here today

 

saved by a woman

We went to brunch, my mom and I, normally a meal that arouses suspicion why can't they just call it breakfast or lunch. Normally she would ask me that then worry about which fork to use while ordering the cheapest thing on the menu. Sunday I choose the restaurant with a prix fixe buffet and at a civilized hour we sat across from each other my mother and I she the subject of so many talk, Gestalt, imaginal, Jungian, interpretive dream sessions. She the invisible passenger at whom I yell and rant and rave and Express My Anger. She the pillow in my therapist’s office that I speak to because I do not speak to the real person the one across the table from me going back for dessert from the Mother’s Day brunch buffet at the Golden Valley Brew Pub in McMinnville, Oregon. My home town and I remember when the radio chose that Springsteen tune as I was driving in for a visit not long after my divorce when I was feeling as if I might never get out of life’s tiny barbed wire cage and there I was returning to that small town with twenty churches but only one good coffee shop.

My home town.

We went to brunch, my mom and I and I looked at her this person who is unable to make space in her heart for who I am. This person who fears the answers so much that she cannot bring herself to ask even a question as small as how are you how is school. And I, the invisible child, the one who does not who did not cause trouble in a house full of trouble, I normally don’t breathe again until I can see the signs for Portland up ahead and know that I am going home going back to where I am me. Sometimes in the car I answer the unasked questions. I am well, I say, though school is hard and is stretching me in what feels like impossible ways. I was hoping you would ask, I say.

This Sunday I talked as if she had. As if she had waded through her fears to a place of wonder. I wonder how my daughter is doing I wonder what she thinks about hopes for. I wonder how her experiences are different from mine. I created for her a world of wonder and though at times she held very still as if I were sending arrows out instead of words as if by speaking the truth I were speaking ideas lit on fire that might consume her. This Sunday this mother’s day brunch I answered the unasked questions and while I spoke she held very still until the waiter came by and handed us each a carnation. I gave her mine and she held them both as tenderly as she must have held me when I was a baby before I became something someone separate from her something someone unknown. My mother she cradled these gifts there and thanked me for the brunch and underneath that thanking she seemed also to be thanking me for all of the rest of what I had said. I do not know if this is true but I do know that on my drive home I sang along to Ray LaMontagne. Trouble, he sings about trouble and how he was Saved by a Woman and each time that lyric hit me I yelled it out to the world I’ve been SAVED By a Woman.

and the woman doing the saving the woman in the song that woman was me.



TROUBLE

By Ray LaMontagne


Trouble...
Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Trouble been doggin' my soul since the day I was born
Worry...
Worry, worry, worry, worry
Worry just will not seem to leave my mind alone
We'll I've been...
saved by a woman
I've been...
saved by a woman
I've been...
saved by a woman
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now

Trouble...
Oh, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble
Feels like every time I get back on my feet
she come around and knock me down again
Worry...
Oh, worry, worry, worry, worry
Sometimes I swear it feels like this worry is my only friend

We'll I've been saved...
by a woman
I've been saved...
by a woman
I've been saved...
by a woman
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now
She won't let me go
She won't let me go now

Oh..., Ahhhh....
Ohhhh
She good to me now
She gave me love and affection
She good tell me now
She gave me love and affection
I Said I love her
Yes I love her
I said I love her
I said I love...
She good to me now
She's good to me
She's good to me

Posted by: 120pages at 10:22 | link | comments (3) |

old friends

I can't read those 2 words without the music of paul simon behind them wistful and yearning and slow. old friends. bookends.

We sat at Porque Non? watching our street wake up. Hip parents out with chubby toddlers messy faces tousled hair. dogs everywhere sniffing our plates as they passed. Miss Holiday dressed all in white coming home from church. white shoes, white skirt, white jacket, white hat. Working in the yard again today? she asks. Nah, not today. That's a nice Dogwood you planted. Real pretty. Thank you, Miss Holiday. I smile cos it's like getting a compliment from my gran. We say good-bye and she walks off shining like an angel living in an old house with a caving in roof.

We sat at Porque Non drinking negro modelos and they arrived. Old friends. Last we said hello was at their wedding an invitation not to turn down and yet there I was in a room full of taupe wearing red and wondering how soon I could leave. Toasts were given. People cried. Inside of me I closed the chapter that had them in it, these newlyweds. And yet Sunday there they were waving to us. Old friends.

and so we sat and talked and ordered chiliquiles playing the game of catch up but mostly noticing that it was good to be there together. and once again I was reminded that life is full of these neverminds these what did you knows. bookends have to be moved to make room for the latest additions the shelf is getting crowded but I would rather let it pile up overflow, creak in protest. I would rather have that then an empty tidy room.

later that day gazelle. smelt and mr. s. after so long of missing each other were suddingly sitting in the gardens laughing and I considered the history we had made in our time in this town. keeping silver strands of connection going even when we felt lost or needed to be lost for a time still they were there and now on this day, this sunday filled with chance meetings, I smiled at these dear bookends. still without the details of their lives from then to now but that will come and in the meantime here we are.

Can you imagine us

Years from today,

Sharing a park bench quietly?

How terribly strange

To be seventy.

Old friends,

Memory brushes the same years

Silently sharing the same fears

Posted by: 120pages at 11:30 | link | comments (5) |