TheBanyanTree: Things I Know Today

[Maria Gibson]

Chocolate cake mixed with pudding is pretty dang tasty but you probably
should mix it only moments before you are to eat it because the cake
sucks the life from the pudding.  The moist life.  It does, however,
when you put it all in a new cat box and cover it with processed cookies
and melted tootsie rolls, make a really gross presentation.  Gets lots
of laughs.

I am a helluva lot smarter now than I was twenty years ago, to include
smart enough to know I am far stupider today than I will be in 2023.

I cannot write anything if I don't have some 'think time.'  I need lots
of think time, perhaps way more think time than the average thinking
bear.  I miss being able to sit and feel the excitement burning
throughout my veins as I type so quickly that one might think I was
dyslexic if not for the corrections.  I miss the heat starting from my
toes and burning straight through to the roots of my hair as I watch
words come alive and gain momentum and personality.  Sometimes I go back
and read what I wrote a long time ago and find I can surprise myself
when I wait long enough to have forgotten the punch line.  Then I move
straight to thinking I should go back and rewrite and correct and edit
and...then I run out of think time.

Just like all old people have told me, time moves faster as you get
older.  True dat.

Ralph the computer guy is a hottie.  And don't let the name 'Ralph' fool
you.

I think average people make better movie critics than movie critics.
What in the world do they know about what we, the avergae Joe, like?
Nothing, right?  Their circle moves in a weird pattern, strange tides
and odd ebbs and flows.  I prefer to hear what my neighbor thinks and
then I'm a lot less hard on him when he gets it all wrong.  Second Hand
Lions was great while Lost in Translation sucked.  Take my word for it
because the critics said just the opposite was true.

There may be many sacrifices involved and the undertaking may be quite
huge but you will never be sorry when you make an effort to spend time
to get to know people.  I have held this view for a long time, probably
gained this insight within the last twenty years of maturing, but it was
YB who etched it in my heart and soul permanently.  I had plans to go
see her a few months before she died as I had not yet met her in
person.  I made plans and then realized that it was over my son's
birthday so I wrote to her that I wasn't sure I could make it then and
could I come a few weekends later?  She wrote back and said I should do
what I had to do but she was making no promises because, as she said,
"Darlin', I'm circling the drain...."  That was the March before she
stopped her painful circling and, as hard as that was to read, I thank
her for being that frank.

Friends don't have to tell you they are your friend.

The term 'little old lady' is so right on the money.  My grandmother has
shrunk and I can see that my mother has lost some stature.  I tend not
to see my mother the way she looks in the moment but rather as I
imprinted her at some time unknown in my childhood.  I don't think of
her as a specific age but almost as a still photo in my mind.  So when I
look up and see her shorter and with softer, folding skin I'm a little
surprised.  Wrinkles are what midlifers get.  Age makes your skin
downright fold up like origami so you can't even imagine what the
original surface looked like.  Big difference.

No matter how much weight I lose, I feel the same inside.  I catch a
reflection sometimes and I am amazed.  Other times I find I am gawking
and am a little ashamed to think someone will see that and think I am
vain.  They can't know I wonder who that is and I wonder who it will be
a year from now.  I had so many ideas about what it would be like and no
idea it would be nothing like that at all.  You may think that I have
made an error in that statement and you may believe that I have repeated
myself but the distinction of the sentence as a whole is worthy of a
book.  I am happier than can be imagined and scared shitless.  My life
is exactly the same and totally different.  That sentence is also not a
mistake.  I am less than ten pounds from a one hundred pound loss and am
as much afraid of losing the last fifty pounds as I am of not losing any
more or of gaining it back.  Among other things, I just didn't see that
coming.

I, too, miss it when the tree is quiet.

Maria