play with me

me at Seaside, Florida
photo by d smith kaich jones

My friend Debi, writer, photographer, artist 

shot this fun photo of me on the beach last year in Seaside, Florida

I drown myself in her writings, so asked her to guestpost here on my blog this day, same day I am on airplane to Florida 

to visit my Mom...enjoy!

She said “playfulness” when I asked what to write about, and I said cool, no problem, I am all about that, but then I remembered I wasn’t, that I’d mistaken wearing flirty skirts and twirling in the Texas sun as playfulness, when in truth maybe it wasn’t, and maybe wearing bare feet all the time wasn’t playfulness either, and I started to worry, started to think, but by then it was too late; I’d said I would – I’d said I could - and then I started to laugh to myself, started to laugh at myself, cause I remembered her cartwheeling down the cold-ass Florida beach, and I can’t do that, never could, never did, and then just the idea of playfulness became damn hard work in my this-is-your-brain-on-menopause, and it made me feel sorry for myself, that no cartwheel ability, and that made me think even more, and I had to just stop it.  Thinking will get in the way of play every time.  So I shut up talking to myself and just wrote.

Going to a baseball game with girls is more fun that going with boys.  Us girls will Cotton Eye Joe our way through the 7^th inning stretch, even if we only have half of a part of a clue about what we’re doing cause it’s been so long since we did it for real, in a dancehall or under the stars on an open front porch; we will just stop thinking and dance around and toss out a yeeeeehaw or two or three, and we will laugh at ourselves and silly happy sparks will fly from our eyes.  If you go with boys, they will be buying more beer. 

I hurt my boyfriend’s feelings when I told him this, cause he sometimes mistakes fun for play, and I felt bad about that, so you should know that he once danced me across a parking lot at the end of a hard day’s work, the car door open, Guy Clark on the radio, the sun just beginning to fall behind the trees.  It was a damn fine piece of romantic playfulness in the late summer twilight and every once in a while he remembers and dances me around my office just for old times sake.

Which reminds me of one of our first dates, motorcycling into the overgrown countryside, stopped by a locked gate leading onto public property, and how we trespassed our behinds and that motorcycle beyond that gate, into the silence of waiting trees.  Which reminds me of climbing fences with a girlfriend, never mind that we were wearing skirts – there was a hill beckoning and we had to see what was on the other side.  In my life, amongst my friends, girls and boys are equal – we will always take the road we’ve never been down before.   Play is spelled l-o-s-t in the moment.  

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pink shoes

flipflops

boots

bare feet painted toenails on the dashboard,

a full tank of gas

and the map tossed out the window cause it doesn’t lead to play.

you draw that road yourself with magic markers.

pass go.

don’t ask mother, may i.

hopscotch.

let go.

cartwheel, baby

Emma Tree