It Never Rains in Northern California

It rained last night. At least, what northern Californians call rain. It looks more like god sneezed and didn’t quite cover her mouth in time. A little spittle here and there, a fine misting that isn’t even enough to produce puddles; heavy fog more than anything. 

But when you live in a place as rain starved as Alameda county folks will take any trace of precipitation and call it rain.

I’m convinced the lack of rain is the reason San Francisco smells so bad. On any given street or walking down into the BART tunnel, the smell of urine assaults you and strangles the breath from your nostrils. How can it not? No public toilets and no rain to flush the streets that people use instead.

I never thought I’d miss rain. Growing up in the water logged south where at least half the year is eying hurricanes with weariness and enduring a thorough dousing even when the storms don’t makes shore, the idea of dry feet was a novelty.

Then, about five years ago, I flew to a training in Alabama in the middle of the summer. It was oppressively hot and humid. I was peeling off the sweaters I’d purposely layered for this very reason because SFO in the summer is cold and foggy and Alabama is anything but. 

When we landed the clouds were puffy and pregnant with gray. As the day passed, more clouds assembled and sky turned a dark gray color – not the green tint of tornadoes but the darkness of a coming storm. 

The first drops hit, heavy and with purpose, and then the sky opened up and bathed the ground below in cool relief from the heat. It rained for a while. More than a five minute Bay Area sprinkle that transforms the dust on a dirty car to mud –this Alabama rain rinsed cars clean and shiny.

I had the urge to go stand in the rain, to splash in puddles as children are often wont to do. I refrained. Instead I stared out of windows and breathed in the fresh and almost foreign scent of ozone. 

Since then I have a special appreciation for the rain; the thundering rain that pounds a white noise lullaby on rooftops and wipes the city new. Appreciation that makes me chuckle to myself when traffic goes crazy in Northern California over a quick misting and people acknowledge our desperate need for it while exclaiming, “it is really pouring out there.”

Pouring?

I’ve watched a New Orleans street fill with enough water to cover half a tire in 15 minutes, that is pouring. What we have out here is a facsimile – and not even a reasonable one at that. 

People in places pounded by rain and snow will probably want to choke me as they shovel and shuffle through wetness. How dare I complain about months’ worth of clear blue skies strung together like brilliant diamonds? Who wouldn’t want that?

I have to tentatively raise my hand. Even without the current drought that threatens our water supplies and renders our forests fire hazards, I miss a good night’s sleep ushered in by the music made by gray clouds.

TMI: Too Much Info (You've been warned)

If you asked me to roll around on glass, or dance through fire, or slather myself in acid I wouldn’t do it. If you insisted that I pay for it you would be met with either laughter or a slew of curse words worthy of any pirate or 8^th grader feeling newly grown. The idea is too ridiculous to even properly contemplate because…well, why would you?

But somehow, when the glass and fire and acid are translated into hot wax – which to be fair feels like all of the above at one point or another – not only do I partake, I hand over wads of cash for it. 

I’m shaking my head at myself, as much as that is physically possible, so need to shake yours.

I never used to wax. Hell, I didn’t shave for years, and once I started my sister complained I didn’t do it nearly enough. I couldn’t be bothered. My armpits are sensitive and who has the time (read inclination) to do that as often as is socially acceptable.

I wish I was of the old guard. Black women that never thought to do that –whether because their hair was so faint it didn’t matter anyway or simply because it was taboo- it was still win win. They didn’t shave and no one expected them to. (For years I was a self-appointed volunteer to be a part of that cadre of women even though they weren’t taking new members.) 

For the longest while I didn’t shave my legs. When I finally did it was out of curiosity and a desire to not have that strange sock line at my ankle where my hair abruptly stopped growing, as if it were a vampire and that was the perimeter of shade.

Once I started shaving the process felt so futile. My legs would look smooth but within a day or two I could feel the stubble growing back. Who wants spikey legs? Add to that, my skin is café au lait, heavy on the lait and my hair is dark brown. The contrast between my skin and the dark hair in my follicles always announced the arrival of hair long before a new strand poked its head out. 

So why waxing?

Last year a friend of mine was utterly horrified to find out that I didn’t wax. It became a conversation that involved other friends. Suddenly there were voices rampant with concern. And while I pride myself on my ability to ignore peer pressure my curiosity was piqued. 

Actually, it was less curiosity and more laziness. My friend pointed out that among the many benefits of waxing was the long lag time between maintenance sessions. The implications for summertime were apparent…swimsuit season without the constant upkeep. 

“I’ll try it. Why the hell not?”

The “why the hell not” was demonstrated to me years ago when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa. My family had come for a visit and we were lounging at a backpackers’ in transit to or from someplace else. My friend Z, an old head at waxing, offered to wax her friend’s unibrow and my sister’s legs. My sister shrugged and grinned and shot out a leg for wax.

Z looked happy – ecstatic really – we should have known. Hot wax in the appropriate place on both parties and Z went in for the kill. First she pulled the strip of cloth from her friend’s brow. The friend’s hands shot to her forehead as if she was covering a wound. And if the bright red spot spreading across her forehead was any indication, she was covering a wound. But before my sister could take a hint from the eyebrow fiasco Z reached over with as much glee as I’ve ever seen and pulled the first strip from my sister’s leg. The reaction was the same, only on a lower extremity rather than a forehead. And since my sister is a beautiful dark chocolate color there was no obvious sign of trauma…other than the audible one. She shrieked like a banshee and then became a liquid streak headed for the bathroom where she tried to cool the burning sensation on her leg and remove any residual wax.

Like I said, I should know better.

And still I signed myself up for waxing.

Vanessa is as nice as they come and puts you at ease. That first time she waxed me – yes I said first, not only- it wasn’t nearly as painful as I’d expected. And the results were so long-lastingly-silky-smooth. Then I went back and it hurt more than I expected but well within thresholds. Now I was hooked. Only I was cocky too. Who needs to stick to the suggested timeline for maintenance? I’m cheap, I’ll come later and all will be fine.

Except it isn’t. 

The longer I go between waxing the more excruciating it is. I barely wince when I keep to my schedule but tonight…tonight was the first time since before thanksgiving. That, in case you don’t remember, was November. It is almost February.

So tonight I paid Vanessa to roll me in glass, and dance me in white hot flames, and slather me in acid… But boy am I silky smooth!

Friendly goodbye

I remember so vividly pressing my hands to the back window of our car, staring through teary eyes as Four-Eyed-FeFe-Feuge-Face’s actual face receded from sight. It was an affectionate name with no parts of malice in it and she stood at the end of the cul-de-sac, waving at me from her front yard. My dad chuckled in the front seat. He isn’t a mean man but for some reason my separation torment was amusing to him. Looking back it could just be that he understood what I am still amazed to find truth in…that friendships change and shift and grow and shrink and appear and disappear in seemingly random fashion.

We thought we’d be best friends forever, but i can’t tell you where she lives or what she is doing now.

My ideas about friendship haven’t changed much since the fifth grade when I first met Four Eyes. I still attach myself to friends with the intent of forever, even as I know that forever is much less infinite than I thought when I was younger.

And so friends have come into my life. Beautiful amazing friends who blazed marks across the way I see the world. People who helped me pick up pieces that shattered in front of me and laughed hysterically when my world showcased lunacy. They let me wade into their waters and learn who they were, and let me help build and repair and reap and rejoice with them as life unraveled and rewove itself on their journey.

 I’ve had some lovely friendships. I loved fiercely in them.

I’ve also had friendships sail…away…

Some of my deepest sorrows are at the loss of friendships. I read an article once that said that divorce was so painful because people come to share a brain. There is no sense in both people retaining all of the information they share and so, instead, they divvy it up. One person remembers the bank information and the other the shopping list. And together they are magnificent but wrenched apart they are pieces that feel somehow smaller than the sum they once were.

I feel that way about friendships.

I don’t speak of casual friends. I mean friendship. I mean the people that seep under your skin and make themselves family. The people who have celebrated you at your best and still love you at your worst. The ones who can tell you you are messing up in one breath and help you make it better in the next. The ones who love you not for who you claim to be, or want to be, or even what you aren’t…i’m talking friend in its most elegant and rare form.

So when i lose a friend i ache.

Once, it was through death. But that is a different ache.

I speak of the longing, not of someone beyond my grasp – not really. I speak of missing a person who still exists in the world. Who still laughs and sneezes and asks questions and seeks comfort…someone who does all of those things, but not with me.

Sometimes a parting of ways feels natural. A path diverging. That ache is small. Maybe not an ache at all, simply an absence.

But sometimes the parting feels violent, sudden, random, unfair. The ache from partings like those is expansive, the absence gaping, the loss epic. It is a divorce of sorts. The stories those people take with them when they go, the shared language, the historical shorthand that negated the need for explanations, are losses that require grieving.

I am stunned that someone once significant in my life is walking the earth carrying pieces of me and my life with them. How are they able to do it? How is a hole not blasted into their brains-their hearts- cauterizing the spot that once held me?

But love and life don’t work that way. I find there is little control over how deeply someone will burrow into my life and no control over how quickly and completely they might leave it. Each friendship is a crapshoot that could leave me with my hands pressed against the car window…or worse, standing in your front yard while my best friend drives away.

It is enough to hold the idea of friendship hostage. Almost. Enough to keep the world at bay through pleasantries and “nice enough”. Almost. Enough to forgo friendships for acquaintances – like sugar for Splenda and say it is the same thing. Almost.

But tonight, one of my besties left me three successive messages filled with passages she wanted me to hear from Nikki Giovanni’s new book. My voicemail cut her off at least once but i could hear the excitement in her voice in each message. Nikki is part of our shared language and so i was excited too.

I could forgo the risk of aching but Splenda doesn’t get you Nikki poetry readings. Some things are worth risk.