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Friday Five/Memories
What was... 1. ...your first grade teacher's name? Mrs. Salerno 2. ...your favorite Saturday morning cartoon? Smurfs! Or She-Ra. 3. ...the name of your very first best friend? Andrea, I believe. She drowned when we were both still quite young. All I have are pictures and my mom's word that we used to be like peas and carrots. My first BFF that I can really remember is Bridgette Varsoke who I met in 4th Grade (and whose wedding I attended last summer). 4. ...your favorite breakfast cereal? Fruity Pebbles! & Cap'n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch. OH! And Cinnamon Toast Crunch! 5. ...your favorite thing to do after school? I honestly don't remember. I probably went home, had a snack and read a book or something before I was at an age where I was legally employable. But...I don't know...the memory is really just gone. I've been wrapped up in memories lately and it occurred to me that some of my favorite memories (right now) take place in cars and involve songs. At the same time. I went to the trouble of writing out a sampler... Flying down the Durham Freeway in the tiniest red convertible I�d ever seen. I don�t love the boy in the drivers seat, but he loves me. The night air is damp and sultry and the air feels like cool fingers brushing back my hair. Lionel Richie love songs blare from the speakers, the volume set so high the bass vibrates the car. We laugh at ourselves and at the sight we must make. We laugh at each other. At the end of the night I don�t let him kiss me. He will tell me later that he never knew where he stood with me and I will have to admit that I probably liked it better that way. Driving, again, on a back road connecting Chapel Hill to Durham. The sun is setting and it is hot as Hades. There�s no air conditioning in the car so the windows are rolled way down and the Kingpin soundtrack is filling in the spaces the heavy air has missed so that the world is just air and music swirling dreamily in the lazy afternoon. The song changes and we look at each other and smile as she cranks the volume further as Colin James and the Little Big Band pours out the speakers and I know that from then on, it will always be sunset on a steamy North Carolina summer day whenever I hear that song. Merging on to 15-501 from Duke Street, my usual route to work. �Anna Begins� is on repeat and the song is the only thing that makes sense and, interestingly, it makes sense to me for the first time. It�s as though I�ve just stepped off a ledge and am free falling into oblivion. I can�t focus. I can�t stop smiling. My heart can�t stop racing. I know, even now, that this will probably end in disaster, but I�m enjoying the way it makes the day feel fuzzy. I�m scared to see him again at the end of the day, but I�m also practically buzzing with excitement. The song ends and I reach automatically to start it again because it�s giving me something to focus on rather than the thoughts in my head, the ones that might make sense of the whole thing and most importantly, the ones that might hurt me right now. Right now I don�t want to think. I want to smile and giggle to myself and occasionally lose my breath about how significantly things have changed in the last 24 hours. For the rest of my life I will remember that drive to work and wish I could recapture that feeling. The song will forever remind me of those cautious first steps when friends cross the line and love starts to take over. So that's what I'm using to soothe myself right now...there are more (memories. Not necessarily involving cars or songs), and they'll probably come up shortly but that's a sampler of what was floating through my brain this morning...as I drove to work... Listening To: New (to me) Josh Kelley CD. Dont' worry - I bought it before March! It seems pretty good so far. Reading: Black & Blue by Anna Quindlan Recently Saw: (gasp) NOTHING here? Say it isn't so... Ah. But it is... Happy weekend. |
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