I Know I Ramble, But I'm Just So Excited

When I was a little girl, every summer, Jessica Barron would come to Alabama from Kansas to visit her grandmother. I always looooved when she came to visit, cause she was "cool". Plus, she'd jump off stuff with me. I mean, that's really all it takes when you're little, isn't it? Someone that will get on top of something tall with you, look down at the ground, then look back at you and say "We can make it."

And we DID.

I loved Jessica cause I could call her Jesse. And that was COOL.

Plus she talked funny, and that was also COOL.

And she made fun of the way I talked, and it was so FUNNY and COOL.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

As we got older, Jesse's visits became even more awesome, because she is exactly as silly as I am. We always made our own fun. Plus? Jesse was COOL. I mean, she had cool clothes, and she wore cool hats, and she wore the cool hats BACKWARDS which was even MORE COOL.

She sang Cake's version of "I Will Survive" all summer long one year, and was known to spontaneously start singing "Love Child" at any given moment, the entire time I knew her. We would drive around for hours talking, and singing the soundtracks to Grease and Saturday Night Fever. She moved me to dance and sing in public. We performed Rizzo's Song for the people in the ticket booth at Rainbow Cinemas, complete with impromptu dance.

Her boyfriend (at the time) sat on me until I was still enough to watch Star Wars. And then the Highlander. Her uncle had an albino king snake named Lucy, and we used to put Lucy in Jesse's old dollhouse and let her slither around. Her uncle worked at this ritzy hotel in TN, and he had stories about meeting Bob Dylan and going along with Sheryl Crow when she took her dog for a walk in the middle of the night.

When Jesse went off to college, we wrote ridiculously stupid letters back and forth. We got the hang of email so we could talk more. (nerd aside: I had a Juno address back then) Alabama started to become "home" to her.

One night we got bored, and went to the tennis courts up on the mountain, and had a pretend tennis match. I mean, we didn't have rackets or a ball, but we still played our hearts out. I'm pretty sure I won.

Another night, we looked through her aunt's 80's prom dresses until she found one that fit her. She wore it, and a golf cap on backwards. Then we went all around town, with her wearing that dress.

I guess my point is... Jesse was someone who tapped into the side of me who didn't care what other people thought. Being with her was just too much FUN to care about what other people thought about it.

Then.... we grew apart.

It was slow at first. I mean, she lived here and in Kansas, so there was always a lot of back & forth. We might go a few months without talking, but it didn't matter, because I knew she'd be here again soon enough. I'd hear a knock at my door, and it would be Jesse, grinning like a Cheshire cat, her brown hair cut in some crazy new way... and all the time we'd been apart would melt away.

She called me one day, and in a nervous, roundabout way, told me she was a lesbian. I wasn't really surprised. I mean, we jokingly called her "the emotional lesbian" anyway, so it sort of made sense. I told her I didn't care, and I didn't. But Jesse jumped into her new lifestyle with both feet, just like she did everything, and pretty soon it was "lesbian lesbian lesbian" and I was a religious "asshole asshole asshole". Her new life was all-encompassing, and it makes sense to me now. She'd been hiding for a long time from who she was, and the freedom to explore this new part of herself was making her dizzy. It's totally understandable..... NOW. But at the time, I couldn't understand why every time we talked, it had to be about lesbians.

I told you I was an asshole.

I haven't talked to Jesse since I got engaged to Alex. That was 1999. I've thought of her so many times since then. My heart hurts, wishing I could find her, wondering if it would be weird to show up to her grandmother's old house to see if I could get in touch with her... but I never did. Angie and I equally love Jesse, (except by equally, I mean that I love her more than Angie does) so there were many "Remember when Jessica...." stories to tell.

Then, today, Angie got a friend request from MySpace from Jessica.

And there she was.

Brown eyes full of mischief, beautiful freckles, and the same smile that I've missed since it left me.

Sometimes? God knows exactly what you need, and exactly what day you're gonna need it.

And I am so happy about that.

~