always merry and bright

A friend of mine just learned that she had breast cancer. Or she just told me. I should have known. She started drinking again. Casting her hard won sobriety away in exchange for the camaraderie of warm lite beer in a parked car. She wanted to become a jeweler. But the real jewel is her self; the generosity of her smile, her quick fingers making hibiscus flowers out of gold and silver, the way she loves to feed people, or paints the beaches of Florida on boring wooden furniture.
I worked with her one new years eve. We painted faces for St Petersburg's "First Night festival (which for some reason they hold on the Last night of the year.) I've never painted faces before and she has her own set of unique designs. Unicorns and flowers. Same stuff she's done for tourists since the seventies. We got a little drunk while she showed me the tricks and let me practice on her face. Then there was the onslaught of children, lined up with their parents. Thank God they mostly wanted "fireworks," a few strokes of color and a dash of glitter. I did "Go Bucs" on a few eleven year olds. We worked back to back sharing the same table of paint, mixing paint in our left hand and brushing with the right.
an endless stream of children.
We never talked about her son Tommy, I don't know what became of him. We know he's still alive because they haven't retired his social security number. She just cleaned out the house where he grew up, now boarded up and decayed in a bad part of town. Some one bought it. They will tear it down, and rebuild when the property value goes up. There was a Winnie the Pooh pillow case, and a couple of broken plastic toys. She left them there. A meaningless clutter for some new owner, but a burden of pain and loss for my friend.
We kissed that night first kiss I've had in many years. Her husband was an abusive nasty drunk that night. He called her many names, but not her name. We went outside and sat in the freezing car, kept each other warm and kissed. Innocent genuine love. Then our human bodies awoke, unthawed and so embarrassed that we rushed over to my friends house. He was so depressed that he slept through new years eve. We chattered like children while he grumbled like a bear and tried not to be amused and then I took her home. The next day, she went over to his house with a big pot of blackeye peas.
Tonight I hope we will cast some silver. She has some gold too. A commission that was meant to be a Christmas present. We were working on it right up until Christmas eve when they closed the studio.
I want everything to turn out well for her.