TheBanyanTree: Shawn Phillips Hair

[Margaret R. Kramer]

Do any of you remember Shawn Phillips?  He’s a great guitarist who had the
most beautiful long blonde hair.  I consider his music kind of folk/fantasy,
very mellow and relaxing.  He was gorgeous and when I was in my late teens
and early 20s, Shawn Phillips my idea of the ultimate man.

I had a chance to turn myself back into a 20 year again at lunch on Friday.
I went to Potbelly’s and got myself a Little Tuna and a cup of chicken
noodle soup.  I sat down in the commons area with my sandwich, soup, and
newspaper.

Before I began eating, I looked up and saw the Shawn Phillips hair just a
couple of tables away from me.

It floated to the man’s waist, tresses of delicate blonde hair, covering his
back like a cape.  My 55 year old body instantly turned into a slender 20
year old nymph, with a small waist, firm breasts, and no cellulite.  I could
feel my own dark brown hair (with no gray strands) growing towards my waist.

I want to feel his hair brush across my face.  I wanted the strands of his
hair to caress my body.  I wanted to hold him tight against me.

I wanted to see his face, but I could only see his back.  He never turned
around while I was eating, but maintained a conversation with his buddies
with his face pointed away from mine.  I didn’t know if he was handsome or
plain, but I knew his hair was beautiful.

And for a moment, I was young again, with the passions and fantasies of
youth.

And that’s what happens when I hibernate too long.  I turn a chance sighting
of a man’s beautiful hair into the major event of my day.

But we are turning a corner.  The days are getting longer again.  When I was
outside on Saturday morning, to fill the bird feeders, I could hear the
early spring calls of the birds rather than just silence.

It’s not snowing at a frenetic pace anymore.  The snow seems to content to
drop a half inch or so rather than several.  And if that keeps up, the snow
mounds will gradually melt away and we’ll be able to see the street again
when we pull out of the driveway.

Another sign of spring is Super Bowl Sunday.  The Super Bowl is like the
unofficial end to the holiday season.  It’s truly our last chance to party
and eat and act silly before we really have to get serious about our
expanding waist lines and alcoholic tendencies.

My stepchildren in Milwaukee have been anticipating the Super Bowl for two
weeks.  They are way over the top Packer fans, even wearing Packers shirts
to their dad’s funeral.  They’ve been bleating all over acebook about how
great the Packers are.  They’ve sent out email with cheers for the Packers.
It never stops, even during the offseason, but it’s really bad now that the
Packers are in the Super Bowl.

I kept wondering how Ray would have reacted to this game today.  He came to
Minnesota as a Packers fan.  On days when the Packers played the Vikings, he
would slip a Brett Favre football card into my lunch bag.  Or send a Packers
related email to me at work.

Gradually, he became a Vikings fan.  He never liked Favre.  He called him
Bart Starr, but it wasn’t a compliment.  He said Favre “just slings the ball
and hopes someone catches it.”

And Ray became part of the Vikings fabric, always hoping for glory, but
never getting there.

Ray might want to Packers to win, just for old time’s sake, or he might want
the Steelers to win, just to beat the Packers.
But I think what he would really want, would be to see a good game.  Most
Super Bowls are very boring.  One team beats the crap out of the other and
that’s it.

I can’t remember his last Super Bowl in 2008.  I’m sure he watched it.  He
loved football.

I’m also hoping that the Super Bowl will be the beginning of the end for the
New Year’s Resolutions people at the gym.  Oh, it was crowded today.  I hate
working out in a mob.  I suppose a lot of people thought they better work
out today before they eat and drink themselves to oblivion while watching
the Super Bowl.

Do any of you remember when the Super Bowl was on during the afternoon
rather than at night?  I know the NFL is trying to pick up prime time
advertising dollars, but a lot of us have to go to work and school tomorrow,
and really don’t want to stay up till 10:00 pm or later.  I wish they would
move it back to a Sunday afternoon game.

Susan, Quincy, and I went to a Vietnamese restaurant after Quincy’s
basketball game yesterday to celebrate the Chinese New Year, the year of the
Rabbit.  Quincy was born in a rabbit year, 1999.

Quincy is in 6th grade now.  We talked about bullying in school.  He
mentioned some kids were bullying him earlier in the school year.  He took
care of it by throwing a football in the instigator’s face.

I told him bullying never really ends.  The office I work in now is
dominated by women who have worked a long time together.  It’s like being in
high school.

I’ve never been very good at figuring out the complicated ways women have of
networking.  I miss cues and alliances and whether to follow or be on my
own, so consequently I’ve never had a lot of women friends.

One of the younger women has decided she doesn’t like me very much, so she
started a covert campaign of being very nasty to me.  She doesn’t answer my
questions or is very sarcastic when she does.  She’s screamed at me several
times for no reason.

I haven’t quite figured out why I’m her target, since I didn’t know her from
a hole in the ground when all this started.  I try to avoid her most of the
time, but we have to work together once in a while.  I let my boss know that
this person is out of line, and I think he told her boss, so she was better
for a while.  It was a fake better, because I can tell the “nicey nicey”
attitude is all on the surface.

We don’t have to friends and hold hands and sing around the camp fire, but
we do have to respect each other enough to the job done.

She’s my client, and I take the high road, basically smile and say nothing
in response, when she throws a zinger my way.  But I sure would like to
throw a football in her face! 

Joe and I went to Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor last night.
Joe has never seen or even heard the show before, but he loved it.  It was a
warm evening in downtown St Paul.  It was the night of the St Paul Winter
Carnival Torchlight parade.  And we saw fireworks as the Vulcans overthrew
King Boreas to kick winter aside and smooth the way for spring to arrive.

For our personal Super Bowl party, just Joe and me, Joe is roasting a
Cornish game hen, veggies, and other delights.  I baked a chocolate cake and
put together a cheese and cracker tray.  I bought a red wine from a
Minnesota vineyard, so we’ll have that with our meal and see how it tastes.

And, hopefully, as we watch the Super Bowl, the Steelers will throw a
football in Packers’ faces and end green and gold nightmare that never seems
to go away for Vikings fans.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net
www.linkedin.com/in/margaretkramer

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.      
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning