Going Backwards - Melody Cryns

This morning as I look out the kitchen windows at the lush green leaves of the trees and I realize that instead of going forward today when I read from my creative thesis, I’m going backwards. So many people are going to be there to listen to me read about things that happened to me and to the kids in the past. I haven’t even perfected what I’m going to read yet, am still figuring out exactly what to read and how it’s going to play out. I feel like a young kid again nervous to be in a play or in a show. Who am I to do this? How am I worthy?

So my friend Heidi is visiting from Washington, my long-time friend. Instead of taking her to San Francisco, the beach and Golden Gate Park, I ended up taking her to Coyote Stage Stop way down Monterey Road where the bikers hang out on nice days – I wanted to meet all of my friends – Debby and Vikki and Mike Sult, my long-time guitar teacher, and all of my musician friends. We sat in a semi-dark room with the front doors wide open looking out on to the golden greenish hills beyond and listened to the Rhythm District play their off-the-wall rhythmic music, feeling the beat and hearing Mike Sult expertly play those lead guitar riffs while Mario tinkled away on the keyboards, and young Jeremy, who is even younger than my son Jeremy, expertly keep beat with the drums. I think Heidi was digging it. She said she wanted to go out because she never gets to while she’s up in Washington, so she’s getting a chance to go out. My friend Vikki showed up and she and I hugged her. We all sat at the same round table and Vikki and Debby thought it was funny to wear sun glasses because the sun is pouring in from the front doors.

My friends from a band that calls themselves After Sunset began to arrive, Larry and Mike Silva and Duane, the big guy who plays a mean bass, and Jason, their young drummer. Larry plays an amazing lead guitar, and I’ve been watching as their band begins to become more and more emeshed and better and better all the time. I really like Larry because he loves the Beatles and the Beatles jam night at Woodham’s was his idea.

So we all sat there having a good time when suddenly Vikki said, “Oh look, your friend is here.

My friend?

I turned around and who walked in but a very disheveled and tired-looking Mike Halloran. I had texted him days earlier while he was at this songwriter’s conference in LA that me and my friends would most likely be hanging at Coyote’s Stage Stop on Sunday afternoon. I’d never heard back and I had no idea what day he was driving back, so you can imagine how excited I was to see Mike – my special guy friend whom I don’t get to see that much. I keep thinking every time I see him, okay this is it. I’m probably not going to see him again. But then he does something sweet like give me a beautiful baritone ukulele, which I’ve already been playing. So far I can play three or four songs pretty well, including Something and Lady Madonna – Beatles songs. Then I left for my adventure in Reno and Virginia City and he went on his own adventure to the songwriter’s conference in LA – when I ran up and hugged and kissed him and then led him to a seat right next to mine, after introducing him to my long-time friend Heidi who gushed about what a loyal friend I was (so embarrassing, but cute nonetheless), he told me, all red faced and smiling that the songwriter’s conference was the best one he’d been to in 20 year. He met so many awesome people and attended the big party that lasted until 3am and just had a fabulous time. I told him I was glad and we sat close together and he put his arm around me as if we were boyfriend and girlfriend – even though I have no idea what we are or aren’t, but I guess it doesn’t matter. He didn’t mind that my friend Heidi took pictures of us and said we looked really sweet together. Heidi and I talked about some of the crazy things we’d done and how we followed each other around the world for 20 years because our husbands were in the military. Good times.

Surrounded by my closest friends, I felt braver than I’ve been feeling lately, not feeling worthy to stand at a podium at 5pm tonight and read from my own writing, picking out which pieces I think are best, not really sure which ones would go over the best.
It’s a beautiful spring day, time for reading about the past yet striving for the future.