my mama (what do they know about this love anyway?)

i get home, i take my shoes off, i pour myself a drink,  i take my drink to bed.  it sits on the night stand and i think: "maybe i should write?"  i have nothing important to say, it's true.  and maybe i never have.  maybe i just like to talk.  in fact, i wake up wanting to talk.  that's why i'm a diarist.  i've learned how to channel my waking need for conversation into a literary habit.  i remember walking into my mother's bedroom when i was 18 or 19 years old and instantly gabbing at her about the dreams i had or whatever i had planned for the day.  she'd be there, lazy eyed with her coffee, rubbing her feet together, one over the other, and she'd say, "Angela, i am not awake enough for this yet.  go away. "  hahaha!  and it would hurt my feelings so bad!!!!  but then i met other people who are like that too.  i no longer take offense.  how can i when i have a diary?  a page is always open to what i have to say no matter how boring or insignificant.

but god...  my mama.  damn, i miss that woman sometimes. she had a funny way about her.  a goofiness tempered with the allure of her height and thinness and full lips that was so endearing.  she could be so silly in such a brilliant, life-affirming way.  she really did love the world...  all the little secret, forgotten things that no one pays any mind to.  if you ever wanted to go thrifting or poking through flea markets, she was the woman to follow.  she had such a big love for the forgotten things in the world; the things other people considered to be junk or thrash.  she would take those things and arrange them, just so, on a mantle or on a window sill and it would be such a beautiful thing.  high design.  she should have been an interior decorator or just a straight up artist.  she should have never listened to the crap her husbands told her or the rest of the world either.  she should have listened to me.  really, she should have.  she should have just painted and written poetry and played her guitar and sang.  she should have been as wild as her curls.  as wild, but just as soft.  she was such a sensitive woman.  beautiful.  aggravating sometimes, but nevertheless charming.  i had the health of her spirit in mind every step of the way.  i loved her and i wanted the best for her.  i wanted her to find the strength to tell everyone to Fuck Off. i wanted her to be herself.  and damn right!  i wanted her to ENJOY being a curly-headed mess, rambling around in yummy plummy lipstick, melissa etheridge on the radio as she bumbled down the highway in her bouncy Wrangler.  i wanted her to flip people off and smile as her huge gold hoop earrings dangled against her cheek, her huge smile flashing and that damn cigarette pinched confidently between her fingers of her left hand.

how did i get on this subject?

oh, yeah, i wanted to talk.

i'm telling ya, i am the worst girl in the world to bring home or attempt to seduce.  my chatterbox ass just won't shut the fuck up. before you know it, it's 4am and i've barely taken my shoes off  :)

i know what my mother looks like driving a jeep through the southern california sun down the 10 freeway singing this song.  i know how the light catches her curls.  i know how the light catches her lips.  and i know how she sounds when she sings, "i'm coming home!"  i know how beautiful we both were in that windy, bumpy moment...  all the times we drove through the rich neighborhoods looking at big houses and dreaming together, smoking marlboro reds, and trying to hold tight to the small ache inside of each of us that told us we weren't nothing...  that we weren't born wrong...  that it isn't a sin to want something better, or at least something fitting... 

that it isn't a sin to want love not to hurt.