I'll See You on the Dark Side of the Falls

Recently, a very cool writing opportunity was pointed out to me by a number of laudatory friends. It was an advertised position for making contributions to a local lifestyle blog showcasing area cafes, golf courses, big red barns, yellow Labrador Retrievers, and bouquets of seasonal flowers, all captured carefully in accompanying images by a talented photographer. I was super excited because I love my town and all of its bounty...however, there is a gritty underbelly which lies beneath all of our farm-to-table restaurants and vintage automobiles and expensive antiques and my tendency, especially over the last five years, has been to seek out more and more of what quietly and humbly drives this place. I call that beautiful bedrock "the dark side of the Falls." 

So while I do want to write about which house on the north side of town has most festively decorated its holiday door, I am also eager to seek out Jamie, the once-homeless man, who sits in front of one of our most expensive and popular cyber-ready coffee houses with his paper cup primed for your offerings on the ground between his boots with the duct-taped soles. He will tell you anything you want to know if you engage him. My advice is, make sure you have at least 10 or 15 minutes to spend because he is a chatterbox of unequaled proportion. A few big-hearted friends supported an old fashioned come-together to bring him warm winter clothing and household items for an apartment he was able to move into after having been on the street for a long while. His red, raw chapped hands and iron-grey fingernails always touched my heart, so we made sure he got a brand new nail kit and some skin-friendly Dove soap in there, too. 

One of my cat-rescue friends pulled over and presented Jamie with an exceptionally generous cash gift at Christmastime when she saw him walking alone downtown on a below-zero afternoon. She told no-one but me.

These are the stories I want to share.  

I get excited when I see a new lash bar in town or a homemade cookie bakery which I am dying to try but I am equally excited to see Jeff. Jeff is one of those people with a smile for everyone, filled with joy and the holy spirit. Before Sandy's Clam Bar closed, we'd run into him there on the dance floor, holding one arm folded in an L shape against his chest, perspiring and laughing and singing aloud. Because of having had a traumatic brain injury, Jeff cannot drive and he therefore pulls one leg behind him in staccato step as he makes his way to his favorite haunts every day. Wearing a huge cross around his neck, both literally and figuratively, he laments to me that his favorite restaurant is still closed due to Covid and he is desperate for a cup of their thick, syrupy, on-the-burner-all-damn-day coffee and a slice of their Fruits of the Forest pie. I think he's more desperate for the company which he keeps there every night but I nod and concur. Jeff's nickname is 'Poppy Poptart' and if it's breakfast time, you'll see one of those sweet confections in his able hand, crumbs on his face and silvery foil flapping in the breeze as he ambles down the block. Upon learning that this was his go-to morning confection, a wonderfully softhearted friend of mine bought a case of them for me to present to him at that favorite restaurant while he ate his dessert and drank his ebony java one evening pre-pandemic. All the regulars at the counter clapped because Jeff is rarely quiet and in one magic moment that night we rendered him speechless. 

These are my favorites. The people who truly don't know how special they are. Do people write about them? May I have the privilege of being that writer?

I'd be honored to tell you about who had the coolest Adirondack-style wedding I've ever seen and which city street has the best block parties with chalk-on-macadam rainbow portraits and silver troughs of Nantucket Nectar, but I also want to tell you about Chris and how he parks himself inside the front lobby of our Hannaford on the cold days so that he doesn't have to spend more hours than necessary out of doors in the frigid air. I stand behind him at the Post Office every so often where he pays for single, pre-stamped envelopes with nickels and pennies, his right eye so close to the counter that it looks like he is preparing to rest his head. We saw Chris last night when we were out at our favorite pizza place. He wandered in, looking chipper in his neon yellow construction vest routinely worn at dusk so that he doesn't get inadvertently mowed down while walking in the street. The waitress knows his order without offering him a menu. She brings him water. He sits alone. As our table orders beer, wings, and pizza, we laugh with my Dad exchanging loud stories about what he is watching on Netflix these days. Chris gets a simple solitary sandwich on the opposite side of the room. My husband, always seeing what I see at each and every turn, nods to me and pays Chris's bill on the way out.

These are our town's people, too. I want to know about them just as much as I want to know about the millionaire obstetrician who travels abroad in search of unusual collectibles and the lumber baron who sits in Bill Parcell's box seats at the track every August. 

So, yes, invite me to your cocktail party and I will show up in the most darling outfit you ever saw. I will drink all the Prosecco and politely pass on the carbs, and fling my hair over my shoulder and discuss which Tesla is the biggest bang for the buck right now, because, if you know me, you know I love all of that. I will write about your foie gras and your charcuterie board and your Hacker Runabout and your advertising business. I will take notes on your Maltipoo and your award winning hybridized lilies and your gutted to the studs Victorian home that has been refurbished with reclaimed wood floors because I want to hear about what intrigues people and who doesn't love a good purse puppy, herbaceous botanicals and sad old house made good as new? But when I drive by that big red barn on the way home, I will see the struggle more than I see the structure. I sure as shit want to stop in front of it and feed the stray kitties and fantasize about spray painting the name of an old friend on it in big loopy letters before snapping a non catalog-worthy photo, because my friend happened to drive his Mustang off the road and was killed on that hallowed spot after working too long of a shift in one of those very restaurants that gets written about; and although that particular story might not be pretty it is a square in the quilt of this town, a block in the foundation of my life. And it all matters to me. 

Photo credit: Gene Krebs/Getty

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The Nonni List

I woke up this morning with my Great Aunt on my mind. 

She was bold and opinionated with us kids and although she could be gracious, helpful and kind, she was oftentimes picky, difficult, loud, intractable, and argumentative around the adults. She had her own exceptionally well defined ideas about things, including the fact that she would never, under any circumstances, eat with a three-pronged fork.

Yes, you read that correctly. 

Someone gave Nonni a three pronged fork.

WHAT?

Holy shit. Get Nonni another fork before she launches that one!

It was made clear to me as a child that Nonni and her preferences were a two sided coin: first, you always knew where she stood, and that was good. It was then up to you whether or not you wanted to challenge her and invoke the wrath of God. Second, her elder standing within our family and the sheer size of her brood made her appear Queen-like, so despite her eccentricities, very few within her 'court' messed with her.  

I mostly watched Nonni from behind couches and curtains. It wasn't until high school that I began having long talks with her and wishing that I might also boldly declare whatever and whenever I wanted to; that I might be more of a staunch and prickly stickler about things.  

Whereas my Moo Moo used to tell me that her sister Flo had no right to be so discriminating and high-handed, I nonetheless regarded her quizzically from my vantage point. I wondered how it was that a woman from a tiny town, with nine children, living one tiny hiccup above the poverty line (and let's be real, by today's standards, pitifully far below it) could possibly have so many fist-upon-table pounding requests and requirements of this life. 

I have only recently begun to understand her.  

She was first-born in a family with two working parents and five active children. Her siblings, birthed one after another in rapid succession, all had something particularly special about them whether it was the unique position of being the only boy, or the chatterbox or the beauty or the one who would follow in her mother's footsteps and become another nurse in the family. Grateful to move away from home and start her adult life, Nonni married a handsome but domineering Italian. Al vigorously exercised all the clout in their home and although he loved her dearly, he maintained order by striking furniture and other unfortunate objects in plain sight, suggesting she might be next. Working directly across the street from her home in a woolen mill was convenient as she lacked a car but it also narrowed most of her meanderings to a two or three street radius, within which other family members also worked and lived.

When your world is that small and your young body is constantly growing babies and nurturing children and you don't have the luxury of a partner who provides an audience for your dreams and admiringly solicits your opinion and you don't travel anyplace outside the dwellings of family and friends, you learn to be fastidious and fanatical about the things you can control...like your notion that light colored fur coats are the most sophisticated, or that blue frosted cakes are prettiest. Or, what singular brand of tomatoes you use in your sauce, what fabric you prefer for your undergarments, what side of the street is best to walk on, or the only type of fork you will bring to your lips. 

Today I started a "Nonni List"; a small but significant tabulation of beliefs I won't compromise on, ideals that I have a solid scrupulousness for, physical things that I prefer and will travel elsewhere to procure. The exercise kind of excites me. The idea of "no compromise" makes me feel a bit tipsy. I will commence with one or two easy items and then maintain it as an organic, ever evolving page in a notebook which I can return to as needed. 

Have you really taken inventory of who you currently are, you know, besides those inane Facebook questionnaires? Maybe it's a midlife puzzle I'm looking at, and a burning need to start putting it together now that I have all the corners and edges in place. Maybe my more recent musings about Nonni have made me realize that we have limited time in which to make obstinate declarations and cocksure pronouncements before someone starts ordering us cases of Ensure and takes our driver's licenses away. Anyway, I'm looking forward to free flowing ideas and seeing what emerges. 

Thanks, Nonni.

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Squirrel Survival

The squirrels got peanut butter sandwiches today.

It's bitter cold and they are looking a little skinny. "Lucky", the one with only a nub for a tail, is always first on the scene in the early morning and she reminds me, as she sits atop the empty bird feeder 30 feet from my kitchen window, that it's time to eat. 

I spread pb on white bread and cut the pieces into squares. Four pieces of bread makes 18 squirrel sandwiches. Keeping the cat and the min pin at bay, I open the door to head outside in my bare feet slipped into old army green suede clogs, kept side by side on a mat for such journeys, and I make my way to the back of the yard near the fence line. I breathe ice through my nostrils and hug one armpit, my bare fingers pressed against my shabbily dressed body. My other hand holds breakfast for my backyard visitors. I make clucking sounds with my tongue. "Lucky" watches me from a tree branch about 10 feet from the ground where I am setting out half of the sandwiches. It's a good time to thank God and the universe for all the comforts I have in this life. I'd last about an hour in this outdoor wasteland of an icebox if I were suddenly turned into a squirrel. 

"Leonardo", "Donatello" and "Michelangelo", the aggressive trio, come a little later in the morning. They chase "Lucky" around the tall pine trees so fast that their bodies and tails turn into swirly ashen barber poles from where I stand. I drink my java and watch their antics. I am glad "Lucky" is such an early bird...or early squirrel, as it may be. The trio repeatedly tag team and eventually chase her off as they forage for whatever is on the menu, their little gray hands moving in rapid circles as they either devour or cheek-pack their sustenance. They remind me of Scrooge counting money. 

Then there's "Bart" who is dark as night and, I'm guessing, a baby summer squirrel from last year. He showed up for the first time in the late fall, inky black, super tiny and fluffier than most of my regular beady-eyed crew. At first all he could do was run and hide from the Italian gang but now he bravely tries to hold his own. I usually put his feast about 15 feet away from the others so he can eat in peace. Some days he makes it in time, other days he sniffs the ground where it was and sits on his haunches tentatively scanning the perimeter of the yard. I try not to feed him twice because I need him to figure out when to show up and meet his own needs. 

I collect uncarved, discarded pumpkins from the roadside in early November to split and use as weekly treats for the hunter-gatherers. I always hope they can store the seeds someplace but mostly they seem to bury them and then I get weirdly placed pumpkin plants in the summertime; they grow about an inch tall until they are mowed over by hubs cutting the grass. Offering the pumpkins as early winter food is a useful exercise until everything starts freezing. I can see faded orange iced over pumpkin guts back there. "Bart" digs for them sometimes. 

They interact like people. I make up stories in my head as I watch them. "Lucky" is a traumatized loner but she keeps on coming back knowing there is usually something special here for her. The trio has consistent companionship. Their meanness is only a survival instinct. Members of a kind of rodent mafia, I don't hold it against them. "Bart", poor little guy...still learning how to find his food and defend himself. I root for him daily. 

I splurged and bought a bag of walnuts for my oatmeal at the grocery store on Friday. However, I saw the forecast this morning and snow is coming, so it will get relegated and I will eat my Quaker cereal plain this week. 

My friend Amy told me that a member of her family crafts little wooden picnic tables that nail onto the trees. I sip my coffee and wonder what the woodworker's squirrels are named. 

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These Are a Few of My Favorite Clothes

 

Did you have a few special pieces of clothing growing up? You know, items that you loved so much you wore them to bits? Maybe you or a nostalgic parent kept an item or two packed away someplace for old time's sake. Have you ever thrown something precious out or given it away only to have such regret later that you don't know how to process that loss? Well, the clothes are long gone but the memories remain. 

Before I knew anything about designer labels, I had a few favorite items of clothing in my childhood wardrobe, and by wardrobe I mean a two-doored light yellow painted piece of wooden bedroom furniture in which I hung clothes and lined up my slippers, boots, sneakers and shoes pair by neat and tidy pair. (It did not lead to Narnia...just sayin'.)  

I was a super lucky kid. My mother made a lot of my clothing when I was small and although I outgrew things pretty rapidly from year to year, I had quite a few items that I cherished. Regrettably, I don't know what happened to them. 

If you're like me, you wish you had those treasured frocks today, if only to run your middle aged hands over their textures and picture yourself as the little pip whom they once fit perfectly. 

One favorite item of mine was a red calico quilted jacket with a close-cut hood and chunky brown wooden toggle closures. Toggles were new to me (I'm guessing from pictures that I was 6 when this was my autumn overcoat) and I remember trying valiantly in a mirror to steady the little red loop and work the toggle through it; but reflections make things appear backward and my fingers were too tiny and impatient to manage the task. I remember loving the color of the coat and the softness of the hood against my head and face but I think what I liked most was that someone needed to rescue me from it when I was captively buttoned. I'd stand at attention while Mom's gentle hands freed me, basking in the warmth of being babied, just a little, during an age when I was a "big girl", more than accustomed to dressing and undressing myself. 

Another favorite item was my one piece terrycloth short romper that was held perfectly snug across my flat eight year old body with a thick piece of elastic, like a soft blue hug. It took no more than thirty seconds to slide it on, grab my rubber flip flops and skip out back to our sundappled yard on a hot summer day, where I could find shade under a tree with my Barbie and her swimming pool, the water heated to a pleasant-for-fashiondolls temperature while I picked pine needles and scooped dirt out of its placid blueness so that Barbie's blonde hair didn't get grody. 

Mom didn't sew my denim gauchos with the matching vest or my cream colored gauzy western shirt festooned with sepia brown thunderbird appliques on the shoulders or the oxblood leather knee high zip up boots with the crepe soles and funky braids down the sides that made me feel so grown up, but those were all favorites too. 

It's so easy now to just press enter and order outfits and I, for one, admit to doing that far too often. Lately, though, standing in front of my closet and grabbing the same old combination of raggedy, patched jeans and a long sleeved tshirt, I'm beginning to feel very strongly that less is more. Maybe it's because I'm middle aged and loathe anything that requires a lot of fuss, or maybe it's because I returned mostly to simple black, blue, grey and white basics a few years ago; but when you have just a few standards, some reliable go-tos, and a single closet of predictable well made items and you really love each one, less clothing actually is more enjoyable. If they have a story behind them (like the jeans you wore when you saw a certain concert or the leather jacket your husband bought you for your 20th anniversary) even better.

I just wish, for old time's sake, that I had one more piece made by my Mom with love...maybe something where I'd need her kind and careful assistance when it comes to the buttons, just so I can feel like her baby again. 

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You Really Got Me

My husband doesn't get my attraction to David Lee Roth.

His eyebrows are bushy. His mouth is muppety. His leg splitting martial arts displays are a spectacle. He crows, blusters and struts, accented by slippery smooth spandex, silvery swords, swashbuckling belts and swirling ribbons.

It's an understatement to say hubs doesn't appreciate Dave's flair for the theatric like I do. 

As a long time lover of his campy style and provocatively androgynous dress, I know he's no puritan. 

He's about as romantic as a slap on the ass. 

His live, carnal, strategic placement of a bottle of Jack Daniels: stage front, crotch high, thumping and splashing onto the faces of young fans huddled together with their red throats unhinged, looks, to me, like a warbler feeding a nest full of hungry baby birds. 

I find that poetic. My husband finds it repulsive.

Repulsive or resplendent, DLR represents a slice in the pie of my life. Whether in a 40 year old photo with abs for days and lush leonine hair, or guest-starring as himself on the Sopranos with a fried yellow perm and a sun capsule tan, or in a modern day snap wearing a foppy plaid suit, sporting a crew cut which would make any other 66 year old look like a sentimental jarhead, I see those eyes, that jaw, that swank, and get sucked right back to a time when things for me were 

damn 

near 

perfect. 

Dave appeared during a year when I was newly hormonal. I felt fine, moderately attractive, on top of my game and reigning sovereign over friends, extra-curriculars, and school. My family was in tact. I was discovering and owning my own rather bold clothing choices. I wore bubblegum lip gloss which alternately melted and solidified in my pocket.

It was a time when I was encouraged to voice an opinion. 

I was pleasantly surprised and emboldened by how much of an opinion I had to voice.

I had my own money to buy my own music. 

And what I bought most was Van Halen.

After sports, dance lessons, dinner and homework, I would lie on my back on the bedroom floor with my preteen frame comfortably sunken into three inches of thick purple wall to wall shag. Boom box by my shoulder, I'd plug it in preparing to make phone calls to friends and tape music from the local radio station. 

It was about the most content I'd ever been.

Back then, people would call Y96 FM and request songs. The DJ would announce the requests on air, sometimes with a dedication including an actual recording of the impassioned, phoned-in plea. If you listened often enough you could tell who was going out with who, who coveted who, and who had the most diverse musical tastes in our small town. Once in a while, someone would mess with a steady couple by calling and asking for a suggestive song to be dedicated to one of the betrothed. On one particular night, I was lucky enough to be listening when that happened. 

After twenty minutes of mushy ballads, the DJ announced a request for "Eruption/You Really Got Me", specially sent to a girl from a boy who had no business sending it to her because, well, damn, because she had just requested Andy Gibb for her boyfriend three songs earlier! The DJ chuckled during the intro, calling it a gutsy move. Sensing a little drama, I rolled over propped my hands under my chin and pressed "record". 

I knew the Kinks' version of "You Really Got Me". I'd had a British Invasion education imparted by my Beatlemaniac mother; but this...this was different than the tinny, mono, sneery Ray Davies track. What were those sounds in "Eruption?" Was it classical? Was it rock and roll? What the hell? The guitar was raw and squawky and it sounded like...well, it wasn't so much what it sounded like but more what it felt like. 

It felt like stepping off the side of a building into a complete and welcome free-fall. It felt like release. It was seductively somatic in a way that was untapped and unnamed. When the first four notes for YRGM played, I was awash in its raunch factor, and rent asunder by the gritty assuredness and nastiness of it all. 

Completely unprepared, after a lifetime of being good and following rules and showing up for everyone and doing my best and never being late and always eating my vegetables, a dormant sprout broke through the wet soil in my belly and a pair of black rebellious wings unfurled across my back. 

I shakily pressed "pause" when the song was done. I rewound the tape and played it again. Lying back on the floor, I studied the patterns that my Raggedy Ann lamp made on my ceiling. Had I not noticed before their resemblance to musical notes? When it was over I rewound it yet again. I got on my feet and looked in the mirror attached to my dresser. I turned to the side during the passionate caterwaul of Eddie's finger tapping and regarded my young, promising figure. I casually flirted with my reflection. Then, as Dave wore and tore through the chorus, my scalp became electrified. Shaking my hair and coaxing it forward over one eye, I undid the restrictive leather band and flung my navy blue digital watch. As it bounced off the side of the bed, I decided I didn't care what time it was, not now or ever. All that existed was me and that song.

This was not the Sonny & Cher we listened to in our living room. This wasn't even my Grease soundtrack with Olivia Newton John owning her own sexuality in those black leather pants. This was all me. 

Me and Mister David Lee 

and the whole tight pants'd package of Van Halen. 

I went to bed that night knowing every squeak, every line, and every nuance to that two song coupling. 

And I wished the girl it had been requested for was me. 

Upon waking, the rhythm drummed through my head like a heartbeat. When I walked the hall at school, it was to the cadence of Alex's drums. I wasn't an 8th grade kid with braces and a velour Izod. I was an acrobat, a magician, a superstar, a minx. I bought the Van Halen debut album as soon as I could that week and dove in like a starving man who'd been offered a bag of donuts. Then I quickly and enthusiastically followed it up with Van Halen II. 

Hallowed be thy Van Halen name. 

Obsessed, I John Hancock'd notebooks, lockers, letters to friends, and the knees of my jeans with the VH symbol (beautifully and coincidentally, Van Halen and I shared the same initials). I owned that signature. The perfect upright linear symmetry of it stacked against the wild molecular abandon of the notes that it stood for felt exactly like me. 

It represented who I was. After all this time, I suppose it still does.

Diver Down was released in the Spring of 1982. One of the wealthier kids in school heard me describing VH's stellar remake of "Oh, Pretty Woman" and he chimed in, mistakenly referring to the Diver Down album as Dow Jones. 

I laughed. Poser.  

I indoctrinated everyone I could. I called the radio begging for songs from Fair Warning and Women and Children First. They are somewhat darker, but they still felt like liberty and breathing room and the vertiginous first hit of a fizzy soda up the nose. 

One friend had an attic bedroom (and permissive parents) and we wrote the lyrics to our favorite VH songs on the walls. I wonder if the words are still there 35 years later, and if not, what killjoy painted over them. 

When the 1984 album was released, I thought the single "Jump" was a load of crap. I still can't listen to it. Too candy-sweet, too watered down for the masses, and way too synthesized, gah! It's like being forced to hold a cheek full of apple Jolly Ranchers when what you desperately crave is wintergreen Skoal. 

Quarter sticks of dynamite replaced bottle rockets. Car rides with boys replaced my bicycle. Black concert tees with long white sleeves replaced those pastel heat pressed ones with the glittery rainbow decals selected off the wall at the local mall. Cherry satin lipstick replaced the bubblegum gloss. In every photograph from that time, a cynical sneer replaced my smile. 

I was breaking out. 

My parents were breaking up. 

Ironically, so was Van Halen.

Therefore, as the front man of the band that best represents my coming of age, Dave is not just a rocker I can't turn away from. He is part of my DNA. He is time in a bottle. He is the capricious carefree feeling of standing on the shore yelling "here comes a big one!" before that wave, bigger than expected, sucks you under and drags you out deep, plunging sand down your suit and salt behind your eyes. 

He's the rainstorm before the hurricane. 

I see Dave this way because my life took a big old shitty turn during the Van Halen break up. They mark a space in time for me like some people might mark other significant events, you know, like before this or after that. 

But as I grew to accept my parents' divorce I also grew to accept post-DLR Van Halen, which many of us Dave fans call 'Van Hagar'. It's a weird parallel, but the parallel is mine. 

I heard "Unchained" one day during a particularly stressful time that included doctor-assisted attempts at baby making and my fingers started moving like digits possessed, tracing the VH pattern on my leg, air-drawing my old initials. The song offered me a sense of being unyoked...emancipated. My husband bought me an iPod and I downloaded the whole catalog.  

So here I am, now, at age age 51 and as John Denver says, they (continue to) fill up my senses. 

Van Halen sounds like safety chains breaking off a boat trailer, the scratching of lyrics by lead pencil on an attic wall, the snick of a Bic lighter wheel repeatedly turning before it gives rise to a flame, and my footsteps running down exactly 13 stairs while my Mom cooks dinner and my Dad takes out the trash. 

Their harmonies smell like the metallic lemonessence of Sun-In hair lightener, the piney diesel of a joint, the powdery innocence of baby oil smoothed in circles on my suntanned teenaged stomach, and the comingling of a dozen different musky perfumes as we girls assemble on a Friday night ready to storm the auditorium doors for the school dance.

Their voices taste like tangy grape Bubblicious gum, like the spicy endorphin rush of a jalapeno pepper, like a combination of half coffee, half milk, and three big spoons of sugar thrown back in an unholy hurry immediately following my 5 am paper route. 

Van Halen feels like comfortably worn rainbow flip flops and inky designer Jordache so tight they are a hundred groping hands around my thighs; my palm curved around the perfect smoothness of a glass bottle of Coke while someone dances up on me exhaling on the bare back of my neck. 

They look like a boy cradling my face, telling me how pretty I am while we speed dangerously down the highway in the back of a truck with no cap. 

So, I write this for my husband. Now he knows when David appears, I can't help but invite to the table my pre-adulting rebel self. Maybe he can see the positive in that. 

Because, hand to Jesus, having her nearby feels amazing. 

Side note: I've seen Diamond Dave, AKA the Ice Cream Man, twice in concert. The first time he performed solo (in Saratoga, where he splashed his JD all over the girls in the front row) and the second time he fronted the inimitable Van Halen (in Boston, Mass). Both nights were bucket-list items for me; pure heaven. I know St. Peter is supposed to meet us at the gates but I hope when I get there, Eddie Van Halen is behind him, all hair and smiling that binky-mouth grin, beckoning me inside. 

#mushroomtumbler

The Avon Series - Blog 2

This morning I woke up thinking about my friend's Mom, "Ginnie".

As I stagger out of bed and down the stairs to make my coffee, I know precisely why she is on my mind. I have an important task at hand but I've got no experience with said task. I know I'll be asking questions and making mistakes before I am on the right path. 

Questions and mistakes make me uncomfortable and overwhelmed. 

I want to do things right the first time. I don't want to look stupid.  

And then, I take a breath and think of Ginnie and the impression she made on me. 

Her youngest child and I have been friends for most of our lives. As kids, we were on the same softball team. When you play second base and your friend plays shortstop, you develop an understanding and rudimentary skills based upon simple drills. She runs to cover third, I run to cover short; she makes a move, I back her up. I run to the ball, she runs to cover second; I make a move, she backs me up. If you're lucky, life on the field naturally extends to life outside of sports and I always felt we had each other's backs. 

After high school, we lost touch as friends so often do, although I once caught a glimpse of her at a David Crosby concert. She was scurrying to her seat, close to the front of the stage, and when I hollered, she saw me and smiled, nodded in my direction and flashed me a peace sign in a blur of magenta tie dye shrouded in sensamilia. 

After college, I got hired by a well known insurance company that seemed like a safe bet. On the first day of orientation, I sat with 40 others in a conference room to learn about company history and expectations. After two hours of corporate jargon, we were offered a break and a dozen smokers scrambled from their seats like racehorses out of the starting gate. One of them was my friend's Mom, Ginnie.

I hadn't seen her since my softball days but admittedly, she is hard to miss. With an orange pixie cut, bright coral lipstick, dark crimson nailpolish, a slim figure that would have been model-perfect for the late '60s, and a crushed velvet jacket in a shade of eggplant that suggested she wrote her own fashion rules, Ginnie stood out; a kaleidoscope of color among the rest of our drab business attire. We were mostly in our twenties, "dressing for the job we wanted" per the Harvard Business Review. I wore a yellow blouse and a black fitted jacket with heels. I had my curls shorn into a stark crew cut. I look at my albums from that time and shudder at my snapshot which now comes across as part bumblebee, part buzzsaw.

I approached Ginnie, (re)introduced myself and we sat alongside each other during training whenever possible. She was easily 25 years older than I, but she had a schoolgirl buoyancy. When asked by the trainers if we had any questions, she always had five or six. She raised her hand repeatedly and requested that the presenters slow down, for she didn't write as fast as they spoke and she was surely missing half of what they had to say. She didn't mind that it was clear she needed extra time and extra help. She demonstrated, for those of us who felt insecure or like we had something to prove, that it was better to be comfortable enough in your own skin to throw that glittery manicured hand in the air and ask for what you need as a way to be successful. 

Concerned about my image, I was competitive and worked relentlessly to make a good impression. Ginnie used to visit my desk, encouraging me to slow down, to stop drinking so much coffee, to take a break when one was offered. When making a point she had a way of crinkling her brow, pursing her lips, twirling her long chunky bejeweled cross necklace into a silvery choker and then offering whatever suggestion she felt you needed to hear, her downstate accent creeping in especially when she was feeling feisty. 

While we had been trained to end calls quickly, I could hear her chatting about bagels and long weekends over our divider, knowing her minutes per call ratio were going to be, as usual, the longest on our team's printed list, handed out weekly. She'd disagree with the 30 year old manager who crouched like a vulture on the side of her desk, directing her to quicken her pace. She made no bones about suggesting to others that they stop taking themselves so seriously. 

The big colorful cross necklace she wore was costume jewelry from Avon and when it came time for me to say goodbye to that particular job, she hugged me so tightly it made a lumpy impression upon my chest. Once in a blue moon I see someone strolling by wearing that very same pendant and I think about Ginnie and her unabashed fearlessness when it came to asking for what she needed.     

Remember her daughter, the one I played ball with? When Ginnie passed away, I sent a letter. She sent one back. Then her father passed away as well. We started going to lunch. One day the daughter shared that she had gotten a tattoo in honor of Ginnie and wouldn't you know? It was a copy of that very same Avon cross I grew to associate her with...the one that reminded me to stay true to who I was. I express how cool I think this is. Like a flash, I think about how questions and uncertainty are okay. I think about asking for what we need. 

Then sitting across from me, the daughter admits she is attracted to women after a lifetime of setting those feelings aside. 

She has questions. 

She is uncertain. 

And when she, like a shortstop makes this move, I, on second base back her up.  

Friends

Dear Reader, this is a simple Facebook post I wrote last week. Since it's gotten so many likes and shares, I decided to slap it on my blog. Thanks for being here.  

No matter where in Glens Falls you lived, no matter what your parents did for a living (or if you even had parents), or how smart you were or whether you spent half your day in in-school suspension; whether your cool factor was to the moon or in the negative, if you went to the outdoor parties, you'd eventually be among a backslapping, hugging, hanging, singing, laughing bunch of friends.

We were who we were and in those moments no one's backstory was more important than a moment of understanding or shared experience. The empathy, the admiration, the respect, the way we couldn't wait to see each other again, and even our shared sadness...it all blossomed, it all came about because of a foundation that began as a single night in the woods.

Cheers to the millionaire's daughter holding hands with the boy from the poorest street in town. Cheers to the kid who never said anything in class but who had a place and a say in the crowd. Cheers to the times, because our outdoor gatherings were just "something kids do". When I think of these days, when I see the photographs here, when I look upon faces I haven't looked upon in a while but I can still see you sitting on a log in your CB jacket or flannel shirt, with the shadows of a 5 foot bonfire on your face, a cup in your hand and Boston playing on someone's car radio, my heart is full.