Reality Check
Six months ago I thought my ten dollar check to Avon snagged me a cheesy black tote bag filled with brochures, a few samples, and the promise of local customers and certain income. I didn't know that check secretly opened a door into a parallel universe where I'd bump into werewolf cloaked customers and make close friends from far away places and discover I liked to tell stories more than anything I've ever done. That sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Making friends, making money, finding new ways to stretch your fingers. But I'll tell you a secret. I think it's scary. Super scary. I handed over a ten dollar check expecting a normal binge of entrepreneurial prosperity and inevitable despair but got galaxy stars thrown at my feet, and so I pick them up, one by one, try to know them, figure out what to do, how to keep them milky way shiny.
I met Carroll this weekend on top of a small mountain in the middle of a tiny open land island in the middle of a chain link city. She showed me her stoic iguana and spastic pooch and we walked in the open lands mountain bike highway, talking about Avon and life and children and margarita recipes. I told her I thought about quitting the blog. I worry about my customers finding stray body parts strewn across the internet, stories of their pain and absurdity available to anyone, anywhere, anytime. I worry I can't keep telling good stories, that my childhood memories will dwindle and my customers will get crusty and old and complacent. I worry about handling email, being myself, giving you real hacksaw pieces of me. I didn't think about these things when I started, it was 1, 2, 3, Go! And here I am. I won't quit. I can't. I don't know why.
Carroll's part of my 'tribe,' those people I meet in email or telephone or body and know them by heart before they speak. I never saw such peaceful eyes, sometimes hidden behind plastic-rimmed glasses, now behind those metallic flame-ridden Harley Davidson sunglasses I gave her. Such quiet all-seeing eyes. I drank too many salty limeade margaritas, leaning against the white tile of her kitchen, watching her stir angel hair pasta into boiling water, watching her pull long caramel hair back with black bobby pins, and didn't notice broken glass in my drink and the special spaghetti sauce rubber band bay leaf. We laughed so much, at ourselves and each other and the dog and the men in our lives. But the evening meant more to me than the jokes. I don't have a handle on it yet. I figured out something important about myself that night and I'm still digesting it, like digesting broken margarita glass, waiting for it to pass like blood, like secret ceremony blood, like getting your first menstruation, like a dark sorority hazing. Something died, that's what it is, something old and testy and worn from waves of salt water scared emotion died. Now I get to be me. Whoever I am. Maybe a neo-bohemian-writing-dancing-drinking Avon Lady. Just something different from my old days.
Caroll shared the story of her youngest son's testicular cancer, how he discovered it at age 19 and found out in a cold doctor's office while she and her husband arrived at a lover's getaway on the coast, the phone calls, frantic phone calls, rushed travel home, surgeries, recovery, the way the family pulled closer together than ever, the way young friends and old friends stopped by the house for hugs. I told her about my customers, about Avon Corporate, the ways I make less money than I need, and my problems felt so trivial and ridiculous.
I left too early in the morning, and I realized the margaritas were magic because I held no hanging head in my hands, no rush of pain when I rose from the bed covered in a patchwork quilt as old and traveled as the mountain beneath our feet.
I called 17 on the way home, told him to run into the bathroom and check his testicles for lumps and tender spots. C'mon, son, check them! Now! And tell me what you get! I forced him with my mother's voice. He did it. He's OK. But testicular cancer kills young men quickly, I told him, and unless you check once a month like clockwork it might get you.
"Geeze Mom. I don't want to hear it. I can't believe you're calling me from the middle of nowhere to tell me to feel my balls. Mom! You're gross!" So young and foolish and full of Superman power, I thought, so charmed gentleman foolish.
"Look young man. Just thank the Good Lord I didn't call you during English class. Be thankful I waited until you got home from school."
6:59:22 PM 
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