Today’s column is a potpourri of a perennial adolescent’s personal experiences.
Ritual
For many years, Friday nights were a melodious tradition, Carole and I shared a glass as the golden week ended. With The Moody Blues as accompaniment, fizzing bubbles of Spanish bubbly rise, or California sparklers and, sometimes, feeling decadent we’d spring for fragrant French Champagne, all in Lalique angel flutes, translucent and chiming. And 10 years into our union, golden monarch butterflies fluttered around us at Moet and Chandon’s sun-dappled Napa gates, a whispered preamble to their aromatic craft.
Friends often joined our joyous ritual, and yet, the evenings for just we two were the more precious.
Our children changed the rhythmic cadence of those early days, our blended five, not always gathered close. When they were absent, we’d resume our tradition, a glistening ritual and occasionally anniversary toasts.
Our new family mosaic, one born of you, two who learned life’s ways beneath your care, transformed the weekend joys into aspen-scented days at rest, sneakers squeaking rhythm to basketball at the Y, rushed visits to Disney’s kaleidoscopic kingdom, and our childhood homes.
As years advanced, our children found their paths away from weekends filled with family cacophony. Unplanned, we found ourselves alone again in stillness, and reaching back, recalled the crystal-clear toast that marked our earliest days together. Once lost, now rediscovered, the sparkling moments of our Friday ritual were born anew in a tapestry of sensations. Again our Friday ritual found for us a quiet rendezvous and, for anniversaries, a ritual of love with our dear friends, beneath the sky’s embrace. Now, years beyond your physical departure, even more years since your bright self began its quiet retreat, I feel compelled to honor what we built.
This year we’ll toast the 50th beneath the dew-kissed gazebo where we pledged our lives as one with murmured vows.
Now you, my constant demiurge, keep the covenant we made. For as the Friday sun yields to evening’s call, so too, I must return to where you wait. I feel you, atmospheric in golden light, and thirst for not the wine, but you, my love. In this plain glass our memories reside, a spectral toast to love that never died. Though you’re beyond my touch, beyond my sight, your spirit lingers here on Friday night.
But she’s only a dream, May 12, 2024
Upon the 12th of May, I wake from sleep. A vivid dream still fresh, like smoke it lingers here. A protest march clashes with celebratory parading. Likewise, the city streets yield smells of gear in contrast to gardens that sing the fragrances of spring.
Upon the curb, alert and tense I stand. A blind curve near a sign marked Route 23. A beauty comes, white hooded jumpsuit, leash in hand, with two white hounds in ghostly symmetry.
Upon the pavement she drops serene, a silent stand, the paradox too clear. I beg her rise, but she remains unseen by looming fate. Almost too late, my warning comes midst fear.
Upon the scent and smell of protest I become the woman and the hounds. Becoming; then I swell, I swim, I fly, and bound. Belonging; then I bear them home, to shield them from the fight, and advocate to stand, yes, stand in sight.