a million mirrors in my mind

And even though we are looking forward to the unthinkable, A Curious Mango and I still fall to pieces laughing as I talk to her on the phone, simultaneously on the toilet, reacting to my farts.  "Oh dear God!" I cry out as the results of too many potato chips explode out of my body.  The sheer hilarity of being a functioning organism still reaches us.  Even though life will never be the same.

How many times have I said that?  – that life will never be the same?

Meanwhile, the Friar plans to come to my apartment on Tuesday, to say goodbye before moving east.  A recent picture shows that he has shaved off his beard; he is almost unrecognizable as the mature boy that started me on one of my fiercest, most loyal, most productive passions.  I have no expectations, no ideas as to how our visit will go on Tuesday.  Well, I do expect a certain amount of Jane Austen-worthy civility.  Beyond this, nothing.  I said goodbye to him, as it were, when we were students at the same university, and he could barely acknowledge my presence.

There is a Mango box sitting on my dresser.  I started it a while ago, when plans were still innocently chugging along for her and the Chou to move out here in the autumn.  It contains candles, soaps, various things I wanted to greet her with. 

The Mango and I sit at our tables a continent apart, slumping over them, connected by phones, weeping.  But over all, I feel love.  I tell her, It won’t always be like this, and Nothing is wasted, and All your love will come back to you.  I tell her, my own voice cracking, that I used to cry over the children I would never have with the one I loved.  It seems like a novel when I look back at it.  I have become so busy without romantic love in my life.

But at the same time, I feel like fertile ground.

And things whip me up into living again.  Like hopping into [I’ll name him later]’s car, on the way to his Orthodox church, zooming through the country scenery (past my Oma’s old property: the barn is gone), yakking all the way about childhood rituals we made up, secret passageways we really had or imagined.  Or, like rushing out (legs unshaved but bravely peeking out from under sparkly skirt) to meet an old high school friend I used to wish I’d known better.  Actually practicing piano in my own apartment.

I go downtown to meet up with T – I haven’t seen that girl in literally years! – and to look at her art, hanging up in a coffee shop.  She started painting a year and a half ago.  I look around and see powerful statements of emotion and a few early experiments gone interestingly awry.  We talk for hours (she misses her massage therapy appointment but doesn’t mind).  She says at last, "What would you do?  If money or family pressures were not an issue?"  The vision in my head surprises me: I am on a porch, and I am writing feverishly on a laptop.  Compositions lie nearby on a table, and inside my children are being watched temporarily by a friend.  Except for the compositions, there isn’t really much music in the vision.  I don’t read too much into this.  I am pretty tired.  Even life passions need breaks.

I go to see my parents’ counsellour.  He wants to hear from another family member about the family situation.  Within seconds, though, he tells me that he wants this session to be for me.  We go overtime as I spew.  And spew.  And spew.  It is punctuated by laughter; I am simply unable to keep from being goofy, and even though he tells me outright that he’s enjoying himself immensely, he says, "But I get that this is a coping mechanism.  Hilarious, though."  We skirt around certain topics and plunge into other ones.  And I walk out hopeful and relieved.  Mostly grateful that he really seemed to understand the degree to which I have been under pressure for years.

I have baths and watch the water sloshing over my hips and think: Almost 3 decades in this body.

High school 10-year reunion is this week.  I’ll be meeting with KT, J and T at T’s apartment beforehand.  C will probably come separately with her husband.  L and the Mango are in Montreal and can’t come.

I always, always pictured myself going to the reunion with the Mango.

Ah, well.

Assignment to self:  Go to beach with roommate and throw a frisbee around.