Category: bus stories

#28: Meridian

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St. Valentine

The first time my former husband was introduced to my mom was Valentine’s Day, 2002. Ricky and I had been dating long-distance for four months and he had made the 14-hour drive from Connecticut to North Carolina for our first calendar-and-cards-and-chocolates-certified day of romance. We were still new, especially having spent so little time in one another’s company. During those first four months and for the following eleven, most of our budding love happened on the phone. We would spend hours and hours and hours talking. He was smart, charming, and witty. I was creative, Southern, and giggly. What I remember most about those late-night conversations, aside from a phone that couldn’t last as long as we could talk, was the laughter.

It was poetic, given our monthly bills and calling card expenses, that Ricky would meet Mom in a similar fashion. Back then, just over 15 years ago, most of us university residence hall occupants did our telephone talking on a cordless landline. (For those unfamiliar with the term, imagine a telephone that does not Instaface your life and one that has to be returned to an actual base to recharge.) Those ancient boxes for conversation often came with a once revolutionary fixture called an answering machine. Even more unbelievable, people used to listen to their messages.

And so it was that while reviewing Valentine’s Day voices on a machine and in the company of my first “real” Valentine, we heard Mom begin to sing…

I just called to say I love you
I just called to say how much I care
I just called to say I love you
And I mean it from the bottom of my heart. 

Ricky was in love. With Mom. Continue reading “#28: Meridian” →

#60: Blue Circuit

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Relics

My first senior year of college was a memorable first senior year, and my favorite of my “four years in only five” undergraduate university experience. My roommate, a close friend since our freshwoman days when we bonded over cigarettes and romantic naivety, had recently experienced heartbreak when her nearly three-year relationship came to an adulterous end. To commemorate what had been or, more accurately, what remained, she created a body outline, in masking tape, on our 5 x 8 area rug. The rug was classic dorm flooring décor with its rough texture and open invitation, by way of its dark burgundy color, for mixed drink spills. There were many an Apple Pie Shot (half apple juice, half vodka, topped with whip cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon; shoot, swish, swallow) poured both inside and outside the lines of my friend’s rug body outline. There were also many cigarette ashes layered in among its course weave. And inside the outline of Lisa en mask there was a relic, a broken heart. 

It was hers to remember. 

By October of 2001, the body outline was under the watch of an oversized, plastic, Halloween bat that hung above our television until the end of the academic year and Lisa’s graduation. I did not want to come back to my second senior year without her. She was the first one to tell me that a plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. She was the one who had introduced me to a man I would marry, and later divorce. She was the one who joined me on Superbowl Sunday for a TLC special about same-sex weddings and the one who had first shown me The Crow, Brandon Lee version/the only one that matters. She was the one who would army crawl across her own body outline to look for signs of feet outside the door when we were trying to hide from everyone. She was the one to welcome me back from night class to a solo New Year’s Eve celebration, complete with Kenny G’s “Auld Lang Syne” and cheap wine, both on repeat. It was not December 31st, but she needed the year to be over. 

For a night, it was. 

Rituals, even the last-minute, mellow saxophone type, are cathartic. Honoring a life, grieving a love, or bidding farewell to a possibility asks much of our hearts. Tears and words and music and gatherings give us a means of lightening the load, if only for a little while. 

Then there’s fire.  Continue reading “#60: Blue Circuit” →

#1: 100 Oaks

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In the BeginningNashville MTA Route 1-page-002Image: Nashville MTA

Being new is hard.

It’s more evident and acceptable in babies than adults. Comfort is given to the newborns and the just-turned-a-year-olds and the toddlers who cry when they first experience pain or shy away from someone they’ve not yet encountered, but that level of concern doesn’t always transition into adulthood. By then, we are expected to know things, even without being told. Assumed knowledge…

But even with that assumed knowledge, even when we’ve had others before us tell us that college will be the best years of our lives or we’ll come to appreciate naps when we grow up or a broken heart won’t actually kill us or one day we’ll look back and…

Does it really mean we should know how to act or react when we experience another new something? Does someone else’s tale of woe or success determine our emotions or ability?

Nope.

Being new is hard, even on the bus. Continue reading “#1: 100 Oaks” →