heart of stone

ive had a plastic snowman juice cup size of wine. the good kind. it was on sale for $4.95. why don't they just say $5? anyway, it's white zinfandel only it’s pink. why is white wine pink? idid pick it for the color though. it looked soft. in vino veritas. so here is some truth. i’m inebriated. i cannot hold my liquor. my Dragon thought it was hysterical, because i am a funny inebriated person. i hate the word drunk. Dragon said i never got drunk because i never drank enough to qualify. he said when i got inebriated i would finally liberally use contractions. he liked that i relaxed enough to use contractions. here’s another truth. when i was in college, i joined a math club. i used to have a shirt that said, “don’t drink and derive.” and i didn’t. i didn’t have my first drink of alcohol until i was 20. it was after my mother died and my father had kicked me out.

here’s another truth. when i was in high school, i was the astronomy nerd, as in the only one. i read every book i could get my hands on. i wanted to go to the moon. funny, isn’t it? i’ve been looking at the moon my whole life and wishing i could get away. get away from my childhood. get away from people who called me Fluke. get away from my first husband. and now get away from here so i can find him. i want to find my Dragon. the full moon was so cold and silvery the night he died. i hope he wasn’t cold.

but i digress.

my high school had a planetarium. i was such a good student that i was the only one who was trusted to run the planetarium and give the shows for the elementary school kids who came. my Dragon loved that. we’d lie out on the beach below the house we’d rented and i’d point out the constellations and the stars. we kept talking about getting a really good telescope when we had the money and i’d asked for a camera mount so i could take photos of, well, yes, the moon, but also Mars and Jupiter, and maybe out towards Saturn.

as it was though, our money went for the kids and food and that was enough for me. we had such a great time. the cove was my whole world and i never wanted to leave it. i could take photos of the moon rising up over our house without a telescope.

i love him. i miss him. he gave me so much that money can’t ever get you. he worried about not being able to give me the things i never had. i kept telling him i'd had some things but i’d never had love. he gave me love. he wanted to give me the house we both fell in love with though and that would have been nice. we would have had a great time saving it.

but all i wanted was him. he gave me confidence in myself. he thought i had talent. he loved my art. all of it. he understood me when i told him i had so many thoughts and ideas and that i had to use different mediums. stained glass, sculptures, woodcarvings, paintings, sewing, and photography. he bought me a really nice camera. my first digital actually. i’d always been a 35mm snob but film costs so he bought me the digital and turned me lose.

these guys are so hard to get. digital was perfect in that i could just delete rather than agonize over the negatives.

but my digital is failing. it’s grinding and i’m losing pixels. ld. so old and worn out. i went outside to take photos of the moon and i started crying tonight about it sounds so sad inside, and because the moon will be full Tuesday or Wednesday. so i had a plastic cup of wine. it has snowmen on it. i got a set of 8 at the dollar store for Christmas. they are so jolly and the red cup makes the pink white zinfandel seem so festive. but very little is lightening my mood tonight because my camera is slowly dying.

i know, i can get another one. but this is the one my Dragon got me. it has memories. it’s the one that took the last photos of him, on that day. hours before he died. smiling his “why do you need another photo of me” smile. because he is handsome. and wonderful. and strong. and he loves me and i love him and i want to touch him. i want to talk to him. i want to be near him again.

i’ve been without him for so long now and i guess, you know, depending upon fate, it’s only just getting started.

my tinnitus is bad tonight. i turned off the television a long time ago and just have music playing.

so the heart of stone. we had this friend who was a widower. a lobsterman. i think i’ve mentioned him before. he lent us the scuba gear to swim to the island. he told us about the house we lived in. he knew we rented but we had rented for 18 months. it was ironic that we were so quickly accepted in town. we found out from the lobsterman that it was because the locals saw us out in every kind of weather there was. and people liked my sculptures and paintings. i was accepted as an artist. my Dragon was accepted because, well, i mean look at him. he’s cute. he’s gregarious. people just gravitated to him. he is adorable.

anyway, heart of stone. i have to stay on task.

the lobsterman said that down on the rocks by our house was a heart that was naturally cut into the granite. he said few of the locals knew of it either. it was one of those magic things that you find and keep to yourself. you pass it along only to those you feel would appreciate it. he said he liked that we held hands where ever we walked, and the fact that we’d walk from the house on the cove all the way into town and out onto the Neck. he liked that about us. he could tell we were close.

so he thought we’d appreciate the heart of stone. he said he doubted the owners of the house knew it was there. they lived in New York and bought the house sight unseen and only ever rented it. it was an investment for them. how they could not live there, even as summer people, was beyond us but it was our good fortune to get to live there.

so we went out looking for the heart of stone. there’s a lot of rock out there. Rockport isn’t just a metaphor. it took us 3 weeks to find it. but we did. and every day we went to look at it. it’s on the side of a huge boulder that is turned toward the ocean. and it is true. the heart is naturally cut. looking at it, it is a definite heart. touching it, it is rough and uneven. like life. life has always been rough and uneven for me. until my Dragon. he saved me. he loves me. i cannot think of it in the past tense.

tonight, with my snowman cup of pink white zinfandel helping me accept the upcoming demise of the camera my Dragon bought me, i am going to make believe the heart of stone was there for my Dragon and me.

i guess the pink white zinfandel is wearing off. i have stopped relaxing my sentence patterns. i have stopped thinking in contractions. i am sitting here with an empty red, plastic cup with snowmen on it and i have typed away the mind fuzzies.

at this point, at this time of night, my Dragon would have smiled his worldly, devilish smile, winked at me and said, “here love, have just half a cup more. i’ll make sure you get to bed alright.”

i sorely miss his laugh.