Queen Juicy J

”You look like you’re glowing, Jewel.” My co-worker is nudging me, and I can feel the familiar tightening in my stomach of excitement. This weekend will be another adventure, another great moment in time for my memories. I know already it will be an entry, I just don’t know in what way. I tell her that my boyfriend will be picking me up from work with the kids, and she says she wants to meet them. More overhear and ask if they can meet him too. This quickly turns into a brief Q & A and one of them catches me off guard a little. “What do they call you?” Referring to the kids. “Usually ‘mean’,” I say. They laugh and I shrug and that’s the end of it. The phone rings and I have to go back to work. As the day wears on, I feel myself becoming more and more excited. Even when he’s late departing and we’re late to close, I feel only elation. It’s actually times perfectly and so he meets people I talk about frequently and they can put both faces with names. Matt has shown up as well. ...

It's coming up on my birthday soon. I'll be entering the final year of my thirties and as I expected, I can't help but look back over the last decade of my life and all the changes that have happened. Decade by decade they roll past me. I can remember being so excited to turn ten. Double digits, a momentous birthday for me. I was awarded new freedoms, and given new responsibilities. Up to 20 was growth with school and puberty. Idyllic childhood, so many golden memories. Life had not yet shown it's uglier facades to me until I turned 19. My high school sweetheart shattered my heart into hundreds of pieces, my grandmother sank deeper into Alzheimer's, and I fell out with friends over the smallest slights. I would spend the next two decades trying to recapture some element of the happiness and wholeness I felt. The sense of irrefutable belonging I had in my childhood. My twenties were marked with tragedy in a string from which I thought I'd never recover. It ...

We’re in the truck, stuck in a traffic jam. A little over halfway to our destination. We’re tired and maybe starting to feel the trip now, and I’m driving. Suddenly the opening refrain from Circle of Life as performed in the movie. We roll the windows down, turn the volume all the way up and just belt it out to the sun that’s now hanging low in the sky. I’ve taken road trips. I’ve enjoyed music loudly. I cannot say that I’ve ever done this though. I couldn’t help but recall that when that soundtrack had first come out, I was often found with my Walkman, transported by the beautiful scores and songs. Always a circle, always a circuit. Always feeling like I’m coming home. Then Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody comes on and I feel it completely. This trip is going to be epic. *** I’m standing on a sidewalk after thirteen hours in a car. My feet feel fine but my legs are a little stiff. My heart is racing as it sinks in that I am now at the mercy of the world. Anything could happen, good or ...