Category Archives: Girl meets Boy

March 27, 2013 · 6:02 am

And cardboard cut-outs melt in the rain.

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We’ll stop purposely leaving high heels on subways with our name & number tucked into the bottom, stitched in our best cursive, hoping that someone will find us in a fairy tale fashion.

We’ll stop nodding our heads in agreement over conversations caked with heavy laughter and future plans when we hear our girlfriends say with confidence, “They aren’t out there.”

We’ll refuse to be another lamp switched off in a town already grown too dark. We’ll wrap our hair in buns, wrap our hands around warm mugs, and wrap our prayers around a God who simply wants to whisper, “They are out there.”

 

The good guys.

A rarity, so we’ve been told. Sitting alongside fossils in the “Museum of Things We’re on the Brink of Losing for Good.” Pinned somewhere between the ones who don’t know how to value what they have in their arms and the ones who balance several tiny waists at one time.

The good guys. They are noble. Honest. True. They don’t lust over our legs before looking into our eyes and seeing Hints of Hazel and Gold say, “We are looking for so much more. We came here looking for so much more.”

They are out there. And they get it: There are Things to Chase in this Lifetime.

The Affection of a Good Girl. The Heart and Trust of a Mama that used to sew that Girl’s dresses. The Approval of a Daddy that once lifted that Girl up to the ceiling, up to the solar system.

They are kind. Loyal. They wring passion from the dreams that once hung on their Little Boy walls. They harness morals and values, roping them into their dreams for a family that still believes in dinners at 6pm and king-sized beds with two tousled heads of hair and five huddled bodies when the lightning and thunder roll through.

They are out there and they far outstretch the expectations we’ve pent up for them in beauty magazines and chic-lit rule books: Hold the door open. Bring her flowers. Tell her she is beautiful even with no makeup on. Never, never, NEVER tell her she looks fat in that.  They take our chivalrous boxes and break right out. They transform the term Gentleman as if they’ve been asked to recreate the Classic Mona Lisa Smile.

They are the ones who ask about the longer days or know when not to bring it up; they treat us as we are: beautiful girls who only want one set of eyes upon us. One stubbled cheek to kiss. One pair of arms to fold us in when Tragedy comes to Huff & Puff & Blow our Hearts Down. Beautiful girls unafraid to say that if there be lipstick on his collar, we want it to be ours. Only, only the burlesque shades of a woman that adores that man too deeply to declare it with silly, stuffy, dictionary vocabulary.

They are out there and they’ll say it straight to us, “I’m far from perfect. I’ve got this going on, and this happened last month. I am dealing with this… and that stemmed from this.” Because we were never looking for perfect. And cardboard cut-outs melt in the rain. But they’ll wrap us up in blankets, our legs slung over their lap, and they’ll tell us they need a partner, a halfway, a commitment. A Thick & Thin Kind of Deal.

They are out there. Growing the bones of one-day fathers, harvesting the strength it takes to be a provider, learning what it means to Hold a Girl’s Hand Down an Earthly Wedding Aisle and far Into an “Earth”less Forever that we only close our eyes to imagine on days when the Metro runs late. They are out there, coming to their knees for a Maker who still craves to do so much more than a good work in them. A stunning work. An unspeakable, sacred work in his Good, Good Men.  Making them ready for the day when paths take to crossing and life takes to shifting us from the things we learned of fairytale love when we first cracked open books that taught us how to lose shoes and find princes.

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November 7, 2012 · 10:00 am

For the win: I want to love your face off.

To my one day, some day husband–

We are bound to look absolutely homeless for that first glorious year of marriage. In the skinny of February and the bulk of April, we’ll parade proudly in half-ironed clothing in search of sushi palaces on the days when frying pans just won’t do. And we’ll learn the art of waking up to one another. And morning sounds. And food that spreads beyond pancakes and grilled cheeses (because yes, that is all I can offer you right now).

And we’ll learn & relearn & rerelearn what it means to love one another unconditionally, even when we break each other.

I come with that promise:

that I will never try to, nor will I mean to, but I promise that I will break you at some point. Without planning. Without intention. Because that is what human beings do. As solidly as we eat & pray & worry & swallow, we break each other with things we don’t mean to do. It comes with flesh. It comes with humanness. We hurt feelings. We get real snarky. We find just how the guts seep out when we tell the whole truth to the someone who holds us for all the fragile we are beneath thicker skin.

But back to us… and that glorious stage of homeless chic.

Post me saying I will never get out of my wedding dress. Post you telling me that I am going to get cluttered in the Crazy Pile for traipsing around town in white & lace & cowboy boots. Post me yelling, I DON’T CARE. Post you telling me that you refuse to have our very first “married” fight over whether I will or will not turn my wedding dress into a school uniform.

All to say this: I’ve never been so good at ironing.

My clothes tend to clump instead of fold. I live in a world where Tide To Go pens are as essential as ice scrapers in the grey of a New England Winter. And not a single one of these things–the ironing, the folding, the bleaching or lack of it– will make me any ounce better for you. Not so much, not even close, to the ways in which I am training my heart to devour you whole when you come.

Plain truth. Square point. For the win: I want to love your face off.

I want to love you so hard that your eyes & your nose & your mouth wonder what it will be like when they fall on the floor and break from exhaustion. I want no boundaries when it comes to loving you. I want your choices from me for the morning to be a) a lot of love b) a ton of love c) so much love you barely stinking stand it d) all of the above. I promise to stick to those options– even on the days when my pants don’t fit right & I am feeling quite like Lindsay Lohan when she stands in McDonald’s lines and harasses the workers with the big yellow arches on their visors.

And I expect the same out of you.

Yes, I come with expectations.

That you will honor me. That you will cherish me. That you will understand my worth. That you will challenge me. That you won’t treat me as the lesser of you. Because it has taken me a slew of Longer Years to learn all this for myself– that I am worthy , that I am cherished, that I am not the lesser of anyone– and I am never getting back together with the parts of me who once thought I didn’t deserve these things. Never, ever, ever.

& as long as you love me, we could be starving, we could be homeless, we could be broke. As long as you love me, I’ll be your platinum, I’ll be your silver, I’ll be your gold (actually… Justin Bieber wrote that line but I got his permission to borrow it for the sake of this letter… If you play that chorus backwards it actually translates as Dear Hannah’s Husband, you got a good one. A great one.)

I’ve put away the map.

I’ve stopped charting the destinations where you & I might meet. I don’t stalk the coffee shops. I don’t pray for your lattes. & every day without you is another day to practice. Practice & practice & practice. So that when you meet me your heart will speak the truth, “She is a good human being.  She honors people. She values life. She is the companion you’ve looked for all this while.” 

Every day until you is another day to learn patience. Kindness. Goodness. Grace when I am feeling graceless. Compassion when I am feeling torn. Giving when I want to take & loving when I only ache. Because I think that is what you really need, what we all really need before finding the “good woman” or the “good man”: The exceptional human being. The partner to us. The better part on our worst days, the one who demands & deserves the brightness out of us on their weaker days. 

The one who understands that when they get you, they get all the parts of you.

And when you get me, you get all the parts of me:

The girl with the heart the size of Czechoslovakia before the tumultuous split.

The girl who has been purged of fairy tales & whim that was never real, knowing that her time with you won’t be easy, nor honeymoonish all the time, but it will be entirely worth it.

The girl who is a recovering, raging Marxist Feminist who once boycotted engagements in protest of blood diamonds. (We’ll chat that one over someday. I promise.)

The girl who can barely bake cookies, never mind a Thanksgiving feast, but she is willing to buy a cookbook if it means you’ll feel more full than yesterday.

The girl who is learning to love the snot out of this world so that when you come & find her she’ll be absolutely ready for a sweet face like yours.

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October 15, 2012 · 5:09 pm

Hi, my name is Guard Your Heart. Wanna date?

I’ve been the other girl before.

Yea, I know, it ain’t the kind of news you bring with you to Thanksgiving dinner:

“Hey Aunt K… everything is going great… oh, that noise? That’s just the phone beeping. I’ve got a text message… It’s from a guy… No, he isn’t my boyfriend… No, he actually has a girlfriend already… Yea…So…Righttt….Pass the butter? “

I’ve been the other girl before and I learned (quickly, might I add) how very un-endearing the whole mess of it is. To your friends. To your family. To your own self when you finally shut off the phone at night and curl up beside the fact that he isn’t yours… Really… He. Isn’t. Yours. And out there, somewhere, is a girl you’ve never met before but you’ve managed to wreck her heart without her even knowing it yet.

Cue the point in this post where I squirm and say that I am not a bit proud of this story but I feel it needs to be told.

No matter how you stared at the thing, it was a blaring train wreck. He lied. He cheated. I welcomed the lies. I welcomed the cheating. I thought, with almost every brain cell that was in attendance during those long rationalization sessions, that he would leave her. He would choose me. He would see that it was me who he actually wanted all along, come to his senses and find a way to break up with her. And this would simply be a rocky Chapter One of a book that would hold dozens & dozens of sentences where his name met mine.

It didn’t unravel that way. Quite the opposite.

He never chose me. He never looked back. He never offered explanation. To this day, I don’t know if the girl even knows my name.

The boy once said that he wanted to know me from start to finish.

He wanted to know all the crooks & curves of my childhood. He wondered how I was as a teenager. What kept me up at night. I, being the faithful, drooling tour guide that I was at the time, led him showroom by showroom into the depths of a heart that should have never been his for the examination.

I unlocked doors for him that I swore could never be opened.

I cleared out cluttered rooms.

I laid insecurities down like playing cards.

I let him know the parts of me that were made to be saved & savored by someone who didn’t view me as the Other Girl, rather as the Only Girl. My heart broke in the simple of the simple truths: he never guarded the secrets. He never buried the stories like pumpkins seeds in the soil of his own heart. He is still walking around, holding the hand of another, with all my deepest fears & greatest hopes rattling around inside of him. And they, the most treasured spots of me, have become pocket change.

That’s what hurt the most. Not the Rejection. Not the Goodbye. The fact that I treated my own heart like it was worthless, slung it like a slingshot over to his side of the fence.

Hi,

my name is Guard Your Heart, the Most Overly Fluffed Life Lesson of the 21st Century.

Cue frumpy Christian women wearing pastel skirt suits & donning slower southern drawl.

That is what I heard, over & over & over again, anytime I tried to come to grips with the broken shards of me that clumped like puddles of table sugar at my feet wherever I was standing.  Guard your heart. You have to learn to guard your heart. And there, in the middle of my own conviction, I would move from foot to foot until the Cliche Police came to haul the whole “Guard Your Heart” rhetoric off in cliche-y handcuffs.

Guarding your heart (whatever the heck that means) might really mean nothing until you realize how it feels to leave your heart unguarded. & suddenly it hurts like hell. & you feel pretty cheap. & branded on the forehead with some blaring label that reads: LESS WORTHY OF LOVE.

Guarding your heart feels like nothing until you slip into the hands of Another that Never Deserved You. Until you are barren & broken before someone who cannot handle your junk, doesn’t want your issues, and is more than comfortable texting four different numbers and calling each one, “Baby.” Baby. Baby. Baby. Baby.

Guarding your heart is just a verse from the Proverbs your mama used to tell you until you get left. & he doesn’t come back. & you decide that this is what you deserve–the mess, the strangeness, the absence–you had it coming for you. Really, girl, you had it coming straight for you.

And guarding your heart is a fairy tale concept all smothered in pixie snot until you see for yourself that God even finds the messes you make to be beautiful. Grace makes sure of that. You’ll be stand in layers & layers of junk and He’ll reveal the gold & copper sitting all around you, waiting for love and just a smidge of polish.

Guarding your heart, it sounds like languages gone extinct from unuse until God speaks. Until Hesays something to blow your little face off:

I want you to know, need  you to know, that your heart is big & beautiful thing–far more precious than you will ever understand. Don’t even try to fathom the weight of it. Just know this– I cannot stand to see it thrown, tousled, trapped in the hands of a Someone who was never made to hold it.

Heed the whisper that I am planting in your spirit: Every. Bit. Of. You. Is. Precious. Cargo. Your heart, your dreams, your hurts, your pains– they never belonged buried in the hands of a Someone who doesn’t fully understand you. They never belonged buried in the hands of a Someone who doesn’t fully understand what it took to make you.

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September 6, 2012 · 7:29 am

Step One: You tell her.

“I have feelings for her,” he said. “They’re real.”

The smoke from the bonfire hissed and tangled with my hair as I watched him wring his hands in circular motion, as if his mama had just told him to wash them good. Soap. Water. No skimping. Germs, they be a killer.

The flames cackled. We sat face to face. The pockets of people around us all cloaked in heavy conversation. Laughter. Their voices buzzed by concoctions of vodka & rum & fruity summer cocktails.

“So what do I do?”

It occurs to me that this feeling doesn’t overwhelm him so often. That it is not every day that he lets the good girl in to take up cushion space in his heart. He’s nervous for the first time in a very long time. His steps have become more careful. His heart takes to guarding. His speech turns to stumbling. Ah, the seeds of someone who might just be madly in love by morning if only they’d let themselves go.

“You tell her,” I say back.

You tell her.

Not in a text. Not even on the phone. You tell her when, and only when, you can see the green in her pupils. The birthmark on her neck. You tell her when your palms are sweaty and your words don’t feel like they hold an ounce of eloquence. You tell her, even when the whole thing could collapse at any moment on any one of your syllables. She might reject you. She might turn away. But you need to say it all the same.

You don’t go back.

To being just friends. To holding it inside. A smart girl will know that a friendship doesn’t work when one of the two is willing to give up worlds & go extra miles & endure sleepless nights for the other. That’s not friendship. That’s blaring, stupid love and it is completely & utterly worth it when two walk towards it with open hands. So even if she turns you down, you don’t sink back into “friendship.” You know those feelings ain’t packing bags. Ain’t hitchhiking to Nebraska. You tell her and risk the whole of it all.  & if it isn’t her, some good girl is gonna love you better.

You hold her.

Her hand. The small of the back when Michael Buble is on and she’s dancing on the toes of your dress shoes in the middle of the living room. You get all wrapped in the scent of her hair. You hold that same hair back on those rare but wild nights. You already know the kind. Yes, you do, because you were crazy to think there wouldn’t be a night with too much tequila and banter. You hold her. All the parts of her. The secrets she has saved for you. The dreams. The fears. The Gold & the Glue to a story that becomes glittered with Us & We. Never again just you & her.

You challenge her.

Everyday. With every step. You don’t supply the easy ways out. You guide her the best you can. But you understand, you understand well, that you cannot move her nor can you make her. You see your limits. You push her to find her own.

You stay.

When dishes break. When snot is on the sofa. When the honeymoon period ends. The finances grow frail. When Life gets unruly, as she always often does, you suck in, breathe deep and you work it out. You man up & work it out.

You believe in her.

You make up your mind right here and right now to be her biggest fan. Her sidekick. Her cheerleader. You get on your strong snow boots and you help her shovel out the doubt like the icy kind of snow that always made havoc for the driveway. And when she decides to curl up & collapse on the floor, you head back to square one. You hold her. But eventually you make her get up & walk. You know just how strong she is.

You let her go.

If she needs it. If it is necessary. Imperfect, yes, but sometimes necessary. You let her go. If her mind is wandering & her shoes don’t fit. And she needs to head away from home & the lights she has always known. You support her in that. You recognize, straight from the formations of a Once Upon a Time that life isn’t perfect & people don’t always stay. But if she loves you, if her heart is sweet for you, then she will come back. She will find her way back to you.

You recognize.

That what you feel is very good. That we– the fleshy messes that we are– were made for these kinds of feelings. The Overwhelming. The Anxiety. The Goodness of Falling in Love. In Finding a Someone Who Soon Becomes Your Only One. You let the feelings own you for a little while, break you down to dust for a girl who weakens your knees in the very best way. You recognize. Not everyone has this. Most people want this. They might be lying if they tell you different. You recognize that it is good, very good. The Best Stuff in Life.

You be good to her.

That’s it. That’s all. If ever you need a starting point, a middle grounds, a point of punctuation, it. is. this: You be good to her. Always & always.

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March 26, 2012 · 4:51 pm

Coming home to your shoes.

Your shoes are by the door and I know I’ve done it again.

Only a lone pair of sneakers this time, it can’t be so bad. The last time this happened I unlocked the door and pushed it in to find hiking boots, dress shoes, sandals and a pair of slippers. All Size 11. Craterly & Mammoth to my Size 7 feet.

“I’m sorry,” I yell into the dark apartment. “I know why you’re here.”

“Do you really? And are you really sorry? I guess those are the questions on my mind,” you respond from the kitchen—a small space of pots & pans tucked tight and out of sight to the left of the apartment.

“I didn’t mean to bring you up…”

“But you did.” I wait for you to come into view. Wait to see your tousled hair. Your black ankle socks. Your casual, boyish attire.  “I’m worried because you did.” You don’t show.

“But…”

“Go ahead, explain it to me.”

“Alex was having a hard time. I brought you up. I told her about us. Our story.”

“Babe, how many times do I have to tell you that…”

“ I know, I know. We don’t have a story… or at least not one that I need to keep telling over & over & over again.” I walk past the kitchen, throwing my coat on the sofa and heading for the bathroom.

I play with the sink knobs. The water gushes out quickly. Soon enough, the hear pours out, collapsing and cloaking my tired hands.

“I only say it for your good. You know that, right?” Stop whispering, please stop whispering to me.

The tears stay pent inside the crooks of my eyelids where the gold shimmer faded nearly two hours ago. Not looking up. Not letting my eyes drift back to the sneakers at the door of the apartment.

“I only ever say it for your good because you and I both know that…”

“That I’ve got to move on. That I’m wasting time. That every time I bring your name into a coffee date then I am only hurting myself,” I steady my hands. I try to keep them from shaking.

You stay talking. On & On & On. As if you were the damn genius who invented conversation. And it does no good because I cannot see you and I cannot feel you the way I used to.

I abandon the towel and the light switch. I stay in the dark and crawl my way to the floor where the sofa’s legs kiss carpet and crook me into cushioned safety.

“You don’t get it… it’s not this hard for you,” I say into the darkness. “You are the not the one who has to live without me. I am the one who does that, every single day. In the best and only way that I know how.

And don’t you know that you are everywhere? You are in the trees. In the leftover slices of pizza that you should’ve ate in the middle of the night. In the side of the bed that makes me want to stay filthy forever if it means I’ll never have to lose your scent on the sheets. You don’t have to go through any of that…I do. I do. And I know, I know that every time I bring you up in conversation that I am going to come home to your shoes & nothing else, just the memory of you that doesn’t hold me right.”

I don’t hear you anymore. Nothing but the clicking of the clock all the way in the bedroom.

My hands are wet and down on the floor beside me. Clawing in the darkness at what I know is a shade of maroon that you picked out back when Carpet mattered & Salad mattered & Sunday Football mattered.

I put my head down on the floor and imagined what you’d do next. I know if you were here right now you’d pull me into your lap and you’d change my mind. You always did that. And not because I always seemed to melt into a pile of bones when I your arms wrapped me in, but because you were just one of those people who could explain the world for me. You plugged in lamps where I could not find light. You strung Christmas lights in the darkest of places throughout your whole fight. And so you say I’ve got to be stronger because you refused to leave me sitting in the dark. But it feels like dark. It feels like dark without you.

“Sometimes I hate you,” I whisper through clenched teeth. You know I am lying, right? “I hate that you left me here to do this without you. I hate that I couldn’t fix you. I hate that I’ve become some town tragedy where people treat me like a fogged up window that they can look through, apologize for the loss, watch me sway back & forth a bit and then head back to their own lit home. That I feel pathetic without you. That so much of this doesn’t matter without you.

I hate that I couldn’t go with you. That you left me standing here with all these secrets & things we told one another when the rest of the world fell asleep, things I was supposed to whisper back on a day when I wore white just for you. And now I’ve got to let it all go… I don’t want to let you go…. I don’t know how… I don’t want to learn.”

I cry. For your arms. For a blanket you’d place over me. For the hairs on my head I know you’d stroke. For the tears you’d wipe. The things you’d say. For the thought of you, up in the clouds, hanging your head over an image of me rendered Helpless & Heartbroken.

“Come home… Just come home again…I cant feel you anymore…” Your shoes are already by the door. I can leave the light on. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’ll try again tomorrow.”

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February 9, 2012 · 6:27 am

Things That Change.

“Clothes,” I say.

“Plans,” he rattles back.

“Sheets.”

“Lady Gaga’s hairdos.”

“And you know that how?” I laugh.

“MTV… They showed a documentary on her. It was actually good.”

“Surreee…. Ok. The weather.”

“Your father… when he is trying to figure out where he wants to get his coffee in the morning.”

“How did you know that one?”

“I pay attention. I remember more than you think.”

I push off what he’s getting at. We’re not touching it today. I’m not the kind of girl who can sit beside a boy who remembers her favorite color and the way her hands shake when she’s trying to button her coat. I’d rather he turn and say semi-politely, I’m sorry, what did you say again?  That was the last one. The Boy Who Forgot Birthdays & Flowers & all the things a girl will claim she doesn’t want nor need until the day he forgets. Those kinds of boys are easier to walk away from.

“Directions.”

“That’s deep,” he pauses. “Real deep.”

“I meant north and south kind of things… Keep going.”

 

We go back and forth, ricocheting off one another with only the roaring of the washer and patches of unclaimed air between us.

 

“Fine. Batteries.”

“College majors.”

“Shoes.”

“Shoes fall under clothes. I win.”

“Not true,” he rebuts. “Changing your shoes is completely different than changing your clothes. Next…”

“Profile pictures.”

“Good one,” he says, pulling me in with a smile that took us to this battle from the beginning. This playful banter that would keep us going for days, as long as we never approached Us. And how often we fit into the category at hand: Things that Change.

 

We were changing.

Even in that very moment.

Dancing around the growing bonfire lit with the Woods of the Things We Didn’t Want to Talk About, shrouding the conversations with trivialities that wouldn’t hold. Term Papers. Things on the To-Do List. All the things you never force into the Talk of Two when there is still so much to say about the Eyes of One Another and How They Swear They’d Been Searching for Years.

 

“Seasons,” I double back into the game.

“Kind of like the weather but I’ll give it to you,” he softens.  ”Your coffee order. Will it be a skim latte today or will you go for pumpkin?“

“Life,” I cut him off.

The room goes quiet. Just the washer. Just the air. Just the curtains hushing the window panes. Just the end tables clamping shut the mouths of the wood floors. Just the clock. Ticking.. Ticking..

“You win,” he whispers, sliding his hand over mine. He doesn’t turn his head- he knows he’ll find the tears burning on my cheeks. Knowing I’d be gone tomorrow, with a suitcase in my hand. My life in its tender suede belly, zipped full.

“I should have said that one first,” I swallow.

He squeezes, harder than I hope for. “There would have never been a game then.”

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January 16, 2012 · 2:26 pm

Tales of a God Who Knit Her So That She’d Never Need to Knit a Cape.

“You aren’t a superhero,” he said, and lingered in the doorframe for a moment just to see what she would do.

To see if she might find the courage, within a chest pumped full with pride, to admit she knew it too.

For she really was no superhero and her heart did far more breaking than her arms ever did holding. She scaled the sides of conversations that never invited her in but she could not scale a building.

She, well, she was a girl who got all tied up in the saving—tightly wound like the cop that meets the robber in the old cartoon shows—too tied up to remember she was really just a human being.

A human being. How peculiar. So small. So fragile.

No Superman. No Batman. No Wonder Woman, just a Woman prone to Wander.

Just a girl left to find out, after all the wreckage had fallen from her shoulders, that even heroes need something far more super than them. Something greater to hitch prayers to at night. Someone far greater than a silly man in lycra pants to handle the swinging and swaying of the Milky Way, as it has no choice but to rock the world’s sorrow to and fro. Back & forth.

And the hurt was in her hair that day. All up in her hair like yarn strung into braids. The hurt was on her face. It lived in her toes. It paid rent to her elbows and made roommates with her kneecaps.

The boy could trace the hurt in every crook of longitude and latitude of the girl he’d known since the days when chocolate milk and grape Pop Rocks could heal her.

He turned—foot to foot—and found solace in a space where the girl wouldn’t find him. He closed the door and uncovered his knees. His prayerful knees that were made to kiss the floors on days where girls take off their Heavy Superhero Capes.

“Papa, Papa,” he cried to the sky. To a God who thought that ceilings that concealed Him were nonsense. “Help her to discover her hands. Her terrible, unreliable hands. The ones that want to hold so bad, even when they know they must be held for a time.”

Hold & Be Held.

Hold & Be Held.

“One requires more surrender than the other, Papa.”

Hold & Be Held.

One asks Control to curtsie at the door.

“Let her hands Be Held so that she might Behold someone as wonderful as You, someone who stretches far beyond the reach of her Tiny Little Hands.”

The boy believed in a God who kissed frostbitten fingertips. Who whispered in the morning while his children still pulled sleep in with both arms. A God who wept to see his children struggle and ached to say, “That world on your shoulders does not fit you. Let me take it. Here, let me take it.”

The boy believed in a God who hated to see His children in capes. For children in capes forget the ones who made the capes for them, the ones who knit them before the cape and packed a heart tight so carefully with all the ways they would learn to soar one day.

One day. One day.

The girl knew the boy. Though not all the longitude and latitude of him. She never knew the way he crept into closets and found ways to place her at the front of his prayers. Because she was worth it. She had always been worth it. 

The girl did not know the God who kissed the frostbitten fingertips, who took worlds off of shoulders and hated to see His children in capes. But she wanted to. She wanted to.

And so how does the story begin? How then, oh, how does the story begin?

The girl waited for the boy who had known since the ways when chocolate milk and grape Pop Rocks could heal her. She found him lingering in the doorway. She patted the ground beside her and motioned him to join.

He did, for he loved her so. He loved her so.

And together they began—with trembling fingers—to unknot the cape tied so tightly round her neck. And let the heaviness fall down. Let the heaviness fall down all around them.

And all the while, through every knot and tremble, the boy whispered tales into the ear of the girl. Tales of a God Who Knit Her so that She’d Never Need to Knit a Cape. 

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November 6, 2011 · 3:00 pm

The Good Guys: They are out there.

I wrote this post several months back, inspired by the brilliant Cory Copeland and his post “The Good Girls.” Somehow buried in trails of email drafts and word documents, I can finally pin this piece to a home.

We’ll stop purposely leaving high heels on subways with name & number tucked into the bottom in our best cursive, hoping that someone will find us in a fairy tale fashion.

We’ll stop nodding our heads in agreement over the conversations caked with heavy laughter and future plans when we hear our girlfriends say with confidence, “They aren’t out there.”

We’ll refuse to be another light switch turned off in a town that has already grown too dark.

We’ll wrap our hair in buns, wrap our hands around warm mugs, and wrap our prayers around a God who wants to let his best girls know, “They are out there.”

The good guys. A rarity, so we’ve been told. Sitting alongside fossils in the “Museum of Things We’re on the Brink of Losing for Good.” Pinned somewhere between the ones who don’t know how to value what they have in their arms and the ones who balance several tiny waists at one time.

They are noble. Honest. True. They don’t lust over our legs before looking into our eyes and seeing something more.  A vulnerable stare. Eyes that say, in Hints of Hazel and Gold, “We are looking for so much more. We came here looking for so much more.”

They are out there. And they get it: There are Things to Chase in this Lifetime.

The Affection of a Good Girl. The Heart and Trust of a Mama that used to sew that Good Girl’s dresses. The Approval of a Daddy that once lifted that Good Girl up to the ceiling, up to the solar system.

They are kind. Loyal. They wring passion from the dreams that once hung on their Little Boy walls. They harness morals and values, roping them into their dreams for a family that still believes in dinners at 6pm and king-sized beds with two tousled heads of hair but also the possibility of five bodies when the lightning and thunder roll through.

They are out there and they far outstretch the expectations we’ve pent up for them in beauty magazines and chic-lit rule books: Hold the door open. Bring her flowers. Tell her she is beautiful even with no makeup on. Never, never, NEVER tell her she looks fat in that.  

They take our chivalrous boxes and break right out. They transform the term Gentleman as if they’ve been asked to recreate the Classic Mona Lisa Smile.

They are the ones who ask about the longer days or know when not to bring it up; they treat us as we are: beautiful girls who only want one set of eyes upon us. One stubbled cheek to kiss. One pair of arms to fold us in when Tragedy comes to Huff & Puff & Blow our Hearts Down.

Beautiful girls unafraid to say that if there is lipstick on his collar, we want it to be ours. Only, only the burlesque shades of a woman that adores that man too deeply to declare it with silly, stuffy, dictionary vocabulary. 

They are out there and they’ll say it straight to us, “I’m far from perfect. I’ve got this going on, and this happened last month. I am dealing with this… and that stemmed from this.” Because we were never looking for perfect and cardboard cut outs melt in the rain. But they’ll wrap us up in blankets, our legs slung over their lap, and tell us they need a partner, a halfway, a commitment. A Thick & Thin Kind of Deal.

They are out there. Growing the bones of one-day fathers, harvesting the strength it takes to be a provider, learning what it means to Hold a Girl’s Hand Down an Earthly Wedding Aisle and far Into an “Earth”less Forever that we only close our eyes to imagine on days when the Metro runs late.

They are out there, coming to their knees for a Maker who still craves to do so much more than a good work in them. A stunning work. An unspeakable, sacred work in his Good, Good Men.  Making them ready for the day when paths take to crossing and life takes to shifting us from the things we learned of fairytale love when we first cracked open books that taught us how to lose shoes and find princes.

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October 28, 2011 · 8:32 am

“Evey, Evey, I’m sorry it took so long.”

It took me fourteen years to accept Adam & Eve.

Fourteen years not to cringe when someone ushered the first couple in the entire universe, the design model for Brad & Angelina and Elvis & Priscilla, into a conversation.

The pair irked me. Made me itch. Bugged me in a way that only the first human beings ever to be created are capable of bugging a person. Nothing like the 76th human being. Nothing like the 10 thousandth being with Ten Fingers and Ten Toes.

I wanted to rip them from the felt boards in Sunday school. Pull apart Adam’s paper limbs. Bury Eve somewhere in the garden. Throw them both into the lions’ den. If you are gonna be a sinner then you’ll be a lion’s dinner.

I think I thought they were boring, a Mom & Pop story. A yawn coaxer for the front of the mammoth book I now read most mornings on a southbound train. Why not some action first, Cain and Abel? Why not a real juicy love story, perhaps Samson and Delilah?

Why, oh why, did God rev up the engines of creation with two naked people who screwed up all of history five minutes into paradise?

Adam & Eve were on my target list until about 10 months ago when I read backing thing, there must be something beyond the First Light, the First Raindrop, the First Furious Clap of Thunder & a Butterfly Shimmying Out from the Cocoon.

And then it hit me, square in the face. You get this picture of God making Adam probably in a Geppetto & Pinocchio fashion. Except Adam was a real boy, and his nose didn’t grow when he lied…

And the world was probably really cool for Adam for about a day.  I can imagine if I were the first human being to ever be created I’d be like, “Heck ya, I am going to do the world’s first push up. The world’s first vine swing. I’m going to learn to doggy paddle… HA HA HA! Whooooo is that stunning human being in the water? Oh, tis’ me! HA HA HA! I’ll call that a reflection.”

Yup… that would be cool, to play all by myself, for about 5 minutes.

So then I’d probably say, “Hey God, can you beam down a friend?”

“Ehh,” He’d boom down from the clouds he just formulated from his massive Craft Store in the Sky. “ I’d rather teach you your very first lesson instead. How about a job?”

“A job?”

“Si,” God would say (because God is absolutely bilingual).

I can picture Adam, slunk over on a tree trunk calling out names to animals as they roll on through a conveyor belt. “Cow…. Chicken… Moose… Antelope… Come on, God, are we done yet? UGHHHHHH. Hippo. Crocodile. Kangaroo. Seriously, this is getting old. Chimpanzee, Spider, Dog… no wait, Cat! Definitely Cat!” And that story went on & on until Adam realized, not a single one of his creatures had the capacity to pull up a tree stump and ask him about his day. Offer him a cold drink. Whisper a secret into his Brand New Ear.

If I were Adam, I’d be a little devastated at that point. A little hopeless. I’d write sad Pablo Neruda poems and talk about darkness all the time. Even with the newly created Sun, I’d talk about darkness a heck of a lot of time.

And I’d look up a lot and ask why. And I’d quit somewhere between the octopus and the sea urchin. I’d think it was not fair. To watch each animal trot & slither & jump & skitter off with a companion, a Somebody that Knew Their Skins. Their Quirks. Their Little Mysteries & Unsaid Wonders. Like the elephants and how they cradle. Like the spiders and how they spin.

I’d want myself an Eve at that point. A perfect, little Eve to hold when the sun dropped down to rest behind a hill. A perfect, little Eve to get tangled up in my Adam Head.

And if I were Adam, I’d already be creating a playlist for Eve: Hey there, Delilah. Angel. Hold you in my Arms… Or at least I’d say to God, “Hey, could you beam down Ray LaMontagne, Jack Johnson and Frank Sinatra a little early? I’m going to need my buds when it’s time to serenade this Eve girl. She’s a special one, I already know it. And God, you can keep Hanson… no need to ever beam that boy band down.”

And I mean, I am thinking it was a Titanical moment. Minus the Grand Staircase. Minus hunky 3rd class Jack Dawson all dolled up in a suit. Minus Kate Winslet looking gorgeous like always. But something like that where Adam saw Eve for the very first time and even though he had found the names for tens of thousands of animals, he needed a moment to catch his breath and name her: Beloved.

And maybe we can edit that part into the Bible… that moment where Adam found Eve. And God said, let there be butterflies in the stomach. And so there was. And God said, let there be heads over heels. And so there was. And God said, Let Him Know Truly. Let Her Know Madly. Let Them Know Deeply. Unconditional. Everlasting. And So They Did.

And I think they talked for maybe a few hundred years. And they said to one another, “When texting comes along, let’s never do it. When email shuffles through, let’s hold off. I always want to know your voice… and the way it sounds when you say my name out loud.”

If I were Eve, I hope I’d have some kind of First Woman Courage, to ask my Adam, “What was it like? Before a Me? A We? An Us?”

“You know, Evey (The World’s First Pet Name). It was me and God. And He’s stellar and bilingual, but he’s on a whole different level. And he wanted someone to level with me. And so he brainstormed beside a vase of lilacs and daisies and you were conjured up. I think he knew it all along, how perfect you might be… But he made me wait, and wait, and wait until I really understood it: That I was made to have you and hold you for my entire life, all through the sickness and all through the health. Eve, he needed to teach me that you are the kind of girl who I can never take for granted. Evey, Evey, I’m sorry it took so long.”

Meet Adam, Ladies. The first  Heart-Throb.

And Eve, Eve, Eve… I can only imagine how it might feel to be the Eve stepping on Adam’s toes while dancing. To show up, and know instantly, that he was mine and I was his and we were somehow made for one another by a Man in the Sky Who Already Wrote a Love Story Among Comets & Stars.

And that he & I, WE would be that way forever. Not some yesterday kind of dust. No, no, it would be reliable like a blue dress, reliable like a recipe for banana pancakes, that he would be mine and I would be his and he was going to love me into every morning not for who I was or am or will be, but because Someone loved Adam enough to make for him an Eve. And that was very special.

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October 18, 2011 · 8:07 am

And I am sorry, like Africa. Sorry like Montreal.

“No man is ever gonna chase you through an airport,” my mother told me on my 25th birthday.

At the time, it was 25 years that I’d managed to live just fine without you.

“He might wish he could chase you through an airport, you are certainly pretty enough for that. But he won’t dare stand at Gate 16 and lose all his manhood for a girl who’d never stay.”

Little girls learn to suck and swallow their mothers’ words like throat lozenges. You should probably know now, I gritted my teeth into those very words nearly every night of knowing you, wondering in the dark when you’d turn to leave. Turn and slam the door and leave me breathing or maybe some kind of breathless on the other side, saying, “That door has never quite sounded this way before.” Never so hollow. Never so cold.

But my mother was right, because of who I am and what I won’t sacrifice, I’ll be the kind of girl who has to stand at Gate 16, staring down at her shoes, asking a part of her heart if it will still remain when the plane’s wheels kiss Beijing’s runway.

That part of her heart that’s sitting in a window seat right now. Ordering a glass of wine to take the edge off. Inserting ear plugs. Left. Then. Right. That part of her heart that is already learning that holding on was a foolish thought to begin with. That part of her heart that is reversing steps and spelling words backwards: oG reH teL reH TsuJ

I’m about 600 yards away from you right now.

A few gates.

Two security guards.

A couple of steps.

And a long aisle away from you.

It’s not really romantic. I didn’t expect to catch you at the last moment. You are so prompt, so timely, that you make these kinds of “don’t go, hurdling over suitcases in an effort to get to you before the gate closes” kind of scenes impossible.

But I am here, 600 yards away from you. Feeling like I’ve already placed a couple countries between us. Uruguays of Unsaid Words. Senegals of Stupid Fights. Mexicos of Mixed Emotions. Koreas & Chinas & Japans of Where the Heck Did I Go So Wrong?

And I am sorry. Like Africa. Sorry like Montreal. Sorry as the whole Indian Ocean, bloated after swallowing the Pacific for a midnight snack.

Sorry because I don’t need you. I really don’t. And the last thing I want to tell you is that I need you. And so I’ll tell you that I don’t. I. Don’t. Need. You. 

Stop, please stop.

Stop and decide to stop right there. Go back on me like a road map that one gave you a hidden turn. Read me one more time; find me in the lines one last time. Find that I don’t mean it, under the apostrophe like rocks in the garden. Climb to the top of the “d” and jump down to the “y,” to see the strength it’s taking me to Slip from my Pride like a Silk Dress and stand Needing before you.

I don’t deserve it. I know. I shouldn’t have you. I get it. I’m barely breathing here. It’s scary. I’d like to walk away. “Like to” is a keyword. I’ll let you down? Probably. You’ll do the same? Surely. But I am better with you. I actually believe that. Better needing you.

And I am standing here. 600      yards     away    from     you.

I didn’t get to chase you through the airport. No hurdling the suitcases to grasp you.  But I’d be willing… for the first time, I Am Willing. If you’ll have me.

 

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