butter, butter, and more butter.

Tonight my mother made grilled cheese sandwiches with butter.

Grilled cheese sandwiches WITH BUTTER.

Now anyone who knows my mother knows that she is, in fact, an amazing cook. She alters and creates recipes with perfect amounts of creativity and love. Often times dinners are prepared from the entire contents of a refrigerator and pantry that has yet to be filled in weeks. And she has a love for olive oil that battles even Rachael Ray. Yet, she does not adhere to the philosophies of those like Julia Child or Paula Dean, chefs finding butter, butter, and more butter at the heart of their delectable dishes. No. My mother, with more of a liking to Giada or the Barefoot Contessa, is all about delicious, yet healthy, fresh food.

But tonight there was butter. And if you ask me, our lives could potentially be a whole lot happier or perhaps more comforting if butter found a more regular installment. But no. Not for Mary. So tonight I knew that something was up. I knew that we were quickly approaching the end of the little food we have left in this house. And I knew that we were quickly entering the chaos that is moving. After all, life is chaos personified, right?

Tonight when preceding said grilled cheeses my mother showed off her Elaine Benes dance moves to the soundtrack of Movin' Out I blasted in my room. I blasted the Billy Joel Broadway phenomenon while piling the contents of my life into cardboard boxes. And my mother danced.

Further preceding those sandwiches, now accompanied by scrambled eggs and apple sauce (hello childhood, hello irony), my mother made a quick request for red wine. Red wine promptly shifted into champagne, and one bottle became, "well maybe you should just get two" just as I closed the door to purchase the bubbling therapy. Because we all know that no dinner of grilled cheese and scrambled eggs is complete without mimosa. At least, if you're a Dawson, you know this to be true.

And as I sat contemplating the somewhat precarious and silly nature of this meal I took a steady look at our house. Our house, which in a matter of days, will no longer be ours. And someone else will stand in that kitchen preparing dishes filled with butter, butter, and more butter. And we will sit somewhere else.

I walked barefoot through a kitchen where I used to sneak granola bars when I was little. A counter top that served as the doctor's gurney for many a scraped knee and tearful end to a fight with my brother. The kitchen sink where my mother propped me up and yes, washed my mouth out with soap after I told Matty to "shut up." I still will not let her live this down.

There's the breakfast nook which has been the site for countless family dinners, ginger bread house making parties, and scrabble matches my father always won. Yet the family room served as my refuge for holding the belt as Sorry champion- the ridiculous game the four of us played around the glass coffee table again and again. With its fireplace that hung our Christmas stockings, and the corner for our Christmas tree we decorated year after year while watching A Christmas Story and drinking, you guessed it, mimosa, while uncovering old ornaments made of clothespins and candy canes.

The dining room and living room which perpetually traded places. Yet, the site for holidays and special dinners. I remember the dining room table covered in costumes for Rock n' Roll Revival, my mother at the sewing machine transforming Value Village bargains into sparkling delight.

The basement was our sanctuary. Where countless nights with friends, sleepovers and in the dark nerf wars transpired. Where I had my first real kiss. Where Sum and I watched American Dreams on Sunday nights. Where Rorie let me sit with my head in his lap while I cried over my first real broken heart. Where we talked about our lives and our friends and growing up. Where we fell asleep watching movies and eating the entire contents of my pantry. Where I threw my first party while Mary and Craig were out of town.

Then there's this room. Where I've spent countless nights writing in journals, singing into hairbrushes, choreographing dances, and talking to friends while staring at fake glowing stars on the ceiling. Where I discovered Jane Austen and Sufjan Stevens and the sensation that is You Tube. Where I played air guitar, and sang harmonies, and made art. Where I let myself just think about and question life. Where I became... who I am.

This is a house filled with memory and life. This is the house in which my family became a family. And I can still smell my mom's chocolate chip cookies as I walk in the back door. I can still remember sobbing in the hallway when Beau died. I can still remember standing in the front yard taking Homecoming pictures, sneaking out in the middle of the night to visit friends and eat ice cream, playing cribbage with my uncle, my brother teaching me to play jimbe, and my grandmother taking pictures of every bit of food at Thanksgiving. I can still remember the sound of the door bell ringing the night of my very first date.

And I will remember tonight. Eating grilled cheese sandwiches with butter. Listening to William Fitzsimmons and thumbing through old letters and birthday cards. I will remember the echo of this room as I sang Hallelujah and the smell of vanilla from the pile of clean laundry and a single burning candle.

Tonight my mother made grilled cheese sandwiches with butter.
And I knew something was up.

dear so-and-so

tell me about the time when we were happy.
when we sat on the roof of your car
eating jelly beans
talking about the future.
about the way you could connect the freckles on my face like constellations.
how our hands fit perfectly, like broken chips of a vase pieced back together with super glue.

tell me about the time when we were.
when we were happy.
when every kiss lingered until tomorrow morning and our hearts were pressed with the lines of tousled bed sheets
the memory of how you always smelled like vanilla and clean laundry.

tell me about the time i lost you.
and tell me why we left each other.
why you left me
drowning in a cardboard box of false memory and empty promise.

empty canisters of spoiled milk and rotten fruit pierce the palate and reject the tongue as you rejected me:
the perpetual list maker,
the sleepwalking brownie baker,
the chaotic mess of thank yous and apologies and never ending monologues.

tell me why you never smiled with your eyes.
tell me how this begins again...

and how i'm still allowed to miss you.

"When I do this it means..."

In between spaces become conduits for constructing meaning.

Ooh Child (Beth Orton version)

Sometimes I feel like this person who feels too much.

I always prided myself on the fact that I'm an emotional, thoughtful being. I feel to the depths, perhaps it's a product of being an artist, so often placed in an environment where expression and detailed, visceral response is encouraged, rewarded, accepted... But I always struggled with where such an existence or experience could exist in the outside world- a world that doesn't seem to cater to the sensitive, romantic, deeply feeling feelers. And I always thought it curious- our inability to embrace the emotionality of others, deeming appropriate times and places for feeling. We are human beings. We feel things, whether we care to admit it or not.

And I am not afraid to admit that I am in fact an emotional mess. I tend to let things build and bottle up inside until they have no other choice but to erupt or overflow... most usually at inappropriate times and inappropriate places. Like tonight: standing in front of a refrigerated wall of food, piling stacks of hummus and guacamole, I lost it.

And maybe it's something to do with the fact that my parents just sold our house. The house I grew up in. The house in which I've lived my entire life aside from the last four years I spent in college. Or maybe it's that I'm leaving for Hawaii in nearly three weeks and have done next to nothing in preparation...and knowing I should feel all this excitement, but that emotion has yet to really set in. And even though I'll only be gone for the summer, I'm going to miss all of these people that I love...probably more than they even realize. Maybe it's about the fact that I have these jobs to come back to- jobs I actually like and want to be doing- teaching, dancing, being back in the studio creating... that is, after all, where I feel most alive and of purpose- so why am I so on the fence about it? Why so anxious? Maybe it's about my best friend moving to Seattle... which is totally wonderful and amazing, but all I see is these 3000 miles between us. Maybe it's that I want to move into my own place with friends and am anxious about that falling into place. And maybe. Maybe it's much to do with the fact that I'm completely enamored with someone who seems to be totally clueless.

Needless to say, I ran outside, much like a child, and shed a few tears standing behind a dumpster in the parking lot. Can you say pathetic? How about emotional? Sadly for me this is normal behavior. Hah.

And I just keep thinking, if only we could be more readily able to embrace one anothers emotionality and sensitivity. If only we could see this as an incredible strength rather than something meant to be hidden or experienced only in private. When did the world lose all sense of empathy? And when did all this emotion become so overwhelming?

Things feel like they've come full circle in a way. I was mess this time a year ago getting ready to graduate and move into reality. And here I am now, in the thick of reality, some great life lessons and experience on my side and yet, a complete and total mess. Perhaps even more so than I was a year ago. Because now, I really am in the midst of life. And I'm trying out this whole grown up thing. And I'm emotional. Beyond emotional. And it's like my heart just aches. And even though things may actually be falling into place for the first time in a long time... I feel so tossed in the air. And I'm just waiting for the pieces to float down and settle into themselves. Until then I suspect there will be more overflow, and maybe more tearful nights in parking lots... or better yet, Hawaiian beaches. Now, that could be good, right?

More to come.