cross my heart

Secrets. When I was little, I told all my secrets to my dolls, especially Raggedy Anne. I'd make her promise not to tell anyone, especially my mom, how I'd pulled my cat's tail just to see what would happen, or how I wasn't really napping during nap time even though I pretended like I was and got a gold star for being the best napper. Judging from the blank stare and frozen smile on Ms. Raggedy's face, not to mention the fact that she didn't even have ears, I was pretty sure my secrets were safe with her. As I got older, my secrets started to involve other people, which made things more complicated. Like when I was nine I'd sleep over at my friend, A's, house and we'd practice kissing so we'd be ready when the time came to kiss a boy. Or at least that was the story at the time. Maybe we did it just because it felt good. But whatever the reason, the fact that it was a huge secret between us made it almost more important and exciting than the action itself. It was an exercise in trust. In fact, now, decades since I've even laid eyes on her, that secret holds us fast.

Some secrets are sweet and make me smile, while others have the opposite effect and I try to chase them back into the dark corner that they came from. When secrets get told, and air gets in and the shelf life is adjusted, the stories become a bit less mythic. Sometimes the fun is in the holding. And then there's the telling to near-strangers as catharsis. When I first met my stepfather's daughter, I was visiting my mom in Leavenworth, Kansas, where they were living at the time. G was a wild child, and while I was, too, I had a few years on her and had channeled a lot of my energy into New York City living, while she seemed to be banging up against every exit out of that city without yet finding the handle to open the door. We'd gone to a bar where she told me we wouldn't have to pay for a thing, because every guy in the joint would be buying us whatever we wanted. As soon as we walked in, I knew that I'd prefer spending all my own money instead. A big tip-off as to what kind of people we were dealing with here was the fact that the dart board was magnetic on account of someone having been blinded during a dart fight that had broken out earlier in the year, or so the bartender said. G was also magnetic, what with her lots and lots of blonde hair, sweater that fell off one shoulder, awesomely tight jeans skirt with zipper up the back and white stilettos (yes, white). I turned out to be a really poor excuse for a wing-chick in this situation, what with the fact that next to her sex-kitten style, I might as well have been invisible with my non-feathered red hair, not-tight t-shirt and jeans and low-slung boots. Up to the minute we walked in I had felt pretty sure of myself, but this scene had me reverting back to high school geek days. Which is why I think G felt so comfortable in leaning over the six drinks she had lined up in front of her, set there by admirers within 10 minutes of our arrival, one of which she gave to me because I had none (seriously, I was invisible), and saying, "This is a total secret that I haven't told anyone. I'm pregnant. But I'm not going to have it. And I'm not telling the guy who's it is and you better not tell my dad." Then she took a sip of her drink, turned to her left and started up a conversation with a guy named Bill (or Bo or Bob). At first I shrugged. Sure, fine, yeah, tell me anything. Then: Wait a minute, I don't want to know that fact you just shared. But it was too late. The secret was spilled. Once we were in the car, driving (unwisely for both of us) back to the parents' apartment I asked her if what she'd told me was true. Yep, she said, it's true, but don't say anything to anybody. I didn't, and eventually I totally forgot I ever knew it in the first place. Except when I call up visions of that night. And in fact if it weren't for that secret, I could swear that I didn't know her at all. I haven't had a conversation with her longer than 20 minutes since then, even during our parents wedding.

And I think that's the beauty of secrets. While they're markers in life, when it's time, they can just as easily be set free like those helium balloons you see escaping from children's parties. Lately I've been setting more and more of my secrets free, while also keeping track of the ones that still need to be laid in bubble-wrap for extra care. I was having coffee last week with a friend who has just started classes at S Factor and she mentioned how often classmates will come out of the studio and become distant or jump into their everyday life immediately, as if the intimacy that's happened in that darkened room needs to remain a big secret and can only be acknowledged during the time spent moving there. I get that. There are some moments that I think exist at a certain altitude that is sacred. I'm beginning to understand how to release those secrets that I've held only because I was embarrassed to tell them and to hold the ones that are special to me. My own little collection of Raggedy Anne's.