Wildflower

Last night I posted a quirky little thing on my Facebook.

Let's see how forthcoming my Facebook friends are.... and if they are paying attention.....Leave a 1 word comment that you think best describes me using the THIRD letter of YOUR first name. No repeats. It can only be 1 word. Then copy and paste this post on your wall so I can leave a word about you ! This should be interesting !

I got some really sweet words.

Uplifting, inspiring, racy, mysterious, irresistible,scintillating (great word!) but the best one came from my oldest friend.  We met 30 years ago in 3rd grade. Unknowingly, our baby sisters were making fast friends as well.  Soon, the four of us were an unstoppable force of curiosity and wonder.  Year after year, we explored our world together and remained close though our parents warned that when we grew up we'd grow apart.  

And it happened. In our late 20's, we were all married and enjoyed time together.  After Mark and I split, it didn't feel as comfortable.  Soon I was off to Chicago and other places.  I carried on alone while they built strong families and lives.  Carey warned that maybe they all thought I was the lucky one and maybe their marriages were not as strong or as happy as I thought.  Carey divorced her husband a few months later.  The Wicker Sisters have remained married and Carey has since remarried.  I'm the only single.  

I added the Wicker Sisters some time ago, but the messages have been few.  Crissy mostly wrote to ask about Carey and Dawn didn't respond to any of the messages I left on her wall.  I assumed there were hard feelings.  It happens. We grew up, after all.

So I find that Dawn has left a comment...

She wrote Wildflower=beautiful and unique yet an unchained soul.

And I dance in that.  It is true and fair and real of me.  I wish I could call her and bare myself to her.  I wish she would bare herself to me.  I miss the honesty of that early friendship but I refrain.  Time might make it awkward. 

My life is different.  I am different.  I've learned to talk to myself when I cannot talk to anyone else.  Sometimes it's safer that way.  

Mascara Tears

My earliest childhood memory is of my Aunt Janet and I lying on a fake black leather couch.  It was almost sunset and she was  crying mascara tears.  I don't think I could talk because no words were uttered but I understood that she was sad and I felt sad with her.  Night slipped in and her first husband showed up and turned on the kitchen light.  She stood and they spoke for a moment.  He cleared out and she lifted me off the couch and took me to bed with her.  She cried and I laid quietly with her through the night.  She was not a sad person and I believe this to be only one of maybe three times that I ever saw her cry.
My Aunt Janet was my hero because as a child, she was the only truly happy woman I knew.  Maybe because she was the only one who wasn't married.  She was the only one that didn't answer to a man and I believed this was why the other women in my life seemed a bit lifeless compared to her.  Long before Cher said it, Aunt Janet believed men were nice but not essential. She lived alone, made her own money and dated a lot.  She wore clothes that were nasty tight and short, rode with the wind in her hair and her past to her back.  She was all about the moment and I simply adored her.
The Single Aunt Janet was always my favorite though that Aunt Janet has been long gone for a number of years replaced with marriage and religion.  She's made many attempts to lead me to church.  Jesus and I have a good laugh over it.  All of that is lost in translation with me but her early message to me is still clear: being in control and living in the here and now are important.
I tried marriage a couple of times myself.
My first marriage was a quick blink to a man I share a beautiful daughter with.  She chose to live with him at the beginning of her freshman year of high school.  I was a single mother for so long that a year later, I am still trying to figure out what to do with myself.
My second marriage looked good on paper and in photos.  Not in my mind or in my heart. 
That was almost ten years ago.
I haven't given up on love but at the same time, I haven't given up on my own identity.
I still live by my own set of rules.
I like control.
Until now.
I have stumbled across someone who can bend me to his will.
It kind of thrills me...