I’m breaking at the britches

A few weeks ago, The Bandito bought me a little gadget called a Fitbit. It’s a pedometer, altimeter, cheerleader, pocket watch of fun. It counts your steps throughout the day, the hills/flights of stairs you take and shows how many calories you burn. At night you can put it in a little wristband and it will monitor your sleep for you. I sleep an average of six hours a night and wake up a minimum of 12 times.

The Bandito got his own Fitbit, too. We linked to each other on Fitbit’s Web site so we can see the progress the other makes. I have a natural advantage over him, though. My job requires a lot of movement, a lot of running up and down the stairs and even gives me time to bounce around in place, which may be considered cheating.

I usually love getting up on Sunday mornings and walking a four-mile loop through our neighborhood. I haven’t made it out the door yet on this Sunday morning — it is bitterly cold and gray out right now and I’ve just eaten a handful of chocolate chips. So, already the excuses.

I also walk the loop on Monday mornings, but I like to wait for work and school traffic to clear out. The neighborhood sleeps during my Sunday walks and it’s just me and my iPod for as long as I want it to be.

These walks get their own playlists, of course. I usually try to throw together a new one on Saturday nights. I didn’t get to that last night, either. But, of course, I have to get up at 2:30 a.m. on Saturdays for work, so I fully expect Saturdays to be shot all to hell. And they are.

I love a playlist, though, and I thought, because I talk so much about music here, that I would share an honest-to-god Sunday-morning playlist with you. Maybe it’ll get you moving. Maybe you’ll share a song I hadn’t thought of. Maybe you’ll realize I’m not as cool as I think I am.

Playlist: 1.3 (January 3)

I Gotta Feeling/The Black Eyed Peas

Before You Go/Sarah Jaffe

Sydney (I’ll Come Running)/Brett Dennen

You Make My Dreams/Daryl Hall & John Oates

Where Is My Mind/Pixies

Kids/MGMT

King of Diamonds/Motopony

That’s Not My Name/The Ting Tings

Oh, Goddammit/ Hot Hot Heat

Growing Up With GNR/Aqueduct

Shake It Out/Florence & The Machine

Walcott/Vampire Weekend

Janglin/Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

 

 

Twenty-one days…

Twenty-one days ago. I was having my usual Sunday. Laundry, vacuuming. Listening to music. Planning a small and pretty much unnecessary shopping trip. I was sitting here, at my old chrome and formica dining table, just as I am right now, when my phone rang. It was my very good friend John.

I met John back in 1996. He was 18 and a world away from his parents, who were missionaries in Southeast Asia. I took him in and took care of him. I cooked for him and hung out with him. Within a year, he was a member of my family as far as my parents were concerned. He spent Christmas with us. We went to concerts during our summer breaks. I took him to airports and sent him on his way to his parents and two younger brothers. But he always came back.

About a year ago, when my frazzled boss asked me if I knew someone who wanted a job, I recommended John without hesitation. For the past 10 months, we have spent every day together at work. Everyone at work adores him. Although his parents were stateside now, they live in another state, so we got to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with John. And I was glad. I like having him with me. The Bandito loves him, too. So I was pretty stoked three Sundays ago when John called me.

But there was a silence on his end of the line. His mother, he finally managed to tell me, never showed up for church that morning. His dad found her dead on the bathroom floor. Makeup on, curlers in her hair.

My own heart shriveled in my chest. Dumb. That’s how I felt. How can it be? My dear friend’s dear mother. Such a special and kind woman. I begged him to let me help in some way. Maybe drive him to his brother’s home three hours south. But no, he said, he needed to get there. I sensed, in the desperation in John’s voice, that maybe if he hurried, what had happened could be reversed. Or maybe his brother’s house would be the place where there could be a different outcome. No, he said, he wouldn’t let me take him. I love you so, so very much, I told him. I am so sorry.

I was able to attend the funeral. John spoke during the service. You’d just have to know him to know exactly how uplifting and hopeful his words were. And when it was time to pray, it was all I could do to not scream.

I don’t know much about god, except that I think mankind has it all wrong. God doesn’t punish us, or hate us or watch us all the time. Heaven isn’t a place where we sing Amazing Grace for all eternity. And normally I don’t pray — haven’t in years — but at my friend’s mother’s funeral, I found myself so desperate for comfort that the idea of god and heaven completely absorbed me. I understood how it works and why. So, with my face buried in my hands, I begged god to make me strong enough for my friend. I begged god to help John find comfort. Oh god, I prayed, oh god help us.

I am thankful that I see John every day at work. Some days he finds me before 11 a.m. and asks if we can go to lunch. I know it must be an emergency. So we order tacos and he talks. At night I come home to The Bandito and cry. I’m not crying for me, I say. I’m crying for my friend.

I didn’t know it would be so hard for me. It’s not hard for me to be a good listener. It’s hard for me to be so unable to help John. He’s doing so much more than I imagine I’d be able to do three weeks on, but sometimes I see the pain flash across his face and it is excruciating for both of us. It hurts me so much to for my friend to hurt. But, in a small way, I’m on this journey with him.

John and I talk a lot now about things we didn’t talk about before. Things that, we understood, we did not so much believe in. Despite his religious upbringing, John had parted ways with his faith. We talk about god and heaven now. What might it be like for us when we die? We talk about books we’ve read, and different depictions of heaven. There may not be a right answer. It’s just impossible to know. But even I have found comfort in thinking John will be with his mother again.

Six days after the funeral, I started my anatomy and physiology class. In the first meeting, the instructor explained that our bodies are designed to maintain homeostasis. It’s difficult for us to not live, once we’re living. But sometimes, I know, dying doesn’t get to be a process. It’s a pretty thin line after all.

Listening recommendation: When My Time Comes by Dawes

Way out in the water, see it swimmin

In the mid-ish 1990s, at a great used-record store in Little Rock, I bought a compilation CD from Germany for a They Might Be Giants song. It turned out to be a pretty stellar collection of other stuff I never would have heard (including the most amazing cover of “Sweet Jane,” but that’s another story for another day), but most importantly, it was the first time I ever heard Pixies.

“Caribou” was on that CD and I remember thinking, “Dang! This girl can sing!” It was just about two years too late for me and Pixies — they’d already been and gone by the time I stumbled into them — but it was definitely love.

Like anything else, I go through phases with their music. There’s so much I love and it’s hard to squeeze it all in, but my appreciation for what this band has created runs pretty deep.

One Monday night last month, after four months of staring at the Ticketmaster envelope clipped to the refrigerator at home, I was finally standing in a beautiful old theater in Memphis, bawling like an absolute baby at a Pixies show.

I’d made peace with never being able to see them perform live as a band. And then I saw them, years ago, on Austin City Limits one Saturday while I was getting buzzed at home before going to the bar. But nothing, nothing can compare to the energy of a live show. I knew beforehand what to expect of this show: They were touring for the 20th anniversary of Doolittle (which, yes, is by now more than 22 years ago). The show would be Doolittle in its entirety. And that’s plenty, of course, but all the albums are good  enough to stand alone. There were going to be songs I would just need to hear.

After Doolittle and its B-sides, we got to hear a four-song encore. The very last song of the night was “Gigantic,” which was played at our wedding. When I first turned The Bandito on to Pixies, though, he asked me about the “Where Is My Mind” lyrics. “Is he saying, ‘Try the shrimp and spinach’?” Shrimp and spinach aside, that’s always been one of my favorite songs.

I told my friend Brick today that I want to go to Rock And Roll School and write an essay about “Where Is My Mind.” But there’s no Rock school that I know of, and it probably doesn’t allow 35-year-old music snobs anyway. But it should.

I always thought there was but one Truly Great song of all time and that is “A Day In The Life” by the Beatles. I’m not saying it is my favorite song, because it’s not. But it is phenomenally well written, skillfully arranged and brilliantly executed. I have always been of the opinion that anyone can write how they feel and anyone can relate to it. There’s a time and place for all of that. But some songs are better built. They require thought. Thoughts about the words and the structural arrangement of the music. I feel pretty confident saying “Where Is My Mind” is as artfully sound as “A Day In The Life.”

“Where Is My Mind” starts out slow. Not soft, of course. Just slow. And before you know it, it’s all wound up into a full-on face melter. And you’re singing along about fishes in the Caribbean and, if you’re a member of this family, shrimp and spinach (or, more correctly, “this trick and spin it”) and then, for the big finish, you’re back to slow again. It’s understood that there was tension in the band, but if they can still play guitars like that, fight away.

The Bandito and I talked so much about the Pixies show when it was over. For days we talked about it, comparing it to other performances we’ve seen. While Pixies don’t interact much with the crowd, it’s because they are there to kick your ass, not ask about your mama and them. And we’re still pretty awestruck a month later. Pixies music, ahead of its time 20 years ago, still sounds new today. It’s still good rock music. Incredible rock music.

So try the shrimp and spinach if you haven’t already. Give a listen to “Where Is My Mind” from Pixies album “Surfer Rosa.”

 

Some sing out loud from the telephone wire

On rare occasions I tag along with The Bandito while he works. His office is pretty much his car and yesterday his work was simple: Attend two churches doing not-so-churchy things. First stop was a pumpkin patch, a fundraiser for a Methodist youth group.

Funny how Halloween is only frowned upon when it is not used as a way to bring in the money.

And the second stop, many hours later, was a blessing of the animals.

I grew up in a church, but my parents encouraged me to think for myself. I went to church where my friends did.Their parents were my parents’ friends. At church I learned a lot about fear and threats. I learned how to dodge peer pressure, but the only peer pressure I encountered was at church, a peer pressure that cannot be dodged because young folks at church never tire of backing you into a corner and repeating, “Yeah, but what if you’re wrong?”

What I hated about church was the insistence of making a display of my faith and relationship with God or Jesus, or whichever one. I never felt that connection. The connection I felt was to the world beyond the church — the flowers and the soil and the people I love.

If there was a God, as I was told there was/is, the god I learned about in church was utterly confusing. God loves us, as long as “us” means white heterosexual two-parent families. Everyone else needed to publicly apologize for their shortcomings and change to suit God. I was never any good at math, but that formula didn’t add up for me. And yes, I am the product of a white heterosexual two-parent family. God loves us, but God is jealous and angry and can make you suffer. I couldn’t get behind that, either.

I ultimately reached the point of bailing out of church. My parents were fine with that. There was none of that “while you’re living under my roof” business. And, also ultimately, I saw more evidence of no God than actually of God. And in a pub in England the summer between high school and college, I realized I was an atheist. Looking back, that’s the typical route for a sort-of-spoiled white kid spending the summer traveling Europe.What an asshole.

My atheism didn’t take, though. There’s something more to this world. I just don’t take it as a sign that someone out there loves us. I get really sad when I hear of people coming out of the Dark Ages and teaching their children that evolution is a lie. The god these people claim to be serving is surely intelligent enough to have A) created all of what we see here and B) designed evolution. I also get really sad when church attendance is a free pass to make judgments about people whose lives you can’t understand. I get really sad when I think about how disappointed God and Jesus must be to look at how the human race behaves for the sake of religion.

And then I get the chance to go to a church on a beautiful day, on a beautiful street in a beautiful town. I get to meet new people and new dogs and even a horse! I get to participate in a prayer acknowledging the elements, the earth and the brotherhood and sisterhood of our universe. I am blessed with water shaken from a pine branch. I am assured that the pets we love will be with us in the afterlife. A dachshund sits on my foot and barks through the prayer, until her owner picks her up and scolds her. We sing and cry and smile. The rectors take to the crowd and bless each animal by name.

While the rectors were doing their thing, and I was aglow with love, I searched out The Bandito. I found him chatting with a man holding a furry white dog. At a distance, we waited for Chester, the dog, to be blessed. The Bandito captured a string of photographs and we made our way toward the sidewalk. Chester’s owner sprinted toward us. “I remember you,” he said. “You sat next to me during Rev. Suchandsuch’s sermon that time. We really made a connection.” The Bandito squared off for a better look at the man. “We giggled the whole time,” the man said. That’s when the light bulb went off for The Bandito.

Gay church. The Bandito had told me about it. He and the man talked for a few minutes. The man, openly gay, talked about his connection with God and how he had become a member of the church we were visiting. He said the rector of the gay church had moved to a church closer to where The Bandito and I live and worship services were later in the morning. “I want to get up first thing and praise God,” the man said.

That punched me in the gut. There was a man who has undoubtedly heard everything there is to hear about the eternal damnation of his soul. And yet he loves God. His talk about the acceptance and the overall feeling of love he’s found between the two churches lit a fire in me that’s been dead embers for years. He put Chester down on the ground and threw his arms around me.

The Bandito and I walked back toward his car, down the same sidewalks I used to take in a drunken stumble, and I told him I’d like to go to gay church. I would even love to attend the church we visited yesterday, but early-morning service after a 45-minute commute doesn’t sound like anything I’d ever actually do. But this other church with the gay rector? “Oh, you’d love him, ” The Bandito said. “He’s faaaaaabulous!”

Maybe it’s like being out of the dating scene for 20 years — things change. Maybe church has changed. But if I could go to a place where love is taught, where everyone is welcome and respected, I could be into that. I can’t go to a church where hate and fear and ignorance is taught. I don’t want to hear about punishments that will follow me when I die. Yes, I’m a heathen with a potty mouth who hasn’t actually been inside a church for the purpose of “worship” since Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris the same summer I gave up God in a pub. But I want to be part of something that makes me feel better about myself and about the people with whom I associate. Uplifted.

The Bandito and I took our dogs for a long walk today. I’ve been singing them the song I learned yesterday: All God’s critters got a place in the choir/some sing low/some sing higher/Some sing out loud from the telephone wire/ and some just clap their hands/or paws/or anything they’ve got.

Regardless of who is out there or up there or wherever gods dwell, right now is our reward.

Today’s listening: “If You’re Feeling Sinister” by Belle and Sebastian

We’re all in the mood for a melody

I bought a new car about a year ago and with it I got a free trial subscription to satellite radio. At which I scoffed and said, “I will never pay for radio.” Right. When paying to listen in my car was not enough, I eventually tacked on the ability to listen online. But only because I was hearing so much great music.

In the year of satellite radio, I have grown to know and love Good Old War, Motopony, Sarah Jaffe, Gomez, The Head and The Heart, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, The Civil Wars, Brett Dennen and a whole litany of other great performers. When it comes time to renew my subscription next year, I’ll be only too glad to do it.

So today’s song recommendation is “Sophia” by Laura Marling.

Happy listening.

They say you were something in those formative years

Yes, still with the music. Sorry in advance to those few of you I’ve allowed to come here.

I was 15 in 1991, and a lot of good things happened in that season. Although “Little Earthquakes” by Tori Amos was released in 1992, it still had a place in my primitive CD player during high school. And college and adulthood.

How did I hear Tori Amos all those years ago? Well, believe it or not, MTV used to be a reliable source. It was either “Silent All These Years” or “Crucify.” I was intrigued.

I had a lot of good years with Tori Amos. I went to her concerts, I wept at the rawness of her music. She said things I said. Despairing after an abrupt breakup, Tori sang to me, “I go from day to day/I know where the cupboards are/I know where the car is parked/I know he isn’t you.” Yes! I did what I had to do to make it to the end of the day so I could cry myself to sleep. Oh, being young is hard, but Tori Amos was something to me in those formative years.

And then, after “Scarlet’s Walk,” I took a Walk of my own. I moved to a new city because I wanted to. I had no job, very little money and a tiny, tiny, cold apartment. I couldn’t afford to eat, but I was happier than I had ever been. I shelved my Tori collection in favor of the up-and-coming bands I was seeing every night in my favorite dive bar. I still loved her, but Tori and I parted ways.

It was never intentional, and I never meant it to be permanent. But I was really surprised to see how many albums I’ve missed, even though a dear friend gifted me “American Doll Posse” on my wedding day.

I downloaded the new album “Night of Hunters” today. It’s textbook Tori — in a way — but also not textbook Tori. It’s the perfect album for right now, as so many of her other records were to me. Maybe it’s the promise of a chill in the air, the foggy mornings last week. “Night of Hunters” seems to embody the thrill of autumn and its spooky evenings.

You can hear “Night of Hunters” on Spotify or download it on iTunes. Give a listen to “The Chase,” sung by Tori and her 11-year-old daughter, Natashya Hawley.

I’m to blame, it’s all the same

All this talking about music has me thinking about music more than usual. Which is a real stretch because music is just what I am. I’m reading a book called Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. I like Nick Hornby and I’m not sure how this book flew under my radar, but I picked it up at the library. I’ve been busy with this and that and haven’t read much of it, but I find it absolutely maddening that I can’t listen to the Tucker Crowe records.

But it has me thinking about raw vs. polished and music assholes (which I may be myself). It has me thinking about the first time I heard Colin Hay’s solo version of “Who Can It Be Now” and finding it a different song entirely than the song I heard on the radio for years and years. And driving to work this morning in the rain, long before the sun came up, my iPod played a live recording of an Avett Brothers’ song and it seemed to have more depth and meaning than the studio cut. It should, I guess. But if you ever wondered what all went on in my mind, it’s pretty much The Bandito, music, food.

In the rough draft of the previous post, which still seems pretty rough because otherwise it would have been too long and rambly for me to even proofread, TRUST ME, the journey I made with music was in finer detail. I thought a lot about the music I was hearing in 1991 and something that stood out a few days ago was all the R.E.M.

“Out of Time” was released in 1991, but I already had a bit of a history with R.E.M. Then I got all nostalgic for 1992′s “Automatic for the People.” How much do I LOVE “Nightswimming”? I was thinking so much about R.E.M. and how long they’ve been part of my life, even though I haven’t thought of them much lately.

Have you ever thought of someone you haven’t seen in a while and then the next day you find out they just died? Or maybe not that, maybe you think of someone from your first-grade class and then you see them buying Fruit Roll-Ups the next day? That happens to me a lot. I thought about R.E.M. so much and the next day the band announced they were calling it quits.

Now, hold the damn phone, R.E.M. You can’t break up. You’re R.E.M., for the love of God. You can’t just say, “No more. Ever.” Lie to me, R.E.M. Because, first of all, I never saw R.E.M. live. It wasn’t exactly something I needed to do until I knew I couldn’t. And second of all, for all the miserable songs out there — and I have listened to all the miserable songs — only one song did it for me when I was at my most miserable: “Country Feedback.”

See, there was another guy. A long time before I met The Bandito, I loved another boy. I can’t say that I love him now, but there is no question that I loved him for a very long time. He didn’t deserve it, of course. And he spent a long time keeping me on a string. I did everything I could think of to sever the ties permanently. It was off and on, and most of the time it was off. Five years passed at one point, but he came back. In the eleventh year, though, I couldn’t take it anymore. Four months later I met The Bandito. But I probably spent half of those months listening to “Country Feedback” in my car. Yes, it was crazy what that fat son of a bitch could have had. He could have had me.

Now The Bandito has me and there’s plenty of music in our relationship. And I can enjoy it and share it with him, and I’ve even done a lot to bolster his musical preferences. The man is willingly traveling out of state with me in two months to see the Pixies. That doesn’t exactly have The Bandito written all over it, but he’s learning. He knew Florence+The Machine before I did. And best of all, he’s open to anything I like. He even tolerates it when I spend a drive home talking about how incredibly lucky we are to be alive in the time of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.

Let’s listen to something new today. My recommendation for you is “King of Diamonds” by Motopony. I didn’t want to love it at first, but there’s a hint of “Linus and Lucy” (the Peanuts theme song) to it. What do you have for me?

The one who likes all our pretty songs

My first favorite song was the background music in a furniture commercial. I would press my toddler ear against the console television to separate the jingle from the droning of the pitch man and listen like my little life depended on it. It got where my mother would automatically hush anyone in the room when the ad came on. I also loved the singing grapefruit on Sesame Street, but this song from the furniture commercial was different. It was something special. A catchy, lovely little melody, heavy on piano. It was … I don’t know. Mine.

I had a record player in my bedroom by the time I was 3. By the time I entered kindergarten, I was listening to my mother’s Janis Ian albums in my bedroom. And by first grade, I’d been handed down the old Magnavox stereo from the family room. My record collection was substantial, for a 7-year-old.

Then I set my sights on something a little more portable. Something with a tape player. So I saved up birthday money for God only knows how long and bought what we in the White Flight suburbs called a jam box. I kept my vinyl collection, but I transitioned over to tapes. I consumed music like it was life-sustaining calories. It was in the earliest years of my life that I got into the habit of spending pretty much all of my disposable income on music. Even now, every other Thursday night, when I know my paycheck is going in the bank, I start going through my iTunes wishlist.

As a young kid, it didn’t really matter so much what kind of music your friends listened to. But it’s funny how, at least for me, music kind of segregated us as we got older. So it was really difficult being in junior high during the New Kids on the Block craze and truly not giving a rat’s ass about them. I loved new wave and punk, even in elementary school. I loved metal and I loved some of the stuff I’d lifted from my parents: Santana, Janis Joplin and The Eagles. I cut my teeth on the Beatles, so when my friends at school were sleeping on New Kids on the Block bed sheets (yes, a real thing), I was exploring the John Lennon/Yoko Ono records. I loved The Clash, and Big Audio Dynamite. And like I said before, it was all I could do to keep my musical appetite satisfied.

On Sunday nights I would listen to guest DJs on KABF, the community radio station in Little Rock. The sets would go on and on, but I hated to to miss anything. Someone might play something I’d never hear otherwise. And they did! Normal people from all over town would haul in their records or CDs and play what they wanted to hear. I knew there had to be more than what Casey Kasem was shoveling down my neck every Sunday morning, and I felt I deserved to know about it. (Note: I found KABF’s Web site and was delighted to find I can listen online now. I was greeted with a little Iris DeMent, which I would have most certainly not listened to 20 years ago. But I’m a better person now.)

This week is the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s “Nevermind.” Hard to believe. I remember where I was when I first heard Nirvana. While my affection for the music has waned, the importance of it still has a place in my heart. It may mean something different to an actual music expert, but for me, well shit. “Nevermind” blew the lid off of my middle-class suburban world. It changed everything by making the thing I was searching for accessible. This was a voice for the rest of us. And in the days before Google, living in the smack-ass center of a place like Arkansas was not exactly the way to be the first one on the scene, if you know what I mean.

“Nevermind” opened a lot of doors for me musically. Yes, it was everywhere. And yes, everywhere is where I usually don’t like my music to be. But, for the first time since the furniture commercial, “Nevermind” felt like mine.

These days I lean more toward Gillian Welch, The Avett Brothers, Beth Orton, The Old 97′s. But I know how I got here.

Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind.

 

The love that let us share our name

My mother is the youngest of four daughters. Their father died in 1970. My mother was 14. Their mother died in 1986. My mother was 30.

From the day my grandmother died, my association with that family was brittle. I was only 10, but the grief of the four orphaned girls splintered into jealousies and resentments that were kept under wraps during my grandmother’s life. She, my sweet grandmother, kept us together with a gentle hand. But after she was gone, I saw that her daughters were not happy as children or adults.

It’s a lot of ground to cover, for sure. I think the things I learned while observing my mother and her sisters shaped the way I relate to women. Which is to say, I have a hard time with it. I’ve always preferred boys, for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. And women have always been hard for me. Scary.

Anyway. I miss my grandmother. Even 25 years later. And I miss my mother’s family, such as it ever was. Most of the time, I can measure the distance from my family in miles. Distances created by petty grievances are not as easy to measure.

No one in my mother’s family has spoken to any of us since before The Bandito and I got married. I don’t know why. And I’m not sure anyone else knows why. There was just an agreement made by some of the sisters. It’s a game with rules.

But this afternoon while I was getting my social media on, I did a search for my youngest cousin from my mom’s side of the family. I saw her last at my brother’s wedding. She always reminded me so much of myself — cut from the same snarky cloth. She was 22 at my brother’s wedding and still kind of awkward. Shrinking violet. But I adored her. Talking to her was like talking to myself. It was the wittiest, cleverest, meanest conversation I could have.

My brother’s wedding was legendary. April in an apple orchard. A cider house reception. Live bands, a maypole. Most of my brother’s friends camped with him and his new wife that night in tents under the apple trees. Everyone was happy.

Except, I later found out, my mother’s two sisters. And that was the end of an already strained relationship.

I don’t even know or care why. Sometimes people just aren’t happy unless they’re unhappy. But how does that have anything to do with me? Or my cousin? Why should we lose our ties to each other?

So I sent my cousin a friend request and a note. I told my mother what I had done, and she told me not to get my hopes up. I went out to pick up lunch. And when I came back? Friend request accepted! And she had written a note back. Turns out, we both missed each other fiercely.

I scrolled through her photographs and my heart ached with happiness. She’s not much like I remember her, Kate. She is beautiful. She’s married now, too, and has a pouty-faced daughter. Kate’s father died, but she blossomed. I wanted to go to her, where ever she may be, and just look at her.

I’d sent her an invitation to my wedding, but no one from my mother’s family — not a single soul — attended. We’ve missed so much from the other’s life, but I didn’t want to miss anything else.

I’m going to spend the rest of the day bawling hysterically. I’m just that happy. And I’m also genetically wired to act crazy.

As I wait on the row for the man to test the rope

Inbox

From: Mom

WM3 released tomorrow

Received: Thu Aug 18, 4:45pm

I left work an hour early on Thursday to pick up my new glasses. I wasn’t too thrilled about it. At my appointment on Monday, I felt the nurse was rushing me as I chose from a paltry selection of thin metal frames. Still, my glasses had come in earlier than expected, and it was as good a reason as any to sneak out early.

It’s funny how little things like whether you totally, totally love your new designer eyeglasses can make or break your whole day. But as soon as I parked at my eye doctor’s office, I got a text message that made all my sufferings really make me feel like a jackass. The day I’d waited for for, what? 15 years? had come and here I was, pissed that I didn’t 100% love my new glasses.

I remember when the bodies of three little boys were found in West Memphis. I remember when arrests were made. I remember the convictions. And then I remember nothing else about the case for a couple of years until my mother, whose confidence in what is right always astounds me, handed me a VHS tape and said, “You have to watch this.”

“This” was Paradise Lost, the first in what will soon be a trilogy of documentaries about The West Memphis 3. I remember saying I didn’t want to watch it. I couldn’t stand to watch a documentary about three boys my own age who had murdered three little boys, right here in my own home state. “They didn’t do it,” my mother said.

In theory, I support many causes. Our dogs are rescues, we spay and neuter. I support local merchants, The Bandito drives a hybrid. I’ve raced for the cure, I buy cookies from fundraising neighbor kids. The Bandito has volunteered at a local shelter for abused children and I did a year of service with the Boys and Girls Club. But there has been, for the past 15 years, a cause I would take a bullet for. In fact, the first time I ever even heard of paypal, it was to donate money to WM3. I did what I could, and I did what the men needed for support. It was still inadequate, I know that. But I know it means something to these three that I believed in them. That I continue to believe in them because this isn’t over yet.

As a supporter of the three imprisoned men, don’t think I have forgotten about the boys who were killed. No. For a long time I’ve said that six lives ended that day. And, sadly, nothing will ever change the outcome for Stevie, Chris or Michael. How can justice really ever be served for those three? All we can do is keep working to find the person or persons who committed these murders and clear the names of those who did not.

That said, I would also like to say welcome back to the world, Damien, Jason and Jessie. It’s probably not as you remember it, but hopefully it’s a little nicer. Without having met any of you, I can say that I care deeply for each of you. And as difficult as it may be for you to think of Arkansas as home, I don’t know of anyone living here who wouldn’t be happy to have you as a neighbor.