Open House
Tonight was the annual Open House and Ice Cream Social at my kids' elementary school. I wished my 400 brochures had arrived. This would have been a most excellent opportunity to unload a few dozen.
Some of the parents are so young. One couple had more tattoos than skin, and they sat under a Eucalyptus tree with paper bowls of ice cream, watching their daughter chase boys. I stared at the blue patterns on their entwined arms: a Chinese fish, rings of plumeria flowers, a woman's face framed with flowing dark hair. "What Avon cream is best for tattoos?" I wondered.
I remember being young like that. I'm like the old mothers now. We chat among ourselves, woman to woman. We don't snuggle with men on the shoolyard any more. We talk about PTA meetings and laundry stains. I mentioned my Avon business and passed out white business cards printed with a photo of lipsticks in a boquet. I felt out of sync with these women, even though they were kind and took my cards and told me they would call to order something.
I wished I was there with a young man in tattooed skin, his arms around my waist as I laughed, whispering in his ear. "Never forget this!" I wanted to yell this to the young parents, to tell them to breath the grass and sky and ice cream and remember.
Years ago I was young like that, and oh so restless. I dropped out of college mid-semester and ran away to Puget Sound with my boyfriend, got pregnant, got married. I found myself managing a Knights of Columbus trailer park on Black Lake, far from the place I called home, with a semester full of F's on my permanent record and a baby on my hip. I was nineteen years old.
I fell in love with my young husband's red hair and sense of humor. He was four years older, and the son of an Air Force survivalist trainer. He could fix anything that was broken. He loved me because I was so different than any of his previous girlfriends. And I liked sex. We didn't start as friends, became immediate lovers, and nothing else seemed to matter. His friends hated me, my gypsy style of dress, my loud hyena laugh, my way of discussing every subject to death. My friends hated him, the way he would emotionally withdraw, his silly puns, his love for dumb movies. Everyone pointed out we had nothing in common, but we rolled our eyes as countless other young couples have done.
I cooked, I cleaned. I made flies for the fishermen who frequented our campground store. We rode the trailer park paddleboat around the lake every night. I worked as a talking, dancing pig at the state fair. I loved being poor and struggling then. We ate only potatoes and green beans for an entire summer, and picked illicit strawberries at night when the farmer down the road was asleep. We walked the railroad tracks of western Washington in bare feet through the summer and fall. My parents' inevitable disapproval didn't matter to me, life moved forward, and for a time the rumble beneath the surface of my heart seemed to fade like the roll of the cargo trains headed for Seattle in the distance.
7:41:47 PM 
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