Happy New Year!

I wish you all a happy, healthy, fun, productive, organized (that's for you, T!), successful, joyful, laughter-filled, prosperous, and creative New Year.

Today's blog is a Chatty Cathy catch-up on my life and what has been going on for me lately.

So much has changed even in the last few months! My last entry, the paean to Andrew, was written about one month before the relationship ended. There was so much love there, but so many other things to overcome, too. I won't get into that on a public blog; I’ll just say that Andrew taught me many things about what a really good relationship can (and should!) be, and I am grateful for that.

November and December were great months for travel. I went to Japan from November 24 - December 11, two weeks for business and one for pleasure. It was one of the best vacations of my life. I was alone for my trip to Kyoto and loved it! I loved traveling by myself. I felt so independent. In a country where I didn't speak the language, couldn't read the signs, and was directionally challenged (I am directionally challenged in all countries, actually— it's my default setting), anytime I was able to find a place I was looking for, it felt like a major victory. Plus I could do what I wanted when I wanted, which was lovely. I found that I really enjoyed getting up early and leaving the temple at about 8am (did I mention I stayed in a temple?!? It was so lovely!), hiking/walking/sightseeing all day, coming back around 6pm, eating dinner, and writing/singing/reading until 9:30pm, when I would fall asleep. I didn't plan my days that way; that just turned out to be my natural rhythm. I met some wonderful people while I was there and actually stayed at the apartment of some new friends for the last two days of my trip. They were a fun, lovely couple and I am so grateful to them for their generosity and hospitality. I will write more about Japan in another entry. What a country! It's so much more civilized than the United States! (Except for the misogyny. And the teeth.)

Over the last few months, I have wanted to expand my circle of friends, and I am excited that I have been doing just that. It started in Japan and has continued since I have been home. I joined a few Meetup groups in the New York area and am enjoying going on outings that other people plan and to which I merely have to show up and have a good time. Since I’ve joined, I have been ice skating, hiking, and swing dancing. I love it! Not only have I been meeting great people, I have been doing things I wouldn’t normally be doing with my regular circle of friends.

I am looking forward to this year as my best yet and I wish the same for you!

When it rains it pours. I haven't written in my blog for months and today I'm posting not one, but two entries.

Today I've been thinking about some of the best days of my life. I was amazed to discover that many of them have occured within the last ten months. Since I have been dating Andrew, there are so many wonderful days to choose from, I hardly know where to start.

I could write about the morning he told me he loved me for the first time. He looked distressed and discomfited and I asked him if he needed to talk with me about something. He paused for a minute, then blurted out, “I love you!” which I felt as a physical, visceral shock down to my toes. That was a good day. But a little scary, too, to tell you the truth.

I could write about my day off in Amsterdam, when we had time at last to sightsee, but opted to stay in bed all day getting to know each other better (in all kinds of ways) instead. That was the same day Andrew found the “little red mouse” in the bathroom and I nearly died of embarrassment--and laughter (You will just have to use your imagination, because I am NOT elaborate). We laughed for 15 minutes straight, after which we jumped back into bed. The sheets looked like a murder scene that day and we didn’t care. It felt naughty and free and fantastic. That was a good day!

I could write about Valentine’s Day, when he wrote me a sonnet and brought me roses. I cried from happiness for the first time, but not the last, that night.

Or my perfect birthday, when Andrew got up at 4am to decorate my apartment, made me a Ho-Ho cake, helped me clean (“You look so sexy when you’re dusting,” became a favorite phrase of mine to use), took me to an amazing dinner at a steak house and then to perfect seats at the Broadway show that I had been wanting to see for months.

Or how about the day we discovered the Couch of Comedy in my apartment, spending an intimate day inside, but not that intimate, because any time we started to get frisky on the couch, something would happen and we couldn’t stop laughing. That might have been the beginning of Rule Number One (i.e. NO NOSEPLAY—bumping the previous Rule Number One (Always Go For the Comedy!) to Rule Number 1a. (The jury will note that the decision of bumping the first Rule Number One is still being contested by the opposing party, namely Andrew)). It was definitely, however, the beginning of my hate affair with the song “I Love You Baltimore” or “What’s Up Baltimore” or “Good News, Baltimore,” or whatever the hell the title is. It’s Frank Zappa, it has Baltimore in the title, and, word to the wise, it is NOT mood music.

I could even write about the night, two weeks ago, when we spent a perfect day in Ann Arbor, reminiscing, completely in love, then going to the Simpsons Movie, where “Spider Pig” immediately became our theme song, after which we headed back to the hotel, where I gnawed single-mindedly on a beef summer sausage with such passion that I got not one, but TWO pieces of sausage wrapper in my hair. After which Andrew chased me around with the orange juice container, sticking his tongue down it in a mockery of my solitary living habits (Brooke: “No one lives with me! It’s just me! Who cares if I drink out of the carton?” Andrew: “I guess I just haven’t given up the hope of having guests someday …”). Chasing me, lying down with me, and so comfortable with him am I that I start to pick my teeth! Um, hello! This is after he picked out sausage wrapper from my hair, mind you. And yet he was staring at me with loving fascination, clearly relishing this incredibly hilarious, intimate moment. This is a man who loves me, all of me, the good, the bad, and the strange. This is a man with whom I can be completely myself, something that has never happened before. This is the love of my life.

How can I pick a “best day”? They are ALL best days, even the hard ones, even the days when we both have to learn lessons. This is a man of humor, of kindness and compassion, of love. This is a man of tremendous heart. And I love him.

New Year’s Day 1996—I was dating Darren. Oh, how I adored him! I lived in New York City, he lived in my old hometown of San Antonio. He was the perfect man, or so I thought then. Handsome, lithe and strong, spiritual, fun, intelligent—I was smitten. I was also 22, so being smitten meant talking at least five times a day, in a time before cell phones. My phone bill was not to be believed. But I was obsessed. That’s not too strong a word, I think.

Anyway, this day was before our relationship went sour. We were still in the throes of passion and infatuation and couldn’t get enough of each other. I had met Darren through Boston, a mutual friend who worked with him at Starbucks. Boston, Darren and I became inseparable when I was in town. My very close friend at the time, Orli, became the fourth member of our group. We would stay up for hours talking about Life and life after Life, about our purpose in the universe, and other subjects that mattered. It was one of the most spiritually charged times of my life.

On this particular New Year’s Day, my parents were out of town and Orli and Boston came over to my house, where Darren and I were hanging out. We rented one of my favorite movies, Much Ado About Nothing, and made cookies and popcorn, laughing and talking the whole time. Then it was time to eat the black-eyed peas. For those of you who don’t know, it is a Southern tradition to eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day to ensure good luck for the rest of the year.

We sat around the table, a bowl of beans in front of each of us, water to our right. We decided to take the opportunity to go around the table and talk about what went on in the past year, what we were going through in the present and where we wanted to be in the future. We held hands as we started and after each person spoke, we closed our eyes and sent positive energy to that person. Well, by the time two of us had spoken, the energy was so intense that we couldn’t even (didn’t want to) let go of each other’s hands to get a drink! We lifted the glasses by maneuvering both sets of clasped hands on either side. Precarious, but it seemed the only way. I remember eating the black-eyed peas as animals would, eating with our mouths straight from the bowl so we wouldn’t have to let go of each other’s hands. It sounds so undignified when I write it, but somehow at the time it was exactly the right thing to do.

By the end of the round robin, we had so much healing, loving energy enclosed in our circle it felt like a waste just to let it go. We closed our eyes and sent that energy out into the world, to be used for healing wherever it was needed. And I could SEE the energy, great golden, pink arcs of it flying out from us, encircling the globe. After a few minutes of this, we finally let go.

Though my relationship with Darren has been over for 11 years, and my friendship with Orli faded years ago, I will always be grateful to them, to all of them, for that perfect, perfect day, forever captured in the amber of my mind. The love, the happiness, the sweetness of lovers and friends uniting in hearts and minds will live with me for the rest of my life.

April 28, 2004: My 31^st Birthday.

It was a pretty low key day, as birthdays go, and I was enjoying a quiet dinner with my friends and boyfriend at our favorite Chinese restaurant. By the end of the meal everyone had given me their various cards and gifts except for one notable exception: my boyfriend. Sometimes he could be shy about intimacy in a group setting, though, so I thought perhaps my gift was waiting at his house, where we were going to go after dinner. We had been dating for almost a year, after all; I knew that he probably had something pretty great up his sleeve. Well, I suspected. Hoped.

We left the restaurant and hopped into his van, chit-chatting about nothing in particular. As I got in, I took a quick look around to see if maybe he had stashed my gift in the car. Nothing out of the ordinary. Hmm. When we arrived at his house, I saw a little bag on the table. In a woman’s mind, a little bag means one thing: jewelry. Yay! It’s not that I even really wear jewelry, mind you. It’s just that when a man buys a woman jewelry…it’s serious. It was indeed jewelry—plastic earrings from his parents. Cute. Not from M.

“Hey, Baby, why don’t you go on upstairs while I go take a shower?” M. said, “Everything’s all ready.”

Everything’s all ready?!? This was it! The moment of truth. I raced up the stairs so fast I would have put Sea Biscuit to shame. I looked wildly around his room. Aside from clean sheets and a different duvet cover, there was nothing different. Maybe he meant it’s all ready for when he comes upstairs! That must be it.

I undressed, slid under the covers, and waited. Finally M. came in looking fine in his towel. “Did you have a good birthday, Baby?” “Yes,” I said. “Good.” He got into bed, kissed me on the forehead and said, “Goodnight.”

WHAT?!? I’m sorry: it’s my birthday, there’s no present, and we’re not even going to have birthday sex?!? It’s bad enough that I didn’t get an actual present, but no sex? Come on!

Hesitantly, because one does not want to be thought of as selfish, even when one is jumping out of one’s skin to find out what the HELL is going on, I said, “Um, M.?”

“Yeah, Baby?”

“I don’t want to sound selfish or demanding or to put myself forward, but…it’s my birthday…You’re my boyfriend and you didn’t get me a present?”

“Oh, no, Baby, I did! I didn’t tell you what it is yet?”

“No.”

“Oh, Baby! We’re going to go away next weekend. It’s a surprise! In fact, I had somewhere else that I was planning to take you, but something new just came up today that was even better, so we’re going to do that instead!”

“Really?” I asked tremulously.

“Oh, yeah! You’re going to love it!”

“Well…can you tell me what it was we were going to do before this other amazing thing came up?”

“Sure,” he said, “I was going to take you to Saratoga Springs Spa and give you the Queen for a Day package.”

What?!? Did you hear that? It's the sound of angels singing! He was going to take me to a spa for a day, but now we were going to do something even better! Wow! I mean, I’m a woman—what could be better than a spa? A weekend in Paris? A trip to Kripalu Yoga Institute for an intensive? There just aren’t that many things in this world that are better than a full day at a spa.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked.

“Yes,” I fairly sang.

“Good,” he said and snuggled up against me.

Still no birthday sex, though. I should have recognized it for the portent it was.

The following Friday, we piled our stuff into his car and away we went. I still had no idea where we were going, but M. was psyching me up, “Are you excited, Baby? Are you ready?” “Yes!” I would answer each time. I really was. The anticipation was killing me!

We drove. And drove. And drove. Four hours later we were passing near Lenox, Massachusetts and I had a moment of elation. “We’re going to Kripalu!” I exclaimed. “Nope, even better.” “Really?” “Yes.” Okay—better than Kripalu. That’s got to be pretty damn good. We drove another hour. And a half. Finally after five and a half hours, in New Hampshire at midnight, we pulled into a darkened neighborhood in what looked like the deep woods. There were no street lamps and everything was very dark. “Almost there, Baby,” M. said.

We pulled into the driveway of a large house, the only one with lights on in the whole street. For a few moments I thought that M. had brought me to a bed and breakfast in a remote, romantic part of New England. “This might be better than a spa,” I thought. And then a horde of people piled out of the front door and surrounded our car.

“M.!”

“M., hey buddy!”

“Wow, great to see you, M.!”

And ten people I had never seen before in my life pulled me out of the car, exclaiming, “This must be Brooke! How are you? Come on in!”

I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to do. THIS was my birthday surprise? A house in the middle of B.F.E. with ten strangers I’ve never met before, but who were obviously extremely close to M.? This was better than a spa?!?

Exhausted, confused, I didn’t even know how to begin articulating my feelings. I only knew that I was about to cry, but that I’d be damned if I would do it in front of a group of people I'd never met before, who were so obviously important to M.—and who I would apparently be spending the weekend with. How romantic.

“Come in, come in!” a sweet looking middle aged woman said. “I’m Michelle, this is Pat….” And on and on through the ranks. M. looked as happy as I’d ever seen him, chatting it up, eating mango ice cream, completely oblivious to the bait and switch he had perpetrated on me. I smiled mechanically and was as graceful and charming as I knew how to be, seething inside. It turned out that these people were some of M.’s best friends, some of whom had come in from Canada to see him. It is something they do every year—get together in a big group and just hang out for a weekend. How this got translated into M.’s mind as “better than a spa,” I have no idea. Maybe it was better than a spa for him. Of course, it was my "birthday present."

It’s not that they weren’t nice people. They were lovely. It’s just that, for my birthday weekend, for MY birthday weekend, I was looking for something a little more…personalized than a weekend with a whole group of people I didn’t know.

It was pretty late, as I mentioned before, and one by one people started heading for bed. The hosts gave M. and I the master bedroom, “in honor of my birthday” which was very nice of them. Oh, yes, they knew that I was coming. I was the only one in the dark.

I won’t go into details about the rest of the weekend. There was the fight and the tears that you might expect. There was still, inexplicably, a dearth of birthday sex (there had actually been quite a long dry spell, one that I had hoped would be broken on our trip). There was also a lot of laughter and good times: yoga on the deck, girl talk in the hot tub, board games and singing. When the women of the group found out what M. had done (read: girl talk in hot tub), they were furious. They would never have agreed to the way it was handled, which went some way to making me feel better. I think they may have talked with him, too, though I know he still didn’t understand. We broke up a week later.

Men take note: There is very little in a woman’s life that is better than a spa. Choose your words wisely and your actions even more so. And for goodness’ sake, give that woman some birthday sex!