Carefree And Easy Going

Remember how you used to share all your secrets with your best friend? Well, not quite all of them, there were some things we all just knew not to talk about.

My mother had a way of raising her long penciled in auburn eyebrows high up into her forehead and saying, "If you only knew."

Nobody wanted to know more than I did.

I used to try and imagine what she would say if I could get her to talk. I thought maybe it would be those same thoughts I had too and never felt I could share with anyone. Growing up in the fifties wasn't all Leave It Too Beaver and Mickey Mouse Club. In order to maintain that kind of easy going care free-ness there had to be a list of things no one ever thought about, or heaven forbid, spoke of.

The trouble was, I thought about them. That in itself was pretty traumatizing, but I was an intelligent child. I never ever spoke about them. If I had, I suspected that I would have suffered the same fate as the flies my grandmother chased down all summer long, always saying, "Filthy creatures," as that fly swatter swept in for the kill.

Grandma knew what was good and what was bad. If someone she loved did something bad, she would say, "That just breaks my heart." She didn't play cards, or drink and she had a picture of Jesus with his sacred heart stuck to the outside of his chest that caused me great consternation. One time I asked about it and she, being rather busy at the time, said something vague about things he talked about.

So, I grew up, not really easy going, and certainly not carefree, but alive and relatively unscathed by the flyswatter. Unfortunately I still had those thoughts and I certainly was not going to talk about them to anyone.

After over fifty years of not talking, I violated that sacred code and -- I talked! I shared those things with a friend and no great flyswatter descended upon me and my heart, although in my mouth for a while, was not ripped from my chest.

For the first time, I know what it feels like to be carefree and easy going!

Don't wait as long as I did.