Midnight Arrival

Last Sunday night, Blondie and I waited for Dough at the Richmond International Airport with more excitement than – well, you can’t compare it to anything. The earth was tiny compared to this love. There was nothing there except what is really there.

We sat in a bench facing her gate. It’s hard to say how long. I was straight-backed the whole time–a light year away from nonchalance. People started coming through the gate. I spotted her red duffel and tan skin–straight from AZ. I stood up quickly, paused and ran till I got to her, and we hugged and shouted in elation.

Blondie, Dough and I walked by the waiting area, arms on each others’ shoulders, and Dough yelled, “We’re best friends, and we get to see each other again!” We stomped out of the airport and drove home–the three of us perfectly united. Everything was magical–from the moths at the front stoop to the Cadbury eggs on the living room carpet.

Maybe we can't be this excited all the time. But I think it would be great to be this focused and to treat everything like it matters this much.

Dough and Court later in the visit. 3.22.12

"I never really cared until I met you and
Now it chills me to the bone"

Beautiful Ugly Things

I. Blondie realized at the end of his shift
that there had been a pair of dirty boxers
scrunched at the bottom of a leg of his chef pants all night.

II. The morning we got engaged, Blondie and I drove to a parking lot with a good view of the east. He stepped outside of the car to photograph the sunrise and instead poked the camera back in the car to photograph me while I heartily blew my nose. I was unaware until the last shot.

December 30, 2009.

"Locusts will
Lift me up."

Done With Applebee's Part II

Blondie left the Bee last December. I left last Sunday.

GOODBYE TO YOU!!!!!
GOODBYE TO EVERYTHING THAT I KNEW!
YOU WERE THE ONE I LOVED!
THE ONE THING THAT I TRIED TO HOLD ONTO!

I actually wasn’t belting out Michelle Branch lyrics when I finished my final shift last Sunday. But I wasn’t overly eager to walk to my car either. I carried a goodbye balloon out with me from my favorite person there, Khaddi, a fellow host.

During my growing up years, I had the urge to escape a school once I’d been there for a while–to move on from middle school to high school, for example. Not for freedom. But because of awkwardness with certain people, the feeling that I’d made myself into an idiot, rumors, my perception built up over time of their perceptions of me. There was stuff like that at the Bee, but surprisingly, there was no urge for escape. I just knew the issues could go away in the place where they had arisen as easily as they could anywhere else.

It’s weird–it was such a superficial experience in a way. It didn’t touch me very much. I look back at Prin and high school with a swelling heart. I look back at Applebee’s and know that the swelling heart I had there had nothing to do with Applebee’s.

I was thinking along these lines the other night when I’d had a hard day and I was staring up at the vent on my ceiling. I have always loved and appreciated this childhood home. I thought, “The way I love this house is the way I love, and that comes with me,” and I thought the same must apply to Applebee’s (at the time I was having some hesitation about leaving the Bee because I’d built up so much love). Basically, the fondness will keep coming because it’s mental–not Ron Weasley mental.

The fondness and the issues are mental.

Dough's side of the room, the "dearest spot on earth"–Mary Baker Eddy. Feb 7, 2010.

Of all the things I believed in
I just want to get it over with