Anybody here seen my old friend


Belinda, Cathy, Mary, David....

I am thinking about my old Virginia Beach friends.
And the times I made the effort to find them. And the times
I called them and how they never called back.

They mattered to me. Why didn't I matter?

David sent an email last fall after the F4 tornado hit here.
He wanted to make sure I was ok (my family too).

That's it.

I'm a transplant to this town. The town my father left when
he joined the Navy in 1941. The town he and my mom decided we'd
move back to when I was 13.

I have never felt at home anywhere. Never.

I fight this rootlessness. I think there must be something
good in being rooted. But I can't figure out what it is.

I feel so alone.

I have 30+ numbers saved in my cell
phone and can't think of one number I would dial at this
moment and feel there was someone at the other end
who would understand where I am.

I think that is the great cost this generation (mine
and my children's) will know. For all the reasons
knowing your neighbor and sitting on the porch
at night became passe, there are so many reasons
for mourning the end of "life as we knew it" when people
sat on their porches and talked to the people going
by and asked, with meaning, "How are you
Ms. Dubois? Why you've got the prettiest flowers
in all of Meridian!"

Progress. Yes, we;ve progressed. Into what?

Damn I'm drunk.