i reckon my feet know where they want me to go...

Driving up to Salt Lake yesterday I was so into singing along with the CD playing that I spaced on my exit. When I realized I was about to pass it I tried to cut in front of a big brown RV that was not havin it so I slowed way down, cut across a few lanes, received some honks and middle fingers and made it safely off the freeway. What was I listening to? James Taylor. Why was I so into his sweet tunes? Because I was on my way to meet up with the rest of the Ryan clan who can hear or are not on a mission to go to the James Taylor concert.

I would like to take a moment to tell you why he is so awesome. Concert is supposed to start at 8 so we figure someone would open for him and we'd hang out and he might show up around 9 or so. However, having the time nazi for a father we were in our seats at about 7:45. We were just talking and I was taking awkward pictures of Scotty who had just taken 2 Vicodin for a migraine when a couple people in the front row gave a little squeal. I look up and amidst all the sound/stage guys and back up singers who were wandering around the stage is the man himself, James Taylor. In a blue striped T-shirt and a pair of jeans he walked around and greeted all his equipment guys while the audience kept on talking to one another. Eventually he sauntered over to his guitar and pulled up a stool and just started playing. People started to clue in and cheer and the band eventually got all set-up and joined him but he didn't seem to care either way; slight contrast from The Cure concert I went to a couple months ago.

He started his set playing some cover songs. Glenn Campbell, George Jones, Buddy Holly, and even some Dixie Chicks all the while his 55ish year old overweight buddy with shoulder length blond/grey hair sang back up and bounced around on one of the back platforms singing along with him and playing the occasional air-guitar as his polka dotted green tie flipped up and down. My dad said the guy had been singing with him for about thirty years. The drummer took a swig of his beer between each song and James Taylor (I just can't bring myself to separate his first and last name)cracked jokes about him throughout the show. A potentially amateur atmosphere quickly turned into an unpretentious exhibit of some of the greatest talent I have ever had the chance to hear.

The greatest part of the night for me had to be the comments that my mom giggled out throughout the show however. In the middle of Carolina she turns to me and says in true Tursh fashion, "Ohhhh this takes me right back to Heritage Halls!" And after Steam Roller, "Oh wow he didn't sing the mother f'er word!" With her pastel plaid button up shirt, capris, and red crocodile shoes with socks she bobbed her head and clapped along with the best of us.

I don't usually blog about the stuff I do but I was blown away last night. I love James Taylor because my dad used to sit at the end of my bed and play his stuff on the guitar for hours and hours. When I was about 16 yrs old he got really irritated with me for messing around with his guitar one day and said that it was his best friend and he didn't know what he would do without it. I thought he was being over dramatic but there is something about a soft, pure melody on an acoustic guitar and James Taylor has that figured out. He didn't play Blossom for me last night but I can forgive him because he played "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" from Oklahoma and because the show was amazing.

new club

Nate: lets start a new facebook group. I vote we call it attractive smart and funny folks who will be more ready for marriage than expected. A pox on all your houses and a shrug and a sigh for all you teenage brides and you boys and your nascent nametaglessness. Maybe your lives are real but they seem mystical to us. Are you happy? Maybe. Would we be in your shoes? Maybe. Do we know what we're missing? Maybe. Do you know what your missing? No. Who are these people anyway... Then she looked at me and I looked at her and we both know... we were 17...
Betsy, we must have had three daughters and given them everything.


Betsy: Or, maybe we should just get married and make a facebook group about the bliss and the endless hours of people listening and secretly aching for their somebody as we talk about fate and the forces that brought us together and how we are eternally grateful for that silly vent and how I can't help but laugh when i think about how much it creeped me out when you started yelling at me and i couldn't find where your voice was coming from and you chuckle and stroke my hair and gaze into my eyes as you tell people how cute you thought I was and how you just couldn't stay away from your friends place because you couldn't stand to sleep anywhere else except for the couch right below where you knew I was. Then they'll know that we've joined the ranks of the blessed and that now we could live out the rest of our lives giving each other rub downs in sacrament meeting and searching for more venues to tell our obnoxiously gaggy story and slightly fake disregard for any heartache or annoyance or moment of compromise or unsurety that surely didn't happen to us because our course was set long before we even came to earth and all we had to do was find each other... which we did with stealthness.

ohhhhhhhh, cute, is how they will respond and my heart will fill with warmth and I will know that I have made it.

Diner at Midnight

Apathy slowly encompassed her as she nonchalantly stirred the ice in the empty glass in front of her with the tip of her straw. Every few minutes she pressed the rim of the glass to her lips to catch an ice cube to chew on, thinking about how so few customers must make it hard to see the need of a refill.

The world kept turning and bad days turn into good ones, she knew.

At least she wasn’t on her feet, eight months pregnant, trying to pay for future pacifiers and car seats, she thought as she watched Grace try to please a table full of obnoxious teenage boys.

The refill comes with a crooked smile and a brown tint. She begins to sip and finds that she preferred the ice.

At least she wasn’t eighty still working the graveyard shift on Fridays nights. The guilt for her misery pressed down as she watched the hostess.

At least she wasn’t alone.

Was the tint in the water a reflection of the table or a reflection of the diner, she wondered as she drew in long sips trying to get to the ice quicker. As impatient neighbors hollered for their food she was glad that she didn’t care. Willy, the cook as she overheard, could take all the time in the world. If nothing else, that was what she had sitting in her hands along with the circling straw.

She watched as the ice melted, taking with it the key to her satisfaction.

Perhaps Willy would like to take a break and join her to sip on some murky water.

She closed her eyes, tilted her head back and took in a long slow breath. With the ice completely gone she was oddly at ease now that she didn’t really have to decide which she preferred.

Unleash The Thighs

Well, its taken 24 years... no, actually there is a great picture of me when I'm about 3 strutting around in a one-piece with ruffles and a butt covered in sand. I didn't care then that my skin was 4 shades paler than everyone else's or notice that my thighs selfishly grab more than their fair share of the fat on my body. But shortly thereafter I began the maneuvering of bathing suits: endlessly searching for suits with shorts for the bottoms and buying them even though the tops were totally ugly, or finding board shorts to wear over the suit and being the uncomfortable fat girl who wears clothes to swim in. Well, I've had enough.

I am tired of having a sun burn that goes half way up my leg. I am sick of laying around in uncomfortable soggy cloth as I lay by the pool. I mark today as independence day for my white legs and not-so-small butt cheeks. I have officially bought a bathing suit with regular bottoms. Its time to stop caring that my inner thighs touch and rub together when I walk.

I have spent years fantasizing about the sexy bathing suits I would wear when I had tight abs and carved legs, or when my skin miraculously started getting tan. I could just see the sun bouncing off the oiled muscles in my calves as I walked around the pool. I would put on some of those big "I'm so hot there's no way I would ever even give you a chance" sunglasses and just lounge around in my hottness. But you know, I'm almost 25 and I still haven't gotten close to that body. I could have potentially passed my hot-peak and my butt still jiggles when I walk and I've never had that perfect tight crease in the cheeks right below the cut of a suit.
Damn that crease.

So, instead of crying about it, which the 15, 16, and 17 year old version of myself has actually wasted time doing, I've decided to shed the shorts and cellulite hiding wrap and smile at the girls with the strings holding their suits together as my thighs rub on my way around the pool. I can admire the brown tint of their skin and continue to hope that someday my freckles will completely connect so I too might look so good. For now, I'm gonna try to jump in and out of the pool with freedom and lay with both legs flat on my chaise lounge, I'll let you know how it goes.

Pantoum

I don’t like you,
You should leave.
Why don’t we just go out?
You sure are cute.

You should leave.
Well, she told me that
You sure are cute.
I wish he’d call.

Well she told me that
He doesn’t care.
I wish he’d call.
That seems obvious.

He doesn’t care,
Why don’t we just go out?
That seems obvious
I don’t like you.

"It's Like, You Know, Pissing In the Wind."

No, I don't know what its like
to piss into the wind.
I am a girl.
I sit down to pee, or squat
if there is no other option.

Grandma Dorothy

“If there are two things I know for sure,”
you told me once with smiling eyes,
“They are that Jesus is the Christ and it will rain in Seattle!”
You always hated the grey skies.

Wall sized windows line the room
and look out at the jagged line of buildings
lining the bay during a soft sunset.

Safeco Field sits still with its roof pulled back
enjoying the rare moment of sunshine.

You would love this evening,
no hint of rain.

I look down on your face and close my hand
around yours.
And, though machines speak in their beeping language
that you are still here, I know you are not.

Your chest rises and falls, I touch it to feel your heart beat.
Sure enough, it is there
but you are not

because if you were, your fake pink nails would tap
on the plastic lining your bed.
Your feet would shuffle around the room
and we would yell at you to sit down.
You would smile at your nurse and crack a joke
with the man on the other side of the curtain
whom no one had come to visit.

When I ran from the airport into this stale smelling room
you would have met me at the door and pulled my face
down next to yours,
said my name five times in a high pitched voice
and squealed that no one had ever missed anyone
like you had missed me.
If you were here, your eyes would open
and you would squeeze my hand back.

“It’s time to turn off the machines
and let her go,” they say to me.

I kiss your cheek and whisper that I love you
even though I know those ears cannot carry
any messages to you
and that you already know anyway.

The beeping slows down,
my chest tightens
as yours stops moving.
It feels like the machines
force you to go.

I will blame it on those machines
even though your gnarled hands
would stubbornly grab on to the metal railing keeping you in this bed
and you would never choose to leave
if this lifeless form laying so still
were really you.