June 7, 1976 - August 3, 2003

There are two dates that strike a nerve with me every year: June 7 is the day Rickey was born; August 3 is the day he died.

Rickey and I had a conversation sometime in 2001 or 2002, where we mused over the fact that not only do you pass your birthday every year, but every year you also pass your deathday. It wasn't a groundbreaking revelation, of course. And though I have wondered about it - like I am sure everyone has - I'm not generally one of morbid nature, where I regularly mull over what date I will die or what day of the week it will be. Rickey and I just didn't realize - as if you ever could - back when we had that conversation regarding the earnest curiosity and wonder of the one inevitability faced by all, that his death year would be so soon.

It was 2003, and it was a Sunday.

Life without Rickey has been what I had realized that it would eventually be. On some level, I realized it that day in August when I learned he was gone. That day and over the subsequent weeks and months, I could not mentally grasp the idea of not being able to see him, touch him or talk to him ever again. But I also could not comprehend a world where months and years would go by in which he did not exist, and I would be in that world, and I would be ok.

I would eventually be ok, and that is what pissed me off so much after he died. I would imagine a time when I hadn't seen him or talked to him in years. I knew a time would come when I would be able to remember him without crying. And I hated knowing that this would become my world. And as I had imagined it back then, it is the world I live in now. I have not seen him or talked to him in years. And though I have accepted this in order to exist sanely in this new world, it still doesn't feel natural to live a life in which he has no fundamental influence.

The most common parts of my life were suddenly unfamiliar, even from just brushing my teeth or my hair to simply driving down the street. Everything seemed magnified, more deliberate, and required more effort as if immense pain hones all of your senses and blurs the big picture at the same time ... because I distinctly remember patches of moments from those weeks immediately following his death, but my general recollection of those weeks overall is hazy ... and dark. Like I remember opening my eyes once - a few days after the funeral - not knowing how long I had been asleep, and seeing the evening shadows cast across my room. Then, it seems like only moments later that my mother was coming in to ask if I wanted to eat a little breakfast.

Maybe I will live to be a very old woman in this world without Rickey, and I hate the idea of his life becoming more distant. Decades may pass in which I will have existed in this unnatural place, where every time something new or exciting happens, I will have that instantaneous urge to tell Rickey about it before I realize I can't. That's the part that makes me simultaneously appreciate and loathe being in this place where I knew I would eventually be - where I am actually ok and Rickey is a memory.

The strength eventually came to get out of bed every morning and put one foot in front of the other - without my mother's sympathetic embrace. And I learned to accept that the darkness would linger. And time began to help me remember that I love this life despite the circumstances. I would eventually know that there were still good times to be had, and I truly believe that as long as I live, so does he.

Today Rickey would have been 31. And I want to write about what life was like with Rickey.

When I spoke on behalf of Rickey at the Memorial Tree Planting Ceremony for students at our university who had passed away during that academic year, I had wished that I had some words of wisdom to vindicate the meaning of life and to soften the tragic blow of an untimely death such as his. But at that time in my life as a recent college graduate entering a "real world" that suddenly felt like a fifth dimension, I was still trying to simply understand that if I dialed his cell, he was not going to answer it.

Instead I decided that day to share some of my favorite memories, and I balled all the way through it. I could not look at any spot on that campus and not see a memory of Rickey. Some days it was comforting and other days, it could be quite maddening. As college sweethearts, we were probably among the goofiest of couples, with a lot of characteristics that might seem unlikely of a college basketball player and a sorority chapter president. Common acquaintances might have often been surprised to discover that we were both big dorks. Needless to say, there are a lot of silly memories from which I could chose.

Next to a tree in front of Brown Cafeteria is where Rickey was chasing me and I tripped over my own two feet and twisted my ankle; we had only known each other for a few days, and I had been teasing him in a botched attempt to be sexy and flirty. And if you walk about midway up the stairs from Brown Cafeteria to Buchanan Hall, Rickey and I once sat there and looked for four-leaf clovers. Under the Alumni Tower, there is a little square plaque in the bricks, and we would race to see who could step on it first. When it snowed, a few accomplices once joined us in stealing lunch trays from Dodson Cafeteria and went sledding on the hill behind Helder Hall. There was a huge snowball fight that same night in the lobby of Leatherwood Hall, which is just adjacent to that hill.

Our first kiss was also in Leatherwood. When I kissed him the first time, he leaned his head back with his eyes closed and a little grin on his face. He took a deep breath and paused. Then, he looked back down at me and said, "Kiss me again." After having chased me for seven months, he acted as if that one little kiss was the ultimate grand prize. And it was kind of romantic even though we were hiding in the first floor unisex bathroom (in the main lobby) from the twins, Jonas and Jarvis. They were his college basketball teammates, who later transferred to Georgia, and were well-known throughout campus for their pranks. The twins and other friends were involved in whatever silly cat-and-mouse-ish diversion we'd come up with that day, and when we finally came out of hiding, the twins kept asking Rickey why he had such a goofy look on his face.

Cullowhee is in the middle of no where so we had to be creative in entertaining ourselves. We had water gun fights. We played pranks. The men’s basketball team once got in trouble for playing hide-n-go-seek in the basement of Hunter Library during study hall. Another time, some of his teammates caught us playing follow-the-leader around Reid Gym. After being witness to this game, they never let Rickey live it down. However, one of the things that his teammates never knew was that he once let me apply a complete line of cosmetics to his face. After one look in the mirror, he demanded that I immediately take it off.

We took a chessboard on every road trip, whether it was to the waterfalls just beyond Cashiers (NC) or to the beach at Tybee Island (SC). We had our own rule for playing Scrabble. The rule was that you couldn’t make real words, but the word had to sound like it was real. We had a dictionary handy just to make sure that certain words we came up with didn’t actually exist. One time I created the word “W-A-R-P-T-H” and Rickey disqualified it because he said it was just Captain Kirk with a lisp.

We sat on the bricks outside of Dodson Cafeteria. We ate our lunches on the balcony of the University Center. We once ran out of gasoline in front of Scott Hall. We took long walks and sat on many of the benches sprinkled throughout the grounds, and there are so many memories all over that university that sometimes the random conversations we once had sort of echoed in my mind from different corners of campus.

Our favorite movie was "Stir of Echoes" because we liked to laugh at the part where Kevin Bacon tells his wife that the water is softening up the dirt. We used to rewind that part over and over. If one watches that movie and has the same corny sense of humor that Rickey and I share, then it is apparent why we think it is so funny.

In front of friends and even acquaintances, we would randomly act as if we could communicate with each other using this high-pitched alien language from the movie "Galaxy Quest." We would try to finish each other’s sentences in random ways that didn’t make any sense at all, and we loved to purposely use erratic vocabulary completely out of context or just plain wrong. For example, he once referred to a tasty hamburger as being so comatosed.

Rickey’s mom was always telling us how crazy we were, but there aren’t only memories that just make me laugh. I remember sitting on the hood of my car overlooking the view of campus from the Cullowhee Airport and talking for hours. He was one of very few people who would listen to me talk for lengthy periods about astronomy. We debated political and social topics. We talked about our families. We talked about our dreams. We talked about life.

Rickey and I dated for over three years, but we fought a losing battle to the long distance (after he left school) and an addiction to prescription pain medication that started after a basketball injury in his senior year and would ultimately take his life. We had a trying fourth year in which we struggled to salvage our relationship, and my biggest regret is that we spent a majority of that last year arguing and saying things to each other that we didn’t really mean. I know that we never meant any of the things we said because we always called each other back within a day - or even an hour - to apologize.

There are certain people that you love in such a way that you feel like you can say certain things to them – no matter how hurtful – but you would not tolerate it coming from anyone else. I guess that is why no matter how hard things got, we wouldn’t let our bridges burn. In some ways, you feel like you can say anything without doing permanent damage, which you never realize is more wrong than when you can no longer say you're sorry.

However, during the months following Rickey's death, I began to see that the true heartbreak of those arguments is not so much that we argued, but that I realize now that he was right over half the time. I was just so selfish with this tunnel-vision ambition that made me too self-absorbed to notice. I was also naïve about the frailty of life and even though I thought I knew a lot, I did not truly understand the old cliché of not appreciating something until it is gone. Despite all of this, I also realize that I am so lucky because I had some great years with Rickey.

Rickey loved me more in four years than some people ever love anyone in a lifetime, and it seemed like everyone knew it because he threw it out in the open and hid it from no one. During the seven months it took him to get me to go out with him, he used so many random, public tactics to get my attention - these tactics often involved the recruitment and participation of his teammates, friends or even fellow students he barely knew. He once picked flowers off of the university lawn and dropped to his knees at my feet in front of a packed student quad. I don't know if he felt no shame in rejection or if he was just so sure he would eventually get me. After awhile, I knew that he would, too ... and, I don't know if this will make any sense, but he had made the chase so flattering that the "foreplay" of a relationship was almost too much fun to give in to being "caught."

One of the last two memories that I wanted to share at the Memorial Tree Planting Ceremony was right around the time that we had first met. I was walking past Simply T’s on my way to class, and Rickey was walking from Brown Cafeteria. He had on some baggy jeans and a dark green sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his wave cap. He walked along, bobbing his head to the beat of the music in his headphones, and in passing, we stopped momentarily and I asked him what he was listening to. I had expected him to mention someone like Pastor Troy or his favorite rapper, Tupac, but when he pulled the headphone away from his left ear, I heard the boys of N’Sync singing “Bye, bye, bye …”

Rickey looked at people the way he looked at music, with an open-mind, acceptance and appreciation.

The other memory was when he wanted to try my roommate’s cereal. He had never had Waffle Crisps before, so he poured himself a bowl, added the milk and took a spoonful. He immediately got this wide-eyed, astonished look on his face and exclaimed, “I have been looking for a cereal like this my whole life!”

Rickey enjoyed the little things even more than the big things, from the taste of cereal to lying in the grass by the creek or creating special ways to say that he cared. I know, because not only did he notice when the little things happened, which is a knack that few people have, but he also went out of his way to do the little things for those he loved.

After sharing these memories at the Memorial Tree Planting Ceremony in 2004, Rickey's father thanked me for introducing him to a side of his son that he had never known. Rickey took with him a side of me that others may never know, but I suppose the only thing that matters for us in the end is that we once existed.

Comparing Ends

Cullowhee, NC. 2003. Rickey and I had not spoken in two weeks. Following a fight over his attempt to illegally fill a forged prescription for pain medication, I had been ignoring his phone calls from Augusta, Georgia. I wanted him to feel like he was losing me, like his behavior was destroying all we'd ever had. And if he didn't get his life together, there wouldn't even be a friendship left. I wanted to make him suffer a little. How immature it seems now. How stupid it seemed immediately after the phone call.

When his father's name flashed the incoming call on my cell phone, I assumed it was Rickey. That his cell phone had been turned off yet again. That he was using his father's phone as he had numerous times before. I remember the last thought I had just before I heard the Earth crack in two: "Ok. I'll talk to him now."

The thing that perplexed me the most after Rickey died is that no one else's world came to a deafening halt. The Western Carolina Men's Basketball Team still left for their WCU Canadian Tour a few days later. My best friend still left North Carolina a few days later for her role in "Mother Divine," which WCU was producing in New York.

After the funeral in Augusta, our friends went back to their lives, and much to my amazement, life went on around me. And my mother temporarily moved into my apartment to fully devote her time to helping me get on with mine. Brushing my hair for me or running my baths whenever the simple act of looking in the mirror would bring me to tears. Giving me pedicures while I stared at the ceiling. Finding shows on television when the remote in my hand idled listlessly on the TV Guide Channel. Forcing me to eat when I actually valued the sharp hunger pangs that dulled the intense pressure crushing my heart. It's like my mind could only accept so much anguish at one time. As if soothing the throb in my stomach, allowed my mind to fully bear the agony in my chest. I preferred to feel hungry.

Much of the day after - and the days in the wake of - his death are blurred in my mind, but some moments are clear, defined in the creases of my memory. I remember laying in the bathtub and listening to a repetitive drip ripple on the surface above my feet. If I focused on the tiny sound of the drip and magnified the echo in my mind, I could make the bathroom tiles stop spinning.

I fought sleep because each time I awoke, I had those first fuzzy moments where I had to realize he was gone all over again. There are few things worse than having a dream where everything is alright and waking up in a reality where everything isn't. And then more tears. I cried so much that I began sobbing to my mother about how I didn't want to cry anymore. It is a painful thing to cry because you can't stop crying.

Terrence, a member of Rickey's former basketball team and a good friend of mine, held fast in his vigil by my side, literally and figuratively. On that first night of the rest of my life without Rickey, Terrence sat in the living room with my roommates all night long while I laid motionless in my bedroom between brief fits of tears and even briefer moments of restless sleep. He sent letters and postcards from Canada during the basketball tour. He called every morning and every night. And when the team returned a few weeks later, I could feel him reading my moods. He and I still wonder how that innate need to take care of me sprung out of no where.

That day, after I received the devastating phone call from Rickey's father and news spread across campus, Terrence was at the foot of my bed immediately after basketball practice. Unlike everyone else who tried to touch me, hug me or offer consoling advice that day, he sat there unmoving in the evening darkness of my room for what may have been an hour. I can't remember how long. I know that he listened to me cry. That he listened to me breathe. And then he listened to me cry again. I know that just before he left my room and joined the growing group of friends and a few university staff gathering in the living room that he said something I will never forget. I have carried it with me since.

New York, NY. 2008. As I walked to work this morning, the front pages of every newspaper featured Heath Ledger. The wake of the day after. And while the world is pausing long enough to read the latest news of his untimely death while they sip their coffee and google updates during breaks at work, I know that other headlines will take his place tomorrow. He'll have a few things that Rickey didn't, like memorial tributes at this year's awards shows, entertainment television documentaries chronicling his last days, and piles of flowers on his Soho doorstep placed delicately by fans. But all of the normal things will continue.

I remember wanting to scream at the world for all the things that I no longer felt mattered. Getting out of bed. Hearing the trash man on the curb. Seeing the postman deliver mail. Life went on.

That's life. It makes history. It repeats itself. It brings back memories. It is what it is, if that means anything at all. I don't always like where it takes me, but I try to hang on through the ride.

Kudos for Halle Berry

Halle Berry is really a phenomenal actress, especially when pushed to her artistic limits. Even when often widely regarded as too beautiful to play certain roles, her Oscar for her role in Monster's Ball served as confirmation of her talent.

So what is my point? Monster's Ball was on television today, and I happened to flip across it just as it was beginning. I saw it once years ago when it first came to DVD, and I remember being impressed with Halle's performance. But I never really got her character. I mean, I understood that she was sad - having lost her husband on death row and her son in a hit-and-run accident. I got that. She was sad. Ok. Good job being sad, Halle.

As I watched the movie today, I joked with Tokii that this was the perfect movie to watch if you ever want to feel better about your own life. "Wow," I said, "I really feel depressed." But as the movie ends, Halle's character realizes that there is a connection between her executed husband, Billy Bob's character, both of their dead sons, and her. After an emotional outburst, of which Billy Bob Thorton is unaware because he is out making a midnight run for ice cream, he returns to his home to find Halle bewildered and subdued. He leads her outside to sit on the back stoop and eat the ice cream he had bought. And when he feeds her a small spoonful of ice cream, there is a look in her eyes that I instantly recognized beyond the point of empathy.

At the risk of sounding corny and borderline psycho, I totally got her character in a way that I didn't get it when I first saw the movie years ago. I knew the exact feeling that Halle is trying to convey. The relief her character feels.

She was disconnected from Diddy's character by prison. I had been disconnected from Rickey by our break-up the previous year, our struggling attempts to figure out how to be just friends, and elements that would eventually lead to his death. Terrence was like Billy Bob Thorton's character after Rickey died. And Halle was able to sum up in one brief look over a spoon of ice cream, the relief that a desperate mourner - in the months following a tragic loss - feels like they will never have. It's a struggle for relief that only one who has been in a similar situation knows. I distinctly remember the moments in which Terrence provided me with similar relief by just a touch of the hand or a kiss on the forehead - even as close loved ones wondered if I was allowing Terrence to temporarily fill the void left by Rickey's sudden, tragic death.

The relief wasn't a replacement for Rickey and it never will be. There is a part of me that will always hold tight to him - just like all of us hold onto elements of our past that influence and impact who we are and who we become. And the relationship that developed out of my friendship with Terrence was not falsely predicated on a temporary need to fill a void because our closeness has grown beyond the long, hard year following August 2003.

I don't know much about Halle's personal life or about the emotions on which she drew inspiration for that role, but my point is that that's a good actor when he or she can not only project feelings with which others might be able to empathize - but within a minor expression - can portray feelings that others actually know and immediately recognize beyond just common empathy. It's even more impressive if that actor has never actually felt those feelings in real life for themselves.

I don't know if the connection between me, Terrence and Rickey has any symbolic value like the connection uncovered in Monster's Ball. And though art often tries to imitate life, I am not quick to fall for "everything happens for a reason" whims. I am more of a "shit happens" kind of girl. But shit happened at the right place and time for my friendship with Terrence. I like to feel like Rickey had something to do with that.

Wake Us Up When September Ends

I woke up this morning and began my new routine as a New Yorker (or New Yorker-in-training). I took a shower, blow-dried my hair, got dressed, put on makeup, grabbed a breakfast bar, walked out the door, went to the train station. But normal things feel unusually amplified on days like today. Not necessarily abnormal; just different.

I got on the train, which wasn't as packed as it usually is at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning. I grabbed onto a sidebar and leaned against the rear door. Directly ahead of me, sitting near the opposite end of the subway car, I immediately noticed the profile of a man who was reading today's edition of The Daily News. The entire front page was black, with the following in large, white text: 8:46, 9:03.

I looked at the flashing marquee on the ceiling of the subway car. In bold, red lights it flashed: (4) To Crown Hts-Utica ... [flash] ... The next stop is ... [flash] ... 161 St-Yankee Stad ... [flash] ... 8:18 a.m. I wondered if the thousands of people who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001, were thinking right now what I think on each August 3rd morning. This year, it was this: "Three years ago today, Rickey was waking up on his last morning ... Three years ago at this moment, Rickey was still alive ... I wonder what Rickey was doing three years ago at this very second."

I don't know the exact time that Rickey died. I don't know if that would make it harder or easier. But I do know that on every August 3rd evening, I feel an emptiness that I'm sure my mind and body create in order to keep me from vividly reliving the emotions that overwhelmed me after I learned of Rickey's death. Time is a funny thing.

When I arrived in Grand Central, I proceeded upstairs to the main terminal and sat down on the staircase opposite Vanderbilt Avenue next to a man sending a text message on his cell phone and a sign that read, "Sitting on stairs is prohibited." I watched the famous clock above the information booth. It was 8:43 a.m. At this time five years ago, the passengers on the first plane knew something horrific may be inevitable, but surely they were still hopeful. In the North and South Towers, the Trade Center employees were arriving to work, going through their normal routines. I stared at the clock as it turned to 8:44 and then 8:45. Five years ago today, Grand Central probably looked just like it did now: a mass of business suits racing in zig-zagging patterns across the main terminal floor. And then it was 8:46. The hustle and bustle continued.

As Joe.My.God once so eloquently described it: Grand Central Terminal functions as the mechanical heart of midtown New York City, pumping out several thousand workers and tourists on one beat, then sucking in several thousand more on the next. The rhythms of the terminal are fascinating ... Beat ... Four thousand, inbound from New Haven ... Beat ... Three thousand, outbound to Westchester.

Then, 30 seconds later, an announcement over the loudspeaker: "It is 8:46 a.m. Please pause for a moment of silence for those who died on September 11." A few people stopped. Some even put down their briefcases. Two police officers removed their hats and lowered their heads. But the heart of Grand Central Terminal continued beating; most continued their full-speed-ahead pace. What did I expect would happen? For the world to stop? For time to stand still?

No. Life goes on. Human will is resilient. But for thousands who lost loved ones in New York City on September 11, time will stand still every year at 8:46, 9:03, 9:59 and 10:29. And I'm glad I let my world stop, too, even if only for but a moment.

Top 10 Favorite Cullowhee Memories

One week from today I will be leaving for New York City! Here, in random order, are my Top 10 Favorite Memories from college and the place I will be leaving behind:

The Battle for the Old Mountain Jug
Some question whether or not the mountain rivalry between Western Carolina University and Appalachian State University is a true collegiate football tradition or a clever 1970's marketing ploy, but for those of us who took down the goal posts in Whitmire Stadium in 1998 following Western's first win over ASU in 13 years and subsequently left one of them on the Chancellor's front yard, it will always be a favorite, genuine and unscripted college moment. Sheer joy. True bliss. Solidarity among thousands. Whenever I think of that moment, I will forever have an image in my head of Tokii and me, linked arm in arm, racing onto the football field and screaming as the goal post fell and narrowly missed both of our heads.

Summer in Park Place
 As much as we hated it at the time, we love to laugh about it now. The summer that Jessica, Daphne, Shameika, Dominique, Travis and I all lived in a two-bedroom (single-wide) trailer in Park Place will always be one of my most unforgettable and vivid memories. This was not just any trailer. It was undoubtedly the worst trailer in the world. To briefly describe it, there was a hole in the living room floor under the stapled-down carpet that everyone used to stumble over; mesh netting was duct-taped, thumb-tacked and stapled over the windows (a quick fix by Travis after the landlord continued to ignore our requests for new screens); a system of box fans in different windows served to facilitate airflow through the trailer in the absence of air-conditioning (it was basically a metal box sitting in the sun); the hard water, which smelled of sulfur, left an invisible film on your skin after showers and was unsuitable to drink (ask Dominique about the time he accidentally made a pitcher of Kool-Aid using the tap water); about half a dozen stray cats lived under the trailer (which was my fault because I kept feeding them); there was a wasp nest with an indestructible force field and super, incredible-hulk wasps above the back door; we woke up to our neighbor's Mexican music on full blast every morning at a quarter to eight; there was only one bathroom so we all got to know each others' scents a lot more than any of us would have liked; a crack head showed up on our doorstep one day when I was home alone and tried to sell me a boom box and a box of cassette tapes; I slept in one bedroom, Jessica and Shameika slept in the other, Daphne slept on a couch, Dominique slept on a futon, and Travis slept on his 6x1' military cot. Dominique and I used to ride around in my little, green Saturn or hang out in Burger King just to be in an air conditioned environment. Late into the night when he and I were the only ones left awake, we'd watch infomercials about exciting products like the Revostyler, the Perfect Pancake and steak knives. And after Travis moved out, Dominique was the only male with four women, who would all go on their period at the same time. I think that may have been the closest we have come to hell. But there is no other group of people with whom I'd go to hell and back ... again.

Hide & Go Seek in Hunter Library
Hunter Library, on the campus of Western Carolina University, is the largest library west of Charlotte. In the basement there is an endless sea of enormous bookshelves and study cubicles with group meeting rooms along the perimeter. I will never forget playing Hide & Go Seek with my girlfriends and a bunch of the players from the Men's Basketball team in the basement of the library during my sophomore year. You know it's a big library, when there are over half a dozen 6'6"+, 250+ pound dudes running around and nobody can find anybody else.

The Brothers I Never Had (besides my real brother)
Dunston, Jon and Pat were three of my best friends from my college daze: sledding and snowball fights in the winter time; summers at East Laporte; riding aimlessly around the Cullowhee-Sylva-Dillsboro triad; do-da-do-da-do by the track; dragging furniture into the elevator in Walker Hall, sitting in the chairs and waiting for someone to call the elevator to their floor; educating me on Sports Center; hanging out at the airport or on a random mountainside; showing me my first porno film; taking care of a puppy that my freshmen roommate and I adopted and illegally housed in our dorm room. BJ was initiated into our little clique later and never failed to make us laugh with his impersonations of Bernie Mac. They were the brothers I never had - in addition to my nearest genetic match, David.

Coco Cherry
The greatest hamster to crawl the Earth - or to ever run on a stationary wheel - went by the name of Coco Cherry. His first name was Coco because I love to name animals Coco. And his last name was Cherry because his eyeballs looked like cherries. He was the illegal dorm room pet of Helder 350, the room Tokii and I shared our junior year. We bought him in Greensboro (the same night that Jagged Edge spotted our clique in the mall, and gave us free tickets to their concert during A&T's Homecoming) because he was the only hamster we have ever seen who would chase your finger if you dragged it along the bottom of his cage and would crawl into your open hand on his own. His only flaw was that he had really bad gas - unless Tokii and I were always placing him to blame. He had a long, happy hamster life and ended up living out the remainder of his days at my parents' house while I was out of the country. I did not get to honor him with an appropriate hamster burial because I was studying abroad in Spain when he died, but I believe my parents buried him in the backyard. It was either that or they sent him to the happy farm where all of our other pets have gone.

The Night I Met Rickey
Rickey and I saw each other on campus for the first time when he approached our parked car near a short row of commercial buildings - jokingly referred to as the Cullowhee Shopping Strip - and flirted with my friends. I knew by the way he peered curiously at me in the back seat that he liked me immediately. We were formally introduced later that evening on the University Center Lawn during Valley Ballyhoo, a welcome back event hosted at the start of each fall semester. I was a sophomore and still dating my high school sweetheart at the time, and Rickey and I would not end up dating until almost a year later. However, the way he genuinely approached me that night and the perseverance and sweetness in which he pursued me over the following months was so remarkably sincere that we became inseparable almost immediately after the distance between WCU and UNC-Wilmington ended my three-year relationship with my high school boyfriend. Rickey and I dated for almost four years ...

He died unexpectedly in Augusta, Georgia. One of the hardest things for me to deal after his death was my foolish immaturity following an argument that we had two weeks before he died. That would be the last time we would ever speak. My biggest regret is that I tried to make him suffer after our last fight by ignoring his phone calls. I foolishly wanted him to really fear that he was losing me for good. The morning his father called to tell me that Rickey had died, I saw his number appear in my cell phone. Just before I decided to answer the call, I remember thinking to myself, Ok - I'll talk to him now...

... Losing him that way with so much left unsaid - just losing him at all - was nearly unbearable. Sometimes I go back to that moment in mind. Just before I answered his father's phone call. To a moment when everything in me knew that I was about to speak to Rickey. When hearing his voice still felt familiar. And I wish for that feeling. That feeling of knowing that I am about to talk to him. I don't know if I'll ever get over the fact that I can't anymore. That no matter what I do, his absence is permanent. That I can't change it. That I can't go back. That I'll never see him or talk to him again. That every day, his existance becomes more and more distant in my memory. That if I live to be 70 years old, he will still be 27.

I do know that now, when I forgive someone, I forgive them without any games or stipulations. I'll never play around with time again.

The Pretend For-Real Marriage of Daphne A. Moore & Kevin Garnett (The Newly Weds, Season Going-On-At-Least-Five)
I don't know when they were married exactly, but I recently found an email from 2002 regarding this blessed union, so this serves as direct evidence that this charade has been going on for at least four years. Daphne Moore, the self-proclaimed Daphne Moore-Garnett, has been living an imaginary life in which she is married to Kevin Garnett, #21 of the Minnesota Timberwolves. It's almost like having an imaginary friend with a mild case of borderline stalking. Yet despite the fact that my boyfriend's best friend plays for the Kings, our sorority sister's ex-boyfriend plays for the Wizards, another friend's brother plays for the Warriors, and two members of our college circle dance for the Bobcats, she has never had a chance to meet him and inform him of their nuptials. How can something so beautiful be so sad?

Ms. Sue Ella
My best friend Tokii is a master of impersonation. She is a gifted actress, who will soon begin her fourth year as a drama student at The Juilliard School of the Arts in Manhattan. Give her 30 minutes and she can mimic most - if not all - of your personal idiosyncrasies. Those nearest and dearest to her, and some random bystanders from time to time, have had the pleasure of meeting one of her alter egos, Ms. Sue Ella. Ms. Sue Ella is a combination of several ghetto-fabulous women, including a former coworker of Tokii's who always ate beanie weenies and Spam during breaks. It was always a pleasure to run into Ms. Sue Ella in one of the residence halls, especially when we were on RA duty. We've got several encounters on videotape!

Flipping for Directions
My current boyfriend Terrence and I started dating after I had graduated from WCU and had joined the university as a member of its staff. My closest friends, and even my family, were initially concerned that I was using Terrence to fill the void created by Rickey's death. I even tried not to worry about that, too. But our friendship eventually became the relationship we have today, and both of us believe that it would not have developed so deeply had it not been for a classic case of the right place at the right time. The summer I graduated from college, Terrence and I used to pass the time by jumping in my car (when gasoline was less than $1.50 a gallon) and flipping a quarter to determine whether to take a right or a left at each intersection. Our 25-cent (plus a tank of gas) adventures led us to a giant chessboard in Dillsboro, a hidden dirt road along a beautiful area of the Tuckaseigee River, and the train and bus wreckage purposely leftover as a tourist attraction from the movie The Fugitive, among other places. Well, we went to college in a place where a Super Wal-Mart is downtown.

Unbreak My ... Splat!
Another cameo from Tokii makes the Top 10 Favorite Cullowhee Memories. Our clique will recall a particular night when she and I were on RA duty. Since we couldn't leave our post in the RA station, our friends came over to hang out with us in the lobby of Scott Hall. While sitting on a couch, I used a video camera to record Tokii as she strutted atop a coffee table, singing Toni Braxton's Unbreak My Heart to the camera as if we were shooting a music video. Through the lens, I recorded Tokii's sexy rendition of the sultry verse "unbreak my ..." and then a nanosecond of sheer horror crossed her face just before she disappeared from view. I immediately panned down to the floor, where Tokii had fallen at my feet between the coffee table and the couch and was laughing uncontrollably. The tone and volume of surrounding laughter on the video is sharp and piercing, yet contagious, endearing and characteristic of my girls. I will love them always.

Creating Coincidences

I don't know if it's coincidence that major personal events often take place around June 7 or August 3 or if it's Rickey's way of helping me not dwell on anniversaries. The part of me that aches to believe in the impossible wants to embrace the latter, but the part of me that clings to logic reminds me that - five years later - I am still vainly searching for some sort of connection with him.

It's like when my mom - a devout Catholic - found me a few days after Rickey's death sitting at my brother's computer in their Asheville home, crying and googling psychics who claimed to communicate with the dead.

"Oh, Katie," she said as she touched my shoulder, "I know you want to believe in things like that right now, but those people are taking advantage of those who are hurting like you are."

I knew she was right, but it made me angry that she said that. I wanted someone to tell me that he wasn't gone forever. That there was still some way to reach out, to communicate, to right our wrongs, to say all the things I should have said. Maybe that's why I can't help but count coincidences.

September 3, 2003. A month after he died, I received the job offer for my first post-collegiate job.

August 3, 2004. Nothing happened. I called in sick to work and kept my bedroom door shut. I fully expected to spend the day crying. Instead I was numb. I screened phone calls and watched TV.

August 3, 2005. Terrence and I were driving overnight from Sacramento to Las Vegas. We had been camped out at Kevin's new house trying to catch overbooked flights to Atlanta. We drove overnight to the Las Vegas airport in order to catch an available flight and drive to Cullowhee in time for his college graduation. Long story.

August 3, 2006. Due to circumstances beyond my control, my scheduled August 1 "Move to NYC" date got pushed to August 2nd. The overnight journey in a rented stow-and-go minivan - packed to the brim with every possession I hadn't sold, donated or thrown away in North Carolina - had me riding over the George Washington Bridge in the early morning of August 3, blinking into the sunrise and not believing I had finally arrived. It was the hottest week in New York City's history. It was already 90 degrees and I was about to begin moving into the living room of my best friend's fourth floor walk-up in the South Bronx.

June 7, 2007. I was helping Tokii prepare to move from the South Bronx to New Jersey and into her first apartment with her fiancé.

August 3, 2007. I was in the middle of last minute bridesmaid duties for Tokii's August 10th wedding.

June 7, 2008. I was so busy closing the lease on my new apartment and preparing to move this week that June 7 crept up on me. I realized it was Rickey's birthday shortly after midnight as I was unpacking boxes in my new bedroom. He would have been 32 today.

I tear up over Rickey at random, unexpected times. When I see something, hear something or smell something that reminds me of him. But oddly enough, on most anniversaries, my emotions are dull. My eyes are dry.

I'm not grasping at as many straws as I used to when I was trying to keep my head above the emotional flood that gushed into my life after he died, but every now and then I notice a coincidence. And I reach up, grab a tiny straw and hold it tightly.

Over and Over Again

I had a dream that I had an opportunity to travel back in time. It's a recurring dream that I've had several times over the years. The scenarios and locations vary, but the scene is generally the same. They're nearly spot-on remakes of fights Rickey and I once had.

I "awake" suddenly in my 21-year old body, nearly ten years younger. I feel my legs storming away from where Rickey is standing about 30 yards behind me. It is dusk in Cullowhee. The street lamps are already on. I immediately remember this moment back in 2001. I know exactly where I am.

Rickey and I were arguing in the freshmen parking lot across the creek from the track at Western Carolina University. I was walking away, my arms swinging in anger. In actuality, I don't know how long he stood there, probably watching me walk away. Or maybe he had turned around and taken the long way back to Leatherwood Hall, as I had stomped to Helder.

This time, I am no longer upset. My 30-year old mind, grief-stricken from over six years of regret, slams my 21-year old legs to a halt. I spin my younger self to turn and face him. He is still standing there and initially appears shocked to see me stop. And then I run. I run and I run. I run like I have never run before. Tears streaming down my face, my hair whipping behind me. And I leap into his arms, nearly knocking him backward.

The dream is so real. I can feel the warmth of his body and the smoothness of his face as my cheek presses against his. I can smell him. A familiar mixture of cologne and laundry detergent. I can feel his arms wrap around me. His embrace is familiar, safe. I feel like I can't get close enough to him. I have longed for a moment like this for so long.

"Why didn't I do this before?" I sob.

"It's ok," he replies, in a calm tone. "You were angry."

I begin to shake uncontrollably as I cry. He hugs me tighter.

"It's ok," he says again. "I was angry, too."

"I'm so sorry," I cry. "I'm so, so sorry."

"We said a lot of things that we didn't mean," he says.

And then, the parking lot around us begins to fade, the street lamps become balls of fuzz. The world blackens around us.

As a dim light began to glow in the darkness, I awoke, blinking into the soft glimmer of a street lamp shinning through my bedroom window on West 51st Street. And behind it, I saw the twinkling lights of the Time Warner Center, towering silently in the night. A taxicab honked. A car door slammed. In the distance, someone shouted a quick farewell. And below my window, the sound of horse hooves clopped along the street as it pulled a carriage home from Central Park.

Slices of Time

Returning to Western Carolina University was like going back in time. A group of us planned a trip for the 2008 Homecoming Weekend in a year that marks 10 years since we were freshmen.

I hear ghosts on that campus. Not necessarily of those who have died. But the sounds of our pasts. The ghosts of the younger versions of ourselves. We came face to face with memories from our college days and were intensely reminded of how much the university shaped the versions of ourselves that now exist.

I saw the younger me there. Sitting on "the bricks" between classes and sometimes skipping lectures on exceptionally beautiful days. Pretending not to see Rickey, the attractive new junior college transfer, walking down the street while I strategically sat where he would be sure to see me among those who congregated there daily. And then trying to appear nonchalant as I waited for him to walk up behind me and gently tug on my hair or tickle my side. Racing with him to step on the small plaque below the Alumni Tower. Seeing him saunter up the steps to the second floor of the University Center (UC) to visit me while I worked at the Student Information Desk. Photocopying our hands on one of the Xerox machines in Hunter Library. Opening a greeting card card while we ate Wendy's takeout on his bed in Leatherwood after he took me to see Hannibal for Valentine's Day. Refreshing the university's live web cam over and over again in my dorm room while he made different, silly poses in the shadow of the Alumni Tower.

I saw the younger me laughing at Tokii when she split her jeans while performing her trademark impersonations of Michael Jackson in Illusions; making silly videos while we were on RA duty in Scott Hall with "Ms. Sue Ella" and "Bernie Mac"; cheering for Monique during halftime of a basketball game; playing pool with Jessica in the old UC Game Room; going to Reid Gym after dinner to watch the football players play basketball; waving at Toya and Kori passing by in his SUV; cooking out during Valley Bally Hoo or Spring Fling; giving tours to new students at Orientation; watching SportsCenter with BJ, Jon, Pat and Dunstan; water gun fights in the summer; stomping through piles of leaves in the fall; sledding on Dodson Cafeteria lunch trays in the winter; accepting flowers that Rickey would pick off the UC Lawn in the spring.

The memories were all around us despite the vastly changing landscape of the campus. Helder Hall, where I lived my sophomore and junior years, is gone. A landmark of my past erased and replaced by a state-of-the-art cafeteria - complete with Starbucks. There is no where to relive my memories of Rickey sneaking a bowl of Tokii's cereal or diving into my closet in his boxer shorts. Or Tokii dancing in her bathrobe. Or Jonas and Jarvis benchpressing and curling Kamata in the hallway or asking a muffled, inaudible question and then yelling "Heeeyyy!" in your face. Or surprise birthday parties in the study. Or the night I stuck some forks in the third floor microwave. Or the snowball fight in the lobby. Or photo shoots in the hall. Or Kevin driving through the Helder parking lot in his tiny car, giving Terrence his debit card and telling him that under no circumstances was Terrence to allow him to spend the remainder of his refund check.

Those versions of all of us are there in Cullowhee, wholly defined by slices of time that exist one on top of another and are buried only by the passage of itself.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Our Stomping Ground in Photos
The Alumni Tower looms over the University Center Lawn.


"The Bricks," which will be removed in the next phase
of campus renovations.


Where there were once two feet competing to stomp
on the plaque below the Alumni Tower...


We were moved when we discovered a bulletin board that Jan now maintains, a woman who is - and always will be - remembered as so much more than a "lunch lady" - who captures all of us in our younger versions semester after semester.


And a slice of time that we remember. Before the multimillion-
dollar renovations, a younger version of the WCU that we knew.


A Year Ago Today: No post
Two Years Ago Today: Subway Dancers

The Little Things

The 5th anniversary of 9/11 was a benchmark for a lot of New Yorkers. Not unlike the majority of Americans, most of us cannot believe it has been five years. But getting to know people, who directly experienced September 11 in their hometown, has revealed to me how differently New York City remembers that day.

For those who lived and worked in or around Manhattan in 2001, a lot of how they view and remember September 11 has a great deal to do with the little things. It's the little things that much of the nation didn't think about immediately following the terrorist attacks or in the years after. The Devil-wears-Prada "boss" told me yesterday that September 11 is still hard for her because in 2001 she worked for a small company in the Financial District that lost a lot of its employees the day the towers fell. When Flight 11 hit the North Tower, a corporate meeting, which included a fair number of her colleagues, was taking place in a conference room above the impact zone. She was several blocks away in her office and immediately evacuated. It was days later when she was permitted to return and discovered dozens of BlackBerry messages that had been frantically sent by her coworkers to the company-wide email account while they had been trapped in the North Tower. None of the attendees of that corporate meeting survived.

My coworker and friend David told me that he and his ex-boyfriend had gone up to the roofdeck of the apartment they shared in Lower Manhattan after seeing the North Tower in flames on the news. He said that for miles, almost every rooftop was crowded with residents or employees all staring downtown in disbelief. His mother, who lives in Jersey, remembers seeing hundreds of cars left in the commuter lots by men and women who had parked in Jersey and taken a ferry or train to the Financial District. David's mother told him that many of those cars sat there untouched for weeks.

Little stories like that made me think of all the dry cleaning that never got picked up, movies that never got returned to Blockbuster, the apartments that eventually needed to be cleared of personal belongings and cleaned out by family or friends. And then I remembered how hard it had been for me to even just brush my hair in the weeks immediately following Rickey's death. The little, normal things took an unbelievable amount of effort when I had been so emotionally exhausted. My mother came to live with me in my apartment for awhile, and her presence had more to do with tending to the little things, like making sure I got out of bed. And then there was attempting to resume the small routines for the first time after Rickey died that made me think things like, "The last time I did this, Rickey was still alive ..."

Multiply that by 2,948 and a lot of little things become an even bigger albeit less obvious loss. I did not attend any of the hundreds of September 11 memorial ceremonies that took place throughout the city yesterday. I worked until 6 p.m. and then immediately jumped on a train to the Upper East Side to view four different apartments for rent. As it is often said, life goes on.

After the real estate broker and I parted ways on Third Avenue, I headed toward the 103rd Street Station to catch the 6 train. It was a moment before I noticed that a lot of people were standing on the sidewalk looking downtown. Two parallel beams of light were shining from the Financial District filling the space where the Twin Towers once stood. I took a minute to let my world stop for the second time yesterday, to remember strangers I've never met, and to wish inner peace for their loved ones, who I know are often haunted by the little things.

Both Sides of the Moon

Ra cooked dinner tonight at her massive apartment in Brooklyn (or last night, depending on how you define the hours prior to midnight when you have not yet gone to sleep). I type massive because it is by my brainwashed Manhattan standards. As I sat at her kitchen table sipping wine, her boyfriend Brad walked in with his overnight bag and a fitted baseball cap cocked to the side. There was something familiar about the way he sauntered in, walked up behind Ra at the stove, knelt his 6'4" frame slightly to kiss her hello, and strolled back to her bedroom to put down his stuff. The familiarity of it made something tighten inside my chest. I'm not sure who it made me miss - Terrence or Rickey. Even now, I'm not even really sure whether Brad actually had on a hat or if I just recall it from my own memories of tilted baseball caps - a mannerism that Terrence and Rickey share. But I am beginning to think that part of me will just always exist in that place, where I see the past and the present simultaneously.

A Year Ago Today: No post
Two Years Ago Today: Bryant Park By Day & Night

Countdown: 20 Days

My mom called today with news that my dad was in the emergency room for an emergency CT scan. His physician was concerned that he might have a brain aneurysm. The CT scan ruled an aneurysm out, but they did find some shrapnel in his skull from an incident in Vietnam. He remembers the incident involving friendly fire, but he didn't know there was shrapnel embedded in his head. Kind of funny and interesting. There is no cause or concern to believe that his physical symptoms have anything to do with the shrapnel, and they ran more tests this afternoon and into this evening, including a spinal tap. Eventually the doctors decided that he may have a unique form of migraines and put him on a regimen of medication.

It's weird how random moments flash before your eyes when faced with risk or danger. When you think you might lose someone you love, suddenly it feels like all the random moments you shared with him or her have all led up to this very moment.

It was the same way when my college sweetheart died. When Rickey's father called to tell me he was dead, there was this ethereal moment when I saw, felt, heard everything that had ever happened between us within a matter of seconds. It was NOT like it played before my eyes as if in a movie with poignant music in the background; they are just moments that you know exist and are jumbled into one last flash to which your mind, body and soul try desperately to hold. And then this shock hits your system as you try to add this new moment into the timeline of your life ... in which this loss is your new reality. And then that flash slips away.

The thing is that you continue to watch it slip away for the rest of your life. Or maybe you keep it from slipping too far and you drag it along with you. Sometimes it's hard to just let the dead be dead.

As scared as I was for my dad today, I was more anxious for my mom. My dad is a logical man who accepts the natural occurrence of death as easily as he accepts that the sky is blue. He has gotten our family through the deaths of relatives and got me through Rickey's death with that logic. And though it is always different when it's your own, I am sure that he will face his own death in a similar fashion. I am just not ready for that day to come yet. And I know my mom is not either.

Twenty more days to go before I end the chapter of my life in Western North Carolina and start a new one in New York City. And I really need my dad to be around for that. And I want him around for awhile thereafter.

One Year At A Time

This is it. One year has passed for me in New York. It's a meaningful day for me in two very contrasting ways. I go on in rememberence and with some regret, but always in anticipation and with hope of better tomorrows. The important thing is that I go on. The personal triumph is that I go on in New York City.

In Memoriam of Rickey

Remember me on quiet days
When raindrops whisper on your pane,
But in your memories have not grief
Let just the joy we knew remain.

Remember me when evening stars
Look down on you with steadfast eyes;
And when your thoughts do turn to me,
Know that I would not have you cry;
But live for me and laugh for me -
When you are happy, so am I.

Remember in a joke we shared;
Remember me when spring walks by;
Think of me when you are glad
And while you live, I shall not die.

By Sibling Lyn Bryant
TCF Bayton, Texas

Stilettos Versus Strollers

My friends in North Carolina and other old connections from my days as a military brat have recently (and when I say recently, I mean within the past few years) begun posting pictures of their children on facebook and myspace. It often makes me wonder what I've missed over the past 10 years since high school (and the five since college). With Halle Berry and J.Lo having their first children in their 40s, I certainly do not feel old at 28 nor do I feel in any rush. But I still consider the conscious decisions I've made to redirect my course away from marriage and motherhood. For example, breaking up with Matt after high school instead of getting married like many of our classmates did. Pushing back Rickey's discussions of marriage proposals in 2002. Or moving to New York in 2006 instead of Atlanta, where Terrence lives in the off-season. Or choosing not to live abroad with him in the exciting foreign countries in which he has made homes.

I've had three serious relationships in 12 years and dozens of forgettable encounters in between, and I've always consciously fought to keep my own path. But am I subconsciously fighting something else? Am I afraid that I am too selfish to even fathom decisions between having my own space or incorporating His and Hers towels? Or researching family-size cars and learning how to make more than Ramen Noodles or my awesome signature salads? Or have I naively and stubbornly assumed that I've already had my one great love? Or have I just not found "the one"? Will "the one" understand my needs to be just a "me" and parallel my path until I'm ready to be an "us"?

Today the other executive assistants and I overheard our Executive Beauty Director scolding her children via the speaker phone in her office while reviewing RFPs. It was entertaining to witness a corporate woman, who is the epitome of grace under pressure while pitching advertising packages, unravel into a soccer mom right before our very eyes. Ah. The multiple hats we learn to wear.

Rather than pull out the mommy hat that I willingly allow to gather dust on the shelf next to my biological clock, I rounded out my week by dining at Buddakan and partying at Butter on Monday night, attending a New York Women in Film & Television screening of The Women at Clearview Chelsea Cinema on Wednesday (with my girlfriends, of course, where we sipped wine and ate tiny, crustless sandwiches). Then, I accepted a spontaneous invitation to join my secret service buddy and his friends for dinner at Brick NYC, a brand new Italian wine and antipasti bar that opened recently in Tribeca. Instead of calling a babysitter to tell her I'd be late - which is what mature, settled, family-oriented women my age do - I was sending "Gossip Girl" text messages to a few friends containing a phone picture I had just taken of Danny Masterson in his trademark bowler hat seated a few tables away.

For documentation purposes, of course:


Will K ever pack up her single gal city life and trade it for diapers and family packages of Hamburger Helper? That's one secret that is too soon to tell. You know you love me. XOXO ... Gossip Girl ...

A Year Ago Today: No post
Two Years Ago Today: It Gets Late Awfully Early Around Here

When the Past Comes Back

Have you ever been out with friends you haven't seen in years, chatting about the past, the future and everything in between? Then, your jaunt down memory lane recalls a name and face you haven't thought of in years, and you say, "Oh my God! What has Casey Cordell been up to these days?"

The faces become sullen and brief glimmers of pain flash across the eyes of those around you and someone says, "He died a few years ago."

That happened to me last night with friends at Whiskey Tavern in downtown Asheville. It reminded me of times when old friends and acquaintances would ask me about Rickey in the first years after he died, and I sometimes wonder how many people that he knew still may not know about him - just like I still hadn't known about Casey.

Today I return to New York and again go back thinking of how much I am truly thankful for.

All in My Head

There are two dates that strike a nerve with me every year: June 7 is the day Rickey was born; August 3 is the day he died.

I was reading the tweets of loved ones & strangers who recently lost a friend of theirs. In times of tragedy and loss, I'm always struck by how life goes on. I perused their tweets about missing their friend and their seemingly cheerful and unrelated daily goings-on within spans of less than 24 hours ... I suppose it all goes on for all of us at one time or another. And it will again.

But when will I stop trying to make connections out of coincidences?

I needed today to be a good day. And it was ... outside of my head.

Where Does Time Go?

I am always surprised when I realize how much time has passed since the tragedies of 9/11. I imagine that the families and friends who lost a loved one must repeatedly face the same grim realizations of the passage of time, where we coexist in two places: one that feels so far from that last word, look, touch that you can't remember what it feels like to actually know them; and another where certain moments feel like you can graze them with your fingertips.

I feel that way when I remember Rickey.

On a doorway in Queens

A Year Ago Today: No post
Two Years Ago Today: Wake Us Up When September Ends

Scents of the Past

I smelled Rickey on the subway today. It wasn't him, of course - but his smell. A subtle mix of cologne and laundry detergent.

It's crazy how a smell can take you back.

It's crazy how fast "far back" continues to get.

It's Happening Now

I didn't mean to walk right up onto the World Trade Center Site today. Per a coworker's suggestion, I was on my way to Century 21 Department Store to buy winter jackets, and I turned a corner and there it was.

The last time I had been there, I was a college junior who had come to New York City with classmates from Western Carolina University to compete in the 2001 Model United Nations Conference. It was early on a Tuesday morning - exactly 22 weeks to the day that the Twin Towers would fall - when half a dozen excited undergraduates rode the express elevators to the Observation Deck at the top of Tower 2. But this afternoon, instead of stepping into the shadow of two enormous structures as I had done over five years ago, I rounded a corner and stared at blue sky and an empty reminder of a younger and innocent place and time.


It was a gorgeous day. I wandered along the edges of the construction site and tried to figure out why my heart was pounding in my head. There is something you feel when you are there - maybe it was just because it was my first time since 2001. But it's undoubtedly hallowed ground. Even while surrounded by thousands of people and the hustle and bustle of the Financial District on a Sunday afternoon, there is something there that makes your hair stand on end. On fences and barricades were images of before, during and after September 11 and displays of the future with the slogan "It's Happening Now."

I looked up into the sky and wondered where I had been standing in Tower 2 on that April 2001 morning, when I had called my former boyfriend Rickey from a 107th floor payphone (that trip had taken place before my cell phone days, and he had been in his dorm room at WCU getting ready for class).

"We have to come here together one day. You have to see the view from up here," I had said to him. The towers would be gone 22 weeks later. And he would be gone two years after that. I wish I could ride the express elevator into the sky and run up to that girl on the payphone and tell her what she doesn't know is happening now. But would I even recognize her if I saw her?

Back to today. After unsuccessfully struggling through the mad house that is Century 21 on a weekend afternoon, I left the department store empty-handed and strolled about the Financial District.

St. Paul's Chapel both stands out and fits in on its corner in the center of downtown, kind of like the penguins in Central Park. The chapel, just a block away from the World Trade Center, was found widely and miraculously untouched after the Twin Towers fell, as seen in James Wheeldon's photo published in National Geographic below.


And this is another camera phone photo op from today.


There used to be two towers behind that steeple. I'm glad I know from experience.

Temperaturely Speaking ...

... I am in hell. According to news reports, I moved to New York City during the hottest week in the Big Apple's history (not hottest week since 1972 or 1848 - in history). On top of that, Terrence, Candice and I scoured the city with what few hours we had left on the rental van madly searching for box fans. Apparently there are none left in the city. Eight million people sitting in pools of their own sweat. Go figure. If any New Yorkers read this and know where we could find several box fans within a Metro ride-radius of the Bronx, I would really appreciate it.

Today, it has been three years since my former boyfriend Rickey passed away. I thought about him most of the day. And I thought about his family. I should have called, but it's hard for me to call them sometimes. I talked to his mom on his birthday back in June, and there is still something about hearing her voice that makes me feel like he's going to get on the phone, too. Like when she laughs, I remember how he used to go up behind her and tickle her in the kitchen. And then something inside of me hurts. I still have to emotionally prepare myself to talk to anyone in his family, and today has been so physically and mentally exhausting. I don't know that I can face that part of my reality head on.

Terrence and I arrived in the Bronx this morning around 9 a.m. (and about 87 degrees) after a 12-hour overnight drive, in which he drove the entire way (what a trooper) and I slept on and off (how typical). We were riding over the George Washington Bridge in the early dawn. It's a moment I'll always remember. There are no words to describe the way it felt to see the Manhattan skyline loom before us. It was a new New York City to me. It wasn't a New York City I was just visiting. It was a New York City in which I would be living.

There was not much time to revel in the bittersweet excitement, however, as we rolled in the South Bronx and assessed our next move. The elevator in Tokii and Candice's building is out-of-order so we made approximately 15 trips each - from the van parked on the curb, up four flights of stairs (in one of those old buildings with high ceilings so the stairways are extra long and steep), and no air conditioning or fans. But we didn't complain - just muttered, groaned and sighed. It really felt important that we help each other. He wanted to get my stuff upstairs as quickly as possible (given the less-than-friendly reputaton of the South Bronx), and I didn't want him to do it alone. Plus, we needed to turn in the rental van by mid-afternoon.

We piled my boxes in a corner of Tokii and Candice's living room, where they will stay until I find an apartment, and then we each took ice cold showers. Terrence later reported that from where he stood showering, looking down over the busy road and the park across the street from the bathroom window, he observed a presumably homeless man taking a dump against a tree. He said he felt really awkward about watching this normal bodily function taking place in a highly abnormal setting with cars and pedestrians passing by, but he just could not stop looking because he just could not believe his eyes. Lately he has been more preoccupied and amazed that all of the windows in Tokii and Candice's apartment are wide open, without screens, and we rarely see any mosquitoes.

It is just so hot all day and throughout the night that we don't even want to sit next to each other. Sweat causes our clothes to cling to our bodies and the backs of our legs to stick to the couch. At one point, I looked at Terrence and said, "I think we messed up. We're in New Orleans."

His response was a short sigh followed by, "Damnit."

The Moments That Make the Ride

Have you ever wanted to run through the streets of New York screaming? I have and I did. As I recall, very few people paid any attention to me. And granted, it was the one night of the year when 90% of the city's population was looking, doing or watching what would normally be considered weird by society’s standards.

And just like on Halloween, my best friend did it again. She tricked me into believing that her late-night phone call was just an average chat. It was indeed not an average chat, and now I am wide awake, can’t sleep and am up blogging.

“You sound like you’re already in the bed,” she had said when I answered my cell. I was (and thinking of the 5:30 a.m. alarm prepped to send me off to the gym) but for her I make exceptions so I responded, “I am. What are you doing? You back in Jersey?”

“No, still in Atlanta [three days each week, she is filming new episodes of ‘Tyler Perry’s House of Payne’ scheduled to air sometime in the near future]. I just got back from having dinner with Shameika and Scott,” she replied, “How’s your 2008 been so far?”

I think I said something like lovely or fabulous, and I had a quick flashback of my all-night-and-into-the-next-morning New Year’s Eve/Day. For a second, I wondered if I had returned her New Year’s midnight phone call, which I had missed because of Veuve Clicquot (this hot French guy I know). Then, I remembered that I had left her a voicemail shortly thereafter. Rather than relay first-of-the-year details, I just yawned: “How about yours?”

“I would say it’s starting pretty well considering that today Tyler Perry offered me a role in his next movie.”

I bolted upright in my bed. I am glad I don’t sleep on a loft in my tiny studio. Otherwise my head would have gone through the ceiling. Out of respect for her professional privacy and that of our friendship – as with other good news and discrete moments we’ve shared – I won’t go into the details of our conversation in this blog. Suffice it to say it included a lot of laughing and crying and ended in reminiscence of the last decade.

Tokii: “Can you believe it?”
Me: “Yes! [pause] I absolutely believe it! It’s just that I have been waiting almost 10 years to hear you tell me that you have been offered a role in a major film project.”
[Silence]
Tokii: “Wow. You just put a whole new perspective on this for me ...Ten years.”

I thought of the seemingly endless rehearsals she endured at WCU while I waited for her in our dorm room watching late-night television (I usually didn’t make it to see her return). I thought about how she busted her ass taking more than the customary 15 credit hours each semester so she could graduate in 3 ½ years. I thought of the play she worked so hard to script, direct and choreograph as part of her senior year project; it was a raving success and she received many local accolades. I thought of the nights she spent working as a security guard before she finally auditioned for The Juilliard School. I remembered how confident I was that she would get in. I was almost arrogant about it and had to back off a little for fear that I might jinx her talent. When she told me she had received the acceptance phone call, I was absolutely delighted but barely excitable (I had already gotten over the initial exhilaration of Tokii attending the legendary school for the performing arts when she had first told me she was going to audition). I think I had replied, “Girl, I know.” I thought about the grueling schedule she endured while studying in New York City, which often pushed her close to her breaking point, but would ultimately prepared her for the real, bitter - and often cruel - world of acting. I thought of her fourth-year showcase and graduation with scholastic distinction, a recognition for completion of an honors program for exceptional undergraduate performers and composers who wish to expand their scholarly activity by engaging in an extended independent research project in their senior year. All those thoughts and everything that has happened in New York since her graduation in May streamed through my mind within a matter of 10 seconds.

"We have been through some things," I said as I briefly thought of Rickey and remembered my one-year, three-job struggle to save money to move to New York. Without hesitation, she replied, “Yea, we have.”

"I mean, there will be more things to go through.”

We’re both smart enough to know (and I’ve watched Tokii and her classmates go through enough to know) that an acting career is a roller coaster of peaks and valleys, highs and lows, big breaks and breakdowns.

“Oh, of course,” she said. “That is for sure.”

Laying back on my pillow, smiling at the ceiling, I responded, “But moments like this are what make it all worth it. These are the moments that we live for."

These are the moments that we sometimes create, that sometimes we wait for, and that sometimes just happen unexpectedly. I’m so grateful that I have family and friends who will celebrate mine as eagerly and sincerely as I celebrate theirs, who will be there for each other through every twist, dip and loop of this ride we call life. These are indeed the moments we live for.

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, your body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, ‘Woo hoo! What a ride!’”

I hope I am screaming the loudest.

UPDATE: Tokii may not be able to take the role because of a Connecticut-based play in which she is starring.
UPDATE: Tokii was unable to take the role in A Family That Prays, but did take a part in Madea Goes to Jail. You can follow her work under her stage name: Bobbi James.