Portrait of A Lady...

Sometimes, Thursdays were my Sundays.

I saw her every Thursday that she felt like it, unless I was sick or out of town. Sometimes, we saw each other on Sundays. But mostly, Thursdays were our day.

We had the same routine every week. I was always about ten minutes late. Her dog always barked at me, like I was after the good silver and all his doggie treats. Sometimes, she would show me pictures of ridiculous shoes in the Neiman Marcus Catalogue, and we would laugh wondering how anyone could ever walk in shoes like that, much less afford them. She would tell me about recipes she had tried, or ones she wanted to try. We talked about her kids and her beloved husband, Lloyd. She always asked about my family, any guys I might be dating, and would sometimes tease me that I had better not wait too long to start having babies, if I was going to have them. I would ask her about how she was feeling, and she was usually pretty honest, which means I didn't always hear happy answers. But this is what we did, week in and week out, whether we were at the top of our game or at the bottom of the hill.

Her living room was a holy place. The carpet, the pictures, the knick-knacks, the granny square throw on the arm of the couch, her chair, her mail table, the clock with shells that her daughter-in-law sent her from Florida, and the way she almost always had the card I sent her the week before poised on the coffee table that sat between us—this was our sanctuary. This is where we met, prayed, talked, laughed, cried, shared, and fed each other. This was our pantry, where we went to get our bread and drink. And this is what we did, week in and week out, whether we were at the top of our game or at the bottom of the hill.

Communion was a holy moment for us. Me in one chair, her in the other, the little dog perched on an ottoman between us…”This is the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven”. I would say to her, and I would put the Host in her hand, and I would hold it there for a minute, mostly just to hold her hand in those moments. To remind her that even though she couldn't come to the building, that this was church, that this was just as real, that she was and is just as important as anyone else, that she was and is a part of who I am as a person of faith.. She always met my eye. We had an understanding. We knew.

I hated leaving her house, every single time I did it. Saying goodbye to the safe, warm place we made, seeing her George Burns' rosebush fade into the distance... I hated leaving her house. The dog would get after me again, always while I was giving her a hug goodbye. She knew I would call her next week, but I would tell her that, anyway. She would always tell me “Thank you”, even though I knew she was thankful and she would always tell me she loved me, even though I knew that, too. She would lock the door behind me, and I would wait until I heard the bolt turn, before I made my way across the lawn, back to my little car, on to the next place.

Sometimes, Thursdays were my Sundays.

For my darling friend Arlene, this Thursday is a forever Sunday. And she's probably already in the kitchen, dancing and laughing, and waiting for the rest of us to show up and eat.

Such grace, such incredible strength, such a woman...

mil besos,

rmg

2011: The Year that Ate My Lunch...and Punched Me in the Face...and Then Pushed Me Down a Flight of Stairs Into The Best Place, Yet.

I remember a night last January, early in the month, when I still had Christmas lights up on the porch. Just about five minutes before I fell asleep, one of those lightening bolt thoughts shot across the landscape of my mind, and I knew that by the time the next January rolled around, Things Would Be Different. Despite the drop in my stomach and surge in blood pressure, I fell right to sleep.

You guys...2011 kicked my ass. Hard. Unmercifully. Explicitly. Remorselessly. Gratuitously, even. But here I sit, in the waxing days of 2012, with all my limbs and family and sanity (mostly) in tact. One of my favorite writers has a line that says, "Ka is a wheel". So it is with time. We are seasonal creatures. And the seasons move in circles, too. And sychronicity is everywhere. Once I started sifting through the pieces of this year, I realized that I had never been surprised by any of the drama and weirdness that's been thrown at me over the last twelve months. I knew, down in my bones, that God had asked me to be looking for a window, and that I would know it when I saw it. I know that sounds weird. It looks weird to type it out. But I knew it, in my bones. And I knew I had just better pay full and focused attention to pretty much everything, all the time. This was what we like to call "daunting".

By March, I'd promised myself and God that even if I had to drag myself screaming and crying through the rest of the year, or however long it took for things to not suck so badly, I would not just lay down and quit. That was a hard promise to keep.

By the middle of September, things had gone from weird to downright surreal, and I was mostly just hanging on for dear life. And then, I saw the window. No, seriously. There really was a window, and it was broken into a thousand pieces. Seriously. And it was my car window. I walked into the car port, and for a minute, didn't really register what I was looking at. Some precious child of God had smashed my window in with a tree limb--for an ipod and communion kit that I'm sure they though was a purse. Looking at the glass and seeing the mess, this cold shiver of understanding ran up and down my back, and lodged itself in my belly. I knew everything I needed to know about the whole back quarter of 2011 just by looking at that window.

In short order, over the next two months, I was informed that I would no longer be employed at my former parish after December 31st, because of monetary issues. One other staff person was also effected by the economy. Frankly, I was relieved. But I was also terrified to be functionally out of work, in the middle of such a risky time for employment in pretty much every sector. I looked and fished and hunted and pecked and prayed and worried and threw up a couple of times. I switched out cars. I found a realtor. I tried not to panic. Grammy almost died, again. My sister in law had major back surgery. Granny had major headaches and vertigo. My therapist had a major stroke (no seriously, I'm not making this up).

And...you'll love this...because this is what put shit over the top...this dude, with whom I'd had a 15 year long friendship and who I quite simply adored, decided that the new theme song to our relationship was going to be "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore", and made out with me fiercely after buying me a birthday dinner, and wants to see what would happen if we, you know...had a relationship for the real. Like real people do. And then...after two whole dates...THE DUDE DIS-A-FREAKING-PPEARED. No, seriously.

And when I called, to offer an olive branch (after not hearing from him for two days, and wondering if he might be...dead...) and asked him to call me, just to talk and clarify, not to yell or scream or try to fix--nothing. NOTHING.

Keep in mind, this whole shenanigan goes down the SAME WEEK, SAME TWO DAY PERIOD, that I was made an unofficial job offer that was for a really exciting job and had that offer unofficially retracted in less than 36 hours. For the record, I've still not been formally informed that the conversation I thought was official was unofficial, nor have I been informed that I am no longer in the running for the job. HOLY SMOKES. Yeah, so dream job and hot boyfriend were literally vaporized at almost the exact same time.

Clearly, there was nothing to do but drive to the beach for less than 24 hours, and rinse myself off in the Gulf of Mexico.

I cried a lot, this year. I cried more than I've cried since my dad died. I cried in front of people. I cried on my steering wheel. I cried at my desk. I cried on the phone. I cried in the shower. I cried while the cat stared blankly at me, wondering what in the deuce had happened to his person. I cried waiting in lines. I cried after dates. I cried before dates. I cried a lot.

And then, in the middle of November, my fairy godmother called to invite me to come work with her. In College Station. And all I could do was very tearfully say "Yes, and thank you." And I've been trying to figure out the rest of it, along the way.

I've moved all the stuff I own to a town I never thought in ten million years I'd ever live in. I moved out of the condo that I bought in 2006, five years to the day after I signed the closing papers. Driving out of town, and trying to avoid snarling traffic, I ended up taking the back way, which was the way we'd driven into town the day I started looking for houses.

Syncing up...life has a funny way of doing it. God has such a weird sense of humour.

I'm right where I'm supposed to be. I'm so happy to be here.

mil besos,

rmg