Lisa-Lisa, Beautiful Red-Headed Lisa Whom We Adore

When I met Lisa I was thirty-eight years old and she was twenty-two.
Now she is thirty-eight and I am fifty-four.
When I met her I had a seventeen-year-old, a fifteen-year-old, an eight-year-old and a four-year-old.
Now Lisa has a four-year-old and a two-year-old.
That's her and her daughter Grace in the picture above.
They visited me today.

When I met Lisa it was love at first sight for both of us, I think. She is one of those people whom when you meet, your heart recognizes as if there were an empty chamber in it, just waiting for her to show up for it to open and let her in. And thus it was.

She was going to FSU at the time and we met through a mutual friend and boy, there she was and there I was and hell's bells, I fell in love. So did all my kids and Mr. Moon, too. We named her Lisa-Lisa, Beautiful Red-Headed Lisa Whom We Adore.
Really. That's what we called her.

She eventually graduated from FSU and moved back down to Tampa where she was from and she began a career and pretty soon, the next thing I knew, she had some high-powered job in the communications field and was traveling all over the country and she had started doing yoga quite seriously and we didn't get to see each other very often, but when we did, it was glorious.

We're the kind of friends who, no matter how long it's been since you've seen each other, just come back together like the two halves of a puzzle, like bacon and tomato, like sand and sea, like joy and delight.

When she decided to marry her honey-man, Jon, they asked me to perform the ceremony and that was one of the high points of my life. My god! but that was a beautiful wedding on the beach on Santa Maria Island and one of the happiest days of my life. And what an honor.

When she had her first baby, she asked me to come and be with her and I did. Another honor. Beyond belief.
That's the girl you see in the picture, Miss Grace.

And two years ago, she visited me with both her babies and we had a beautiful visit. You can read about it here.
She was in the very midst of children-and-babies and bless her! She was having to work so hard and she was drowning in the blessings and burdens of it all.
And since that visit, we've hardly spoken.
Why?
Who knows? She is so busy in her world of yoga teaching and being the director of a yoga studio and raising those babies and she's just one of those women who can't stop, can't stop, cannot stop.
I seem to be attracted to those women. I do.
Lizzie's like that and so is Kathleen. They all keep telling me that they need to slow down and concentrate on what's important and I've learned to nod and smile and say, "This is the way you like it, darlin'," instead of suggesting ways they can slow their lives down. They don't want slow lives and I celebrate that. I admire them and I love them and I watch them speed through the universe doing this good deed and that while I hang my clothes on the line and measure my days, as T.S. Eliot said, with coffee cups.

Anyway, this weekend, two years exactly since Lisa and I saw each other, she was in Tallahassee and came out this morning with Grace to visit.
They pulled up and she got out of her mommy-van and we hugged like we were trying to get inside each other's skins and we laughed at the joy of it.
It's always like that with Lisa. There is no moment of awkwardness, there are no moments of silence. We immediately begin a dialogue and we cry and we laugh and we are amazed at each other and we did that today and Grace was grace-full and let us talk and yet, she was herself and I took her out to the chicken coop and gave her a cupful of corn-scratch to feed the hens and I saw in her something like I will see in my grandchild. Because I have known her from birth, there is a part of us which is bonded, too, no matter what. And she seemed to recognize me and she trusted me.
What an honor to be trusted by a child. That may be the greatest honor of all. I don't know.

And Lisa and I told each other as much as we could in the hours we were together and we discovered that we'd both faced similar beasts and we'd both lost our minds and we'd both found them again too, or least some facsimile of them and we cried.

Ah yah. Lisa and I always cry.

She went with me to the tea party at my yoga teacher's house and Grace was the queen of the tea party and my yoga teacher had made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in case there was a young princess in attendance and Grace loved them. Lisa, as I said, is a yoga teacher too, and such a different sort from my Catholic yoga teacher and I could feel myself, pulled between the two of them, wishing I could go to Lisa's classes, knowing that here in Lloyd, I am lucky to have the teacher I do have, Catholic or not. And Lisa was so gracious, as was my yoga teacher, and I think in the few short moments we were all together, sipping tea and eating cucumber sandwiches, something was exchanged between them.

And then it was time for Lisa and Grace to leave and I sobbed. I am crying now.

How can it be that someone so very important to my heart is someone I so rarely see? This wise, incredible woman, this mother, this sister, this child of my heart, this wild-redheaded woman who lives five hours down the road?

I don't know. Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be. Perhaps if we lived closer, we would burn out like two meteors smacking together in space, turning into a fiery ball of flames.

I don't think so, but you never know.

And now it's hours later and I am holding the memories of her visit with her daughter in my hand and I am cherishing it and I am astounded by it.

That woman. Lisa-Lisa, Beautiful Red-Headed Lisa Whom We Adore.

She thinks that I am older and wiser and she thinks she learns from me.

Ha!

She is like a fire that warms my heart. She is like a cool blue lake who soothes my soul.

She is part of my life, my heart.

When she was leaving, already strapped into the mommy-van, and I was crying, I said to her, "You know, I am always there for you. No matter where or what or when or why. I am there."

And she said, "And you know the same is here for you."

I do.
She is like a treasure, that Lisa.
She is a sunrise and a sunset. She is a mother/sister/daughter.

She is my Lisa-Lisa, Beautiful Red-Headed Lisa Whom I Adore.

What a blessing to have her visit today, this solstice day.
I am at once changed and also reminded of who I am at my core.
I got to hold her daughter's hand and kiss her perfect cheeks.

I got to be, for a small moment in time, part of her life.

What an honor. What an incredible honor.
Again.

Ruby And Maxine Are Ready For Their Big Date

It was a glorious weekend with as much music and frivolity as I had imagined it would be.
Mr. and Ms. Moon did not go to bed until after midnight THREE NIGHTS IN A ROW!
I'm sure the very foundations of the earth are being shifted as we speak.
If you can feel the ground trembling beneath your feet you may blame it on me and my wild, wild weekend.
Last night the four of us, Mr. Moon, Mr. Williamson, Lis and I, all gussied up and piled into the 1972 Cutlass for its (re)maiden voyage to the coast for dinner. With the top down. With the wind washing over us in great waves of joy and abandon.
Down around Sopchoppy, it began to rain so we pulled over and the fellows put the top up which made it much quieter and cozier (sort of like being in a tent, except hurtling down the highway at sixty miles an hour) while outside the lightening flashed as the mighty American car carried us to Panacea where we ate dinner at Angelo's.
It was over eleven years ago that the four of us made this same trip in the same car to celebrate a special birthday of Lis's. It was a night we'd never forgotten. Mr. W. gave his wife black pearls. We were all happy and beautiful and we could not quit smiling.
And last night, we got to recapture that night and it was all we'd hoped for. The Cutlass ran like a dream. We got to eat outside over the water at Angelo's. Lis and I renamed ourselves- Ruby and Maxine- and the men had their own secret names.
After we'd eaten so much we could not eat even one more sweet scallop, we drove home through the piney woods down the very dark back roads from Panacea to Lloyd and when we got home we ate key lime pie and agreed that it had just been the very best night.
I think we get a few of these special nights in our lifetimes and we keep them like individual pearls, strung on silk, that we can put on and wear in our memories. We fondle them and cherish them. We put them away in a velvet pouch in our hearts. They are there forever.
And we can add to them, one lustrous, shining pearl at a time, each one more valuable than the last because as we get older, we know how precious, how few they really are and they shine brighter and more fiercely because they are so rare.
Look and Ruby and Maxine.
They know.
Such a simple thing. Four friends, dressed up and driving through the night in a 1972 Cutlass to the coast where they will eat and toast to the friendship, to the love, to the night, to the beauty of being together again as the water flows beneath them and the lightening flashes in the not-so distant sky and the eyes gleam and the smiles never quit and not for one moment does any one take any of it for granted.
The joy must never be taken for granted.
Just ask Maxine and Ruby. They'll tell you.

Heart-Friends

I just spent a good part of the day with my friend, Billy, which is always a delight and a pleasure. Today we went to Monticello and had lunch at the Mexican restaurant and then went to the place on Highway 319 that has tons of cool Mexican stuff including a tiny merry-go-round that I desperately want for my yard but will never get because it costs $1500. We did buy a ristra of red, yellow, and green peppers for Billy's Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw because their house in Kentucky burned down and they lost everything in it, including Maw-Maw's ristras, and this one is for the new home they are about to begin building.
Billy and I always have a great time, no matter what the circumstances, as long we're together.
We're friends. Real friends.
But here's the funny thing- if you put me and Billy and fifty other people in a room together and asked someone to pick out the two people least likely to be friends, they'd probably pick me and Billy.
For starters, he's younger than my son, whose best friend he is. He's also tattooed and pierced, which I am definitely not unless you count my earring piercings. Billy loves country music, which leaves me cold, and he pretty much hates Bruce Springsteen whom I adore and I think he even hates John Lennon but he loves me too much to admit that out loud. I eat mostly vegetables and Billy would live on bacon if it were humanly possible while most vegetables make him sort of want to throw up.
And yet, and yet....
This person is someone I adore.
Now why is that?
There are so many people I meet with whom logically I should be friends. People with whom I have so much in common. And yet, I just don't feel the love. I'd rather go to the dentist with Billy (which I have done before) than go to Paris with a lot of people I know and logically should be friends with, but I think this friendship stuff has everything to do with the heart and nothing whatsoever to do with logic.
Because appearances and age and all that other stuff don't mean shit to the heart. You meet someone and your heart sighs a little and says, "Good one, here," and you just know that this is a person with whom you can trust your real and honest self with and your heart throws open the door, flips on the porch light, and slings the welcome mat down and next thing you know- you've got a friend you love.
If you're lucky.
And if you know Billy, you are. Because not only is he one of those people, so is his wife, so you sort of get two for the price of one.
There are all sorts of lotteries in life.
If you're Billy's friend, you've won a big one.
Which I have, and I'd like to thank my son's wise heart for buying the ticket that brought not only Billy into our life but his mama and his wife and his sister and his grandparents, too.
They're all the sort of friends that are more like family.
Family of the heart. Friends of the heart.
The wise and happy heart that defies logic and knows joy when it sees it.

The Very Best Tradition

Almost thirty years ago, my friend Lynn and I started a holiday tradition which, as good traditions do, bloomed and evolved and changed and became a part of our lives. It began very simply. We were young and had no money to speak of, but Lynn told me that Shaw's downtown was so beautifully decorated for Christmas that we should go down there and walk around the store, just to see it. So we did. We put Downtown Guy, who was a toddler, and his little sister, who was a baby, in strollers and strolled them down to Shaw's, which was on College Avenue. It was a big furniture/decorating store and it was gloriously decorated. We didn't buy anything, but we enjoyed the visit, and it was a lovely day.

We may have done this one other time and then Lynn moved to Houston, sobbing every mile of the journey because she couldn't believe that my babies could possibly grow up without the hands-on care of their Aunt Lynn. Or Aunt Yen, as the youngest called her.

Somehow I managed to get through those years that Lynn was in Houston, and the kids did too. Our friendship remained intact and active, bound together as the best friendships are, by that glue made up of chemistry, love, and a persistent desire to keep it alive.

When Lynn moved back to Tallahassee, she had a baby of her own, born late in her life. She had long since given up ever having a child of her own and then out of the blue, she was given the miracle of her son, which was her heart's greatest desire, as the best miracles are.

We restarted our holiday tradition, but instead of taking babies to Shaw's, we began to go, just us ladies, to LeMoyne to wander and be in awe and buy a few ornaments to bring home or to give as gifts. We decided to incorporate going for drinks and dinner after our trips to LeMoyne and asked my brother if he'd like to come along as our designated driver. He said he would. And then the next year, we asked another dear friend if she'd like to come with us. And then another was asked. And another.

It was always one of my very favorite parts of the holiday. Actually, one of the few of the Christmas season that I actually enjoyed and which held meaning for me.

We'd meet at LeMoyne, dressed up and feeling all festive and go through the rooms, saying, "Oh, look at this! How sweet, how precious. How much?" Before we checked out, we'd all meet up outside in the sculpture garden where we'd head towards the gazebo. We would crowd inside it to stand in a bit of a circle and pass around a flask containing sacred (and I assure you, it was) rum. We'd sip and then we'd each take our turn, saying what was in our hearts. It was never formal, it was never long. We spoke of the things that had happened in the last year. Coming marriages were announced, babies were celebrated, then grandbabies. Thanks were given for grave illnesses recovered from. Sometimes, all there was to say was, "I'm so grateful for this," with a gesture that included us all, the ladies, my brother, the shining twinkling lights around us that defined and bordered the darkness. Some of us had been friends for so long that we were mere children ourselves when we met, although we hadn't known it at the time. And here we were- still here! Wearing lipstick and velvet and able to celebrate or to mourn or to hope or to share with each other.

Then Lynn got sick and the tradition took on new meaning. It became harder for her to find her words. The evening became more bittersweet. She sipped sweet cider instead of her beloved rum. We circled around her more fiercely. Each year I wondered if this would be her last with us.

Last year was her last with us there.

We didn't wait until night time to go, but went in the daylight, and there were just a few of us. The hardcore core of the tradition. We went to the assisted living place where Lynn was living then and dressed her up as best we could and took her out and she was so excited. She even managed to say some words and although we couldn't understand them so much as words, we knew their meaning. She was happy.

This year, tonight, only three of us are going. And we're not going to LeMoyne. We're going to the nursing home to see her and then I think we'll go to Dorothy Oven park. We'll take our flask and find a private spot and we'll toast to Lynn and we'll say a few words that maybe our hearts need to let out. I don't know. You can't plan these things.

And then we're going to dinner. It would just be too sad to go to LeMoyne without our Lynn.
I think that when we go see her in the home, she is going to know exactly who we are and exactly what we're doing and I'm so afraid it's going to break her heart that she can't come with us.

It's going to break mine.

But dammit, we have to do this. It's tradition.

And traditions, the very best traditions, are here to give our lives meaning, to allow us to stop and make a moment special enough to remember for a lifetime.

Tonight we'll celebrate Lynn's lifetime with the sort of joy that can only leak out of a broken heart. It's a lifetime that is going to be way too short, but believe me, I know it's been a lifetime that has been joyously full. I am so grateful to have so many memories we've made together. And the memories of us standing in the gazebo behind LeMoyne in the cold winter night air with the twinkly lights and the warmth of our friends around us, are among the very best.

Here's to you, baby. Here's to you.