… With My Heart In The Middle…

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So, I hung out with my friend Nick last Friday. He made me realize after we got comfortable with one another again (which took no time at all) that the last time we REALLY hung out… was 19 years ago. And I had to do a mental double take… have I been ALIVE that long that someone could be “out” of my life for 19 years??? Yeah… if I met them when I was 13. But… still. That puts some weight on the age. We didn’t miss a beat though. I have 3 shoe boxes FULL of letters from Nicky. We used to write each other whenever there wasn’t anything else to do (shows you how different a time we were from… here I go sounding like a gramma). There wasn’t e-mail yet. No texts to send. No twitters to tweet or Facebook statuses to up date. If you were going to communicate back then? It was by letter, phone call or fax if not in person. And so we wrote. We wrote when we were bored in class. We wrote when we got home to stop from running up our parent’s phone bills. We wrote whenever the spirit hit us. For 2 years. And it resulted in 3 shoeboxes worth of memories that I kept. Mind you… I’ve not read them since. I probably wouldn’t understand the humor now. It was children’s humor. LOL But I’m sure if I read them in succession… I’d remember TOO much about myself. Maybe one day… But don’t you TRY to throw those boxes away. They go right up there with my Granny’s photo albums and my mommy’s Madonna pendant. Super Precious and part of me.

While we truncated 19 years of catching up into an evening, he suggested that I rent a few movies that he’s seen that he thought I’d find interesting and I did the same. One that he mentioned was “Waitress”. Now, I’ll be honest in saying I don’t really remember WHY he suggested this movie outside of it being interesting and engaging. I’m not sure if he was asking for me to look for a message of any kind… but tonight when I was flipping through something to fill the silence with a little noise and I noticed that Waitress was playing on HBO. But it was an hour in. I thought to myself… “whatever reason he wanted me to see it will be lost on me… by now in the movie, I’ve missed the point.” Well folks… I can only tell you that the first hour must be amazing because what I saw? GRABBED ME BY THE HEART and I had no choice but to watch. I was poignant and amazing to me on so many levels… I can’t even begin to explain on how.

One scene, the main character gives birth to her little baby girl. And in one fell swoop, the presence of that baby gives her the strength to do all the things that she was afraid to do or thought that the presence of that baby would have prohibited. And it made me think about this one time. One single time in my whole life, I heard my mom talk about bringing me home from the hospital. Had to be about 3 years ago. And I don’t know what the topic of discussion was. But she was going over the parts of the story I already knew and had heard for years – I didn’t give her one craving. Didn’t make her crazy at all the whole time. Never made her sick in comparison to Dominic who had her going nuts at every opportunity. Then in the evening on September 30th, I started making it known that I was ready to come out. And by 10:54 AM on October 1st i “flew” out (in her words). And here is the part that I’d never heard till that day (and would never hear again)… She said it in Creole and there’s no direct translation for the real sentiment, but I’ll do the best I can. “She was so full of energy… so awake and aware… I’d never seen a baby so ready to LIVE, God DAMMIT…. she was going to take this world and wrestle it down!!” And her excitement… 33 years later… wasn’t dimmed by the passing of time. And it made me SO HAPPY to be alive… right then and right there.

Looking at that movie, I hope I gave my mom the slightest glimmer of hope in all my excitement to live… I don’t think I ever got too much less energetic. Even when I’m sad – I stay in this life, trying to stay in the stream and a part of the life force. Just like the main character of the movie was empowered by the presence of her daughter. I look forward to being renewed one day in a similar manner. Find my second wind…

Thanks, Nicky!

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