and white.

So, when a high school friend posted status updates about his family vacation,  at first I couldn't help wondering why he would possibly think it was interesting to anyone that his wife bought him a blueberry muffin.  Then - I thought it was a hokey beyond measure when he put it out there to the world (or at least his merry band of followers) that he was going to make eggs for her for breakfast just because she made the sacrifice of buying his pastry of choice instead of the one she really wanted.

Then I  couldn't get the story out of my mind - I tried to get out - and it pulled me back in....I found myself getting progressively more agitated.  Not because of his "so sweet I got a cavity" homage to the apparently wonderful woman who has high maintenance breakfast requirements which he - after three decades of connubial bliss - has managed to memorized - but because if I died tomorrow I knew that no one would know how I liked my eggs. 

Was it my fault - was I too much a free spirit? Was I raising the bar too high? Did I askew intimacy because I was too damn independent and afraid to let my guard down?

"You had three men marry you," my friend said in response to my rant about not being memorable enough, "and you left them all.  It's not them - it's you - you are commitment phobic."

I hotly debated this point, "You're wrong! I believe in true and everlasting love! I believe in passion that lasts a lifetime! I believe in soul mates and twin stars...and people completing each other...I'd rather spend eternity alone than be trapped in a loveless marriage...another bored, neutralized woman ravaged by the compromise of time..."

"Now I get it," she said, "You need a booty call."

Clearly she didn't understand. No one understood.  Who could? Who would? Oh the pain! It wasn't male attention I was craving...it wasn't even poached eggs (on a burned dry English muffin with orange marmalade, burned bacon and hot sauce).  It was to be part of something...to be enduring...not an echo that the wind left unreconciled...

Just as I was walking towards "the ledge" - this time for real - as I was writing my suicide note - suddenly the phone rang.  It was Peggy.

"We're ordering food from the diner," she said, "Come on over..."

In the background, I heard her son doing his interpretation of me at my most dramatic  "Get hot sauce and extra napkins," he said.

"Was that Austin?," I asked, "is he making fun of me?"

"Yes," she said, "he's saying if you eat with us - we need extra hot sauce and napkins."

I knew then that I could continue on my path as invisible as it was to me...even if the birds ate the crumbs from the muffins I had left to guide me home... one mistake at a time - interspersed with miracles, laughter, fireworks, highs and lows...and hot sauce.

The Wayshower

Today, I went to Target today to buy vacuum cleaner bags. Of course it was the worst possible day to shop anywhere...the store was mobbed with people preparing for the hurricane.  So as I made my way through the crowds of manic shoppers fighting for the last bottle of Poland Spring, I overheard a fellow shopper (who bore a striking resemblance to the late Tammy Faye Baker) ask one of the red-shirted clerks where she could find sunflower seeds.

"We don't have them," she said.

"Are you sure?," Tammy Faye asked.

"Yes - we don't carry them," the clerk said.

"OK," said Tammy Faye, "you sound very positive about that so I'll take your word for it."

Although I should have minded my own business and continued my personal quest for Type M bags for my Kenmore Magic Blue, I couldn't hold back. 

"Excuse me," I said to the clerk, "you used to carry them - as recently as two weeks ago." Then I faced Tammy Faye.

"Do you want them for your pets?," I asked her, "because I think they have some with the bird seed."

"For my kids," she said.

The clerk said, "No - we don't carry them."

"Yes you do!," I said, emphatically.

By then Tammy Faye had moved on - but this lit a fire under me.  I was - in a word - pissed. Pissed that whenever I complain about poor service in stores, the response is "well - what do you expect? The people who work there only get minimum wage."  Pissed that I was in the store to begin with, when I should have been sunning myself on the South of France or in my imaginery Villa in Tuscany, exchaging trenchant repartee with a group of artists, authors and rulers of small countries.  Or something like that. You get the idea.

So I was not about to leave the store till I found the sunflower seeds.  And less than three minutes later - I hit pay dirt.

In the snack aisle - next to the Planters' Unsalted Peanuts - I found three different types of sunflower seeds...sunflower seeds in shells...sunflower seeds unshelled and salted...and dry-roasted sunflower seeds (unsalted).  Victorious - I grabbed the biggest bag of "in shelled" I could find and made a beeline back to the lazy, bored "I only get minimu wage so I don't care" clerk who had misguided poor Tammy Faye.

"Excuse me," I said, "but you told that other woman who was looking for sunflower seeds that you didn't carry them.  What do these look like?"

Of course she had no idea what I was talking about - she was too busy talking to her co-workers about when they would take their respective breaks. But - undaunted - I was on a mission to prove a point.

"You told that other woman that this store doesn't sell sunflower seeds, and I just found several varieties...how do you explain that?" I said staring her down, haughty and righteous.

"Well," she said, "she probably found them."

"How do you know?," I said, "do you even know what they are? Did you check to see if you had them? Do you care? What if YOU were the one who needed the seeds? Would you want someone to treat you that way?"

It wasn't really a question - it was an accusation - so therefore I didn't wait for her response.  But then, I knew I had to find Tammy Faye...to be sure that my efforts were not in vain.

 Of course, she wasn't easy to locate. In North Jersey, baby girls are given Bedazzlers at birth so there's always a sea of big hair and Cheetah-print spandex on display.

Finally - when I was about to give up - I found her near the automotive supplies.

"Guess what!," I said, "I found sunflower seeds!"

At first she had no idea who I was, but then didn't seem to care. "OH!," she said, "you did! That's great!"  I handed her the bag.

"Well, I really wanted the kind without shells," she said.

So I told her where they were and was filled with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

Then I looked at my watch. It was 12:00 - but not because that was the time - because the battery was dead - and while I was busy playing Sunflower Seed Cop and trying to convince a lazy Target representative that she wasn't doing her job - I had wasted valuable time when I could have been getting the battery replaced.  I estimated that the entire episode took up 40 minutes of my life that I'll never get back. And - to add insult to injury - they didn't have the vacuum cleaner bags that I needed.

Although it was tempting to buy a bag of Dipsy Doodles and skulk in my car - I took the high road and left the store with nothing but a few rolls of Brawny paper towels and a copy of a magazine proclaiming that "It's TWINS" for Jennifer Anniston.

"Jeez," I thought, "whose more pathetic - the clerk in Target who doesn't do her job or someone who makes righting the wrongs of Big Box Bargain Store employees a raison d'etre?"

Before I could answer that question - or drive myself crazy contemplating what it all meant - my friend Juliette, a traveling professor of feng shui, called me.

 "Your friend Marla is coming to my retreat!," she said, "thanks for telling her about it - you're what I call a wayshower!"

She couldn't have called at a better time.... I was instantly vindicated and elevated from the position of "nosey interloper who goes around offering unsolicited guidance and advice". 

My joy was short-lived however... I realized I still didn't have the vacuum cleaner bags I needed.  But at least I had the chance to bone up on Jennifer Anniston's life, knowing that somewhere in the Northern NJ suburbs, Tammy Faye's happy brood was eating sunflower seeds in total bliss.  If only I had bought the Dipsy Doodles... 

Collecting Residuals

Patrick, a contrarian, recently expressed to me his annoyance about the cumbersome and time-consuming task of opening emails, and how many items of the in-box were summarily deleted unopened. He's often an inscrutable man who expresses himself in few words - specifically "Ummm", "Hmmmm" and "Ugh."

"First there are the political emails," he said, "I ignore them.  Then the jokes - some of them are pretty good - I forward them - did you get any?

Then the offers for car deals. Then - male enhancement drug advertisements. I check to be sure they're not from anyone I know - but how could they be?  Male enhancement? Me?  Ridiculous.  So I then delete them - a lot of them contain hidden viruses."

He continued, "Then I get Bible stuff - and 50 updates a day from my high school alumni group chat room.  So I delete those and read them when I'm in the actual chat room. Then I'm done.  Sometimes it takes me days to get to the real email that I have to answer....or sometimes I miss important emails.  Last week someone sent me a suicide note.  I'm hoping he's still alive. It ended up in "Spam." I was thinking of calling him but it might be too late..."

Of course he was mostly joking and being hyperbolic (hopefully at least about the suicide note) and making a point, but he unwittingly hit on something that we've all worried about since the explosion of social media: what is the right way to reach out to someone if you're in trouble?

I've recently been told that ranting on the Facebook Wall - which I do regularly - is not a good way to express angst.  "You post WAY too much," the Queen of Social media recently told me "people are going to start hiding you."

I told this helpful person that her suggestion - though well-taken - didn't phase me at first, as I considered posting like graffiti...you put in on the wall and don't really expect anyone to read it - and if they do - you hope they get a laugh out of it.  However, as I usually think too much, the mulling over phase started - which led to full-tilt social media anxiety.

It's more than worrying about appearing unstable; most of my FB friends know me from "real life" and understand that "out there" is sometimes where I dwell, and that the posts are a form of "performance art" or self-expression.

Nonetheless, I vowed to listen to her and try one or two social network free days  per week - to have only real relationships with people I talk to face-to-face. To use the telephone and not the walls of virtual reality to connect.  To cry into my pillow and not into a status update. And - most of all - to obsess over life's fluctuating ups and downs privately, so that the mini-storms are ridden out in a less public forum that won't someday come back to bite me in the arm.  Or the ass.  Here, I can say "Ass" with no fear of being villified.  Hallelujah.  Maybe there's something to the non-Facebook theory.

But then I foolishly started paging through old high school yearbooks, with Patrick.  It's fun to look back at the pages of a book you don't remember owning, let alone whose photos grace its pages.  When doing with Patrick, it's a veritable Pandora's Box; opening it can unearth old insecurities and long-buried feelings of longing, wistfulness and unrequited adolescent love.  And some happy memories.

"Hmmmmmm," he said, when falling upon a lovely Italian beauty captured forever in her teen-aged splendor.  "We went on a ski trip together...I got to kiss her...only once..."

"But your dream is still collecting residuals?," I asked.

"Hmmmm," he responded.

"Ugh," I thought, "Men are retarded."

Then I found a picture of a boy who had inspired six poems during my senior year.

"Hmmm," I thought, "too bad I never kissed him..."

"Yes," he agreed, "the residuals...hmmmmm."

"Ugh," I thought.

The Fortune Cookie Crumbles

A boy I didn’t know from high school but know a little now, through an alumni group in the virtual world, who I’ll call “Mike” (since that’s his name) shared with his fellow alums that he only recently started practicing law.

“I had a very successful career,” he explained, “and now I’m doing something different…but it’s all gravy…I’ve already realized all of life’s promises.”  He went on to describe the strength he derived from his faith…how his wife of decades still made his mouth water – how everything was beautiful in its own way…

At first I’ll admit that it seemed too good to be true, yet -  I was happy for him, as I was never one to disbelieve fairy tales because in some parallel universe I knew that there were people who weren’t restless souls or who could adjust better when things were less than perfect.  It’s a curse to think too much – one that’s been an affliction all of my life.  That and my complete lack of athletic ability.  I still have some hope regarding the latter, however; tennis lessons could help – or confidence. As for the former?  It will never happen without a lobotomy.

So since Mike uttered that phrase “all of life’s promises” the words have been haunting me – insidiously…popping into my head at the oddest of moments.  When I’m walking through crowded streets.  When I’m painting pottery.  When I’m out drinking with friends.  What, after all, are “life’s promises”? And are they different from guarantees?  Because I knew there were none – if any – of those to go around. Even “death and taxes” which according to cliché are the only two certainties in life – were no longer so black and white. As an insomniac, watching late night television taught me that John Edwards could speak to those who had crossed over and Ronnie Deutsch could negotiate IRS debt. It almost didn’t matter if what they said was illusory or misleading. Wasn’t everything in life illusion?  Or is that “delusion”?

On days like this, in my search for an answer, I know that the only choice is to order Chinese for lunch. Anything worth knowing can be summed up in one line or less.

Whoever invented Twitter had the right idea.

Or not.

Going real slow

Had to write website bios for everyone in my department at work - including myself.  Thought it would be neat to ask each person for a quote that defined them.  Each person out-pithed the next with profound thoughts. Someone quote Napoleon Hill...another Plato...and so on.  Then it was my turn.

"What quote defines me?," I asked myself aloud, which would have annoyed Kagee no end.  (She hates it when people ask themselves questions, especially aloud and when it's one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey).

So I thought of a few that I used when I wanted to be glib, or sound more upbeat and carefree than I probably ever was.

"Go real slow; you'll like it more and more...take it as it comes...specialize in having fun."  Jim Morrison said that.  Maybe if I changed it to "James Douglas Morrison" no one would know I was quoting one of the Doors.

On second thought, I realized it was a terrible idea. 

Then I came up with another:

"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun." Katharine Hepburn said that.  But it wasn't really me - it was the "me" I liked to project to the world, because in all honestly I don't really break too many rules. I don't even run red lights in the middle of the night, when there are no cars or cops anywhere in sight.

Then of course, I turned to Joni Mitchell.

"All romantics make the same fate someday...cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe..."

I ran that one past my boss.

"Don't you dare!," she said, "they'll think you're drinking on the job."

A friend used this one "Gentle if stroked, fierce if provoked."

Couldn't make it mine. It belonged to a batallion.  I was only one person, afterall, and having a hard time coming up with one line...how could I hang my hat on the slogan of a fearless batallion?

So, where did that leave me?  With a bunch of  over-used cliches?  Things people have said so often that they no longer know if they are true?  "Today is the first day of the rest of your life...the only thing to fear is fear itself...to thine ownself be true...blah blah blah...I might not be as irreverent as Katharine Hepburn - but I was surely not mainstream either.

What should have been a simple exercise turned out to be an overly analyzed debate in my mind when - in the relative scheme of things - I knew it really wouldn't matter what my quote said. Then - why was I tossing it around so much in my mind?  Why did take on the proportions of a doctoral dissertation or last will and testament?

 Actually - I knew the answer to that question - I wanted to feel secure that whatever quote I used to define me would present the right image - and help me blend in - and stay in the march at the risk of being left behind.

Then serrendipity struck.  Well - not really...I turned to Google and searched under "inspirational quotes that make you feel less insecure about what you write."  And I found this:

"Security is a superstition...it does not exist in nature.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the longrun than outright exposure" - Helen Keller.

So I decided to go with it...feeling exposed - outright. 

And tonight...maybe I'll run the redlight?

 

Strawberry Moon Rash

Dark Star. Not his real name. Changed to protect the guilty. Or, the potentially guilty. 

Can one be punished for thoughts? Do thoughts become deeds? She remember her first confession.

"Bless me father, for I have sinned...this is my first confession...I told someone that I could ride a two wheeler but I still have training wheels...I used the name of God in vain.  What does 'in vain' mean anyway...and how do you spell it?"

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...

Nothing had ever happened between Dark Star and Gwen - but "it might as well have," she wrote in her journal, with an eyeliner. Then she wrote: "Dark Star, keep your thoughts to yourself and stop reading mine, " Gwen said silently, like a mantra, all day, on the morning after the night before.

"NOTHING HAPPENED," she screamed then silently, "and it never will" she said, in something between a stage whisper and a bellow. No one was home. Or if they were, they were invisible, as she went through the motions. Wash the windows - change the lightbulb - pat the dog.  The three ways to wave.

"It never will," Gwen said aloud to herself, as she folded endless loads of laundry while listening to the opera that she tried to force herself to enjoy because it seemed like an interesting thing to talk about at cocktail parties or at random people who struck up conversations with her at train stations.

She had that kind of face. She always ended up sitting next to someone visiting from Kansas who asked her where they should go while visiting New York.

She had that kind of soul. Not easily amused...swimming in rarified waters...

"Dark Star, just STOP!," she said.

She grabbed the keys to her car and drove to meet The More Sensible Solution a/k/a the Alternative.

"My blood sugar is low," she told him by way of explanation when she dialed him up and said "let's meet for Lemon Ice."

She looked forward to the monotony of what he would say - that could easily put her to sleep or in a trance, and to the sting of lemon ice on her tongue. Better lemon ice than Dark Star...

Or not?

Bittersweet Symphony

“I never would have dated him if I hadn’t married him.”  That’s how I explained the end of my marriage to friends last night. They were quite amused and thought I was doing “schtick” apparently not really understanding that the unvarnished truth is often – if not always – more absurd than exaggeration.

 “And I’m not really ‘in the market’ right now…because things are still complicated with my feelings for Trey.” That’s how I explained why I was on hiatus. They shifted from laughter to a deeper understanding about my “dilemma” to which they could relate -  because I somehow turned confusion and ambiguity into banter – which was as it should be on a night out with friends.  Little did they know that my feelings for Trey were nothing for than a convenient excuse for my isolation.  His name wasn’t even Trey – because the roman a clef version of a bad relationship was more interesting than the real thing, which was just a void-filling fall back and a safeguard against the unknown.

Of course, somewhere between midnight and dawn I decided to come clean with myself, which is never the easiest thing to do for anyone I suspect. My “complicated feelings” weren’t keeping me from being out there – nor was it any residual regret from my divorce, the finalization of which was nothing more than a legal technicality.  It was fear that I couldn’t really “be” with anyone else because I was so afraid of surrendering my freedom - even though I wasn't sure exactly what it meant even to me.

When I told them part of it – that I needed at least 3-4 hours a day without talking to anyone – when I didn’t have to speak and when I could zone out – they were incredulous. In their eyes, I was the person least likely to survive in the “quiet car” on the train in the morning.

The truth is that no one I was ever with understood this. They tapped into my energy like I was a back-up battery and never understood that I needed to recharge myself at times…that the current wasn’t enough to sustain both of us…and the relationships always ended up on life support until I pulled the plug.

What I’m saying is not profound or unusual but it makes it hard for me to reconcile the outer me and the silent shadow that is unable to speak when it needs to be heard most.

 

Kissing the Paper Frog for Good Karma

Today as I was leaving a seminar at Baruch college with two co-workers, a group of young girls approached me. fresh, energetic, and enthsiastic, all of them.  "Miss," one said, "You're wearing red lipstick.  Can you kiss a piece of paper for us?  We're having a scavenger hunt and red lipstick is one of the items on the list."  Another chimed in, "You'll be helping us graduate."

Who knew if it was true - but it sounded too ridiculous to be false.  So without hesitation, I replied "Of course."

"Put more on so it's nice and bright," one said, holding the mirror for me as I fished out  Nars Shanghai Red and smeared it on in a globby layer so as to leave an impression that popped.

"OK," I told them, "I'm ready - give me the paper."

I then passionately kissed it, and they thanked me profusely and ran off to find the next item on their list.  Didn't have the presence of mind to ask what it might be.

It was almost as when I kissed a poster of Jim Morrison hanging in my room back in 1969. Or when I kissed...nah...let's not go there.  He sometimes reads my blog.

But - how bizarre it might have been was of no concern to me.  I was helping a portion of the Youth of America graduate from college. Or so they said.  Maybe they were nuts or maybe I was on candid camera. Maybe I was nuts to kiss the paper.  Or maybe, just maybe, they won the scavenger hunt and I did something vaguely good for my karma.  One can only hope...

 

 

 

Part of the Romantic Metaphor

On the night of the most romantic moment of my life, ever, never to be surpassed, I smelled fresh cut grass and warmed my hands over candles in a friend's yard, at her sixteenth birthday party.  That's a run-on sentence, but I don't want to edit it or rephrase it, just as I don't want to edit the memory.

This romantic moment is, of course, more of a romantic notion but nothing ever felt more real.

August 4, 1971; the summer before senior year of high school my friend had a Sweet 16 party in her yard. As she opened gifts, her brother sat next to me, wearing no shoes, his long hair falling into place over his green eyes. I looked at his feet and said, "You must be a Pisces...you have beautiful feet."

Who knows how I knew. But who cares? He thought I was magic from that moment on, even though I was hardly anything like it. Shy, confused, lacking in confidence...everything a sixteen year old girl is, or was, in 1971, in her friend's yard.  No one had big Sweet 16 parties back then - at least not in my circle.  Mothers baked cakes...people bought each other albums...someone gave me "A Question of Balance" for mine. How ironic...

Back to the romantic moment.

Older Brother and I stole away...sat under a tree and talked for three hours as though no one else was there.  We didn't touch - but at that moment in time - it felt like our souls were intertwined. Even writing it makes me want to laugh; it's so "16 in 1971" - but every word is true.

Somehow we got onto the topic of music and he said "I just got Graham Nash's solo album...I want to play it for you."

He went into the house to get it and I wandered to the patio to warm my hands over citronella candles. He glanced back at me. "You must be cold," he said, "let me give you my jacket."

My friend, meanwhile, was thrilled to see me hanging with her brother. My date - not so much.

But who cared; I was in another world.

He returned from the house, and put his College of the Holy Cross jacked over my shoulders, and went to the record player that was set up with tiny speakers...interrupted Iron Butterfly, and put on Graham.

I am a simple man; and I play a simple song

Never been so much in love and never hurt so bad

at the same time...

Our eyes met - hazed by citronella candlelight - and we smiled a perfect smile.

That night I wrote in my diary, "I'm in love and I'll never be in love like this again."

We never even kissed; never even touched; we didn't really have to.

That fall, he went back to school - a sophmore in college - and I sent him cookies a few times...we wrote to each other...he hitchhiked to visit me...then I started "going steady" with another boy who was closer to home and he spent his junior year abroad and fell in love and I think I ran into him a few times, at parties and shopping malls or maybe not.

A few years later we touched base - he had some fond memories "I still have the letters you wrote to me when I was in college...you wrote one with different colored felt-tipped pens...I keep them in a box with memories from that period and look at them now and then..."

I didn't remember much about the correspondence...but everything about "Simple Man."  He likely doesn't...but that's all part of the metaphor.