The girl, Lei Lani Michel, walked along the sidewalk in front of us, wearing a black shirt with white daisies on it, black shorts, and -- here's where I was sold -- bright blue 8-hole Doc Martens. I think I fell in love just then. Luckily, she ended up rooming in my dorm, just two doors down from me. I must have tracked her down sometime later that day, and in the conversation we had on the benches outside the dorm that night, something clicked that never could be broken.
There's not enough space here to list all the adventures we've had since then, though some moments are wonderfully memorable -- like driving up to Ruston, LA, to see her perform in a play where she had to scream some sort of wildly intense banshee-sounding grief-scream (keening, was it called?) at a framed picture of Steve Buschemi. Or the time we got the idea to make a huge banner out of construction paper with the words "Merry (se)x-mas" and string it up outside between the third floor windows of our dorm room. Or the times she brought me to the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show in Metairie.
Or the time when I went to visit her for Towahpahsah, the 4-wheeler heavy Mardi Gras parade in Reserve, LA, where we took photographs of drinking straws in odd places (on top of the mounted heads of deer, planted into the garden, on the hood of the car) with the intention of mailing these photographs anonymously on a regular basis to a friend(?) who had a phobia of straws. We never put them in the mail, but I do still have a collection of photographed straws.
LL Bean hasn't just been my partner in adventures of the absurd. She is also one of the gentlest, most generous souls I've had the grace and good fortune to meet in this lifetime. I remember her once telling me about a dream she had had in which she was the angel of death and I was the angel of life, and we had keys that were used to determine the fates of certain humans.
I mention this because it seems to me that she is the one who is the angel of life. She is a person of deep compassion and sincerest warmth. She loves courageously and lives with spontaneity and enthusiasm. She subscribes whole-heartedly to one of her favorite quotes by Emile Zola, "I came to live out loud."
I'm telling you all of this because LL is going to undergo her third (THIRD!) open heart surgery tomorrow, and her insurance cannot possibly cover all the costs associated with the procedure. She was born with a congenital heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot, and while her first heart valve lasted over 20 years, the second one has failed her, and she has been struggling for over 2 years with it. She'll be having it replaced on Thursday, 3/1.
Many of us who love her are trying to raise money via PayPal to help her with medical bills, and the link I'm sharing tells you how you can make a donation to her. I really hope you'll help.
LL's physical heart needs help, but her spiritual heart is tremendous. She has courage, in the sense that that word means "to have heart." She has approached this whole situation with grace and aplomb, and I'm humbled by her strength. I hope that this description of her has captured you so that you'll help us to help her.
We love her immeasurably, and we want to smooth out the road ahead of her as much as we can so that she can continue to live her life with the infectious enthusiasm we all so admire in her.
