My Trinity

Sometimes, it has seemed as if the fastest way to my heart has been in a name.  Not an odd statement for someone who has worn a name as unique as "Velvet" since birth.  But this holy name for me has for years been one most common and in a sense, plain.

\ ˈjän \ 

My father; My son; My holy ghost.  A LOVER.  A LOVE.  A LOSS.  Three chapters in my life that have been written, revisited, revised and closed.  Each one has made themselves a part of my life and has imparted upon my life something significant from beauty to bewilderment.  

A Lover.  While only one year older than me, he was so much more mature and adult and other worldly than I was. In my trinity - he is the father - often imparting wisdom and advice and leading me as I grew.  I remember battling youth and time with him - never in sync with one another.  I wanted to take rides in the country and watch the blue lights at the airport.  I wanted to swing on the swing-set and reach for the stars with my toes.  And I wanted to share those things with him.  But all we did was see-saw.  Back and forth.  I liked him; he liked her.  He liked me and then I was in love...

But by then I was in love with A Love.  My Love.  In my trinity - he is the Son.  The one whose love and belief forever gave me confidence and peace.  Knowing that for even the smallest amount of time I had been loved by him was like having all sins wash away.  He was the one with the blue eyes who stole my heart on a rooftop with very few words and the shortest amount of time just swooshing between us.  And to him, I was the older, wiser one.  I was the one who spoke the most and wrote sentences in abbreviations on his arm.  Sentences that he could decipher just by knowing how I felt at that moment.  17 and free, happy and in love. The one who wrapped a blue piece of thread around my finger in a college cafeteria that bound my heart to him for years to come... but with tears.  The blue piece of thread lasted only so long.  The portrait he painted that we imprinted with our hand-prints in a forbidden room in my college castle quickly faded rolled under my bed until lost in a shuffle from one home to another.  But he remained my lighting rod by which all was judged for 7 years.  I allowed myself to love and laugh and look - but I judged each by what my heart had felt at seventeen.  For only a stolen kiss or two, I would for seven years ask myself - if He came back at your wedding, would you pick him over this newest "love" and the answer was always "yes" until...

A Loss.  In my Trinity - he is the holy ghost.  They speak of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost as being wisdom, intellect, counsel, fortitude, science, piety, and fear of the Lord. The loss certainly imparted those "gifts" upon me.  But all forces have an innate opposite - an often destructive force that resides within them that once unleashed can cause more destruction than value.  That he did.  He destroyed all of the gifts that once pure and innocent A Love before him had crafted.  The learning that A Lover had instilled in me was stomped out.  With sarcasm and a strike.  With isolation and a quiet tongue.  I learned not to question and walled myself up inside of what I was.  I forgot the lessons from A Love and The Love for they did me absolutely no good to remember - a foreign language in this new world I found myself inside.  My words were not valued, conversations not encouraged or appreciated.  Only blind following.  More than that was stricken down. 

I have today, wrapped each of these three into one.  Imparted learning upon myself by what they imparted upon me.  A Lover is gone.  Never to return.  His experiences exposed as narcissism and self serving that shaped me - but must not and will not be allowed to mold me.

A Love.  Years have passed in which he has not been felt in the recesses of my mind.  We remain friends, I believe.  But I feel him stirring inside my heart these days.  Not "him" - but A Love.  What he taught me was good about being in love.  About tears that sting but never mar the surface of your soul.  He has broken his way out of the middle of the trinity.  He is once again my Sun.  Guiding me back to the me I was.  I was 17 and I was in love.  

And my Loss - baggage weighing me down that is now washed away. 

Today - I am 17.   
 

Music & Lyrics by...

MUSIC AND LYRICS BY...

There is a sinewing rhythm you added to my life.

A musical chord snaking its way from the base of my hips
skimming up my spine
tickling like your fingertips.

Our rhythm the broken volume button of an old boombox

Turning up

Turning down

Muted in moments taken over by the noise of

Life.

This rhythm sparking in and out

wave and crescendo.

Stop.

Pause.

Rewind.

Play over the lyrics we love

or fashion our own.

I Sang a Song for You Last Night

I have a love/hate relationship with music. I know that almost anyone who knows me knows my favorite band is Duran Duran. I will travel cross country to see them and push myself outside of my comfort zone driving in Dallas traffic to see them also. (Yes, that's a BIG deal for me).

Music of the 80's has such strong personal memories attached. My experience at Arkansas Governor's School has the theme song Friends by Michael W. Smith; my first love at Governor's School started with the theme song the Power of Love from the Karate Kid, transitioned to JoAnna by Kool and the Gang as the summer ended and ended up as If You Leave by OMD when we both attended Hendrix College the next year.  I woke up every night for 2 weeks straight to the song JoAnna playing on the radio and I would drag the watercolor painting our friend had made for us out from under my bed and put my hand on his handprint and sob knowing that my first love had ended or laugh remembering how we inadvertently got the Art students banned from the art room that summer.

It is those memories that drive me away from music.  I can't hear a song and not feel the memories attached.  

Don't Cry for Me Argentina was one of my mom's favorites and when I close my eyes - I can see her standing in our house on Central. I've just come in from riding my mongoose bike and walked past the fish tank into the living room where my dad had hand wallpapered an entire wall with maps.  There's the faint scent of a Tareyton Regular wafting through the air and a pot of spaghetti cooking in the background and she's singing this strangely out of place opera.

And that's normal.  I walk back to my room to read a book or listen to Michael Jackson as I look at his posters on my wall and wonder if he's going to accept my invitation to take me to my Junior High Prom. (He did not)

 

My Uncle Brother was my only birth uncle - the baby of my Mom's family and my mother ADORED her baby brother.  He'd stay at her house at Christmas and he taught my family how to end a phone call the proper way -  say "I Love You".  I can hear his voice saying those words phone call after phone call after phone call.  And I can feel the ringing of the phone he refused to answer when he got sick.  Call after call after call unanswered because he didn't want us to hear it in his voice.  Dying makes a sound, you know.  It gets into the body and almost tauntingly pokes its way out here and there long before the person is gone.  Cruel Bastard that it is.  Cruel.

And my song for Uncle Brother is Elton John - Daniel.  His for me is - I Guess that's Why They Call It the Blues.  No - he never sang it to me.  I don't think that I ever heard him sing.  But I played those two songs over and over and over again on my way to Ft. Worth to visit him.  One of many "Come Now if You Want to See Him Again" trips.  I cried and cried and sang LOUDLY that trip.  Only made it halfway to Ft. Worth before abandoning the idea to come home for a political rally.  But it was a start for me - someone who gets such anxiety over driving long distances, driving on the highway, driving in new places - the sinking stomach, every sound is amplified kind of anxiety.  We never discussed whys or hows or what happened - but Uncle Brother was my strongest ally during my ongoing 6+ year separation.  He was never as strong as my mother - no one was.  But in our conversations, I knew he empathized and I knew that he knew how it hurt and I knew that he didn't judge me and that one day I'd find someone that made me happy again.  Or for the first time.  That I'd smile and laugh and that in the end I would find my voice and sing out loud.  Maybe even in public. 

 

 

Journal Entries on Losing My Mother #01

From 2010

Two years ago, you changed my life forever.  You began entering and leaving my life - both at the same time.  I found my mother and friend in 3 very short months.

Then you were gone.

There could be no more laughter or pain shared - no more chances at what tomorrow could bring or mend for us - just memories, regrets, wishes washed away by tears.

I will always wish for one more chance to tell you that I loved you, that I still love you - but that will never happen.  In it all - you were a mixture of love and hurt.  I could walk into a room and see your love for me sparkle in your eyes.  Your words grew kinder.  I felt the love for me that you has shared with your friends and hidden from me.  I had your pride.   But it reminded me of how it hurt when I could not see your love and it hurt when your love was given, but with a finite clock ticking down the moment to its end.

I still think of you every day.

I cannot picture your face without a blurriness surrounding it, hiding you yet again from me as in those years from junior high to 4th of July "that" year.

"That" year when a surprise birthday party was a parting gift to your only child.  "That" year when a mother has to find a way to tell her own babies "that"... grandma is dying.  "That" year when all my heart wanted was to believe in optimism but it knew it would not, could not, should not.

And through all of this, "that" year still has a beauty to it. 

Memory Freedom

One day, I won't need to protect my memories. 

One day
I'll have stopped loving you
enough to let my guard down and

remember

each

and

every

vile thing you ever did. 

And I will whisper...

I don't love you anymore.

Screaming it won't make it heard. 
You've turned deaf to my lectures and pleas
and logic. 

You won't know it. 
You won't care. 

It will hurt you. 

It will be losing your mother all over again
Without the innocence of being 2
to save you.

You won't know it.  You won't care. 

But it will never be the same...

for you.

X Y Z

Two out of three still make me smile.  

17

Just yesterday, I was reminded of me.  At 17.  In the last year or so, I can say that she smiles at me.  That I have earned her pride.  She breezes through campus writing poetry and fighting against hunger in Africa.  She collected artists while never getting anything more than the ability to draw in a very linear and logical manner.  A stick figure or a house with windows and doors and a chimney with smoke.  Images etched in black and white,too simplistic for even a smattering of color.

And she has found her smile, her peace, her tribe at Arkansas Governor's School.  She has found this collection of people who mutter of Humpty Dumpty being pushed as she breezes by in comfort.  There is no corner or room that frightens her or puts her ill at ease.  And she breathes as she breezes.

I smile as I think of this.  It seems so simple and easy and yet I think of everyone I know today and the age I am and the heat that I feel when I step outside in the morning.  Is that humidity?  Or is that being older and tired?  The years of children, jobs, doctor's appointments, loads of laundry, dinners you need to eat but don't want to cook, balancing a checkbook.  It's oppressive.

And I remember that once she breathed.  She sat still long enough for a tall, thin, pasty white boy to "tag" her entire arm. He knew rap.  She knew Depeche Mode. I can't remember one conversation in depth or substance but they had a language of abbreviations that kicked texting ass.  IKR?  It started as ILY.  But they once wrote a note to one another that had 46 abbreviations and they knew what they meant.  They breathed their thoughts. 

She knew she was changed.  She knew that  she'd smart, political and breezy.  She'd collect more artists and she'd be their linear groupie anchor. 

I regret very little in life.  Everything shapes, pinches and molds us into the people we become.  I have moments that I wish I could change or remember.  I'd change my car wreck and I'd change the days I left Hendrix.  Both of them.  The last day of Governor's School, she was bound and determined to bind herself to a tree.  But she walked away.   The wind stopped.  Like the lore of spirits, ghosts and fairy-tales.  The whisperings that we are all born able to communicate across those mystic channels until we age and those channels close.

Governor's School shaped her- her second meeting of Bill Clinton, his signature on the name tag she wore all summer long.  Just another piece of paper she collected.  Worn with pride and admiration.  His signature turned in towards her heart.

She walked away.

Yesterday, I met  a guy from Fort Smith and I was reminded of the John Y.  She whispered a phone number and an address still tucked away after 31 years.  But more, she waved at me from a corner of my heart buried underneath loads of laundry and parent teach conferences. And I caught my breath.