Bird

Lately I've become a creature of habit. I go to the coffee shop and have my five shot venti americano, watch people walk by for a little while and read a book. God how I love the smell of coffee. I look forward to that warm, buttery feeling that fills my nose right before I drink it. I absolutely love that first sip. Every morning I hope it doesn’t burn my lips or my tongue, and every morning I don't care if it does or not. Sometimes the feeling I have reminds me of being a kid, and then I love coffee so much I wish I could marry it.

At my coffee shop a woman dressed in purple sits by the door and never smiles. She doesn’t look mean or sad, she just sits impassively. Even when someone talks to her for a few minutes she’ll answer but her face remains the same. Every once in awhile she wanders around the tables looking for something. Sometimes she’ll stand next to me for a minute or two and look for something on the ground. And even when I’ve looked with her, there is nothing.

When she isn’there or when she sits around the corner, a bird will land on my table and sit there waiting for me to leave my muffin or coffee cake alone. This bird, she just stands there without looking at me. Her tiny little back and head facing toward the street, waiting. One morning she hopped around and looked at me brazenly and I had to look away. I was hungry.

Don’t get me wrong, I always leave a lot for her to feast on, and I don’t move around too much because I want to see her nibble, fly away and come back. She always does.

This morning I was walking back home and as I passed the flower shop and watched the flowers bend in the wind. Coffee in one hand, crutches under the other arm to support me, it dawned on me: What if the woman in purples turns into the bird when I’m not looking? What if the woman who will not tell anyone her name and will not meet the eye of anyone, what if she becomes this tiny bird and she flies to different tables and waits. And what if when she’s a stoic, beautiful, old woman she walks around the tables looking down, what if she’s just looking for a place to land?

Unknown

I used to have this theory about pain. I thought that pain was a clue to grace. I thought that one of the greatest gifts God ever gave us was the ability to not remember pain. We remember that something hurt on our bodies, but not the actual physical sensation of pain. I can tell you that when I broke my back years ago that the pain was beyond comprehension, and I know it was because I couldn't speak or understand anyone for awhile afterward. But I cannot for the life of me get you to understand the way it felt when I had to walk after falling to a waiting vehicle, and the way my vertebrae were pressed together, rubbing and rubbing against each other like lovers after too much to drink. Each step I took made my breath come in sharp measure like a pregnant woman giving birth. I could feel the way bone met bone with each step and the blood from inside pouring out down my legs. But you will never feel that and I will never feel it again.

I believe there is grace in that pain. I would call it mercy but I did nothing to earn that injury or that level of pain. I did nothing to earn God's grace in the moment, but today I feel that grace in not remembering those steps in my physical being.

However, what do you do when you have constant pain and you don't know when or how it will go away? What do you do or what do you believe when the same pain returns day after day? Am I supposed to remember God's grace for all the other times? Do I pray and wait for healing? Do I believe that I do deserve this pain? If so then my plea is for God's mercy. Do I deserve it? Is there a vindictive God who is punishing me for something? What do I learn from this pain, from this time of not walking properly and without pain? Is there a God in pain?

I realise that there are people in the world who are worse off than me, but I am not them. I am me. What purpose and to what end am I suffering? And why can't I have the same passion in this pain that I do in love? It feels just as deep. It keeps me awake like new love; it makes me weak like a new love's voice. I listen to songs differently now. I listen to them like someone who’s learned something somewhere at sometime.

I think the exact opposite of self pity is action. Not reaction, action. So I don't sit here and wonder about all these things that have happened to me, and why me, I wonder what to do next? What do I learn from this? How do I make what's happened, when I find out what's happened to me, how do I make it work for me? How do I meet the new people to come into my life and show them grace, or mercy, or compassion?

I know that pain isn't remembered in our physical being, but I hope that I never forget how to share someone else's own pain. I hope I can describe the grace shown to me.

It looks a lot like love.

Weightless

Lately I'm having trouble walking. I limp like an old lady I saw and laughed at once. I laughed because she was shaped like the letter "L" walking down the sidewalk. I was very young and convinced I would never walk like that.

Now though, for the time being I walk like she walked that day. If I saw her now I would apologise. Not because I want absolution from this pain or the way I look walking down the street, but because I was so stupid.

This morning I was hobbling to work in the dark and the rain and I was thinking about the way it feels to walk when you know you're in love. But then I started thinking about all the other times I felt like I was walking on air. I mean, does it only happen when you think you're in love that you feel weightless? Sometimes I felt like I was walking on air whenever I found something no one else could see, like a rock shaped like a heart in the ocean, or met a stranger who told me fantastic stories.

Why does it feel so light and airy when things are discovered? Once I found a leaf shaped like a musical note. Exactly like an eighth note. You should've seen my face and felt my pulse that day! I saved it and didn't show it to anyone for fear of losing that light feeling discovery. I was a firm believer that certain things didn't really exist until you shared them, but after I found that leaf I just didn't have the words to explain what it felt like. It was selfish but also self-preserving.

Someone once told me that no one can see the world the way I do. No one can see the world the way the other person does. Being in love, being debt-free, watching the top of the trees in the wind, it doesn't mean the same to you as it does to me.

But this weightless feeling of love, of secrecy, of contemplation - at least you know what I'm talking about.

Transported

I was thinking about this time when I was allowed to go home and visit my mother and sister one weekend. I was 11 and it was the fall season in Alaska; a Saturday afternoon and I was quickly becoming bored without all my friends at the group home. My mother had been invited to a Tupperware party that she insisted my sister and I attend as well.

So there we were. Me in my best jeans and my little sister in a yellow dress, my mother in a skirt and blouse and panty hose and short black pumps. She'd never learned to drive so we took cabs or the bus everywhere. On this occasion we took a cab to the host's house. A Checker Cab. I sat in the back on the passenger side and watched people drive and wondered if they were on their way to the same Tupperware party. I'd recently discovered that I was extremely talented at crossing my eyes so everytime we came to a stop I'd give the neighboring car my finest cross eyed stare and try to hold it for as long as I could.

When we got to the party I tried with my mind to get the cabby to stop a block down but my mom and sister weren't having it. We got out right outside the front door. I featheredd my hair back then so it wasn't long enough to let it fall in front of my face with embarassment.

We walked in and I saw that my sister and I were the only kids there and all they had to eat was tiny sandwiches with no crust and tiny vegetables and punch. So we sat in the corner, my sister with her legs crossed up inside her yellow dress and me in my bell bottom jeans and pink striped sweater trying to eat sandwiches that scared us.

My mother had decided that she would sit on the floor. Everyone else at the party was sitting in chairs and on couches, but my mother acted like she belonged on the floor right by the corner of the coffee table. She was as quiet as we were. I'd never seen so many old women in one place, and all talking at one time, in my life. It bothered me that my mother wasn't speaking to anyone except me and my little sister. My sister answered her questions dutifully while I stared out the window to my right. I smiled a little because this lady's window was just as dirty as my mom's at her trailer. And I bet she never made a fried bologna sandwich like my mom did.

I looked at my mother differently for a minute. She seemed better than all these women who didn't wait for an answer to their loud, squawking questions. She would ask a question and not say anything or look away while you answered it. She just let you answer it.

Then she took her shoes off.

My sister had her hand halfway to her mouth with a baby carrot and I was playing with my feathered hair. We both froze. I prayed hard and fast that no one would notice what had just happened.

For some reason I started thinking about the time she'd abandoned me in Oregon City when I was seven. She took me out of school for a special day and decided we'd go to Oregon City so I could see where I was born. She bought me my own wax bag of salt water taffy and a book. I was seven at the time and thought I was the best behaving girl in the entire history of the world. We stood at the bus stop to go home and she said "Wait right here, I'll be back." I watched the doors close and her face as the bus pulled away. Her eyes were hard but her face was soft. I waited. And waited.

Now here I was 4 years later, in a group home, on a home visit to the same mom I waited for back then and she had taken her shoes off.

It started with the lady sitting next to my sister. She looked at my mother on the floor in her stocking feet and smiled tightly. She looked at me and then my sister. I looked away hoping no one had noticed I'd walked in with her. All of a sudden there was silence in the room. And a smell like nothing any of them had ever smelled. I could tell by the look on their faces. My sister had smelled it before. I had smelled it before.

I thought about that day she got on the bus and I watched it turn the corner. I turned my head the opposite way, expecting it to come back around the corner and deposit her. While this offensive, unforgiving smell permeated the room and got in between the conversations of the women, I thought about how I'd been seven years old and left at that corner with no recollection of how I got home.

I was ashamed, embarassed and had the deepest feeling of compassion for my mom at that moment. I still don't know why she left my that day or the days after that day. But she sat on the floor of that fancy home, with her purse sitting next to her, her stockinged feet tucked to the side, with a look that seemed familiar to me but couldn't recall its origins.

She put her shoes back on quietly, she didn't buy any Tupperware, and we left our tiny sandwiches on the coffee table.

We took a cab back to where she and my little sister lived and I went home where I belonged.

Veil

It's 1:11 in the morning here. I'm not tired and I'm really trying to be tired.

I haven't written here in a long time. Hell, I haven't written in a long time.

I received a promotion at work recently. I wish I could say that that's why I haven't written. My company was bought out by another, so I've been working for the last two or more years to make that conversion happen more smoothly for everyone.

I am in love. I am still in love with the girl of my dreams. And she loves me too. I mean, she actually loves me. I no longer wonder why she loves me. I no longer think "She's gonna wake up" and realise I was only a stop along the way. No, she actually loves me and I know it and I know why.

I think I stopped writing because what rested inside scared me at the time. All I saw at the time I was falling in love with writing, was the grain.

Do you know what I mean?

I saw the underside of leaves on trees I passed. Not just saw the leaf, but the veins and the patterns the sun made through them. I saw old men with creases in their faces who smiled at me like they knew me and realised I smiled first. Everything was sensual to me. My senses were on the surface and I wasn't sure what to do about it but confess.

I want only to see it all again. This time through a veil of passion and compassion for someone who grounds me. I floated for so long.

I want to remove the veil; tethered to the earth through the thread we've wound together.

She lets me fly when I want.

Winning

Around the corner from me is a smoke shop. It's changed hands a few times in the last few years, but it's always cold in the summer and hot in the winter so nothing's really changed. It's a small shop that only manages to fit three people comfortably, four if we all politely maneuver our bodies.

A year ago a man from Ethiopia bought it and took over with his wife covering the counter whenever he wasn't there. She is beautiful. Her skin is the color of a dark latte, she wears braces on her white teeth and smiles like she is proud of their placement. Her eyes are dark like obsidian and they actually shine. I swear they do.

They had a baby 9 months ago on a Tuesday and he gave away free cigars the next week. I like him alot. He smiles just like his wife and speaks animatedly about basketball and soccer. During the world cup he began calling me Friend, after I called him that one day. We both wanted Italy to win but enjoyed the entire competition anyway. During the games I would go to his shop and stand and watch with him and we would yell for anything, good or bad.

It wasn't always this way though.

I used to go in and see him and he would say "What you want?" and I would tell him and he would throw it on the counter and tell me: "Four dollar fifty." I'd give him the money and he would say "See you" and wave his hand to scoot me out the door. I wasn't statisfied with that though. I wanted to know his name and his wife's name and I wanted to learn how to say "hello friend" in his language. See, I've always wanted to learn every language I could retain or at least hear and roll around my own mouth. Call it selfish, but the more stories I learn about people and their own lives, the more I grow. So I called him Friend everytime I saw him and asked him about futbol so much that he gave me The Smile.

I saw him this morning and he said "Hello Friend! Did you see the Brazil Argentina match?" I told him no I didn't know it was on but he promised to tell me the next time he sees one.

I asked after his wife and his new daughter and he told me to come to the shop sometime and say hello. It wasn't until I watched him cross the street to his shop that I realised I've never known his name. I guess it doesn't really matter though, I figure I'm still gonna call him Friend.

Square Root

Sometimes I'm not sure what to do with my hands. What are you supposed to do when you're in love? How do you fix your hair or hold your head? How do you talk to the one you love without thinking about the way they smile when they see you? And are you even supposed to do that?

When she cries I want to ride in on a white horse and save the day. I wanna be a lifeguard and give her the breath of life when she feels like she's drowning. Those tears that stream down her face, the ones that taste salty and I can't kiss away fast enough, they're the most beautiful body of water I've ever taken in.

Her smell still remains in my house. Her jacket hangs on the corner of my closet door and whenever I get something out of it, it swings back and forth for a few seconds and I imagine her dancing.It feels like I'm standing in the middle of a room full of things that I'm unfamiliar with. Being in love feels like I'm standing here surrounded by old things made of leather; dust covered things that've sat for years and hold the memories only lovers remember. I feel like I'm standing in this room surrounded by beautiful things that are meant to be touched but seem untouchable in their beauty, and all I can do is look. I feel like this room is big, and airy, and light, and dark, and sexy and secretive.

I feel like this room has blackboards on the walls, filled with square root math problems and seventeen histories of the world, and correct penmanship and exotic words, all whispering softly, while raging and begging me to learn...learn...learn.

This room is at the top of the stairs, to the left and at the end of the hall, waiting to be discovered, over and over.

Behind the door to this room she waits.

And I am determined to learn.

Over and over.