"Sweet Melissa"

Saturday night, long phone calls, a pot of French onion soup under my belt, a few too many glasses of wine and then this song pops up on the stereo. Sometimes music has a way of stopping you in your tracks, makes you want to put down whatever it was that you were doing and listen. Maybe even sit down, hit restart and really hear what the band has to say. In this case it was more a moment to reflect on the one thing that I can't do that this gypsy in the song can do, and that's run home to Melissa. Some can, while others sit and listen to old songs and find themselves getting a bit too blue for a Saturday night. Other days, other times, my dear. And the Saturday night just rolls along as I stroll upstairs and look forward to a long evening's worth of deep, dark sleep. Have a great Sunday, M. Mine will be peppered with bits of this song, a soundtrack for my morning, an opening for my day.

Your WHMB

Sweet Melissa by the Allman Brothers

"Crossroads, seem to come and go, yeah.
The gypsy flies from coast to coast
Knowing many, loving none,
Bearing sorrow havin fun,
But back home hell always run
To sweet Melissa... mmm...

Freight train, each car looks the same, all the same.
And no one knows the gypsys name
No one hears his lonely sigh,
There are no blankets where he lies.
In all his deepest dreams the gypsy flies
With sweet Melissa... mmm...

Again the mornings come,
Again he's on the run,
Sunbeams shining through his hair,
Appearing not to have a care.
Well, pick up your gear and gypsy roll on, roll on.
Crossroads, will you ever let him go? (lord, lord)
Will you hide the dead mans ghost,
Or will he lie, beneath the clay,
Or will his spirit roll away?

But I know that he wont stay without Melissa.
Yes I know that he wont stay without Melissa."

To all all the Melissas who loved this song:
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=830

To hell with a mint, here's a Kitchen Aid mixer bowl full of whipped cream on your pillow!

You once told me that we made no hard promises to each other. I suppose that's true, but we did tell stories, then, stories that carried the weight of fairy tales and scripture passages. And while those stores we told weren't cast in stone, I believed them as we spun them, thinking that someday we would live them. Maybe those tales we wove were like spun sugar, high, fragile, tall tales that were meant to be savored like the desserts we pulled off in my kitchen. Maybe they were illusions, not too much different than the kind children have about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. All well and good until you grow up and get to be one of those characters yourself. Your life of imagination then becomes real and you find that you end up making up your own form of reality. I do every time I mix up a batch of whipped cream.

It's not much of a story, a short one for a Sunday. Good in that I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen lately and no longer have to look up how to make a pot fresh whipped cream. That all came about because of those weekday evening visits we used to share together, the one's that your arranged to have happen on Mondays and Wednesdays when your people were off at bible study. We had two hours to ourselves, sometimes more, sometimes less, but we worked those minutes to the max. We mostly spent the evening playing games, fast, fleeting evenings salted with talk and music and dessert. Once we prepped you for an interview by studying up on online databases, another time we sat in front of the computer and looked up restaurants in Seattle and the rules to rummy. Many times the candles were lit, the fireplace roared, and we played round after round of acey ducey and Yahtzee. Rarely did we have time for much of anything else. We sometimes went out and shopped, managed to watch a movie once or twice. But no matter what we did those hours would fly by, always went away too fast. But the most distinct memory of all those evening distills down to the very same thing, and that was standing in the alley watching your taillights go down the drive. Those nights always ended in goodbyes or goodnights or see you laters. Never thought that the goodbyes would someday would last forever.

There were two nights in particular that stood out, that were extra special. One was your birthday, the other Valentines Day. How we lucked out and got to have those two special evenings for ourselves was part of that magic we shared, was that ability we had to weave gold out of dross. Those two evenings were highlighted by gifts and food and cheesecake. Fresh baked cheesecake topped with freshly whipped cream. I couldn't imagine wanting to gild the lilly but we did. You taught me about chilling the bowl and the beater, but after that the mixer was on it's own. Each time that cream would rise and so would we to the occasion. High piles of fluffy goodness graced our slices of cake. It was a delight, not such much in eating it but in the making. Kitchen teamwork for a dulcet treat.

But it was the conversation we had on the couch at the end of that Valentine evening that has stayed with me, the same way that a good telling of Jack and the Beanstalk or the The Three Billy Goats Gruff will stay with a child. It's not to say that I was child-like when we told each other our dreams that night, but it was more a case of being embued with a particular form of magic that is only found in the heart of lovers, fools and children. Maybe my heart was pumping joy juice that evening instead of blood, but that's okay. I heard and believed, not too much differently than you must do on Sundays with your fellow Christians.

We talked about a hotel in Vancouver, a special one that you heard about, what was it, the Four Seasons? I can't remember the name right now but I remember that we looked it up later. We talked about a time when we could go there, not as lovers but as mates, partners, married folk. We talked stupidly, as if a extreme form of madness had slipped silently down the chimney and addled our brains. We talked about something that seemed to be a like a honeymoon, something that spoke of commitment, but like in the way Corelli's lovers spoke spoke about their future lives at the end chapter 45, in an "after the war" sense. We had no sense saying those things to each other. It was like promising your kid a bicycle at Christmas in July. You might not remember saying what you said but that kid of yours never forgets.

So we talked and then the talk came back to the Kitchen Aid. It was lacivious, that talk, and we ran out of time, and all we wanted to do was haul that mixing bowl full of whipped cream upstairs. We figured, well, when we did the Four Seasons we'd just take that mixer with us. Make up a batch and take it to bed. No cheesecake needed. Only two lovers in the sack.

We never lived out that fantasy, we were never allowed to haul that contraband mixer over international borders. We took that cheesecake and that whipped cream and made up stories, instead. Sky high we were but like all good things that fly too high saw those dreams of ours come crashing down. We woke up in that wee kitchen of mine and realized we were two responsible adults again. Our fantasy world took a back seat to our realities. The only thing to come out of those tales was the realization that a good cheesecake could be tasty with or without whipped cream. But no matter how you eat it, always be sure to chill the bowl and the beaters before hand.

Like with all good fairytales, there is a hardcore moral attached. Mine was believe with all your heart but next time keep your eyes open and your feet on the ground. That and keep your mixer ready. Never can tell when it'll come in handy across the border in Canada.

Love, your WHMB

Dangling conversation

Just to let you know: every day I fight the urge to call you and on the most part my better angels win. I have called and found the machine on, heard The Detective pick up the line, found you gone for the day. I've walked down the street and dialed the pay phone and hung up at the last minute, just like a school boy, my knees shaking, my heart in my throat, my breathing labored. Sometimes I get more winded from just the thought of talking you than I do from a full out walk up the hill. Just the idea of hearing your voice sends me into a panic. Not so much fear, but more a form of disquiet I feel up front about interupting your life and then being called on it.

As you put it to me one time in a letter, when I finally see you in the aisle of a supermarket someday, what will we find to talk about? Know that I won't be speechless because I couldn't think of a million and one things to share with you, but I'll be struck mute because of the high volume of frozen wordage stuck in my craw. A form of brain freeze. Verbage lock.

I will be walking up the block in a moment and passing up yet another opportunity to call you. There is an agreement of sorts that we made long ago, one that says that I must give you space because you need it for your fighting chance to work over there. There's also that Jay Leno line in my head, the one that says, "hey, have some self respect, a phone works two ways, and so does a relationship. What you have is a tragic story on your hands, not a friendship. Get over it".

And I do, until I pass a payphone with fifty cents in my pocket. Today I'll leave the change at home. I'd rather leave it all to chance. Maybe then when I see you I'll be able to find words on legs that are solid, not ones made of fleeting desires and old dreams.

Love, Your WHMB

Sometimes I don't even have to leave the paper to find you, 5/09

"Good morning to you" I say to you as I sit here reading the morning news. It's an old habit now, one expanded to take in newspapers from both coasts and the local and regional ones as well. This morning I left BBC alone, forgot all about LA and New York and just poked around in the Seattle Times, instead. But I can't dawdle, I have a busy morning staring at me in the face. I still have dishes to wash, coffee to drink, a walk to take and beans to boil. I have day's worth of yard work to do and a pot of French onion soup to make. I also have a bottle of chardonnay chilling in the fridge that's calling out my name, a few movies to pick from to watch (well, more than a few!) and a couple posts to polish up and send off into the world. In short, a full day ahead of me.

With all that up front I still woke up and thought of you, thought about your second coda, which, by being second and not really being an ending, says alot about us. I thought of the last time I saw you, that time in passing, there on the road in The Woods. I watched you wave to me as I drove past and haven't seen you since. Then I thought again about the wording in that wee passage you sent back in September of '06, by far not the last thing you wrote me but one where you defined your position, the one where you chose God over the two men who were vying for your heart. Sensible, I suppose, because that Being in our love quadrangle doesn't get a vote. Except in absentium, and His vote is only counted by you.

But I realize that this love of ours does not live a democratic society. It is very totalitarian and you are the head of state and that's just that. I know that I don't get a vote, that for me the ballot box is stuffed or closed or locked. Whatever. But that doesn't mean that I don't get a voice, even if that voice of mine is muted, but muted only because these words here are unknown to you. I know, too, that if you were ever to find these words you would wonder why I just can't set you down and turn away. I know you must wonder, too, why I just can't be "brave" like you, bring my family back into my life and suffer in silence like you do.

I know from our talks that in losing me you lost your right hand man.I also know from our run-ins that you still care. You know from my words and actions that I've given myself over to the fine and unsettling art of leaving you behind, that I attempted to get the family to come home, that I've done my best to find others to replace you. All of that has mattered and none of it has worked, so now I've gone a different route. I decided to just go it alone for awhile. As far as my writing here is concerned I know that I should find another way to honor our times but I look at this as a sweet form of madness, etchings on the walls of my very public cell, something that's straight out of Dickens, or a chapter or two ripped out of Corellli's Mandolin.

Like those two lovers we, too, were lovers in the old fashioned sense, and like those two lovers we were also forcibly torn apart. I suppose that's where all these posts come from, from that well spring of imagination fed from reading all too many books. Love in the Time of Cholera, The Time Traveler's Wife were just two of the many tales we read together, ones that I absorbed into my being as much as I absorbed you in the days of our times.

SO I read and write and commit myself to words, to meaningless votes, to standing by the side of the road to wave to you as you go by, to living life as I know best as God and The Detective continue to get all the good press. No matter. I know your heart and I know mine. And I felt it jump this morning when I saw that block of information posted below in the travel section of the Times, a chunk of weekend ideas that took me back to our times, to our Lake Chelan moment, to our birding thrills, to our walk in Leavenworth. We had our outdoor adventures, we had our road trips, we had our stolen moments. For that I am glad. Yeah, read all about it!

Your WHMB


Leavenworth offers fun in the sun for outdoor adventurers
Pike Place Market festival once again says "thank you" for ballot-box support
Where to find Leavenworth adventures
Ask Travel: Where to take kids for watery fun? Lake Chelan
Birders' Top Spots: Gorge stroll offers jays, woodpeckers, wildflowers and views

Benches are for more than sitting

I noticed the other day during a quick stroll up the Port Orchard waterfront that our bench is gone. Not to say that it was in good shape to begin with. Someone had left a smoldering cigarette or the like in the armrest and burnt the support post almost all the way to the ground. It was still usable but not so picturesque so I imagine that's what made the city pull it. Take it out, sure, but not replace it? That I don't get.

I suppose that the city has some grand master plan for the waterfront. I know that they refloored the observation deck on the other side of the marina and pulled the picnic table that sat there, too. Let's just chaulk that up to beautification. But as far as not replacing benches, maybe it's a case of the city not wanting us to sit in any one place too long. Lord knows what kinds of talk or thought can go on when you're sitting looking out over the water on a pretty day. Might make you do crazy things, like frolic or skip or fall in love. Can't do that. Must some some sort of ordinance against it.

You and I, we've put in some serious bench time around the county and the region. I think you can fairly say that betwix a handful of city parks in Bremerton, the ferry system, that school yard picnic bench in Snohomish, the bench outside of Campbell's, the rough but handy cement settee at Pt Definance, the bench we glanced at but tossed aside in favor of my ragged old patchwork blanket that day at Loyalty park and that one moonlit pier bench in Gig Harbor that our bottoms have graced more than our shared of publicly paid for sitting devices. For that I am glad. Beyond glad. Happy to the bottom of the rivits on my blue jeans.

And while some benches may go away, like those there at the marina in Port Orchard, there are others out there that are still going strong. I know that whenever I get a chance I do the waterfront walk there in Ruston and I love to stop and see where we sat and watched the boat traffic go by the night of the last Calcopo. I love to stop and walk the waterfront at Point Defiance, too, if only to see if I can see a seal or two like we did on the fabled day, the 27th of August. I know that whenever I fry up chili rellenos I think of the stop we made at the park behind the Cash and Carry store, that quiet little spot we took in between work and home, a place that was brand new to both of us. Then there was that rainy day where we sat in your car instead of on the bench in front of us, if only so that we could talk longer and not go home looking too sopped and silly.

Benches were our hallmark. How many times did we sit outside the branch and talk, knowing that our talks were soon coming to an end? How many secrets did we tell each other under that Oregon Maple, on that ferry seat that cold December night, on that bench in Snohomish while we ate our way through those fabulous box lunches provided for us by Lil of Pave fame? I know that we landed in Lake Chelan that night and had but a moment before we had resume our library identities, but we sat and contemplated our day on that bench outside my room which solidified our love that evening. It didn't take a word, again, not too much differently than the day we cupped and handed over our hearts under that maple tree in Sumner. One thing I can say for certain, and this is after a long contemplation on one of the surviving benches in Port Orchard, is that we never gave those hearts back. Beat them all to hell but we retained them. I still have yours here in safe keeping. Pity The Detective.

So know that whenever I wander I'll take a minute and sit, look out over a vista, take a break under an ample shade tree or just set down my bags for a moment and rest. And when I do I'll think of you, of you and me and that wild clematis in my back yard, the day after you came back from Denver, the day we sat on my raggedy old bench and bonded, exchanged kisses and talk and small gifts. The bench may be on it's last legs, but that geode you gave me that day is still around and gracing my mantlepiece. I can't haul benches around with me but I can sit on one and think and know in that thinking that you, too, must rest every once in a while, rest from your labors and dogma and pursuits of integrity and love of God and think of days where you were loved unequivocally, loved with no strings attached, loved for being just you, because you shared with me your heart, your sweetness and that general overall love of life that you embrace so dearly.

I may not find you sitting on one of those remaining benches outside the branch anytime soon, but I know where to look for you. If I look closely I can see you cross the water...yeah...there you are...

Love, Your WHMB

Auntie Emm's kitchen

"And you know I'm a complete recipe follower, right? I don't love cooking for the most part and wasn't taught much in the kitchen, but I did find that if I followed a recipe things tasted good!" email excerpt, July 05

I just came across a huge cache of recipe booklets the other day, courtesy of the Friends of the Library. I was at the desk when John came up with two plastic grocery bags filled with both old and new pamphlets and asked if I would be interested in going through them. These were on top of a huge collection that had been given to them earlier in the week. That little load seemed to be the tail end of a donation. I had no problem digging through them and pulled a dozen or so aside. After that I took a break and went back to the Friends room and went through that treasure trove they received earlier in the week and in the end went home with a paper grocery bag full of old and interesting recipe books. They're not all in the best of shape but they're a reflection of a cooking sense that is long past. Picture life in the days when most women were expected to be homemakers. That was the era of these cookbooklets. They were, and still are, grand.

I found a piece that was generated by the so and so Democratic Society of dumpty dump County. It was a compliation of that particular voter block's favorite recipes. I liked the style of the writing, the quaintness of the recipes, but more I loved the illustration on the cover, a simple pen and ink of a modern woman struggling with a pie recipe while the ghostly image of grandmother hovered benignly overhead. I saw your face in that image, saw the seriousness of your kitchen approach, saw you in your ernestness, your desire to please. You were the housekeeper when I knew you, or maybe more the keeper of the house. Without you that place would have fallen apart. Due to your training or diligence or hardheadedness you've managed to keep that house going in ways that astound me. Frankly, M, it's a lovely house. A grand place to entertain, which you seem to do a lot. And from what I can tell you do it well.

I wasn't a big recipient of your cooking powers, if only because you were so shy in sharing them. You thought that I was some grand master chef, but I snowed you if only because I knew how to cook and did all of it off the cuff. But you amazed me with your love of recipes. Without them you were lost. With them I was dumbfounded. Together we managed to pull off some pretty great stuff. But you, on your own, knocked off dishes without any help or back up. Before your talks you did it all, without a man in the kitchen to provide assistance or support.

Melissa, that alone made me love you. That abillity to pull it all off all by yourself. You were and still are a powerhouse. Those dishes, those treats, things that you wrote about or shared with friends or made for me told me that you were not the woman of "little brain" but a true force of nature to contend with. No wonder The Detective fought so hard to keep you. To lose you would have meant starvation.

Nevertheless, we shared some good chow. For instance:

Applesauce: I told you about it, how easy it was to make. You poo-pooed it for the longest time then the day you stayed home and skipped the All Staff Meeting you made some. Told me the next day in an email that you had some for me but that there were no takers. How was I to know that you'd be waiting there at the corner of Sylvan and Wheaton with a bowlful of applesauce for me? Had I known that you were there nothing would have stood in my way. Not a legion's worth of cinnamon sticks would have stopped me from tasting that fresh sauce. Nothing.

Raspberry jam: we were still new to writing, still feeling out the parameters of our friendship. The Estranged One was still my wife living at home, I was still your boss at work. I was working Sundays at the Rodeo swap meet, taking the boy, selling junk, making cash. In that one letter you wrote me you told me how you spent a Saturday picking raspberries with a friend and afterwards got to gether to make jam. You didn't so much as say it but when you asked me when The Boy had his golf lessons you were telling me that you had something to give me. I found out later that week that it was more than jam, it was more than a bag of plums, it was a small batch of fondness wrapped in a prickly bit of irkedness after finding out that I had applied to Boise. It was funny to see you that way as I stood outside your van, across the passenger seat from me, sunglasses on, distant and just a bit huffy. I had never seen you that way before. You were mad because I had gotten some plums earlier in the day from some other woman. But more you were angry because you thought I was going away, but you couldn't tell me so. Why was that, my guarded one?

Berries: they came up in our story many times, but the time we sat at the track and talked movies you brought along strawberries to share. I don't think I had anything with me, but I remember those berries, room temp, juicy, a bit before their time. Quite unlike the berries we picked from the bushes not too far from where we were sitting. We did that walk only days before, walking, talking about nothing much, when I pulled a vine ripe, sun warmed black berry from a bush. turned to you and popped it into your mouth. Who needs sex when things like that were like making love standing up?

Brownies: you had a recipe that you were particularly proud of, in fact, you asked me in a letter if I could smell them baking from where I stood. While I was out working the swapmeet you baked a batch for an impromptu bbq you were pulling off for some old Texas based friends that were in town for the afternoon. I can't remember if you ever shared that recipe with me but I know that whenever I think of brownies I think of those hot asphalt coated Sundays and the joy of seeing emails in my box from you.

Clafouti: let's just blame Ina Garten, shall we? Maybe Tacoma Boys? Or we'll just blame that stop we made at that fruit stand outside of Twisp on our road trip back from WALE. Nevertheless we always seemed to have pears on our minds fairly back in those days and a recipe for pear clafouti seemed to be just the right thing to make. It necessitated buying kosher salt and nutmeg and pear brandy, but we were good to go with all of that, too. Once I made one in a cast iron skillet so that necessitated finding one for you, too. You've since gotten more than one. I wonder if you still have that skillet I bought for you? If so, when was the last time you broke it and that hand written clafouti recipe out and made one?

Pork burritos: then there was that whole Crock Pot episode we shared, where we were challenging each other weekly with slow cooked meat recipes. I made some dish or another that slow cooked pork with some soup, onions and beer and passed along the idea to you where, in the end, you made a dish that was oh so much better. I still remember the lunch we shared together at Bataan Park there above the library off Sylvan Way. You were hesitant to have me taste your chow, you were afraid I wouldn't like it, as if you were cooking for me. Maybe you were, but all I know is that it was delicious.

Salmon: then there was that time you had in-laws over and everyone went deep sea fishing and you suddenly had tons of salmon in your ice box. Tons of salmon to grill, and alot of it was coated with mayonaise. We never had a chance to explore that. What was that all about? Where did you learn that? Was it really all that good? Explain, Professora!

Banana creme pie: what brought that on, making me a pie? But you did and then you discovered that my Southern colleague at work made one for me, too. I had to eat two of those things, and I have to tell you now that at that time I had no idea which one was better. But darlin', in hind sight, it had to be yours!

Then there were cheese omelets that you suddenly started making because I had made one for you. And then there was the pear tea that I drank in your kitchen because of the pears and my fascination for green tea. Then there was the pan of turkey lasagna that started it all, the one you gave to my family whe my youngest was born. That was the day I first met The Detective, the day I knew that I had to set you free. The day that I found out that love begins and ends in the kitchen, no matter whether or not your dreams or desires or recipes turn out.

I am sure that you are still Queen of your kitchen and are turning out a passle of princesses that will hopefully follow in your path, even if that path is filled with good intentions and good food found in recipe books. Someday, if we are lucky, maybe we will find ourselves washing dishes together after a long slog in the kitchen. Maybe the food we'll make will be soft, less challenging, more suited to geriatric tastes. Maybe it will be for two, or for a grand group. No matter. If that happens, all to the good. If not, well, just know that I am happy for the food that we already shared. You shared lunch off of your plate, we broke bread in your kitchen, we gleaned and gathered knowledge all over the place and I know, in my heart of hearts that when you sautee in that cast iron skillet or bake a dish in that French casserole I gave you that you think of me and all the dishes we never made. It's there in your letters, as much as it was in your eyes when we parted last.

Food and friends, that's where the best memories are made.

Love, your WHMB

Walking everywhere

There was a time not so long ago that I would wake up at the crack of dawn and hit the streets in order to get my walk in before work. Not only would I walk the boulevard at daybreak but would spend my two break periods at work out walking the neighborhood around the branch as well. Sometimes, on those really hard to deal with, all too frustrating days I would strap on my shoes and hit the streets once again after I got home, or wander up to the local track and do a few miles before I jumped in the car. Needless to say I was down to wearing size 36 pants again. I had a lot of things on my mind back in those days that needed working out. The work out I was getting was besides the point.

I recently rediscovered the joy of a daily walk again. I know that I've been doing a lot of walking for the sake of my groceries but this latest spurt of exercise has been a different thing entirely. I'm not too sure what brought it on. Was it the early morning light? The feel in the air at seven? Knowing that you're out there doing the same? Feeling like I was getting to be a bit too plump again and needed to keep those thirty eights loose and comfortable on my hips? Whatever the cause I've been enjoying it quite a bit, as it helps to keep my mind sharp at work and has given me extra contemplative time in the morning that I was needing. Time not so much spent thinking about what has passed but more on what's here before me now.

Life is so much different now than it was two or three years ago. I think of last year and all the grief I was dealing with and know that I have come a long way since then. I hear that time heals all but not in regards to all things. I know that work is better, that I have surrounded myself with good people and that life goes on. I know, too, that time has marched a long ways away from our days and that it has been almost a year since I've heard your voice. I know, too, that that's what you wished to see happen so all that is happening is according to your plan. What I walk and think about so much these days is that no matter how much I walk and wish you away you still somehow find a way back into my life.

Sure, that's going to happen, some might say, as you bring her to the fore daily with your active thinking and photographs and memorabilia. Okay, I'll take that hit. But it comes down to being something more than that. It's not a pattern or an obsession I'm dealing with here but more a form of breathing, or a sort of blood type, or some kind of genetic twist in the fabric of my soul. I can walk with the best of them, entertain colleagues, challenge myself at work, have tons of good friends in my life but the one friend that I miss talking to the most is you.

Somehow I can't or haven't been able to reconcile myself to that, no matter what I do. That I have to go for the rest of my life not being able to talk to you is a severe form of punishment that I have yet to figure out how to make good on. I can't for the life of me walk that away. I'm not like that character in the Great Escape, the Cooler King, who can sit in his cell and catch balls all day long. I wake and work and I work some more just to make sleep easier. I wake and I walk and walk till I drop and when I do I think of the walks I used to take, the ones where I knew your calls would be coming in as I walked along. You haven't dialed in for years now. I truly miss those calls, our exchange of words and life and laughter. As far apart as we are these days I might as well be walking on the moon.

But walk I do. And know that all that walking has done me good. As I walk I think of ways to improve my life, think of things I've done lately that have helped make me whole again. Leaving our life behind a step at a time has been hard to do but I am doing it. But at the same time I've found that no matter how far I walk away from you I find myself somehow getting closer to you. I've found, with all these miles behind me, that I am finally seeing you more clearly. Those miles have provided us with a buffer of time that is beyond important, but more than that those walks, sweaty, hard, tiring, have helped for me to better understand and respect your hard choices. That closer/further away thing has turned into a sort of Zen kuon. Good for me. Spiritual enlightment up and down the boulevard at 45 minutes a day. Good for both of us all the way around.

Your WHMB

A plain and simple truth

Jane, Professora, Empress of my Heart: one thing is for certain, and that is that you wouldn't pray for me every day if you still didn't love me.

Just thought I would point that out.

Te quiero, mi amor.

Besos, tu WHMB

A full day of references

The numbers keep adding up, darlin'. When should I start the tally?

Should I start at midnight or when I first wake up? Should they be neutral, stuff that I fall upon naturally or can I include things that are open, blatant, like the poppy husk or the colored geode that rest on my mantle? Should I keep those free floating references contained to a particular geographic region like Kitsap or can I take them out of state, like the back highways of Oregon or Nevada? Should I get out a grid sheet and categorize them? I think categories could be fun, a sheet of lined school paper all boxed up and set up for tick marks.

I wonder sometimes how many times during the course of a day I run into moments where I think about you, where I utter you name, say "oh M". It's not all that difficult after spending almost five years getting to know someone. It's not too hard to imagine that the most everyday things, the sacred vessels of our exquisite mundaneness, would be larded with reference. I don't think it'll be possible to engage in basic housework or do a shopping run and not have it become a hash mark on the grid. I feel, in order to be fair, that those little mind mines have to come up randomly otherwise I feel I'll need to carry a spiral bound notebook instead of a sheet of paper to keep track of it all.

So, for starters, I won't use those two random references to your name that I fell upon yesterday. As it were they tipped the scales of yesterday's unintentional nostalgia trip, if the word nostalgia is even the right word to use. So, knowing that your name will show up over and over again anyway should I count those references as well? Count them in the same way that a man who has been sentenced to 50 lashes with a feather boa counts the strokes as they grace his back?

It's not so much pain as a sudden jolt when I find you in out of the way places. It's more of a "How did you find your way in here?" kind of moment. Take for instance that business of your name popping up over and over again yesterday. There it was, up on a business sign, as I rode down Wheaton Way, and there it was, once again, buried in an article in the Seattle Weekly. Is that fair, for your name to be so prolific? Was it a popular name for awhile or what? Do I go around disturbing you that way? Honestly, how many Wally's do you see on a daily basis? Not many, I am sure. But then I can only wish for that to happen to you, for my name to appear if by magic, if only to return all the sweet shocks you give me throughout the day.

Maybe my mind is just more open to you right now because my bed is empty. Maybe betwix The Boy, the cat, my overgrown yard and lots of daily exercise I can exorcise those demons that plague me. Or maybe I'm suppose to let that happen. To promote susceptablity, through those daily reminders, to the notion that we once loved. Egg on my memories in a such a way so that they don't cleanse as much as spur on a deeper infection through reflection. But those rememberances never bother me as much as I'm sure it bothers other people, the way the smell of gangrene must bother folks sitting too close to an open, unfathomably silly wound. Think Love in the Time of Cholera. A long case of serious life long goofing while waiting for the inevitable to happen. Whatever that inevitability may be. No pistol notches on the handle of my gun as much as vivid hashmarks scribbled in my binder.

So, tomorrow I will start. The reference I found today in the article I was reading in Esquire about The English Patient doesn't count. Tomorrow when I wake up I'll begin. Carry a small pencil and sheet of paper around with me. Make it all meaningful. I'll finish this post Sunday, let you know how it all turns out.

*************

Got a preview of coming attractions today while I was out shopping. Two copies of the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack on cassette, two VHS copies of The Snowman, one copy of The Time Traveler's Wife. Innumerable games we thought to play and one that we loved, Yahtzee. And I was passed as I walked home by all to many Focus cars. So, is this to be the pattern of the game? To sit on my deck and hear an old Ike and Tina Turner song being played up the street that was once covered by Bob Seger and know that that song refers to my Colorado days and then to have that refererence turn once again towards you because you hail from Colorado? Fair, yes. Just like the Kevin Bacon game. How many steps removed should be figured into this series of upcoming hash marks? Does it matter? I know that I can listen to that song and know that those days I spent in Colorado were some of the best days of my life. I know, too, that I tried to get back there a couple years ago just to be in the land where you began. It would have been a melding of nostalgia and grief and pleasure and pain. A voluntary exile on top of a forced one. It would have been all too strange, sitting in Pueblo wondering if you'd ever swing by to say hello. Even the French Foreign Legion wouldn't know what to do with an expatriot like me at that point.

Ok, openers: it's Memorial Day weekend, so there's that trip I took to Greyland Beach and the wonky phone connection we shared when you got off of your Sunday workshift. Then there's Corelli's Mandolin, the last Calcopo meet, that horrid film with Nick Cage and the strange oblong pizzas I made that never got eaten. How about the Seattle Times article I read about the Chinook Pass opening for the season? The blue Craftsman vacuum cleaner, the same one that you have, the one that'll be vacuuming the floors in anticipation of The Boy's arrival? Do those count in their own sideways fashion?

Then there's that pan of migas that I made for breakfast this morning. Not too far off the mark from the omelet I made for you that sunny spring morning, the kind you started making at home, the ones that you oldest asked you about, as to why you suddenly had a hankering to make them. Then there was the discussion I had with the boy about the back house, about the newlyweds who were interested in renting it, kids we had both worked with, folks that we considered to be our friends, friendly enought that you could flirt in a friendly way with E just to make him blush, friendly enought that we could have K act as our beard when we sent messages to each other through the inner office mail.

There was Freddies, the quietness of the store at six o'clock in the evening, Saturday being the day that we began our last great unhindered week in July of '06 before your Gmail box was found open, the day we met each other in the aisle and called each other "hon". It was also the place where I saw you and The Detective cross the parking lot, the evening I was in the car with Punkin, just having come back from eating sundaes and french fries at Dairy Queen. We were both sticky from chocolate sauce and my heart was racing from excess sugar when I saw the two of you cross that parking lot together, causing my heart to pound even harder. But then my heart always races whenever I see you. It did the winter before last when I saw you and your daughter in the video store. All the same parking lot, all off the same corner. Another corner to be turned, to anticipate, to avoid.

So I walked up the highway to pick up The Boy and got a ride from friends who saw me as they passed, a couple wondered who that pathetic bastard was who humping all those groceries down the highway. Would you have stopped? Could you have? I waved at you in the past as you've passed me on the street, and thus go the memories, like cars down unmerciful highways that don't respect stopping or speed limits. Or limits of the imagination, or the weight of satchels packed full of heart.

Hon, face it, I don't expect for you to stop now or ever to savor the tick marks. I do and that's enough for me.

Know that it is now Sunday afternoon and those marks were fewer than I thought they would be. I suppose because I was concious of my actions, that thinking hard about thinking about you. It took a bit of the thrill out of it, the preciousness I feel whenever I've been ghosted by you.

But I must admit I was calling in all my spirtual markers yesterday on my way to Fred Meyer's. I was pushing god and all his angels, asking the devil and his minions to help me, to have you show up, even in passing, if only to make all that work spent thinking about you worthwhile.

For now I'll let it rest. I have a bbq to go to today. Friends to talk to. This time I'll leave you out of the conversation and let you come along a ghost instead, as a shade in my life, one that covers me like the shade of an Aspen tree would cover me on a breezy Rocky Mountain day.

Good Memorial Day to you. Hmm, now that's a coincidence. Love.

Your WHMB

Some Tom Petty lyrics to go along with that Captain Nemo trunk recording, 08

Woke up this morning to muted sunshine, a nestled cat, a clutted room, an old snapshot of your face. Padded downstairs, let the cat out, boiled up some water, brewed up a presspot of very strong coffee. Did a bit of housework, stripped the bed, forgot the dishes, toasted some sourdough and added a bit more flour to the pot that's bubbling on the kitchen table. Stood outside on the porch for a bit while the music played, looked out over the water and thought about what a colleague told me yesterday about views. How important it is to have one so you have a reason to look out and away from yourself. So I did. Looked out over the water, out towards the mountains. Nice time, gazing over that view. There is a big world out there yet to be conquered, buddy, and somewhere out there you're in it, too.

So I took in the view and saw the long road that lies before me and I was glad. Happy knowing that there's still miles to go before I sleep. And know that when I finally do lay my head down on that goose down pillow I'll be whistling a Tom Petty tune that I've heard a thousand times before. Whenever I hear it I crank it up and sing along, sing way up loud. My neighbors most certainly heard me sing along with this song this morning. I'm sure you must have heard me, too, if you had your ears cocked in the right direction.

So, sing along with me, buddy, it's our song. That is, outside of Sabor a Mi.

"You and I Will Meet Again"

You and I will meet again
When we're least expecting it
One day in some far off place
I will recognize your face

I won't say good-bye my friend
For you and I will meet again

I heard you singing to no one
I saw you dancing all alone
One day you belonged to me
Next day I just wouldn't know

Someday all the rules will bend
And you and I will meet again

I've got a feeling
I've got a feeling so strong
Maybe someday

our paths will cross

A red-winged hawk is circling
The blacktop stretches out for days
How could I get so close to you

And still feel so far away?

I hear a voice come on the wind
Sayin' you and I will meet again
I don't know how, I don't know when
But you and I will meet again

by Tom Petty

Into the Great Wide Open

Love, your WHMB

Ghost riding along the Truelove trail

I didn't want this to read like a travelogue. I had a meeting scheduled this morning out in Poulsbo. I still don't have a car that's up and running so I took public transit instead, caught the foot ferry over to Bremerton, walked up to the loading area and then caught the number 11 to the mall. Transferred over to the 32 which took me to Poulsbo. Walked over to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks before the meeting. Pretty much end of story as I had a ride back to the ferry after lunch.

It wasn't so much riding as it was observing. Watching the details of a quiet morning flow by the window. Unlike driving where you have to concentrate on working many mechanisms just to stay alive and out of harms way, as a passenger on a public conveyence you get to relax, take a look around you while you travel. See the sights, turn your head, take a look back at where you've been.

I suppose that's what today's ride felt like, like I was looking into a rear view mirror rather than through the windshield while heading down the road. I watched scenes of my life unfold as if I were down south watching the Ramona Pageant unfold before me on a grand outdoor stage. It was a ride filled with snippets of emotionally charged film, a sunny day, "best of" edition of my Kitsap years with you, a chapbook of memories like the ones you pick up when you attend a major event like a play or opera, like the yearbook you buy when you leave high school. We've all picked up old programs or souvenier pamphlets and sighed and said yes, I've been there, too.

Today was like that. A grand old glossy guide to places that we have traveled on the north side of town. All too much. All very sweet. Makes me realize that there's not too many places in this little slice of the world that we haven't touched on together.

Years ago I wrote you a poem about the events we experienced during our year. You told me after you had read it that you were surprised that we had done so much together. Just a ride between Port Orchard and Poulsbo can bear that out. We've ridden that little ferry to supper, and have worked over that corner of Wheaton and Sylvan Way to death. I've waited for you to make your way up the street from that school your girls once attended, and we strolled the aisles of the Orowheat store in search of good day old deals. We sipped coffee at the Starbucks that I saw over one shoulder and shopped for curtains at the Walmart I saw over the other. We parked at the Target to conserve gas on our way to meetings, took my tire in to get fixed at Sears, took in coffee and tea and discount books at Barnes and Noble with your daughter, and did our best to look busy at The Central Market before the Audubon Kingfisher group met. We did our best, no doubt, to make time stretch, to make it turn to plasticine. It didn't always work but we tried.

No, like Yoda says, "don't try, do". We did. We stretched our stolen moments out like Silly Putty and made those suckers bounce. We took life and that route and those shops and stores and highways and made them ours, turned them into our very own Outlaw Trail, roads where only true loves travel. We were gypsy lovers and nobody, not nobody, could shut us down.

Nobody but us.

Today I traveled by ferry and bus to Poulsbo. But in reality I took a time machine back to our times and in my heart of hearts I knew that you, too, were along for the ride. Like my buddy told me today at lunch, we don't choose love, love chooses us. We don't have a say in the matter, it just is. We love for life, my dear, just like geese or swans. I may not be with you, my love, but that's okay, for I know that you and I love each other anyway. We said that to each other when we saw each other last.

I am a fence rider. I have my north forty to ride. I will see you, my love, whereever the sun meets the horizon. Yeah, M, I'll see you at sunset. Or maybe someday, once again, in the dark of a Kingfisher meeting, downstairs in the Poulsbo meeting room. I know how to get there. See you then.

Love, your WHMB

The Romantic and the Pragmatist

"I never thought it would end this way," Johanna Carter says to him." "There never was any other way," Captain Barstow tells her. "We just put it off awhile" from the film Rocky Mountain.

A few years back we were kicking the relative merits of a number of films, Lost in Translation, Spanglish, Phantom of the Opera and Shakespeare in Love among others. We still hadn't had a chance to watch a movie together, that was still a long ways off. We were just talking about movies as friends tend to do, weighing out not so much the film itself but the weight of the message built into the movie.

You asked me over the course of June to check out Spanglish. In the meantime I found and then watched a copy of Lost in Translation, then watched your flick, then put you to the challenge to watch both of them as well. We got together by the j high track after your July road trip to discuss the films over warm strawberries and luke cool water. It was an afternoon made in heaven.

In the end I think that you felt more at home with Spanglish than you did with Lost because of the girl and her ability to break away from her true love, if only because the tragic ending fit so well with your mindset. I say tragic only because the boy lost the girl of his dreams. You said that was fitting because the girl maintained her sense of intregrity and was able to be loved by the boy even as she walked away. No families torn asunder, everyone went on with their heads held high. I didn't enjoy that part very much and, as a matter of fact, haven't watched the movie since. All too much like our own story. Why watch something when I already lived it?

After that I think I understand why I've sent along copies of Casablanca and The Ghost and Mrs Muir to you. In both cases, as well as with Errol Flynn's Rocky Mountain, boy loses girl but does so only because in doing so he maintains the high road. I suppose, too, that was the moral in that Shakespeare flick. Boy loves girl, boy loses girl, but in doing so gets one hell of a good writing spree out of it.

Maybe that's why I enjoyed Lost in Translation more than you did. I felt that that film's ending was bit more ambiguous, because while it looked to be a boy meets girl,boy loses girl kinda film, I think it was more of a boy meets girl, then says goodbye to her for awhile and then meets her again later on off camera after he gets his life in order.

Our points of view may have varied when it came to that intregity in love thing, but deep down in that place where words don't exist I think we both are sharing a cold drink together. We'll always have WALE, but I don't think that either one of us will ever think of our time as a "stolen season". And while I may be the more Romantic of the two of us, my dear, you, my eternally pragmatic one, certainly know in your buried heart of hearts that the better story has not yet been told, that the story still smolders like a glowing ember waiting to ignite, like the fire that burned brightly in Ilsa's eyes for Rick as she was led to the plane by her righteous freedom fighting husband.

M, our time was not a stolen season. It's a season waiting in a calendar that has yet to be opened.

Think of our love as a season that has yet to be lived.

Your WHMB

20 questions, or there abouts

"So, how's your dad?"

One of the hallmarks of our friendship was the thrill we got out of talking. Not always serious things, not always fun topics, just mostly in the middle of all that, a comfortable spot that allowed for introspection and honesty and a regular baring of the soul. Sometimes we would fail in our ability to handle the truth, sometimes we shyed away from the words that could have easily crushed our fragile craft, but on the most part we chatted the day away in some sort of fabled magic space, some mythical neutral zone that kept real life at bay.

This comfortable realm was littered with laughter, with family stories, with invention and merriment and a sort of fondness that engendered risk taking and fence walking and smiles that continually broke down barriers between us and strangers. People who fell upon us either joined in with our smiles or left us alone once they saw that we were set of magical twins that seemed to live apart in a bubble of absolute freedom, free from the constraints of societal norms. On occasion we were brought back to earth, but never willingly. Times like those left us wounded and feeling hunted, as if we had been stripped naked and forced to make our way out of a comfortable dream.

But on the most part when we moved around in the world we pretended as children pretend. We donned the garments of whoever we wanted to be that day and wore them as if the whole world were invited to our costume party. It was like a summer day's garden party in many ways. Almost always we were light and breezy, there was always finger food at hand and parlor games at arm's length. Our games of acey ducey and slices of cheesecake and pots of coffee were only interupted by time, which was the only true rival to our friendship. We reluctantly broke down our tents of play and went back into the world with whisker burned chins and weary hearts. We knew we had no choice but to do so if we wanted to get back to that story, those conversations, those questions that we relished.

Was it because we found each other so interesting or was it because, when we were together, that the world suddenly became new and interesting again? I wonder all the time about what it was that we conjured up, what genie's lamp we disturbed that granted us those three time constrained wishes. I wonder when I wake and say good morning to you via the ether whether or not, in the mindsets that we now court, that it would even be possible for us to talk to each other like that again?

You must understand one thing, that that sense of wonderment we shared continues on like a blissful hangover and still leaves me asking you questions everyday. You once wrote me in a letter how you wished you could just pick up the phone to call me and ask me things. I struggled today with the very same thing, found myself weak kneed at a payphone, where I looked up the number of the place where you work, just to hear your voice, just to know that your breath still sounds the same.

But more it was to ask you things, for you see that it's you and your words that you once shared so willingly with me that I miss, all those rambling conversations that would take us from Colorado to California to Japan and then back to the Northwest all in the course of an hour or two. We were gypsies in our talks, we would take our wagons full of life and spreaded our stories all around the countryside. In turn we generated even more tales to tell, but instead of stories filled with ancestors or far away relatives or rambunctious family members we became the key players in the story. We became legendary and it wasn't just in our minds.

The questions I would ask. I think of things mundane like where you ate Mexican food last or if you've gotten a dog yet or what you made for supper last night and think, what a maroon, wasting time like that but then think, that those were the kinds of questions we peppered each other with as we talked to each other on the phone or while we walked or drove or wrote deep into the night. These days I wonder where you are going, whether or not you finally made it to France, or if you've read anything good lately. I see interesting book titles all the time in the library and want to ask you if you to share them with me. I watch movies almost every night and want to ask you if you've seen them. I look up into the sky and see sunsets and full moons and falling stars and want to find out your reactions to all of them.

I can't seem to move let alone breathe and not have a question for you attached to it. I suppose that's why I pester people in my life with so many questions because in some small way it's all a carryover of the daily questions of life that I shared with you. It wasn't odd to ask about my favorite little family member or to see if you had popcorn with your movie on Sunday night or if your real Mexican Friend had you over for the holidays. I want to ask you about that mayonaise on the salmon thing that you do or find out what you made in that cast iron casserole I gave you or whether or not you've made a clafouti lately. I want to know if the soldier and the lady still reside in the clock, whether the Pinto Pony still rides and if Les Chiens is still around.

All mundane, my love, but then again, we were the King and Queen in the land of Exquisite Mundaneness. But not everything I want to ask you is light and airy. Sometimes we find ourselves with heavy duty things to address. I'd die to know how your heart is, if you're happy, if those vegetables are still getting chopped and if your bed is still getting made. I want to ask you how your smile is holding up, if you steps are light, if you are still on track with whatever it was that drove you down the path you took.

I don't think that anything I want to know really matters much in my life as it stands, but then again, see, that's the art of conversation and getting to know someone. Those little thing, at the moment, anyway, are just that, little things, but they add up. Show that you care, that you are interested. Living with someone is like building a matchstick building. Those house are composed of many individual matches like a good conversation, a solid relationship is composed of many questions. Our life together was like that, composed of many individual questions, all added one to another, that ended up making one grand edifice.

Never mind that ours went up in flames. Things happen.

I wonder, then, about the embers, the Phoenix, the ashes at my feet. I dwell sometimes on that and then shake it off, just in time to find my way back to life and living and new conversations. But those question for you still remain. You see, when it comes to friends and love, you can't choose those things. They just happen. Where they go, how they are handled, how they rest, whether they choose to wait or not, all depends on what you want out of them in the long run. What I want to be able to do again someday is to be able to sit down with you and share coffee and play Yahtzee and talk and talk and talk until the embers in the fireplace die down to cold ash, till the candles melt down into unreconizable blobs of wax on my mantlepiece.

Someday I want to be able to call you on the phone and ask "So, how is your dad?" and know that you'd be fine with me doing that. You would be glad for me to ask you all those questions that you missed being asked all your life all over again.

I miss that, True Love.

Your WHMB

To drop and roll or stand up and go, choices, spring '06

It was a Sunday not too much unlike today. Sunny, warm, light breeze off the water. Typical pleasant spring day here in the Northwest. What was nice about that particular day was that you were working up the block. You had a half hour break coming to you, so made it over to my house. Just enough time for a quick lunch, coffee, chat, whatever.

Funny how folks come and go out of our lives, how some become players in the grand drama of our lives in bigger ways than we ever expected them to.

When that decisive player arrived on the scene we were horizontal on the couch, testing each other on the finer points of French linguistics. We heard a someone hit the porch with their feet and then, just like good civil servants do during earthquake drills, we ducked, rolled and covered.
After the big shock we had some serious questions on hand that needed answering. Had we been seen? Did we dare answer the door? Who in the hell comes over to someone's house on a sunny Sunday afternoon unannounced?

Well, we straightened up and pretended everything was a-ok. "Lack imagination and miss the better story" indeed. Our imaginations were running overtime when we got up, straightened out our story and opened the door. It was my old school teacher friend, back from a kayak run. "Come on in" I said with a forced and cheery smile. Introductions all the way around, and with that, with your eye on the clock and your conscience, you took off back to work.

I don't think that my old pal, in the midst of her storytelling and coffee, ever thought twice about the scene she fell into. I had already been on my own for almost a year. My pal was a good friend of The Estranged One but it didn't seem to matter too much that day. She and I had always gotten along well and that in itself proved to be an incredibly valuable commodity to have in my pocket back in those days.

Later on, after my friend left for the day, I went outside and did that little walk up the stairs to see what I could see. If she behaved like most folks she was looking ahead when she ascended the steps. She may have looked into the house, but at the pace she was keeping she would have only seen a glimpse of the kitchen and an even narrower slice of the living room. Try as she might she would have never seen the contents of the couch. Little did we know that that afternoon we had been in the clear.

It doesn't take too much to conjuer up the memory of that day on days like today. I can still see you across the street, hitting the corner of the prosecutor's building, giving me that little wave before you disappeared . That old friend of mine hasn't been around for awhile but responded to an open question I left in a post yesterday. She'd like to help me out with a store run, she said, would like to assist me in getting some bags of soil home. Very kind of her. After interrupting our lunchtime French lessons that's the least she can do.

Pity we didn't have sense to stay put on the floor that day, but that's what forks in the road are for. For picking and choosing which path in life you want to take. We took the high road that day. We always did.

Love, your WHMB

Kitchen implements, various kinds, 06-09

Who knew that my tiny kitchen could grow up to be so big? Maybe you did, for I surely didn't. It took for you to share your eyes with me for me to see all the possibilities that my kitchen had to offer.

I have a pot of navy bean soup heating on the stove right now. It's simmering away in an old pot, well, it looks old as far as it's style is concerned. Not old as in antique or even collectable, but old in that it served it's time in some eatery out there in the real world and looks beat. It's commercial gear, a three quart or more pot with an exquisitely long handle, nothing fancy. Aluminum, which is funny for me to have considering I lectured you on the "evils" of that kind of cook gear years ago. You had your grandma's pots back then and I hope you still do. Knowing you you kept your own counsel on those pots and pans and ignored my sage advice. I'm sure you kept them because you loved them. If so, good for you. Now I have my own.

I have more than my share of pots and pans these days, that's for sure. My basement is full to brimming with stuff that migrated over from the little house. There was plenty down there to begin with but now it's almost claustraphobic with goods of all kinds, stacked willy nilly in every corner. What really takes up space more than anything else are all those kitchen gee gaws I've accumulated. I don't know why I found collecting that stuff so important to do but I did. Well, I do know why. I wanted to pass along trunks full of cooking gear to the kids, packed tight with heavy duty bowls and good quality knives and commercial cookgear, stuff that I never had when I took off into the world. There are a lot of things you don't know that you need when you first establish yourself in a brand new apartment. All that pre-emptive gathering will hopefully take a little bit of the mystery out of setting up their first kitchens.

I don't think I would have ever really thought about that, about pulling together those kitchen goods, if you hadn't of come along, if you hadn't renewed my desire to impress, if you hadn't made cooking for someone a pleasure again. See, the way I was, the skills I sported, the gear I had on hand was enough. Or so I thought. I had a small amount of fairly standard gear, had it around for years, all heavy duty, hard core stuff that continued to hold up, never seemed wear out or need replacing. I had my Revere Ware, my cast iron skillets, my stainless steel untensils, all that. Restaurant bowls and coffee cups, non-descript crockery, purloined beer glasses, nothing fancy, all sturdy and basic. All well and good. But then you turned me on to cookbooks, and I found, like with home repair, that the mantra still held fast: "the right tool for the right job". So, I started to accumulate used kitchen gear, new tools for new skills. And I haven't looked back since.

In accumulating stuff you find that you can't keep it all. You discover that there's also pleasure in giving. Finding kitchen stuff to give to you was one of the little side benefits for inspiring in me to get in that kitchen again. What inspired me to get you that acrylic pepper grinder? Was it because you needed one, never having had one? What was it that made me seek out for you that cast iron skillet? Was it the latest application of our famous clafouti recipe? Why did I need to find a five quart stainless steel pot for you? Was it for split pea soup or was it for pinto beans? I can't remember, but I do know that I last passed along a very nice French five quart enameled cast iron casserole to you last spring. I have to wonder what you managed to pull off in that pot.

See, the pleasure was in giving back to you the gift that you gave to me. It was a return on your investment, your investment in me, in time, in our friendship, that paid off in a multitude of ways, mostly new skills that I could share with you, but also in something you can't weigh, and that was a new found sense of confidence. Things can only say so much, but they are tangible goods, things that sit on your shelf or in your cupboard that stand as stark reminders of affection and friendship. I know that you couldn't take home the blue ceramic tea pots or the stovetop espresso maker I gave you for your birthday, but you did take home that Japanese bowl I picked up for you when Don was here and you did manage to keep, from what I can tell, the Wallace coffee cup that was squirreled away in your Captain Nemo trunk. You couldn't go home with a full out birthday cheesecake but you could slip under the wire cookbooks to add to cookbook collection,some that would hopefully inspire cheesecake baking in your home. I had no problem setting up your kitchen with little things, my dear, because already gave me the biggest gift of them all: you helped bring me and my kitchen back to life.

A life for a life, as it were.

So, my soup is hot and ready and I'm hungry for breakfast. My presspot of coffee is long gone. The rolls that are toasting were baked last night, sourdough generated from scratch. Later today I'll bake something, maybe a galette, maybe a lemon pie, and when I do, baby, I'll dedicate it to you.

Who knew that there was so much to do in that small kitchen of mine? For years I swung away at dishes that I knew, became proficient then got bored with it all. You came along with your recipe sense and blew out the walls of my life. That of mine kitchen is as big as the world now. Yeah, it's a whole new world, and it's all thanks to you.

Now, come help me make sense of that basement. Some of it's your doing, you know!

Your WHMB

Lyle Lovett and his Large Band, 06,09

"There was a time dear
That once you did love me
and there was a time
You loved me no more"

There is a point to all this, there has to be. There has to be a reason why, for the moment, anyway, that I'm waking up in the morning with just the cat sleeping next to me. Why I am thinking of renting out my back house instead of filling it with my family's stuff. Why, out of a whole calendar year's worth of time, I am only getting to see my kids for two weeks this summer. There has to be a reason for all this.

There has to be a reason why I sit up late at night and type long stories of times that are long past. There are reasons, sometimes unfathomable, why I continue to find signs of you all around me while I make my way through this world. There have to be reasons why the corner of my bedroom and my library are full of cookbooks, why I bought a copy of Shakespeare in Love for a sake of a line you once quoted, why I played Lyle Lovett's first album this morning, and then, in the middle of "If You Were to Wake Up", stopped everything I was doing to sit and listen and shed a few tears.

There has to be a good reason why that that torch for you still burns brightly in the face of all that has transpired between us. By all rights and reason all of this should have shut down long time ago. There has to be a reason why it hasn't.

Is it due to the fact that the rampant symbology of our times is always in my face? Is it because I have chosen to stay in the same town where we once roamed? Because I chose to stay in this house of ghosts? Is it because I still wander the streets of this county, of this state, of this whole Northwest region and know that everywhere I go that somehow we have touched on it? Living here in the same place we walked now has some sort of Midas-like curse attached to it, it has endured some sort of ethereal piercing by Cupid's arrow. I wander about and touch on our times and it colors my life, wounds my heart, fills my with mind with glee and completely and totally inflames my soul.

There must be a reason why I haven't yet moved to Australia or New York or Canada but I'm not too sure why. There has to be a reason why I haven't gone off to cooking school or joined a commune or stepped off into the void but nothing comes to mind right off the bat. I think I'll stay on and continue to figure it all out.

There are reasons why we do things even if they aren't too clear at the time.

There is a reason why I come back here to talk to you. There is a reason why I wake up in the dead of night and turn on the lamp next to my bed to look for a book or a bottle of water and say hello to your photograph. There is a reason why in my Mexican heart of hearts I should be running from my past, or stopping this witless behaviour, or turning away from you but I don't.

I won't say why because it sounds sappy but I think you know why. And as you might say, ditto.

That Lyle Lovett album is part of our soundtrack. When I ran into you last year in that Silverdale Starbucks parking lot I handed off a few books and movies and pieces of music to you. One of the albums was our old standard, Lyle Lovett's Large Band. You passed on it and I think I know why. To hear that album again would have you asking questions of yourself, asking for answers to those silent soundings that crop up whenever you hear the right song, feel the weight of those latent symbols of our times that show before your eyes that are buried deep, or maybe lightly, under the surface of your skin.

You may still wake in the morning and ask yourself why you chose the path that you did. Maybe you still wonder about what it was that passed between us when you go to places that we once haunted. But I am willing to bet that when you finish looking at all those reasons why you stayed on in that life of yours that you turn away from your husband, turn up the volume of those songs that still play in your heart, and dance alone in the silence of your memories.

Your WHMB

Wallet full of Kryptonite, pocket full of basil

"Thank God for health insurance". Something that I am sure that you must say on a daily basis. Not me, I'd rather thank the gods for something else entirely. Happiness, good fortune, basil.

Basil? Yeah, I have my own personal connection.

A few times a year the Karakas girls come through the library to let me know how their crops are doing. "Would you like to buy some lettuce?" they asked me a few years ago. Certainly, I told them. So I took a walk after work and found them outside their family's bike shop, peddling their wares, and bought five dollars worth of garden fresh greens. These days they grow basil for me exclusively. I think it's grand that they would be so industrious at such a young age, but it seems that the whole family is pretty much a bunch of happy entreprenuers.

But funny how that basil crop has led to other things. I was at the desk today when their mom came in. She had just come back from the courthouse with a renewed license in hand. I had to ask her what kind, and she told me it was to sell insurance. Not only does she homeschool, work with the Census but she sells health insurance, too. Wow, what a hustler! Well, she had to pass along her business card to me, just so she could feel good about having just spent fifty dollars and ten cents on that renewal fee. I figured I would give her one of my KRL cards, too. After we exchanged them I looked down and pretty much stopped in my tracks. I recognized the name of the business, the layout of the card.

It was then that she told me that she worked for The Detective. I suppose there was a certain dazed look on my face when I saw that card that she was just kind enough to fill in with information. "Oh, and did you know that he's M's husband? You remember M, don't you? She used to work here."

Gosh, what a question. Truly, a million dollar question if there ever was one.

Of course, I told her. I even told her that you were one of my favorite people, one of the finest women I've ever known.

I'm sorry to say that I wasn't so kind when it came to your fella. I told her that I didn't think he was a very nice man. She responded that she knew nothing about that, but thought that he was a very ethical businessman. Well, I responded that I knew nothing about that, but that my impression of him still stood.

I had to side step quickly out of that trap. Nevermind about that, I said, how nice it was for you to be able to.....blah, blah, blah. My face, demeanor, attitude, everything crashed in an instant so I had to shift quickly in order to avoid a major faux pas, in order to help keep that basil rolling in. I held my own until she left, walked her to the door while I checked out another patron complaint and told her to say hello to you whenever she sees you again.

But I must say that I would give anything to be there when she slips and mentions to her boss, in some sideways manner, that she saw me today. Will she pass along that hello to you to him? Will his blood pressure go up like mine did? Will he need a good long hard run to kick out all those bad enzymes coursing their way through his veins? Will he wonder how it was that his world got to be so gawd damn small?

All I know is that I have R's card in my wallet bearing that business name of his, the one that helps support your life and your household's bottom line. For your sake and the sake of your girls I truly hope that the money always rolls in. But for me, what I have in my wallet is the equivilent of a card coated with Kryptonite, a device that could do me some serious damage if I didn't already know how to defuse it. It is funny how the world got to be so small. I'm glad that I already have health insurance. I'm sure I would have needed it after all that.

It is a small world, M. But the bigger object lesson today was I became reaquainted with the fact that anything can happen. Maybe someday I'll get lucky and it'll be you walking through that door instead of one your husband's insurance agents. Maybe you'll step up to the desk, pass the time of day with me and ask me how my basil is growing. Maybe I'll give you one of my cards, and you'll give me one of yours. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Yeah, come on over and I'll pull together that wonderful tomato, mozarella and basil platter I love so much. We're long overdue for long chat and a slow suppper. Think of it as health insurance we both could use, something we both need right now..

Your WHMB

"The greatest sin of all is risking nothing" Movie by-line, Orchard Cinema, May '09

Took a walk this morning to help dispel this myth I've had in my head that keeps telling me that all those early morning walks are behind me. Used to do it all the time, need to get back into the habit. Have lots of good habits cropping up again right now. I've become more frugal, stopped using credit, drink in moderation, well, to a point, and have once again embraced keeping my house in tip top shape. Now if I can just take that spirit of hard work out into my yard!

So, I took a walk this morning. Dropped off a couple letters at the Geiger sub-branch post office, hit up St Vinnies and found a nice paperback Japanese cookbook, walked around downtown and found that the China Chef has closed, that Slip 45 has closed as well and that the bakery no longer makes donuts. I also found a Chevy Astro van for sale down the street for seven grand and found that that silver grey Focus I had my eye on was gone. Six grand was a good deal.

But it was when I passed the art house cinema that I found the inspiration to write you a line this morning. It's not a quote that I could pull of that bag that sits by the side of my bed, but it is now. It's good enough to print on the side of a Starbucks coffee cup, like the kind you used to bring by the house.

"The greatest sin of all is risking nothing".

It's all about risk. I suppose that's why you used to find me out on Sylvan, waiting for you to pass by. I suppose that's why I used to hammer message signs by the side of the road off Anderson Hill, why I still tend to forward illicit recipes and such to you, why I take long walks to places like Freddies and shop real slow, just to see if I can catch you passing by. I suppose, too, that's what we shared back then, which was a life filled with risk a mile wide. We were crazy, yes, wild, no, but better, in love and wanted the world to know about it. We made plenty of choices, certainly, had window of time big enough for an elephant to jump out of. We had plenty of reasons to stop, too, had ample materials on hand to build up firewalls, to end everything when the heat got to be too hot.

But we kept on stoking the fire, taking the temperature up, fanning the flames. We risked it all and in the end lost it all. No matter, it was a good ride, good enough for me to hard-headedly keep up the risk quotient. Sometimes we see things when we should. Those are the times where we step back up onto the curb and avoid being hit by a passing car. Other times we walk straight out into traffic, movie star style, and hope that those stunt drivers will stop on their marks, get that shot right and avoid mowing us down. I believe I took that mowing down quite well. I ended up where I started, in this house, waiting for somebody, anybody, to come back.

But then, funny thing, I took an even bigger risk, I stopped waiting and started living again.

Risk is a funny thing. You look at life and all that you have to lose. You mentioned that in your last coda to me, how you found that you wanted to keep what you had, that you finally found the value in your life and possessions and didn't want to lose them. I look at my life right now as an embarassment of riches. I look at my risk quotient as one that could be covered by insurance, filled with stuff that, if I should lose them in a fire or burglary or divorce settlement, I could find all over again in a second hand store. That's where I found most of those things to begin with.

But it's that bigger risk that we took, the one where we tossed the dice and lost it all, that has been the biggest lesson of my life. It didn't leave me bitter, or sad, or despondent. Well, I suppose that it did for awhile but now that the lesson has been learned those feelings are all behind me. I'm onto something else entirely right now and it feels good.

I look at that lesson we shared and say "thank's" to you every day. I look at the risk we took, at that line in the sand we drew at the track, at that moment when you walked away because you had to for the sake of your girls and goods and community and where I stood and stayed on because I given you my word, for whatever it was worth. That word as the seminal moment of my life, the cornerstone of my existence. Not the moment when I was born or first got laid or first gave myself over to matrimony. No, that moment when we said "I love you" to each other. When I decided to stay on to honor those words was the moment that I became an adult, a man. I left it all to chance after that and have never looked back.

Yeah, what a risk that was. To open our mouths, to utter I love you, to hand over our hearts to each other and then let life take over after that.

Silly as it seems I took those words to heart if only because they mattered then and still matter to me now. We ran into each other almost a year ago, right up the street from where your kids used to go to school. We sat in your car, drank coffee, told tales. Before you left I passed along to you Captain Nemo's trunk, we hugged and there in front of God and everybody told each other those magic words I love you once again. It was a major risk for you to be standing out there with me, to sit in your car in an open public parking lot. You could have been seen and busted once again. But you did it anyway, risk taker you.

Haven't seen you or shared a word with you since, but you must know, through friends and signs and dashed phone calls, that I am out here, risking it all by waiting for no one while I wait for you. That is the biggest risk of them all. Hanging it out on the line to dry and waiting for you to come by to claim your laundry.

There'll be no risk in that. Come by. Claim that life, and it'll be ours to live.

Your WHMB

Dental labs and plum trees, verification required

What do fresh plums have to do with dental work? Read on and find out!

I only have a bit of recall on this, so correct me if I'm wrong. It has to do with dental molds. If I remember correctly you did this type of work for awhile. Was it something you did out of your home? Or did you work in a shop? I read the blog post below that mentioned a little place in Seattle, pretty much an institution, a real slice of old Seattle. Did this happen to be the place? I remember you were living in Seattle at the time. We both did, for awhile. I lived in the Broadview neighborhood, then, after a short stay in Everett, came back to live in Ballard. If I remember correctly you lived out in Wallingford, in a house with a plum tree in the backyard. As far as that dental lab is concerned, it could be one amongst many, but it is close enough to where you used to live that it could be the one that you worked for. Who knows? You do, set me straight.

As for Wallingford, nice part of town. Great shops, wonderful places to eat. As for that house, I can't remember if you owned it or what. I do remember you talking about that plum tree, though. I know that I was lucky to have one growing in the church yard behind the Queen Anne branch library. Those were grand plums, especially picked in the heat of summer. Hard core gooshy fruit, messy, couldn't eat one without juice running down your arm. Nice memory, that. Hadn't really had a decent plum since. Least ways, till I mentioned it to you.

I can't remember for sure what brought on that conversation, the one about houses and fruit trees, but I think it started out with a mention of my old house in Santa Ana, the one that had that great avocado tree that dropped tons of produce all over my lawn, over the fence and into the alley behind the house. I still remember coming home one day and finding a couple young guys from the neighborhood doing a balancing act on my fence, reaching up into that tree, going for that ripe fruit. It was a mighty good tree. Never ate so many delicious avocados before or since. One story about a magical fruit tree begets another, hence your tale.

As for that plum tree in your yard, the same thing had happened to you. Too much fruit, too much spoilage, so you let neighbors and passers-by reach over the fence and pick from your tree in order not to waste that fruit. Talk about magic. In telling your story your eyes practically sparkled. And there it was, something I hadn't seen in you before, a sense of self, a letting down of your guard, a sharing of a bit of M that told tales about you apart from your plums. It told me more about your inner workings than darn near anything else we had talked about up to that time. That side, that sparkling side, was something apart from your general work demeanor.

Different than the hard working, funny and pretty much happy gal we worked along side with in the branch. We were both still somewhat new in that "active friendship" category at that time, we were still in the gathering phase where new pals tell all their early tales. The plum story brought out something in you, I don't know what. A sense of sweetness that was very endearing to me then, even moreso to think about it now.

I remember not too long afterwards you asked me to meet you at the club house one afternoon there in the Woods. The Boy had golf lessons that day so it was easy to do. You pulled up in your van and passed along to me a couple jars of raspberry preserves you made the weekend before and a bag of plums you had just picked that morning at your girlfriend's house. I think you got a bit irked with me that day, as a coworker had already passed some plums to me earlier that morning! Damn if she didn't steal your thunder! How was I know to know you were going to pass plums along to me that day? Never saw another plum fall out of your hands into mine again, that's for sure! But the ones you gave me I ate with relish all the same. Out of loyalty to those old memories let's just say that yours were much, much better even if they were a different kind of plum all together!

So, just know that whenever I think of plums I'll think of you and your tree there in Seattle, the one that had folks reaching over a fence to get at the fruit. Thank goodness for that short post below on that wee dental molding place in Seattle for it jogged a forgotten memory of those times. It's a strange combination of things indeed, dental molds and plum trees, but when I put them together they'll always make me think of you and of that one very short and tender rendevous that was sweeter than either that raspberry jam or those plums could ever be!

Your WHMB

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/seattlesketcher/2009211282_ding.html/

Post Script: thank goodness, or not, for old love letters. Well, it wasn't a love letter at the time but it was loaded with stories about your life. I found out that I had the type of fruit wrong, least ways, in regards to your tree. It was a peach tree you had growing in the backyard of that house in Wallingford. And, like me, you were happy to share that bounty with the neighbors that lived on the other side of your fence. That's one thing that's never changed. That sharing thing. Love, WHMB

"No one's ever written me a poem before" August, '05

"They're yours to with as you wish"

A couple autumns back you gave me a folder filled with letters, notes, cards and such, things that I had passed along to you. I don't know when you started compiling them, but that folder was heavy, a real time capsule of our time together.

What started it all I have sitting before me right now. A cropped white piece of paper, gingerly handled by you many times over. It was more than just a printed email, it was a piece of your personal emotional history, something that you said was harder than anything you knew to give up. That it still exists says much about us, about our commitment to the documentation of our times.

I remember the day you scrubbed your mailbox, wiped clean that June to keep you from getting into any more trouble at home. And I also remember that infamous day in September when I cleaned mine out, scrubbed hard out of indignation, anger and sheer stupidity. By fall of '06 all of our electronic mail was gone, all we had left was what we had printed out and set aside. Out of anger I had asked you to give me back all of my letters. It was a sad thing for you to do but you relinquished them. For better or worse I am now the holder of that satchel of faded dreams.

That neither one of us torched that folder is a miracle. It's a testament to our tenacity, to our beat sense of commitment, to our tenderheartedness and possibly to my foolishness. Those letters and notes and such have the half life of spent nuclear rods, still pack a punch, still have the ability to get us both in serious hot water but I know that I have to keep them all the same.

But I must say that there is one piece in particular that I cherish more than all the others, cherish having back in my hands again. Not because I wrote it, but because I know what it meant to you.

That piece has been made even more special because I know it was there in your hands, all those folds and creases and bent corners are careworn lines and crinkles that you made. The wrinkles in that paper tell me that it was handled often for a time, tells me that it was purposely culled out of all the letters we wrote to each other that summer. It was printed and cut and folded and stuck away in your purse to be pulled out and read in private. It was something that made an impression on you, an impression much larger than I had ever expected it to.

It was just meant to be a small gesture of my affection for you, that poem. I wrote it and sent it along to you on a Friday night. I woke up the next day thinking it was going to be a normal weekend. I was doing typical Saturday morning housework when checked my in-box for news and found that you left me a quick note, asking me to meet you at IKEA that afternoon. You were dropping your sister off at the airport and would be right up the highway. Could I make it? I did and that day changed our lives.

But more than that it was your response to that poem that I still cherish to this day. I no longer have that note but there was one line that I'll never forget. It was a simple thing, that poem. It could have been a fatal flaw, could have ended everything, but instead you told me that no one had ever written you a poem before. You called me your own personal Cyrano. To read that was heartbreaking.

After that I made it a point to write a poem for you once a month, every month, on the 27th. And like with that first one, each month you faithfully printed it out, folded it in half and stuck it into that plastic folder, the one you got at WALE, the one that you had secretly squirreled away in your closet. In the end you gave that folder of words back to me, not only to please me but to give you and yours a fighting chance.

But, back on that day, the 27th of August, 2005, your heart was filled with light. No one had thrilled you before in the way that you had been thrilled that day. You were special then, and face it, Melissa, in my eyes, you still are.

You would have thought that the moment
that defining moment

between us
would have arrived
more stealthy
silent

would have posed as being something more
common place
you were but a name on a piece of paper
an appointment to keep

someone to meet
who was to know?
but when you walked into that room
it was as if a whole circus train unloaded

right then and there

klaxons sounded tubas blared
calliopes whistled
acrobats clowns and lions did what they do
the whole world just opened up and fed-exed in an immense amount
of lightness
and sweetness
and clarity
into that room
and it's never stopped you see
every time you walk into a room time
stops
and then starts again
but in that moment when the world comes to a halt a
thousand papparazzi flash their bulbs and capture
that moment
a moment then becomes part of the chapbook of memories
of you that I carry with me
an album filled with memories
of blue dresses
of a particular generosity of spirit
of smiles
of a very wonderful
very real
very nice person
I sometimes wonder how it was that I got to be so lucky
to be in that room the day you walked in"

Your WHMB