I've just been reading a friend's blog -- it's sweet, thoughtful, lush (with images she takes on her camera), mature, cosmopolitan (she teaches in Pullman, WA, and lives half the year in Chicago, with her husband, and her daughter is in college in Vancouver, so she travels as a matter of course), deep and meaningful. Wow. (You can read it, too: Spots Of Time.)
Reading it, I miss Deb, down to my bones. And I'm a little jealous (that green eyed monster, Buh's friendly familiar) at how textured and rich her life is, at how much she's attempting. She has always been so full of life, so eager to try new things. She's a traveling soul, a winged creature. If I were still a gag-me Jungian, I'd say she's a puer; her feet are not fully connected to the ground.
Deb's learning, right now, to be an emergency rescue ski patrol woman. I'm just trying to make it through 400 lb Tai Chi. And to keep my body at least 75% cleansed after the last ordeal. And to choose what to do, other than to write this, stretched out on my bed, on this glorious first vacation day.
And of course I'm just a little sad that all of Deb's rich life is going on somewhere else, where I am not, in a place filled with faces and lives not my own. I'm no longer part of Deb's inner circle.
Buh wants to make this all about me. Buh wants to bring the conversation home.
No, Buh. Take a hike. Guh is going to confess that she savors the small ache of reading about old friends' adventures on the other side of the country, far from the fly-over state she's in. Guh is going to take the time to read all about Deb's adventures, to look at the pictures, travel with Deb, get into her life. Guh is not going to beat herself up for being a somewhat shallow writer, obsessed with the daily minutia of maintaining an ego. Guh is going to be happy that she has such talented friends, such warm friends, who invite her into their lives and keep inviting her, as the years pass.
Last night, Amy, one of my bestest friends from AZ, called up. She hadn't yet read about herself in the last post, either. She confessed that she'd been reading me, obsessively. I am hugging that to myself and grinning so hard that my cheeks hurt.
Amy and I talked for nearly an hour, I in my kitchen, making and drinking tea, she on her staircase, where the reception for her cheap-o-cheap cordless is best. While we talked, she had to mediate with her two girls, Olivia, 4, and Molly, 2. They tried all their preschool wiles to lure her away from the staircase, everything from owies, to food requests, to video complaints. On my end, I smiled, reliving Lizzie's 4 and 2 year old ploys.
Mommy's talking on the phone, Amy said. Let Mommy have another minute please. Watch Clifford. Oh, Clifford is bumpy? The tape's not working?
I smiled harder, planning my trip out to San Antonio, where the weather is in the 70s.
I guess our adventures are smaller right now, because they have to be. It's just where we are in the stream. Guh has this neat ability to see the silver lining in the shit cloud.
Guh is going to find a good place to eat lunch, take Cheri and Lizzie and Lizzie's friend Renee out. It'll no doubt be some mediocre chain food we'll choke down, maybe Max and Erma's, or Red Robin. We'll eat hamburgers dripping with grease, overfried French fries, or a taco salad, more shredded cheese, chili meat, and iceberg lettuce than any sane woman can eat. Then we're probably going to tour the Target aisles, leave with a bag of chips (not on the cleansing list), some allergy pills for Cheri.
Maybe later we'll eat ice cream out of the carton, drink a bottle of cheap wine.
Life is good.
No comments:
Post a Comment