Friday, August 7, 2009

Choose Your Own Adventure Friday Edition

Disclaimer: I wrote the below post last night after seeing (500) Days of Summer, an adorable movie about not love. Perhaps I should have just written about my lust for Joseph Gordon-Levitt who now occupies the #1 spot on my Free Pass Five right above James Franco. Who knew I had a thing for squinty eyed boy/men (but good god yum, right)?


Yes, I probably should have just stuck with that on a Friday, liking the boy from 3rd Rock from the Sun. So if you want your Friday light, your adventure ends here. However, if you'd like your Friday complex, a little bit woody with an undertone of WTF, go down the stairs and turn the page to below.

Sometimes I think about 1976 when I was 4 and the world was the tinged yellow of old photographs. I think about the space between my mother's legs as she stood talking to a friend, Swanson's tv dinners, how a few peas and maybe one miniature cubed carrot always ended up in the burnt edge of the square of sweet apple pie. I think about the hot cigarette smell of my mom's little red Datsun, linoleum, Woolworth's and how one very bad day after a corner piece of cake at a birthday party I threw up there: In my mother's car. On the linoleum floor of somebody's kitchen. In the denim department at Woolworth's.

I think about how somewhere relatively nearby Bryan was probably eating a Salisbury steak. Throwing tanbark, wearing Toughskins, his bowl cut washed with Herbal Essences, the green kind in the Mother Nature bottle bubbling, the love of my life right there yellow same as me all along.
But this is not a thought of myself. After all, what's done is done and we are here, the image of us now digital. No, this is a thought of Zoey, the color of her childhood all around so that we cannot see quite what it looks like. Blue crystal clear and crisp? Will she remember milk in cartons, butter in sticks, the way we carried our bags to the grocery, I used to be a plastic bottle, her shampoo pearly white opaque?

I think if maybe somewhere there is a boy, a girl maybe, who knows? But for the sake of argument: a boy. Maybe he is also 3, maybe he is 1. God forbid he is somewhere right this very minute studying for his final exam in Keynesian Microeconomics of First World Market Failure, a post-graduate class for which he is woefully behind--it's been known to happen, the color of childhoods not corresponding. I think if maybe there is such a thing as The One, The Two, a love that merits capitalization, I don't know. Maybe it's because I have just come home from seeing a movie about love, maybe it's because I'm a sap. Maybe it's because who cares, a matter of minutes, rose colored glasses when the appliances were burnt avocado all along.

But I think of this boy, how one day Zoey might pinch the skin on the back of his hand in bed at night as she now does mine, how he might notice that her eyelashes really do look like starfish from that close up, how one day maybe he will nickname the two dimples above her bum, This and That. I think of this boy, this one year old now, somebody else's baby, maybe three and asleep sweaty head snub nose, and I want to tell him how very lucky he is to love my daughter, to have her love him, to have found each other after years of swinging on monkey bars miles apart in a lifetime that surely could not have existed in quite the same colors as before. Now, whenever it happens, wherever, with whomever. This boy. This three year old, maybe six, where is he? Because I want to tell him, this son-in-law whom I will undoubtedly love, the father of my grandbabies, the skin on the back of his hand now loose. Dear boy, know this: if you ever so much as slowly pull your fingers away from my daughter, if you break her heart or hurt her in any way, so help me God I will kill you black and white easy, the colors do not matter but oh how she does. How hard it will be when my daughter's heart belongs to another.

Oh dear.

And just because I don't want to start the weekend sounding like a lunatic, here is this: long exposure photographs of insects flying around a street light stitched together into an amazing video. In my mind this has something to do with my post.

flight patterns from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.

19 comments:

Unknown said...

uhm... the boy is four and half...thank you very much.

krista said...

the first time my daughter cries over a broken heart, i will probably implode.
and, yes, joseph. i have a bit of a cougar complex admitting it out loud, but i'm totally with you on this one.

Erin said...

Your writing is crushing it this week, lady! I love this post. xo

hmrubes said...

You made me cry. I cry as my parents marriage ends and I book caterers and tents and chairs for my own wedding in October. I know that "ever after" might exist but "happily ever after" does not. For so long I've wondered what the boy I would marry some day was doing at that very second. Playing atari? Starting high school? At his own prom? Crying after a broken heart (if he loved he would go through sadness before he could fall in love with me)? Now that I know who he is and what he's doing, it seems like the beginning of the end. You made me cry. At work. And I have work to do, and I'm crying.

Amanda said...

I am now weeping. Thanks.

ZDub said...

He's 20 months and lives in Colorado. He's part Asian, but he has red hair.

Zoe is a lucky duck to have a mother as rad as you.

Happy Weekend.

72 and sunny said...

great. perfection. as always. teary eyed.

Monkey said...

I used to wonder the same thing about my own life when I was younger: where is my future husband, what is he doing right now*? Now I look at my three sons and wonder who they will love as much as I love their dad.

*My husband, as it turns out, was busy being married and raising children while I was in algebra class day dreaming about him. The colors of our childhood don't line up, but the colors of our future do.

Rosalie said...

I haven't even read this post because I had to quickly comment that you and I were supposed to see this TOGETHER?! Who did you cheat with on me?
R

Up Mama's Wall said...

Ok, the day after I saw 500 Days of Summer I Googled the hell out of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I have the worst old lady crush on him. And when I discovered we have the same birthday (11 years apart) I took it as a sign. You may lust after him, but he's MY boyfriend (the Mister is oddly ok with this).
Oh, and I don't believe in THE ONE but I do believe that whoever loves Zoey (please let it be Oliver) will be darn lucky indeed. Unless, of course, he crosses you.

Simply Mel {Reverie} said...

Damn, how do you do it? How do you convey my deepest and strongest feelings about losing my lil' crumbs love to a boy years from now????

He better love her as if she is the most beautiful and incredible goddess on Earth. She is Earth's Pearl, and for this she only deserves the cream of the crop.

And yes, I could and do have a total crush on the squinted eye boy in 500 days of summer. He makes me hot and bothered...

Petunia Face said...

Rosalie! I forgot we were going to see this movie together! Okay, can I make it up to you--can we see September Issue together (the doc on Anna Wintour)? I am fairly certain Bryan would never ever see that with me.

Everyone else--back off Joseph (note the first name basis). I dropped Paul Rudd from my List for him--don't you think I've lost enough already? :)

Anonymous said...

I am going to write this quick so as not to hurt my hubs feelings. I think that the manboy from 500 summers is just yum-o! I loved your post. New here and definitely following your thoughts after today! Happy SITS day and can't wait until you are the featured blogger :o)
Other things I loved: your pseudo threat to your future son-in-law, and the long exposure to the flying insects video. It almost made me forget how much I hate night insects and for a moment I thought them to be slightly beautiful...

My best, Lynn

Petunia Face said...

Lynn,
What is SITS day? *fervently hoping it has nothing to do with sitz baths...*

I sat here and tried to figure out what it is and here are my best guesses:
So Is Today Saturday
Still In The Soup
Say I'm Terribly Sorry
Shit! It's The Sun! (highly influenced by my latest excessive watching of True Blood)


I'm thinking I'm not even close here.
Help?
xoxo,
S

Unknown said...

Wow. What a beautiful way you weave words together. I was blog hopping today and landed here because of your adorable blog name and the captivating picture that went along with a comment you left somewhere. Nice to meet you.

Maggie May said...

those flight patterns are awesome

i want to see that movie too

Amoco said...

I know in earlier posts you have mentioned your wish of writing a book and your fear of failure but I swear to you your writing is some of the most heartfelt and unique I've ever come across, you could write your version of the daily news and you'd have no problem getting published. You have no need to fear. This was a beautiful post.

Megan @ Lovely Happenings said...

I am in love with 500 Days of Summer. They both are absolutely adorable!

bakingwithplath said...

Oh how I have loved Joseph Gordon-Levitt for so long now. I don't know why it is taking him so long to propose.