I Wish I Could Go Too

I went to Cal Poly yesterday and saw Peter Pan with my daughter. It was the same show she’d played the “grown up” Wendy in almost a decade earlier. It was the last show she was in here at home, before she left for school to attend AADA, The American Acadermy of Dramatic Arts, a drama school that has been around for over a century. Ahhh how I remember those last days. They were so fragile and they’d hit me like a Mack Truck.

I wasn’t prepared for the whole “Empty Nest” thing. In fact, it really kind of creeped up on me. It all started with her driving, and then curfews changing and slowly, me figuring out how to let go. I’d done it almost a decade earlier with her brother and that was hard enough, but there is something about the last one. Anyway, I’d remembered this line in the play at the end and searched all over to try to find it again and couldn’t. I kept wondering… What was that line that had me sobbing in my seat all of those years ago?! So silly.

NOW I KNOW, it was a combination of things that caused it to have had such a strong impact on me, but I was sure that line was so much more than what it was. Maybe it was because my baby was playing the older Wendy and I related to that character so much right then, but it was the scene when Peter came back to find Wendy and was mad at her for growing up. She’d told Jane, her own little girl, all her stories about Peter Pan and was letting her go with him. The line was simply: “I wish I could go too.” At the moment I heard the line back then all those years ago, I guess I felt that I was saying goodbye to my youth as well. NOW, I realize that it hadn’t been the words, but the time in my life.that made everything more meaningful. Not only was I letting my daughter go, but I was giving her wings, letting her fly, to go find her way, to go realize her dreams, to embrace her youth and find her way. It was time for me to stay home. I’d had my chance. It was her turn. Today I’ve realized how stuck I’ve been. But it has been my fault. I am in this time of my life where I am in deep reflection. My parents are getting older. I am having to face realities that I haven’t had to until now. Even my friends are dying, two in two weeks. But I have to realize that, THAT is not the norm. They died too early! “All” my friends are NOT just dying. Sadly, two of our closest friends who’d both fought different illnesses for around twenty years went home to be with the Lord. I knew it was happening, I expected it. But when it did, my world kind of crashed for a minute or two or… well, I’ve been kind of stuck since, in a depression. Focusing on everything negative. This also happened when I turned forty. I wasted my whole 39th year focusing on the next. Funny, but it took the very same play to kind of make me think about it. Lately, I’ve realized that the weeks seem to whip by, as if my life is going in fast motion. I think I got lost for a while. I think that I felt as if I’d missed my chance. My art room is packed away in tubs in the garage, my book is in the archives of my “saved documents” and I’ve kind of felt like Wendy when she knows she has to let her daughter go and live her life saying “I wish I could go too.” But yesterday I realized that it probably wasn’t that line that bothered me… it was the line after Wendy’s wish to go too when Peter said… “Well, you can’t.” “You wanna bet Peter?” Watch me!”

Dr. Suess Editing

I’ve been experiencing “writer’s block” for a while now. Though, I don’t think that I’ve ever truly experienced such a serious one. I’ve written several manuscripts, have a card line, and produced a monthly column for a local magazine. A few years ago, I started writing a book that was on my heart for decades. It was one that >I< needed to write. Now, I am wondering… Did I need to write it for me, or is it a story that others might find time worthy as well? Hmmmm. Well, it’s written. Or I guess I should say…I have the bones. The foundation is there.

Some of my “blog’s readers” have given my little project a thumbs up when I’ve shared pieces of it. Some have even helped edit parts of it, here and  there. But I KNOW that it is far from done. The editing has just begun. I’ve done a kind of Dr. Suess editing. Reading it to myself silently, reading it out loud, reading it to others, having them read it to me. Green eggs and ham, Sam I am. Ya know? You have to put it down, come back to it and read it again. In my case, I think that I’ve put it down for almost too long. I know I find new things wrong each time I come back so that might not be a bad thing. Over the course of re-reading it, I’ve come to the conclusion that I use the main character’s name far too much, I use the word “had” a lot (pointed out by one of my favorite editor/friends.) I Tell more than I show… All correctable. I just need to get my rear in gear and  do it. In-between the beginning and end of writing this book, I have lost two close friends and just had some emotionally challenging times. And  have been S-T-U-C-K! Literally. But maybe those experiences can oil the keys and help? Another writer friend recently told me…     Thinking about the task at hand, takes more energy than just doing it!

 She is right. The blank page is not all that scary once you start putting a few words on it. Today, all we need to do, is backspace and re-write! Right?

Inside My Memory

City lights and jazz in the air

the smell of smoke in my hair,

the first scent of a lit cigarette

are memories I just can’t forget.

Coppertone still fills my head

reminds me of things you said.

A time of day still makes me smile,

our hearts store them like a file.

Forgotten like a vapor’s mist

don’t mean that they don’t exist.

 A song or smell has a knack

of snapping us so quickly back,

at any given time you see

I can find you in my memories.

Ah, yes the smell of smoke in my hair

I close my eyes and find you there.

Keri London

2011©

Side Note* Keri London is my character’s name on my blog: http://kerisjournal.wordpress.com and this poem reflects that work. I am currently STUCK. Have finished the bones of that book and need to go back and edit so I can send it to a real editor and kick my butt into getting motivated again. I let life, work and being “stuck” get in my way. What I am afraid of is… is that I know editing means pretty much rewriting the whole thing! So I write these poems telling myself I am going to use them in my book… by the time I am ready to submit anything, I will probably have enough poems for a book all of it’s own! LOL. Thanks for reading and for my loyal readers who read both… you know I love ya!

xoxo

di/aka keri

Today Was A Bad Day

I smile and life goes on,

I even laughed today,

but something that would normally just annoy me

ruins my whole day.

My feelings are all muddled

and yet I have to face my life.

I have to go to work,

be a mom, a friend a wife.

Things that normally wouldn’t hurt me

fill me with so much pain,

I lash out in anger,

needing someone else to blame.

I want to cry and yell,

to fall into a heap

to make the world go away,

to make it stop, so I can sleep.

I want to ask you why..

you think that I should be okay?

When I just lost my best friend

only yesterday?

My laughter isn’t real

my smile is purely fake

My heart is aching

the whole time I’m awake

The hole is gaping, I can’t forget,

as all day the memories weave

How does anyone do it right?

When there is no perfect way to grieve?

Diane Reed

2015©

Dear Terri

We met when we were four years old and from that moment on we were a part of each other’s lives. It all started with a moving box that our new frigidaire came in. Her sister was two years older, and my dad loved to describe the memory… They knocked at the door, eyeing the big old empty box in our front yard and asked, “You got any kids?”

We quickly became buddies and she even shared the little boy next door to me without a problem. We caught frogs in coffee cans, shared the first day of school a few times together, played barbies and learned how to ride two wheelers and stayed out till the street lights came on. I will always treasure those memories those few years we got to live across the street from each other.

When I was growing up, I moved a lot due to my dad’s job. It’s not that easy always having to be the new kid but it’s really not easy being the new kid four times in the middle of a school year when you are in elementary school. I made friends, but there were times when I felt left out or was tired of always being dubbed the “new kid” and just knowing I had Terri was a kind of redeeming grace that carried me through those times.

Through the years we’ve probably written each other a million letters and shared more with each other than someone in our daily lives. There is just something about being able to talk it out in a letter that creates a deeper kind of conversation and a different trust than with someone sitting across the table from you. We’d both find stationey and sealing wax for the occassion and then later, emailed daily for years and years and years!

There was just something about knowing that though she was a thousand of miles away at times, she was also just a letter or a phone call away always. We were in each other’s weddings, had our babies around the same time and emailed each other every single day for years and years. We vacationed with our kids and visited each other as often as our lives permitted. She was my bff.

We had an inside joke about emailing each other…. When we were little, we used to look across the street to see if each other’s garage doors were opened. We knew then that it was okay to knock at each other’s doors and that everyone was up. (No one shut their garage doors back in those days unless they weren’t home or not up yet.) So when we would see an email from each other, we would refer to it as… “I was so glad to come on and see that your garage door was already up!” I have missed that opened garage door for a while now. It has been a funny feeling to want to tell her something and know it will never be opened again.

Today she has been released from this life, from her body, from all the hurts and disappointments this life has held for her to go and celebrate her life and be with our Lord. She lived a wonderful life, had so many people in it that she loved and loved her back. Even in the last two decades of illnesses she managed to weave around it all and embrace life with a passion and energy that few who are gifted with good health, ever manage. We may be missing her but she is in a better place.

I have no doubt that she is enjoying the party being thrown for her right now and will perhaps be in charge of some of the future parties up there in the future! (She always threw a great party!) And I have no doubt that she is preparing amazing places for us all who believe in that better place and in the Lord who has ALREADY embraced her!! Perhaps someday, I will get to live next door to her again! But for today… I am just going to take the time to really miss my very first bff. In these last few months, I have adjusted to the fact that our garage doors will never be opened again, but today it takes my breath away. I guess I always believed in another miracle. God gave her many in her lifetime. I know now the miracle is happening on the other side.

“In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to perpare a place for you. John 14:2