The skirt

We explored the jungles of Central America searching for El Dorado on his 50-something inch plasma TV. The video game had wonderful graphics, and I soon lost track of time.

Eventually my cell phone chirped a reminder at me.

"I need to get going," I told him, and got up from the couch. I started gathering my things together--briefbag with laptop, winter coat, shoes...shoes... where were my shoes? I turned around to find him laying down on the couch, hands smoothing his jeans over a respectable erection. I looked at him and shook my head.

"I have to go."

"You're wearing a skirt," he said. "Seems a shame to waste it." He opened his arms and smiled.

Anxiety tightened my throat even as I felt myself flushing with warmth. He does so love me riding him, my skirt pushed up my thighs, his hands alternating between gripping my hips and squeezing my bouncing breasts.

"I'm going to be late," I said, despairingly. I had pushed the time-limit already so I could be with him for as long as possible.

I looked away and when I did, I spotted my shoes. I shoved my feet into the black pumps and adjusted the fabric of my 1940's style skirt so that it would flow freely.

"A kiss then," he said, his arms still raised.

"Ok," I said, and moved back to the couch. I raised the hem of my skirt and straddled his legs, then moved forward until my hands dug into the cushion on either side of his chest. Looking down at him, I could not help but see the love and concern on his face. He was worried about me, he wanted me to take some time off and stay with him, get some rest. I lowered myself to kiss him and my hips moved forward, rubbing my mound against his hardness.

It was my undoing.

I moaned as we kissed, nipping and nibbling and sucking at each others lips and tongues. Grinding. He pushed up with his hips as mine moved against him. I could feel the inevitable wetness building inside me. God, he makes me so juicy.

"You've got time," he said, his hands working at my skirt.

I stood up and dropped my coat off my shoulders, then hooked my fingers under my skirt and dropped my panties too. He watched me, unbottoning his fly and opening his pants. I reached in and freed his balls, then let my hand glide upwards along his shaft. Thick. I gave him a squeeze. So thick.

I straddled him again, one hand bracing against the couch, the other reaching between my thighs. I wanted him inside me, the urgency pressed at me, and he, he was worried about lubrication. I have to be wet to take him, or I bleed.

He gasped when he slid into me, when that hot moistness enveloped him. His eyes closed and this blissed-out expression settled on his face. It was only when he opened his eyes that I started my descent. We gazed into each other, eyes wide and filled with wonder. So much joy and pleasure in something so simple as joining. I wanted to savor that moment, but I was concerned about the time, and so I rode him hard and fast.

I rode him through three orgasms in twenty minutes. He showed every sign of enjoying himself immensely, but no sign of coming, himself. So I got unsteadily to my feet, dropped to my knees, and put my mouth on him. With my lips, tongue and fingers I coaxed from him the gift of his seed, and I swallowed it with a smile.

I stepped into my panties, put on my shoes and coat, and grabbed my bag. The scent of him was on my hands and face, and my center glowed from the warm friction of him moving inside me. My panties were already drenched. I was covered in a fine layer of perspiration. I was short on time and anxious about it. But for all that, I was flooded with endorphines and grinning like a fool.

The skirt had not been wasted.

weariness

There are many kinds of weariness.
There is physical weariness, which is remedied by rest.
There is mental weariness, which is remedied by sleep.
There is emotional weariness, which is remedied by love.
And there is weariness of the spirit, which is assuaged by time.

I am bone-deep weary on all fronts. Had I the energy, I might even be in despair, but alas I'm too weary even for that.

A dear one opened his home to me and I slept 14 hours--unheard of for me, the woman who never sleeps more than six hours. I slept, making up for the long nights of giving meds every hour to the sister who is still living but jealous of the one who died. I am so sad that every ounce of water in me feels like a pound of tears.

I am home now, and in a short while I will be going back to work, back to the world of taxes and financial services. A world of precision. A world whose parameters I know well and know how to control. A world in which the solution is always 'zero', regardless of the problem. At work, when my colleagues get caught up in the drama of an error, I remind them that they are focusing on the problem, instead of the solution.

What is my solution to loss and death and weariness? WORK.

Leaving Massachusetts

The sun shone. The rain came, a torrential downpour complete with thunder and lightning. And then it snowed. And rained some more. All in 10 days. I'd forgotten how bizarre the weather could be in New England.

She was brain dead but we kept her on life support long enough for them to find donors for her organs. Four people were given a second chance at life. This is a comfort to me somehow, knowing that some part of her lives on in others. Like me, she had no children.

She was cremated. Her urn is actually a beautiful wooden box, which we will take to Hawaii. We will disburse her ashes in the same place we did our mother's ashes 6 years ago.

I went to her boyfriend's house to get her things. I had this odd moment, this memory-echo, when I went to get into the rental car stuffed full of clothing and paperwork and medical supplies. I remembered Tammy and me in Hilo, standing next to my mother's car, which contained all of her belongings. It seemed so sad that her life fit into a car, and my sister Tammy sobbed then, horrible wracking sobs that echoed in the jungle with the same mournful quality as wolves howling. My other sister unpacked the rental car when I got to her place. I couldn't seem to do it. I was so blocked on it, for some reason. But she understood and did it for me.


We had a quiet ceremony at the funeral home. Just family and a few close friends. Friends of hers opened their restaurant early and served us lunch. I had homemade tortellini soup and a portobello mushroom salad. It was all quite tasty. It was the first thing I remember tasting in a week, actually.

Friday we opened her bar for a goodbye party. Last call for alcohol. It was just for 4 hours, but there must have been 250 people who showed up to pay their respects and send her off. I think she would have liked it. She always threw a good party.

I'm in Portland now, with an 18 hour turn-around and then to California to see my sister Caro before she dies. She said come now, she is tired. The tumor on her aorta makes every beat of her heart painful, and she is ready to go. And so I am coming.

Such a painful way to start a new year, with so much loss and suffering. I could make it mean a lot of different things about the world, about life... I could chose to make it mean that life is unfair, that it sucks--all sorts of things. I choose instead to make it mean that Tammy is free of suffering and Caro soon will be, and that life is what it is and every day we have is the most important day of our lives.

Beautiful Soul

I was fortunate to be her sister for all of her 38 years. She was a vibrant, extraordinary woman with a smile that never grew up. She always looked so vulnerable and sweet when she smiled, like she was six years old and sharing a part of her soul. Her last two years were pain-filled and exhausting, and now she is free. For this I am grateful, though selfishly, I wish she was still here.

I'd gotten lulled by the daily routine of my life, and forgotten its transience. If the only certainty in life is that we will die, and the time of death is uncertain, then it is best to live each day as fully as possible, lulled by nothing, taking none of it for granted.

Life, Death, and the Amaryllis

I am the dance of snowflakes as they tumble down a chasm. My nature cannot overcome the howling wind nor the inevitability of gravity, but I dance anyway. Is it the dance of life, or is it the dance of death? I do not know. I know only that I dance.

I packed two suitcases last night, one for the East Coast, one for the West Coast. I awakened from a bad dream at 2am. So much on my mind, so many trips ahead. California to see one sister who is dying, Massachusetts to be with another for surgery to remove cancer, and lo, phone calls at 4am, a third sister in a coma. The brain aneurism fairy visited her in the middle of the night. Frantic father, torn between two coasts -- the deathbed of one daughter, and now another. How sad, to have three daughters in their thirties sick or dying. He must feel like the biblical Job.


"How are you holding up?" a friend asked.
I answered, "The amaryllis on my windowsill is blooming."
A moment later I thought, How Zen.

Fuzzy New Year