1. My Dad. So many connections with him as I'm planning my wedding. For one, it's at the home of the love of his life, Holly. My "bonus" mother -- they never actually married. I met Holly on my 13th birthday, and I was alternately adoring and jealous and plain old mean. And I'm glad we've transcended everything to be what we are today. Bonus.
2. To draw the line. To not feel like I have to be a superstar in everyone's life all the time, and to say no. Or say nothing. Stop overextending.
3. There is infinite wisdom in iTunes' Shuffle feature. I don't know where the soul is on that little piece of code, but dang it if Shuffle doesn't always know what you need to hear.
4. I have been having trouble remembering what day of the week it is. Regularly. So I'll say, "see you tomorrow" when I mean in three days, because I'm thinking it's a different day. Not sure how to remedy that or what to say about that.
In 1983, I was at Chimacum High School in the farthest boondocks of Washington State. I was 15. Alternately a good kid and a raging lunatic. I was woefully unpopular and growing out an unfortunate asymmetrical haircut. I was learning to drive and listening to the Stones and The Who and Duran Duran and I even lip-synched Irene Cara's "Why Me?" at a talent show.
The man I will soon marry was 22, in a band, managed by Barry Manilow. They dressed him in white leather and razor-cut clothes and a bandanna. He had a small son. He was a rock star in California. Had we met then, I'm sure he would have been nicely dismissive. I would have been too young. He is good. So good and so kind. And I was such a dork.
I took the scenic route to where I am now. There is no way I would have predicted that it would take a good 27 more years until I got married. No less, to a man with three children and one grandchild (still taking suggestions on what to be called as Evan's grandmother. My grandmother preferred "Grace" or "Gracie").
I do believe that time knows its own way and travels in the path it is supposed to. But I do wish, the tiniest bit, I could have been the girl with the fake ID and too much eye makeup in the audience who could have scored a makeout session with Steve after the gig.
I will say I have a teensy, weensy competitive streak in me. Maybe it's from staying up late playing backgammon with my Dad on his cracked leather couch in his office, drinking cappuccino he brewed in one of the first home-espresso machines ever available (he loved being first in the gadget realm). So of course when my neighbor, a blogging cookbook author from the Marathi region in India, put up a quiz with the prize a signed copy of her book, I jumped at this. I had refused a free copy from her husband and daughter weeks ago with the intent to buy it -- my tiny way of supporting creative friends. But the chance to win one? Sign me up!
I love how she made a tiny blessing in her post: "Vanessa has written about food and travel and I hope the new cookbook will inspire her to explore Marathi food. We are looking forward to many feasts with her & Steve in the future, and we also wish them a lifetime of happiness at their new Shared Table."
Our world is expanding from right across the driveway.
My neighbor found this puppy on the highway. Not around it, or on an exit ramp or something, but ON THE INTERSTATE 5 freeway. She is a dog angel, and because he is the last on a long list of rescues, she can't keep him. Right before she was going to let him go to the pound, we stepped in.
There's just something about those big brown eyes and huge floppy ears. He wore a red collar with a bell but no tag. Well fed, happy and loving ... he must be somebody's dog, we thought.
So we hit up Fido Finder and Craigslist. No response. The vet's office says he isn't microchipped. And why would he have a collar on with a bell but no tag? I'm becoming more convinced he was dumped on the side of the road.
All yesterday afternoon, we kept assuring each other that we wouldn't keep him. Even though his puppy antics kept us laughing for hours. He delights the neighborhood children and stared down a big pit bull in Petco. He needs house training. He has fleas. He has no name, except the temporary one we've given him to tide us all over until he finds his family -- Cinco.
We're working pretty hard to find him a new home, and getting him all spruced up. Today was a new collar and leash and a dose of Front Line. Tomorrow it's the vet for neutering and shots.
We want him to have the best possible start on his new little life. Somewhere else he can curl up like a baby on a lap and give tiny kisses. Somewhere else he can be happy and tangle himself up in a blanket. Somewhere he can sleep soundly with the oddest little puppy smile on his face. Because it would be crazy to take on a dog with a wedding and impeding adoption of a child and a move.
I've been in LA five years and forget sometimes that you can have anything you want, pretty much simultaneously at the instant you want it. Money, food, French food, Thai food, Ukranian food, obscure vitamins and health products, shark fin, a maid, guns, cars, pets ... the list goes on. And hair.
Of course hair. This is the place where nobody bats and eye at a good boob job or a newly streamlined nose (and tsk tsks at badly done ones). At my hairdresser, I timidly explained that I might want extensions for my wedding. She told me the place to go -- about 10 minutes away -- and I walked into the Hair Shop (which is truly that) and in five minutes and $125 later, had my own lush coiffure in a bag.
It'll need a little adjusting to match my color. Growing up always with long, curly hair, in the 45 minutes that I have been wearing them, I feel more like myself with the extensions than without them.
And to think I have been pounding Omega 3s for months in hopes to grow, grow, grow my hair long for my August wedding.
In LA, you can buy anything. Which is scary and comforting at the same time.
The first time I saw Nanci Griffith was in 1993. Jefe and I were leaving our messy, gritty, extraordinarily fun lives behind in Gallup, New Mexico, where we learned to be reporters and we'd finally gotten the hang of the two-step. I'd pretty much sabotaged the relationship, even though I was deeply, madly connected with this quirky and funny and kindhearted Yalie on a cellular level. Raised by my single dad, I didn't know how to take space or talk about what I wanted without causing major collateral damage. He held on for unknown reasons. He didn't want to marry, he didn't want to leave. I suppose he loved me, though to this day I am unsure why.
When we outgrew what is arguably the worst newspaper in the country, it was my turn to choose where to live, and I picked home, Washington state. My grandmother was getting older and becoming more still. My dad was in his big house, sometimes with his longtime love Holly, sometimes without. I imagined great reunions with high school friends who had stayed on the Olympic Peninsula.
We piled my 1984 Ford F-150 (with dual gas tanks) to the brim with our secondhand furniture and the Native Art we'd collected in our time in the Southwest. Me and my truck and he and his yellow VW Rabbit made our way north, stopping in Los Angeles for a few nights with his hipster aspiring director friend (who got horribly offended when I called "This Boy's Life" a "movie." "It's a film," he said, rolling his eyes and clucking his tongue). But Hipster was able to hook us up with tickets for The Tonight Show, where we saw Nanci for the first time. She sang "The Sound of Lonliness" and I was struck with inspiration and love and peace and longing and everything you want from a beautiful song.
Of course, Jefe and I didn't last out the year in Seattle. We'd imploded, crushed by past misdeeds and terrified of the uncertain future. When we broke it off for good and he decided to move back to New York, I stared at myself in the mirror and howled until my face disappeared.
If this were a movie, there would be a montage here: Me living in a cabin in the woods. A dozen different boyfriends including a rogue Irish man and a painfully urbane Irish man. Moving to Seattle to take a job as a magazine editor. Repeat appearances of some boyfriends. Leaving the job and becoming a freelance writer, playwright, producer, voice-over and commercial actress. Death of father. Moving to LA for bigger universe. Taking work at a corporation, and, shockingly, settling in.
The last scene of this montage would be me meeting Steve in the spring of 2008 at work, though we'd spoken on the phone a couple years prior when I had questions that needed answers. This ruggedly handsome, impossibly blue-eyed man would turn out to be the best man I had ever met. The most solid and trustworthy and easy and generous and fun person I could imagine. It was my profound delight to agree to marry him.
His birthday was last week, the second anniversary of our first kiss. Aside from the Bacon of the Month Club gift, I got us tickets to see Nanci. There she was, same as before, only we were close enough to hear her slap the guitar and to see the wisps of gray in her pulled-back hair. She was a queen and made it all look so easy and regal.
And when she sang "Across the Great Divide," tears rolled down my face. She sang this:
"The finest hour
I have seen
is the one
that comes between
the edge of night
and the break of day
that's when the darkness
rolls away."
That time of my life was bookended by Nanci. The first time I heard her, I was embarking on an uncertain journey, about to navigate my ballistic behavior associated with subconscious deep regret of losing and hurting the one man who I thought I should have married. Sitting there Friday night with my head resting on Steve's shoulder, I realized that my old journey is done. I don't need souvenirs or diaries or postcards from it. I am on a new path, clear and clean and pure. I am smarter and better as a human being. And this time, I am not alone.
