Thursday, September 29, 2011

The cycle of love has always amazed me. Loving Poppie has always been an adventure.

I vividly remember the moment in time when I meant Poppie for the first time.  He was laying all alone on the floor of a dorm room TV room.  He was the skinniest longest person I ever saw.  He had his hand folded behind his head watching the screen. We, my mom, my littlest sister at the time, and a couple of kids mom was babysitting were escorted there to wait for my dad to come get mom and the kids.  One of the kids had pulled the keys out of the ignition and it wouldn't go back in so a friend of mine, that I had joined YACC with, had had the great idea to hot wire the car, well the long and short of it is that you can't hot wire a Fiat.  So my dad had to come about 80 or so miles to rescue the car and the rest of the family.  I was to stay at YACC, it was a program with the forest service that helped youths between 16 and 24 learn a vocation.  Reagan cut it in 1980 but this was late 1979 and I was there to start my life.

Poppie was quite and polite enough though the kids saw him as a jump rope and began jumping over him, he later told me he thought all those kids were mine, never did understand why we would have thought that.  He finally got tired of being the rope and left.  I was totally in love, and knew beyond a doubt he was for me.  He was so sad and skinny looking, I think I might have had puppy love don't know.  Poppie was 6'6" and weigh about 130 lbs,  a friend later tagged him with the name of Bones and it, for obvious reasons, stuck.  Dad finally showed up, they loaded up the car and they all went home.  Poppie and I went on our first date about 4 days later.  Three weeks later I took him home to meet my family and friends.

It was funny the first time I took Poppie home my family made and impression on him and he on them.  My mom had decided to have a party, but not being a drinker at the time, she had one big drink and was pretty lite and went to bed, asking for "n****r toes (Brazil nuts) as she left the room,  my brother Silver took her some.  She told him to put the  N toes on his feet and laughed and laughed.   Poppie said he could tell she didn't drink much,  I was embarrassed as I had never seen my mom do that before, neither had any of my siblings.  The next day Poppie was getting to know my dad.  They had a nice time together.  Later my dad confided in me he liked Poppie.  Poppie had said to him, "My dad's name, My name, is teaching me to fart polite".   My dad, a little shocked, said, "oh, that is nice." he never bated and eye to hurt or belittle Poppie.  My dad liked him.   Poppie came from a family that it was a proper dinner time activity to lift your leg and fart at the table, or to lift your leg and fart as you walked along.  I was so appalled that I taught him right away that nice people didn't do that.  He had no idea that you didn't, he was a quick study. 

The next time we went to visit at my home town, I started to recount the story of the farts to my friend.  Poppie simply said "don't" and I shut up like a clam.  My long time friend hated Poppie in the moment.  She had always tried to make be do things she said and I being the free spirit didn't mind her or anyone well.  I do know that that one little word probably made me truly fall in love with Poppie.  I hadn't realized that telling the story had hurt him, when he found out my dad had told me of it.  My dad hadn't meant to hurt Poppie by the telling, he had like me loved Poppie for it.  My mom told the story because she thought it was funny.  My dad just loved Poppie.   Poppie with that one little word, showed me how lonely and hurt a boy he was.  I learned all of the terrible details over the next years, but the momma bear in me knew with one little word I would protect him from anyone and on that day it was my friend.  We never had the same relationship again, but I had a new more important one; To this day I am that momma bear with my kids but mostly when you hurt "my Poppie", I can't control myself, I just fell the need to protect him from the world.

Poppie and I grew up together in many ways, we had ups and downs along the way.  I can say that I have always loved Poppie from one or both of those moments but I can't in all honest say that I have always been in love with Poppie.  What sounds like a terrible thing to say but it isn't.  I think that a good relationship is always loving and a series of falling in and out of passionate love.  I can say when I first meant PoppiePoppie anew.  I lust and go through all the stages of new love for a new reason.  I can say loving my one man is always a new adventure. I can't imagine not loving Poppie, and have never felt the need to look at another man and don't understand the need in others.  Maybe for me a life time of loves was one love and with others it isn't always, I can't really say but only guess..... tomorrow.

1 comment:

  1. I remember Poppie talking about you teaching him how to fart polite. To us it seemed very funny. But he was dead serious. So you didn't dare laugh... though at our ages at the time... I am sure we did. Sis

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