Surf And Turf

I got a notice today in the mail about my high school class's  fortieth reunion.
Yeah. Sounds like a long, long time, doesn't it? Forty years?

Well guess what- blink- that's how long it took to get from high school graduation to here, forty years later.
I have no plans whatsoever to attend.
In fact, I pre-booked a house on St. George Island for the week the reunion is going to be happening. Entirely by accident, I assure you.
A complete coincidence.

In another example of complete coincidences, a good friend of mine, one of the few friends I can still claim from high school, stopped by here tonight on his way home to Winter Haven from a cross-country trip after hiking in the Sierra Madres for ten days. He's come all the way across the country in a black, uh, maybe a Camero?- I don't know- and he stopped in Denver to see Jack White play at Red Rocks and he's been listening to an audio book of On The Road narrated by Will Patton who is my favorite book narrator (and I have discussed him here before as he does James Lee Burke's audio books) and he was going to spend the night and then he thought it would be cool to meet me and Mr. Moon at the beach and it ended up that he just stopped by for a cocktail before doing the final push towards home because he's taking his grandson to the beach on Wednesday.

An hour and a half before he got here, I was on my way home from Lily's, stinking to high heaven of spit-up and baby poop and hair-gone-sour from being put-up-wet and I knew my house was a pit of dispair and I had nothing whatsoever to serve him in the way of cocktail food.

Plus, I was exhausted. I didn't sleep well last night and I'd had my walk this morning and Owen threw a fit this afternoon when his mama came home on break.
"NO LEAVE ME!!!! He kept saying, and after she finally had to go he continued to wail and scream that I needed to go home and that I needed to go and get his mommy and bring her home and that his mommy did NOT need to go to work but needed to stay with him.
My heart broke over and over again for him and for his mommy too until finally he grew silent for a moment and then he giggled.
"What are you laughing about, boy?" I asked him.
"I happy now!" he said and crawled up on the bed beside me where I had gotten Gibson to sleep for a nap and then his daddy came home.

So I've been feeling like I have one foot planted in this world and another foot planted in that one today and I cried when Kerry left because how many friends do you have for forty years? How many? I feel lucky as shit to have one or two.

I was a child when I met Kerry and yet, his influence on my life continues to this day. As I have said before, he gave me Bob Dylan and I gave him the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles came to both of us through the ether, free of charge. When we get together, we never run out of things to talk about because it's like we're still informing each other on how to be in this life and I think about him every time I brush my teeth because when we were in high school, he went on some environmental camp thing where they told the kids not to leave the water on when they brushed their teeth and I stopped leaving the water on when I brushed MY teeth and god knows how many gallons of water I've saved since then.
Like that.

So when he left, headed back out in the Camero (?) for his home and his wife and his grandchildren, I cried.

I cried because I was tired and I cried because someone I've loved for forty years still cares about me and I cried because Owen had been so sad and I cried because life goes by so fast and I cried because, well, just because. I cried because Jack Kerouac lived and wrote and died and I cried because Kerry and I have been correspondants for all these years, first with paper and pen and now with e-mail and because we both have grandchildren and I cried because some day, we're all going to die. I cried because we can still make each other laugh and I cried because I am not beautiful any more and I cried because yes, in fact, we ARE still all beautiful, and I cried because I am so lucky that he has been in my life all these years and that he is married to his One True Love and I am married to My One True Love and that we can still mean something to each other.

I walked by the piano after he left and I saw that postcard above of a mermaid at Weeki Wachee Springs and also, those two carvings of an old, old couple, the woman holding a chicken under her arm and I felt like I was both mermaid and old woman and I posed that picture and I took it.

I have no desire to go to my high school reunion and I am looking forward to my week on St. George Island with all my heart. Let me tell you something- reunions happen every day and mostly, they are reunions of the person we were with the person we are and we all read those stories of people getting together at high school reunions after all these years and re-falling in love and changing their lives but I'm here to tell you, if you do it right, you just stay in love and your life changes every fucking day.

I am fifty-eight years old and I am mermaid and I am crone and I am maiden and I am grandmother and I wouldn't trade places with anyone even myself forty years ago for anything in this world.

I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.

And that's all there is to it.

Can you imagine the Botox involved in a fortieth high school reunion?

Nah, baby, that ain't me.

Yours truly...Ms. Moon