... a continuation of policy by other means ...

AT THE HELM

Got lil’ Mook up and out just fine. One more wake up, and next week is Spring Break and no worries. I kept it light with her, using the story of the little boy who’s Mom let him use the public transit in NYC to get home (featured on ’The Today Show’) as a discussion piece. I told her how my Mom (who didn’t learn how to drive until her 20’s), would ride me around on the bus, and how she’d let me go off on my own, at 10, 11 years old. The Mom made a good point about how we are creating children who aren’t ready to deal with the being on their own and are fearful. The expert was full of crap and I be her children are the ones referenced in the buper sticker that says ‘my kid beat up your honor roll kid today’!

I explained to her that if things were different around here, I would let her do more, not because I am ‘easy’ but because I think that she can handle the responsibility. While I don’t know what you will encounter out on your own, I do know what I am sending OUT … and I am confident in you and what you can do. I reminded her that when I leave her home alone, I keep the same simple instructions, because the rest, I expect HER to fulfill the expectations I have of her, and she already knows what they are. ‘Do that‘, I said, and the rest will fall into place.

Joked her about giving her a ride on my bike to school. ‘I’ll walk’, she replied with a smile. We’ll be alright.

MOOKIE’S BEST SISTER

She has four, one a little younger than she is. She is one of the two in the middle I have no issues with. I don’t know where her best sister is in relation to the one that I don’t like, but they are both older than Mookie.

She was always cool with me, letting Mookie drive her car when we’d hang, and spend the night at her place, being ‘grown’. They’d eventually move together, and that is where Q-dog, best sister’s ‘boyfriend’ came in. He was always a weasely, scurrilous cat, and I didn’t care for him at all. Mookie once told me how uncomfortable he made her feel when they would be at the house alone together. I made sure to do that ape thing, where they beat on their chest, to warn other males who was who in the place to be. I simply reminded him, though he was fatter than me (as opposed to bigger, or larger), there was a reason my name would get mentioned in the local sports page regarding amateur boxing. I can do that there thang! And everybody knew it … IT WAS IN THE PAPER!

… had to do it like that, because Mookie wouldn’t let me do what I WANTED to do. I remember saying something to the effect of, ‘blood is thicker than water and your sister will get over it, I just wanted some sparring!’. Funny, I can remember moments of fights or near fights pretty clear, but other things are foggy and gray. As much as meeting Nebraska in Chicago meant, the moments are becoming foggy … but I remember seeing her framed with the backdrop of the lights at the pier. I really should have got a picture of that moment … that was Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan … Cary Grant/ … for me at least. Unforgettable.

I felt that I had ‘put my life in her hands’ by coming out there to see her. Something about letting my best sister look out for me just wasn’t sitting ‘right’ with me (after all, I changed HER diapers! Wasn’t ready to let her take care of me!) That I felt comfortable letting her ‘hold me’ like that is …

… for later. I will come back to it.

… I may be a kettle …

Q-Dog was always a slimy, shifty cat. He is a useless, cracked pot, blackened with soot and grit. There is no small coincidence that Best Sister up and moved to Vegas … that is where Q-Dog lives, with his new life, wife, whatever. In a strange roundabout way, this makes me even more hopeful … again, for later. So I am guessing that Best Sister and q kept in touch, and as his family is still here, he would connect when he would come back for visits.

Getting back to the above point, I may be a cad, but I still have my boundaries. Mookie is the first and only girl I ever ‘called back’. Even my ‘keep in touches’ were made when I was single, and not to lead her on or create false hope. I missed her as a friend as much as my girl, so every other year or so, I would write and call, just to see how she was. I have always felt that since I am ‘a different kind of cop’, that someone who would want me, WOULD WANT ME. Sister girls need to be able to make a conscious decision about being with me, because I don’t want to sound boastful, but I am not quite like other cats. I canwatch ‘Martha Stewart’ and enjoy it, just like I can watch a boxing match and enjoy that. I am good company, and I like to talk, and no, I wouldn’t mind if you and the girls had coffee, because I would make the finger sandwiches and desserts!

Because I have finally found out what it would be like to ‘back track’, I feel I have lined out one less choice and am another step closer to the love that I hope for.

FEELING COMFORTABLE (Freedom Of Choice)

Like the kid on ‘The Today Show’, I wanted and asserted my independence early. My Mom let me go to concerts, me and my sister Jan, at the Cobo and the ‘big red barn’, old Olympia Stadium, picking us up outside afterwards. I would go to see Tommy Hearns when he would fight in Detroit, and I used to catch the SEMTA bus from 7 mile and Telegraph to Lakeside Mall (you find THAT on Google Earth, to see what a journey THAT was!). I remember her putting Jan on my bike, rent money order in my pocket, and being told to ride through racist Dearborn to deliver the rent!

So in going to see my Best Sister, I still wasn’t ready to hand myself over to her. Not yet. But I ‘felt’ Nebraska, and when I mentioned that we meet in Chicago (at least I think I brought up the possibility), I felt comfortable trusting her with my life.

Now, it is and it isn’t that serious. I have taken risks before, but I always acknowledge the possibility of what could go wrong, even horribly wrong. The stories of bad internet connections are legion, and this had the outline to be one, except…

… except I FELT Nebraska. For whatever reason, I always, always have. So despite all the ‘ifs’ that were in play, the biggest IF, ‘if I am right about her’, was the one that mattered most of all.

And I was. And I still am.

That is why my heart is in such a flux right now. Because after meeting her, she changed my destiny. Since November, I have known I am supposed to be in another place, in another time. I have set my mind to get ready for that ‘happening’ because it is coming. I knew I had to get back ‘into shape’, because I had to get ‘into the ring’ for one more go. There is always one more fight left in a fighter … and I thinkI may have more than that in me.

The reason that I say that ‘I put my life in her hands’, is the only way to describe how certain I was about her. See, I have had to do that before, trust people with just that, and though you can use that phrase for a metaphor, it is literal enough to show how strong my emotions were at that time, and about her. Despite my worries, and there were more than a few, I rode them out and I let go …

… she made me feel safe and cared for. Unlike how I feel now.

One of the things that I told Mookie when I said that I wanted to quit her, was that she was bad for my health. My first good blood pressure reading came after I told myself that I wanted to be happy, rather than be with her. So when she left this morning, saying that she was worried and wanted ME to be okay, I found it grating. I told her more than just thrice, that this needed to be a priority, and she never made it. Now, that her life is getting shifted, she wants to make something ..?

When I decided that I was going to see myself ‘out’, I also told myself that I would repeat it, over and over until I do, that I am done with her. I do feel that it is fair that I get things together, and go as I see fit. So, without bitterness or rancor, I am again saying that I am leaving Mookie, lil’ Mook, and this provincial town, once again.

Never to return.