There is an exceedingly tender bruise on my right temple from a particularly exuberant collision with a steel bedside table during a rousing bout of tickles.
The downside of this is that rinsing all-natural-wheat-germ shampoo from my hairline was particularly painful.
The upside is that it is a token/reminder that I am in possession of more than my fair share of moments of utter glee.
Tickle-fights being an exemplary indication of a glee-ridden household, I read that.
Ahem
The very first hours of Saturday found me in my mother's kitchen, arguing over how much garlic to put in the vegetarian lasagna, and how the most efficient knife to use on the cauliflower really is the well-weighted cleaver, not the pseudo-boning knife at the bottom of the knife-stand.
(Looking at the knife stand I realized that onceuponatime my loftiest goal was to be able to afford such a quality item. Now I live in a house that has the choice of two of them, and I have had the opportunity to learn the difference between a dozen blades.)
We cooked and chatted and bantered until four in the morning, and I kissed my mother goodnight for the first time since I started bleeding in odd places.
By nine in the morning I was awake again, in the kitchen again, giggling again with my mother. We argued and she lectured and begged for grand-children and attempted to call me a failure for my lack of offspring, but that spot hasn't been tender for a really long time and we eased smoothly back into comical abuse of the blonde and her dressing my up in an ENOURMOUS winter coat and galoshes to send me out to the garden to pick raspberries for breakfast.
It's late in October, I still managed to cueillier an entire bowlful, but by the time the breakfasters arrived it was more like a smattering of juicy red bits lining the bottom of an all-too-familiar porcelain patter.
After breakfast Mr. Pyke impressed the living hell out of me, and put ten times the effort I'd managed to eke out for him into helping me rapidfire sort the meagre handful of stuff lying around my parents' home.
We ate lunch still in my parents' house, in which Mr. Pyke swallowed aforementioned horrible lasagna (mental note - cottage cheese is NOT an appropriate replacement for bechamel) and generally impressed the hell out of my parents, while I sat there stunned (and spewing incessent nonsense) and trying to adjust to the fact that I was doing something so unbelievably normal
as watching my boyfriend charm my parents.
Granted, we are working with the supposition that my parents believe that Mr. Pyke is just my roommate, but either way
when I finally crawled onto the sofa bed in the basement, I was all too aware of the fact that there was a Mr. Pyke so impossibly close by, that him sleeping in my little sister's room was incredibly silly, and for the first time in my entire life
I didn't feel so impossibly, heartachingly alone, in my parents' house.
I lay there waiting for sleep, shivering from the cold, but not distress.
I still haven't entirely gotten used to the idea.
After lunch we were off and running. Hugs from Tia after so long incommuniqu�, picking up my vynil and raverboots as there is suddenly a possibility that I might wear them.
We missed Maria's art show, the original purpose of the visit, because it never clicked in my head that a religious art show might end up in a church, not a gallery.
We couldn't find the damned place.
Good thing the show's still on until December, that gives me time for at least another chance to miss it. ;)
Although it did give us time for a slightly-longer drive-by at Dan'n'Nancy's for hugs and olympian-calibre ballgames with Vincent. Watching Mr. Pyke outshine even my knack for eliciting glee from Vincent had me hiding tears at one point.
Nancy still has the most beautiful lap for cuddling. Maya still looks like a beatific prune. Dan looks like he's going through some of the same profound introspections as the rest of the boys, of us. Learning how to show our love for the people in our lives. Learning to show our insides, rather than our brightest veneers. For a gang of misfits who took a thousand bruises growing up, it impresses the hell out of me how many of us are learning to heal.
Saturday evening was filled with miracles. Mr. Pyke with his hand on Marc's knee, and a total lack of ensuing bloodshed. Marc and Russel and Bruno showing up three minutes before the appointed hour, as opposed to forty-three minutes past. Narc's sweetness and sincerity, Hans' open-ness, John's honesty, Russel's... Well, Russel hasn't changed. Bruno actually asked me a question about me and if I was happy, rather than launching directly into absolute witticism.
THe witticism came soon after, though, not much of it since everyone was so painfully tired, but there was a moment when I got to pull back again and look around, and each face was shining with laughter.
Shining.
And for the record, I'm pretty sure the waiter was charming for tips, not hitting on the only girl at the table.
Although the recent influx of "don't I know you from somewhere"s also seems to be making up for a half-decade of wallflower-ness, and a full decade of being too agressive to let anyone near me.
It still stuns me that they really use that line. I honestly thought that was an only-in-the-novels thing. I mean movies.
After dinner we lost Marc and Cfoo and a few others, but gained a Kaff and despite the way things just seemed to turn a touch to the old way, I was still happier to see her insides than play with her outsides.
Sunday, we missed Maaike, again, turning her and Mr. Pyke once again into each others' grownup Pokeroos, missed Maria as well, and on a total of three hours of sleep for the second night in a row, went and hugged cf, and Marv, and Mystie.
Not enough, and I never seem to be able to touch them in my great hurry to... To... To hide my insecurity. Such brilliant points of light in my life, and yet, like with Marc and Bruno, we exchange more of our souls in writing than in the intimidating presence of each other.
Proof that the loudest ones are the shyest.
But noticing it and letting myself say it out loud is the hardest step to getting over it.
Today I spoke to cf, and despite certain pangs of watching him hurt yesterday
I heard in his voice an escape from other pains of a long time ago. Much larger ones. I heard in his voice what he sees when he looks in the mirror
and you have no idea how immense that is.
On the drive home we spent six hours without the stereo, talking of immense things. Serious, difficult, brain-tiring things, and each was more beautiful than the last.
At some point shortly before the ticklefight that began this entry, Mr. Pyke spoke to me with an honesty that seemed to come from so deeply inside him
and I watched his naked face
and was happier than I have been in a very very long time.