Cutesy Go-Getter Smiles

What matters now?

Cheez-Its and foam rollers.

A boyfriend turned husband.

A ring on my finger,

When I’m not too scared to wear it. 

A glass of wine on a Monday.

A workout video found on YouTube, taught by 3 soccer moms all wearing blue and cutesy go-getter smiles. 

A hilarious coworker who is quick to laugh at emails and intercom announcements and keeps me connected when I can count on one hand the number of friends I have in this new town, this new beginning. 

Panting my nails, slowly.

And then picking at the paint during long, sometimes pointless meetings, like a child picks at glue.

Cleaning out the fridge,

Taking out the trash.

Remembering to buy new garbage bags.

Why do I always forget to buy new garbage bags?

A wave and a smile from my 30-something neighbor, a short hopeful exchange that promises a friendship and a walk, perhaps when her four kids are at Grandma’s.

Remembering to wash my mask, to bring my mask to work, or I can’t enter the building.

Seeing new shades of red and blue on our new TV that we bought at too-crowded-for-a-pandemic Costco right after we ate 2 slices of pizza standing up.

What matters now is pink and yellow unicorn slippers bought at CVS.

Watching the Bachelorette with Lucy,

“Keeping it cool” with my dad and not lingering on his preaching.

What matters now is improving my handwriting and reading the Alicia Keys’ memoir,

Cooking winter squash and sitting at the fire.

Protecting Jim and Pam’s love, no matter what the cost.

What matters now is this. 
All of it.

Sleep-Eating

 “I saw Ruffles in the trash can this morning.”

This was Lucy, to Brandon, in our kitchen.

Lucy with her brown-rimmed glasses, the beginning of a familiar laugh tickling cheeks and buzzing at her lips, her baggy high school soccer shirt hanging off her shoulders.

“Lady Falcons” in bulky red letters laid vibrantly across a soft cement gray, a color combination only intended for high school t-shirts.

 

It was Saturday.

Saturdays are slow these days, meant for conversations like this one, in the kitchen. 

Mismatched socks, messy hair.

Coffee and maze-like exchanges about our day’s plans that are never actually plans this early, just ideas.

 

One Saturday, Prince was the topic of conversation and how we all seemed to miss that particular fan wave, and we were sad about that. (Was it too late?)

“How did he die exactly?”

Brandon explained.

“Where was he from?”

Lucy answered. 

 

This was that kind of Saturday.

 

“Yeahh.. “ Brandon inched in with a leaning voice and a side eye.

“The Ruffles… that was me.”

 

His confession was playful as that same tickling threat of a laugh circled his mouth.

 

See, sleepwalking is not exactly Brandon.

His eyes don’t easily cater to pitch-black hallways and sharp kitchen counter corners but, sleep-eating is a constant friend of his.

Chip-crunching, powerbar-smashing, and sugary fingertips are all a part of the adventure of lying next to Brandon at night.

Thankfully, I am a heavy sleeper and I hardly even notice.

Until of course, someone finds Ruffles in the trashcan.

The Worst of Sounds

I can hear it now.

The sound of my old roommate’s cat slurping water with her tiny, scratchy, leaf-like tongue.

And immediately, a look of disgust forms below my hairline.

My face wrinkles up like a comeback scrunchy. 

It is forever and always the worst sound of all sounds. 

Could it be that I simply had a very complicated relationship with that cat?

One that has involved too many scratches on my arms,

A headache-type ringing to my ears.

And an after-hours search party when she “mistakenly” slid out the back door,

Just seconds after I desperately peeled the door back with only 500 hanging items off my arms and an already spilled cup of coffee.

Why on earth did the cat need to slurp her way to Timbuktu right next to the dinner table where I would be eating food that I had been waiting for and daydreaming about all day?

All.Day. 

I couldn’t do it.

I can’t do it.

I will never do it.

I refused to spend my rent that way, sharing dinner with a slip-slop-slurpery, evil cat.

My food already cold in my hands,

I stormed off to my room.

But really...

I think the cat won that day.

And she knows it. 

An Invitation and a Walk.

Today Phyllis and I walked gravel, and then dirt, and then gravel again- in a loop.

“Want to do one more?” she asked whenever we neared the polished Ranch dressing-white fence with the megabus suburban white cars behind it.

The parking lot that, if we allowed it, bookmarked the end of our time together under this perfect patch of October sky.

 

I forget every year how pretty the fall is. 

It surprises me each October at every first chill, every first pumpkin sighting in the neighborhood or the tiniest first speck of yellow in a leaf.

Phyllis asked me this easy question like we had known each other much longer than two whole weeks. The question rolled off her tongue like a neighbor who casually locked you in to a conversation you could trust, a conversation you actually cared about. Not about the weather or the trash guy getting sloppy on his pickups, but about a favorite book or artist. It was a warm invitation that said she appreciated me, or at least it seemed that way.

 

Here’s the thing-

When Phyllis asked me to go on a walk today,

I literally hop-skipped out of the house.

I couldn’t help it.

She was and is my first friend here.

In a new town, a completely new season.

 

When I walked up to her car after first arriving to the park today,

she spilled into conversation like water.

Clear, soft, smooth.

 

You know, I didn’t know how bad I needed this-

A friend.

A girl friend.

A 63-year-old hilarious coworker now girlfriend that begins stories and statements with “Honey” and talks about Chattanooga like you wouldn’t believe. She knows back stories upon back stories of all people, places, and things here.

 

“Yes, I can do one more loop,” I kept hearing myself say, each time a bit less shy.

And I pray the loops would keep coming.

That's All You Knew.

I remember that one night.

I was in my front yard.

And it was dark outside, the darkest black dress my street had worn as long as I had known her.

 

It was one of those summer nights where I was pretending.

I was pretending to be okay,

Like I have been known to do.

(You know, when movements get compact, sticky... insignificant).

And I shrink in every way I know how.

That was the summer I worked with lots of teens- too many teens.

I taught yoga in hot rooms all over the city.

I babysat in fancy East Nashville homes and got way too used to smelling another woman’s breast milk.

And I was just plain anxious.

  

Anxiously waiting,

Anxiously guessing,

Anxiously moving,

Anxiously driving,

Anxiously knowing, and then... not knowing.

Avoiding the Truth, altogether.

I was living a lie,

Anxiously.

 

But on that oddly cool June night,

I don’t know what prompted me...

Perhaps out of habit, I looked up.

And I saw you.

 

I felt your weight- the part of your weight I could handle, anyway.

I felt your presence behind my knees,

At the tips of my fingers,

In the dryness of my throat.

And you stopped me.

You held me- the sky, the world.

Just watching, silently.

All you knew to do for me was watch.

That's all you knew.

But it was everything.

And all I knew to do was the next small thing, the next barefoot step toward my garden, my too-often-forgotten summer chore.

 

You tasted my sadness.

Sadness feels like too weak of a word, actually.

More like a paralysis of sorts.

I didn’t have the strength to make the hard decisions, to do the hard things.

All I know was that my plants needed water,

And that you were watching.

God Bless Y'all.

 My cousin owns a store called The Wrinkled Egg. 

I remember when I first heard the name.

I can’t remember the story behind the name-

I know there was one.

 

We were all at either Applebee’s or Ruby Tuesdays, 

My memory merges those two place together often… I can’t help it. 

It was the 90's and these two ruled the town.

We were all piled up in a booth, and yes we are all family, but there were officially and confidentially too many small and big pairs of hips sticking to each other.

I remember that part too.

 

My cousin told us all about the store, 

That she was starting it, that she named it, that she lived down the street from it.

Before I knew it, I was holding a brochure.

It was a trifold- a silky, orangish-reddish kind of thing that felt good to slide through my fingers.

I think I was somewhere close to 10, but that’s also the age I offer to myself when memory gets muggy.

 

If the same someone lingered at all my stories, they would have thought I must have hit the jackpot of life at age 10- all the people I met, decisions I made….

 

Anyway, I didn’t really understand the store or why she was doing it all.

It felt a little risky to me, but I do remember thinking,

“Man, she’s cool.”

 

My horse-loving, church league basketball playing, “Can we order more cheese sticks and Sprite?” self, thought she had all and every bit of her life together.

 

Her name?

Virginia.

 

Her store is still standing, thriving actually, on the edge of Asheville, North Carolina.

And she still is one of my coolest cousins.

 

During this new normal of Pandemic Times, 

I am on a handful of group texts, one of them including Virginia and other cousins and aunts and uncles across Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, California, and Tennessee.

 

“This thing is getting more and more serious, but don’t panic,” my dad preaches.

He is always the self-proclaimed preacher with text typos running through his words like tangles at the back of a little girl’s head before bedtime.

 

“Be sure to thank those in the medical field,” my cousin George chimed in.

 

“Well, I still have the store open.. and I just went and bought some extra hay for our horses to support the other small business down the road.”

(This was Virginia).

 

So much has changed even since that group text exchange at the middle of last week. 

 

“Here, watch this video to understand the spread of the virus.”
That was Aunt Wanda.

In a different group text with her husband and me (officially Uncle Frank), sweet and soft-voice Wanda would get a bit political.

But not here.

She knew her complicated audience-

(Extended) Family.

 

“God Bless Y’all.”

That was Aunt Cathy.

She never had much to say beyond blessings. 

It Was Just Us.

 We were in Florence. 

My mom and I were not used to spending this much time together.

None of the other mother-daughter combos with the twangy 

and sometimes embarrassing “We’re from the Deep-South and we know it” accents 

had invited us to dinner. 

It was just us, 

Again.

 

My mom was tired of all the walking, and I was tired of all the Trump-talk and the, 

“Oh, we’re saving this special handmade Italian lace for her wedding” talk on the bus.

Like that was the only thing that mattered in a girl’s life.

Waiting for a wedding.

 

How did I end up… here?

With all of these strangers, on a boxy and uncomfortable, loud tourist-shouting bus in Italy? (I wouldn’t necessarily say this is how I prefer to travel).

 

And what would I tell myself now, three years later?

You really don’t get trips like this with your mom.

Put your phone down- he’s not going to last, and he’s desperate.

You will soon tell all of your friends and every person that begins to say the word Italy,

that this was the best meal you’ve ever had in your life.

 

Creamy, rich pasta with deep maroon, stain-threatening, 

“It’s okay, I’m on vacation and I’m walking home anyway” red wine,

And Mom.

 

Your mom is here,

Your mom is perfect.