Fallen Dove

You gotta watch out for girls like her. If you are not careful they can drag you down into the flames. I mean, I don’t think that they really can help themselves, it’s just the way that they are. They remind me of the story of the frog and the scorpion…it’s just their nature to destroy those that try to help them, even if it means destroying themselves. I knew all of this as I walked up to her door and rang the bell. I was on my guard. I noticed the nice bed of flowers that sang softly beside the walkway and I breathed in their sweet scents. A few seconds passed after I rang the doorbell, giving me enough time to scan the welcome sign next to the entrance that read ‘Blessed are those who enter this house as friends; may your enter with one smile and leave with two.’ And I did smile. I wondered what kind of joke the lady who lived here was pulling. Who was she trying to fool? I knew what kind of person that she was. She was the type of girl that lived fast and never worried about the consequences. She knew that life was too short to get bogged down in all of that ’thou shalt wear the robe of righteousness’ mindset. It was all about getting your thrills before you burned out. If you have time to regret your choices, then you are moving too slow. And that was just the kind of girl that I was wanting…at least for a night.

I must have looked surprised when she answered the door because she immediately laughed.

Here she stood before me dressed in a way that I never expected. Instead of the short skirt and ’take me now’ boots, she wore a pair of black dress slacks and a strawberry cream blouse. Her hair was pulled back into a waterfall ponytail that was highlighted by subtle streaks of grey. But, the real kicker was her eyes. I hadn’t seen her in over ten years and I remembered her eyes as being well adorned with makeup. Now, the makeup was sparse and I saw that her eyes were a crystal blue. I was embarrassed that I had never remembered her true eye color.

So, she invited me into her house and I felt like I was crossing over a threshold and meeting a stranger. Firstly, her bouncy six year-old daughter immediately sized me up and decided that I was a worthy candidate to view her efforts with her Dragon Tales coloring book. As with all children, her labors were masterful. As for her mother, the memories of those long ago nights when the two of us were each other’s test of immoral endurance soon fled before the images that were now revealing the woman that she had become.

She excused herself to answer the phone. I glanced around her living room and felt comfort in her pictures of her daughter and other family members. I do have to admit that I felt a bit of a leacher because I had come to this home with pre-conceived expectations, ones that were sprinkled with soul-burning decadence. It is a fools’ bitter drink to not realize that people do have the capacity to change.

When she hung up the phone, she sighed and apologized, but her baby sitter could not make it. She asked if it would be okay to re-schedule our date…then she offered another option. How about if we just spent the evening there with her daughter?

The daughter and me looked up from the child’s coloring book and both of us answered with grins.

After a wonderful meal of tuna sandwiches and maccaroni-n-cheese, washed down with grape Kool-Aid, I realized that life does give you a second chance, or three, or four, or hundreds.

This woman may have been a soiled woman before, but now she soars with the angels.

It is an honor that her and her daughter consider me a friend…and they make sure that I never leave their house with less than two smiles.

Take care.