Picking the Right Dance Partner

In seventh grade, I was subjected to a "Map & Globe Skills" curriculum in Mr. Thomason's science class. We were required to pair off, and of course I picked my number one road dog, Mindy.  Now, anybody who knows anything about me knows I love me some Mindy for real.  Mindy is my girl, and she will be my girl until I take my last breath.  But picking Mindy as my Map & Globe Skills partner was a mistake with terrible, ever-lasting consequences.  You see, Mindy was more interested in the Sharpie marker that came with the map and globe than she was in the learning of said Map & Globe Skills.  So instead of learning basic skills like how to read a map or find a country on a globe, I spent my time during the Map & Globe Skills session watching Mindy draw a handlebar mustache on her face.  Did I get a good laugh out of it?  You bet. Did Mindy end up with a handsome mustache that lasted for a few days?  She sure did.  But to this day, I can't read a map to save my life.  And I think we know who is to blame for that.

I heard a story today of a potential business pairing that made me want to cringe.  Actually, I didn't want to cringe.  I wanted to cry or throw up a little or run after the one half of the pairing I respect and scream, "NOOOOOOOOO!" at the top of my lungs.  I quickly realized that last scenario involved running, so I opted out.  But I thought about it, and that counts for something. Right?

If our level of happiness is directly linked to the five people we spend the most time in life as research indicates, it occurs to me that we must always choose well.  Flaky friends?  No time for it.  Boss who doesn't respect you? Moving on.  Problematic employees?  Help them find the way...out the door.  You see, life is too short for the riff-raff.   They will only distract you from what you need to do, stop you from being the best you.  So I say, take your time, assess the situation, and pick the right dance partner - for every dance - right from the start.  If you find yourself with a dancer who has two proverbial left feet, get yourself a new partner right quick.  It really is that simple.

Because let's be honest, if you don't pick the right dance partner you might end up like me:  unable to read a map.  And that is no way to live.

A Gentle Toast

A Facebook message came in a few weeks back, and the outset I was confused.  Someone I had never heard of named Angela was messaging me.  A couple sentences into the message, however, and I felt my heart skip a beat. My old (as in long time, not old old) friend Jane from a past life was reaching out to me. She had assumed a pseudoname on Facebook because she is a teacher or in the witness protection program or something along those lines.  She had stumbled upon my blog and then found me on Facebook and decided to reach out.  I was instantly glad she had.

Tonight the lovely Ms. Jane and I got together for the first time in I believe ten years or more - she had been one of the unexplained casualties of my divorce.  Jane is about as sweet and cute as someone can be without being obnoxious about it.  I had thought of her often over the years and missed the friendship.  So as I left work to meet her for dinner, I felt a few butterflies in my stomach.  I remembered a bunch of details, and a bunch more I did not.  As I arrived to the restaurant, I could not remember...is Jane an early or a late arriver? Does she like mushrooms or hate them? (Let's be honest, no one falls in the middle on that one.) The little details escaped me.  I hoped this evening would not be awkward or hard. Mostly, I hoped we still had a thing or two to talk about.

When we sat down at the table, we promptly fulfilled our civic duty by ordering cocktails, and when they arrived we did a toast. "Here's to reuniting, but make it a gentle toast," said Jane.  Gentle, because her froofy girly pink Cosmo drink was filled to the brim, and we mustn't spill. But gentle, too, because we had some catching up to do and some history to retrace.

If our gingerly ways lasted more than a moment, I surely did not notice. Turns out, ten years is a long time and also the blink of an eye.  A lot had happened in that decade- family additions and family losses, career changes, and a whole lot of growing up.  But one thing hadn't changed:  I think we still adore each other.

At the end of the day, I can say this:  my heart is grateful that Jane found me and more so that she made the move to reach out to me.  It's hard to do that, hard to retrace the past and find a new way. I don't know why we haven't been friends for the last ten years, but really, who cares?  At this point, it's kind of irrelevant. And even though Jane ordered two drinks and I only ordered one, but then we split the bill evenly and I paid more than my share and now Jane totally owes me a drink (the hilarious content of her voicemail message to me two minutes after parting ways) I'd like to keep this friendship alive forevermore.  No more ten year breaks.

Hotter than Hot

You know what's hotter than hot?  It's not abs.  Not eyes.  Not arms or thighs or even a well-shaped butt that is high and tight.  (OK, I lied.  That last one is kind of hot.)  I'll tell you hat's hotter than hot.  It's banter.

I love banter.  Banter, when done masterfully, is as good as it gets.  I consider myself the Queen of Banter, don't you know?  So when someone can step up, accept a challenge to go toe to toe with me, ignite the twinkle in their eye, cock their head, and give me a run for my money, I am all in.  All in, I tell you!  Bring it.

If you can forsake all others for a moment in time, and point by point match me on wide-ranging topics such as micro-brewed beer, marriage equality, art, Milwaukee's restaurant scene, the glaring truth that no one cares about the Bucks, the glaring truth that it is not possible to care too much about the Brewers, the Pope, and then end it all with a Shakespeare quote, I'm pretty much all yours.  Do it all with a layer of sass and sarcasm?  I mean really, just take me now.  I'm a puddle.

And sometimes when this happens, your friends whisk you away from a perfectly beautiful match of banter to go eat a mediocre (at best) meal at a restaurant you hate.  While disappointing at the outset, that's okay too. Because the second best thing to it actually happening is having an encounter that reminds you it will happen again.

A Healing Hug

It was a hug I had been thinking about for some time, a hug I really wanted to give.  Yesterday, that hug happened.  It felt extraordinarily sad and cathartic and necessary.  I loved that hug and I've been thinking about it ever since.

The hug I gave was to Dontre Hamilton's mom.  Dontre is the young man who was shot to death by a cop in Red Arrow Park a little over six months ago.  There are many varying accounts of what happened that day, and I suppose we've all surmised our own truth by now.  My version of the truth is that Dontre was in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the audacity to have wrong skin color.  He was sleeping in park located in a segregated city and apparently that's just not allowed.  My version of the truth makes my stomach turn.

It has also been widely reported that Dontre had a mental illness.  In my mind, there was no need to widely report this, though.  Whether or not Dontre had a mental illness was relevant to his life, but not to his death. I've spent many hours thinking about Dontre and his family, my heart hurting so much at times I thought it might burst into a thousand pieces. It is a situation that has been an injustice to end all injustices. It is a situation that has made me weep.

Dontre's family, in my humble estimation, has been nothing short of inspirational.  They came to the National Alliance on Mental Illness fundraiser walk in May not even one month after Dontre's death, banded together by their matching T-shirts and their compassion for the people who help those living with mental illness.  They have organized rally after rally to get the attention of the city's policymakers and to promote peace and resolution. They have respectfully but firmly asked for answers of our District Attorney and the Milwaukee Police Department.  But all the while, they have attended event after event and peacefully participated.  I'm not sure I could do what they do.

So when Dontre's family showed up to yesterday's Dia de los Muertos event - an event that had a special focus on those who had lost their lives to violence - it was no surprise to me.  I watched them as they stopped to take in the ofrenda that had been made to honor Dontre, hugged one another and wiped away some tears.  As I was making my way to leave the event, I felt compelled to talk to the family and say what had been on my heart and my mind for months now.

I told them how deeply sorry I was for their loss, and that their pain had been carried every day in my heart since that terrible day in April.  I told them that I had massive respect for their family, for the way they have carried themselves with dignity and grace in the wake of tragedy.  The family members I was speaking to thanked me for my words - words I'm sure they've heard from countless others - and pointed me to Dontre's mother who was a few feet away.  I approached her and said many of the same things, this time adding that I work in the mental health field.  I told her that there are hundreds of people like me in Milwaukee who are working tirelessly every day to make things better for families like hers, and that no matter how big the barriers or how high the stakes, we won't stop.  What I know, that I hope I conveyed to her, is that we won't stop because of the Dontres and the moms of Dontres and all the other people whose lives are affected by the stigma of mental illness and its ruthless path. I know that we won't stop, simply because we can't.

With that, I got a grateful, tearful hug that felt like the best hug I've had in some years, maybe ever.  My passion doesn't rest very often, but now I'm not sure it ever will.  It got fueled with the best inspiration I've had in a very long time.

Dia de los Muertos

I love death.

I know, I know.  It is one of ninety-nine (or more) things that makes me strange - or as I prefer to say, "quirky."  I don't mean that I like death in such a way that I am looking forward to my own, or I enjoy the death of others.  To say that I love death is more to say I am fascinated with it, that I am more or less comfortable with it, that I think it should be as much a cause for celebration as it is for sorrowful mourning.

I had friends in town for the weekend and we were looking to fill our 48 hours together with the most unique brands of fun we could find.  In light of that, the annual Milwaukee Dia de los Muertos celebration at Walker Square Park seemed like a good choice.  A group of six of us assembled at the park and took it all in.  The smells of burning wood and incense filled the air.  Many people, young and old alike, were dressed in fancy garb and had their faces painted.  A circle of drummers kept the beat going. Sugar skulls and ofrendas provided colorful, heartfelt and at times somber visual reminders of what the day was about.  It all culminated in a tantalizing sensory overload.

This small, grass roots event was started four years ago by a group of people who just decided it needed to be done.  They believed, and rightly so, that it was a way to bring people into a community that is misunderstood and to unite the city's citizens with a common thread. After all, what thread is more common to all of us than death?  Many of us, myself included, have already suffered a great many losses and had to find our way through the grief - a grief we may very well carry with us to this day.  All of us, myself included, will have to face our own departure one day.  Death, it seems, is the great equalizer.

As the parade was about to start, a few people shared words of wisdom. One of them, a quiet, soulful man, stood at the front of the crowd and gently told his story of his people who had passed.  In his story, he referenced the feeling he carries with him that his grandparents are always with him.  As he said this, he motioned his hand toward the sky, and at that precise moment two hawks flew in and landed on the tree above his head.   A gasp was let out by the crowd in unison, and tears filled many of our eyes.  It's a moment that doesn't even translate well in writing; it was a true "you-had-to-be-there moment."

We then all walked in the parade together, something that hadn't necessarily been planned but was the right thing to do.  It occurred to me as we walked that we are all in this together, this thing called life.  And while death is just one part of that, it is the part that reminds us of how important it is to live.

Two Ships

I looked at him and realized twenty-some odd years had passed.  I can't say with any degree of honesty that I had ever loved him, but then again the timing had never been right for me to have the proper chance to love him.  Maybe in the right set of circumstances I could have, but to think so is nothing more than sheer speculation.  I certainly had spent a good couple of years hard crushing on him.  And then when he was out of my sight, I pretty much forgot about him.

But then one night, all those years ago, we ended up in the same place (a divey, dirty small town bar) at the same time (a hot summer night) by pure happenstance.  There were a lot of contributing factors - cheap beer and a lot of it, raucous laughs and his bruised heart - that resulted in us staying up until the sun peeked through the windows.  Kissing even though we knew we shouldn't, laughing, talking, examining figurative wounds and then laughing and kissing some more. And that was it, really. It was lovely and fleeting.  He was gone once again, headed his own way and I headed mine.

So to see him again all these years later, hair graying at the temples and laugh lines around his eyes, was really something.  But I looked at him, and then I looked at his ordinary wife (who is no doubt perfectly lovely and wonderful but ordinary nonetheless), and I thought,  "I bet she makes him Swiss steak for dinner. And I bet after dinner they watch Dancing With the Stars."  If that sounds judgy, I promise you it's not. Eating Swiss steak and watching reality TV is a perfectly acceptable way to live if that's what makes you happy.

But it occurred to me, right then and there, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that I am no ordinary woman.  Even if I tried with all my might, I could not be that ordinary woman. No, I am complicated and layered, difficult even.  And sometimes twenty-some odd years of time passing gives you perspective that everything is exactly as it should be, ordinary or not.  It's a good perspective to have.

Bliss

A hug from a friend whose life just changed for the better.  A beautiful new baby in your arms.  A wedding ceremony of someone you adore who spent 25 years finding her way back to the man she would rightly marry.  A gorgeous starry night outside a Frank Lloyd Wright house.  An open bar.  A dress that feels flattering.  An accompanying sweater that feels warm.  The smell of burning wood.  Eight hours of uninterrupted rest.  Waking up to the sound of the Lake Michigan waves crashing up against the rocks on the shoreline.  Free breakfast.  A slow, meandering drive along the lakefront.  Fall colors that take your breath away. An apple orchard.  A silly picture that makes you belly laugh.  A clean house, fresh sheets and a stocked fridge.  Two cats peacefully napping at your side. A delicious dinner prepped for a sister you never get tired of. A week ahead you are actually looking forward to.

Some weekends you just really get it right.