Jenn,
I accidentally deleted your email yesterday when dealing with an attack of spam in my inbox, so I’m not able to respond to you that way. But thank you so much for your lovely email — your words really touched me, made a big difference for me. You have a generous heart. Thank you for extending a piece of it to me.
At Saturday breakfast, I smile at the old lady at the table next to us.
Old Lady: You’re so pretty.
Me: Oh, well, thank you.
Old Lady: And you smiled at me. (forlorn) Nobody ever smiles at anyone anymore.
Kinda broke my heart a little.
**********
He: I have no idea what happened last night.
Me: Nothing happened last night.
He: Okay.
Me: We turned to liquid hot magma and died.
He: I think I fell asleep at 8:00.
Me: Uhm, 7:30.
He: I can’t be conscious in this heat.
**********
Cooking in the heat.
Me: I made spaghetti. I really suffered.
He: Ohh, baby. It smells like suffering.
Me: Uhm, you’re being sympathetic, right?
He: Of course, hon.
Me: Hm. I was going to tell you the sweat of my suffering is making my yoga pants slide off my body, but now I’m not.
Dear blog friend Brian sent me this today — saying it was for Sheila and me — based on this post where I talk about — oh, God knows what — my gun and MB’s fantasy man date based on an NRA sticker sighting and how perky Bob violated his man space, blahdie blah. Well, the comments in that thread are insane, basically — pony rides with guns were discussed at one point, I believe — and the whole thing inspired Brian to Photoshop this bit of crazy genius:
Seriously, Brian — I mean, I emailed you already, but I could not breathe — this is killing me. Tears of laughter. And look, that is my gun exactly, my .22! Check out my little purple duds, too! Frankly, Happy Pie Tracey never looked better and, I have to say, I really want this outfit. Those shoes! Brian, you dressed me better than I dress myself, thank you.
And you have to explain how this all came about, I beg you.
LOOK AT THAT INSANE STUFFED PONY!!
Go, gun totin’ Tracey, go!! Look how manic I am about sporting a firearm. Who needs pie? I got me a GUN.
I love how those pants are just round enough in the butt to suggest a hidden diaper.
And “drunken slatterns” — hahahahaha.
I’m rambling out of my mind here. Brian, how insane and sweet and hilarious of you. I can’t believe you took the time to make this. Thank you!! You made my day!!
(Okay. I’ve exceeded my exclamation point quota for the WEEK here.)
I remember watching this episode of Ally McBeal several years ago now — the episode the short clip below is from. You don’t really need a context, thank God, because I don’t remember enough of the episode to give you one.
The clip simply shows Ally sitting at her little upright piano in the final moments of the episode and plucking out the tune to Dulcinea from “Man of La Mancha” — a song her dad used to sing to her. His voice joins in and sings with her.
But when I saw it, it had a completely different context to me. The song of Dulcinea could just as easily be the song of the childless woman. That’s what I heard when I saw this episode. These are exactly the words you sing to the children you don’t have. The children you swear you know, the children you know you love, but still, the children who are not here. And the visual at the end of this clip — well, that’s the life of the childless woman, during the worst of it, when you want to die.
I put this clip up not for my sake, no, but for anyone you might know going through this right now. Mourning what doesn’t exist. Going crazy from it. Feeling haunted. Wondering if they’ll ever come out the other side. Pray for them, okay? Or just say a prayer in general for the childless, for the single who long for children, too.
Be forewarned: I don’t make it through this clip dry-eyed — ever — and you might not either.
There are so many people walking around mourning so much that people just don’t see, aren’t there?
(partial lyrics below)
I have dreamed thee too long,
Never seen thee or touched thee.
But known thee with all of my heart.
Half a prayer, half a song,
Thou hast always been with me,
Though we have been always apart.
Dulcinea… Dulcinea…
I have sought thee, sung thee,
Dreamed thee, Dulcinea!
And thy name is like a prayer
An angel whispers… Dulcinea… Dulcinea ….
Dulcinea …. Dulcinea ….
By JD Souther, from the movie Always. I actually like this better than the original version by The Platters. Nearly impossible song to sing — the highs and lows of it — but this is so beautiful and heartwrenching. I’ve always loved his voice. I just want to slow dance to this song, right now. Rips right through me.
(The image is static and annoying, but it’s the only version I could find of this. So, again, just listen.)
And one dawn, before she is born, he takes her to a high emerald hill. Scattered across the hilltop are wells of stone, white stones, grey stones, mossy stones. He leads her by the hand, stops to point to one, and says, This. This one is yours.
He motions her to lean in. She does, but sees only darkness.
Listen, he says.
Then she hears them. The sighs. A woman’s sighs. Breathy and full of sorrow.
I don’t understand, she says.
Listen, he repeats.
For a moment, there is only a black silence. Then come the sobs, the shrieks, the wails. She holds her ears against them all.
She is yours, he says simply, and you are hers.
I don’t understand, she says again.
He turns to her and searches her face for a long moment. When he is done, she knows, without knowing how she knows, what he means.
And her heart quakes. Falters.
No, she says in a panic, glancing around at the other wells. I want a different one.
She runs to the next well and leans in, straining. Silence. The next one. Silence. A third. More silence.
But these are quiet. These are still. I want one of these. Please. Please ….
He takes her trembling hand, leads her back to the first well.
You can’t hear them because they’re not for you.
As they stand gazing in, he tells her all the things that have fallen into that well. Dark things and jagged things and cold things. As he speaks she sees each one. Things that make her shiver and weep. Things that make her blood run cold.
He holds her close and says, Can’t you see? She needs you to love her. Can you try to love her?
She nods, face wet in her hands.
Come. It’s her time. She’s ready for you to be born.
I’m working on a very angst-ridden post about my waning days in Seattle and a certain fellow I dated who helped spur my fateful decision to move away.
It’s all very serious and heartbreaking and not silly at all.
Also, I’m working on a post about the falling-in-love moment. The moment when you KNOW: it’s happened. It’s done. Something my sister and I were talking about a while ago that inspired this post in progress.
You know, just a coupla withered crones sittin’ around talkin’ about when people used to love us.
I told MB I was writing this post and he basically shrugged.
So now I am definitely writing it. Not in a vengeful way, of course — no, never — but in a VENGEFUL way. You know, just to be clear.
Look. The man doesn’t have a jealous bone in his body and it is a HUGE HUGE HIDEOUS flaw. I don’t think he could even list the names of the men I’ve dated because, you see, in his mind — HAHA! He has trumped them all!! To him, the other guys mentioned in the post — not by name, of course — are basically Guy A, Guy B, etc. Forever anonymous. So what is there to know?
All right. Fine. Whatevs, Linus.
It’s okay. Later, I will suffocate him in his sleep.
Actually, I’m not sure the other guys would feel “trumped” at all; probably more like they escaped shrieking into the night with their lives and sanity barely intact.
But I’m not just writing it for, you know, VENGEFUL purposes alone, but because I will be interested to hear what it’s been like for the rest of you, that moment when you just KNEW …. you were in love. Toast.
I’m nosy, let’s not forget.
Okay. In all seriousness, I guess I’m writing this huge disclaimer before I even post the piece because I can almost feel a nasty email brewing out there in the ether. Some people may not understand. How could you write about that, etc. But look. MB knows and accepts that I write. He knows I had a life before him and accepts that I will sometimes write about it. People I knew before him, experiences I had before him, these are part of my life. They make up who I am. They impacted me, for good or bad; changed me for better or worse. And these falling-in-love moments I’ll be writing about taught me something about myself. About how my own heart works and responds. About the kind of person I needed in my life.
So I’m writing about it.
And dodging my inbox.
