now

It's sort of hard to sum up the past three or so weeks of our lives.  Mainly they've been a blur of pain and doctors and tests all culminating in a surgery and most of all a good prognosis.  Long story short, we are free to move about the country. Or outside of it. I say we do both. So next week we'll go back to the jungle, hopefully dodging a pig pandemic along the way.

I could dwell here on April's both good and bad but I've decided there is no point, life moves on and sometimes things happen that make us take stock and so we take it and move forward because there's no sense in looking back.

We went to the movies last night, a movie I've been dying to see for the longest time.  I knew I'd enjoy it even if it wasn't well done because it was a movie about my people, and watching the portrayal of mental illness and homelessness up on a big bright screen brought tears to my eyes several times. On the way home from the movie we talked a bit about our own Mr. Ayers, the ones who aren't famous but who managed to move us in unspeakable ways. I had an experience similar to the one in the movie years ago, a man who has now since passed on but is still in my heart all the same. I cried again a tiny bit because I miss the fight, the ups and the downs and the struggle to help folks find what should be easy, a place to sleep that will keep them safe.  It was time to move on and yet it will always be in my heart, I still miss the lessons and the banter and the reality and the street but I figure that's okay, it's my way of honoring what I was lucky enough to be a part of for such a long, long time.

strange rivers

It's amazing how much I've forgotten. As I sift through the piles of memories, letters tied with red ribbons just like in the movies, ancient mix tapes and photographs, ticket stubs and etchings. It's all there, a piece of every person I ever thought I loved was inside these dusty boxes.

Moving means boxes, but moving in the way we are moving means very few boxes at all.  So everything must go and what doesn't go is downsized, my parents have agreed to store three boxes in their garage in perpetuity so we decided to each take one and keep whatever memories we want and the other is for M.  

So my box is full of half finished journals and trinkets from around the world, silly pieces of paper that mean nothing to anyone but me. But it's also filled with the people who've helped to shape me, who'd claimed to love me, who I spent short or long periods of my life with. I've allowed myself to keep one correspondence from each person, something to mark the relationship and the point in time and the rest I will burn in a fire before we go. And in all but one case I've kept my promise. Maybe two. It's my box after all.  

But tripping down memory lane has brought both good and bad, the memories I'd installed inside my brain seemed incongruent with some of the letters, the acknowledgement that I'd not been as kind as I thought I was and the one or two bits I'd never really resolved and unforgotten now have left me pondering. The what happened to started creeping around my brain next to the man I'd forgotten about so I went as far as google, a voyeuristic way of seeing how people from 20 years ago have fared and in some cases I've smiled broadly at my discovery and others prove elusive even still.  

This served to remind me of how much life has come before, of how deeply things were expressed and how true we thought they were and in some cases only timing stood in the way. How we are always searching and ever hopeful that you will see me as I see you.

black and white

Nine or ten years ago I was working in a project that was at best barely squeaking by. We had no computers, not even a voicemail system and we had to write everything by hand. We had many, many people living under one roof, all in rooms that were too small and with way too many kids running all over the place. It was non-stop chaos, and we had to work our asses off and usually with four or five kids hanging on you at a time and in spite of it all I absolutely loved that place.


One night there were two of us on swing and we were hanging out in the staff office when this guy who'd been a problem for weeks came in. It was obvious he was high and he stormed into the office angry for a reason I can't recall. I remember feeling cornered, I was behind a desk against a wall and he was pacing and yelling in front of the only door. My co-worker stood up and came over next to me and just as he did the guy came around the desk and lunged. His fist came towards my head as my co-worker jumped in front of me. Immediately I was pushed aside and the two of them were on the floor. I called 911 while the the guy was still assaulting my teammate, fists were flying and a couple of other clients got into the mix trying to pull the guy away. This went on for a while and was actually quite scary when the cops came storming in, cops who immediately grabbed my friend and threw him up against the wall leaving the other guy heaving on the floor.


My friend see, he was black and the guy who was trying to kill us was white.


You've got the wrong guy, it's him you want I remember saying and they threw him against the wall too. After a few minutes of me freaking out they eased up on my friend while he, the one who probably saved my life that night was silent, he's facing the wall and he's not saying a damn word. The cops spend a few more minutes sorting it out and talking to witnesses and they let my friend go and arrest the other guy and drag him off.

My friend is bleeding but he's one of those tough guys who won't let you make a fuss. I got some ice for his face and we call our supervisor and report what happened, she tells us to send him home and even though he protests we all know this was too much for one night and he needs some space. So as we wait for another teammate to come in we process what happened, I tell him what he knows, that if he wouldn't have been there that dude could have killed me and then I say it out loud I can't believe those cops, they went for the black guy automatically and he was silent for a minute before saying no matter how much people act like times are changing it's still the same and we sit silent for a minute, lost in a world I could never really understand and he could not escape.

and the sky opened up

I've talked about my uncle once before, his life and his death both. But Jessica's post on understanding death made me remember it again. As I wrote before, I cut my teeth on his doctrine, the original Jesus Camp. He commanded your attention and would then reward you with scripture quoted in a booming voice that meant no fidgeting, no looking away and you damn well nod your head and you damn well better never say damn. He commanded his church with much of the same tough love: you can come in but you better find a bible. You can do drugs but you better be praying. You can sleep on my pew but at 6am you better be on your knees.

Because of the nature of his ministry he had a tremendous following, people who truly felt he'd saved their lives. Folks that ended up serving the church in a variety of ways, their gratitude almost cultlike, Pastor, they'd say with reverence and hands outstretched. Pastor, and he'd touch their hands or heads and they saw it as being blessed.

When he died suddenly and without warning everyone felt he did a great service by choosing to die away from the church. There was never any discussion, just Pastor decided it was time to go home. Dying away from the church meant no one saw it happen and the shock while brutal throughout the church and shelter was manageable until the day of his funeral.

We got there early and still had to park blocks away. The church was overflowing with scores of street people and the elderly, kids and their moms. Every color of the rainbow and every walk of life, languages from all over the world and the church packed to the rafters. They still had to lodge some speakers in the windows to accomodate the hundred and more people filling the street.

My uncle was laid out up front, his casket closed. Folks were weeping and using their programs as fans. Being family I was in the second row and watched his son give the eulogy, tears coursing down his cheeks. The choir broke down in sobs in the middle of their song. It took forever after the service for everyone to walk by and pay their respects at his casket, lines streaming from outside the church. One woman literally threw herself on the coffin and had to be pulled off and away and I can still recall her wail. Men were weeping. Women were in the basement making a humble meal, a meal he'd approve of because everyone was convinced he was still paying attention. My uncle see, he didn't mess around.

I didn't know death until that day. I didn't know that my heart could feel the depths of sorrow and fear of loss itself, the man we circled our lives around and broke bread with, who ministered and raged and guilted and scorned and forgave and loved and who never, ever would listen to an opinion contrary to his faith. And I cried that day, sitting amongst the street folks and the dealers, the thumpers and the old grandmas with no teeth. I cried great buckets of tears because nothing made sense, the man who spoke to God was dead and I feared him and I loved him and somewhere in between I found my own way.

capturing the flag

I was raised in a small mountain town, you know the kind. Mail was delivered to the post office and we all had a box. The tiny town had one market and all the cashiers knew your name but still called you honey and baby and doll. We had a town drunk and everyone knew him and yet drunk he stayed. We'd get snowed in for days on end and sleep huddled in front of the fire. All the men drove trucks and people watched out for each others kids and there was nothing much to do.

Growing up there meant I spent a lot of time outside. Climbing trees, building forts, creating imaginary situations out of rocks and dirt. There were many of us in the neighborhood, kids from a variety of rough homes and broken families who all gathered in the trees and played endless games of capture the flag to avoid going home.

One of those boys was named Rex. He had a lot of freckles, Rex. He's was the kind of kid who got in a lot of fights, who had a mom but not a dad, who ran wild and free and late into the night. One such night Rex kissed me, the first kiss of my life. It was uneventful really, two ten year olds prodding each other in the face and then running in different directions thinking we were grown. Rex went home and his house caught fire that night, the story on the mountain was he set it himself. His mom took him away after that and none of us ever saw him again.

old time rock and roll

Heather asked me to list some of my favorite posts. It comes from a meme that's going around but I can't quite follow rules very well (and Heather doesn't know that about me yet) so I'll offer a slightly abridged version and call it good.

Posts on love: My favorites are some of the ones that tell the story of we three and my journey into mothering and my beautiful child.

Posts I like: I have a fondness for the ones about our travels.

My great passion besides the above are chronicled in some of the ones about my work and the incredible people I've met. And the kids too.

And I am rather proud of the ones that fostered the Just Posts and their ongoing
evolution.

And once in awhile I even think I'm funny. But only once in awhile. I'm way more fun in real life. But you'll have to take my word for it unless you bring your sweet asses to BlogHer this year.

PS. After I did this I realized that so many of you have been in my village for so long, for a year or more, you've come round visiting. It brought tears to my eyes to see the early getting to know you comments and the evolution of the relationships in the present, so while it wasn't the point of this post, thank you for that too. Old friends and new.

getting on the bus

Many years ago I was a case worker for a diverse group of people. Often, they were the ones who'd slipped through the cracks of others. Needless to say we were a wild and varied group with myself as the pied piper of sorts, attracting lost souls referred by other lost souls. One lovely woman was severely mentally ill and deaf to boot, our communications consisted of long rambling letters on large white boards, a situation that could take hours on end. Another woman was convinced that rubbing butter all over her body was her only measure of protection so in between coaxing excess tubs of liquid gold out of her hands I'd be assisting with massive loads of laundry. Another, a man who is still dear to my heart was an honorable feeder of trees.

The other man I got to know during this time was a young guy, a Christopher McCandless before his time. A good looking man who had travelled the nation, hopping freight trains and camping, hitchhiking and squeaking by. Troy ended up in California after a bad patch, he'd been beaten up and his meager funds had been stolen. He showed up filthy, ragged and hungry. He had stayed in shelters on and off in the country and avoided them when he could in favor of finding day work and sleeping in parks. But it was winter and it was harder to do that and harder still since he'd been recently robbed. He started living in the shelter and cleaned up a bit and started getting day labor work. His goal was to save enough money to buy a bus ticket east, to head through the Rockies and end up on the other side. There was a part of the country he'd yet to see, a place he'd heard about that smelled like promise.

He was reticent to share much about his life but from the bits he offered it was clear that his family situation was a tough one, that he'd been all but orphaned. He was a dreamer and very bright, he had strong feelings about society and what being a good human means. He was also tender hearted, his loneliness was obvious even as he denied it was there. We fell into a routine of sorts, he'd wait for the rest of the folks to clear out and we'd spend an hour or so a day checking in on his status, his savings, his goals. I tried connecting him with more local resources but he was pretty clear leaving was his only option.

Winter wore on and my caseload grew larger, at one point there were 15 or so folks no one knew quite how to help, least of all me. But my interest in creative solutions coupled with a strategically placed office (in the middle of the sleeping area) managed to get a lot of game and kept the wheels turning, some times more successfully than others.

Troy started making plans. He had enough money saved now to hit the road again. We'd talk at length about the life he was choosing, one with less options and one with more. I admired his courage and acknowledged his sadness and waited to see how he'd go. One day he came in my office and sat down and told me he was leaving. And as he talked he reached into his back pack and pulled out an envelope and slid it across the desk and nodded his head. I opened it and pulled out not one but two bus tickets, the long haul greyhound type. He looked at me and said I got one for you too. So you can come with me. I was completely taken aback, nothing in our discussions had suggested I'd be interested nor had he ever made an untoward advance. And yet somehow in all those hours of talking and listening he'd crafted this plan without my knowledge, a plan where he'd spend his hard earned money on something impossible.

I looked at him carefully, knowing the risk this must have been and the pain my answer would cause. But I told him definitively that I could not go, that I did not want to go, that I had work to do here. And more so, how we could get his precious money back. He sat stoically as I talked, a glimmer of sadness behind his carefully disguised eyes. He seemed almost surprised that I was not taking him up on his offer and I realized then it may have been a question of a differing reality in more ways than one. We talked for a little while longer and he took out a small plastic robot and sat it on my desk. Then he picked up his back pack and walked out of my office, out of the shelter, and I never saw him again.

I remember being taken aback by that for a long time, how he'd perceived a reality so different from what reality was, and how living that way must open you up to so many more possibilities as well as so much more disappointments. And even now I wonder if he's still on the road or if he's eventually found a place to call home.

blackened skies

I've not talked much about the fires in California, mostly because it's hard to find the words. I grew up in one of the tiny mountain towns that has burned so viciously over the past week. A town of under 2000 people, a town of mountain men and snow and one or two roads off the hill. Seeing pictures of it burning, hearing that one, two, now three old friends have lost their homes, wondering if the home I grew up in all those years ago survived or if it too burned into the ashen sky.

Growing up in those mountains was a mix of redneckery, small town gossip, loyal neighbors and another kind of fire and brimstone. I hated it at the time, the long distance from the real world, the cold, the forever digging ourselves out of the snow. But it was something else too; small town safe, the place where everyone had to get their mail at the post office and the market down the road had the best candy. A place spent climbing trees and building forts, long school bus rides and four wheel driving. It's also where I learned to play baseball and where I learned to drive, where I had my first job and my first broken heart.

And now it's burned. It would be impossible not to know the names of folks whose homes have burned, even 20 years gone I still know. And in one week it's changed forever, the landscape blackened, the town grew smaller and wider still.

Posessions are just trappings. Clever disguises to keep us from knowing our ultimate selves. But they are also how we define our safety, where we lay our heads. We cleave to these things, to these tangible markers of our memories and then one day they fail us and gone, all gone.

And then we start anew. The courageous mountain men and women living there will find this as their beginning rather than their end. I know this because it's hardscrabble living in those hills and the weak wouldn't choose it. But clearing away the charred rubble of their lives until now is a solemn task at best.

little boy lost

It was the first and last time I'd ever had the feeling that this child didn't belong to the woman who was claiming to be his mother. It was 1999, Prince was partying and I was holed up in a large street shelter. And something wasn't right.

Mikey and his mother moved in after claiming to have moved here from Florida. They had no friends or family in the area but the mom said she lived here in the past and wanted to come back home. From the beginning things seemed off - the parent child relationship seemes almost in reverse - Mikey was an incredibly bright six year old, far too old for his years. He spoke almost scripted about his love for his mother and his happiness in general. Mom's behavior was very odd, no photographs were allowed, the child was not allowed to speak with us unless she was there. Other residents started to report other weirdnesses, patterns of questionable interactions and behaviors that further raised suspicions on our part and far too uncomfortable to recollect here. The local school also contacted us - Mikey's mother would stand outside the fence of his school all day and during recess would silently watch him. They also indicated they were unable to get his records from Florida and asked us to assist. She would have preferred to keep him out of school entirely and dragged her feet in getting him enrolled and getting him to school.

We'd found similar issues during our intake process. A birth certificate that did not bear the name she called her son, and a last name different from hers. Things weren't adding up and to be honest, this level of digging wasn't the norm but something simply wasn't right.

After much discussion and a number of weeks his mother provided the Florida information along with a release and I made a few inquiries. It turned out that the school there had suspicions similar to ours in conjunction with a lack of previous records. Once they'd alerted the authorities she'd disappeared and they warned me of the same. I called DSS in Florida who also expressed concerns but lost track of him once a monitoring had occurred. But I learned along the way that she gave up public housing, the equivalent of a gold ticket to Wonka's place in the process. Abandoning a housing voucher is unheard of in my world, another red flag rising.

I then did something I'd never done before or since. I started searching the national databases of missing and exploited children looking for a match. While searching we were conferring with child advocates and other experts in the field. All the while it began to feel dirtier and dirtier, unfair of us to be feeling this way but our concerns for the child were stronger than anything else. And we didn't want her to run again until we'd figured out what to do.

Child Services received various reports and I tried to fill them in on the larger concern and our fear that if they came she'd disappear. They were concerned and agreed but then showed up and met with the mom and the son and said they'd be back the next day as further investigation was required.

In the morning they were both gone. Their room was trashed and they had disappeared. It was a horrifying time because while we had our assumptions no one was guilty. We contacted the police and child services again and while everyone agreed something wasn't right suspicions aren't enough for legal intervention and besides, we'd lost him now. It was too late.

Three years later I am walking through the adult shelter and I see her, battered and older with hair dyed a different color. I approached her and asked about Mikey and she claimed not to know what I was talking about and wouldn't acknowledge she had ever met me before. She didn't have any I.D. this time around and was simply a single homeless woman in need of shelter. We made inquiries to the police but there was little follow up. But there was no denying that it was her.

This was a difficult post to write. Part of me feels I had no right to pursue things as I did and the other feels I didn't do nearly enough. Intuition is not a reliable strategy in all circumstances but sometimes it's all you've got. Those of us on the ground make mistakes and are dealt a difficult hand all the time and there aren't always good or right decisions in times like this. And I will never know what happened to Mikey, whether he's okay or not, thriving or not. I just know that the woman who claimed to be his mother all those years ago claimed to have no idea who he was.

my first mothering

Today we saw one of the best and most disturbing movies I've seen in a long, long time. It was a brilliant film and J and I had very strong reactions to the content. On our way home I couldn't stop myself from re-telling stories about kids I've known over the years who were in trouble. Kids that haunt me to this day.

I still can't shake it, the movie or the kids both. I've decided to post about these kids from my past for a little while, a series of sorts. Some of what I will write isn't pretty, in fact it's damn hard so I am warning you now in case stories of wounded children isn't something you want to read. A graceful feel free to click away with no hurt feelings.

Peter came to us with his mom about seven years ago. He was five years old at the time, his mom lived hard, drugs and addiction, multiple husbands. She had a teenage daughter who lived somewhere else. Peter was a beautiful kid, a lonely kid. His mother was rough, she would often yell at him, her tone always harsh. He would wander into our offices almost daily and after awhile we became friends of sorts. He mostly just needed a safe place to feel some love.

We started to suspect his mom had started using drugs again but we were having a hard time catching her. Around that time she found out she was pregnant and simultaneously her neighbors were reporting a lot of traffic, loud men in and out all night long. We suspected she was selling her body for drugs and eventually proved ourselves right. I'd involved the authorities and as usual, they were disinterested at best. After four or five calls they'd go to her apartment, verify that there was food in the fridge and that Peter wasn't being beaten and tell me there was nothing else to do. Meanwhile, Peter was worsening, he'd come into my office and sit on my lap or he'd sit in the corner against the wall and patiently watch me work. He was dying for love, for nurturing, and his mom couldn't or wouldn't give it to him.

I'd keep reporting her to child services and they'd keep visiting and she'd keep yelling at me for reporting her. This went on for a long time and short of evicting her there wasn't much we could do and we feared the eviction would be worse for Peter, at least this way we were watching and doing what we could.

His mother continued to do drugs and somehow continued to have clean drug tests (we figured out how much later) so in every turn she managed to slip past the limit that would yank her chain. You have to remember we were dealing with the system, a tired and broken system who didn't give two shits about a poor kid living in homeless housing. In their opinion he was better off there than on the streets or in the shelter. His mom was convinced she was a good mom who loved her son. And Peter continued to be neglected and continued to live in sad and lonely pain.

And then one day something very bad happened. Peter was sexually assaulted by a teenage boy because his mom once again failed to supervise him properly. We were the first he told, before he told his mom. He came into the office and told me something that no five year old should ever know with such clarity it left no room for question. I called 911 immediately and when the cops came they took Peter to the hospital.

This was the only time I'd ever seen his mother nurture him in the entire time he was with us. The only time she held him and told him she loved him. It may not sound like it but I was an emotional wreck. I loved Peter and for the first time in my life wanted to adopt a child. I wanted Peter. I wanted to save him because I couldn't take watching him suffer any longer. I called social services and inquired about obtaining temporary custody. The worker took me half seriously and tried to talk me out of it at the same time. The damage, she said. You don't know what you are getting yourself into. The damage, I said, has been caused while you've sat and done nothing. Let me do something.

But in the end he was never removed from his mother, and trust me when I say this isn't something I take lightly. I've seen this many times from all sides and it's awful every time. This was her child, she was his mother. She was and he was and it shouldn't be easily disposed of. She left us soon after, her trust in me shattered and her hands full with a new baby too. It was so hard saying goodbye and harder still knowing how little there was I could do to make it better. To make his life better in the end because I wanted to so much.

Peter should be twelve by now. I haven't seen him in six years and have no idea how he is or how things have gone for him. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't think of him and wonder how he is, and if he remembers the love we offered him so long ago. I've met hundreds and hundreds of homeless kids in the past decade and I've seen all kinds of horrors and all kinds of beauty, but none of them pierced my heart quite the way Peter did. He was the first to make me want to be a mother.

bark at the moon

Many years ago I met a guy at a beer festival. He of the long hair and multiple tattoos, me of the boredom and hunger. We danced wildly hands gripping beers, drinking in the sun. Numbers exchanged at the end of the day, curiouser still. I notice the flame creeping up his leg and I wonder how far it goes.

A few days later he calls, we agree to meet up at a bar. I go there that warm summer night and share a few beers and agree to go for a ride on his motorcycle. He's bad, this man. And I was recently tired of being good.

We climb on his bike, I've had several drinks now and am feeling no pain. He hands me a helmet with check out my tits stenciled on the back and I laugh in the face of it's absurdity. It has nothing to do with me so I slip it on my head and hold on tight.

We hit a few more bars and around 1am he talks about some of the darker sides of biker gangs. It's rather like a bizarre version of the learning channel. I laugh in the face of crime and subjugation and order another beer. I am reckless. I wear the helmet again on the way out.

It happens that his apartment is close to the bar of origin, so he offers to take me there on the way back to my car. It's dangerous and I know it and I say yes anyways. His badness has nothing to do with me, not yet. I am just visiting and beneath the devilry and the sexism he's just a guy on a bike.

We go into his apartment, half the night is gone by now. Candles stuck in skulls, another motorcycle inside. He shows me around, the last stop his room. A room that is almost solely full of bed, leopard skin and all. Something catches my eye and I turn my face upward. A complicated system of pulleys and leather and shackles hang from the ceiling, a whip looped through the cords. For the first time all night I am truly taken aback, this is more than I bargained for and it's more scary than absurd (although absurd it still is). He notices me gazing upward and says, all six feet of him with hair streaming down his back You should know I never have sex on the first date.

Immediately center rights itself again, his words warning me not to get my hopes up when instead I wanted to run for the door. I am thanking the gods and godless my intuition was right, that although he's bad, he's also good. We talk for another hour or so before I go. And when I do he says to give him a call if I am still interested, a chaste kiss on my cheek ends the night.

I never call this man again, this wildly dangerous man with a certain moral fortitude. But I'll always remember that night fondly, the dark and windy ride in and out of the badlands.

a little respect

M and I were driving home last night rocking out to a little Aretha when Respect came on. Yes, it's overplayed, yes, I know. But as I was listening it reminded me of the work I did ten or so years ago at a group home for addicted throwaway jail destined teenage girls. We were a small house, six girls at a time with a therapeutic vibe, a tight staff and an intentionally loving atmosphere.

Some of the girls had been through more than others, by 14 some had been sexually active for a while, done a lot of drugs, spent time in juvenile hall. Most had been abused in one way or another. And whether gangbanger with blackened eyes or hardened little con woman, they all wanted love. They craved it. But they didn't know how to ask for it in healthy ways.

One girl was especially tough. She'd been so damaged early on by abandonment and violence she had a hard time connecting in any sort of meaningful way. She was preoccupied with boys and her looks and rarely was able to dig deeper. And we required digging. There was a lot of processing. Reflection. Feedback. Buttons were pushed, mine as well. But I felt such a strong connection to her, this vacant little heart who so desperately wanted to be mothered.

One night I was helping her clean up the kitchen, working together in silence. I started singing spontaneously what you want, baby i got, what you need, do you know I got it....and so on, probably butchering the words when a small voice behind started singing just a little bit and so on, rounding out the song. We started singing together but I never looked at her, I just kept on cleaning. It felt big, this moment in the kitchen, her voice getting louder, until the end we were both loudly R-E-S-P-E-C-Ting and socking it to me over and over. It was innocent and impromptu and beautiful.

When the song ended we both started laughing and she fell into my arms, hugging me tightly. It might not have been much, that moment in the kitchen, but it cracked open the door and we became very close over the year she was there, this child of my heart. It didn't stop her from giving me an enormously hard time occasionally, but I always took it as a compliment because it meant she felt safe enough to let her guard down and know she'd still be loved.

In other news: my blog is 365 days old today. Happy Blog Birthday to me. And more importantly, thank you for making me feel so welcome. I can't tell you how much this has meant to me, getting to know so many of you. I had no idea a community like this existed, and now I couldn't imagine it not.

that one time i was in Kurt Vonnegut's brownstone

About 12 years ago during one hot July summer, I was in NYC with a friend of mine.

We had a free afternoon and so we headed over to see one of her friends, a woman I'd never met before. She was a personal assistant to Jill Krementz. We were heading out for drinks when she said she had to stop and drop something off at her brownstone. Oh, and by the way, she shares it with her husband, Kurt Vonnegut.

Slaughterhouse Five was a pivotal book in my youth; the irony and the conspiracy both. Vonnegut, while not achieving a premier place of idolatry, was certainly nestled solidly somewhere in the middle of my angst and admiration.

As we walked inside I was silenced with a mixture of awe and discomfort. I was not supposed to be here. It might have been legitimate, if he walked in the door while we were there I am assuming I'd have been issued a brief introduction and we'd be on our way. But his absence made the silence louder.

I touched nothing. But I did walk through the halls and look at the photographs, so many photographs, both professional and personal and taken by his wife. And the books. Oh, the books. I peered into the office and saw a pen resting on the desk near a stack of them, a few were his. I had a strong urge to touch the pen, to pick it up and grip it as if I were going to write a note. I touched nothing.

I remember feeling anxious; that this was the personal space of a public figure and it was unfair somehow to allow for my voyeurism. We were probably only there for fifteen minutes or so; her friend was doing her job, checking voicemail and sorting the post. There were a lot of both.

There were several floors but we didn't go past the first. I felt that was the least we could do. And I've always remembered those few minutes that afternoon; visiting a nondescript brownstone that housed a legend.

And so it goes. Rest in peace.

old bill

When I was 28 I ended a long term relationship. Looking back, it was either that or get married, and while the man was a very good man, he wasn't the man for me. Or better said, I simply wasn't ready for a good man yet. I could have handled it better, so as when it was over I was the one who needed to leave.

Problem was, I was working in a homeless shelter in one of the most expensive counties in the nation. I could not afford to rent my own place, not even a studio.

A co-worker came to my rescue. Bill was a Vietnam veteran, a former drug addict, and had lived on the streets. He cleaned up his act years ago and was my mentor and co-worker. He had a small one-bedroom walk up smack in the middle of downtown and offered to let me "rent" his couch for $100 a month. I had no other options, so I gratefully accepted. Ok, warily, but gratefully.

I gave up almost all of my belongings in the transition. Everything I owned fit into the back of my car, and most of that was books and clothes. Bill gave me one drawer and part of the closet for my clothes. Everything fit. I kind of liked only needing a drawer.

We were a strange pair - an old black man and a young white woman breaking bread and sharing a bathroom. At night I would watch the hookers earn their money in the alley below his apartment. It was vastly different from my living environment for the past four years, and I was happy and scared simultaneously. I felt small and big all at once, alone and everywhere at the same time.

Every once in a while I'd get a voice message from Bill asking me not to come home for awhile. That was one of our arrangements early on; that he'd entertain a lady friend (by the hour) from time to time and he wanted his privacy. We all need a little warmth sometimes, and if you can't come by it naturally, I'd imagine it would get lonely after awhile.

Sundays Bill would go to the neighborhood park and look for former friends from the streets. He'd round up three or four of these cats and bring them back for chicken dinner, because everyone deserves chicken dinner on sundays. I'd often come in to a group of guys playing chess or cards, drinking beer, listening to jazz. I liked those afternoons quite a bit.

After a few months I'd saved up enough to be able to rent a tiny studio in a rough part of town. We shared a last Sunday dinner and I moved out. Bill quit work the following year and I lost touch with him after that. A few years ago I heard things got rough for him; rumors of crack pipes and the streets. I could and couldn't believe it. I knew how lonely he was, but I didn't think he'd give up what he'd worked so hard to keep. I still don't really know. Some demons are too much for this world, and the old sly ones rooted in southeast asian wartime are especially tough to shake.

I will always love him, old Bill, for offering a girl a place to stay when she had nowhere else to go. His kindness allowed me to close one chapter and start another.

And I still think of those hookers in the alley and smile at the absurdity of it, working girls doing their best for most certainly not enough.

primal inference

I ran into an old lover on Friday, the only lover in a non-relationship I've really ever had. It's probably been six years since I've seen him, strange enough because we work in the same field (I always was a sucker), but somehow we've managed not to cross paths in all this time.

I was showing someone around a site I am rarely at when I came around a corner and saw him, facing away, but recognizable (always) from a distance.

I actually stopped walking and before I could stop myself said Oh...I was so not expecting this...followed immediately by a silent and i look like shit. He must have sensed something from 100 feet away because at that precise moment he turned and looked, then turned again for a moment, standing still.

We both managed (always had managed) to play it off, even when we were involved no one at either of our agencies was remotely aware of it; but I'd be lying if I denied that my knees didn't all of a sudden feel like sand.

Perhaps some things may never change, and yet I walked past with a cool long time, friend, to with he replied yes, nice to see you. I walked into the office and took a few minutes to watch him through the window. He looks exactly the same.

It was always a visceral thing, a former life, a primal connection. He was the one in between others for a number of years, the one that was no good but I still couldn't shake. It was physical, with a minor in emotional, but from time to time I'd confused the two, and that was my downfall.

He looks exactly the same, a south american with a minor in cuban, a bit of new silver, but mostly, exactly the same. He is never someone I think of, no one I miss. But in those few moments it was if an invisible velvet cord wrapped in Neruda and red wine wrapped itself around my waist and pulled me close. The way a man places his hand on the small of your back while teaching you to salsa and guides you effortlessly around the floor. Omara Portundo singing in the background. A bit like all of that.

I took the high road and avoided him. He waited until there was a pause and came over, direct, subtle, exotic, saying I've often wondered how you are. Do you have a moment? Not really, my mind says Just a minute, I suppose, comes out of my mouth.

We wander off from the crowd and he mentions hearing that I've become a mother, he wonders how that is. I am trying not to fidget. I decide I don't really want to tell him anything.

It was always like this. And it was simultaneously very flawed. He was never truly forthcoming, he had too many wounds and was the opposite of what I needed all those years ago. And yet I dug in for far too long at the sacrifice of other things not the least of all myself. I'm still a bit irritated over the power he had, and the way even now, seeing him makes me feel.

After a few moments I tell him I need to go, people are waiting. He asks if he could see me, go to lunch, catch up, talk. No, I say, with my mind and voice this time, I don't think so. He looked taken aback, started to speak, then paused, gazed, nodded, and said adios, then, preciosa. If you change your mind....No, I said. I don't think I will.

I watched him walk away and stood still after he'd left, silent. It had always been like this. And it was the most it ever was. He was exactly the same. And thank god I am not.