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.