Your Great Reward

I'm not saying this gets you a free pass into the promised land, however over the weekend I had a premonition that might help out if the judgement scales are tipping towards damnation.

The lord is really into you doing self less things for other people right? Therefore it makes sense that if you help your friends move, there is a special VIP room in heaven waiting for you. No one likes to move and fewer people are willing to help others move. Therefore showing up early on a Saturday morning to chip in and get the job done must mean that a divine bounty is awaiting you at some point. I have helped many a friend schlep their crap to and fro. So I think my karma is set for the champagne room in Valhalla. 

If you find paradise is slipping from your grasp and you need to hedge your bets pick up a box or watch a truck for a friend and I'll make sure you get your share of the all you can eat sushi that JC cuts fresh daily!!

Amen.  

Attention Superman!

On 101st Street & West End there is a telephone booth. I know it's a hike for a quick change but I think it's the last one in Manhattan. Good luck & god speed Man of Steel!

Date Me?

Really I've decided to go down this road again. I posted a profile on match.com, I thought why not take a peek? I mean my best friend is now married and pregnant by a guy she met on this website so why not? It might work for the gays too. I am already deep in regret 24hours into the experiment. Ugh I hate people, no really, they are awful creatures I should know I am one.

Basically because it all inevitably breaks down into the ones we want don't want us and the ones that want us we would sooner die than date. It's a vicious circle my now ex-therapist and I danced the fox trot to for hours at a time. I believe the old Groucho Marx quote can be applied to this idea, "I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member." 

Does it HAVE to be in our nature to want to be with someone? Frankly I am coming to the realization that I am more than enough. I don't need to be "completed" by someone else. So Jerry Maguire and Jane Austin can go f*ck themselves. I'm not catching my death standing in the rain waiting for some ass hat named Willoughby to finally get a grip and love me. Kate Winslet doesn't require approval from some dickey wearing twit to take care of her and neither do I. 

So a pox on you internet dating sites!! Daggers & weebotkins to you all! I'm off to kick up my heels unhindered by the weight of another’s' baggage! I've got me own!

Two Cars

We took two cars the day we returned to the hospital to find out what exactly was happening to my mother. I can't remember why now? I do remember driving by myself in my grey Pontiac Sunbird. I absentmindedly put in the Les Misérables Broadway Cast album figuring a little "turn table" distraction would take my mind off the stress weighing down on me. Only, when "One Day More" started playing I instantly realized my error in music selection. Suddenly I was hearing the lyrics as applied to my life not the French revolution. 

 

Tomorrow is the judgment day.

Tomorrow we'll discover

What our God in heaven has in store.

One more dawn.

One more day.

One day more!

Needless to say I burst into tears and almost wrecked my car. I just can’t believe THIS is what "God" had in store for me and my family. Really? This was the plan, complete obliteration from reality, earmarking them only as ghosts that wander in my dreams who occasionally slip into my shuffle playlist where I wormhole back to them for 3 minutes & 30secs? Really this is what all those years of love, growing pains & understanding become in the end. Some music video that only I can see. 

Dear Apple, iPod's are really time machines, I wish my brief, fleeting trips could be to happier places. You might want to work on an App for that so I don't accidentally wind up keening in a bathroom stall at work.

As I was thinking about what to write today in celebration of my mother’s 72^nd birthday I went through some of my other blogs honoring the day. I realized I said everything perfectly in 2007, but it bears repeating with a few updates…

My Golden Girl  

My mother would have been 72 today.

She would have just been hitting her prime as a sassy senior with all the strut and promise of a woman who’s lived a life full of family, laughter and love.

Both of us were born on the 13th something that might seem to be unlucky to most, but not to us. We always thought of it as a reminder that we were special. Nobody lifts an eyebrow if you were born on the 3rd, 18th or 23rd. But tell them you were born on the 13th and you always get a hair-raising reaction.

If I try to sum my mother up into one thing it would be impossible. She was so many things to so many different people. She made an impact wherever she went and with whomever she came in contact. The “IT” Factor can totally be applied to her, people were drawn to her, they respected and admired who she was and not just because she threw one hell of a party. She was the party.

I can remember as a little girl watching the parties my parents threw, my sister and I would sneak down the hall in our footy pj’s to peer around the corner into the grand room. Dad would be at the piano playing some swing tune that made everyone dance like no one was watching. Mom would be whirling around making sure everyone had what they needed, the laughter and the smiling faces of friends and neighbors are still as clear today in my mind as they were then. Or if my parents went out on the town, again my sister and I would be spellbound while watching Mom put on her make-up and her fancy dress. Shalimar and Old Spice bring me right back to those moments.

She loved chocolate turtles. Old movies and popcorn made on the stove. She loved to dance and even won a swing contest or two with my father. Dancing with her in the kitchen between unending rounds of holiday baking used to make us laugh so hard my sister and I’d fall to the floor.
Her most treasured possessions, other than her family, were the pictures she took. She used to tell me if the house ever caught fire to grab the albums and run. She was meticulous in printing on the back when, where and who was in each shot. I guess she thought she would be spending hours poring over the past and reliving those Kodak moments. Now they serve as the only way back for me to remember the family that seems all too distant.

My sense of humor is a mix of my mother’s and father’s both of them "cards" in their own right, but in very different ways. Dad was silly and goofy, slap sticky with a smidge of Stooges, and mother was the best of what dry; witty, smart, perfectly timed English humor is at its finest. She loved to read, and when I say read I mean everything, she consumed books like I eat potato chips. As a young woman she wanted to go to college and be a chemist, but didn't so her brothers could go because they would have to support families someday. Truly a waste since they never finished.
 
We planned to write children’s books together after I graduated from college and even finished one that I used in a creative writing class. Unfortunately she got sick the summer before my senior year and that dream got shelved. We all traveled that last year together, after I graduated, doing and seeing as much as we could. Packing in all the life as a family before we knew it would all disappear.

I try to think about what life would be like if she was still here. How different I might be or if I would have made other choices due to her influence? Where and who would I be if things hadn’t gone so terribly wrong? She was my best friend; the one person I know loved me just for me. Even with all my flaws and insecurities she never made me feel like I didn’t matter. Her pet names for me were, Missy or Princess, to unlikely words to describe the Brandy of today.

Being from the south nobody really went by their given names. My father went by Doc, my mother was Rea or Aunt Rea, my sister until puberty was Scooter, and I forever and always will be Brandy. None of which appear on our birth certificates. My parents even had nicknames for each other, Pooh Bear and Boo Boo Bear…which naturally just became Pooh and Boo. I think that’s why people without nicknames worry me. It’s almost like nobody cared about them enough to make them their own, to put a stamp of affection on your relationship is to me the highest form of flattery.

November 13th, 1939 (The year both Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz premiered) my mother Mariea Gladys LaCone (m. Rowell) pushed her way into the world. I miss her every day, and on this day especially, so I try and do something we would have done together. Today is Sunday so I’m thinking Kayla and I will walk in the park. Go to our favorite hill, sit in the sun, have a good cry and maybe even say a little prayer. I’ll try to work in a favorite movie of ours or perhaps a show. She’s the one that introduced me to the theatre and supported my every endeavor in my pursuit of finding my light. My only regret is that she never got to see me perform.

Well, that’s not true, she saw me entertain at the dinner table, and when we were out with friends, but that’s not the same as standing alone on stage at Carolines in front of a packed house. She probably would have been so nervous for me that she wouldn’t have been able to watch. Wringing her hands until that first wave of laughter burst forth; yeah I would have liked her to have seen me shake my jelly.

She would be so proud of all the fears I’ve conquered, but frankly there are many more and while I know she’s watching out for me, I wish she was here. I wish I could remember her voice. I wish she could meet all the wonderful people I have in my life who are my family now. 

She was the greatest birthday present I ever got and I’d trade anything to hear her call me Missy just one more time, I love you Mom, Happy Birthday!