My Life's Playlist

With thanks to Ava, for the kick in the butt to post and with sincerest apologies to MugsyB and Pennlady for dipping my big toe into their genre. I'll never do it as well as you guys! The first couple of chapters are character development, so please be patient with me!

© 2009.

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Loneliness on the dunes

I'm pretty tough

But the wind is rough

On the dunes

- "On the Dunes"-Donald Fagen

Giving what my best friend refers to as a "big momma sigh", I stood up and folded my blanket. The gray color of the Atlantic reflected both the approach of a storm and my mood. It was time to pack the car and leave my family's little slice of paradise here at the Outer Banks. Late Fall is my favorite time to come; I especially love the way the ocean changed color as I walked the beach, deserted of the usual horde of summer visitors. I needed some time alone to think, and Friday had been a school holiday for both teachers and students. When my parents offered a chance to use the house, I was packed and ready to go in no time. It was hard to believe that it had been almost a year since I'd walked in on my fiancé and his secretary doing things in his office that made me want to poke my mind's eye out. I promised myself that I'd use this weekend to do the last of the mourning for what was.

As I drove back to Washington, I could hear my late Grandmother Phillipa's voice. "Phillipa Fiona Rhys-Hall, it's time for you to pull up your socks and get on with your life. Take a moment, count your blessings, and move on!" I was honest enough to admit that this whole "I should be sad business" was making me get on my own nerves, so I did just that.

First, there are my parents.

. My friends were starting to lose their parents, and I thanked God everyday for the blessing of my parents continued health. They had met when my English father had been posted to the Pentagon to work as one of the liaisons between the Royal and the US Navy. Phillip fell in love with my Irish-American mother Siobhan at an Embassy party celebrating the Queen's birthday. Though neither side of the family had been thrilled at the prospect of the other's background (read in minor titled, upper-class British vs. spunky self-made Irish American), they realized that at thirty-eight, both Phillip and Siobhan knew their own minds. My unexpected arrival a year after their marriage had caused my Grammy Fee to exclaim "Saints preserve us, miracles really do happen." Unfortunately as a peace offering, I had been saddled with my grandmother's names. While Fiona was not so horrid, Phillipa was definitely not a common name here in the States or in England for that matter since around 1910. Pippa had been settled on as a reasonable nickname, but it had been a big no fun being known as "the girl named Phil" in junior high, and my thick glasses hadn't helped. Almost thirty-one years later they were still madly in love, and after my father's second retirement from his civilian job in DC, they had settled full time at the beach, and spent a good deal of their time traveling. From my mother, I inherited my "Black Irish" coloring of almost black hair that shone with auburn highlights in the sun, blue eyes, and fair, freckled skin. From my father I inherited a love of the sea, sailing, history, and reading. The biggest puzzler in my family was how I ended up being only five feet tall, when my parents are both of above average height

Number two, Annie. How many people can say their best friend since their junior year of high school has turned out to be more of a sister than a friend?

Annie and I had been there for each other since the day we met. We're both military brats, with Annie's father reaching the rank of General in the Air Force. Neither of us had been in the popular clique, but we both were well liked and straight A students. I coxed the men's eight in crew and sang in the choir, while Annie played the piano and was a demon field hockey player. After high school, we had gone our separate ways, me to William and Mary to pursue my dream of becoming a history teacher, and Annie to Johns Hopkins for pre-med. We reunited when Annie was accepted to Georgetown for Medical School, and I started my first teaching job. Shortly before we graduated from college, Annie inherited her Grandmother's Old Towne Alexandria town house, and she invited me to come live with her. This comfortable arrangement had continued as Annie started her pediatrics' residency and neonatology fellowship at the Children's National Medical Center. Annie was everything I wasn't: tall, red hair that always did what she wanted it to, brown-eyed, tan, with a figure to die for. She also had above-average intelligence and a stingingly dry wit.

Naturally, Annie had come to my rescue when I discovered what color panties my fiancé's secretary wore. As a true friend, she realized the situation called for an enormous amount of both alcohol and bad country cheating songs. She bundled me into her car and took me home, where we proceeded to get spectacularly drunk on Annie's famously lethal Manhattans. By the end of the evening, she even managed to help me find the humor in the situation by saying, "Pipster, did you expect any other outcome when you agreed to marry a man named Dick?"

"Annster, the thing that really bothers me is the absolute ordinariness of his unfaithfulness. I can admit now I knew how deadly dull he was, and he couldn't kiss worth a damn, but my god, couldn't he have shown more flash in his indiscretion. If I wrote this as a story for Mrs. Baldwin's journalism class, she would have taken out her purple pen and written trite all over it!" This sent us both into drunken giggles at the memory of our adventures on the high school paper. Giggles turned into drunken hiccups, and we decided that bed would be the best place for us. Neither of us was ready to face the next morning until it was afternoon, but Annie figured it was her off-call weekend, and what are best friends for anyhow? I had done the same for her when her college boyfriend dropped her because he wanted a woman whose career would come second to his. He then proceeded to marry the most insipid woman we knew whose only dream was to take care of him, stand by his side and stare adoringly at public functions and produce the five children he hoped to have. Last time I'd run into them at a Junior League fundraiser, he was balding and she was as whiny as ever!

My third blessing was my job, and the friends that came with it.

When I graduated from W & M, I was able to find a job teaching 7

th

grade Social Studies. I know that most people think I'm certifiable when I say I like teaching 12 and 13 year olds, but I really do. One minute they are all-knowing sophisticates, and the next minute they are telling you about the latest episode of Hannah Montana. It also helps that the curriculum is World History from the Exploration of the New World to current times. How could you not love this part of history with its crazy dictators, wars, plagues, and epidemics? My students were a mix of the upper crust of Northern Virginia society, whose parents know me as the granddaughter of the famous society hostess Lady Phillipa, and immigrant kids from the low economic neighborhoods. One hundred and seventy-five days out of one hundred and eighty, I looked forward to getting out of bed and going to work. On those other five days, I could count on my 7

th

grade teammates' help to find the humor in the day.

Our school operated on the team model, which meant that I shared the same ninety students with Flip Jacobs who taught Science, Mary Miller who taught English, and our Math teacher Ted Adamson. We had been together the last seven years, and we were considered by both the parents and our administrators as a strong team. Our strengths and weaknesses complimented each other, and we had been known to break into silly banter in the halls during class change, much to the amusement of our fellow 7

th

grade teachers, and the confusion of our kids. I have many other friends on staff, but my teammates are the ones I see every day and the people I consider my school family. We also are bonded by our blood oath to help each other hid the bodies of any student who is being particularly annoying that day.

Flip is the youngest, a free spirited bachelor of twenty-eight who spends the summers hiking, fishing, and kayaking. His girlfriends all tended to be interchangeably tall, blonde, outdoorsy and terminal airheads whose names generally were spelled in overly cutesy ways. The rest of us referred them as his "Flippy Dolls". His room is full of colorful pictures he'd taken of his travels. Less attractive is Flip's collection of amphibians and reptiles. The star of his collection is Ethel, a giant boa who likes to occasionally escape and run free along the ceiling tiles that connected our classrooms. This is fine, except for the fact that I had a huge phobia about snakes, and I'm definitely still not over the time she came popping down from my ceiling during sixth period.

The only thing average about Mary (or M squared as we affectionately call her) was her height. Using her work ethic and intelligence, she had managed to beat the odds of her tough D.C. neighborhood and graduate with honors from Howard University. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of literature, and can find a quote to meet any situation she finds herself in. She met her husband at college, and they'd been married since graduation. At thirty-eight, she has managed to keep both her figure and sense of humor, even as she carpools her three kids to all their activities.

At forty, Ted was the oldest of our team. Originally, from upstate New York, he and his Canadian wife Angela had moved here after he got out of the Navy. Their four-year-old son Theo is my godson. Ted went into the whole parenting thing with great reluctance, but since the day Theo was born, Ted has referred to him as his little buddy and best friend. Around school we refer to him as "the dude", since

The Big Lebowski

is one of Ted's favorite movies. We always greet Ted by asking, "How is the dude?" Ted of course always replies, "The dude abides".

In counting my blessings I managed to find myself getting off the interstate and pulling up to the converted carriage house that served as the garage for our building. Annie was on call this weekend so I wouldn't see her until tomorrow night, when she would come in around 7:00 pm, grunt at me, eat a bowl of oatmeal, and sleep until she had to go back to the hospital. That's okay, because Beau Kitty greeted me. Beau is a black and gray calico Annie's brother found abandoned in a house his fraternity was cleaning out. He texted a picture of the then named Bonethugs (they had also found a female cat they named Harmony) with the caption "Who can resist this face?" When Annie showed me the message, I took her phone and sent back the message "Annie and I can", but when he came to visit Annie and me on his Fall break, I fell in love, and the rest is history. Unfortunately, due to the time Beau spent with the Frat's dog, he believes he is a canine. I guess if that is his only quirk, he ended up okay.

It had been a long drive home, and I was tired. I gave Ted and Angela a quick call to let them know I was home safe and sound, and to confirm my ride to school from the Metro station in the morning. After a hot bath, I climbed into bed, tried to read a few pages of the book I was reading, and soon fell asleep.