Monday, May 14, 2012

An Apple, a Jordan and a Skip

Really I had intended to
write a post about motherhood,
Mother's Day,
mom mom mom-iness.

But I just couldn't
stomach it.

Not to say I don't love being a mom,
because I totally do.

I gotta say the coupons were my fave.

 And my life is great,
and I love my kids,
and my Mother's Day
was wonderful,
and and and...

I also have
24 million other things
I sometimes want to talk about.

Ok?
Ok.

Thus I present to you 2 (maybe 3)
things that hardly have anything to do with one another
except yes they very much do.

So...
Paul being very sweet
and oh-so-thoughful
(and in receipt of 3 reminders and an email)
bought me tickets to see Fiona Apple this July.
And I am insanely excited.

I mean...
she is hands down my absolute favorite female singer.

And...
I've only seen her live once.

A million years ago
she did an impromptu few songs on the Largo stage
and I'm sure my date's hand is still kind of broken
from the hand crush I imparted upon him
when Jon Brion said,
"Hey Fi wanna come up and do a few songs?"

I'll admit it...
I cried.

I am still sort of the 14 year old girl
who spent an entire afternoon
sitting cross-legged on the floor
calling KROQ incessantly
and requesting "Criminal".

Oh Fiona...put some clothes on for chrissakes.

I loved that song long before
I knew anything about 
the kind of broken heart
she was singing about.

When I was 19
and having my heart really broken,
first by Him
and then by Him #2,
I remember playing "When the Pawn..."
over and over and again and again.

Driving around in my little white Jetta,
screaming lines about wasted unconditional love 
and believing in a man that was just a boy.

Wondering how or why
I ever loved anyone, 
and really,
if anyone could, would, should,
ever love me back.

It was all very dramatic.

I mean...
I smoked cloves back then.

Which brings us to Him #2.

My Jordan Catalano.

My Skip.

Last week on Instagram
Rebecca Woolf
(of my favorite Girls Gone Child)
posted a picture of her Jordan Catalano
which everyone else received
with stories about their Jordans
which of course
then made me think of mine.

The Jordan that
if ever he should read this
would know I'm talking about him
when I say...

Remember the day
we walked for hours in the rain
and then came home
threw our clothes in the dryer
and spent the afternoon listening to The Cure
and studying each other.

Siiiiiiiiigh.

He may or may not be in this picture. Ok...he totally is.

I once gave him a lighter
engraved with "Skip"
because he was the skip in my CD of life.

Which...hi...CDs barely exist anymore
but yes,
my cheesiness still does.

10 years later it's kind of silly.

The aches, the pains, the tears.
The passion that only a 19 year old,
clove smoking, journal writing, Salinger reading, heart can muster.

We're grown ups now.

A man with a man's life.
A woman with hers.

He wasn't a man back then.
Only a boy.
And he shattered my little girl heart.

He thought me crazy and
I thought him cruel
And probably we were both right.

But above all that
for a sliver of time
we were really,
sincerely,
wild about one another.

And then he met her
and I went back to him
and they got serious
and I got pregnant
and that was that.

Which brings me back to Fiona.

All of these years I've loved her
and sang her songs at the top of my lungs.

Empathy pouring out of my eyeballs
because my heart hurt
for a very long time.

But what I love the most now
is that listening to those old albums
is like strolling down memory lane.

I'm glad the older Fiona
doesn't seem to sing so much about being fragile.
Her more recent albums seem lighter.
She seems less helpless
and less likely to chase heart-breaking boys.

Me too.





No comments:

Post a Comment