I’m listening to Zac Brown Band and wondering if you’ve ever heard them. Your dad has a friend over and he knew your grandpa. I miss you. I wish you were here to hear the stories and to tell me how much you loved the Zac Brown duet with Jimmy Buffett. I miss you. A lot.

I hear the words in broken Spanish and they make me laugh. It reminds me of you and I wish you were here.

There are days I think I can go through life without you. That you can be some painful part of my past that I can forget and move on because Tears for Fears was WAY more cooler than Wham! any day.

But, sometimes, it backs up. Like Christmas Eve when I missed you on the bed with your sisters listening to “The Night Before Christmas” or the times with your friends when I wish you were here and it hurts so bad that a new memory is created in your absence.

It hurts and I miss you.

And, sometimes I wish your grandfathers would whisper in your ears while you sleep and tell you, that I miss you, that there is a hole here. That I find it hard to make a life without you.

It hurts…

and I miss you.

I love you.

I hope you are happy.

I hope it never backs up on you like it does on me.

She curled into the corner of the blue couch. The blue couch her “new” grandma had picked out for her Papa after her Nana had died. Somehow she had ended up with the blasted thing and the sad fact is that it was probably worth more than the single wide trailer she was sitting on it in.

“When Harry Met Sally” played for roughly the 400th time on the tiny tv screen. She worried she might wear the tape out and these days Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal, Harry Connick Jr. and Amy Grant cassettes pretty much made up her entire friends list. To put it lightly, regrets were many and blessings were few.

Her 3 year old son slept on the couch beside her and inches away in a cradle was her newborn daughter with the faint halo of red hair circling her perfect head. In the corner was a rifle that she barely knew how to use but figured she could beat someone to death with it if she had to. Out in the yard was a half wild Alaskan Malamute / Siberian Husky mix that wasn’t smart enough to be housebroken but seemed to sound a decent alarm if anything crossed a fence on the five acres surrounding her.

The wind literally howled outside and she remembered all those books she read as a child where the wind was described as a howling wolf outside the door. She was sitting in the middle of the inspiration for most of those passages somewhere in the plains of Colorado just barely west of the Kansas border. Hell, she could be in Kansas faster than she could be in Aspen and that meant she was a hair or two from tornado alley’s door, this was a fact her Papa rarely let her forget in his near daily phone calls.

The thin, single pane glass creaked in the aluminum frames and the metal door rattled as if someone were trying to get in. She watched the thin, mobile home walls bend in and flex alarmingly and wondered what she might do if the winds got really bad out on the plains.

“Really bad” was the farthest she would let her thoughts drift even though tornado warnings weren’t unusual and funnel clouds were spotted often. She had a loose plan if things got bad and the last ditch was going to be a balls out, outrun-the-storm maneuver in her Nana’s old, blue, Buick Regal. Until then, she’d sit up all night and run old movies and doze occasionally with one hand on the boy and the other on the cradle until the baby woke up and needed to be fed.

Too many bad choices had brought her here. There was barely any money in the bank and she had no idea how much propane was left in the tank outside. She didn’t know how much longer she’d be alone and she didn’t look forward to him coming home anyway.

What she needed to do was figure out a way back to California as soon as possible. She’d fallen in love with Colorado, but she was too far from family and in unfriendly territory too often to ever be able to rest easy. The only people who ever seemed to worry about her or the babies were people over a thousand miles away and much too far to be of any real help.

A rifle in the corner of the living room was a far cry from her cozy neighborhood in California, weekends at the lake skiing and the mall within a 5 minute walk. Growing up with grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles within 5 minutes in any direction it was a scary awakening to realize that any kind of help was twenty or more minutes away and that depended entirely on the weather.

She watched Billy Crystal run down the street toward the New Year’s party where Meg Ryan was making excuses to leave early and she took a long, deep breath. The wind continued to scream, the walls flexed and she wondered if she had the patience to wait for the tape to rewind so she could start the movie again.

In the quiet of her own thoughts she felt that size and shape shouldn’t matter. There were women she found beautiful regardless of their size or shape and yet, she couldn’t manage to bring out that same quality in herself. While she longed to be Mrs.Fezziwig, round, jolly and happy, she instead found herself sagging, pudgy, and sallow and the contrasts were never lost on her. Besides, her temper was such that any remote resemblance to the fictional character would have been an even greater work of fiction than the original itself.

What she wanted to be and wished herself to be she was not and she never let herself forget that she had fallen far, far short of any such glory. Her body had rebelled against her in almost every way. The long list of scars, stretch marks, unwanted hair, aches, pain, dry skin, and flabbiness stayed firmly planted in the forefront, the unwanted grocery list in her mind, all too difficult to overcome, all earned through years of disappointment, heartache, and bitterness.

Moments of inspired change came late at night as she drifted off to sleep. These moments were all but gone in the morning save the whisper of them like a dream too fuzzy to recall. Small accomplishments were not worth the trouble and only those that were felt to have the ability to land among the stars were worth striving for even if they invariably ended in dark disappointment punctuated by too many glasses of whiskey.

She often felt alone, trapped in her thoughts unable to escape the fear of what the future might hold. She had to laugh when a trip to her favorite Tarot reader began with, “The biggest theme that comes out through your cards is self-imposed exile.”

Exile. Self-imposed. She laughed because it was obvious and yet, while there was a ring of truth to it, she couldn’t convince herself of its validity. She laughed because she knew it landed in the pile of obviousness that was absurdly insurmountable. She had moved away from people who hurt her, people who made her feel worse than she was capable of making herself feel even if the possibility of that seemed ridiculous. Her self-esteem had long ago been obliterated and in the current pop culture phenomena of “Eat, Pray, Love” where pleasing yourself guaranteed inner peace and tranquility her issue seemed simple to rectify.

It wasn’t an unwillingness on her part, just a lack of simple direction. No map appeared clear enough with simplistic enough steps to follow, no self-help guru appeared credible or trustworthy, no lightening flew down from the sky bringing about a radical shift of paradigms.

She sat down at her desk thinking she might have an email or two to answer. Behind her he rattled around on the keys, she noticed that his typing had gotten faster and more accurate. She rarely heard the long pauses between key clicks as he hunted and pecked his way across the board.

He’d spent a lot of time online on the football message boards lately. She was tired of getting bypassed for the keyboard.

“I think I’m going to have to shut this thing down.” He said glancing over his shoulder.

Since she had been hinting all night that she had “needs” that she was absolutely desperate to have met, her hopes soared thinking he meant to shut things down and go upstairs.

“Oh, really?” She asked flirtatiously.

“Yeah. I think this thing is dragging and needs a reboot.”

She turned around and swallowed the last of the scotch in her glass, picked up the empty coffee mug from this morning and chucked it at the back of his head.

She missed, of course. But the split second the coffee mug shattered across his desk he jumped so hard he flipped ass over tea kettle out of his chair and she was fairly certain he might have lost all control of his bodily functions.

“Good night, sweetheart.” She said as she stooped down to kiss his forehead and made her way up the stairs.

She never knew why she did it, even if she knew where it began. Out came the bottle, the carefully selected shot glass and while she wished she could just drop a needle on a vinyl record and hear Solomon Burke singing “Cry to Me” she instead slipped in her headphones (couldn’t bring herself to call them ear buds) and fumbled clumsily with her mp3 player.

The first shot usually felt a little rough, but by the second or third she felt happy. Happy enough to tolerate him brushing by her, not taking a moment for something more than an absent-minded peck on the cheek. Happy enough not to feel the dull ache when he ignored her again.

Still she had hours before he came home and that wasn’t always a good thing. The songs played making her feel melancholy, alone, un-romanced, and unwanted. Still she tortured herself slowly with La Vie En Rose, More, and Come Fly with Me. And, she remembered what it was like to be wanted, desired, to tease, and to fall brilliantly.

Her song lists were sloppy and eccentric, John Mayer’s “Why Georgia” shattered her inner dialogue and she swam to the surface for a fresh breath before diving back into “Save The Last Dance For Me.” She succumbed to the lyrics and remembered the last time she was kissed breathlessly and someone worried about “losing” her.

She remembered the thrill of feeling excited and nervous. Now it always felt like affection was something she waited on him to instigate and she felt ashamed at how her heart fluttered whenever he did.

“Like a puppy starved for attention.” She mumbled under her breath and poured again.

Inwardly she scolded and chided herself. She was silly for needing him, silly for having “school girl” fantasies, and ridiculously silly for being irritated with him. After all, she worked from home, he worked both away and at home, she had no right to ask for more from him.

“What are you humming?” She asked, bleary eyed and slightly drunk.

“Crocodile Rock… Elton John.”

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

“Yeah, you know, back when Elton John was cool. Now he’s this pudgy, pasty, over-the-top gay guy who sings songs for Disney… you remember Faith Hill and Tim McGraw did a tour together, the Soul 2 Soul tour. Soul 2 Soul, that’s hot, that is steamy, that just screams chemistry.”

“Right… I’m trying to follow you.” She sighed and took another long sip.

“Right, well, Elton John and Billy Joel did a tour together but to make it perfectly clear, they had to call it “Face to Face.”

At first glance, it appeared to be a brandy snifter cradled in her hand as she tossed her hair back and laughed at the most bawdy jokes lobbed her direction. Upon a second look through the faint smoke around her, it became obvious that the delicious looking glass object was a water pipe. Hand-made and obviously expensive.

She made a crass reference to erotic asphyxiation and her eyes twinkled mischievously as the jaws around her dropped. She laughed and took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet smelling herbal smoke that hung in the air. Cigarettes were always kept outside, good cigars occasionally wandered through the house if the windows were open, but this smoke was always welcome.

She wasn’t the typical hostess. She dressed in a simple bohemian fashion that bordered on eccentric. Bright cotton poplin printed capri pants and a split-neck tunic that hung at the top of her thighs. A simple black tourmaline pendant hung from her neck on a braided hemp rope. Her jewelry was always simple, but she was never seen without her beloved wedding ring.

It was obvious she had seen thinner days and her breasts had clearly seen too many nights with crying babies. Still, she laughed loudly and occasionally winked at her husband who held court at the other end of the room. He, in turn, nodded and lifted his glass in her direction.

This was no magical evening, no air of mystery or romance hung in the room. It was simply a dinner with ordinary people, drinking, smoking, and laughing. The jokes were plenty and she would undoubtedly have to endure family members complaining about party-goers and their ridiculous comments tomorrow. But, tonight, she was just a person, chatting and laughing in the middle of her kitchen. The guilt could wait.

“Ok, I’m here.” He said strolling into the room and tossing his jacket on to the chair.

“So I’ve noticed.” She replied through teeth that were clenched around a pencil.

“Are you ready to do this valance thing?”

She misheard him as she shuffled through the bags around the ladder. She’d had valences waiting, unhung, for months.

“Valencing? Oh! Ha. Yes, it’ll be an Olympic sport next year. I’ve signed us up for the team, we’ll be head stud finders.”

Paul McCartney is captivating a magnificent and obviously adoring audience with a very lively and modern rendition of “Hey Jude” on the television. They stand, frozen, leaned against the counter, mesmerized by the tune and the message.

“It’s almost sad that he’s old enough to be the father of most of his band members.” She whispers shrewdly.

He snickers, pretends not to hear her and leans over further attempting to illustrate his conviction in being completely enraptured by the music coming from the television across the room.

“Really though, I don’t care how old he is, I’d still…”

“Oh my God. Shut up!” He said sharply, nearly sounding offended.

“Well, it’s not as bad as you made it sound the other day! Who were we talking about?”

The two of them had been driving back from having her car washed. They were chatting happily about politics and their mutual liberal interests.

“That Joe Biden is not a bad looking guy.” She said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, he’s not bad looking, I guess. I mean not in that, “I’d *bleep* the hell out of that guy! Ooo yeah.”

“Oh my God! You didn’t just… oh dear. I just can’t talk to you at all. I mean, sure he’s attractive, but I don’t think I’d… I just can’t imagine talking about someone that way.”

“Thank goodness I used the word “bleep,” right?” He said slyly.

The strains of “Lady Madonna” whipped about the room. She looked at him wickedly.

“I’m just saying, given my chance with Sir Paul…”

“SHUT UP!” He said, clapping his hands over his ears.

“What? You are so naughty. I’m just saying he’d be tired the next day!”