Today is AIDS day.  It is also the beginning of the end of a decade.  It is hard to fathom both.  AIDS still has no cure, and another decade has passed. 

In my own life, I ponder what my purpose is at this point.  I write, read, listen to the news, enjoy visits from my son, but something seems to be missing.  I think of the war in Afghanistan, the political conflict between Pakistan and India partly fueling it.  Iran will embrace any country that will side with them against the U.S.

That is when I realized I am questioning my life in America.  I don’t feel very American.  This past Thanksgiving my son and I decided not to celebrate in the usual, American way.  Instead, we went to the movies on that day, and celebrated Unthanksgiving on “Black Friday” We ate lobsters, pan-seared scallops, broccoli rabe, and chocholate cake.

Black Friday also has me puzzled.  To me it seems like a day when Americans show the worst traits of humanity, greed being number one.  Rudeness abounds on Black Friday.  I’m reluctant to put up Christmas lights, though I know I will feel like it one of these days in December.  Maybe when it first snows.

 Maybe I just need to accept that I am a rather unamerican American.  Maybe I will just have to find new ways to deal with this time of year.  Following the herd is an impossibility.  I will have to create my own traditions and rituals for this time of year.  Traveling to Tahiti, and staying there until April sounds like a good ritual with which to begin.

As I gaze into sleep, I no longer exist.
A story told in patterns of memory in a dream,
A kaleidoscope of blues, greens and endless sky.
The story of a face once known,
But never known enough.

Lush Gardenia and wild, mushroomed hills,
Memory of oceans, rivers, and humid love,
The weathered, wooden dock of a night fishing village,
Held us as we were bathed by the stars.

Brilliant constellations of Consciousness,
Revealing worlds within worlds.
Blue, green and endless sky,
Your soul has never left my own.

Today has already been eventful. After yoga and meditation this morning and a final blast of mental affliction stamped into my private, hand-written journal, I walked to the convenience store because now I want to read from library books I have borrowed and am out of Chai Tea. What will become of this luscious, lecherous habit.

I’ve got my green cloth, re-useable grocery bag that announces to the world that I’m trying to be conscientious.  Now I am talking to my favorite cashier. As I place my three items onto her conveyor-belt-for-one counter, I smile, and she smiles, and we are happy to see each other once again.

“You’ve got that hoedown music playing”, I say with the best country accent I can muster. I say this while I slap my now-bent knee and stomp my foot down twice onto the musty wooden floor boards in imitation of what I think is “everything honky tonk”.

The cashier’s face is young, freckled, wide-open, and bright with smiling blue eyes and “that haircut” that has lasted here (where I once and again live) for the past 20 years.

“I love Country music”, she says, “you don’t?”

Because she and I have now developed a cashier-customer relationship of total honesty with one another, I say, “Nope”. “I hate it.”

This is not entirely true, so I explain to her that the other night I listened to a pianist who played with the Allman Brothers and other timeless musical groups. He never sang with them just played the piano, but, that night he played and sang alone a Hank Williams’ song, in his own style of playing Hank Williams.

I explain to her, I heard the verse “and the moon hid behind a cloud so no one else could see it cry, while the sun… and I’m so lonesome I could…”, and Norah Jones singing Hank Williams lyrics, as well as other Country artists in a way I can hear and appreciate the wealth of Country music, and the cashier and I make other customers wait in line while we clear this thing up.

This is my explanation-answer to her question, “what kind of music do you like”? I wanted to let her know I had not ruled out Country music entirely, and I was traveling south for a concert tonight.

Now I am headed home to my one-bedroom apartment that I’ve come to love, and gaze at a pristine, blue sky that promises forever through one white birch tree flourishing with skyward-turned limbs, except for one that is broken and sagging but still hanging on among heartier, budding maples and elms. A robin settles onto the top of the largest, sturdy tree and jumps from branch to branch until it settles so I can get a look at it for a good five minutes.

There is one daffodil growing, in my alcove neighborhood, on the lawn of a new tenant who moved to the U.S. from South Africa and whose mother came to America in 1975 to try and make a place for him to live in less fear for his life. She named him Kennedy.

“Do you go by Kennedy, or a nickname, or is it Kennedy only…”, I ask.

“Kennedy only”, he says in a definitive and beautiful South African English dialect.

In the back of my mind words and phrases like hope, the promise of, liberty, freedom, and Kennedy are floating. His face helps me not to place them into any kind of formula for assumptions and none-of-my-business certainties.

I realize I am just happy to be talking to him and tell him there is a tree in Africa that when I look at it in photos, I always feel God, and before I can say the name of the tree, he is already nodding his head in recognition and knowing anticipation of the tree I will name.

I say, “I’m never sure how to pronounce it, but I think it is called an Acacia”.

He helps me pronounce it as I have pronounced it with a short “a” in the middle when actually the “a” is long. He goes on to tell me more about the tree then what I can see in pictures.

While he talks I remember how the daffodil on his lawn made me very happy this morning. He had been working very hard for days on his small patch of land. His legs and arms long with lean muscles, he cleared away dead leaves, branches, old dust and debris that filled six, large lawn bags. He did this for his three young children who will be joining him next spring.

“I love trees,” I say, when he is through speaking.

“mmm”, he hums as we both stand in silence looking up at the nearest tree.

I wonder what words and how many are floating around in the back of his mind now. I respect his privacy and don’t ask but feel a pang of sorrow that perhaps does not belong to me. I turn to watch his face looking up and then look down at the dirt where I have swirled an oval with my sandaled toe.

“Well, I have to be going,” I say.

I realize I have jarred him into hospitality as he puts up his hand and says, “yes, yes, of course”, and backs away.

“I look forward to meeting your children,” I say. Then all I can see are his radiant eyes and smile, and I thank God for this man’s smile, Kennedy’s smile. It has been a gift given today and so was the smile of my favorite cashier.

I imagine her still—enjoying the music.

Because I am feeling better these days—basically recovered from a serious illness— I thought, why not turn my attention toward that other gender.  Since I do not have opportunity to meet men in real life, I thought I would try the virtual world—online dating.

It isn’t that much different from real life dating: one still has to kiss a lot of frogs.  Though I state in my online profile that I would eventually like to meet some of them, I haven’t met one yet that would surprise me enough to incite me to hop out of my very own small pond and into the big, real-time, dating pond.

So far I have moved from just viewing profiles to actually emailing and chatting online with a couple of them.  The first guy—who I will call Fred in order to protect his privacy and my life and bank account—seemed like a good prospect, initially.  He sent me a virtual teddy bear holding a yellow daisy.  I sent him a thank you email saying, “awww, that’s sweet”. 

Next came the online chat where I began to ask some questions.  This is where on-line dating is really handy.  I found out that he is a Park Ranger after retiring from a “fortune 500” retail career.  Who knows.

Then he answered the questions that I knew would make or break this back and forth between us.  It turns out that when he and his wife divorced 7 years ago, he moved 5 miles up the road, bought 8 acres of land and built his “dream house”.  Maybe it is just me but my “dream house” would not be built “5 miles up the road” from my ex-husband.  Call me crazy, call me a snob, call me cynical, call me anything you want, but don’t call me from my ex-husband’s house 5 miles up the road.

Religion even came into the chats whether I wanted it to or not.  He said he “would pray for me”.  I don’t recall typing anything that would require prayer, but I did know that I suddenly became curious and asked him if he belonged to a religion.  He sent me a URL for his church’s website.  He was a faithful follower of Christ. Because of my post Catholic cynicism, I rolled that URL up into a wad and tossed it into my trash bin.  Then I deleted him from my address book. 

Now I have gone back to viewing profiles and possess more insight into which profiles I can discard right away.  If they don’t drink, watch sports, laugh, have a sense of humor, or a sense of adventure by the time they are 50 years old, then I think they are beyond hope.  I mentally ask Fred to pray for them and hit delete.

I experienced the fear of dying in my dreams last night.  The feeling has stayed with me today.  The feeling is sheer terror. 

I summoned my son and his father so that I could instruct them regarding my living will, gave them keys to my apartment, told them to take care of the dogs and cats, gave them the pin #s to my two bank accounts, and keys to my car.

Then I went to the hospital and began the procedure that would put me to death.  There were some nurses and two doctors present.  The doctors examined me and instructed the nurses to start IVs.  I panicked and bargained for one more day because I needed to spend more time with my son, but they said it was too late.  The doctor had already started the IV that would sedate me.

I was making arrangements with a pastor and funeral director at the same time that I was hooked up to the IV.  The doctor said I had to hurry, and then I was led to a coffin and was assured I would die in my sleep.  I told the pastor not to read from the bible, just play music and be silent. 

I awakened just as I was led to the coffin and gazed down into it’s wooden frame. I know we all fear death, and I was brought to  the  precipice of that fear in this dream. 

It’s not always easy to let go of someone you love.  I dreamed of a previous lover last night.  He and I were young in my dream, the way we were when we were together.  I was at one of his ball games, watching him shine the way he did and feeling left behind when a team of young women came onto the field to play against his team.

He laughed and smiled his handsome smile while he and the boys sparred with this team of young women.  I felt sad as I watched and decided to leave.  I knew he would not notice. 

Later, I was in a room watching a movie in which he was one of the actors.  I heard a knock on the door and knew it was him, but I said “who is it” anyway.  He knew that I knew and said, “open the door”.

I immediately let him know I was watching one of the movies he acted in, and he looked at the television and then at me and took me in his arms without saying anything.  I let my body melt into his.  We held each other feeling each other breathe.  I caressed his chest and struggled to speak, but I could not.  It felt like goodbye.

I can still feel that closeness and letting go today.

I’ve been dreaming about my father a lot these days. He died 23 years ago. In the dream, he was quiet and so was I, much as we both were in real life. In the dream, we sang a couple of songs he used to sing when I was a child and adolescent—Irish Limericks sung instead of recited.

There he was, in my dream, driving a station wagon, which in reality he never owned for himself. He did, however, buy us kids the old “tank” to drive when we got our licenses. He always bought luxury cars for himself, and I don’t remember him ever driving that station wagon that was made of steel.

We knew that beige station wagon was made of steel because we could not put a dent in the thing no matter how many trees, curbs, or street lamps we ran her into. We named her Bertha, which sounded as sturdy as she was.

My father would proclaim about his own car such things as “lots of room, cushy seats, feels like we’re floating on air”, when he packed us all into his newest car-extravaganza, a 1972 Lincoln Continental Town Car. He bought these cars with a combination of his rolled up sleeves at the office, and his good horse sense at the racetrack.

His glistening blue eyes would look in the rear-view mirror at our brooding, adolescent faces in the backseat. Smiling and rolling a Garcia Y Vega back and forth between his teeth, he would chuckle at our sullenness in a way that made his body pounce beneath whichever hat he chose to wear that day, usually a Panoma hat in various sizes. I remember one that was blue with a plaid band wrapped around it. It seemed to be his everyman hat.

I do remember him in the passenger side of the thank-god-we-don’t-have-to -cart-them-around-anymore station wagon once, though, when I was driving with a permit. We went over a small bridge and after awhile my dad said to me, “are you going to pull over?”

His elbow was propped against the door near the closed window, and he placed two fingers to his temple, plucking his thumbnail with his teeth, once, twice, three times. His gaze was non-chalant and straight-ahead. I glanced at him, puzzled, and said, “no, why?”

As I looked back at the road ahead, my hands at 10 and 2, I got a little ticked off as I reflected on how the corner of his lip creased and that one eyebrow of his went up—the one eyebrow that went up when he thought someone was being amazingly stupid in the moment.

“You have a flat tire”, he said, matter of fact. Then he turned and looked at me square, amusement gleamed in his eyes. I may have felt stupid, but, I did learn how to change a flat that day.

He bought that station wagon, he told us, so we could haul ourselves to all our softball, baseball, basketball, football, track and field, and cheerleading practices. We had a great time in that car and so did all our high school friends.

If we wanted the windshield wipers to come on, we had to turn on the radio. If we wanted the heat to come on, we had to blast the horn once, or something to that effect. For all we knew, we were driving a human death trap, but we didn’t care. It was the time of no seat belts, and we had fun doing it. Besides, Bertha was a talking piece. A lot of stuff—things our parents would never want to know about—went down in that car.

My father and his wife, my “stepmother” attended all our games, via his car—every game. Their record could beat any postal carrier’s record for delivering mail in all kinds of weather—any day. We angst-ridden, ingrates didn’t appreciate their effort enough, but our friends thought they were cool as hell. They had great game faces.

My father didn’t praise me much in real life other than to imply I was strong. This was in response to one of my brother’s epileptic seizures. He and I had been there when my brother fell and violently seized most all of the times my brother had a gran mall seizure.

My brother was an All-Star athlete, a natural, in spite of it. He and my step-brother were pure entertainment to watch. My step-brother would rip the basketball down from the board after an opponent’s attempt at a basket. His demeanor signaled to the other team they would not be getting the ball back any time soon.

Come Autumn, it was a male bonding ritual for my father, brother, and step-brother to boil mouth guards, or whatever they’re called, while huddled around the dining room table. I don’t recall all the steps, but I remember steam rising into the amber light over the stove from a boiling pot and, at some interval, these plactic, waxy units were fitted into those two bozos’ mouths. I remember thinking the whole thing was a male conspiracy to withdraw and buttress themselves from female household members.

My brother was the first-string quarterback, and my step-brother was some kind of “end”. Dead end would have been my phrase for it back then. While being proud of them, I also thought they acted “queer”. Back then “queer” was the word for anything that made one’s eyes roll and want to hurl.

In the spring they took up an even more disgusting ritual. They’d oil baseball gloves with some male, mystical, mystery oil and spit, over and over, into the palm of their gloves. Then they would plunge their fists in after it and grind away like their arms and fists were a mortar and pestal.

“Really work it in there guys,” my father would say. Then they’d finish by nestling a ball into their gloves and wrapping their gloves tight with string or rubberbands overnight. This ritual appeared along with their increasing ability to annoy me.

I learned how to throw, catch and drop-kick a football, took a baseball in the eye once as pitcher—line drive, right eye. I even cracked two of my front teeth because of one of their pranks, which involved a pile of snow, a garage roof top, and me jumping at their command.

We had large front lawns, and my brothers would invite their friends to play football, basketball, or baseball. If they were short a man, I was dragged into it.

“Look what my sister can do,” my brother would say, as he told me to show them all the ball tricks he told me I should learn if I knew what was good for me. There were reasons why I let him torment me, though. While thinking he was a world-class smart ass, which he was, I also looked up to him. I also worried about him every day.

It was difficult for my father to watch his beautiful son suffer from epilepsy. I have always had difficulty reconciling seeing him make amazing plays, be handsome, funny, intelligent, with having a syndrome that tortured him, out of his control.

After one particular episode, and after we had put my brother to bed, my father and I both said how we wished we had epilepsy instead of my brother, both sad and worn by the incident. I’m not sure who said it first, but I think it was me. Then my father said, “I don’t worry about you, though. I know you can take care of yourself”.

I remember an initial, superficial feeling of being praised by my father but was saddened by his statement, too. It was a way of telling me, consciously or subconsciously, to continue taking care of myself, I perceived, because he couldn’t and wouldn’t be able to do it. He had his hands full enough already.

Distance grew between us as I faded from his view and into the land of males other than my father and brothers. The distance between us would later be, not just emotional, but geographical and filled with long gaps of time, no contact with one another at all. Distance became our relationship until he died an early death at the age of 58.

I don’t know if he was aware, but I was his shadow as a girl. I used to run to the door to greet him when he returned home from work, never with hugs and kisses, because I knew that was not his way, but just to a kitchen stool at the L-shaped wooden bar.

Legs askew, elbows on the tiled counter and jaw leaning against my semi-curled hands, I would give him a “hi, dad”, when he walked through the door. I don’t imagine he ever knew how much I was beaming inside to see him, but maybe he did. We didn’t tell each other things like that in my family. My dad proclaimed that we were a family that “does not wear our hearts on our sleeves”.

My father was a sturdy man, in my eyes, as well as in the eyes of others. Handsome, athletic, hard-working, and hard-playing are just some of the ways he could be described. Other words like stubborn and quiet come to mind. He possessed a certain deftness, mental accuity, that I have not seen in many people I’ve met. I say that because it is true, not just because he was my father—at least that’s how I have chosen to remember him.

He was a Naval Korean War Veteran. The tops of his feet were badly burned in the war, and he always called on me to bring him his warm, porcelin foot bath with epsom salts, towels, and Gold Bond foot powder, on days his feet bothered him most. We never knew how much pain he was in other than when he would say, “Laney, would you bring me my foot bath”.

I always jumped at the chance. It was my privilege to lay a mat down, place a warm basin of water and salts on the mat, and then guide his feet into the water. He would always make an “ahhhh” sound when his red and scarred feet felt the water. He did not bestow this task upon any other member of the family.

As he grew older something happened to my father that was beyond his control, however. I remember one of the last times I saw him, besides the last time when he was in the hospital. We took a walk down to the ocean. By then the farm was sold, and he was now retired and living on the rugged Maine Coast.

Andre the Seal was due in, and all the towns people went once a day to see if he had arrived. It was an annual event. My father wanted to take me there to see if Andre would show up because there had been much speculation that he would not make his annual trip this year, due to his age.

We stood in relative silence looking out at the ocean, waiting by a white, wooden fence, rocks and green sea glass beneath our feet. My father would tell a quick story about this or that usual, daily event. He cleared his throat and made a motor-boat sound with his lips here and there.

Then, we could hear someone shout, “there he is”. Sure enough, there was Andre’s whiskered face popping up from the water. I felt happy to see him, happy my father could see his old friend.

I could feel a tightness in my throat and thought, fight the feeling. Just as I thought that, I saw something I had never seen on my father’s face. He wiped his sleeve across his cheek in a quick swoop.

I did the same.