MY COUNTERTOP HEART

There was a place in Tao-yaun, Taiwan that served the best chow mein in the world. The woman who served it was bored with life. She had a two foot shuffle with worn through cloth sandals. She read the paper - a lot. She sighed.

Wo yao iga chow mein, la! My rude incremental chinese begging for a plate of her magic.

shuffle shuffle
indifferent shuffle to kitchen
slop
shuffle
serve

Her serve was to bowl a plate down the table to me and as the plate wobbled to a standstill she retook her place at her own tiny table.

There was a miscellaneous hot sauce at my table. It gave me the stink eye, its nasty thick caked top, the sauce seperated into sour layers. I shook it out onto my chow mein and sank into my plate of beauty. She chuckled from behind her paper, her short chin sinking into her neck and her top teeth heavy. She snapped the paper, stopped her laugh, righted the paper crisp again and ignored me still. Just us two in her shop.

I remember one day driving three towns over on my scooter famished, voom vooming down one way streets backwards and driving the wrong sides of roads. Chickens lifted, children scurried. I was hungry!

Wo yao iga chow mein, la!

Mayo!

Huh? None?

She squaked at me and hit her towel toward the countertop and a heat light. Iga! One!

There was a plate sitting there with what looked like spent noodles. It was wilted, greenish and covered in flies.

Ji! Chicken! She said it as a selling point but it made me think twice. Noodles all day under light is one thing but chicken with flies is another.

Xia Xia ne! I bought it anyway. Chug chug sauce and a flip of my sandal to kill the cockroach scurrying up the wall. Shoe back in place and ummmmmm. It was the best plate of chow mein that I have ever had. I did worry that I might vomit later. I had a passing hope that I wouldn't die, but I didn't regret taking the chance on the best chow mein in the world.

I think of that chicken, that meat. I think of me and you and blogging. I think of what we are doing here.

This blog has gone through a transformation. I have gone through a transformation. What I started out doing and what I am doing now are two different things. I told little family stories before. I practiced writing. Now I open my blouse and set loose the meat of my heart. It sits for days on a counter under a heat lamp. It is horrid, putrid, greenish meat. You land your sticky feet in it. Some of you stick right into it. My heart lays substantially undeniable muscle. It smells. It raises eyebrows from passerbys. Some walk away. And some of you still dare to sit and eat.

Now, I'm not saying I'm offering the best chow mein in the world. I'm not even claiming magic. I'm only claiming questionable safety of my heart and this blog and the refinement of your palate. But xia xia ne for coming and thank you for eating. Oh, and if you need it, there's a bucket by your feet.

POW WOW

It all took place in about four seconds. Only four seconds. A life can change in four seconds. Did you know that?

I do -
now.

Four one way,
perhaps three back.

Do you understand?
It only takes four seconds.

For years she hid behind my legs, spoke through her brother.

For years she was afraid.

Three years ago she refused to wear dresses any more because one person laughed at her.

This year she was devastated when her best friend told her her shirt was ugly.

This afternoon at the crowded beach, in front of friends and teachers and strangers she looked at me and grinned. Not just a happy passing smile but she grinned into me, deep boring eyes, an invitation to see.

And I did.

She raised her arms behind her, eagle girl, her towel fanned out into the wind. Her head tipped back and her throat opened to the sky. One foot. One direction. A singular spontaneous Pow Wow of life. Other foot and three seconds back. She was girl turned bird, ancient greeting. She was determination, force, fu** you feet in sand and rock.

She righted herself and looked deep into me, bore right through me bent forward and daring.

This is me! This is life! And it is good!

TRANSMUTATION (enquire within)

I was all long and loose in the leg today, stretched out in my own 5' 4" forever. (That's comedy right there folks.) My toes slipped in sand and my crows feet caught the sun and threw it back. I wondered at my self. Here (and you gotta know by now, the mid-life crisis is coming on, so buckle up) here I was, my physical self sprawled with my butt diverted into two lakes by the swing seat that I was submerged on, the beaver dam causing overflow front and back. Not pretty. Here I was slightly wrinkled, slightly dried up, more than slightly sore from simply pushing my legs forward/backward like all kids do without thought pump after pump. Here I was 39 and wilting, a dimple in the kid-shrieking sand.

And I want to do something about it.

No make-up, no hairstyle, no botox, and no freaken surgery, that's for sure. Maybe some Neat is in order (to take care of that manly handlebar I'm grooming) but that's not the type of transmutation I'm hoping to conjure. I'm thinking more along the lines of spontaneous combustion, transcendence, or maybe something else a little more this worldly. Shape shifting? Sounds good in theory, but my back's not so good. If I were a leopard could I still sleep in bed? My stomach acts up, so as rabbit my guts would be in knots...too much raw. A wolf? Well, I'd just be all hairy again, wouldn't I?

I am thinking I need to do something radical to claim this shell back before it kicks me out or at least gives me grief upon lifting my head from the pillow. I already have a nose ring. Earrings. Ears. So what can I do? Tattoo came to mind but it is just so ordinary any more. I was thinking a tiny diamond above my lip off to one side, apparently called a Monroe. (Gad, I'm getting old!) I was considering an elephant trunk transplant but that's a whole lot of picking to maintain and then I'd lose my nose ring, my only claim to near funk, or have to get a ridiculously large one.

So what? What? What can an almost forty year old do to wrangle back this body and say, Hey, it's not over. I still have power over you! What? Really. That's a question. Anybody got a real answer?

I'm thinking spontaneous combustion might be my best bet.

How do you stay feeling vital?

One Day Tomorrow Will Come

It hurts to look back. It physically hurts. My stomach gets all flooky, an instant case of vertigo.

Don't get me wrong. I've a good life. I've had a good life. But I'm not one of those people who likes to revel in the then me. Perhaps not even the now me. I'd rather look to the one day me.

One day I will be beautiful.

One day I will laugh when I wake,

I'll have tender hands all day,

I'll radiate light from finger

and flowers will turn to me.

One day

I will wear my couch

and my couch will wear me.

When I make pies

and cut the pastry with my butter knife

daisy chain birds will lift from the lip

and fly!

One day I will be my best.

I will have dirty feet

and lion mane hair

and my children will paw for more dance.

It will be more that they paw for

because I will already have them dizzy with dance

and all before breakfast.

One day my thighs won't rub,

my back won't hurt,

and my teeth won't sting when I eat the sweetest confections.

I'll let the dog run.

I'll allow the cat its meow!

I'll follow fart with hiccup

and follow that all with a poem

more decadent than chocolate.

One day

that poem will be my life.

I'd like today to be one day. That's the philosophy of my bones. But to be honest, today is just today. But tomorrow. Oh tomorrow! Now, that is a whole other story!

THE REVERENTIAL DWARF

I'm here for a good time, not a long time.

You ever know someone like that? Someone who lived it? Someone who repeated it, hoped it, infected you with it?

He was four foot nothin', his belly as broad as he was tall. His arms rotated around his girth in a circular sweep. His hands found his pockets miraculously and he jangled his keys as he shook his face with a Blue's Brothers-like manifesto, I'm here for a good time, not a long time. (I know, Trooper sang it but this guy looked all Blues Brothers, deep down gravelly soul and he sang it his own way, anyway.)

He was dirty. Not just dirt from the day but the kind of dirty you have to work at with constant attention to not doing anything about it. He had hand painted walls at home and I don't mean he painted some sort of French faux design, Trompe l'oeil or something, but one of his kids had probably lifted a paintbrush from school and he had free-handed purple words on his walls. Over his sink, Jesus Loves You! Exclamation mark! He was very excited about this one and believed it wholeheartedly but he never pushed his beliefs on anyone, except that is, about living well. There were other messages but I don't remember them. I remember this one and him standing so short, perfect sphere under the arch that the purple train of words rode, and he couldn't have been more proud. His kitchen floor was a dirt floor, but only kinda. There was linoleum underneath all the dirt. His kids were dirty and thought to be neglected but they were loved more than most. His wife was huge and smelled. He loved her more than he loved himself, life, and perhaps even Jesus.

He was in the habit of hugging me. With one arm he drew me in sideways firm. I let him. He'd burst into song.

Jeremiah was a bullfrog, duh duh! He was a good friend of mine! duh duh!

I was young, teenager, almost adult, and I wondered if I should have liked him or not, should have judged him, but then he would break out an air guitar and play some raucous tunes, give the up-you finger (which for him was only his pointer finger) to some fine member of establishment and hug me tight. I loved him. I let judgement cower neglected in the corner.

I spent three summers working with this man. I saw him shit on, berated, belittled, used up and spent by fine members of the establishment. But every student that he worked with, he gave us song and he gave us hope. If we were lucky he gave us hugs.

He died a few years ago, freak accident, ATV roll over or something like that. I was living far away from here at the time but another student who had had the honour of working with him contacted me and we both shared a moment of sadness for the loss his family surely suffered, and then we shared a few more moments of remembering. Some people might be small, might be different, might not be fine members of the establishment, but it's those ones that aren't and yet still shout it out and shine, those are the ones you'll never forget.

I loved that man.

WHAT MAKES A MAN?

How does it happen that a boy grows into a man? Does it actually happen or do we just think so and thereby trick ourselves and those boys, too?

I knew him when he was just two. I was over for tea and somehow he and his mommy got into the bath together to repair some toddler mess that had captured them both. I sat at the open door on the floor with my legs crossed pretending to drink the drink I wasn't old enough in my heart yet to drink. (And I'm still not.) She had had her baby young. She was mom. I was just a kid who happened to have breasts and hips beginning to widen in some mysterious welcoming that I hadn't been notified of.

Smack smack his tiny hands hit the water in that universal toddler glee and reached playfully for her familiar parts. She gently lowered his soft splashers and calmed them with her will.

I was an alien there in the doorway. Twenty-four and still wild, untamed, blowing in the wind. They were aliens to me, too, albeit beautiful aliens in a claw foot spaceship built for two.

Now he's big. Someone happened by and in the last sixteen years they laid their lips to his cherub blusters and they blew. Blew, blew, blew and he has grown to little boy in big body, all alert and verge. But the little boy is mostly gone, mostly leaned upon by this new bigness. His splashers now hold hands with his girlfriend and his hand is big enough to swallow hers as though it were a fly but he is gentle, oh so gentle, like young men can be in the daylight. What his hands reach out for in the moonlight, we all know. From somewhere deep inside of him an iceberg has risen to cut the waters and change the course of his voice. He swallows and the weather changes with the levels of the sea. He sings songs, plays guitar and publishes stories, causing girls and women to feel things no once-two-year-old boy should make them feel.

How is it that this has happened? That one day he was splashing in the tub grabbing for his mother's breasts and sixteen short years later he is man? And is he a man? If you were to ask him surely he'd say yes, or perhaps almost. And what will change between here and there to make him so? What makes any of us adults? Only time? Gaining responsibility? Or losing something entirely different?

Tonight my son asked me to pull out his last front baby tooth. It's fairly loose and it's hanging about like absently tossed socks from his lampshade. Eating a snack he jammed it and it hurt, sent him reeling, crying. I hugged him to my chest. No, he didn't want that. He wanted me to pull it out, set him free. I pulled on it halfheartedly. He stared me straight in the eye. It wasn't enough. He willed me on. I pulled on it harder, my stomach rolling with the crunch and the resistance of the tooth. He continued to look me straight in the eye. I pulled with everything I had and still it wouldn't let go.

It's not ready, son, I said.

He was disappointed.

I'm not ready, son, I thought. Here, come back to my chest and rest here, cry here.

But he didn't.

Maybe I should put on that pot of tea now?

(HA! Joke's on me. He had nightmares last night and NEEDED me to lay in bed for hours and hold his hand. Guess I can hold off on that tea for a while! And anyhow, although I happen to be a parent, I'm still quite a ways from being an adult. I don't think I ever really want to develop a palate for tea.)

CRAZY CLOWN HEADS DO GIVE BIRTH

There was a moment of trepidation. A moment. And then she elbowed me, silly skeleton-like elbows she has, and what could I do?

I elbowed her back and said, OK, but you ask!

Two young girls elbowin' each other, none feeling the big one to ask.

My elbows working hers I chanced a look down at my size nine feet to her size three and realized it was gonna be me to ask if it was gonna be anyone. So I did.

Erm, ah, ya, hi, can ah, adults go in that thing?

The brown matted head had two slow eyes that took the longest blink in the history of the world. I think she slept in between the open/close/open sequence. I shook my head to stay awake, willing an answer that would satisfy. Ahhhhhh, sure, she managed uncertain, before she merged once again with the endless winking that would make up her sorry day.

Oh brown matted head girl, I wanted to say, come inside and bounce with us, but instead I watched my skinny skeleton child wiggle in through the vulva door that was the clown's mouth and I pressed my hips through, reverse birth, to the swollen tongue of clown that we would be jumping on.

It had never occurred to me ever in my life that I might jump in a moon bounce. I had just simply accepted it as against the natural order of things. Big person - no jumpy. Big person - no go-y in! But I was in and it was she and me, girl of skin and bones and woman of formidable girth. She poinged and I urdled.

There are unspoken rules to moon bounces. One has to let go of all inhibitions. One has to forget gravity, leave behind aches and pains, forsake all audience.

I'd like to say it was a blossoming of moon bounce, a slow emergence of flower for me, but it wasn't. Once that brown matted girl said I could go in it was all guffaw and snort and as high as I could go! It was me popcorning my daughter and her trying to popcorn me. It was all competition, not to see who could go the highest, the fasted or run circles (which just doesn't work so well for me) but it was a competition to see who would have to most fun.

Boobs know no gravity in the moon bounce. They float. Ass knows no jiggle. It's steal determination. Bones know no quake (until you exit). It's all limbs gone mad and maniacal laughter. It's all skeleton and bootylicious eye to eye in synchronized toss. It's all 9 and 39 on exactly the same page at exactly the same time.

I think my daughter was shocked to shit. Not that I went in with her. Not that I bounced. But that as we met in mid-air for that briefest of times the twisted look on my face mirrored that of hers. We were held there, in air, child to child, spirit indefatigable.

Sure, my boobs found gravity real fast as my sweaty self crawled through that vulva and my ankle got caught in the clown's perverse facial strapping. Sure, I smelled. Sure, my hair was nuts. And sure, all those other blond mom's looked sweet lined up neatly with legs crossed waiting for their toddler's to emerge from out of the clown's head, but after my skeleton child slipped through the opening and after we put on our shoes, my daughter, she...she held my hand.

That folks, is monumental.
That's worth feeling like a kid
time and time again.

(I am so sorry. I have fallen behind in my Reader and some sorry sap went and put Father's Day at the end of my busy week. I will do my best to make my way to your place over the next few days. And hey, all of you dads out there, proud grandpa's too (AnvilCloud!) Happy Father's Day!)