It’s been a fun point of contention, debate, and occasionally-serious attempted-reconstruction over the past several years. We’d narrowed it down to a few films, and finally two finalists: ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ and ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’. One of them would have been the first movie that Skip and I saw together, and we have spent way too many subsequent movie nights trying to figure out which one it would have been.
The truth is we had known each other for a few years prior to that fateful evening. I’d started working with Sherri in the summer of 2005, so it must have been the holiday party of later that year at which I first met her then-boyfriend Skip. Sporadically seeing each other at parties and work events, it was always a fun and easy camaraderie we enjoyed, but we didn’t hang out on our own until that first movie, casually agreed upon, likely at some party or gathering where we would have been talking and plotting a future plan.
Our first salient memory when we began to look back was of a guy, one of the only other people in the theater that night, who fell asleep repeatedly during ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’, and gave up a very loud series of snores which left us both in hysterics. But while that made for a memorable outing, I wasn’t sure it was our first, but when the memory popped up on Skip’s FaceBook from January 2012, it seemed like that might have been the case.
However, on my third day with a flu that had me housebound, I wandered unsteadily into the guestroom where my date planners were roughly organized on a shelf, and I pulled out 2011 to see if I wrote down anything prior to 2012 about seeing a movie with Skip. Once upon a time I kept detailed notes on the daily events of my world (I’m a Virgo through and through) so I perused the pages and days of 2011. It took the whole year, but eventually I found the very first documentation of that first movie night, on December 27, 2011.
It made sense – we would probably have been talking about the new David Fincher film at a holiday party, and our shared love of dark and disturbing directors and their films instigated the movie date a couple of weeks later. I didn’t know then that one of the best friendships of my life was emboldening itself, gradually becoming a happy foundation and fundamental part of my adult years.
The past year has brought about a number of Madonna reinventions, some of which have been the most striking of her storied career. Witness the challenging ‘Madame X’ album, a tapestry of music culled from around the world, most notably Portugal. Witness the accompanying theater tour for the album, which found Madonna in some of the most intimate venues since she first hit it big. And, most startling of all, witness her perhaps-unwanted turn as mere mortal, given her reported knee and hip injuries, which have caused her to cancel a number of tour dates.
After one such cancellation, she posted an Instagram video of her carefully ascending a set of stairs with a “vintage cane”, looking slightly hunched over and defiantly un-Madonna-like. My heart broke a little for her then, as I’ve seen some of the ticket-holders’ reactions to her canceled shows. (By the way, I’m not one of those lucky folks who got to see one of the shows that went on – I had tickets to a Boston date, all of which ended up being canceled, so I speak as one of the affected parties. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but I got over it, and at this point it’s clear that there are some serious medical issues at work.)
After almost four decades of thrashing her body in the name of entertainment and pop superstardom, and doing so in relentlessly top-of-her-game fashion, Madonna has spoiled us, and maybe herself, tricking everyone into assuming she would run forever. Up until now, she really showed no sign of slowing down. Even a brutal fall down a set of stairs didn’t stop her step for more than a few scary seconds. This time feels different, and I can’t imagine what Madonna herself might be feeling. I do know if anyone can make the best of a difficult situation and turn it to her advantage, it’s Madonna. I will keep my hopes in that and wish for the best in her recovery. She’s one of the last great pop stars still standing and creating, and now she deserves a break.
“Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.” ~ Paulo Coelho
Way back in 2003, when I first put this website up, I didn’t have any notion of how long it might last, but I certainly didn’t envision the year 2020 and a personal website’s endurance for such a stretch. That said, I’m happy to have had such an outlet. Artistic and creative expression is worth years of therapy – really good, intense, helpful therapy – and I will always find a way to express my artistic ambitions. Yet to the observant visitor, my posts have generally been on autopilot of the past few months, perhaps years, and my heart may not be in it as much as it once was. It began a few years ago when I took my first summer off from daily blogging and it was so wonderful. Reconnecting to daily life and living each moment as it came without thought of documentation or blogging about it reminded me of what we should be doing. Ever since then, it feels like we’ve moved into the fall, and now winter, of this site’s grand trajectory. It puts me in the mind of this music – ‘The Malady of Elegance’ by Goldmund. Do give it a long listen.
Winter is good, no matter how much of a bad rap it gets, and I’m as guilty as others have been in condemning it. Its stark harshness, its unrelenting viciousness – it all has a purpose. Yet as much as I know how necessary it is for the true enjoyment and health of a proper spring and summer, I still dread and recoil at the horror of its frigid days, its icy winds, its way with chilling the heart. But there is beauty in the cold, a beautiful crystalline truth and clarity that only comes when you strip away the leaves and foliage and flowers and examine the bare bones and structure of the world. It’s frightening, and I can admit that I’m a little scared, but it’s absolutely necessary, and ultimately it will prove beneficial.
And so we enter the wilderness of winter for this website. I’m not sure how it will all pan out, whether it will simply fade slowly away with diminishing posts, whether it will go out with some big glorious bang, or whether I’ll simply disappear without a word, vanishing into one of the hidden corners of the anonymous world wide web. I’ve been pondering my own mortality of late, wondering what might happen if I suddenly got hit by a car, my life instantly and unexpectedly snuffed out by some freak accident or tragedy. This blog would sputter out a few more pre-populated and then posthumous posts, a ghostly trick of our technological world. Those who only knew me here might think I was still alive, still writing and creating, when I would have already gone.
Such pondering of my own life found a focus in the past week when I was stricken with the flu, missing a couple of work days, a therapy session, and limiting the usual three-posts-per-day schedule this blog has managed to maintain. It put all those things into perspective, most especially the latter, and it suddenly dawned on me that the only person putting pressure on myself to do three a day, to maintain this pace and volume, was me. As I get older, and hopefully wiser, I am learning to let go of such perfectionist goals. I’m also learning to look ahead to the eventual end of this website as we know it. As far as personal blogs go, or websites in general for that matter, this one is a dinosaur, and I say that and own it with pride. Name your favorite blog right now and I bet I have it beat. This site is older than Twitter and FaceBook and Instagram. Think about that for a moment.
At 44 years of age, I’m way older than those social media sites as well, and some would, not inaccurately perhaps, proclaim that I’m too old to be doing a blog, and that blogs are all but over anyway, and that’s a fair take on the whole scene. The idea of a blog has likely passed its highest point of potency. There are too many easier outlets to make a creative name and channel for oneself. I’ve also grown a little too comfortable with the format and limits of this site, and any time the hint of stagnation rears its still head, I get a little restless and look for a new challenge. At this point in our technological history, that new challenge may be a return to a mainly off-line existence, an unplugged life not lived for documentation or recaps. Where not everything must be noted or annotated for future reference. When I think of the freedom involved in that, I get a little giddy. I almost want to slip away without word of warning or notice, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary night, never to return again, never to explain or say goodbye. Yes, that appeals to me as someone who has always preferred an Irish goodbye.
I don’t intend to go out in such a way, if I do in fact even have a say in it, so I’m hopeful I’ll get to design my own exit strategy, and we have a few more months or years to figure that out. It’s good to have a little preparation though, a plan of how this journey might go. The best thing about winter is that it is the springboard for spring, for the next rebirth. We will honor that in the snowy world. We will honor that in our slumber. We will rest and prepare for the next igniting of the phoenix.
And sometimes they don’t signify anything more than brightening up a week in winter. The world needs more roses at these times. Beauty will always make things better.
This bouquet is comprised of some dark pink spray roses and a few traditional long-stemmed pink roses. As we get closer to Valentine’s Day, their cost will become ridiculously prohibitive. For now, they brighten our home, nestled lovingly in a favorite vase, gradually opening and becoming the blooms they have aspired to be.
Oh magnificent amaryllis! How you stun with your saturated redness, how you thrill with your scarlet bloom! From such a plain bulb of brown, how gloriously you burst forth with your floral explosion, followed by straps of vivid green leaves. You are life and beauty and power in a world sick with mundane mediocrity. You give me hope. You give me pleasure. You give me prettiness in the midst of a bleak day. What price on such a piece? What bounty on such a head?
It is enough simply to exist when you are so richly red.
This post is enough to supply the day with the magic it wants.
Once upon such posts populated this blog, providing a brief haven for those who deigned to visit, a quick little respite while a cup of coffee or tea was had before the workday began in earnest. A return to the simple and the true. A return to beauty.
As if the universe knew exactly which test to administer at a moment when I need it most and want it least, I’ve just been ferociously and furiously felled by a fever of 102.2 degrees and croaking a prayer that it’s not the dreaded flu. I’m typing this post out on my phone- a handy little trick about which I know the bare minimum, so bear with me as I alternate between chills and sweats. If you could see me now… anyway, cue Shirley MacLaine because I’m singing her song and seeing her visions and I’m way way fun to the casual observer when I’m sick, not so much to the devoted caretaker.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
One of the more noble-minded holidays we have in this country, this is the day on which we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for all the work he did in helping us move toward equality for all. While it may seem like certain people are doing their damnedest to erase that work, it lives in anyone who carries on Dr. King’s dream in practice or in heart. We need to be a little louder now.
As for the past week, it was calm in reality, but somewhat tumultuous based on the blog posts. Some of them were written a couple of months ago and are only now being posted, while others are more vague ruminations on things that have been in the works for weeks. That sense of distance and detachment from the time that events happen to the time they get posted here is a necessary safety buffer for me, and once that I embrace. On with the recap…
January 6 has been reported as the saddest day of the year, and for a lot of reasons that’s tough to dispute. Everyone is throwing out their Christmas tree carcasses, the blush of the holiday season has long since passed, and the endless winter lays ahead without much hope or promise. For me, though, early January is filled with a freshness that’s not present at any other time of the year. I find early March or mid-to-late November the periods that strike me as the most depressing. In March, one is keenly aware of the length of winter, and it often brings its worst storms then. By late November, the trees have all turned brown and mostly discharged their leaves, leaving the landscape stark and barren, and the skies gray and dirty.
In January, there is still the freshness of snow, when it drops its white cloak on the ground and lights up the surroundings when sun or moon reflect their glow. It’s still possible to embrace the cold, to find wonder and beauty in the formations of ice, and to enjoy the winter wonderland. That won’t last long, and I see and hear a lot of complaints already. I suggest we find the good in what is at hand. The alternative is bitterness, and that won’t make the winter pass any quicker.
Between winter slumbers, we bide our time until the weather turns palatable again. This is when my attention shifts to the cellar, where the creative process finds expression and fruition, near the warmth of the fireplace, on the mid-century sofa, ensconced in a fuzzy robe. There are several projects on the horizon, but not on any grand scale. In fact, I’m starting with the embellishment of a favorite coat for an upcoming Broadway show. Nothing ould be simpler, nor more spectacular at the same time. My fingers have been aching from all the beading and needlework, but the coat will sparkle more brilliantly in New York City than anywhere else in the world. (Trust me, I have experience with beaded coats in the city.)
There is also planning afoot for the multitude of spring events set for 2020 – a year of anniversaries and milestones that will be done in a quieter manner than previous extravaganzas. An anniversary should be a lovely echo, a reminder of the original but not anything to match those early moments. A diminished set of expectations lends for greater magic.
Still, there is a hum happening already – a buzz, if you will, growing in intensity and excitement, and I will do my best to keep it in check. The bees are still asleep; the rest of us are quietly at work. All good things to those who wait.
My Mom doesn’t look a day over fifty, even though she is, quite literally, a couple of decades older than that. She wears it quite well, and I remain astounded by her perpetual grace. I learned a great many things from my mother, not the least of which is poise and elegance, and a certain icy, nonchalant disregard to the unimportant aspects of life. Her analytical and scientific background as nurse and professor was a wonder to behold, and her ability to remain unflustered (with the occasionally notable exceptions of dealing with her kids) was something to which I aspired and ultimately achieved.
Two nights after I found out she died, Alissa visited in a dream. For the first part she was in a car with me where hilarity and mayhem resumed. We were laughing like we always did, in a way that we could not laugh with anyone else, and it was so much richer because of it. Then the fun was over, and over much too fast. The last part was when everything went suddenly still and somber. I found her in the front seat looking straight back at me, her eyes burning into mine and trying to convey something that I couldn’t get. She stared so seriously, so intently, and it felt so real. I couldn’t speak, and didn’t know what I should do. I still don’t.
I don’t know if her keenly analytical mind would attribute her appearance in the dream to the simple fact that she had been on my mind all day or if her whimsical side would indulge in the possibility of a visit from wherever she was. It doesn’t matter – I realized what her brother had alluded to in his last message – Alissa was still here with us, inside each of us, and all that we once shared we will continue to share even if she is no longer physically here. It was a small comfort but a comfort nonetheless.
As the days passed and realization that she was gone began to sink in- grief is woefully tricky that way, especially when you don’t see someone but for once a year, if that – my despondency was checked by her brother’s reassuring idea that she did live on within each of us.
Still, when I was in Boston for the first time after her death, I was not prepared for the wave of memories and sadness that washed over the warm amber floors of the condo. Where we had toasted so many happy events over the last twenty years – graduations and parties and sleep-overs and birthdays and Christmases – and those nights when it was just the two of us, when one or both of us had been too scared and too proud to call anyone else to say that we might actually be lonely. We didn’t need to say it. We just pulled out an extra set of sheets and some pillows and got through the night together.
In the silence of the empty condo, I light a candle with a box of matches she had given to me a couple of Christmas holidays ago. Like all of her gifts, it was a piece of art in itself, covered by an artistic scientific rendering of a pair of bees. On the marble table in the middle of the room was a red ceramic bowl, and inside the bowl was the note Alissa had attached to the Christmas gift she and Sophia had given to me last year. When I saw her handwriting, my heart caught in my chest. She had been there, right where I was standing, less than a year ago. We had no reason to believe she wouldn’t be there again, and part of me still couldn’t quite believe it. Even though I know it’s true, and my brain understands and comprehends that she will never be with us again, still I feel that she is present. Part of me will always feel that she is merely halfway around the world, still reading and studying and working. Still raising her daughter and finding her path, still seeking and searching for love, still living out her life in her own way… and then, briefly, I begin to cry.
Boston will be different from this point forward, and in a year filled with difficult changes, this may be one of the saddest. I put the box of matches away and place the note on the fireplace mantle. When everyone gathers a few days later for the Children’s Holiday Hour, it is for the most part a happy occasion, mainly because we don’t talk about it. I am still not ready for that, still not ready to process or think about what we have lost. I occupy myself with my niece and nephew, who unknowingly carve out a space of salvation so that I can safely navigate us through the weekend.
The bluster and havoc of the holidays is difficult enough distraction, and maybe a distraction is exactly what I need to keep me just off-balance enough to not be completely destroyed. When that is over, and when the silence of early January descends, and there is no snow to buffer the darkness, I begin to work through the grief.
In our home we have many vases. It’s not unusual for us to fill a number of them at one time, especially in the spring and summer. But only one of these can be considered a favorite, and it’s the one Alissa gave us for our wedding. No matter what the happy occasion, this is the vase that gets filled with flowers first. This is one of the many objects that will remind me of Alissa. This is what we will fill with flowers again, when the spring comes back and when the summer returns, and we can remember all that we once shared together. An end to new memories is not an end of old ones – it only emboldens them. I hold onto this and hope that it will be enough.
Dear Alissa – I’m beginning this letter to you in Savannah, Georgia. Sitting on a bench in Forsyth Park beneath a magnificent magnolia tree, Spanish moss dangling down from every branch, I try to find solace in the soft and quiet beauty here, because I miss you and I know I will never see you again. How strange to be in Savannah again and find out that you passed away, in the very place where I only found out you were sick a few months ago. Only a few months. My God, the world is quick and brutal.
I think you would like it here. I can’t remember if you’ve ever been. It’s a clamp on my heart to think we cannot talk about it, to think I cannot ask you anything anymore, because I still have so many questions, and we still had so much to share. And there’s so much that has happened these past few years, and even just these past few months that I need to tell you…
I am thinking back to that day in Cambridge when we first met. Chris had brought me there to meet you, and as you stepped off the bus, not expecting me to be there, I shouted and screamed and ran up to you like a complete maniac. You looked startled when I wanted you to be amused. Skeptical when I wanted you to be instantly embracing. Aloof when I wanted you to be enamored. You were all the things that I was, and from that moment we got on splendidly.
Somehow, even though you were his girlfriend, you became a friend in your own right. We were similar in so many ways, and where most people thought we were too blunt or cold, we each knew that it wasn’t coldness or aloofness – always the opposite. In a world where we would each be perpetually misunderstood – our concern mistaken for criticism, our false carelessness mistaken for apathy, and our self-protection mistaken for cruelty – we had each other. On many a cold Boston evening we would reach out to connect, and it was almost enough.
The world wasn’t always kind to you. It wasn’t always fair. We shared a kinship and a cynicism when it came to that. We’d been hurt enough. But when the right person came along – friend or lover – we would always give in to love. With all that went on in our heads, too often we led with our hearts.
Even after you and Chris went your separate ways, we stayed friends. That’s not an easy thing to do, but we did it, because certain friends are meant to be together. Chris was too kind and sensitive to have a problem with it, and he did his best to stay close to you too. It was easier for me, for us. When things fell apart for you in California, you and your mother and daughter came to Boston to start again. You asked if you could stay with me for a night and of course the answer was yes. I still remember the thud in the middle of the night as Sophia rolled onto the floor and you scrambled to scoop her up and, in a panicked, muffled voice intoned her that it was ok, when all the while she went right on sleeping as if nothing had happened.
I don’t know how you did it – how you started over after all that had happened. I suppose you had no choice, and I hope I never know the terror of that. Yet even if I do, the example you forged will remain locked in my mind, a memory of the strength and survival that the best people can summon at their worst moments. I watched from afar as you and Sophia made your way through the next few years. Who would this child turn out to be? How would she grow into her space in the world? What would she make of her mother’s quirky, sequin-bedecked friend from so long ago?
We talked about these questions on the sporadic visits I made to Boston then. Every few months we would touch base, going out for drinks and dinner at a carefully-selected restaurant – a favorite pastime of ours that no one else quite shared or enjoyed as much as we did.
I think back to one of our first shared dinners at Geoffrey’s, when it was the anchor of the South End, when everything was still tottering between good and bad, when our lives could have gone either way as well. I’m so glad we were there together. Not even my closest friends could understand some of what I was going through in the way that you could. We shared a certain chilled view of the world, having been left wary after one too many bad experiences. And maybe we each did our part to set up such circumstances. I can say that now. I can admit those mistakes. I know you would too. At least I think you would. There is no consolation in not knowing for sure, and so I miss you even more.
On this bench in Savannah, where I type these words into my phone and the world goes foolishly on around me, I think back to last April, when I was in this same city, experiencing this same beauty, and I remember exactly how this sad journey began. I was checking e-mail when I saw your name, and immediately I opened it because you always sent the best messages. This was different from all the rest, and you didn’t sugarcoat your diagnosis. I was out walking and just returning to the hotel when I opened it up and read it. Andy saw my face as I walked into the hotel room and asked what was wrong. I told him the news, then instantly wanted to cry. Even as I had hope in your strength, even as I couldn’t imagine a world without you in it, I went into the bathroom and let the grief pour out of me. Maybe you knew then. But you had a plan, and you had a goal, and you had a daughter who needed you around and you were not going to do anything other than survive. And once again I marveled at how you could do it.
In the later days of fall, as we readied for a return to Savannah, your occasional updates dwindled, and in that silence I felt worry and sadness. I thought about Sophia, and one of the first dinners we shared together in Boston. For a few years you would get a babysitter when we would meet – it was as much a night out for you as it was for me, and since you had been her sole caretaker, I understood (and quite frankly had no objection to an adult dinner between friends). When she was old enough to join in, I inadvertently picked a place that was across the street from a park with a giant jungle gym, and after dinner she climbed and swung and impressed me with how strong and agile she was. You were raising a warrior, and I was happy that she would have the power and grace that you did. She would survive. It was just you and her, and she was getting the skills and the love that she needed to make her own way. Yet again I was amazed and awestruck.
By November it had been several weeks since anyone had heard from you. I arrived in Savannah with Andy and my parents, going through my own emotional stuff, and I had made my way to the river by myself as the sun was just beginning to leave the sky. I remembered a sculpture in the area of a girl waving to the boats. She was waiting for her lover to return and she waved each day at each passing boat but he never came back. He never returned. Still she waved, arm perpetually raised, head held high in perpetual hope. We know what she does not.
Chris texted me and asked if I could talk.
I knew right then that you were gone.
He didn’t need to say much, and what was there left to say? I couldn’t fathom his pain, not for all your shared history and time together. We spoke for a bit, then said goodbye, and I was alone in a strange beautiful place, as the river lapped the shore and evening lapped the edges of the sky. We’d never lost a friend like this.
Walking away from the river, I follow a path that leads to steep stairs. There is a sign warning readers that these are historical steps, and to tread with great care. They are steep and thin and dangerous, and when wet the moss turns slippery. I pause before climbing them, stopping to examine the little ferns that poke out through the crevices and cracks in the ancient stones. This is how life exists and persists in the minutes after I learn you had died. How it could be is beyond my grasp, how it should be goes against every grain of my sadness. The entire wall is splattered with ferns, defying the vertical incline, the inclement and inhospitable environment, yet here they were absurdly insisting on surviving when greater beings went on dying.
Up these treacherous steps I walk, through the squares of Savannah as dusk falls and the light goes out for the day. I find a single camellia bush in bloom – most of the ones I’d seen on the way down had only been in bud, but in a shady side street I find these magnificent blossoms and I inhale their perfume hoping to find some bit of calm, some signal that the world hasn’t gone dark forever. I don’t find it there.
By the time I return to the hotel, there is no more light in the sky. Church bells toll somewhere nearby. A fierce sense of rage suddenly ignites in my heart. I’m mad at myself for not doing more. For not being closer. For not hugging you one more time last Christmas, for not insisting you stay, for not pulling Sophia a little bit tighter to me.
Before I finish writing this letter in Forsyth Park, I pass a wedding party. There are children playing in a jungle gym, like we once watched Sophia doing in the South End. They are shouting with glee and laughing with abandon. Normally it would annoy me, today it just makes me want to cry.
I will put this letter away until I can finish it properly.
I will say goodbye when I am ready to say goodbye.
I will hold you in my heart and pretend that I will see you again at Christmas.
