what I do best.

Tonight as I was driving home from a great and productive day at work, I found myself smiling a perfect smile, one that spread across my face an overflowing stream of joy. I was listening to Dave and Tim live at Radio City Music hall, Dave was talking about a soldier that had been injured in Iraq and when he was greeted a homecoming - it came with a loss of his pension because of a pre-existing condition of depression. How the depression correlates to the bomb hitting your tank I wondered too..... It wasn't that made me smile. It was what he said next "you have to honor the people that give their lives so completely to the cause, because....they BELIEVE"....Then I thought about last week when I stood in my store, hands on my hips, eyes searching past the glass at nothingness, searching for some comfort out on the brick, on the wind, somewhere, anywhere. I said aloud to myself and I guess Rachel too, "I wonder where Dave is today?" Later that hopeless afternoon as I struggled not to pass out in the heat that bore down on my body that had not kept down actual food in days, I was accosted by a very aggressive, very large, very vibrant butterfly. It flew at me like a dive bomber trying to intimidate the enemy. It continued to swoop and attack, flying all about my hair as though it were the leaves on a butterfly bush. It flew at me like it was coming home and couldn't get through the front door fast enough - fast enough to stand still and see that smile.....It was unwilling to move on from me, it relentlessly expressed it's combative devotion. Finally I realized that my one true love was in the wings and mind of that butterfly, he was comforting me on the bricks where I knew it was waiting for me. I smiled to myself as much of a smile as I could force and it fluttered my hair again, approving of my acknowledgment. I moved on feeling as though the visit had made it's point. Yeah. But No. As I walked on, just ten feet before the door to the shop, I looked up and squinted into the sunspot that dazzled on my eyelashes like diamonds in candlelight - and I saw him there - his face, looking inquisitively as the woman with a fierce side bun, squinting directly into the black abyss of perfect, that was his pupils. There he was, My DAVE..... Now for those of you who know me, you know me seeing Dave is no big deal - I kissed him passionately once upon a Summer night, left with a self portrait that still hangs in my living room....It's not a big deal because Dave and I have danced this dance for years and Charlottesville in the Mountains is where he calls home. The fact that I happen to live in my musical hero's hometown really is not a coincidence. Hello. Dave Matthews called me here himself and I know it and so does everyone who knows me. I have that kind of life - the one where your hero actually rubs elbows with you, just because of proximity....At any rate, it IS a big deal that he came when I called.....He answered back when I asked - where are you today Dave??? He was with me and my butterfly. Where else would he be???? I know that those of you who have never gazed once upon my face in the flesh will not understand the beauty of my spirit - how it is raw purity and unassuming. when I say where else would he be, I mean that because raw souls know when another purist is in need and they always come - that is the reason for my car smile which I told you about way back at the beginning of this masterpiece. .. I smiled because I am one of the lucky ones who know what it is to call, and know just as likely what it is to receive, and the that exchange is perfection, because we live life wanting to understand and spread the good word.... After I arrived at Dan's to drop of Matt's math book which he left at my house, I had a moment that made me have to bend, head to knees and breathe straight up through my calf muscles, a backwards breath at best, and one I hoped somehow I could make fit purely out of need and desperation. As I pulled around the corner, I saw her there playing in the green grass - she lit up like a firefly at midnight during a lunar eclipse. Her smile spread exactly like mine does as I access real joy. Her eyes said "Momma" first, them her freckles, than her mouth, than her arms and her hands, fingers - "MOMMA" As she jogged along side the B2FLMS, her hair blew behind her and I saw her running alongside of a pick up truck, a devastatingly handsome young man smiling back through the open window, leaning into all her glory to get the full effect. I had a massive panic attack dead on the spot. I threw my purse down on Dan's table and found him out back sitting and looking at the sunset - I put on one of my finest monologues for him, taking him down the path of how fast it is going to happen, she either goes good OR goes bad. It can happen so easily with a beautiful girl with an attitude of an undefeated prize fighter....It's happening again, ahhhhhhhhh - SHIT - FUCK AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. My daughter takes me to a place of Momma Cub that I never dreamed possible and I fear for all three of us - her, him and ME. And if he is remotely unworthy, a hint of sour on a tiny edge and I will take her out of his landscape faster that I can say "Young Man you do not want take me on." mmmmmmmmmmmmm my daughter is not for less than anything/anyone. And then when I went down the path to a place where I KNEW that would not happen with me on the watch and I began to breathe normally enough to sing. I sat down and recorded a birthday greeting for my son Brian who turned 22 today. He is with his Dad camping in Maine, not with his Ma on Vaginal Exit Remembrance Day and I admit it - I am resentful....So I did what I do and I sang him his lullaby, the one I sang religiously, everyday of his childhood. Fly me to the Moon. I sang my heart out into my cell phone and sent it off to the child who defined my new beginning and saved my very life at the moment of his birth... God do I adore my children beyond anything that I can ever conceive of imagining in my wildest dreams. I love my children and they know it as sure as Emma knows there is always a snake in the wood pile. They know because I talk to them in brush strokes and music notes. After that bout of panic passed in music, I then sang Angel from Montgomery Deb style and sent it to my wife. Earlier in the day I had called her, received her voice mail in lieu of real Mary and so out of spite I just continued to speak to her as though she were talking back or at the very least mulling it over. I went on and on, acknowledging all the hate in my wife missing heart.... And then, I sang HoneyHoney "don't know how" with Emma on the harmonies..... And then I told Dan that for an almost 42 year old, I have really snapped into myself and age is absolutely more than a number, it's perfecting. I feel like if I made love to a man right now - I would ruin his life forever if he could not convince me to do it again. When a woman my age finds herself, it can be ugly for those who cannot get close enough. Sorry haters, it is so abundantly and miraculously TRUE. The fine grain of all my work, experience and growth make the smooth, unbelievably smooth. Any self doubt of any kind has washed clean off me in the chaos and I have emerged in rare form. 42 is going to be a stellar year as I close the cave door tight on all my mistakes and misunderstandings. I hopefully will get to have the conversation that will free me completely and bring closure to a chapter (best selling future book) that was written under the influence...... Of.......the most self destructive inability to wave the white flag and feel love. But.....I am not in the business of convincing, it seems, I am in the business of I told you so's. And the told you so means that I have to achieve, no choice in the mix. I must and will know, as I always do, the loss is not mine because I gain at a rate that is truly inconceivable to most minds. And deep breath and smile. Not really sure where I began with this - I know that my grace began at 6am as I woke to another perfect school morning, followed up by a yard guy I know creeping along the fence on my neighbor's property - followed my some Jackson 5 I wanna be where you are - followed up by a three page letter to my co-workers letting them all know the new and improved Deb is clocking back in - to a creative revamp whirlwind with my friend and co-worker Rachel where we rocked our classy Diva all over the boutique - to tuna salad with sea salt potato chips, a cold ass diet pepsi and some very wrong chocolate chip cookies in the perfect sunlight - to a visit from my friend and wise owl David (while he fanned himself southern Belles style) - to all of what I told you after - to a phone call from my heartbroken Cali girl Sara whose evil and good is exactly like mine ten years minor, the distance between means little to the 15 years we put in. To Now. Right this second. I am smiling again. It happens a lot. It is a good place to be in, my place. If you are welcome and a regular, you will feel a protection that you will never ever ever ever doubt. If I invest in you and you are a wanter of investment - you will surpass the doubters who will then doubt why they ever doubted or if in fact they did. If I love you, really love you, you know what that means and you know that even I don't have the words. Yesssssssssss Liz, I am in love with myself and in deeper than a few weeks ago - this romance is blooming like the sunflower in the yard. And that is good. Really really good, because I am really really lucky. Lucky to have earned all that I have by a shit ton of hard work and commitment. Half assed efforts get half ass results, period. This has been a big day, I have entered the ballroom and my dress is the unique one in the room. Life requires that you hurt to grow. I have hurt a lot my entire lifetime, but as of late a whole lot as I gaze upon the divorce file that sits alongside on my Grandfathers desk where i sit here typing. I said before in a blog - all the stuff before was muscle work for now. I hurt unbearably lately - have had to give up when I don't on two men. Endured finding that what is the other half, is sometimes still not enough. My light has flickered in the storm. sigh. But life requires that we hurt in order to grow - we learn to apply - we self preserve even when we don't want to. Humph - wow. And so anyways - yeah I sing. I sold all my clothes to get rid of your smell, I smashed all the clocks that had the right time to telllll me how longgg it has been since we parted ways - don't know how to leave you when I want to stay. So go go go go on without me now, lose me in the crowd. Oh I am so so so slow moving like the south, the words stuck in my mouth. And I sing it better than her if only you could catch me on a stool in front of a microphone, a cigarette burning in one hand and brown liquor in the other. And so I smile because that is what I do best, after I sing, after I grow,after I cry.