I was right.

People used to ask me why I didn't leave.

Why when we fought so much, and carried on like children sometimes

When you said ugly things and I did ugly things

And we looked at each other and it was like pressing on a bruise to see if it still hurt.

I don't answer.

I tell a joke.

I make something up.

I lie.

I don't tell them, because they don't really want to know.

They just want more gory details. More secrets.

But I save the best secrets only for myself.

So I don't tell them that there is magic in you.

That your rib cage seems to hold it like the gilded cage of ravens, and your eyes seems colored with it.

I don't tell them that I stayed 

Because there was something in you

That I was afraid I'd never find in anyone else.

And I knew then

Like I know now

I was right.

Summer then, Summer now.

When my siblings and I were growing up, we - and all of our friends - had a lot of freedom during the summer.

Although we were mainly confined to our own neighborhood, from the time we woke up in the morning, until the sun set at night, we were free to roam about and play with our friends, pretty much for as long as we wanted.

Nobody we knew had a video game system, with the exception of maybe a Nintendo that the whole family shared, and nobody had their own tv in their room, so it was rare that you had the luxury of spending entire days sprawled on the couch playing video games, or watching tv or movies. 

Outside was pretty much our only thing to do.

I think when I was a kid, and probably for most of the generations before me, parents didn't see entertaining their kids or doing a lot of "play" as their responsibility. They handled your basic care, spent time talking with you or doing things together as a family, but when it came to most of your imaginative or creative free-play, you and your siblings and your friends were on your own.

My sisters and I were lucky enough to almost always live in neighborhoods with lots of kids. {Shout out to the ghetto always having lots of babies}. So every summer, as soon as we woke up we'd hurry to do our chores, and then dash outside to be with our friends.

In an attempt to stay outside - and effectively away from parental supervision - for as much of the day as we could, we found creative ways to occupy ourselves.

We played marathon games of Uno, Gin, Rummy, Poker, 21, and BS. 

By the end of the summer our decks of cards were soft as soap lather, and permanently bent almost in half. 

We hopped on our bikes - or on someone's handle bars if you didn't have a bike - and rode down to the elementary school or the baseball field or even the public pool. 

We'd go watch community league baseball games for free, and then stay after everyone was gone to play kickball or baseball on the empty diamonds. 

Almost every night, the park filled up with kids, and sometimes their parents, for pick-up basketball, volleyball, or soccer games. 

We were sunburned, freckled, tanned, wild-haired, and free. 

When our parents finally did call us in, we'd all stay in one bedroom together so we could keep playing until exhaustion over came us. 

We would do almost anything we could think of to stay entertained, but surprisingly we never really did anything too stupid. 

Sure, we built skateboard and bicycle ramps in the drive way, or climbed up on the roof to hang out, or took off to McDonald's without telling anyone, but none of us were smoking, or drinking, or having sex. There wasn't any drugs, and aside from the time we jumped the back wall of a neighbor we knew was out of town to take advantage of their pool, we never really broke the law. 

There was always a huge group of us, ranging from my age to my sisters' ages, and summer was two straight months of freedom and comradery. 

I wouldn't dream now of letting my two kids do half the shit we were allowed to do when we were younger. 

Leave the house the WHOLE DAY, with no cell phones, no pagers, and be allowed to be anywhere in the neighborhood at any time? Nope. You can go outside, but for the love of Jesus when I come out to check on you I better be able to see you. 

Stay out from the time you get up, until nightfall without checking in? 

NOPE. 

If you're going to be outside that long, you best come check in every couple hours at least.

Get on your bike at barely 10 years old, and ride it all the way to the nearest intersection to get McDonalds?! 

ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?! 

I don't buy into the idea that it's any more dangerous in the world now than it was then, really. 

I know there are more people in the world now, and the city gets vastly bigger every day it seems like, and neighborhoods aren't as tightly knit as they used to be, but every generation says "It's not safe now like it was when I was little", and I just don't think that's true. 

I think the biggest reason why we can't let our kids have the freedom that I had as a kid, and that my parents had as kids, is because being over-protective has become the norm. 

Children aren't allowed to hang out in groups and pretty much do their thing, from the time they're pretty young, so long as they all stuck together, so it's gotten to a point where kids don't know how to look out for themselves and for each other until older and older ages.

When we were little, kids stayed home alone after school at 7 or 8 years old, and during the summer it was you and your friends, and you could go all day without even seeing your parents.

We were raised with the expectation that when your parents aren't around, you look out for yourself, and more importantly, you look out for each other. 

The responsibility of independence was given to us much earlier, and it was that way with almost everyone you knew, except for the kid we all felt sorry for whose mother never ever ever let him out to play without a parent there to watch. 

Whatever the reason is that things are so different, I wish my kids could have a summer like the ones that I had when I was little. 

I tell them all the time that if I had a time machine, I would take them back to the summer I was 10, and leave them there for the whole thing. When summer ended I'd bring them back, and see which they preferred: now, having computers and tv's and internet and video games, but much less freedom to be outside with their friends and explore and roam, or then, with no tv of their own, no computer, no internet, no cell phone, no video games, but a huge group of friends, and a whole neighborhood to explore and call home. 

I think they would choose then, in a heart beat. 

How to love her

Kiss her neck

Hold her hand

Let hugging her turn into holding her

Be patient when she's at her worst

Tell her when she's at her best

Be unconditional

Unwavering

Show passion

Take pictures of her

Whisper in her ear

Answer when she calls

Listen to her feelings

Be around for the small things

Make sure she knows you want her around

Forgive

Understand

Make her laugh

Don't magnify her weaknesses. She knows what they are. She's far more aware of them than you are. You see them, you deal with them, she owns them. She carries them. She lives them.

Love those parts too. 

I Wish I Could Be Who I Was

There is a quote that I used to love, that said "I wish I could be who I was when I wished I could be who I am now".

 I liked it because it always seemed fitting to me, and it was the longest way possible to say "I wish we could just go back. Back to how things were. I wish I knew what I had then." 

Like when you're a kid and you want so badly to be an adult, until you are one. You get your first job, and finally your first paycheck, and you realize for the first time that paying taxes on your hard earned money sucks. You get your first apartment, and your first electric bill, and you realize for the first time that paying bills and rent sucks. Sure you can also have all the sex and Tequila and parties you want, but after a while you realize how expensive Tequila is, how unforgiving neighbors are of loud music at 2 a.m., and how unreliable birth control and condoms can be when you're testing the odds several times a day.

You want to go back.

You want to be a kid.

You want to lay down on your twin size bed with a teddy bear and smell your mom's cooking again.

The world is a cruel and unforgiving place, and you don't want to play here anymore.

Or, when you've been an adult long enough to get over the parts that are miserable and monotonous, and you've finally found a little joy in it, and then you fall in love. Maybe with someone you've been friends with for a while, maybe with someone you just met, maybe with the most unexpected person who you met in the elevator in your office building. Regardless, for the first time, this is real love. Adult love. Not super fun, carefree high school or college love when the biggest things you have to worry about are whether to take that person with you to every house party you go to, and who's couch you're going to make out on tonight. 

No, this is grown up love, and you're all in. 

But one day, something happens, or nothing happens, but everything changes and the next thing you know the love of your life is breaking up with you over a five dollar Gyro in a strip mall on their lunch break. 

Suddenly there are no more Thursday's watching Grey's Anatomy together, no more Saturdays drinking and goofing off in their kitchen, no more long Sunday drives to middle of nowhere towns or lunches at hole in the wall restaurants where the waiters learn your name and memorize your order. No more kisses, no more pet names, no more text messages that say "Good morning! Have the best day ever!" Just a lot of crying, moping, and personal hygiene negligence.

Once again, you want to go back.

You want to have never met.

You want to be meeting again for the first time so you can try it all over and maybe do it differently, or at least be able to relive those sweet moments a second time.

You want to go back to a point when being just friends seemed possible, so you could at least still have this person in your life, and not have to lose your lover and your best friend all in one go.

You've made mistakes, you took some things for granted, and there doesn't seem to be any kind of redemption.

You wish you could be who you were when you wished you could be who you are now.

Chapter One

It's cold outside. Rain falling in slow thick rivulets down the window like oily water, so we're smoking inside. I shouldn't be here, but nobody knows that except me, and him. Rose has us all gathered at the rickety dining room table she inherited from her parents when she moved out on her own, all of us sitting together like the last supper, before a table of nothing but cigarettes and booze. Smoke hangs over us like a thought cloud from those old comic books. Thick and gray because none of us are thinking anything good.

Rose is at the head of the table. Fitting. Her hair is cut and dyed again, a new shape, a new color, still a mess. Sometimes I wonder how she never runs out of hair to fuck with.

It's getting hot in here. Or maybe it's just running out of clean air and I can't breathe. I want to go outside and shiver for a while. Wake up and maybe drive myself home while I still can. Dooney follows me out though and I know why but pretend I don't. Rose is inside holding court and I can hear her voice over the sound of traffic swishing through the puddles. Short whispers that almost sound like waves. I wonder where they're all going at this hour.

Dooney brushes the back of my hand, and I know I'm not supposed to be here, but nobody else knows that and I can't be where I should be so I stay. I hate being drunk. I always think it's going to be fun, but by the end of the night I feel dry and sticky and heavy with poison and just want to sleep, but I hate sleeping alone.

I won't see these people again. 

How It Happens

It will happen one night, seemingly unexpectedly.

Or maybe I'll see it coming, but pretend I don't. You'll text me and ask how my day was, I will respond over eagerly and tell you it was good, busy, but good, because I think that sounding busy means I sound important and self possessed, when really I wonder all day long when I'll hear from you again. You'll say yours was good too, and then ask if you can stop by for a minute.

My heart will hit the pit of my stomach because I will wonder if you're about to do what you are about to do, but I will say Sure, and throw a little smiling face emoticon at the end as if I am completely unaware. Later I'll wonder if that smiley face, that blind trust made you feel guilty for what you were coming over to do to me, but I will shake it off and tell myself you didn't care.

You'll show up at exactly the time you say you will.

I will brush my teeth, change my shirt and try to do something with my hair in the ten minutes I have to wait for you. And then pace around in front of the door for the remaining three. 

When I answer I'll smile and you'll force yourself to smile, and we'll exchange a hug but not a kiss because we both know why you're here.

And in the nicest words you can think of, you will break my heart.

You will tell me it doesn't feel right, or that you aren't in love anymore, or that you don't see this going anywhere. You'll blame the age difference, the past, my mistakes, your divorce.

You'll say you hope we stay friends, I will tell myself not to ask you to stay.

In twenty minutes or less, you will pull the loose thread in the fabric of our future and unravel the whole goddamned thing.

And I will pick up the pile of thread and scraps of promises, take them inside and box them up. Like someone who can't leave a dead animal in the middle of the road, and endures the stench in their car while they try to find a decent place to bury it.

Because it deserves that much, at least.

In all the dreams that wake me from my sleep, this is how it happens.

Writing Assignment: Childhood Memory

I think at this point, it's pretty safe to say that I have official writer's block. It's been days since I could think of something that I wanted to write about. For me, that constitutes some serious writer's block. 

In an attempt to unplug my brain, I was given a writing assignment from my dear friend and sister in law Lucia, who has her own little budding blog, which you can check out here. 

The assignment was to write about a memory from my childhood/teen/early adulthood, in detail. To make her feel like she was there with me, living it.

So here I go.

When I was 7, my dad took my mom and I to the fair. 

They had separated two years before, and after she disappeared for a year, she showed up again, and they started spending time together. She had a little apartment in Sunnyslope, a new wild hair cut, and she started calling me "girlfriend". Like "Ready to go, girlfriend?" 

It was weird. 

One day, while I was swimming in her apartment pool, she came out looking breathless, excited and like she was in a huge hurry. 

"Get out of the pool" she said. "Your dad is taking us to the fair, you need to dry off and get dressed." To me, this sounded like good news. Holy shit, the fair! And with my dad! AND my mom! But she seemed oddly stressed about it. She was nervous and fidgeting all night, pulling at the short auburn pieces of her hair, smoking too much and picking at the chapped skin on her lips. 

When we got to my dad's house, it smelled the way it always did when my sisters and I were gone for a while. Like unwashed dishes and sweat. I felt bad for being away at my mom's for most of the summer. I knew my dad needed me. 

I remember them moving around each other in the kitchen like they didn't know how to share the same space. I realized for the first time how seldom I saw them in the same room with each other when they weren't fighting. I wondered if what was truly foreign, was getting along. 

I went to the bathroom right before we left, and I remember while I was in there washing my hands, my mom called to me "Come on, we're gonna miss the fair, girlfriend!" It didn't bother me. At least she was calling me something. At least she was talking to me. 

And then my dad corrected her. He said "You know, you shouldn't call her that. She's your kid, not your girlfriend. You're confusing her." and just as I opened the bathroom door, I saw her face fall. It was another thing she wasn't doing right, in her long list of failures. It was the same tired, defeated look I saw on her face, in all of my memories of her. Like a balloon losing all it's air. 

The ride to the fair was quiet. We took my dad's tow truck, with one bench seat. Me in the middle. My dad drove, and my mom looked out the window. I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, but the question sounded stupid, and I wasn't used to talking to her, so instead I sat between them and wondered what the fair would be like. I wish now I would've said something to her. Touched her shoulder, held her hand.

When we got there, I tried to make them hold hands. I walked between them, only coming up to both their waists. They held my hands, and I kept trying to bring their hands together, as if I could work their fingers together without them noticing. When they sat on a bench, I pushed them together, put my  dad's arm around my mother's shoulder. I thought, at the time, that them getting back together was the best thing. It was the only way for anything to make sense again.

My parents laughed at my childish attempts to make them fall in love, and I wished on every star in the sky. 

The only ride I remember, was this big bumpy slide, where you sat on a piece of burlap, and slid down the whole way. I went on it with my mom. She sat behind me and put her arms around my waist. I dug my fingers into her legs as we flew down the slide, catching air on each big bump, and screaming our heads off. 

At the end of the night, when my dad dropped me off, he gave me a framed picture of a Bengal Tiger. And I still have that picture to this day.

It's the only memory I have of my parents being together for a whole night, and not fighting. 

I laid down that night on the love seat in my bedroom at my mom's apartment, with carousel music in my head, while my mother chain smoked in the living room.

Heavier Boots

She sat there with the phone to her ear and her book clutched to her chest and listened to him breathing.

She tried to think of something to say.

Nothing came.

"I don't have anything to tell you." she announced, as if that in and of itself was news. "I just wanted to know you were there."

"I'm always here for you, and I always will be. You know that." He said, in a way that was supposed to be comforting, but instead it made her sit there with tears filling her eyes, holding her breath so he wouldn't know she was crying, because he didn't understand. She didn't want him to be there for her, she didn't want him to comfort her, she didn't care if he didn't say anything. She wanted to know that he would answer the phone. That someone, somewhere would answer the phone when they saw she was calling, and be quiet, be totally silent while she cried. Just let her cry, and she could listen to the soft static, the audible digital silence on the other end of the line while someone breathed in and out, and waited patiently for her to finish.

She wanted to know that someone would answer the phone and do that, but she didn't know how to ask him to, because it sounded silly, because it made her sad, because he would want to know why anyone would call someone and ask them not to say a word, especially if she wasn't going to talk either.

She didn't know how to tell him

{or anyone}

that she was alone.

That there was no one there, and all she felt like doing was crumpling, like a dry leaf beneath a heavy glass, and weeping, while someone sat beside her and waited it out. Touched her hair. Placed their warm palm on her knee. Offered her a tissue without making a sound.

But she was alone.

There was no one there.

And knowing that someone would answer the phone and listen to her keening was good enough.

After a long silence he said goodnight, and her chest jumped up and down as she stifled her cries and forced her voice to be steady as she said goodnight too.

"Is there anything you want to say?" he asked, and that made her sad because there was a lot she had to say, but she didn't have words for it and she didn't think he'd understand, and then he said "You just seem like there's something you want to say." and her heart broke a thousand more times because maybe he did understand, or maybe he would, or maybe no one would but maybe he didn't need to.

In the end she just said no, and they left it at that.

He hung up the phone, and she was alone again with the book on her chest and her river of tears. 

Understanding in a Rainstorm

"I want to know what it feels like to be understood." She said, maybe only to herself, as his steady hands held the wheel and rain washed down the windshield in thick rivers of falling water.

She liked the rain.

The way all the colors outside looked deeper and richer with the violent sun turned down to a muted grey, and the sky turning from heather to charcoal to black.

The thunder and the lightning excited her.

Woke up her insides and made her want to talk and kiss and get lost in a reckless abandon with someone who was crazy about her.

Who would follow her anywhere, even on her restless thunder driven adventure, just to be close to her and her ever turning sea.

"You don't think I understand you?" He asked innocently, as if the answer wouldn't bother him, but she knew him well enough to know that her statement alone had already bothered him.

Anything she said now wouldn't make a difference.

She could reassure him that she knew he did, but then have to explain why she would say she wanted to know what it was like to feel understood, as if no one did, and no one must include him because he was someone.

Or she could say that sometimes she felt like maybe he didn't, and he would pretend he understood, and say something about how people are hard to understand, but she would know it made him feel sensitive

and a little hurt

because he would go on to tell her how he tried to understand her

how he cared

how he did his best.

But she knew enough by now to know that understanding a person has nothing to do with good intentions

or love

or how hard you try.

It seemed to her that when you understand someone completely, it comes naturally. 

Like it's a gift you have, and have always had, and were waiting to meet that person so you could finally use it.

Everyone understands someone, she thought.

Some people understand a lot of other people.

But you can't make yourself understand a person.

You can know them.

You can accept them.

You can give them your love and your kindness and your unwavering devoted acceptance all you wanted.

That's what friends do when they love their friend but don't quite get them

That's what parents do when their child turns out to be something other than what they planned for.

But no matter how much you learn, or what you accept, or how much you love, 

Understanding of another complex and intricate human being either exists, or it does not.

She felt lonely as she sat beside him wondering what to say.

She knew no matter what her answer was it would come out all wrong, and she would never be able to take this moment back.

She settled further back in her seat and watched the rain

Feeling the cold seep inside her chest as she thought to herself that there was one undeniable fact in this world:

Alone is, and always will be, the difference between being accepted and being understood.