All I Can Say

X365, week 5

27|365
Billy, 1981
You were the alpha male in our little pack, the boyfriend of my best friend. You had a winning smile and spectacular self-confidence. I lost touch with you when I went to a different school in sixth grade, and only heard about you through the grapevine after that. After celebrating a basketball victory one night — I think you had just graduated from high school — you caught a ride home in the wrong car, which turned out to be a horrifyingly fatal mistake.

28|365
Roddy, 1982
You were my friend’s older brother, and everyone idolized you. You were smart, good-looking, athletic, funny, well liked. I often imagine you on that two-lane highway late at night driving up to your family’s cottage. You were all of eighteen and must certainly have been driving too fast, oblivious to the danger that cut short your brilliant life.

29|365
Jamie, 1988
We went to school together, but since you were a couple of years older, we were never really contemporaries until we were in our twenties. You invited me to a boxer shorts party you were having, and I was one of the few people who actually showed up in costume. You died a horrible death: golf course, summer storm, bolt of lightning. They said it entered your body through your mouth.

30|365
Joey, 1990
You were the last of eight children, and you had that even-tempered, amiable nature youngest siblings seem to have. You were more composed than your crazy older brothers, more centered. One summer day when you were in your early twenties you went out on your sailboard and never returned. They found the board, Joey, but they never found you.

31|365
Allison, 1993
My sister, you went like these others — much too early. You had the most generous spirit I have ever known, but you also expected so much from others — usually more than they could deliver. I miss you every single day, but especially on holidays, which you loved the way a child does. I wish so much you could have known my children.

32|365
Kate, 1999
Most heartbreaking of all, perhaps, because you were only six when you died, and you had spent a third of your life sick. You thought of yourself as brave, and you were; you were a spitfire. You had a special friendship with one of the older boys on our street and he used to walk you up to the store for an ice cream. I think about you frequently, what you might have been, the girl you would have grown into.

33|365
Jennifer, 2001
I’m not sure when I saw you last, but we had to have been teenagers. And I’m not sure exactly when you died, but I know it was breast cancer and that you left behind young children. You were my younger sister’s best friend growing up. I remember your big, toothy smile, so much like your mother’s, and how at the end of one summer you suddenly emerged with this cute little figure that I envied.

34|365
Allan, 1961
I never knew you, and in fact, if you had lived, I would never have been born. You were my mother’s first husband, and you died so unexpectedly of a heart attack at 33. She was pregnant and you were building your house together. She described for me the moment when true, pure grief leveled her: she pulled back the shower curtain and saw your dark curly hairs clinging to the porcelain from your last shower.

X365, week 4

21|365
Gord, 1974
You were the older of my mother’s two brothers, and you had Abraham Lincoln physical qualities – tall, thin, dark hair, pale complexion, weak chin. You were a cartoonist, and ironically one of the most morose people I’ve ever known. I could tell you adored my mother, and that just being around her was like being in the sun for you. Once I begged you to draw me, and was mortified when you made my body grotesquely fat, with the buttons popping off of my Brownie uniform.

22|365
Sabrina, 1988
I first knew of you in college because you lived in my dorm and annoyed the crap out of me with your shrill voice that was always sounding off through the halls like some alarm. Then when we started working together in Boston, I got to know you and found you quirky and self-effacing and not at all prissy and snotty as I had thought. We became quite close, and I felt a bit like your protector in a way. Naivety was your M.O.

23|365
Nancy, 1988
Another co-worker in Boston, you sat right across from me and at first kept your distance, remaining undecided about me. You had short hair and wore funky glasses, and your bottom incisors made you like just a little bit like a bulldog. We developed a great rapport over time, and invented our own company that we called “In by 9, Out by 5 Advertising.” We thought we were absolutely hilarious.

24|365
Joe, 1999
You taught swimming at the YWCA and had a mild yet firm way with children. When N was two or three, you got her over her fear of the water, and eventually had her jumping off the diving board. Once I saw you standing outside the building smoking a cigarette, and you gave me a look like I had caught you. Now that the Y has closed down, I hope you’re still working with children somewhere, in some way.

25|365
Maureen, 2000
You were one of the kids’ (and dads’) favorite teachers at preschool. You were young and hip and very pretty, and N wanted to be just like you. You seemed excessively aware of clothes and how you looked, and once I overheard you talking about your diet in front of some three and four year olds. I wondered what kept you at the school for so many years since you didn’t seem terribly passionate about working with young children — and it couldn’t have been the money.

25|365
Neville, 1977
You were my best friend’s father and I always thought you had Fred Flintstone features: the shock of dark hair, big nose, five o’clock shadow. Once you drove me up to your cottage so that I could spend the weekend with your daughter, and I’d never had that kind of one-on-one time with you before. I remember you were trying to park near the ferry and you kept passing up spots in pursuit of the very best one, yelping, “Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh” when you thought you saw one. You were unexpectedly boyish and animated — so different from other fathers — and I was surprised how much fun that trip was.

26|365
Doug, 1987
We met at a party one June night in Toronto, and since we lived on the same street, walked home together. It had rained, and I reached up and shook a lilac branch above us, showering us with cool water droplets and lilac petals. You took me out on your sailboat, and I fell pretty hard for you and your freckles. But by the end of the summer I moved to Boston and you moved back to your on-again, off-again girlfriend.

X365, week 3

20|365
Sally, 1977
You were the same age as my parents, yet you still lived with your parents down the street (there was a rumor that you had had a nervous breakdown at university). You used to wander over to our house, usually around dinnertime, and my mother would invite you in and sit you down and pour you a cocktail. You showed up on my thirteenth birthday, just before we were sitting down to my favorite dinner of Hawaiian chicken, saying that you had been locked out of your house, and so we set a place for you. The dinner had been delayed and had gone cold and I hated you — and then felt selfish and sorry.

19|365
Michael, 1986
We were roommates one summer on Beacon Hill in Boston. We were very different and clearly were not going to become friends, but that first night, after your dinner of pasta and broccoli, we took a walk through the neighborhood together and you complimented me on my stride. You ate the same meal every single night that summer: boiled pasta with steamed broccoli, methodically washing each of your dishes by hand when you were finished, even though there was a dishwasher in the apartment. I have never seen anybody clean a fork the way you did, meticulously scrubbing in between each of the tines and holding it up to the light — as though you had all the time in the world.

18|365
Annie, 1982
You were one of my four roommates freshman year, and you had a beautiful hammered gold bracelet such as I had never seen — a graduation gift from a family you babysat for. I openly admired it, and then bought a poor imitation in silver in one of the boutiques in town. Later, when you lost your bracelet, you naturally assumed I had taken it and rifled through all of my stuff looking for it. I knew you did, and I couldn’t really blame you; I could never prove that I didn’t take your bracelet any more than you could prove that I did.

17|365
Karen, 1994
Your husband/my boss invited me up to your camp one summer afternoon, and we were out in the boat while your boys were knee boarding. Your youngest had never done this before, and you got into the water with him and, while the boat was starting to pull out, calmly helped him get the rope in his hands and his knees up on the board. You were encouraging him softly, saying that if he got up he could even make some turns and have a little fun in the waves. I don’t remember whether he actually accomplished it that day, but I knew he eventually would — and so many other wonderful things — because he had a mother like you.

16|365
Mary, 1976
You were a germ-o-phobe and refused ever to share food or drink with anyone, which your friends all found highly annoying. One day Diane and I said we would get you some ice cream and we scooped some vanilla out into a bowl, and then we each spit in it. After you ate it, we told you what we’d done — attempting, I think, to prove to you that our germs wouldn’t kill you — and you didn’t say a word. In my whole life, this was the crudest, cruelest thing I’ve ever done.

17|365
Mr. Hardy, 1977
You were the reviled headmaster at my school and you looked just like that cheesy salesman on WKRP in Cincinnati, and even wore the same orangish imitation leather overcoat. In grade seven, you were also my geography teacher and ridiculed me in front of the class when I offered that one place a person could find a draft was at the beach. You kept shivering and saying in a silly voice, “Oh dear me, it’s so cold and drafty at the beach,” with everyone laughing along. But I just thought you were an idiot for not grasping the obvious — that beaches are subject to four seasons just like everywhere else.

18|365
Ginny, 1974
You lived in a little blue house with incredible secret gardens all around that your father, who also spent endless hours building elaborate ships inside bottles, lovingly tended. On the inside, your house was neat and tidy, but smelled pervasively of dog shit. Whenever you had sleepovers, I had to stuff my face into my pillow in order to fall asleep. Usually we watched Planet of the Apes just before bed, which made for anxious, wakeful nights at your house, listening to your clock ticking and waiting for morning.

A little Joni is good for the soul

I lay on the couch and listened to a two hour long radio program on NPR a couple of weekends ago called The Emergence of Joni Mitchell. If you have some time I highly recommend it. I was reminded of her brilliance and fearlessness as an artist — as a poet, a painter, a singer, a songwriter, and a musician. She is a modern day Renaissance woman, and I am in full awe of her talent. Court and Spark played practically non stop in my bedroom in my last years of high school, and I knew every word, note and nuance to every song on the album.

I found this video on YouTube from her Japan tour in 1994. In my opinion, this is what YouTube is for.

Hejira – Joni Mitchell

I’m traveling in some vehicle
I’m sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away

There’s comfort in melancholy
When there’s no need to explain
It’s just as natural as the weather
In this moody sky today

In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I am returning to myself
These things that you and I suppressed

I see something of myself in everyone
Right at this moment of the world
As snow gathers like bolts of lace
Waltzing on a bridal girl

You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or you stick to some straighter line

Now here’s a man and a woman, sitting on a rock
They’re either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen: strains of Benny Goodman
Blowing through the pinewood trees

I’m porous with travel fever
But I’m so glad to be on my own
Still the slightest touch of a stranger
Sends up a trembling in my bones

I know - no one’s going to show me everything
We come and go unknown
Each so deep and so superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

I looked at the granite markers
Those tributes to finality, to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for a piece of immortality

In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There’s the hope and the hopelessness
I’ve witnessed all these years

We’re just particles of change, I know, I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I’m always bound and tied to someone

White flags of winter chimneys
Waving truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
From the window of my hotel room

I’m traveling in some vehicle
I’m sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
Until love sucks me back that way

X365, week 2

9|365
Paul, 1987
You hired me. You had big blue eyes and you shuffled, with your thighs kind of rubbing together, when you walked. We dated briefly, mostly going out for beers after long hours working at the agency, although there was that one time we played racquetball together. That was pretty much the beginning of the end.

10|365
Father Smyth, 1980
You were the Chaplain at my all-girls high school, and my friends and I were among your groupies. You collected girls who had that little mischievous sparkle, and would invite us into your office to discuss literature, current events, family, boys — anything — handing out your Dunhill cigarettes. I remember you drove us places in your old Volvo sedan, empty coffee cups floating around and the ashtray brimming. You were very kind, full of life and brilliant — but I thought terribly lonely.

11|365
Rob, 1978
You, of the sea green eyes and impossibly developed calves and forearms, were the tennis pro for one summer only, but you had a longlasting impact on the club’s girls and women. My friends and I signed up for all your clinics, and would purposely hold our raquets with the wrong grip so that you would have to come around and gently move our hands into the correct position. I played an unprecedented amount of tennis that summer, hitting baseline shots as hard as I could, thwup, thwup, thwup, hoping you might notice me. I remember riding dreamily home in the evenings, with my raquet resting on the handlebars of my ten-speed, singing that Olivia Newton John song from Grease, Hopelessly Devoted to You.

12|365
Cassie, 1997
You were our first babysitter and you came highly recommended from several sources. You were maybe fifteen years old and you had a daytimer (which seemed ridiculous to me at the time but now I know even middle schoolers have them). At first we were impressed by your self-assurance, a quality that gradually yielded to self-importance. You were someone I never would have hung out with in high school, and ultimately I determined that to be a good measure for choosing a babysitter, too.

13|365
Denise, 1987
We worked together at Ogilvy in Toronto and were part of a group of fresh-out-of-college hires just trying to get our feet in the door. We had a lot of after hours fun together. Fast forward ten years: I’m living in Maine and wandering through Pier One one day when I notice a rolled up rug with your name written on it. And then two days later, when I fly to Toronto to visit a friend and run into you at Sporting Life, I am absolutely stunned by my powers of prophecy — but you are cold and snotty.

14|365
Graham, 1973
You were my best friend’s baby brother. Your mother was feeding you dinner as I was heading home one night, and when I came over to your high chair and leaned in to say good-bye to you, you pushed your hand in your baby mush and flung it at my face. Your mother scolded you (but inside must have been laughing a little, too) and tried to help me clean myself up. But I was completely mortified and burst into tears the minute I was out the door.

15|365
Joe, 1980
You were my first real boyfriend who picked me up in a car and took me out on dates. I was over the moon about it, having spent what felt like an eternity fantasizing about a relationship with a boy. We met at a party and you offered to drive me home in your burnt orange Pinto. You came inside so that you could get my phone number, which I wrote on a piece of paper and tucked into your jacket pocket while tilting my chin up to kiss you. Somehow I knew how to do this.