A Portal To Love

A magic portal in my bathroom? With no restrictions or lost time to make up? Seriously!? Hell fucking yeah! I could go back in time to see Kurt Cobain perform Unplugged Live, since they didn’t exactly allow eleven year old’s in MTV studios; had I even had a way to get to L.A. from Detroit back in ‘94. I could finally get that time alone on a private beach in Mexico off the gulf coast. Recharge my over-drained batteries with nothing but the sun and waves, a cocktail and a book. Or. I could finally meet my beloved group of online friends in person once and for all. That would be like a twoferoner on the wishes coming true.

More than all that, though, I would want to be able to travel back and forth between two very special places in time for me. These two memories are my most cherished ones. I think back on these pieces of my past often, whenever I need to find my happy place inside or just need to be reminded of the warmth and love I associate with each. Like all memories do, they are beginning to fray around the edges, fading slowly as the clock keeps ticking away. Every day I grow a little more panicked that soon I will wake up and they will be gone. That I’ll have breathed in too deeply last time and inhaled the last bit of the way the air smelled in the clip of time. Or I’ll have drank all that was left of the way it tasted on my pouting lips. Possibly, even, broke the record playing the melody etched into my heart once upon a time ago. Having this portal would not only allow me to continuously renew and revive my favorite times in life, but it would allow me to truly escape back into those moments and relive the magic of those memories in full. Every time the darkness comes a callin’, I’ll be able to check out for a moment to the only times in my life I forgot it even existed within me.

The first place I choose to have unlimited access to through my bathroom portal is the first week I met my husband. There was more passion and soulful connection in those seven days than I have experienced in my entire life combined. I still wonder to this day if he is even human. The enchantment he wooed me with is unlike anything else I have experienced before – even better than the Xtacy I used to pop at raves way back when at the turn of the century. And that shit makes you LOVE everyone and everything to the extreme. The night we met, at a mutual friend’s bar-hosted birthday party, we took one look at each and melted. Our eyes kept locking gaze over the table and I had never felt so real and alive before each time it happened. It took a little bit before we got up the nerve to talk to each other, but once we did, we didn’t stop until the sun rose the next morning. Seriously. My husband rejected every move I drunkenly tried to make on him, as well. All he wanted from me was to get to know me from the inside out. Like, straight outta a sappy romance movie.

From that night on, he only left my side to shower and go to work. Every last second was spent gently peeling my layers back with his bare hands, kissing all the broken and shattered pieces of my soul and soaking up all that I was made of. No one had ever cared to see the fabric I was woven by before this dark, mysterious, and beautfully handsome man came into my life stirring up emotions in my heart I thought were merely the lies fairy tales are made of. By the end of the week, we shared one heartbeat and one dream. And he still refused to make love to anything but my soul. Who wouldn’t want to keep that memory of a soul awakening to the truest, purest form of love they have known from flickering out like a candle flame left to the wind? Surely not I. That was the most powerfully intense week and if I had it my way, I would be content living it on loop for the rest of my life; especially now, after ten years, when his captivating charm and heartfelt tenderness are beginning to fade away, right alongside everything else time eats up.        

The second destination preprogrammed into my secret bathroom portal would take me back to my maternal grandparent’s home circa 1995. Particularly the summer before seventh grade. Her house was one of the earliest farmhouses built after the area began to replace the farmland with city. It’s a small bungalow with dollhouse windows. Two tiny bedrooms on the main floor. The upstairs originally designed as the family quarters – the stairway leads you into a small dressing room/parlor area which then opens into the master bedroom with low raftered ceilings. The smallest of the main floor bedrooms had a door which opened onto the back porch. My grandmother kept a pullout couch in their for me to stay the night, as I practically never left her house every summer because I was always escaping the chaos that was my home. This summer was different from all the rest. I began to seek a mother figure from my grandmother, trying to compensate for the mostly absentee one I had in her daughter and the too young to be my mother stepmother. I began to really listen when my grandmother spoke to me, carefully folding up every last tidbit of wisdom and knowledge I could pull from her and tuck them away in a safe place. Everything about her fascinated me as she was a rare woman of incredible strengths and courageous perseverance.

This was also the summer I began to discover who I was as a woman. That I, too, had magic coursing through the blood in my veins. I discovered how hot that blood could run from the boy down the street smiling at me crookedly as he cocked his head and held out his hand to walk me around the neighborhood. He was the first boy to ever say my full name aloud and ask me to be his girlfriend. When my grandmother shooed me out from under her feet, I happily sought out his company, a big change from the summers before when I used to throw sticks at him when he walked past my grandmother’s house and make fun of the way he rode his bike around when my girl friends were over. It didn’t take long to figure out my attention was his kryptonite. I had him washing my bike, running my grandfather’s errands, using manners around his mother, and even cleaning his room (this girl had standards and wasn’t going to play Nintendo 64 with him on a floor covered in dirty socks and empty food wrappers) in no time flat. He got me to sneak out that back door in my room and sit in the grass with him at midnight every night, making out under the stars terrified of anything beyond first base. The memories made with Matthew as I embraced my newfound period of self-discovery and the deep, maternal connection I grew to my grandmother made this a very defining moment in my life. The lingering innocence of childhood coupled with the budding maturity of womanhood made this a perfect summer and fills me with such warmth and joy to think back on, I never want to let it go. I want to revel in those emotions for an eternity. That house is the epitome of home for me.

I know. I had the chance to go all creative with this and entertain you with some exciting places to go and I jumped on the sentimentally nostalgic train, instead. Again. I can’t help myself. Really. My husband will tell you that I am not a person. I am not male or female. I am not an animal or species or even a living thing. I am simply a fiery ball of intense emotions and feelings swirling incessantly. I don’t disagree, either. Now, if you would please excuse me, I have some portal hopping to go attend to. This overemotional crazy lady has some fueling up to do to keep those favorite memories alive.                  

***Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 12 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Your “Secret Subject” is:

Prompt: Just what the kids and or pets were scared of, there REALLY is a secret portal in the bathroom. You can go anywhere you want and return as if you just left for a few moments. Where do you go and what do you do?

It was submitted by: http://dinoheromommy.com/

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

Baking In A Tornado 

Southern Belle Charm 

Not That Sarah Michelle 

Spatulas on Parade 

The Bergham Chronicles  

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver  

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy 

My Brain on Kids

The Lieber Family Blog 

Confessions of a part time working mom 

Climaxed