{the.wednesday.whistle}

dear Mikki and Katie…

when i was 16 years old, i experienced perhaps the worst possible, yet predictable, tragedy that one that age can possibly experience….a break up. i shouldn’t say that it was just ANY old break up because it wasn’t. my first ‘real’  boyfriend and i had been together an epic 10 months 15 days 10 hours. (no…not counting those middle school drama fests on the play ground where i am pretty sure i got married to a couple of people near the swings…divorces still pending in Thomaston Grammar School District Court). it was surreal, the way it happened… and the moment can still swallow me even though its been (gulp) 14 years. he told me on the  phone (classy, huh?), and after i hung up i closed the door to my bedroom, and puddled onto the floor. i stayed there for hours and disintegrated emotionally….i wish that was an exaggeration, (as i am known for extravagant abundance especially when it comes to the discussion of teenage hormonal imbalance) but alas this is not one of those times, and anyone who has had a relationship fall apart knows this to be true. my father came in from mowing the lawn, his curly black hair still damp from the sweat under his baseball cap, to find me motionless in the same place, creating a spot wet with tears on the carpet. When he pulled up my shoulders and face from my lap and saw the black stains that Maybelline had created on my face, he didn’t have to ask what had happened…he just knew.

“Oh…honey…..” nothing more was said for a long while and his last word drifted into the ugly baby blue paint of my bedroom and into sticky silence. he picked me up effortlessly with his strong arms, and sat me on the edge of my twin bed…he plunked down next to me and let me bury my head into his LL Bean Flannel until dark spread over the hillside and curtained the town in night. before getting up he stroked my hair with his large hands, rough and gentle at the same time, patted my back, and tucked me under my covers as if i was six years old again and i had just had a bad day on the play ground.

“love brings you to your knees, Mand….it always will. and, some time soon, it will bring you to your feet again. its funny like that….” he left it at that but i always felt he wanted to say something more. my father is not an overspeaker…anyone who knows him knows that.

my ribs hurt from violent sobing, and i can honestly say at that moment, his words didn’t make one, single, solitary thing or feeling better.

but time did.

and love did.

its just funny like that.

all my love darlings,

p.s. “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart). i am never without it.”  {e.e.cummings}

p.p.s. girls, i don’t understand love. i never will. i just know it feels good most of the time, and hurts just some of the time.