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“settle down, it’ll all be clear
don’t pay no mind to the demons
they fill you with fear”

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Life lessons are hard.

I was 19. Too young and far too sensitive to know. My car had just been vandalized, and I had made the hour and half drive from college to home. I sat crying on the couch. Dad left the room, probably frustrated, maybe enraged. Both he and my mom had tried to console me. I didn’t think they could possibly understand. It wasn’t just a car. It was my car. I had earned it. I had worked hard for it and saved, and then worked some more to have it painted. My ’66 Mustang. I’d bought her for $900, $400 of which was graduation gift money. She was faded pink, top coat of paint burned out from sitting 20 years in the sun. Rubber hung dry-rotted from the wheels and the spark plugs, well, let’s just say that was the only magic piece that need replacing to light her fire.  $900 and I was a senior with a new car.

A really cool car.

I worked hard that summer. My days started teaching a 6:30 am class at the gym, and ended at midnight or later, depending which night it was and when the restaurant closed, and it included a full day, six days each week, lifeguarding and teaching swimming lessons. I was working to earn money for college, but I motivated and rewarded myself with a $500 paint job.
Candy Apple Red.

I tried to explain to my parents, it’s not the car. It’s the intention. They did it intentionally. They ground that cabled gas cap round and round until there was a perfect silver circle around the gas tank opening. They drug a teaspoon from the back bumper to the front, creating a silver racing stipe a quarter inch thick down the side of the car, deep into that candy apple. They wrote foul things on my white walls with permanent marker and bent the windshield wipers and it was all too much, really.

How easily they took something from me that meant so much {because I had worked so hard for it} with the swift swipe of a spoon and a marker. How could they? Why would they?  And how in the world could I ever get anyone to understand how what they did to my car, the act of it, affected me?

My mother said, I know you feel alone. That’s why they say we’re born alone and we die alone. Sometimes I feel alone, even though I have you girls and your father…

And it occurred to me, for the first time in my life, I truly am alone. This stupid act, something that happens all the time all over the world to better people than me, shoved me hard right into adulthood.

“The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home”

30 years later and it’s not the car that I ended up selling four or five years later for $100 more than I’d bought it. It’s this rollercoaster life, the continuous wave of up and down. It’s children leaving and bodies aging and  relationships changing. It’s the need to feel connection with others, to know we are loved and valued.

And I remember her words loud and clear, remnants of a quote by Orson Wells:

We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we are not alone.

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And he comes home, unaware and pulls me in tight.
And he sings softly into my ear,

“hold on, to me as we go
as we roll down this unfamiliar road
and although this wave is stringing us along
just know you’re not alone
cause I’m going to make this place your home

Settle down, it’ll all be clear
Don’t pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m gonna make this place your home”

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Imperfect Prose

Loves on a Thursday

Little Things Thursday

Rurality

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There are 1440 minutes in every day… 1440 opportunities to capture a moment of beauty. What moment of beauty did you capture this week?