Sweet ​Thing (Sweet Thing 1.) 4 csillagozás

You have to teach your heart and mind how to sing together… then you'll hear the sound of your soul.

…wisdom is not the same as information; it’s something entirely different. It’s often mistaken for good advice, but wisdom cannot be imparted to someone. Wisdom can only be earned; it’s a by-product of experience, not necessarily knowledge…

Sometimes it takes the love of others to show us who we really are.

You are your mother and your father. You are your experiences and your fears and the love you let yourself feel. You are your degree and your talent and your passion. You are your pain, your joy, and your fantasies. You are me and Sheil and Jenny and Will and every person that touches your soul… but most of all you are you, whoever you dream that to be.

The big questions… what do you want to do with the rest of your life? Who will you marry if you marry at all? What career will you choose? Do you want children? It seemed like everything I knew at twenty-five morphed into everything I didn’t know by twenty-six, when I was suddenly hit with the realization that many of the decisions we make in our twenties… are permanent.

I never considered myself guarded, I thought of myself as strong, but I was wrong. Life had thrown me for a loop when my father died. I’d gone to New York thinking I would straighten things out with the café, then go to grad school, further my education, meet some strapping doctor or business man and let my life follow the square rules I set forth, but the moment I stepped onto that plane back in March, I’d started to feel a different pull. There was a magnetism I felt toward Will, the music, my new friends, the café, and the city itself. It felt right and it felt good. How could I have been so wrong about myself before? If I was guarded it was because I was realizing how little control I had over my feelings and it scared me.

had shut the window screen, my eyes and brain off to the world, when I was jolted by the weight of my own bag being tossed onto the seat next to me. My eyes darted open and up to Will, who was forcefully rearranging everything in the overhead bin.
“Sorry, baby, I’ve got to make room for her,” he said, grabbing his guitar and hoisting it up.
I rolled my eyes at the thought of him personifying his guitar. He grabbed my bag, shoved it in the bin, and collapsed into his seat. I shot him a slightly annoyed look. “Why didn’t you request an aisle seat?” I asked.
“Well, you see, sweetheart, I like to be right behind the emergency exit. I’ll hop over this seat, jump out the door, and be down that super slide in a split second,” he said with an arrogant smile.
“Then why not request the exit aisle?”
“I am not the person for that job, trust me.”
“Damn, chivalry is dead. It doesn’t matter anyway; our lives are in the hands of these hopefully sober pilots and this nine-hundred-thousand-pound hunk of metal, so…”
“Can we stop talking about this? I don’t think you understand.” He pulled a rosary out of his pocket and proceeded to put it around his neck.
“Something tells me you have no idea what that’s for,” I said, giggling. “Are you Catholic?” He was desperately trying to peel a tiny price tag label off one of the beads. “Oh my god, you bought that in the airport gift store, huh?”
Putting his finger to his mouth, he said, “Shhh! Woman, please!” He looked around as if he would be found out. “Of course I’m Catholic.”
A light chuckle escaped my mouth. “Well, God would know, so wearing that around your neck instead of chanting your Hail Marys is probably pissing the big guy off, and that’s not good for any of us.”
He let out a nervous laugh and then whispered, “Hey, little firecracker, you like taunting me, don’t you?” Waiting for my response, he looked directly into my eyes and smiled cutely.

When we hit cruising altitude, he relaxed a little and began describing the magical pickups on the Harmony and the modifications he’d made to the Telecaster. He clearly knew what he was talking about and I found his enthusiasm sweet.

We continued into an easy conversation about our favorite musicians. We agreed on everything from Led Zeppelin to Bette Midler. We talked about Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Debussy, the Naizi Brothers, and Edith Piaf. It was the most intense and diverse musical conversation I’d ever had. We talked nonstop for the entire length of the flight.

I told him about my musical background and also how I was going to live in my father’s apartment with my yellow lab, Jackson, and run his café, maybe teach piano lessons on the side. He told me how he was working as a bartender in a swanky boutique hotel lounge in SoHo. He said at the moment he was living in a literal storage closet in Chinatown until he could afford an apartment. He was playing guitar in a band that he wasn’t too excited about. Between practice and his job and the few gigs they played a month, he was never home.

I thought about my spare bedroom for a second and then pushed the idea out of mind when I reminded myself that Will was a complete stranger. Even though I found his neuroses more endearing than scary, I figured inviting a struggling musician to live with me was not the best idea.
As the plane started to descend, Will gripped the armrest. “Mia, we’re going down. I need to know everything about you right now! How old are you, what’s your last name, what street do you live on? If we make it out of this, I think we should jam together, you know, musically or whatever.”
He was being adorable. My body tingled with warmth from his gaze. I shifted nervously before answering, “My last name is Kelly, I’ll be at my father’s café most days—Kell’s on Avenue A. Come and have a coffee with me sometime and we’ll talk music. Oh, and I’m twenty-five.”
When we were safely on the ground, he smiled sweetly and said in a low voice, “We both have double first names. I’m Will Ryan, twenty-nine. I live at 22 Mott Street in the storage closet. I work at the Montosh. I’m O negative, you know, the universal one and I play in a band called The Ivans. Oh, and I love coffee. It was nice to meet you, Mia.”
“It was nice to meet you too.”
“We made it,” he said, pointing out the window as we taxied to the gate. “You know they say people who have stared death in the face are bonded for life.”
I laughed. “Your antics are cute, Will.”
“I was going for irresistible,” he said with a brazen smirk.

When I stepped out into the crisp March, New York air, I sensed him walking behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I walked straight up to the first available cab, hopped in, shut the door, and shouted, “Manhattan!” As we pulled away from the curb, I glanced over at Will. He was blowing a lungful of smoke into the air with curiosity in his eyes like he was listening to God. His gaze met mine and with a larger-than-life wave, he mouthed the words, “Goodbye, Mia.” I thought I caught “Sweet Thing” just as he left my view.

Sorting through a box of pictures, Martha pulled one out and held it up. “Do you remember this, Mia Pia?” I scanned the black-and-white photo as the memory came flooding back. We were at the Memphis Zoo, all of us. I was about six, sitting atop my father’s shoulders. On one side of us stood my mother and David, on the other side stood Martha and her husband, Jimmy. We were all smiling exuberantly at the camera except for my mother; she was looking at my father and me. Her smile was different—it wasn’t excited, it was warm and full of love.
Martha, Jimmy, and Pops had been on a road trip all over the U.S. My mother and David decided we would meet them in Memphis. Just moments after we took the picture, it began raining. Instead of calling it a day, my father pointed and shouted, “To the butterflies!” Showered by the warm rain, he skipped toward the exhibit with me bouncing above his six-foot-four frame. I held on to his ruddy brown locks while he hummed “Rocky Road to Dublin.” I remember feeling safe, loved, and exactly where I should be. Inside the screened enclosure, he pointed to a chrysalis and explained metamorphosis to me.
“Pops, will I have a metamorphosis?”
“Of course, luv. We are ever changing, always learning, always evolving.”
“So I’ll be a beautiful butterfly one day?”
He smiled and chuckled. “You’re a beautiful butterfly now. It’s the change that happens in here that matters.” He pointed to my heart.