From the Oxford English Dictionary: † fode, v. [‘ trans. To deceive or delude with kindness or kind words; to entice or lead on with delusive expectations.’]

“Who comes to you,”  was an artist’s question when I told him about the healing work I do.  I should have just answered, ‘creative types,’ but leaving out names or institutions, I listed categories of power in the art world.

Our connection was through OK Cupid and after one phone conversation, we met at a park.  I must say, he was a gorgeous creature, but the opposite of what an interested guy would do on a first date.  He spent the evening dropping bombs of financial, professional, and emotional disasters,  His desperate need to find a gallery presented many chances for me to offer connections, but I honored client confidentiality.

This attempt to fode me was a familiar one.  My detection skills were solidified in a recent deception, one for which I fell.  While serving as President of the Board in our building, a co-owner approached me with an offer.  He’d seen my modeling pictures and insisted they needed an update.  As a photographer with a make-up artist partner, they were willing to do a head shot session, no charge involved.

I turned them down, but they didn’t let it go, applied pressure and flattery until I acquiesced.  Sitting for portraits is something I have done many times, but this shoot was an energy-less chore equivalent to cleaning out someone else’s garage.  Though the photography turned out fine, my sour expression ruined the possibility of usable images.  When they insisted I select favorites, the thought of looking at those photos again made me want to go invisible.

This shoot happened during the same month that we conduct our building’s annual Board election, and after years of serving as Madame President, a new person was voted into my old position.  Happy to step aside, when the photographer’s partner found out the results, her first response was to stomp her feet, and then she cried.

Such a surprising emotional display got me thinking: for extra income, they used their second apartment in the building as an Air bnb, technically against the rules.  The headshot session was designed to keep me looking the other way while they did what they needed to do to maintain both spaces.  By not campaigning to my position of power, I’d dropped my end of the silent deal.

Even though we’re on friendly terms, the photos were never spoken of again.  And coincidentally, the man who wanted art world contacts just wrote stating ‘energy differences’ regarding a match, with an offer to continue our ’instant friendship.’  The answer to that is no thank you, because through the eyes of a foder, everyone is humiliated.

Photo by Marissa Bridge: Deceiving colors

Definition of canaglia, n. from the Oxford English Dictionary:                                             [‘ Rabble; the common people; a mob or pack of people regarded as rabble’]

Based on my mother’s limited expectations for marriage, she chose her mate according to his gene pool.  My dad called himself ‘The Producer,’ so I’m pretty sure he operated within the same parameters.  Their insecurities, lack of opportunities, coming of age in WW2, were overcome by what they saw as  physical superiority, in themselves and their children.

Beauty was more valued than education.  Their badges of honor were square shoulders, shapely legs, almond eyes, good hair, exceptional posture, and in my mother’s case, speed.  Her driving skills matched any daredevil man’s,  Dad was a normal driver, but nothing could slow her maneuvering excellence down, especially four screaming kids in the backseat.

Not long after my father left, so did Melanie and I.  She was still in high school.  We had only the confidence of our upbringing, youth, and skimpy clothing.   Those led us directly to a hippie artist with a page-boy to be coveted, who lived in a retired mail truck.  Old friends in a matter of hours, we piled into his vehicle for a spin around Kansas City.

The truck had been converted into a sunny, drivable living space, lined with daisy wallpaper.  Big enough for sections, it housed a sofa/bed, a small table, and what Melanie and I used as a running track between the front and back.  The driver sat on a free-standing swivel stool, and in a moment of quiet repose, I plopped next to him cross-legged on the deep dashboard.

When he pulled in front of our house, one of his friends, referring to our car antics, said to him, “God, all that screeching, now that those two are leaving, maybe we can actually hear ourselves think.”

Self control and car manners were not part of our upbringing.  Until then, we’d gotten by with our buona faccia facades.  Realizing that acting like wild animals wouldn’t cut it with those outside my parent’s model was as shocking as a slap, and the first step to self-examination.  And even though we were mere canaglia, I fit into the artist’s aesthetic vision.  He moved out of the mail truck, into our house, which he turned into a palace of his imagination, and I married him.

Photo by Marissa Bridge

In a recent late night conversation about loss, aging, and the current state of global affairs, I said, “The only comfort is in knowing we don’t have to live forever.”

Such glibness can be explained.  On top of everything else in the world, I am attending two memorials within a few days.  But it isn’t just me making careless jokes.  On a quiet night in an Indian restaurant, our waitress asked if we’d been there before.  I recalled a recent dinner, different friend, same table.  The place had been packed.  The waitress’s graying bun hung from her head like a climber losing steam.  She gestured beyond the sitar and tabla players, out to the sidewalk.  “I know,” she said, “where is everybody tonight?  Did they all die?”

The three of us laughed and laughed again.  Even with collective fears of imminent disaster, we laughed at the thought of the end of the world, about sitting in a little place in the East Village on a sleepy Sunday night, about being the last five people left on earth, blithely eating Chicken Tandoori while listening to live music.

But laugh as we may, anything can happen.  A close friend of mine, along with five others, was killed in a small plane.  It was years ago, still fresh, a beautiful spring day, clear skies.  Yet the pilot scraped the roof of a building as he was coming in for a landing.  It turned out he suffered from back trouble and was flying on morphine.

As I sat crying my head off at the funeral, I noticed a brass memorial plate on the back of the bench before me.  It had the name Hattie on it, the dates of her birth and death, and a quote.  By then, thousands of other mourners had seen it, and it was my turn for Hattie’s take on life.  “Well,”  the plaque said, “that’s that.”

For those of you who have read this before, I apologize.  I’m trying to get the text and the image to publish on the same page.  Wordpress can be unpredictable.

John Gibson arrived at my apartment for what we refer to as ‘salon.’  But before we were to commence our usual shenanigans, he needed to sit down and read prayers for a very sick friend.  I lowered the lights, and for several minutes, John read blessings off his computer.  He closed with the prayer that repeats a comforting concept when a person’s about to leave this earth: World without end.

Within the hour, John was belly down like a reptile looking for a diamond earring I had just dropped on the floor.  And I was right beside him.  We tried corralling it with a dust mop.  When that didn’t work, I got up and retrieved a flashlight that needed new batteries before we could use it.  Every dimmer in the apartment was turned to high.  All the while, I kept lamenting, “That’s what I get for showing them to you.  God, I feel like my sister, Gretchen.”

After my mother died, Richard, her long-lost-half-brother drove from Wichita to southern Missouri to treat my three siblings and I to lunch.  In a state of unspoken grief, we mostly stared out the window at a manmade lake and golf course with grass so smooth I assumed it was fake too.

Gretchen, the youngest, got up to go to the bathroom.  After an unusually long time, she returned looking as if she’d witnessed something worse than what we were repressing.  In a breathy hush, she said, “I took off my diamond ring to wash my hands and when I went to put it back on, it wasn’t there.  I think it went down the drain.”

I stood and followed her to the bathroom.  Our waiter and the hostess came in to see what all the fuss was about.  A uniformed member of the maintenance crew joined us with a big light and a plumber’s snake.  He eventually fetched more tools and went about the removal of the drain pipe. Her ring was not there.  At least thirty minutes into this fiasco, we returned to our uncle who looked as if he remembered the reason for his absence.

Still crawling around on the floor at the end of this tale, I said to John , “Gretchen found the ring by her kitchen sink, exactly where she’d left it.”

“Where’s the damn earring box?”  John commanded.

“I heard the diamond tinkle across the floor, John.”

“I don’t even know what we’re looking for.  I need to see the other one.”

Once again, I hoisted myself from a prone position, got the little white box and handed it to him.  Both diamonds were inside.  It was one of the screw backs that I’d heard scamper out of sight.

With John reciting prayers for his dying friend, and Gretchen’s birthday within a few days, yet thirteen years after her tragic death, there was plenty of grief in the air.  That is, if one had the courage to face it.  Instead, I pulled a Gretchen: false loss, big panic.  I don’t claim the technique to be particularly desirable, but in a so-called world without end, it’s comforting to recognize a glint of her in me.