Looking Back, Looking Forward, Keeping the Faith

Lately I have been off-center, a wonky situation at work, the accidental (although they say there are no "accidents") discovery of a long-rumored, but never believed, suicide.  Something which happened well over 40 years ago just hit me upside the head and knocked me askew.  Ever since reading the report, discovered online of all places, the phrase "self-inflicted wound" keeps drumming in my head.  It has taken place there along with the evil dwarf OFU, who regularly makes his presence known.  Although his appearances are fewer and fewer these days, thank God, but still he does come out to play once in a while.  Merrily tap dancing inside my head, laughing his evil cackle and yelling in his raspy voice "YOU?  Happy?  Neverrrrrr!"  The best way to shut him up is to start writing about what is bothering me at the moment, hence my most recent post, Three, about me and my two cousins. I always thought of them as Beauty and Brain, my oldest cousin, my godmother was beauty personified.  She had the kind of beauty that took people's breath away when they first saw her.  The thing was she was also funny, bright, good-hearted, kind.  She was not stuck-up or arrogant, she was truly one of the nicest people you could know.

My second oldest cousin was a brainiac, so, so smart and beautiful.  I really spent very very little time her, but she was a lot of fun when we did get together, plus she also deciphered my math homework during one visit (we were then already living in the States) and helped me conquer fractions and those math problems from hell (at least for me) that went something like if a train leaves the station going south at 65 mph and another train leaves going north at 45 mph, bla, bla, bla or if Bobby buys 10 oranges at 10 cents a pound and Nancy buys 3 apples at 5 cents a pound, bla, bla, bla.  I am the daughter and granddaughter of people who could solve complex mathematical problems in their heads, but God skipped that gene when putting me together.  It wasn't that I didn't want to learn, I just didn't care to.  Did not give a fig about if a train left a station at 9:00 in the morning, going north at 60 mph and another train left a station at 10:45 in the morning, going south at 50 mph, when would they cross paths?  Who cares?  I wanted to know where they were going, who was on the train, what they were wearing and would there be shopping and lunch involved when whoever got on the trains got to wherever they were going and would breakfast or brunch be served on said trains?  So, kudos to her for getting me through those math problems from hell.

Years later my Dad figured out how to get me to do percentages, he simply put a dollar sign in there and voila, I could solve them like a champ.  By that time, I had discovered the magic of X percent off in stores.  To this day when something is X percent off, I imagine it as something I've really wanted for a long time and now I can maybe get more than one because it's on sale.  My mind works in mysterious ways.  I remember my grandfather (my Mom's dad) adding up huge sums in his head, while I worked diligently at solving them with paper and pencil and when I (finally) finished my jaw would drop at his having gotten the same answer in like a nano-second!  How DID he do that???  My father was the same way.  I had math genius on both sides of my gene pool, but I really did not get that particular gene. I got the artsy, creative writing, chasing fireflies because I believed there were fairies riding on them gene.

At any rate, back to my initial point, the wonkiness at work and the discovery of the possibility of someone I loved  very much putting a gun to her head and ending it all, have really knocked me off center.  The whiny bitters, who I firmly believe are companions to the dementors from Harry Potter, started flying around my head, cackling and cawing, flapping ever closer to my happy.  I tend to be a glass half full type, but this time around the glass was almost empty, cracked and leaking, not a good place to be for me.  I know some people enjoy going about with a little cloud of gloom and doom perpetually over their head.  Not me.  Whenever it is raining and people moan and groan about it, I'll think well, the plants are getting a good soaking and won't they be happy, plus now the ground will be nice and soft for planting more stuff in the garden.  Or, if it's a rainy weekend (which I happen to love), I will sketch, paint, read and make soup and corn muffins.  This attitude tends to tick the naysayers off.

My luck is that I was raised by positive-outlook people who, no matter how daunting their situation just got up in the morning and went for it, with a smile on their face and the attitude of "It is going to be alright" and "I can handle this and it will be great."  They are gone, but I am still surrounded by positive-vibes people.  My friend and Faboo Fleaing Magical Fairy GodMother Steph is one of those.  (Note, the term Fairy GodMother shall henceforth be denoted as "FGM.")  There is also FGM Martha a/k/a She of the Whimbles.  Last, but not least is FGM Ruby.  Whenever the whiny bitters loom, I call one or sometimes all three of them and invariably come away feeling much better and ready to tackle the world once more.  There's also my "Talley Peeps."  These five wonderful  people help keep me centered and on course.  They love me "as is" and encourage me to become the best me possible.  That is one heck of a combo right there.  Lately I have been waffling, letting the uncertainty of the job situation get to me.  Wondering if, in fact, my cousin did one day just decide to end it all, the "why" of it just keeps slamming around in my head.  I wrote my last post about it, spent yesterday reading and sketching, but still thinking about it.  Made a great Italian dinner last night and opened a bottle of very good wine with it, enjoyed the food and wine, but still the "why would she do this" was tap dancing in my head, why, why, why.

This morning I woke up and decided, okay, enough.  This happened over 40 years ago, I am obsessing over something that (1) I had no control over whatsoever, I was a child when it happened; (2) anyone that was even remotely connected to the investigation is either dead or really, really old by now; and (3) I need to do something productive, write, paint, clean, do the laundry, bake, if I am to obsess over the why, I need something productive to come out of it, or else it will be 10 at night, the weekend will be over and phhhht, I will have done zip.  So, I opened my blinds and let the light in, it's a beautiful day.  The sun is shining and the sky is true-blue.  I decided to get off my duff and do SOMETHING, like writing more of my beloved Whimble stories, which I then turn over to FGM Martha and she works her magic and turns them into absolutely fabulous little gems.  Or painting.  While on vacation last month I actually painted something.  On a huge canvas.  It's a very simple painting, really. Inspired by a Valentine card I absolutely love and carry around with me, because it's such a beautiful, happy card.  Smooshing paint onto canvas, getting paint splattered on my clothes, the scent of paint in the air, did my soul good.  I loved the end result so much, it now hangs in my bedroom and is the first thing I see when I open my eyes.  It makes my heart happy every single day.

I need to remember to keep the faith, look for the good, the beautiful, like the beautiful roses I buy for my cocoon every weekend, my cat greeting me with a huge yawn showing off those sharp little teeth and looking at me as if saying "Hey, you're home!  Perfect timing, just finished my nap and am ready for a snackie!"  The little every day blessings of life.  Sitting down on my comfy sofa for morning prayer, cafe con leche in one hand, cat at my side.  Going to work.  In a time when a great number of people are out of a job, what a blessing it is to know you have a job, even if the people around you are annoying as all get-out, you have a job, you are getting a paycheck.  Coming home to a clean, fresh bed and sweet-smelling cocoon, God bless whoever invented lemon-scented Pine Sol and Fresh Step cat litter.  Little things.  Little blessed things.  I got an email from a friend the other day, someone I rarely see and you'll know why in a second.  She was kvetching because her yearly vacation in Europe is a no-go this year.  She had to settle for a week's stay at a Caribbean resort and she was complaining about it.  My response?  "It's all perspective.  Look at it this way, you could be living in Syria."  She did not appreciate this.  I can't deal with people who continually focus on what they don't have and wish they did, instead of on what they have right in front of their eyes.

My aunt, someone I do love very much although I walked away from her, was like that.  She continually focused on her daughter's death (my cousin mentioned above, who was also my godmother).  Now, my godmother's death was tragic.  She had, or so it seemed, everything going for her.  Her children, family, health, she was getting her degree and then one day, it was all over, just like that.  Once when my aunt was visiting us with her grandchildren, she told my Mom she would have chosen to lose her child at birth, like my Mom lost my sister, than to lose her after seeing her grow up.  My Mom just hugged me and said "But you have her children, that is her living in them."  That was my Mom's way of looking at the world.  To me it was like my aunt was competing with my Mom, seeing who was in the most pain.  What hurt the most, carrying a child within you for nine months, making plans for it, feeling it grow and move inside your body, looking forward to bringing the baby home and then coming home without the baby, or having that child, seeing it grow up and then the child dying young.  What the heck?  I'm guessing both situations hurt like hell.  But at least in my aunt's case, she had her grandchildren.  What a marvelous gift and blessing.  But my aunt did not see having my godmother's children as such a gift.  At the fact that her daughter did, indeed, live on in them.  Years later, all grown up, they married really wonderful people and had beautiful, healthy, joy-filled children.  My aunt did not see it that way.  She saw it as her daughter was not here to see her children and grandchildren.  She continually harped on that and on my parents having died and not leaving me any money. Like that was really their job, to leave me money.  Not giving me a wonderful, mostly happy, exceedingly long childhood.  She did not see that.  She just saw that they did not leave me money.  My godmother's death and my not having inherited money.  Those were her two pet subjects to harp on the minute I got home.  It can be frustrating and soul-numbing living with someone like that.  Try as hard as you might, you will never get them to see the good side.  They will always focus on the dark, on the lost, on the absence and sometimes you start seeing the world through their eyes.  Scary.

While living with her there came a day when I was feeling really, really tired and I remember being in my room and thinking, if I were to close my eyes and just let go, would it be so bad?  That was around the time she told me I had to leave her house by Fall and I would never find a place which allowed me to keep my beloved felines, so I was going to have to, in her words, "kill them all, except maybe one or two."  She came THISCLOSE to defeating me in those days.  That afternoon, when I thought maybe if I close my eyes and just let go, something inside me snapped.  Maybe it was my backbone which had been seriously MIA, snapping back into place. I don't know.  All I know is, something made me get up, take a shower, get dressed and go get a newspaper.  The next day at work (didn't have a computer at home back then) I went on the internet looking for apartments.  By the end of the week I had three apartment interviews lined up, all allowed pets.  A week later I had signed the lease on my cocoon, cats and all.  Two weeks later I moved out.  I remember telling her I had just leased an apartment and her saying I couldn't leave, she had said I could stay until September.  This all took place in June 2004.

I moved into my little apartment at the end of June.  I took a Friday off from work.  Didn't have a lot to move, actually, at least furniture wise.  Boxes I had plenty of, having put everything in storage from my home where I'd lived with my parents.  I had given away all of my furniture from that home.  The only furniture I had was my armoire, two little round tables, the kind you screw the legs into and then put a little tablecloth over and my mattress set, which took a battle and a half for me to actually take, as it was my aunt's and she said she needed it. I could damn well buy a new one.  She knew full well the costs of the move were taking up pretty much all my budget and I could not afford it.  I figured after six years of paying her rent, utilities and chauffeuring her around, I had earned that mattress set (and then some), come hell or high water, I was taking it.  My cousin, her granddaughter, stepped in and got her to, grudgingly, let me have it.  Mind you, she had a spanking new mattress set in her bedroom, but that was my aunt for you.  Control at all costs.  My first weekend at home was the 4th of July weekend, my parents' wedding anniversary was July 2nd, so their anniversary always rolled into the 4th of July celebration.  I couldn't help but think they were looking out for me from Heaven, happy I was cocooning in my new nest on this most special of holidays for us.

Sometimes we forget that, really, the only one in control of your destiny is you.  Well, you and God, but let's not get into a theological discussion.  I believe we have free will, we get to choose (most of the time).  The Father gently nudges us (some call it gut instinct) in the right direction and sometimes we listen, sometimes we don't.  Sometimes, I am sure, He really wants to reach down and smack us upside the head.  In my case, I know that has to have happened on many, many occasions.  There were times during my Mom's illness that I had very loud (and one-sided) arguments with the Father.  In our garden.  It's a wonder my Dad and our neighbors (we have always been blessed with excellent neighbors and friends) didn't have me Baker Acted.  Because I would kneel on the grass and yell "Why?" at the top of my lungs. There was one day when we were in the middle of a police investigation, my Mom was in the hospital because her blood counts had plummeted, my uncle was in CCU in the same hospital having been felled by a massive heart attack and I just couldn't take it all in.  Going to the hospital with my Dad, I just started shaking and crying and my Dad pulled over, hugged me and said "This will pass."  And it did.  Once more we walked through hell and came out the other side.  Which is what I have to remember.

Maybe that afternoon when I thought of letting go, that was my Dad holding me close once more, helping my backbone snap back into place.  Reminding me everything passes, we come out on the other side.  Life is good.  You just have to look for the good in it.  My "problems" are gnat-sized compared to what others are going through.  Keep it all in perspective.  I have always had the blessing of employment, have kept my cocoon, I just have to remember to secure it.  And, yes, I moved on.  My first night my FGM Ruby showed up at my door with the most beautiful sleigh bed ever, in went my mattress set.  A few weeks after that she showed up with my beautiful pink-marble topped night table.  By Christmas I was able to buy my sofa, big comfy chair and dining table with four chairs.  I made my nest.  A path has always been shown to me.  What is that saying about having an angel on your shoulder?  Sometimes I think I have an army.

I need to remember, when the gloom and dooms circle, to have faith.  Believe and have faith.  Because every single time my existence has been threatened, I have been put on a new path.  And that path has always been steady and true.  On it I have discovered friendship, fabulous FGMs, love, laughter.  The freedom to let my imagination fly.  A job which at times makes me want to scream, but still affords me the ability to pay for my cocoon, my car, keep a roof over my head, food on the table and plenty of snackies for Bella Bella Smokey Noella, who is at this moment licking her whiskers after snarfing on tuna.  This morning she was being such a ham, I grabbed her and gave her a big kiss on her fuzzy snoot.  She did not appreciate my Colgate minty-fresh breath and wriggled out of my grasp, giving me disgusted looks from the middle of the bed while giving herself a thorough grooming.  My faith tells me something better is just around the corner, things will be as they must and they will be wonderful, to see the blessings all around me, my friemily, these keep me centered and keep me on track.

So, enough with the venting and writing, time to go create ...

Until next time, be safe, be blessed, be loved.

Once We Were Three

Once we were three granddaughters. Beauty, Brain and Toad.  Brain was never around much, she lived far away.  But Beauty and Toad were close and spent a lot of time together.  Toad would be me.  It has been a harrowing week for me, there have been layoffs at my office, just as I was starting to feel a bit more secure, the job no longer seeming as daunting, this started.  I have to admit I have been freaking out, worrying.  Writing helps, which is how I wound up on the internet the other night when I couldn't sleep.  For some odd reason I googled your name and up you popped.  Well, not you.  That would be kind of difficult, seeing as to how you've been gone for, oh, let me see, 44 years.  Good lord, that is a lifetime and then some.  But there you were, your name splashed in big bold letters across my computer screen.  A hearing transcript, of all things, who knew those things were public?  The web, a double-edged sword.  I was so startled, but read it just the same and now, now I wish I hadn't.  It has brought back that awful day when the phone rang and we learned you were in the hospital and then a few days later, an even worse day.  You had died.

The world changed that day.  You were gone.  It was weird enough losing my sister two years earlier, months of looking forward to the baby, going to the doctor with Mom, hearing her little heartbeat inside Mom, thump, thump, thumping away so very, very fast.  Feeling her move.  How I loved snuggling up to Mom, putting my head and hand on her tummy, feeling her kick.  I must have driven her nuts doing that, but how I loved feeling that baby, hearing her.  Once she poked or kicked, a little fist or foot just popped up, you could see it jutting out on Mom's tummy and I thought it was the most marvelous thing.  I thought it was the baby's way of saying "I am here!  I am here!"  All those dreams and wonderful plans, and then no baby.  That night when Daddy came home from the hospital, his eyes red, and he and Grandmother were talking in low voices and then he told me the baby was a girl, which Mom and I had said all along, only she was very, very sick.  That Mom was fine, but the baby was going to Heaven and I told him he had to go back to the hospital and tell those idiot doctors to put the baby in an incubator, then she would be fine.  But she wasn't and Mom came home with no baby.  Mom looking so calm, serene and sad at the same time.  She would hug me and tell me we were going to be fine, we now had our very own angel in Heaven. Only I didn't want an angel, I wanted my baby sister.  That was in January, early January.  I remember Mom telling me the nights are most beautiful in January, the stars shine the brightest.  We would sit out on the terrace at night and look up at the stars and she'd say "You see that one twinkling really bright way, way up there?  That's our little angel saying hello."  She'd tell me how the moon would sing her lullabies and tell her bedtime stories, so she would have sweet dreams, just like she and Grandfather told me stories.

Daddy decided to take us across the country to visit you that summer.  He knew that seeing you would make Mom happy and so we were off.  Mom and Daddy in the front seat, me in the back sitting between Grandmother and Grandfather.  Mom was in charge of the map, Daddy happily ignoring her directions, until he really ticked her off and she pitched the map out the window.  Which is how we wound up spending the night in a little town's only hotel, where the next day we had the best breakfast ever and our first taste of grits.  I'm still a fan.  The next day we arrived at your house, where we finally got to meet your babies, all huge eyes and shy smiles. Daddy filming the reunion with his Super 8 camera.  I wish I still had those movies, but they were damaged in one of our moves.  There was a scene with Mom sitting on a chair, you on her lap, me on your lap and one of your babies on my lap, wriggling away to swipe a lollipop.  Our grandparents looking on beaming and your father rolling his eyes because we were all acting silly.  We all looked so happy, relaxed, we were where we belonged.  We were whole, again.  I wish there was a photo.

Mom and Daddy returned home a few days later with Grandmother.  Grandfather and I stayed behind with you.  We spent the rest of the summer there, with you and your babies.  It was heaven spending time with you and it was hell because your mother had morphed into this harpy, who continually screamed at you, calling you horrible names.  She actually punished you and me.  Her favorite punishment was to make us scrub all of the doors in the house.  And you, you just bowed your head and said nothing.  You never talked back to her.  I remember when I was back home and I told Mom about this, she could not believe that your mom (her sister) made us scrub the doors all the time.  You had started divorce proceedings, but were still in love with your husband, keeping his name and yours written on a piece of paper, in a glass filled with clear water, next to a little statue of a saint, I forget which one.  We went to Mass every Sunday and you could not sit with us, but had to stand at the back of the church, because you were getting a divorce and still you went to Mass.  I would have told them to f' off.  (Years and years, decades, later, I actually did and soon afterwards I left what remained of my family behind.  My parents were gone by then.)  I think that is when I started to dislike church, politics, hypocrites.  How could the priests say God was love and then turn around and treat you like a second-rate citizen, denying you communion and to sit with your family at Mass?  Of course now, I realize a lot of it, if not all, was probably your mother's doing.  Her way of punishing you.  I have no idea why.  I will never understand the way her mind worked.  And yet, I loved her then, I love her now.  So did you.

Parts of that summer were magical.  Going for walks in the woods with you, Grandfather and your babies.  On picnics in that big meadow, the kids riding along in a little red wagon.  You taught me to sing the entire Sound of Music score.  We'd walk into town singing at the top of our lungs.  Grandfather busting his buttons, happy to be with his two granddaughters, his eldest and his youngest, and great-grandchildren.  We would sit on the back porch late at night, after the babies had been tucked into bed, Grandfather and you spinning fairy tales.  You helped me catch fireflies and put them in big jars with screw tops which we'd punched holes in.  You would always make me set them free before going to sleep, saying the fairies needed them to ride on because they could only fly short distances.  If we kept the fireflies, the fairies wouldn't have them to fly on and then when their wings grew tired, they'd fall and hurt themselves.  I have been enchanted with fireflies ever since, always picturing tiny fairies riding on them.  You kept this wonderful smelling soap in your bathroom and you let me wear your fluffy slippers, the red ones trimmed with marabou feathers.  Their shade of red exactly matched the towels in your bathroom.  Oh, how you loved that color of red, a true red.  You said it was the color of Christmas. You loved roses, white roses.  A love of roses, I believe, is part of our genetic make-up.  I loved spending time with you, my beautiful, beautiful fairy godmother.

Do you know I used to believe you were a real fairy godmother?  You were so beautiful and you loved me, the toad.  As far as I was concerned, you were a real fairy and you sprouted wings after I fell asleep, then went to visit the fairies.  You were such a joy in my life.  You made a rotund, buck-toothed toad feel like a beautiful princess and taught me ballet in the woods, while Grandfather stood watch as you taught me to plié, stretch my arms gracefully over my head and twirl. I loved to twirl.  I still remember those early morning ballet lessons.  Oh, how I loved you.  I hope you knew that.

Your husband came to visit you and the children during that summer and one time you went for a walk with him and came back looking so happy.  You would talk about him to Grandfather and there was this look on your face, you loved him, I could tell by the way your face changed when you talked about him, your voice was lilting when you would describe him to Grandfather.  When he visited, you just beamed.  Something your parents did not appreciate.  And when he went away, I asked you if you thought things would be okay between you and you looked so sad and said, no, you didn't think so.  The day Grandfather and I left, you hugged me so, so tight and said good-bye with such finality.  I remember starting to cry and when Grandfather asked me why, I told him I knew I would never see you again.  There was just something in the way you held me and the way you said good-bye.  I was cold for days and days afterwards.  Even when we got home.  I just, somehow, knew.

Which is why the day the first phone call came in, I just knew, it was a matter of time.  And then you were gone.  Everything shrouded in mystery, lies and deceit.  I didn't know for years how you really had died.  Mom finally told me part of the story one day at the cemetery.  We had gone to put flowers on Grandfather's grave and we were sitting there talking and it just came out.  You had been killed in a hunting accident.  I was still in my teens, still in school, when Mom told me.  It was years and years later, I was out of college, visiting one of our favorite relatives, when I heard another version.  She was moving out of her apartment and in with one of her children.  It was she who told me that family rumor had it you had taken your life.  Only she didn't believe it.  Neither did I.  You loved your children way too much to do that.  They were your life.  You were studying for your degree, living at the university, your parents had the babies and you saw them on weekends and holidays when you came home.  I have a letter from you, written during that time.  You had met a boy and Grandmother and Mom had sent you Cuban coffee, a little coffeemaker and some pretty coffee cups, because he loved Cuban coffee.  And there is a photograph of you taken during that last winter.  You are wearing a brown jacket, trimmed in fur and red pants.  You're standing next to some bushes, your hair blowing in the wind, snow was starting to fall and you look happy, as if you were standing on the brink of something wonderful.  I remember seeing that photo and being so happy because I thought maybe, maybe this meant you were going to be okay.  You look so happy in that picture.

But you weren't okay, were you?  That phone call still came and then you were gone.  Our family was never quite the same afterwards.  A vital part of us was gone, missing.  It was like losing a limb.  Your mother made it out like she was the one who lost the most.  But, you know, we all lost.  My parents lost a beloved niece.  My grandparents, their firstborn granddaughter.  Your children lost their mom, and, oh, my love, how they needed you.  And I, I lost my fairy godmother.  A few years later, Grandmother and I spent two weeks in summer with your parents.  We didn't see the kids, it wasn't their time to visit.  You were not to be mentioned during our visit, not even your name.  It was like you had not existed.  Those were two of the oddest weeks of my life and believe me, I've had a few odd weeks in my time, but those two were definitely weird.  I wanted to talk about you, see your things, read your books, but there was nothing remaining of you. Not even a photograph.  At home, we talked about you, about how much fun I'd had with you, how much we missed you, your laughter.  But in your parents' house, it was like you were never there.  Once I mentioned you, said something like how much I had loved walking in the woods with you and your mother raised her finger and said to be quiet, that I didn't know what I was talking about.

I grew up.  Our grandparents died.  Then my parents. I walked away from the rest of the family.  Long story, not going into it because what would be the point.  But, oh, I remember you, the memories of playing dress-up with you when I was little and our family still intact, of those summer nights on the porch listening to you and Grandfather spinning fairy tales long into the night, singing "doe, a deer, a female deer, ray a drop of golden sun" at the top of our lungs, all those golden moments keeping you alive.  Always with the question of what really happened to you, who had been there, seen you, that could tell me the truth.  Not that I ever found anyone and your mother refused to talk about it.  But I never believed you would take your life.  Not for one second.

Only now it's there in black and white.  I first read it here at home.  The next day I looked it up again at the office.  Still there.  Big as life.  Self-inflicted wound.  I printed it out and drove home with those words ringing in my head.  It still doesn't make sense.  I still don't believe it.  It just doesn't have any logic.  Why, why, why would you do that?  Who were they protecting by letting that be stated?  What really happened?

When something doesn't make sense, they say we only see bits and pieces, God sees the entire picture.  I place my faith in that.  In the hope that one day, someday, all of this will make sense and it will all coalesce into something grand and beautiful and we will marvel and go "Oh, NOW it all makes sense and it is beautiful!"  And I hope, somehow, you have seen your children grow up, they both married truly special people.  That you have seen your grandchildren, who are such joys.  Especially your firstborn grandchild.  The first time I saw that baby, it was like seeing a little piece of you, the same coloring, the same eyes.  Your grandchildren, pure joy.  They must be almost all grown up by now.  I wish them all the joy and beauty life has to offer, wish they had known you. 

When I think about those long-ago days, when we were still in our birth country, those memories seem to be wrapped in tulle.  They are happy, beautiful memories of family, friends, Mom and Daddy dancing down the long hallway of our beach house, dressed to the nines ready to go out on the town, days at the beach, floating in that crystal clear water, you riding a bike with me perched on the handlebars, both of us laughing out loud and Daddy driving the car behind, just in case we got tired, making sure we were okay.  Nights on the terrace of our beach house, looking up at the stars that seemed to cover the night sky and shone brighter than diamonds.  Of the power going out and lighting candles, Grandfather playing his violin and then making shadow puppets on the wall.  Of you dressing me up.  Memories of sitting on the porch, on your lap, while some young Romeo visited you.  Grandmother and Grandfather looking on from the living room, front door open.  You would put a little bit of lipstick, a soft peach color, on me and I felt so grown-up.  I think of those memories like the pretty patterns that form, break apart and form into new patterns when you look through a kaleidoscope.  It was a bubble world, safe, loving, perfect.  Until it was smashed to pieces and no matter how hard the grown-ups tried, they could not put it back together.

I haven't seen a firefly in a very long time, but every time I see a fairy I think of you.  Once we were three.  Beauty, Brain and Toad.