An Unexpected Friend

June 14, 2013June 14, 2013 / roughwighting / 31 Comments

I make a new friend on a recent trip to the right coast.

His name is Oliver, and he’s my brother’s dog.

This golden lab mix, 5 years old, is about as loving a being as you’ll ever find anywhere on this earth.

As I arrive at my brother’s Maryland home, Oliver waits for me at the front door like I’m a long-delayed special guest. The tip of his tail wags first, as if he wonders if I’m as nice as he’s been told. When I greet him happily, bending down so we can meet eye to eye, his wag travels down the rest of his tail, and then onto his body, which can hardly contain his excitement.

Yes, we bond immediately.

Oliver brings me his special stuffed muskrat.

He tours me around the acreage of his family estate, proudly showing off the peach and apple tees, the vegetable garden, and the strawberry patch.

When I rub him down, he talks to me with a prolonged squeal, similar to the sound of a young boy swallowing helium.

An endearing trait.

When I sink into the hot tub with my brother and sister-in-law on a cool but gorgeous Sunday morning, Oliver splays himself on the pool curb besides me, licking my cheek every so often, just checking up on me.

In other words, we become fast friends.

I take Oliver for a 45-minute walk, and he shows me every colorful hydrant in town, and introduces me to the neighborhood cat, who enjoys playing “chase me up a tree.”

But then it’s time to say goodbye.

With suitcase at my side, I stand by the front door. Oliver approaches quietly, sitting in front of me, ramrod straight, gazing into my eyes and then suddenly, lifts his left lip so high it almost reaches his nose.

I stare back, open-mouthed.

“That’s his smile,” my brother explains.

Wow!

I curl my lip in response and hug my new-found friend with fierce appreciation.

We find friends sometimes in the most unexpected places…

Covered in the most unexpected body types….

Offering unexpected joy and love.

As I return to the left coast, I find myself seated in the plane, curling my lip often as I think of my new unexpected friend.

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions – the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

A Ghost Story

October 26, 2012 / roughwighting / 13 Comments

I know it’s going to happen tonight. All the signs are right. Children off on their own, husband away on business, my two best friends gone on vacations with their families.

I am alone. Finally.

For the past two months I’ve been preparing for this time, not knowing that it would come, but preparing nonetheless.

The sun finally loses its power over gravity and sinks down into the dark rose horizon. The moon floats ahead, but herds of black clouds cover its cheerful shine, darkening the sky and the earth below.

I turn off the lights to the living room, the hallway, then the stairway, and finally my bedroom.

I am swathed in glorious blackness.

I close my eyes, then open them so the room is revealed to me like a developing photo in a dark room. Familiar shapes and shadows relax me.

Then an unfamiliar form floats from the window to the door and stops a few feet away.

“Virginia?” I ask. She nods her head. I see no face, no female body, but still, I know it’s my dear friend of many years, my mentor, dead over 15 years now. I have talked to her so often in my prayers, but never a response.

Now she speaks, though no words fill the room.

We revel in memories of the life we shared, and she laughs heartily. My soul fills with the sound. I have missed it, but now realize that it has always been part of me, and shall remain so.

She answers my personal questions of what lay beyond. I won’t tell you what she says.

Felicity, my cat, creeps into the room, staring at me with her yellow eyes. I’m afraid she may think her mistress has lost her mind, but instead she meows to me. “Why stay here? Take a cat nap and see the world.”

Oh, I suddenly realize; I’ve always been able to go back and forth between worlds. I just don’t nap enough.

I close my eyes, feeling Virginia’s presence close at hand. We soar off through the window panes into the black night. I am so happy my heart balloons twice its size. I see George, then, and grandmama, and, of course, Pauli. They are just as free as me.

We head toward the prism that has suddenly appeared, and just as suddenly we’re in a garden of roses and delphiniums and hydrangeas. The soil is moist and smells like cut grass, starfish, and summer moonlight. Felicity joins us and converses with a butterfly.

“Change is imperative,” the colorful flying insect says wisely.

I wink and find myself back in my dark bedroom, seated Buddha style, petting Felicity in soft gentle strokes. She gazes up at me and says only one word in a long, low purr.

“Llllllooooooovvvvvvvveeeeeeeeee. ghost story, butterfly, cat, soul

“Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for

but never seen.” (Anne Sexton)

Spa STRESS

September 21, 2012 / roughwighting / 24 Comments

I seize the opportunity to enjoy an afternoon at the spa to spiff up and stress down.

I succeed, sort of.

My visiting mother, always full of zip, is a bit reluctant, but my friend Dee urges us to take the time to R E L A X. So we arrive eagerly, quickly getting into the mood by wearing the spa’s over-sized plush robes as we sit in front of a warmed pool in the dazzling Sausalito sunshine.

We’re each called away by our trained de-stressors. Mom’s facialist is a warm Hawaiian woman who sooths her at ‘hellooooo.’ Dee expects a woman masseuse, so when a handsome young man leads her to her massage, I whisper, “just think 50 shades.” The shocked blush-red expression on my friend’s face starts me giggling, even as my massage begins– not the best way to let my muscles go limp. As strong fingers push open tight tender back muscles, my stomach bops up and down in suppressed laughter.

An hour later, warm lavender tea in front of a roaring fire as the fog swirls amidst the sun’s rays continues the amazing effects of a splendid afternoon at the spa.

Until we’re back in the car, coasting out of the driveway, and I think out loud, “Where’s my cell phone?”

My foot drops on the brake as my mind searches for the last time I used it.

Then I get a sinking feeling: “Oh NO!”

Just in case I’m wrong, I empty the contents of my purse and my book bag as Dee, sitting in the passenger seat, calls my phone on her cell. She figures if we hear the ring, we’ll find the phone.

Too late, we realize I’d turned the sound off while we were sedated and pacified at the spa.

“I know where it is!!” I yell, blood pressure already rising, pupils dilating. “Don’t move!”

I jump out of the car and race up the long walkway back into the sweet peaceful spa.

“I need to get back in there,” I roar as gently as I can, pointing my finger toward the curtained rooms beyond.

The two tall lithe women behind the desks, the ones who dress in loose black silk and talk only in whispers, just stare at me as if they’ve never seen me before, then nod their heads. I suppose I look different than even 10 minutes earlier, when I’d floated out.

I try to walk, not run, to the elegant locker room, where we’d changed back to our ‘regular selves’ and plopped our spa bathrobes into big wicker baskets.

Gone.

Not one used bathrobe in the room.

An attendant notices my wild eyes and directs me down a hallway to a well-hidden cleaning room. A man and a woman are sorting the bathrobes into HUGE bins for wash.

“I think I left my cell phone in the pocket of my robe,” I explain breathlessly.

The woman laughs (yes, laughs!) while nodding her head toward the pile of many, many thick cream robes. “That will be like finding a needle in a haystack,” she says.

“I’ll look in every pocket,” I exclaim, and the man slowly begins to look himself. As my heart pounds, I ponder: I have just wasted an aternoon’s worth of de-stressing.

But before I can even get to one pocket, the woman shouts, “You have good karma!” and yes, in her hand is my lifeline to the world (and all my contacts)– my cell phone.

I take a deep breath and smile as broadly as the California sun.

Ahhhh, a splendid day at the spa.

What’s in a Name? (Part I)

June 8, 2012August 25, 2016 / roughwighting / 28 Comments

Finally my son wanted his grandmother, my mom Marcia, to meet his “friend.”

“Hey, since Nanny is visiting you, want to bring her to meet Shara and me for dinner?” was how he put it.

Most of us in the family had not yet met Shara, who had been named by us over the past months as “the girlfriend-we-are-not-allowed-to-call-his-girlfriend.”

The reasons for the nomenclature were complicated: she didn’t want to commit after a previous unsuccessful relationship; he didn’t want her to think he wanted to commit; she was worried he didn’t want to commit so she was adamant about not committing.

In other words, a typical 20-something relationship.

Mom, always excited to be with her well-loved grandson, was thrilled that she, “the grandmother,” would get to meet Shara, “the secret girlfriend.”

“It’s a sign,” my mom sighed dreamily. I just shook my head.

“No,” I answered, “Sean sees a chance for a free dinner for him and his date.”

We met, tired and a bit out of sorts, at a restaurant halfway between my suburban home and Sean’s tiny hip city loft. The starless sky wore as blank an expression as the uninterested waitress, who seated the four of us at a table for six.

Within three minutes my mom demanded that we be moved to a smaller booth.

“More cozy,” she said. I’d never seen this romantic side in her before.

Sean ordered the Chianti, and Shara sat demurely quiet. I knew she was extremely intelligent, but she looked like Ali McGraw in Love Story: long slender black coat that covered tight jeans and a soft curvy cashmere pink top, long blonde hair capped with a jaunty flat hat, the kind that only really cute, really slim women can wear. It took her 10 minutes and a glass of wine to lose the coat and hat. It took my mom 10 more minutes to loosen her up.

“So, Shannon, what do you do?” Marcia asked.

Shara looked up at Sean as if he was to answer, so he did. “She’s an investment analyst for a competitor of my company.”

Shara jumped in, explaining a bit about her position, but only Sean understood her world in high finances. We Wight women believe in words, not numbers.

Somehow the conversation turned to words, and their importance. My mom told a story about a friend calling her by the wrong name, pronouncing it Marsha instead of Marceea. “Maybe it’s spelled the same,” she said, sipping her second glass of wine, “but it’s totally different. Do I look like a Marsha? No. I’m a Marcie, or a Marcia, never a Marsha.”

We ate our pasta, our shrimp, our salads, and drank our Chianti. The conversation relaxed, the laughs got louder, the restaurant suddenly glowed in a golden light, and Marcia continued to try to draw out Sean’s girlfriend, ur, friend.

“Cher, where does your dad live? Near here?” Mom asked after hearing Shara talk affectionately about her father.

Shara looked at Sean. I think she kicked him under the table. Sean cleared his throat. “Uh, Nanny. Shara’s name is Shara. Not Shannon or Cher or Sherry. Shara.”

Silence suddenly permeated the table.

Mom looked stupefied. “Oh, well, how do I remember that? Shar? Shar A? I don’t know if I’ll get it right. Okay if I just remember Char? That sounds close to Cher, so I should be able to do that.”

Shara smiled sweetly at my mom. “I don’t mind at all….. Marsha.”

Silence for one sparkling second, and then the table burst into cheers, my mom’s the loudest.

A week later Sean called me on the phone for no particular reason, until I asked how his friend, Shara, was. “Well, uh, it’s okay. You can call her my girlfriend,” he responded.

I could feel his deep pink blush over the phone lines.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

(Shakespeare)