Kiss of Death

My daughter has decided she doesn't want to kiss on the lips hello and goodbye. 

She says it's weird.

I don't have alot of rules. I say look, my mom always said you have to kiss hello and goodbye cause you never know when it will be your last time. So let's have this one rule, it's a good rule.

I would go to kiss her and she will shrink, look sideways, and twist her mouth sideways.

I finally got mad enough that I took her phone and wouldn't give it back til she kissed me. 

Then it got weird. Like we were making small talk and all she wanted was her phone and THEN waiting for a kiss is weird. So I told her look man, this is how we do it in our family. I still kiss my dad on the lips. He kisses my brothers. It's OKAY.

I know I'm HIDEOUS, I say. But I'm not asking you to KILL JEWS. 

It's just a kiss.

So I got my kiss. Each time is incredibly awkward, this idiot who I have kissed her whole life since she came out at that hospital from INSIDE MY BODY.

Let's just get through this year, I told B. Let's just survive 14 years old. With this, our flower in hiding, Bess.

Love is a Dumb Waiter

I posted a pretty angry post a few days ago and I think reading it over that it was more mean than accurate. It was accurate in how mean I felt but as a writer, the core of the post was about love, and how it wrecks you or disarms you or confuses you, and so I will hone it to honor that feeling and make it less about a dumb girl.

What the fuck happened to her man.

Or maybe who was I that I liked this person who has come through my door. In a summer where I am managing a used to be normal and now dying mother, while trying to go to the beach with my living family, like we used to in a normal summer. Trying to understand where I fit and how I fit and who am I

But I am not HER.

I LOVED HER, man. I loved her for maybe all these 30 years since I met her. I gave my heart to this person! Like stupidly, because I thought, when I was 25, all those years ago, that she was what love was.

She never loved me.

She never nurtured me.

She never did anything but somewhat entice me and then leave me hanging. I guess I thought that was what love was. It was supposed to be pain and longing.

I am older now. I have all these kids, and a few horses and dogs, and there’s Barry over there.

I’m pretty sure, I’m not all the way sure, but I’m pretty sure that love is way dirtier than that purity of longing. That longing is a game I’m playing with myself, and should maybe be an app.

If you’re longing for someone that someone most certainly doesn’t live with you and disappoint you. Disappointment might be the first step to real love. Maybe disappointment is right before laughter.

She’s been gone two days now and the laughter is starting to kick in. In her case, this is not because I realize that she is my true love or a true love. This is because:

In the hardest year of my life she came into my house to use my pool.

She came into my house to not take care of me.

She came to escape her own house.

She came to leave her kid and go eat lunch.

She came so I would take care of her.

I learned:

I do not like this.

I do not like her.

I do not want a non nurturing person in my life ever again.

I am so grateful

I am so lucky

I work so hard for my good life

I used my time on this planet well

I grew my heart bigger than my intellect

I am bigger than I thought, inside

I give up, in some cases

And this is good

I am saddest about the young Jules who sat on that hill and looked at that girl and thought I had found deep love, all those years ago. I maybe knew it wasn’t deep, but I thought it was the beginning of something so amazing. She must know more than me, I thought, she was 5 years older. She was funny. She was  - no, she was not me. I thought she was me. I INFUSED all my me-ness on her and heck that was good enough for me! I’m a writer, better to create the person in my head and forget the actual person!!

Well the actual person walked through my door a week ago, the SAME exact person, just bigger, and for some reason, because I am stripped bare emotionally perhaps, this same exact person was just a horrible horrible NOT ME. Not like me AT ALL. It was real, real life.

I feel like the best part of me backed backwards into my kitchen, into a hole in the wall, down the dumb waiter and got out somewhere so much cleaner, more cementy, without all the stacks of shit that I accumulate so as not to feel the real core of my life. In actuality, the real core of me is pretty clean, and there's ice cream here. Even near the dementia booth. There's also always a wet dog, and sandy feet. For some reason. I think because that means I'm home, and a little bit of mess - there's comfort there.

It is very very funny to me now. I feel like I have amputated a part of my body, like an extra leg, that was grown just for her, and it fell off and I wrapped it up and it’s tied with this big pink bow and I threw it gleefully off the Golden Gate Bridge because this is NOT ME. 

Don’t fall in love with people in the art department. I knew it then. Grips, ok, ADs even, they will be too organized, but so what, that’s ok. Fall in love with people’s hearts, and make sure they are open and bleeding. Love the big hearted. You will never be sorry.