Heaven can wait, we're only watching the stars

I'm heading home for Thanksgiving. Updated my Facebook status to ask if any of my hometown homies are up for a beer. Did this after thinking about saving time to hang out with Bernard, the friend I always met up with every time I went home after the summer of 1987. He's still the first person I want to see when I'm home after all these years.

I met Bernard for the first time in elementary school. He was a gawky, tow-headed kid who barely spoke English (his mom was German and his dad was in the Army). We had some classes together sporadically for the next few years and saw each other at the skating rink on weekends.

When we were in 8th grade we really bonded. We skipped school for the first time together. The details are murky, but I think he, our friend April and I hid out in the woods before school started, then walked back to my house. What a glorious day that was! I remember we watched a lot of daytime television, and at some point we had a water-throwing fight that culminated in the breaking of one of my mama's vases. We glued it back together. It took my mama weeks to notice, and I blamed it on my little sister. I fessed up years later when I was in college.

In 1983, we started high school. We were two dorky 14-year-olds desperate to appear cool. Duran Duran were our idols then, and we emulated them down to their footwear of choice: leather jazz shoes with no socks. I took mine off in Bernard's presence once and he told me to put them back on because my feet stank. Everyone's feet stank during those heady, heel-blistered, sockless days.

I think we were about 15 when Bernard and I got the lofty idea to have ourselves a fancy dinner. Somehow, we got the opportunity to go to Hills' and do our own shopping and cook it at my house with nobody else around. We bought frozen pizza bites, Pac-Man ravioli and a single frozen lobster. We put the lobster in the microwave for several minutes, then sat staring at it, as neither of us had ever eaten lobster and we weren't sure how to go about doing it.

Throughout high school, the two of us behaved like immature siblings. We were notorious for getting into fights, not speaking for several weeks, then getting right back together and never mentioning -- because we'd usually forgotten -- what we were fighting about.

Bernard and I went shopping for school clothes at Independence Mall in Wilmington when we were 16 and we both spent all of our babysitting money. Bernard bought Alexander Julian multicolored shirts and I bought Alphaville's "Forever Young" and made him play it over and over on the cassette deck for the next two years.

At the beginning of our senior year, after not speaking all summer, we went to a party on the beach at Ocean Isle with a bunch of our classmates. Bernard somehow managed to lose his class ring. We went up to the arcade to borrow a flashlight, but we couldn't find the ring. The next day, a few of us went back and there it was, plain as day, on top of the sand.

Right there on the sand. That's where we'd stare at the stars. That's where we dreamed about a world outside our hometown, where we could go and be anything we wanted to be.

Bernard and I continued our glory days through college. Even though I moved away and he stayed, we always hung out when I came home. We'd get a six pack and drive up and down the island. Then we'd lie on the hood of his car and watch the moon go by.

There's the story of us driving our summer friend home to Virginia with a missing gas cap in Bernard's Samurai, terrified to throw cigarettes out the window lest we blow up. And us getting pulled over by the Myrtle Beach police outside our favorite late-night breakfast house hours after we "accidentally" drove past the parking deck attendant at the Pavillion. Oh, and Bernard putting the gas nozzle into the tank, going in to pay, coming out and driving off and gas from the nozzle spewing everywhere. (I thought it would be absolutely hysterical to call him the next morning and say, "Dude, are you watching the news? The gas station blew up!" But he could see through me and said, "Yeah, that's really funny, Leigh Ann.")

Then there was the night we decided to sleep on the beach, got some pillows and blankets from Bernard's mama's house and set up camp, only to be awakened two hours later by a massive lightning storm. We spent the next few hours in the car waiting for the sun to come up, as I was staying with my parents and therefore restricted to girl rules and had "massaged" the truth about where I was spending that night.

Fast-forward a couple of years. Bernard was friends with my sister Jill because she and he both came to Raleigh to stay with me and go to bars and shows. Back home, he got to be friends with my youngest sister, Amy. They made the same trip to Virginia together Bernard and I had made together years before to see our friend graduate from college.

I remember clear as day sitting on the front steps of the house I grew up in stunned silence, feeling not much of anything as people came and went after Amy died in 1994. Then Bernard pulled up in his Jeep. We ran to meet each other halfway, threw our arms around each other and sunk to the ground crying on each others' shoulders. Bernard was an honorary pallbearer at Amy's funeral, and he was with Jill and me at sunset when we saw a double rainbow stretch across Ocean Isle Beach.

We continued to meet up either at home or in Raleigh for years, but grownup responsibilities caused those meetings to be further and further apart.

I got married in June 2006. It was a very small ceremony at Mordecai Chapel here in Raleigh. I ran my announcement in our hometown weekly a few weeks later. My mama called and left a message on my answering machine of Bernard's message on her answering machine. "Hey. I saw Leigh Ann's announcement in the paper. Please tell her I'm happy for her and I love her."

Four weeks later, my daddy called me before my alarm clock went off to tell me Bernard had gotten killed in a car accident a mile away from his mama's home, where he was living. He'd gone out for cigarettes and had both his beloved dachsunds with him. One died on impact with him, one was found wandering the road the next day.

April and I got together for the first time in years to go to Bernard's funeral. We alternately laughed and cried as we remembered the three of us chasing each other around under the pier, when Bernard cut quickly to the side and we smacked into each other, nearly knocking ourselves out cold. And Bernard ran off laughing.

April, my English husband she'd never met before and I had lunch at the Giggling Mackeral on the island, then went back to my parents' house to get ready. We stood in front of the vanity we'd stood in front of hundreds of times before when we were young, including the time Bernard and I decided to dye the ends of our blond hair black like the girl in Berlin, with April in charge of applying the can't-color-over-this, jet-black hair dye.

The emotions we couldn't control caused me to shake uncontrollably and April to sweat profusely. My mama came in the bathroom and asked, "Why are you shaking and why are you sweating?!" April and I started laughing hysterically. I couldn't speak, but April managed to gasp out the words, "Well, because we're burying our best friend who died tragically too young and I'm really sorry but this isn't something we've ever done before!" And we laughed until we couldn't catch our breath.

At the funeral, I greeted classmates I hadn't seen in nearly 20 years, viewed pictures of Bernard that included shots of the two of us together and him holding my baby nephew, and cried my heart out on my husband's shoulder mourning a friend he never got to meet.

Every now and then I think of something I need to tell Bernard. I can remember how he enunciated every syllable and hear the sound of his voice. I can't believe how much I still miss him.

But I'll always know and remember him like he was when we were young and the world was wide open to us, because I know he's re-experiencing that feeling in the great beyond. When I see him there someday, we'll be lying on our backs on the sand under the Ocean Isle moonlight, being together without saying a word. Just like we used to.

Alphaville - Forever Young

Things like this used to make me sick

But in a case like this, I hope I get away with it.

My Sainted Southern Mother has taken to worrying about the way my husband and I banter sarcastically. "You're too mean to each other!" she fusses, because she doesn't get why we insult each other, congratulate each other ("Good one!) and laugh.

"That's our love language," I assure her. Then I remind her that I have exactly the same sense of humor as the man she married 43 years ago, and it took me 35 years to find another human being with that same quick, self-deprecating wit who could dish it out and take it.

So she concedes. Needless to say, my Good Ol' Boy Daddy looooooves Mr. Sweetypants.

And who wouldn't?

For the better part of two decades, I dressed in black and cried to a particular Depeche Mode song. Then I found that somebody. So when we often disagree on issues, I thank my lucky stars that he hears me out -- though my views may be wrong, they may even be perverted -- and is not easily converted to my way of thinking.

At the end of it all, he understands me. Bless his heart.

Vive le Sweetypants! You don't look bad! xoxoxoxo

Some things just roll off my tongue

(Setup for non-Methodists: Pastors in the United Methodist Church spend an average of four years at their parishes before being reassigned.)

I only met my Sainted Southern Mother's pastor once, briefly, at the shindig my parents gave Steve and me three years ago. It was in honor of our wedding and my SSM got to get me back for our boozy reception in a dive bar up here in Raleigh. Her reception in Shallotte was alcohol-free and in their yard.

Pastor Rich came and hung out in the waiting room with My Good Ol' Boy Daddy and me at the hospital as my SSM was undergoing her emergency hip-replacement surgery Monday. Trying to make small talk, I asked him to tell me about the building project at the church. He told me about the new wing and I asked about the current sanctuary -- the one I went to many a service in growing up.

"Is the carpet still green?" I asked.

(Have you ever caught yourself in the middle of a sentence realizing you are saying the exact wrong thing, yet you can't stop yourself from finishing the sentence? My mind was saying, "Noooo!!! You're insulting the preacher and admitting you haven't stepped foot in his church decades!!!" But my mouth wouldn't stop short.)

My face turned 18 shades of red.

"You know, I couldn't really tell you what color the carpet is," he replied.

He goes there every day, so I don't feel bad. In fact, I love knowing that a "man of God" is still just a guy. I bet his wife has to point out when she's had her hair done or remind him to take out the trash. Just like I do with my godless scientist.

All men truly are created equal.

Buy him breakfast, at least

While my Sainted Southern Mother is in the hospital recovering from her hip-replacement surgery, Mr. Sweetypants and I have been staying with my Good Ol' Boy Daddy at their house. When we aren't at the hospital, Steve and I send updates to family and friends, man the phone lines and run errands.

Last night, Daddy, Steve and I were sitting outside and making our list of errands for today. The first was to drop my daddy's beloved kitten off at the vet to get his first shots and be neutered.

"No problem," I replied while writing on my sticky note. "What did you decide to name him?"

"Haven't decided, have we, little buddy?" Daddy said, encouraging the kitten on his lap to attack its own tail.

"They're going to ask so they can establish his records," I replied. "And I think the polite thing to do, if you're sending a family member off to lose his private parts, is to refer to him by name."

"That's the least you should do," Steve chimed in.

"I'll think about it," Daddy said, promising to leave me a note in the morning with the vet's name and number to call, since my mama was the one who made the appointment and we didn't know the time.

When I got up at 8 this morning, my Daddy had long since left to be at the hospital for opening visiting hours. I drank a cup of the coffee he'd left warming for me and read the sticky note he'd left me.

(Animal Hospital Name)
(Phone Number)
His name is Little Buddy

And my tired, stony, little heart grew three sizes.

Daddy picked Little Buddy up from his de-balling, as Daddy calls it, this afternoon, getting to be the little fella's hero after my bad guy role traumatizing him this morning.

And that's cool. My daddy has always been my hero, too.

We've got a landlubber!

Or: "Epiphany! I don't have to hate my job!"

When I wrote this old post about wanting to work at Trader Joe's, I wasn't really kidding. A new Trader Joe's is under construction one mile from my house...

"So, are you going to teach?" just about every single person I ever told I was an English major asked. Teaching was the farthest thing from my plans, which never really formed a career path. I majored in English because I didn't have to try very hard at it (one of these days when I overcome my math anxiety, I'll blog about how many math courses I failed) and I reveled in the glory of being praised for putting in very little effort at the last minute.

Over the years, I stumbled my way into a career in editing for a book publisher, an advertising agency and (after refusing to take Corporate Communications for my Communications minor because I had principles and would never sell them out, dammit!!) the Corporate Comm department of a multibillion-dollar corporation that operates nuclear plants. It wasn't easy or fun anymore in that last job. I made a lot of money as a contractor, but for all the effort I put in and for all the errors I corrected, there were always people whose work I made better waiting in the wings to bitch about any mistakes I made.

Further complicating my stay in ultra-corporate America was my complete inability to rein in my honesty if forced to respond to a question or to control my "nonverbals." I learned that term there, along with other meaningless phrases like, "opportunity," "diversity" and "team-building."

It was in a "team-building" exercise that I got seated next to a screechy-voiced, sour-faced middle manager (the same age as me) who never once thanked me for rewriting her work to make it read like she actually graduated from J-School and who gleefully pointed out every typo I zoomed over but spell check would have caught if she used it. The question, intended to help us get to know and love each other, was, "What is your dream job?"

"Retail," I responded, "I love retail."

(The answer they were looking for was management. Management. Thanks for playing and enjoy this case of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat.)

"Ugh," she sneered at me. Then, as she was the moderator and had to follow up, she sighed, "Why?"

("Because I never, ever want to be like you," I thought.)

"Because I love meeting and talking to people," I replied.

("Because when I've ever encountered someone like you while helping them shop, I knew I wouldn't have to see them the next day, and the day after, and the day after...," I thought.)

Here's where the epiphany comes in: I really don't ever have to deal with people like her or crappy office jobs again. Steve and I live simply with our two cats in our small house and Steve LOVES his job. I pick up freelance here and there and enjoy it. But as for corporate America? I really don't ever have to do that again.

Say that aloud and think how worth the monetary sacrifice it is if you hate your job or if you left a job you hated: I really don't ever have to do that again. Feels good, doesn't it?

I want to go to Trader Joe's a few hours every morning, talk to people, ring the bell and get a discount.

A pirate's daughter looks at 40

I turned 40 a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't bad at all. I was a bit introspective, especially since my unexpected early retirement five months ago turned my life upside down before it settled into something calm and wonderful. I was so numbed to corporate helldom toward the end of my last position that I forgot who I was at heart:

Whatever else I am, I will always be a girl from a sleepy beach town in North Carolina (see here and here).

My daddy's life is a Jimmy Buffett song. From his first album in the 70s when Jimmy Buffett songs were about the water, not the liquor, colorful shirts and parties of the Parrot-Head Nation. I grew to hate this culture as I waited tables at his shows at the amphitheater in Raleigh when I was young and poor or when I go home and hang out at my old bar on the beach and listen to party-Buffett playing on a loop for the tourists.

No matter where I roam, from London to New York to Amsterdam, I will always be that girl from Shallotte, as will my sister, the former gutter punk-squatter and current Earth Mother, hippy, Vermont resident.

Jill and I were both home in Shallotte last week, a meet-up that only happens maybe once a year. My Sainted Southern Mother has retired from cooking, so my Good Old Boy Daddy does all of it now. And he prepared two entrees: Jill's request for shrimp Creole and my request for country-style steak.

Jill and I left her boys with their grandparents and went out riding around in Jill's car. We intentionally averted our eyes as we drove, with the windows down and an 80s radio station blaring, past the golf courses and McMansions for New York's and New Jersey's rudest retirees that have sprung up, consuming the woods where we'd ride our our mini-bike and the marsh ponds where we'd watch for alligators.

We ended up at Shallotte Point, on the intracoastal waterway, where our daddy used to set the boat out for our adventures. The marina wasn't like we remembered it; what used to be a divey local seafood restaurant had gone all upscale with waterfront deck seating, and it was around dinner time.

We walked out onto the floating docks together for the first time in well over a decade. Jill handed me her disposable camera and I took shots of her next to a seagull and crouching by the aft of a boat branded "Shallotte Point, NC."

Then Jill sat down on the dock and dangled her feet into the water. I was starting to get self-conscious about the dinner-people on the deck looking at us: Jill with her tattoos and dreadlocks and me with no makeup. "You have to come here and remember," she encouraged me, "No water in the world feels like this."

So I joined her. I put my feet in that warm, salt water and felt the safeness we felt as little girls when our daddy docked the boat, carried us out on his shoulders and taught us to swim.

Jill and I sat there for a good, long while with our feet in the water, taking in the brackish smell, feeling the intracoastal breeze on our faces and looking over at Mother Mother Ocean. And it helped us forget the word we'd heard earlier when our parents sat us down together to tell us about Daddy's most recent doctor appointment.

Cancer.







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My sister is trying to kill me

Granted, I did try to kill her in 1974 by making her drink a bottle of perfume and I did encourage her to run away from home two years later.

But she's a wily one. She sat on her revenge for three decades. Her first attempt to make my heart explode at my wedding failed. She wouldn't be stopped by that. Oh no. She's been saving up.

She sent this for Mr. Sweetypants to read in her absence at my birthday roast.

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Leigh Ann the Great

When I was a little girl I had a big sister.
She was 3.5 when I was born, and was naturally inclined to having the world revolve around her.
To me she was the sun. A huge shiny all knowing big kid that would help me get bigger faster. If I followed a few simple rules.

1.Say 3 times... Leigh Ann is the Queen of the universe.
2. Never sing "her songs" like "The Boys of Summer" or "Billy Jean".
3. Stay out of her room.

To really get her point across about the Queen thing, at one point she went through the entire house writing "L.A. is the greatest," on every plastic or otherwise writable surface in our mother's immaculate house.
There are still to this day remnants of her ego pasted to the sugar container, and a pitcher here and there.

I remember so clearly how cool LA was. Her purple hair and oversized Duran Duran sweatshirts. Headbands, and Boy George all the way. I can see her splayed out in the floor at our parent's house watching MTV all night, and memorizing all the words to the top 40 songs she loved.
I wasn't allowed in the room for this. I would sneak through the living room, and peek through the kitchen, or pretend to need water over and over. I was mesmerized by her obsession with pop culture. Why was this so important to my hero? Maybe I could rock the mic too.
But alas, my attempts were futile, and not only was I forcibly removed from the TV room, but if she heard me utter one breath of Cindy Lauper, there would be hell to pay.

One day LA wasn't home. I was playing with my hamster in the hallway outside her teenage lair. It was so alluring. The smells (probably cigarettes and incense) the mystery, the closed door, the knowing that I couldn't open it...
So this day, I decided that if my hamster went into her room, I would have to go and get it. I dumped the poor creature out of it's ball jar that we used for his nest, and slowly pushed the door open just enough to squeeze his fat little hamster butt in.
Then I announced "oh no, I have to go get him now!"
This was probably one of the most deflating moments of my childhood. Her room looked like any other room. There wasn't anything cool or shiny, some cool posters maybe, but nothing really, a little trashed, not even that stinky. Well not really stinky.
So I found my hamster and went back into my own room at the end of the hall. The mystery exploited, Leigh Ann eventually spiraled her way through her teenage years, and off to college, bringing with her the smell of cigarettes and incense.
I eventually took her place, and stunk up the house myself, but as a true pioneer of alternative behavior, no one has ever left a bigger a mark on me or my mother than my big sissy LA.

Today my sister writes beautiful stories about how life is now, and how it used to be. She creates beauty with words, and evokes feelings by tickling our own emotions tied to times we cherished. She is a voice for our most treasured childhood memories, and a storehouse of who's who in American Pop culture.
Today I carry the memory of a childhood filled with getting dragged through ditches, being forced to drink perfume, and LA's sweet tiny voice whispering "run away Jill run away!!".
I have to say thank you to LA for opening me up to what the world had to offer outside of Shallotte NC. Her words and actions fueled a fire that brought me here.
I couldn't ask for a better sister, mentor or friend.
But she can't be 40, I'm only 25!!!
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My heart exploded a little bit, but her sinister plan failed again. I fear the third time and its deadly charm.

I love my sister.