I had a very rough weekend. The eclipse set off the Pluto transit to my Moon and…

My daughter is ill, but today she went to school and I got to the gym which is a relief and a refuge for me. It’s a sanctuary and on good days I leave my phone in the locker.

But on days like today when I think I might hear from the school, I take my phone with me, so I had it in my hand when the soldier called. I was not expecting the call.

“Yeah?” I said.

“P. I can’t talk. I only have a minute.”

“I know.”

So he talked for a minute. “You okay? I just want to make sure you’re ok. And tell you that it’s bright here,” he said. ‘You go have yourself a bright day, P.”

I hung up, glad to have his energy. I am in some trouble right now, in the Petri dish that is the gym. And feeling stressed about my daughter, I am not really up to dealing with it.

When I get low energy like this I tend to try to evade… everything. And beyond that I just hope I can get away with it and fight another day when I’ve got more stamina. Then there was the added good feeling because the phone rang, but it was not the school, which it so often is.

So I hung up and I got on the crosstrainer and I don’t use headphones. I tried it once for about 2 minutes but prefer to hear the piped in “whatever the gym is playing” each day.

And I notice the music too. I have to, since I am going to dance to it. I can pretty much dance on a cross-trainer and even if I’m having a not so agile day, I still dance in my head and I know most the songs on the loop.

For example, the most commonly played songs are Tom Petty’s “American Girl” and Los Lonely Boys, “Real Emotions”. But anyway I got on there and something new came on. What’s this, I wondered. I couldn’t place it.

“We can drive around this town
Let the cops chase us around…”

And then it hit me. “Hey Jealousy”. The Gin Blossoms. It’s one of the songs the soldier collected throughout his life and sent me in 2003. I chuckled. Pretty slick timing. I guess the universe decided I deserved some shoring up or something.

See, when I contacted the soldier in 2003, we hadn’t talked for about 20 years. And he’d collected these songs that made him think of me during that time, each of them for very specific (and varied) reasons.

So ultimately he sent me a cd with all these songs and I listened to it like… once. That was all I could handle, I was so overwhelmed. Because when I decided to contact him, I never expected anything like this. I expected him to be dead and if not, I imagined he would probably remember me, but this? I was thrown for a loop.

And then after I’d listened to the cd, he ran through each song and explained why he chose. Each song had some kind of story…

“Hey Jealousy? Yeah, that’s a good one,” he said. “I got that one… well for one thing we were always jealous. We were both jealous as hell of each other all the time. Remember?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Yeah, so that was the first thing. But then he says he’s drunk or something. He’s in some kind of trouble so he’s heading to her house so he can crash. And I used to do that with you sometimes. I’d show up needing somewhere to stay and you’d always let me. I always knew I could come crash at your place, E and that’s a really good thing about you. I liked that about you, that I could always come to you and that was really good thing for someone like me to have. It meant a lot.”

“Thanks and you’re welcome.”

“And I always thought you’d still do this. I always figured even if I hadn’t seen you in ten years, fifteen years, if I ever showed up needing a place to stay, you’d give it to me. Is that right, E?

“Oh yeah. Absolutely.”

“Yep. Even if you had a husband or a boyfriend or something I still know you’re going to give me a couch, aren’t you, E? Somewhere to sleep?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah, you’re not going to send me away. You wouldn’t send anyone away, and you sure as hell aren’t going to send me away, so yeah. That was in there and it definitely made me think of you.”

“Gotcha.”

“And then they’re driving around in that song which is what we did. That’s all we ever did. Wherever there was to go, we were there. We went there on those bikes, one or both of them and we got there in like 2 seconds. And in the song, they’ve got the cops chasing them and does that sound familiar to you?”

“Yeah, it does. We did have people chase us from time to time…”

“Hell yeah. Someone was always chasing us, huh P? We were always running from someone or something. You drove the getaway car a few times, remember?”

I laughed. “Well, yeah. I had to keep you from getting killed. I had to save you repeatedly. Get us out of there before you got killed.”

“Yeah, I know. I definitely used to take some chances. And you’d see me getting into trouble and you wouldn’t say anything. You’d just get up, walk outside and start the bike. They’d think you were in the restroom or something… fixing your hair. But you’d be on the bike, waiting by the door with the thing fired up and ready to take off. Then I’d run out, jump on and you’d take off with people yelling, get back here!”

We both laughed.

“We always got away, too. Though we had some close calls a few times. Some of them were very close. And it was never the cops after us, huh P? We didn’t break laws. That’s not what we were doing. We weren’t really bad kids. Just daredevils.”

I laughed. “Yeah, daredevils. And no, we didn’t break many laws, I guess. I was 17 years old and in a bar. Should we count that?”

“Nah. We don’t count that. That was okay. You can be 17. So anyway, E, it also says in there, you’re the best I ever had, and hell. That goes without saying. You know that’s true, I don’t even need to tell you. And there was one other thing, I think.”

I waited.

‘Oh yeah. There are two… no three other things in that song that made me choose it.”

“What?”

“Well he talks about blowing the whole thing years ago. He says, if I wouldn’t have blown the whole thing years ago, I might not be alone. So obviously that fit. Fit too well, I would have to say. I do feel l blew it with you back then. I think I fucked up.”

“You didn’t. It wasn’t your fault, what else?”

“Well he says he’s not going to screw around on her, which I never would, and… oh yeah. He says if she doesn’t expect too much, she won’t be let down. And I don’t know, E. I just think that has to do with us too. I think that has something to do with me or with us, as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well you know I am always trying my best. I am. Always! But I always seem to let people down in somehow, anyway. And I wish I didn’t. I really wish that people never were or felt disappointed in me.”

I winced. “Ow.”

“So I just wonder if they expected a little less, if things might be better. Things might be okay if a person could just lower their expectations a little. Or even a lot. I think people should lower their expectations a lot but lowering them even a hair would help. What do you think, E? Does that sound right to you?”

It does sound right to me.

Do you feel people expect too much of you?