December 29, 2012
-
New Year’s Eve In San Francisco
What old acquaintance shall I forget this year? That I have to forget anyone seems dreadful somehow, and yet much of my life has depended on removing people into another place and another time, and I am dumbfounded that, especially the men who appeared to have such interest in me a long time ago, then I know that my life could have been so much easier.. Tell me now Ye Baby Boomers and loves of long ago, for I have taken this question over many experiences, marriage, children and all of those things most of us wound up doing, for I need to know if young men just loved a while and went away to the girls they left behind and act as their partners lambs on their wedding days, now a long time ago — Or did they just have such a great run in the 60s and 70s trusting women were educated and practicing birth control that it was all right for lovers to mean nothing.
Did these boys, and some — Well off men simply make check marks in black books, for example, and if they thought a relationship was going to become serioux, then were there Xs instead of stars for however long it lasted, and did anyone ever clue a lot of you in to the idea, that especially in Washington, D. C., you were as disposable as a May shower when the nights were becoming long. I was wondering what ever became of a boy I knew in Washington not long ago, and he was among the first people who sort of confessed that he had involved himself with me, because I looked so young, inexperienced and afraid, and then the last time I would ever see him — With him on one drug or another, probably hooked up with a guy by then, for drugs seemed to bring him into much experimenting, but his last words to me were that he loved me! One day earlier, had he said that, I would have thought of turning my life around, and I would hear that he was playing street drunk and hippie after a year or so went by, but was it all just lame speak and what guys felt like they needed to say then.
I wanted to know if his life had been happy, and when he had come back to the real world, for most of them did — That is, unless he went fully gay after his introduction to the guy thing and of all thing, a jerk who was a guard at The Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier was the mate. It seems that being stoned got him through his shifts, and I felt like showing this guy the wrong end of my southern foot for his coy admission as to how he did not blink — being stoned! But I told a special friend that I was thinking of seeing if I could make this contact, and she said; “Why?”
He will have no memory of you. The truth partially too was the getting even, for I know he thought this little pre-med student stopped, became a girl who sweeps hair in the local salon, and he would have gasped to know that I gave college 4 hard years more to equal six, and then throw in some honors, and a BSN with that. I wanted him to know that I wrote, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” my book on Amazon that took him and anyone who cares to go there through the internal war of being a daughter of Appalachia, so without that his skinned little military brat butt could not have lived my life and come out whole in one piece.
To any one I ever had any kind of relationship with; Coming In Bulletin — From Barbara Ellen Everett Heintz, I never forgot a one of you, though I put some of you on the pages farthest back in my memory cells. I never even forgot a jerk from Hawaii, another little rich boy who thought if he left his tongue in my throat long enough that it would eventually go to my toes, and he would get a one night stand. Sweethearts, I did not care if his tongue photographed a laryngeal spasm, for I had no use for one night stands with anyone. Only recently have I discovered that I was one of the least sexually active girls in high school, and only when I hit college and met the sweet talking Natchez, Mississippi man did I know what it really felt like having my heart race, for I believed that I was going to a child bride with an exemplary one love experience, but it happened that as I grew up a little more, then nothing was that simple, but my fear had kept me a shining example of purity than most girls who enter college at 17.
People say, “Don’t you just want to remember people as they were,” so do not ask a formr Hospice nurse that, because we know that life ends at the last breath, and the values and goals which you have reached up to that point and that point only are your destiny, for only then may a proper epitaph be writen and many of us will leave this place with the sweet oil of Chrism as something our children can touch with a handkerchief and take away the scent of death touched by the sweetest thought — That even that evening a new child could be born fragile, but live, and the same life giving Chrism may also be the touch they need to enter life. I have shared so much with many of my elders — Joy and Marriage, their children, heart breaks that could not be mended, and each had some story of someone they knew.
Have we become so vain, so self approving that we forget how it felt to be loved, or is our pride so without quality that we just pretend life didn’t happen??? Trial runs are for sports and cars, not for the heart that loved, and running from our past simply means that somewhere before; We lost a lot of our future. We build the fences of illusion to close out that we were fragile, and we still are. Aging just gives us more time to look back with the wisdom to know whose paths we would like to re-encounter, after the firstt snow storm and winter/s solstice — After the April rains bring crocus carpets like my friend, Melanie, plants — On and on the cycles of all of our being.
Who forgets anyone whose arms have held them; or am I just vacuuous thinking that my memory is somehow is superior, or flawed, for it is less selective? There is rain in San Francisco tonight, and we put this Christmas away this day. I have such gratitude to my husband for packing it so early, but soon I wish to be well to be back in Cincinnati for a while, to talk with my friends again and to remember as I watch the barges and boats awaken for summer’s travels. I will not forget this cold here, for old houses such as ours have no central heat. I will not forget that the children came or that we sat at Terri and Allan’s table, and San Rafael Bay could not be seen from the Christmas table. It is the way with me,, this frightened home girl that can remember so much about the little things, the special people, the ones who say they forget. For this recurring theme of memory, I ask of you; Are people really so easy to forget, and if so; Why did you bother with them, for it could be a chip of my soul, and strong spirits always return. Blessings, and Happy New Year to esteemed friends of the world east to west and north to south. Barbara Everett Heintz, Author of, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon, KDP, Kindle Ready, and Library rentals to Japan and many European neighbors…
