Hello dear reader, and welcome to Busted Flip Flops. Here we explore observations of life, musings about being mom (and sounding like your own), weird dreams, unpretentious recipes, ’80’s nostalgia, picking up strays (the furry and the non), and unfeigned poetry. Watch for weekly/monthly posts as these beach reads build and form like, well, a castle in the sand...
I Poured My Heart Out to this Dude Cooking an Omelette at a Hotel in Gainesville
“I’m feeling the feelings,” I started as I left him a voice memo. “But I’m able to sit with it ok as a few weeks ago I’m pacing around like a tiger in a cage and don’t know what to do about it.”
Over the last few weeks I’ve been experiencing that cruel, horrible, all-encompassing thing called heartbreak. Three of my friends are also going through it. One is an old coworker and the same age as my son (Gen Z). We bonded over cassette tapes and concert stories. Now we’re bonding over this. We’ve been messaging each other back and forth via text, phone calls, and voice memos as we try to make sense of our own emotions and the actions (or inactions) of the partners that are no longer in our lives.
We both mused on the length of our dual grief. “Six weeks since things went subtly more to an advanced stage of shit” he described.
“I feel like the person I thought he was is not the person he is,” I pondered late one evening. The next day I received a long voice memo with such sage advice that I listened to it three times and jotted down notes. How can this 22-year-old be so wise? It was him giving me more guidance than I’d given him. And I have three decades more experience.
He started explaining his internal struggle. “Two people fighting on the inside and no one’s winning.”
He went on to talk about how it was easier for him to talk to complete strangers than friends. “Someone is looking from the outside of your life– as if looking at your house through a window inside your head. It’s almost easier to open up because they don’t know you. They can look at it entirely objectively. You’ve got nothing to lose by talking to them. They’re not going to think any more or any less of you. I poured my heart out to this dude cooking an omelette at the hotel in Gainesville.”
Funny, I thought. I cried to the guy at Goin’ Postal yesterday.
Breakups are awful. It’s the death of a relationship. It’s your life as you know it changing in an instant. It’s self-deprecating grief and it comes in chaotic waves. One minute you think you’ve got a handle on it (I’m doing ok today!) and then another minute you’re ugly-crying in your car in the parking lot after work listening to Madonna’s “Skin” from Ray of Light:
Do I know you from somewhere? Why do you leave me wanting more? Why do all the things I say sound like the stupid things I’ve said before…
The crying and the talking and the writing it out saves us. You can’t keep it in. “Be willing to get in touch with that vulnerable portion of yourself when writing,” he advised. “Pour your heart out– get it to where you need to be.”
He also spoke of the metamorphosis that occurs when you do have some time and distance from the estranged partner. “You can be entirely different from someone when you’re not forced to spend every moment together. You start to become the person looking out the window at yourself and at someone else and what kind of role they fill in your life. You realize the disconnect of someone being your favorite person in your life to being something more foreign. You almost have the capacity to be a bit more critical when you’re not putting this person on a pedestal.”
Ah, that damned pedestal. Why do we romanticize things so, after things have ended? I need to think of all the crappy stuff to move on. The hurtful words, pompous attitude about things I didn’t understand, the grumpiness, the way he sneezed without covering his mouth.
“Through distance you’re more likely to not look over the flaws noticed in your relationship. You don’t sweep them under the rug. You come back to a different perspective. You gotta play lover and critic– you play the critic out of love because you want people to do better.”
He continued to address my initial voice memo rant from a day ago. “It’s odd seeing people change in front of you– they’re not acting like the person I thought they were.”
We also spoke of self care to get through. He’s been playing guitar with a friend. He refused to grab a beer from the outside fridge. I’ve been redecorating a little bit. I replaced dead plants with lush, green live ones. I changed light bulbs that were too harsh.
“Love thyself,” he reminded me. “Don’t lose your best face for what someone else may or may not think– you’ll never really know what goes on in someone else’s head. You can speculate all you want but at the end of the day, you’re the only head you’re in.”
“For the sake of all we know and been through, find comfort in yourself.”
Amen to that, my friend. I’m trying.
Filed under Yep I'm Becoming My Mother
The Man on the Porch
There was a new POD in the parking lot. Someone was moving. It could be the older man who sits on his porch. Why wouldn’t it be? But maybe it was his neighbor. Nothing looked empty where the man usually sat in the early evenings.
The man who sits on his porch usually has a friend over. Rarely he sits by himself. “You look beautiful in your dress,” he said to me once when I was walking the dog past his place. I usually walk past his place twice a day on dog walks.
He used to sit on his porch every single night. Music would blast from inside the apartment out the screen doors. It was usually music I liked– Bowie, Dire Straits, The Beatles. The music was so loud I thought it bold of him. But he wasn’t alone or with a friend back then. He was with his wife. She wore headbands around her bald head and always had some sort of paper in her hand, like a crossword puzzle.
They would always wave at me as I passed them on my dog walks. We’d never spoken a word to each other, although once his wife yelled out that she liked my pink hair. Every night the same. Hear the music pulsing from a building away, walk past (sometimes mouthing the lyrics), wave and smile, hurry by so I didn’t have to speak.
After a while I took another route because this was getting too predictable and sometimes I didn’t feel like smiling or waving.
Weeks and weeks later when I went back to that route, neither one of them were there. The porch was empty of them. Only all their whimsical clutter– the hanging bird wind chimes, red and green wicker furniture, yellow and red rectangle pots of half-dead flowers. Maybe they were on vacation.
But this vacation latest weeks. Then they were back. But the wife was not on the porch anymore. Every night just him with no music.
I asked a neighbor if she had died. They said she was there in the apartment with hospice care.
Tonight I walked past on a breezy June evening that gave respite to the scorching heat of the day. The plants were still there, but the wicker furniture was gone.
I guess my initial thought about the POD was right. He is moving. And why not?
Filed under Observations, Yep I'm Becoming My Mother
Thrifting, Sifting
these thrifted items
rows and rows of someone else’s belongings
maybe even some of mine
scattered among dusty memories
I glaze my fingers across the glass
the fabric
the parchment
what stories would they tell?
the teddy bears and toys tug at my heart
those times are gone both in my life and my child’s
why do we stop playing?
lines of clothing that are either too young or too old for me
worn furniture I can’t even afford if I had room for them
I once donated my dusty wedding dress here
the same day I visited my ex-husband in rehab
thrifting to kill time
sifting to find
Set of 6 for $28. Wish I’d bought these…
Filed under Sunday Night Sonnet
June, in Bloom
All is well
in Daventry Square
All is fine
in heart of thine
Along the hilltop
the cozy abode
A quiet place to lie
the heavy load
A scattering of brown
Anole lizard tail
A screech from Mockingbird
gusty gale
Blanket flower in full
pink-golden bloom
Overcast skies
of mid-morning June
Filed under Sunday Night Sonnet
Take off your busted and your worn
For a moment
take off your busted flip flops
your worn shoes
Slip off your boots, wiggle your toes
Inhale that purity of freedom on your tired feet
Let go of all that wore down those soles
those straps, those laces
No need to forget all learned from it
but okay to set it aside for a moment
Shed the skin and soak in the nakedness
of just being.
Filed under Sunday Night Sonnet
The Constant of Change
Change is inevitable. Until it’s not. At the moment, there’s a progression of time where things are at a nice constant. But I’m afraid to even think this, as I know change is around the bend, in the backyard, up the hill, at the corner coffee shop.
Right now my work dynamic is ideal. It has not always been this way in jobs prior. I get along beautifully with my coworkers; I’m greeted with genuine cheerfulness every day I walk into the learning center’s glass doors. “Writing Island”, as I came to name it, is a space where our seasoned writing mentor, my aged experience, and the fresh innocence of a student worker meshes oddly organically in our oval area in the middle of the center, against the backdrop of exposed blinds and student activity. We muse over 80’s films, books we want to write, and regular students we’ve embraced in our daily, weekly, yearly tutoring sessions.
But at some point this dynamic will change. The student worker will move on to another university or opportunity. The mentor may eventually land the faculty role he wants. I may be then thrust into his position, mentoring a new set of coworkers.
I mentioned a coffee shop. There was this corner coffee shop I’d go to twice a week. Initially I went there out of convenience (I could bike there and it was also on my way to work). There I discovered the best peanut butter banana smoothie I’d ever had. Sometimes I’d grab and go. Other times I’d sip and stay, either sitting outside on a bench in the sun, or inside where regulars and staff chatted about music and school and word puzzles and eventually became like a communal family. My teenage son would sometimes meet me there for lunch after his classes. Then the owner decided to sell the shop, unfortunately to some idiots. Now the shop sits empty. The tables and kitchen appliances are still there, but the people aren’t. I’ve visited other smoothie/coffee shops. There are some tasty peanut butter banana smoothies out there and some friendly baristas, but they cannot compare. It is not the communal feel of my beloved corner store.
In my backyard there are all kinds of plants I’ve cultivated over the years, including the sturdy Queen palm, fragrant Cape jasmine, and hearty Asparagus fern. Through the wet and dry seasons and changing position of the sun, I’ve managed to keep them all alive. The metal patio table under the loquat tree has harbored its share of various friends and family and guests. Some will come back soon. Others maybe a year from now. A few, forever a memory.
I’ve always said I don’t particularly like change. It’s scary and it can come out of nowhere, like a job lay-off or the death of a loved one. It can also creep in slowly, like the phases of your child’s life, or the bearing of loquat fruit. It is inevitable. And at some point acceptance is our savior. Fighting is futile. Sometimes change just sucks. It’s unfair. But if we let it guide us to other experiences, learned lessons, new discoveries, then the scariness looses at least some of its grip on the constant of change.
Filed under Observations
California Skies
I saw myself in the California skies
somewhere else
where I was not
Half-hidden darkness and half-hidden gems
in a southern middle class suburb
We walked to school
and envied the neighbor’s portable television
that occupied the car where our friends watched morning cartoons
as their mom directed street traffic in her blue uniform
No celebrities
except the ones we highlighted in our minds
the girl who played softball like a champ
I couldn’t even catch the ball in our own backyard
Dad tried to teach me but I could never get it
Piano too
I cried in frustration
My dark bangs and protruding belly
ugly in comparison
to my golden-locked neighbor
who had a stomach like an Olympic gymnast
She was the daughter of the mom
with the portable TV
But she wet the bed
and I always felt like a stranger
in her house.
Filed under Sunday Night Sonnet
A Crow’s Call
Interesting are the crows
Their nasal squawks permeate Sunday’s silence
from the mouths of dormant chimneys
There is a purpose to their short, fevered flight patterns
a reason for their dominating calls
But I cannot entirely gather why
as surely it would mean hours upon days to do so
And here in my backyard moments
only a glimpse of their day
The Tufted Titmouse and Chickadee’s chime
barely audible against theirs
Two mourning doves ruffle feathers along the fence’s ridge
and brown squirrels await fallen seed
at the floor of the feeder I have put there
Our human ears distaste that loud caw from above
muffling pleasant birdsong
and perching proudly on our rooftops
But we are in their home.
Filed under Sunday Night Sonnet
Men, A Pause
Picking up the pieces
strown items on the floor
from a basket hurled in solitary anger
where did this come from?
pent up frustration about this stage of life
everyone’s therapist
where’s mine?
he was a baby cooing
gazing into my eyes
a boy playing trains and Legos
look mom!
a teenager on the cusp of manhood
finding his way
now I am the baby
mewing for attention.
Filed under Sunday Night Sonnet
Waffles to Donuts
The teenagers are here.
Our house was always the one the kids came to. How many breakfasts of waffles did I make? How many trips to the park did we take? How many Nerf wars battled in these rooms and outside the pale, wooden perimeter? Years and years later, I still find those blue, spongy bullets tucked in corners and hiding among domestic tumbleweeds.
The sleepovers and and get-togethers are less frequent in these late teenage years, but they do happen. Last night my son had friends over. They whooped over video games and a backyard fire pit. This morning they drove themselves to get donuts and we shared laughs in my small, crowded kitchen. I love being a part of their conversations, which normally include musical interests and the mundaneness of high school. I also know to slink away to give them space, as much as is possible in a modest, one-level condo.
But I love the closeness. I wouldn’t have it any other way. There are too many distractions for us to not enjoy the closeness. Everyday I go out on my lanai to watch birds. He doesn’t join me in this. It’s not his thing. But he invites me to walk dogs with him on occasion. We snicker about interesting neighbors. Sometimes we don’t say anything at all.
It’s not easy to catch time with him. If I have just five minutes I am grateful. But there’s never really enough time. I love his company so damn much.
Filed under Observations
Busted Flip Flops 