The years of wine and no roses.... a butterfly story.

The years seem to fly.

Here I am. I am. The shortest sentence in the world. It is a statement and a questions.

The flowing hills hue of faint blues in the morning fog seems ethereal in it's beauty. I love my back deck in the early morning hours. I am wrapped in a pendleton blanket of fiery autumn colours. It is chilly this morning as summer has crept away in the middle of the night like a lover good at that one thing but nothing else that lingers on your mind. Well maybe two or three. But you get the point. New England Summers go by all too quickly.

This big old adirondack chair used to be bigger when we moved her eight years ago.

This is my time. The few hours I have before the children wake and start demanding my time. It seems I have no time left for me. I felt this way back when I was touring, but looking back, that was all me time.

My mug is filled with a good stiff coffee, Irish coffee. I place it on the table. All the while thinking it is almost time to put this furniture in the barn for storage.

I pick up my old steel guitar. You know this hour or so by myself makes me think too much of what I don't have and what has been left in the past. Here in the morning mist I feel so lonely. My children cure that, when they wake and the world comes alive with the force of a hurricane. But this time. The time I can't help but think I should be sharing the morning coffee and mist with. Knowing looks and caring eyes from the opposite chair. But there's no-one there.

There hasn't been anyone there for 5 years. In my mind I can see him sitting there. Sometimes enjoying the peace with me. Sometimes playing a song to me. Sometimes playing a song with me.

Now I play alone. When the mood strikes.

I play the all too familiar notes. Old friends them now.



You know sometimes you get to a point in life when you feel all the best times are yesterday. When you can not come up with one reason to look forward to tomorrow. You know that yesterday will be the same toil as tomorrow as will be the next day. In other words: WELCOME TO SINGLE MOTHERHOOD.

As I sit here and play the song I think about what brought me here.

I told him to leave. I wore it as a badge of honour. I TOLD HIM TO LEAVE. What I didn't say is that I was saying it to him as he was leaving out the door anyway. He was walking out on me and the children and walking to that groupie with sky high boobs. Ones that had not nursed four children. She had a vacancy in the head as well.

Yes, I allow myself bitterness. Especially when his words about her being so much more agreeable than me and that I really let myself go over the years. He said he was still was young and deserved better.

After 4 children I had gained 80 pounds. Some how it crept up on me one every child after Freedom. With Freedom food was scarce. That makes it easy to keep your girlish figure. After Freedom food was plentiful. I had means. I had a career. A modest one in Europe. I never did much in my home country of America. Where U2 and Frankie Goes to Hollywood came over in the 80's my sound smacked too much of the old blues and what happened in the 60's. I remember Robert Smith and I talking over coffee with his wife. Oh how they loved those old songs. Funny how you can not be appreciated until you are walking in a foreign land.

The royalties did allowed me to buy this old farm house on 30 acres here. Not much else. I actually have a a small farm. Didn't I run away from that life so many years ago?

Funny sometimes you run away from things and than you become a mother. You remember all the healthy things that the boring sticks and country life can offer. I wanted my children to know what it was to sneak up to a frog and chase a chicken. There are some simple pleasures of childhood that are missed in city life. Here, though in a semi country life the city and ocean are not that far away so I could keep my balance.

England was home for so long. Ian, he wanted to make a go of making it here. So we moved here. He became a studio and back up player to other front men when I was not going over well.

That made me.. well a house wife. That was all fine and well... Oh who the hell do I think I am kidding? I am not housewife material. I am adventure girl and take my family along for the ride kind of woman.

In my new chained life, Ian looked at me differently. I was told "Hon, why don't ya make some food for us, you wouldn't understand this music stuff." He actually said that more than once. The others would laugh. They didn't know me. They didn't know that was my guitar on the wall, not his. They were Americans. Living the life I was more than aware that woman were not worth anything, especially when the word "Mum" got called out.

I was not some groupie. I was not some hanger on. I was his wife and now I had all his buddies in our marriage as well. Some would say even in front of me they had a tart they wanted him to meet. They talked of these woman as meat. They traded them around like woman borrow shirts from each other.

After all that I still knew he was different when he sat in that that other chair. I would have my Ian back for a brief moment in the days he was home. But those days were less and less. And the last few weeks he did sit there he was not there. It was not him. He had already gone.

"MUM!"

"Out here, little one."

My youngest child comes out and cuddles in my blanket. She looks up at me with her bright blue eyes and freckly face " When are you going start making pancakes? It's Sunday." She smiles.

" I guess right now."

" Can I have chocolate in mine?"

"I think I have some chocolate chips around here, but you have to have Apple pancakes, too."

"Oh, Mum!"

I am about to walk back into the house when I hear a car come up my gravel driveway. I look over the deck as the red sports car comes to a halt.

"Bloody HELL" I say as Ian climbs out of the car.

"Who is he?"

"No-one, Mercy, go inside. Get warm. Get all the things I need for the pancakes out. " I push her through the sliding door and shut it behind her.

"Hey Butterfly! No-one! I'm the damn father! You let Charisma know that!" Ian seemed upset at my dismissal of Mercy.

" That is MS SMITH to you! And any one who can not tell which child is which does NOT get to call himself the "DAMN FATHER". You haven't seen them in 5 years. You have no right..."

Before I could finished "Same old Butterfly, still a bitch." Came out of his mouth.

I turned and walked back into the house.

That which is in the past....

She remembers everything.

It can play like a movie in her mind or on a blank white wall if she is creatively bored enough. This happened a lot in school. Her teachers could be less than inspiring. Now it is Supervisors and trainers and corporate types at work brings out the creative boredom of her childhood. Isn't always seem the most uninspiring people tell other what to do and how to do it. Intelligence is her friend and half being in the present and half in the past.

This ability to relive the past with the recall of the DVD you have watched over and over again would have been great if her life was filled with more good times.

She wonders how others deal with the walking past, for quite honestly it was starting to bring her down.

So she goes to a preacher to find the answer. He told her to pray for an answer. She does not believe he really understood the query. She prayed when she was a child about it and the cosmic voicemail told her god was away on business.

She went to one of those New Age gurus. They sold her a whole bunch of stones some represented male and female parts. When that didn't work, she was told she was not ready for the answer but if she wanted to get there she could buy his book. When the book enlightened her not, he said she had to take his seminars in the woods were Indians used to do their sacred ceremonies. That was before he bought the land and kicked them out. His new age retreat center was far more profitable . And as she was told that no-one reaches enlightenment unless you paid for it otherwise it doesn't mean anything. She ran out of her entertainment fund and did not feel every entertained.

She ended up in this therapist office full of fake plants and magazines of Pop Psychology. She suspects you can find new neurosis in the waiting room, job security. He sat her down and explained how other people deal with living with the past and present merged together: they don't. He explained they simply don't see the past that clearly. It fades over time. He said she was special and offered the suggestion just to watch the good ones.

After a month she got tired of all the repeats.

She just let's the past come as it will now. Strange little turn of a phrase from a conversation as she walks by strangers waiting for the bus or the odd look her co workers would give would set the past replay again. Old lovers waifing back into the present like the the man on the train who passed wind and blamed the blind girl's dog. She wonders if they ever think about her like this. She shakes her head each time that thought crosses and remembers what shrink said. They don't.

Can you walk or even wake in multiple worlds at once. She was proof time was only how you perceive it. She hates the people who say things like : keep the past in the past or any of the many other says that said the same sentiment. She , more than most, saw that the past effected who we are today. Or in other words that she prefers : they who forgets their past are doomed to repeat it.

She has had the good judgement not to fall into that trap. Unless she wanted to, that usually didn't last long. As if if we know how it will turn out that we would try it from another way. When she saw the same pattern emerge she would walk away. No need to have remakes of the same story.

One of her past lovers was a past walker, too. Their fights were glorious. Each one recalling their side and transgressions against them so perfectly. Ah but time and transgressions are unfortunately all about prospective. This union, no great sex could save.


Yet another lover remember almost nothing clearly. Yet was determined that she lied about the events constinly. He drove her to the brink of madness. The Part about how he knew his memory was faulty and hers was not is what really drove her crazy during those times.


She finally met a person who thought about the future only. With this one she would stay with. It was good. The processes of bringing him to her was nothing but looking forward. He was her child. The child balanced her out. She taught him to remember the past. He taught her to look towards the future. Together they lived happy .