Thinking in Circles

 
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  I'm staying at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown San Antonio tonight.  I'm meeting up with a friend tomorrow.  We're meeting at a museum in the morning and we may also go to the zoo.  Her baby is a little older than mine.  My baby is asleep in the oversized chaise chair by the plush, draped window.    

  The American flag flutters feverishly outside my window.  A classic movie featuring Betty Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Ronald Reagan graces the sleek flat screen which looks a little ironic on top of the Spanish antique armoire with little brass feet, artistic embellishments in wood inlay, creamy marble surface on the top, a lively little green plant slanting toward a window on the bottom shelf.  The theme of the room is decidedly nautical.  I do like it.  The wall wears a monumental painting of a stormy sea, two ships slanting in the violent wind, framed in gold.  I look at the flag outside again.  Very windy out but no rain.

   Across the street people are watching a movie in the park.  I'm still listening to this movie in my room.  The other classic movie just ended.  Another one with Betty Davis just started:  The Man Who Came to Dinner.  The actress who played Glenda the Good is in it.  Makes me think of the summer I was in the play The Wizard of Oz.  I was in the chorus.  That summer marked the first time I fell for a gay guy.  It wouldn't be the last.  One of the hazards of growing up in theater.  

  That makes me think about myself as a child, and all the things I wanted to be one day.  I was always trying to get at something, something I knew not what.  Something instinctual wanted me to get at it by drawing, painting, telling, and writing stories.  I loved my stories, stories about cacti coming to life, girls turning into trees, princes and princesses playing with witches and warlocks, and a little boy who knew how to grow and shrink at will.  I often pretended to be him when I was at church and I imagined myself being able to shrink so small I could fit inside the pocket where the hymnals went so I could take a little nap.  Telling stories was something I did all the time.  I wasn't "practicing".  I was being.  I was living.  And I resented interruptions like dinner, bath time, and worst of all, homework.  

  I never liked school as much as a smart kid should've.  I found it unnecessarily laborious, boring, and too full of danger.  I was afraid of mean kids and often pretended to be one so as not to be mistaken for an easy target.  Growing up with blond hair in El Paso, Texas was a treacherous business.  Which makes me think about being a minority.  I was definitely a minority in El Paso, a city with a Latin American population of at least 95%.  It was interesting and wonderful in many ways, too many to mention for this little entry.  

  Which makes me crave my favorite Mexican food.  I should try and find something good tomorrow.  I'm in San Antonio after all.  I seem to remember a place called Mi Tierra; an impressive, orotund Mexican restaurant, quite authentic fare, multiple vast rooms, each one decorated as a different holiday, dripping with lights of all colors year round.  As you walk toward the exit you find an enormous case of Mexican baked goods.  Oh, my.  Now I'm really craving Mexican food.  Thinking in circles.  

  But what I meant to write about was this room.  Impressive!  Full of antiques.  A miniature boat atop a white cement sconce of some sort "sails" above the crackled, blue desk.  A helm wheel, polished wood, adorns the plush bed drapery, all stripped cream, gold and navy blue.  Makes me think about my father.  He was in the navy way before I was born.  I used to wear his sailor pants and jacket in high school.  They barely fit.  My dad was a real stick back then.  I was pretty slender when I was a teenager, too.  

  One time my Dad read us the love letters he wrote to mom, the ones he wrote while on the Enterprise in the Far East during the Vietnam War.  They were just kids and they were married.  And they are married still.  What a phenomenon.  Makes me think about my failed marriage and my second, my happy marriage.  How can I even use the same word?  The first was fraught with confusion, darkness, and the deepest loneliness.  The second is so sweet, and full, and innocent somehow.  

  Sometimes Ely likes to talk about what ifs.  "What if we had kept in touch all those years ago?  What if we had gotten married younger?  To each other, instead of suffering through our failed relationships and respective divorces."  I don't know.  But something tells me I had to suffer some, to somehow deserve the goodness I now call life.  I think about the arduous nature of my first marriage.  I think about how awful and slow it was to recover after such a long, terror of a marriage to a very unhealthy person.  Maybe it wasn't necessary for me to suffer so.  But it happened all the same.  No sense in regret.  But in all honesty, sensible or not, I do have regrets; more than a few.  I regret not doing my homework.  I regret smoking.  I regret being awful toward my parents.  I regret being mean to my siblings.  I regret punching that sassy girl in the face in high school.  I regret all my meanness, and it was considerable.  I regret never playing sports.  I regret not riding a bicycle more.  I regret never learning to dive.  I regret not taking piano lesson seriously.  I regret not paying enough attention to my inclinations, the artistic ones especially.  I regret indulging my doubts.  I regret doing it still.    

  Looking out my window I seem to notice the wind has died down to scarcely a breeze.  I better say my prayers and read my scriptures and fall asleep so I won't be a bore tomorrow, but before I sign off I just want to say I love this nautical room and I love America and her flag and my sweet, sleeping baby, Betty Davis, Spanish antiques, room service, and Macintosh.  But most especially, I love Ely and Aria.  Good night,

Moon.