And the morning comes and you know it is the last day of the weekend before you ask that question of yourself if your head is alright.
Mine was not the best. I was not exactly hung over, but there was dead shit on my brain I would have liked to have taken a knife and scraped off. As soon as Rich appeared at the door the giggling started about the night before, the Waffle House, the Body Piercing Place (that we saw from across the street) the Re-finding Brokeback Video we watched until 3 am.
"We can go have brunch at that place Sweet Melissa's that I won the gift certificate to.'" he says.
"You won a gift certificate, when?"
And so with open pours and a dying phone battery we hit the road again, this time to Decatur, a suburb to the east of Atlanta, finding the United Church o' Christ on the way, the VA, Ponce De Leon, but alas no fountain of youth. Litterally or figuratively.
What we did find, immediately, was a beautiful day. Just intoxicating balmy. Rich asked if I wanted to borrow some shorts to wear, I should have. We parked the truck in a parking lot featuring a mural of KISS, with Gene Simmons tongue in all its glory. Its like do the other people in KISS even have names? Around the corner to the block near the square there the hippy new age shops and galleries had their wares splayed out on the sidewalk, the generation of ease sat at tables under umbrellas, coffees in hand, enjoying global warming while it was still a fad.
Sweet Melissa, it all goes back to Brokeback, like we carry part of Ennis with us everywhere we go. We don't carry Jack? Not exactly, we carry him differently because of the way his life ended. I remember back in them earlier days we used to said "Spoiler" before saying something like that. He dropped them quarters in a juke box and Cassie would not let him rest. "Back home you'll always run, to Sweet Melissa...." We found a table just inside the front door, the place was full, two guys were playing base and guitar I think, on a stage, the place was alive with whimsy, the light fixtures something out of a Salvador Dali daydream. What were they playing Rich, do you remember?
We ordered and took in the place, recalled the night, the names, the faces, and a family walked by with a little boy, about 5 years old, carrying a purse. It was an adult bag, almost dragged the floor. "Look, it's little Chuckie!" but felt glad that his family was one that would allow him to be himself. The little boy climbed on the stage to put a tip in the jar for the band, and I tried to eat as much of my Eggs as I could, wishing I could stomach more of them Shrimp Grits, law they were good. Made even better by the fact Rich had won that gift certificate,
Out on the street I asked a nice lady to take our picture, just because I could, just because there could never be enough pictures of me and Rich in the world. She was happy to oblige. We toured a small gallery of primitives and folk art type stuff, so much would be right at home and Wayne's house and so made me want to play the lottery. And then we were off to Piedmont Park.
Now I will say this for the record: I am 44 years old and had never been to Piedmont Park, but for more than half my life I had heard of the place. Back in the day when the locals in Bristol all decided Atlanta was the place to be the sound that reverberated back was Piedmont Park, it was the place you could go and find all kinds of trouble to get into. I am so glad that the good things in life are worth waiting for. Instead of ending up there in 1987 and getting into trouble, I was there right when I needed to be, when it meant something.
Walking with the Frisbee toward the field near 10th St., we came up on a travelling exhibit for the 9/11 Memorial to be built on Ground Zero in NYC. Of course we could not pass it by. We walked thru the tent and then prepared ourselves for what we knew was comming. We went into the trailer for the 8 minute movie.
If you would like to see the same movie, go here:
http://www.national911memorial.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ecard_film but I warn you, it is a hard thing to watch. More than you think you know. Here is their website if you would like to know more:
http://www.national911memorial.org/site/PageServer?pagename=homepage2I won't take you back to that time, that is betterserved someplace else, but what an honor it was to add my name to a beam that will go into this memorial, what a joy it is to know that in a hundred years someone can read where I was that day. That is an important thing to people who don't have kids.
One of Rich's friends joined us for a game of Frisbee. I took off me boots and ran in my stocking feet, each of us taking turns laughing at our attempts to regain agility. I can't remember what decade it was that I last played Frisbee. And the funny thing was we all got better at it, especially me. lol Eventually my shirttails came out, and then my bandanna came off, then my shirt came off, the 9th friggin' day of December and I was bare chested in Atlanta! It felt wonderful.I thought about Chuck and Scott and Jeff and the others in the frozen north, and knew my day was coming too.
In a while we crashed on the ground, laughing and watching the passers by, some hand in hand, gay and straight, black and white, showing that they were together. It was just amazing. Made me proud of my part of the country. We traded stories from our lives, as far beyond Rich' shoulder, a clouds grew and darkened, and we hoped and pledged if it rained, to get wet. Well, in times, it did come and spit upon is, the barest of moisture, enough to see flickering in the indirect light, the most pitiful rain I have ever seen, not worth sticking your tongue out for. A Rain Flurry.
The afternoon was wearing on, I knew a decision had to be made. I counted the hours on me fingers and man I would be late getting home, if even now we left, and why should we leave? Such a beautiful day, how many more days like this would I see in 2007? And something else, something was missing. The Sunday Afternoon Dread. I have had it ever since elementary school, dreading tomorrow, dreading responsibility waiting for me. I thought of my mother dining alone, I thought of my cat possibly knocking over plants, thought of my partner putting up his Christmas decorations and you know, it was alight, no guilt, they were separate things that didn't require me to grieve for them that day. That was good. I didn't feel like grieving.
So Rich or his buddy one had the idea: lets go roller blading. Ha! what a great idea. I'd not been on skates in a decade and had never tried roller blades before. The place we rented them was across the street on the corner, with a sign that said the time was now. The kid with the glasses told us we had 45 minutes. I was sure that would be plenty of time to break something. Rich told them his shoe size and everyone looked at him and just smiled.
So I got them in line wheels on me feet and got acrossed the street with its fractured pavement, into the gates of the park, danced a gig, cussed and then was thankful for the wrist guards I had on. I told them, don't worry about me, go on and I found my rhythm, but my buddies were circling back, like bird parents teaching the hatchling to fly. We made an entire turn around the Frisbee field clockwise, a down hill stretch aided by the glassy shoulders where I found I could step off into and run with the nightmares on me feet. Found too it made a reasonably soft landing pad. By the time we neared the gate again I was starting to find my way, knew I needed a size smaller shoe and wondered how long it would be before I tried them again.
By the time we had walked Rich's buddy to his car it was near dusk. The truck on the other side of the place, we walked along the trails and bridges and took in the reflections of the towers in the ponds, took in the last sweet air of Indian Summer, this aberration I imagined had been summoned up just for this weekend. A sweet strong hand on the back of my neck and a laugh or two about the antics we had gotten into.
Back to his house, a warm hug from his Mom and a bowl of ice creme and we settled it. The car came down River Road at a wreckless speed, the children laughed in the park, and a semi rolled down a two lane road in Wyoming, and we pulled out our hearts and stepped on them once again. And then, it was Monday morning, it was good bye and the long road home, because back home is where we always run, back to separate and unequal lives, richer for time together.
Long ago, I had been promised a trip to Atlanta by a well meaning but complicated young man, which never came to pass. His ashes I never found, his face I saw in the the cloudy sky above a Frisbee field. He smiled.
We make the trips, when time and circumstance collide to make us a way. We take that path and we leave that which weighs down our hearts, we feed upon that which makes our hearts grow. We bless our memories with sweet words and symbols, and we hold on to them like a babe in arms or a lover whose mind is somewhere else. We open our eyes and we are in a comfortable chair in front of a cluttered desk and Fiona Ritchie is rambling on about something on the radio and a week has past. The warm Indian Summer has past to a blustery day with the light dying.
Thank you Rich, my brother, it was worth the wait.
Topic: Shakesthegrounds Rumblings (Read 2629827 times)