Binda,

Was so happy to find out you are coming for a visit this fall. I’m so looking forward to it. Look, I know everyone will want a piece of you so I’m hereby putting in my reservation to at least see you–and the kids (the kids and Brian are coming, right?) for at least two hours.

Nothing special. Just dinner and catching up. I promise to hug you tightly without sticking my hips out as if afraid to hip with your hip. I will hug you will all of me. What’s left, that is.

Dear Binda,

It just occurred to me that everyone one of us has moved back to Austin. I’m the only one of us that’s not there. Austin was the first place I’d ever heard of fish tacos. And Wholefoods and the concept of byob. It was the place I had my first kiss.

New York is bigger and better. Fish tacos are served in waffle cones here, drenched in Millenial sauce. Byob is no longer needed because everything is delivered, thus no bringing involved. I’ve kissed so many lips in all five boroughs.

So, dear Binda, won’t you come back?

I get that feeling sometimes that I want to stir shit up. I used to be so good at it, when I was little but the consequences were less dire. I’d get sent to bed early or in my later teenage years got grounded. Dad took back the car keys.

Stirring up trouble now is more like this: have an extramarital affair, try an opoid, stick my finger down my throat on those Friday night Pepperidge Farm binges. I need a smaller stirrer.

So lately I’ve just gotten into the habit of reading a New York Times articles, finding out the author’s contact information and writing them, to thank them for their thoughtful piece. I could rant at them, troll them. But that isn’t the stirring does anyone any good.

Maybe I should bake up a storm. There’s more process, more ingredients to focus on. And there is literally a stirring there.

I regret cutting them. They held me up. They cost nothing–or at least nothing I could readily see. Oh, sure, people always warn about the dangers them knotting around your neck, slowly, in time. The major cause of death, they say. But there are pills you can take, I’ve heard that makes you less aware of your new freedom. Although they have side effects like constipation, blurred vision and nostalgic foragings for anything from Velveeta to old episodes of Police Woman.  So what to do with the actual strings–for they are hardly ever biodegradable. Depending on your genetics, the average number of strings is five. There are gig industries that have cropped recently up about how to repurprose them. Too many to name here.

I personally like to use mine to wrap presents with. My strips happened to be wide, colorful and tapered–a rare gene, I’m told. But I always ask for the strings back, after the presents are opened. Just in case I need them.

Dear Binda,

Remember that pencil sharpener you bought me for back on my 21st birthday? I still have it! I found it underneath some old photos, in a box from labeled “Stuff,” of all things.

And it guess what? It works. The irony is that I have no writing pencils. Remember when I went through that eye makeup phase? Well the only reason I’d stopped wearing eye makeup is because the guy-liner pencil dulled. At one time I tried using a knife to sharpen it but I kept losing how chunks of the stuff that way. I gave up. But now I have your pencil sharpener. Thanks to you,  my eyes are lined. My eyes pop.

Here’s the thing: no one noticed. Not even close colleagues at work. I finally had to show my boyfriend and even he didn’t notice. But clearly there’s a difference. I mean, you guys used to make fun of me wearing it back then. Why not now?

Is eye-liner just dull no matter how sharp the pencil?

Dear Binda,

I love fall. I love any change in season. Even pizza tastes better in the fall. Kisses are sweeter. I’m thinner (in my head). This season is like the slices of onions that are a bit too encroaching on an otherwise perfect pizza. Yes, this season has it’s imperfections. But that’s okay. The weather makes it possible to walk those problems into a smoother stance and to help the smell of dead leaves makes me think that solutions are in the air.

Impossible to find. But you know when you’ve pressed it. And they are everywhere. They actually line coats and jackets. One of my favorite Binda buttons is the one that is right under my nose. Whenever I realize it’s there, I don’t press it but just offer my appreciation. It’s more of a compass really. A chance to see in the flesh what I’ve heard so much about.

My journey to happy. My journey on my journey. The joy is in the journey. I announced several journey’s earlier this year including my journey with Binda, my best friend. She suggested I stop taking so many journeys.

What about rest stops? She asked over a Coca Cola and a bag of Swedish Fish.

Lots of sugar is required on multiple journeys. Relationship journey. Spiritual journey Exercise and diet journey.Career journey. “What about your nap journey?” she asked.

I laughed. But she didn’t.She blinked. Crickets chirped. The earth continued to rotate silently.  I couldn’t take a nap, then and there–not with that sugar rush.

But when I came down from the sugar rush, you bet I did. If Binda suggests I’ll do.

Ohhhhhhh Binda.

It started and ended in the shower. I did the usual. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

But added another R. Read. I read the bottle of shampoo. It turns our shampoos tell stories now. I was used to stories about food. Oatmeal Cookies called “This Cookie Saves the World.” etc, is something we are now going to see more and more of out our favorite cafes and groceries stores and television.

But this shampoo was created by an old man (old now and dead now–he was born in 1918). I assume someone else is telling his story–oh right: it’s his nephew. The shampoo was built-up over time with discovery of new blends and herbs and spices. Not longer a secret blend, just all out in the open for a naked middle-aged man to read while he wastes water standing there, just reading. This shampoo didn’t just leave hair clean and sparkly. You could use it on your body, on dishes, on pet, windows, cuts, bruises and in some rare cases, divorce. It’s hard to read the whole story when you’re wet in the shower.It turns our there’s a book. A novelization of the shampoo, written by you-guessed-it, the nephew. A series, actually.  A movie might be coming out.

In the meantime, I bought the book on Amazon. Turns out the story is pretty sad. The Old Man who made the story turned out to be racist and the nephew has to expose him. But it a novel–so it’s fiction. But it does have me wondering, whenever I wash my hair of what-all I’m dealing with.

Products I buy have stories and that’s just all there is too it.

People started noticing that as I washed dishes I wasn’t actually looking down at the dishes I was washing. I moonily ran a dishrag over the plates but stared ahead. If I was lucky I stared through a kitchen window. And that did happen, when I was a teenager,when I started washing. I dreamt about things when I started washing. I dreamt of bigger things. I missed greased spots on the dishes. My mother stopped asking me to wash them.

Friends stopped asking. I was known as the spaced out dishwasher. Someone wrote a song about me. My mother. She was a one-hit wonder. But she made a good fortune off of that song and used part of it to fund my college education.

I was hired to dishwash in the dorm cafeteria. I went to a school with 30,000 undergraduates. You can imagine.

I told some people about my mother’s song so they started playing it during my dishwashing scenes. And, yes, they were scenes because I was now being taped. There was an MTV special. John Leguizamo played me. Somehow, I managed to get a degree during all of this.

Now I’m fifty and I eat out of cans. Not to avoid dishes. Not because I’m poor. But because no one notices. I can eat in peace when there are no dishes to wash or people to watch me doing them. My mother has since passed away and so I do mark her birthday by washing dishes and thinking of her.

Best regards,