amy loves books

merry little christmas

there is a light and it never goes out

go speedracer go

eveidently, i am not the only child that sat on their sit and spin and pretended to be speedracer.

heros

My friend jane lee alerted me to the Ebola outbreak in Uganda.

Please pray for Dr. Jennifer and Dr. Scott Myhre and Scott Will.

atonement

I know there's always a certain type of reader who will be compelled to ask, but what really happened?

How can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her. In her imagination she has set the limits and the terms.

No atonement for God, or novelists, even if they are atheists. It was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. The attempt was all.

-Ian McEwan, Atonement
(Oh, I believe I will love this movie - with its 5 minute-plus Stedicam shot, symbolic costume design, and typewritter-as-instrument in the score.)

someday, i'll get an owl tattoo (but a key is next on the list)

painting by Cooper Sanchez

lucky (for almost fifteen years now)

The owl painting was a gift from my husband, who is not the most sensitive or thoughtful gift-giver in the world. Early in our marriage, he was an absolutely horrific gift giver - so bad that I can win any worst-gift-ever-given-contest hands-down - but he has improved with time and tears. For our first anniversary, he gave me a vhs copy of his favorite movie. Last December nineteenth, he gave me the owl painting. In the gift-giving department it was the best he has ever done.

At the time, however, I did not blog about it. I've been wanting to write something about marriage for awhile, and I had it in the back of my mind that I could do it as an anniversary post, but then the actual day came and I realized that I did not like this particular anniversary. It made me uneasy.

Over dinner, with my beautiful painting wrapped and in the trunk of the car, I confessed to my husband that I would be happier next year on our anniversary. I don't like saying I've been married thirteen years, I told him. It feels ominous; it feels like tempting fate. I wish it was fourteen years instead. Twelve felt safe, and fourteen feels safe. . In thirteen years, he has learned that I am not always a rational creature, so he did the right thing, and just listened.

There was a time when I was much more comfortable giving advice about marriage. I've become shushed with time. Since I've been married, my brother married and saw his marriage end, my husband's parents divorced, and every one of my best friends have either divorced or had their marriages rocked by infidelity. I've gone from thinking weddings were beautiful to attending them with a sort of dread - I carry in the back of my mind the images of the brides and grooms I've known and the betrayals and bitterness that dissolved their unions and contradicted their vows. Weddings would be nice if they lasted, I think.

In the midst of all of this, I have remained married. I can honestly say that I have never even given serious consideration to straying. I am happily married. There are some evenings when it's been a long week, and the stresses of children, and work, and money, cause fatigue and annoyance settle in our bones -- on those evenings my husband and I probably look like the dining dead to a casual, critical observer. Yet, if that critic were to observe us a week later, he would inevitably see us laughing and flirting like a couple new in love. This is the nature of marriage: it ebbs and flows. Some days, I am tired of the physical work of marriage - the dishes and laundry and grocery shoppingness of it all. I'd like to have things stay put. I'd like to only clean up after myself. But more often than not, I am a woman in love. Not exactly a domestic goddess, but contentedly domesticated. My husband and I tell each other we are glad we married one another, and we mean it. Truly.

I started writing this post in December. I am now halfway through the dreaded year thirteen and, so far, the sky has not fallen. In the past year more people than usual have sought out my husband and/or myself for advice about marriage. Should they get married? How did we know? I am terrible in conversations like this. The truth is, you don't know. You just commit. My marriage has lasted not because I am kinder, or more dedicated, or holier. I don't pray more. I was only twenty-two when I married, and not particularly wise. There is nothing special that I do or don't do, and I know that there are a number of things that have caused friends to divorce that would have been deal breakers for me as well. In the end, if people push me for an explanation, the best I can come up with is that I got lucky.

and this actually is my favorite pie.

You Are Cream Pie

You're the perfect combo of simplicity and divinity. You are a secret hedonist. No one knows how indulgent you can be. You don't indulge often, but when you do, you go for the best. You have expensive taste - even if you aren't rich. Those who like you live for understated pleasures. You're not flashy or trendy, but you have a depth that most people lack. Interacting with you makes most people feel incredibly satisfied. You are gentle, super sweet, and in harmony with those around you.

What Kind of Pie Are You?

gargoyles in our youth

I met George in the fall of my junior year at UGA. He was working the security desk in in the lobby of mycollege dorm. He had a fantastic gargoyle impersonation. He would perch on the railing of the staircase and stick out his tongue and get very, very still. He was so cool. A lot of people go to college in Athens because they want to be cool. George was one of the few people who actually was that cool.

He lived in a legendary Athens house - a pink shack with a tin roof and a big front porch, not far from the shack that “The End of the World As We Know It” video was filmed in. It was sort of passed from person to person if you knew the right person. Supposedly, those chosen to rent the tin roofed house did so with the understanding that they had the responsibility to throw huge Bonfire parties on the property each semester. George lived in the house with four other people. He was not from America. He had long hair and steel-toe boots and a leather jacket. He smoked Marlboro Reds. He laughed all the time. He did not care what anyone thought of him. He was beautiful.

The year before, I had come off of a string of relationships that went from bad to worse until I woke up one morning and could not look myself straight in the eye with the knowledge that I had sunk so low that I had spent the previous evening actually watching the Super Bowl with a boyfriend that I, were I true to myself, never in a million years would have even considered being friends with. He was rich, handsome, and stupid. And I hated myself for sinking so low.

I had been “in love” my freshman year of college with a boy that used me and hurt me so bad that when he dumped me for a cocktail waitress named “Sage” (ruining Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair” for me forever, I might add), I snuck into his house and lit all the letters I had written him on fire in the middle of the floor. I watched them burn and then dumped a glass of water on the flame, scattering ash and bits of cardstock in a stain creeping across the wooden floor. I also gave all his clothes to Goodwill.

It was not losing him that hurt, it was having someone reject me so totally. It was hearing, “Well, it’s been fun - but what I really want is a poofy-haired cocktail waitress named Sage". I was desperate to be redeemed. After I was dumped, I went through three boyfriends in three months. Each of them represented a rapidly progressive compromise. When my dating criteria became something along the lines of “he has a nice car” - I realized that I had no idea who I even was anymore. I made a vow that I would never date again unless I thought I actually loved the boy. I cleaned up my act. I made peace with God. I rededicated my life. I attended Bible Studies. I was good to go.

So when I met George, I had taken myself out of the dating market. I was hardly the image of the model Christian with my prairie dresses and Dr. Marten boots and extensive collection of import albums. I was trying to fit into the “Bible Study” mold. Kind of trying at least. I mean, I attended Bible studies. I was trying to be good. I was trying to follow all the rules. Then, George invited me to come and hang out with him. I should say that I hesitated, but I didn’t.

On our first and only “date”, we snuck into the Botanical Gardens and went and sat down in a grove of trees. We talked. We kissed for the first (and last) time. Then, it started to rain. George invited me to come to his house to dry off and get a cup of coffee. We talked some more and then some more and it was getting really late and it was really raining. And George propositioned me. He knew about my whole “rededication-being- a-good-girl-not-wanting-to-date” vow and so he told me that his room was the attic bedroom and every time it rained, he would lay and listen the rain on the tin roof and he always wished he had someone to share that moment with. He invited me to stay the night - just as friends. This was definitely not in the rule book of acceptable young Christian woman behavior. But I believed George, and the sound of rain on a tin roof has an allure of its own. I trusted him. I think I already loved him. And so I fell asleep, fully dressed, on a mattress on the floor of the slant-roofed attic, by his side. The rain beat down and he did not kiss me; he just reached out and took my hand and held it in his.

From that moment on, we were inseperable. George escorted me into a world of people and parties. I was still struggling with reconciling my newly rededicated faith and my attraction to (and at-homeness in) the counterculture. I never did drugs or drank enough to get seriously hung over, but with George at my side I spent my days in coffee houses and my nights in pubs. We often got served our food and drinks free, because George invariably knew whoever was working at any given location. (I learned from him that all the punk rocker waiters and waitresses that worked at a certain 24 hour restaurant that was popular with the frat boy crowd as well as the 12am-5am hipster crowd would lick the plates when the frat boys came in).

George got me to start smoking, but I rebelled against the reds because I did not like the cigarette-taste that lingered in my mouth. Instead, I smoked cloves - which I knew he thought was a little wimpy of me - but I loved the way they made my tongue taste sweet and the way they burned so slowly. I wore his leather jacket. We would go and do laundry at 3 am at this laundromat that also showed movies and George would push me around in a rolling cart and we'd play the video game Tron. We would hit the Potter’s House thrift store and fill bags with clothes from the rag pile for 3 bucks a bag. We got morning custard and coffee at The Bluebird Cafe. George would try to order a bluebird for breakfast. We laughed all the time, stayed up all night, walked along railroad tracks and over bridges. We got our first tattoos together.

Unlike me, George wasreally wild. He drank a whole lot. He sometimes let himself get picked up by pierced and spikey haired bartender stripper girls and he would go back to their place and leave me to find my own way home - but I slept with the door unlocked and he always came back to hold my hand, not theirs, before the end of the night.

I know that people thought we had some sort of strange andvery open relationship, but the truth was so much more complicated. George and I never had sex, not even anything remotely close.

Every night, George simply slept by my side. If he had to work security, I would leave my door unlocked and he would eventually wander up into my loft and take my hand in his and fall asleep. Most nights, we slept under the tin roof in his attic room. We held hands. We always held hands - and it was more than enough.

One night, we went out to visit some bars because George was doing “research for a sociology project”. I was drinking a bit more than normal. When I drink, I get very content and passive - which is unusual for me. Especially the passive part. I was feeling really passive though, really happy. All was good and right in the world. We drove back to his house and for some reason, I was not wearing shoes.

I don’t remember what happened to my shoes, but I remember that when we got to the house, George said that he ought to carry me inside because the big bonfire party had been the previous weekend at the yard was still full of bits of glass. It was raining. George came around and opened my car door and carried me into the house. No one else was home so he told me to stand there with my eyes closed. Being in a passive and content state of mind, I complied. He lit candles all over the living room and he told me to open my eyes and when I did he had started playing the song “Singing In the Rain” on the stereo (from the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange) and he took me up in his arms and started to dance me around the room a la Gene Kelley.

It was one of the single most perfect moments of my life.

My friendship with George was much more than friendship; I loved him.

I think, like so many people, I had always confused sex and love in my mind. Sex was always linked to love. When I daydreamed about falling in love, it was always tied up with feelings of sexual longing. I had had boyfriends. I had had sex. Until George, I had never experienced actual love. We talk about friendship love as if it is less than "real" love. We denigrate it. We say to ourselves that friendship is nice, but it is not “true love”.

In the Spring, George and I shot a short independent film together. I wrote and directed the movie. It was called “maybe I used to love you”. The film was basically a backwards rant by a girl who had realized that her ex-boyfriend had never really loved her at all - had never even known the color of her eyes. And like all first novels or first screenplays, the girl was me. The boyfriend was a composite of all the boys in my string of bad and worse relationships. I finally got it. That thing I had had in the past in all my romantic delusion - that was not love. Love was patient. Love was kind. Love did not take. Love wanted the best for the other person. Love knew the color of your eyes. Love looked at you not as something to take and use, but as something to respect. I knew, at last, how to love and be loved.

While I was editing my movie, George told me that he knew the perfect guy for me. I shrugged his comment off. I was not interested in dating. He knew that. Unlike my previous conviction, this time I really meant it. I was perfectly happy just the way things were. I could have been happy with the way things were forever, but he insisted.

He lied to me finally. He told me we were going to the movies. He said he just had to stop by a party for a second to check on something. Because George knew me, he knew what was best for me. He introduced me to a guy that he called “Smiley”. And he was right, he had had the perfect guy for me, the one I'd go on to marry.

George taught me so much. He taught me to really laugh, and I laugh so much now. He made me bold. It prepared me well for marriage - but more than that - it has made me unafraid to really, deeply love my children and my small handful of friends. I buy them art and books that remind me of them. I can look people straight in the eye.

I don’t so care anymore about being loved back. In this small way, I am fearless. I have had someone really see me. I carry that with me always.

the boy with the sherlock holmes hat

My mother brought over a box of my old things. Among the photo albums and yellowed greeting cards, I found my senior yearbook. I am not a yearbook kind of girl. I never bought a yearbook until my senior year. I don’t know why I bought one then. I did not enjoy the school part of my senior year. I was actually not in school very much. I skipped at least two or three classes each day.

But, there it was- Picture This, the great class of 1988.

So, I dated alot of boys. Boys were the one thing I was good at. Extracurricular activities, not so much. Grades? only when and if I found it interesting. I never got along with other girls. Looking through my yearbook, I realized that I have forgotten 99% of the details about the boys I dated. With only a few exceptions, I do not even remember their names. I remember even fewer first and last names. What I do remember are snapshot-like moments, rich in imagery.

Instead of faces or yearbook-handsome sorts of important achievement related details, the memories I have stored away are small, random moments of beauty. A cream colored cable knit sweater. The taste of cigarette smoke on a rooftop. The welded junkyard metal sheeting on the floor a battered jeep. Driving too fast and spinning out on an abandoned red dirt road. A typewritten short-story. Small moments of feeling awake, and times of wanting to be a part of the world - to just breathe it all and hold the alive deep in my lungs. A feeling like being underwater and never wanting to surface.

I remember music, the passage of night landscape out the passenger windows of cars, driving anywhere but home. And I remember the boy with the Sherlock Holmes hat.

I remember every detail about the boy with the Sherlock Holmes hat. He wore a Sherlock Holmes hat to school, in 1986, in Florida. He was two years older than me, and he was the smartest boy I'd ever met. He made me care about getting into the National Honor Society; he was the vice-president and I just wanted to have a reason to be where he was. I figured that if I was around, he'd have to notice me - so I made good grades for an entire year just so I could inducted into his club and stand there in a white honor dress while he lit my little white drippy honor candle.

I remember the way his hair curled slightly at the nape of his neck. He was tall. He asked me out for first time while we were sitting in the bleachers of the Civic Center, right in the middle of the Billy Graham Crusade. We saw Crocodile Dundee. The movie sucked, but I did not care.

I remember his rust colored car, an older 1970’s model without bucket seats - that lovely expanse of front seat, the way you could just curl up like a cat in the crook of an arm is still one of the things I miss most about the world I grew up a part of. Why pamper life's complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger's seat? Charming indeed.

I remember talking and not talking on the wooden Florida pier at night, surrounded by woods and dark lake water. There were so many stars, and always the night air was like a womb, like the inside of a blade of grass, curling your hair and making everything damp. And I remember Bob Dylan.

THe boy with the Sherlock Holmes hat loved Bob Dylan. In the eighties, when everyone wanted Casio keyboards and razor thin ties to be like a MTV veejay, but he would play Dylan on an old tape player and the cadence of the songs would reach back to my earliest childhood memories: bonfires, and my bare feet in the sand, clothes that smelled like woodsmoke and flannel blankets, Kool-aid in styrofoam cups without ice, Maggie’s farm, and my blue-eyed son, and we're gonna fly down into an easy chair. His music spoke a language that I knew with memories deeper than words. I was going nowhere, but I didn't think twice because it was allright. Buckets of moonbeams in my hands.

He was the first boy that I really loved; the only one that I thought about for years afterwards with regret that I had been so, so young at the time - so completely not self-posessed.

Right before he went away for good, he took me out and we drove around. He was not a staying around sort of person. He told me that whatever happened between us in the future - he wanted me to hear a song. He wanted me to listen to the words know that, whatever happened, this song was the truth about how he felt about me. I sat next to him and he drove down the canopy roads between our houses and Bob Dylan sang - Emotionally Yours . I will always be, emotionally yours.

It was enough. In the end, I forgave him for every way he broke my heart. He remains, in my mind, incandescent.

Even his leaving was beautiful.

Come baby, find me, come baby, remind me of where I once begun.
Come baby, show me, show me you know me, tell me you're the one.
I could be learning, you could be yearning to see behind closed doors.
But I will always be emotionally yours.
Come baby, rock me, come baby, lock me into the shadows of your heart.
Come baby, teach me, come baby, reach me, let the music start.
I could be dreaming but I keep believing you're the one I'm livin' for.
And I will always be emotionally yours.
It's like my whole life never happened,
When I see you, it's as if I never had a thought.
I know this dream, it might be crazy,
But it's the only one I've got.
Come baby, shake me, come baby, take me, I would be satisfied.
Come baby, hold me, come baby, help me, my arms are open wide.
I could be unraveling wherever I'm traveling, even to foreign shores.
But I will always be emotionally yours.