She could have called...

Today, my mom emailed me to let me know that my neighbor had died. Apparently, he had not collected his mail since the 3rd and when another neighbor with whom he would occasionally discuss gardening stopped by to check on him, she received no response even though his car was in the drive.

He lived alone. His son has been in and out of institutions my entire life. First up in New Jersey. Later Virginia. He's a a paranoid schizophrenic and when he was much younger and his mother was still alive, she wouldn't make him take his medication. Lately, on his infrequent visits, his father would refuse to let him in the house. Once he came into ours unannounced and in his underwear, claiming that he'd struck his father and the old man had fallen down.  He was alright, but the police came regardless and Danny (the son) was  gone again soon after.

He's lived alone in the house for years now, his wife is long dead. I would watch him from my room, pushing an ancient lawnmower or raking for hours at a time. Meticulously cutting away branches from the shrubs in his front yard. Regardless, they always grew wild. They were never neat. The house always looked like you wouldn't want to stop there on Halloween.

Mom and I would always say that we needed to be friendlier to him. We were afraid to get too familiar. Danny always comes back and we didn't want to let him in. He was our Boo Radley, only the stories about him were mostly true. He would howl at the moon and lift manhole covers. He'd drape Confederate flags from the rear of the car he couldn't legally drive and yell from his stoop that the South would rise again. He told my mother he'd seen the Devil because he knew she was similarly religious and would understand why he then tried to remove his own eye. The eye is still there, he just can't see out of it. He used to send letters claiming he was innocent. I never knew innocent of what. Mom wouldn't say. Later I found out it was something about two missing girls but there not being enough evidence. That was the first time he went away.

My childhood was punctuated by missives not to walk certain places alone. Never answer the door. If the phone rings, it's a wrong number. If we did see him, we had to go home for lunch, or dinner. Whatever made more sense. I hated seeing his father alone the way he was. I just couldn't bring myself to go against what Mom had always said. That these were people we didn't associate with, We didn't let them in.

The Reverse Murtaugh

I was talking the other day to a friend who will turn 26 in a few months time. She is terrified that she'll reach 30 without a wedding ring or a toddler (preferably in that order.) She doesn't want to be 40 before she has a kid. I tried to tell her that that is exactly how old my mother was when she had me and I don't recall her ever being to tired to keep up with me. Actually, the night Michael Jackson died we danced around the kitchen to the stream of Jackson 5 videos playing on every channel.

She dances better than most of my friends and she's 65. She can still twist. She can still jerk. I'm pretty sure she could pull off a mean watusi with minimal provocation. She shovels the snow and never asks anyone to open a jar for her. The only suit she owns is a perfectly impractical shade of red. She once drove her car on the sidewalk surrounding the Washington monument because she wanted to see if it was wide enough for a VW Bug. The night she totaled her car and had to be taken to the hospital, she smiled because her panties matched her bra. They were both plaid. The other night, she casually dropped into conversation the nude pictures of herself she used to have hanging in her apartment. She did all this before she had kids. She lived a whole life before she met my father, settled down, and had kids.

Even still, there are things she never did and I know she wants better for me. She never really traveled. She pretty much always had to work. My friend might owe her mother grandbabies, I owe mine pictures of me on top of Irish cliffs and in front of Parisian cafes with dark Italian men who call me "Bella" because "Meredith" is too hard for their languid tongues. I might keep the languid tongues to myself though. I owe her poems and journals and postcards. I owe her roadtrips and staying out too late to catch the Metro home because I didn't want to leave before the next song. I owe her cup after cup of coffee and the occasional cigarette even though we know much better. I owe her scotch and just a splash of water.

So that's where my list comes in. I don't know if I'll ever get married or have kids. I do know there there are a few things I need to do before I turn 30. Before I get too old for this shit. I'm not going to compile the list here. It's a work in progress. But one of the things on the list is (and has been for a while now) go to a music festival that lasts more than one day. Today, I bought my ticket for Bonnaroo. I'm going to get dirty. I might even get crusty. I'll sleep in a van and "shower" with a giant bottle of water and some baby wipes. I'll wear my hair in braids and pretend that my striped bikini is a perfectly acceptable bra/shirt. I'm going to do this for four days and it's going to be magical because these guys will be there (and so will thousands of my new best friends):

It really is shaped like Virginia.

From opposites sides, we looked at the map of Virginia
that table made in my parent's kitchen and
from under the newspapers and our cofffe cups
you pointed the eastern edge where you'd rather be
and asked me to do the same, but
where I want is out the backdoor and passed
the neighbor's yard, over other people's fences
to a table shaped like something else entirely.

2010: You can keep tomorrow. After tonight we're not gonna need it...

1. Do not write off bands with silly names because this is how I almost missed on out Death Cab for Cutie. (See also Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, etc.)

2. Stay up long enough to see the Sun come up.

3. Kiss strangers.

4. Make things.

5. Do things.

6. Wear all my shoes at least once.

7.  Finally wear the naked shirt.

8. Walk to Metro more often than I drive there.

9. Make food for people who will eat it.

10. Learn something new. One thing. And be able to do it well enough that I'm willing to do it in public.

11. Dance, even when the situation does not call for dancing.

12. Take full advantage of the puddles left by rainstorms.

 13. Go see bands. Start with this one:

I need to find a cheaper happy place.

Some girls eat their feelings. I, apparently, buy mine. Sadly, most of this has been purchased since returning to NoVA after college. The last year was kind of shitty and Urban Outfitters is my happy place. I haven't started packing my clothes to move yet. I was going to do that tonight but needed to clean first and tried to organize the shelves somewhat in the hopes that it would make the process easier...

Where in the hell did I get all this? Why do I own this many striped shirts and cardigans? You know how women like to say "you can never have too many cardigans"? I have 6. that's too many. 9 little black dresses. Also too many. I didn't count the striped shirts but it's a sizable stack. How many shows could have gone to were it not for that stack? Drinks with friends? Dinner? A movie or two? The dresses are worth a roadtrip or two, no doubt.

The thing is, I will pack up what is pictured and take it to my new place and try, fruitlessly, to find room for it there. Getting rid of it is only an excuse to buy more.

So here's the new rule: if I say I need more/new clothes. I'm lying.