Mother Marilyn

We were lying there on a futon bed, with a red blanket, when I asked her, "What do you do if there is a man in your life that has you on a pedestal or anyways, they don't see who you really are?" She moved her pale naked body into a new position, a position to talk from. "Well, you just ignore that, and you go on."

Ignore it? I thought about that. But, I argued with myself, the guy thinks I'm so much more than I really am.  She of all people should understand this. Maybe no woman was idolized as much as she, since the 1950s forward. And the truth is we, she and I, didn't really have much in common, our blond hair, and something else...

"So, you're saying, ignore it, ...even while he is going overboard with being of service. I mean, this guy, by the way he looks like John Watson on the show Sherlock...come to think of it he acts like that too. You know the way John is pretty much in love with Sherlock and will do any and every thing for him?"

"Some men operate that way" she said cooly. "Come here put your head on my chest" We were under the red softness of blanket together now, bodies touching, I laid my head down on her bare breast.

"Its nice, like pillows" I said, still considering the first half of the dream with the Watson-like fellow. "There, there" she said and patted my head. She was so wonderfully motherly. Like the mother I'd lost so long ago. The blond hair, the softness, the gentle way of speaking. But Marilyn Monroe had had her loss of a mother as well. That was the only real thing we had in common, but it was everything. We that lost a parent as a child limp through life with an invisible crutch, a crutch called 'show-biz'. It' all about the presentation. Appearing okay.

Being held by her, with such gentleness, I allowed myself to be a child again and to be nourished by loving touch.  We had both had terrible loses in our youth. Some kids do, some don't. I met a man a week ago, he came up to me after a show and said "you know I lost my father when I was 15, I just....It was so ..." he couldn't finish the sentence, his breath smelled of many beers. "I understand, it's the loss that never goes away". "That's it" he said and wiped an eye.

We all have losses eventually, we kids just got there early. I have a song that goes:
One thing I figured out a long time ago, when the hurtin' starts young it looks like everyone you'll know. 

I awoke from the dream feeling comforted. I think it's our job in life, to comfort our 8 year old that's still afraid of the big people world, the child inside of us. And it's also our place to nurture our own adult cindy lee, so we can be compassionate and open and empathetic to our little cindy lee, and of course, to her friends.

Happy May Day to you my friends...