My mother lies in a hospital bed in North Central Florida, dying slowly and possessed with an intriguingly imaginative dementia.
Last night she told me that her kind neighbor, who discovered my mother on her kitchen floor four days ago and called EMS, has a sister who lives down the road with her husband and children. This family, my mother told me frankly but conspiratorially, is not nearly so kind. Instead, this family lives in a secret outer wing of the same ICU where my mother lies wasting--a secret glass wing that had been built specifically for this woman and her family. Way out in an adjacent grassy horse field they dwell, she and her family, in a glass-covered vestibule, eating their meals in the echoes and blips of the unsuspecting ICU unit down a long hidden hallway.
There are too many things to say right now for any one thing to seem relevant. I could tell you about my mother, circa 1970, in a bathing suit--cigarette in hand, the other hand on cocked hip, yelling some instruction to me and my sister from the shoreline where she stood. Our summer friends called her the Mayor of the Beach.
It wouldn't mean much, though, and it wouldn't be anything close to what I want to say.
So instead, right now, I try to picture my mother somewhere once like me, now: sitting cross-legged on a big messy morning bed, laptop on stacked pillows in her lap, birds singing in the courtyard behind her, sullen lover sitting at his own laptop through the door at the foot of the bed.
In other words, I try to imagine her in a life she never lived.
My mother has had many chances at her life, many stops and re-starts, and I suppose in this way I'm like her. I don't seem to live in small gestures either. I've often wondered who my mother would have become if she had been able to pull off second chances the way I have. I believe it's partly because of her that I actually have--her feisty, indeterminable spirit lives in me. Her anger taught me other things, too: that it is only safe to live with fangs ready to bare. This is turning out to be a hard bell to un-ring.
As for my mother, true to form, I believe her going-out is going to be one hell of a ride.
So here I sit, wondering now about who she might have been if luck had somehow intervened. I wonder who she would have been had she been allowed the space and the understanding her soul needed, right from the start. She didn't have a very good chance with what she was given. Neither did she ever figure out a way to stop fighting and make a chance open up.
I'm trying to honor my mother in what seem to be her last days, fighting for some scrap of her life because I believe that is what she would want. I know she would fight for me this way. There has never been any question in my heart that she would go to battle for me. Doing battle was often the most mothering she could do.
If I haven't completely forgiven her for this yet, I hope to, someday.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Starting Again, Again
There is irony in the date of my last post--May 19, 2011.
On May 18, 2011, just one day prior--though unbenowst to me at the time--my boyfriend had written an email to a woman he'd been having a years-long correspondence with. His May 18th email went like this:
That girl I'm seeing is so jealous of you! Somehow she knows I have a wicked crush on you--I wonder how. I miss you terribly.
I only just read this email last week. I read it as my boyfriend stood with movers some 20 miles away, amidst the boxes and bags of his soon-to-be-former apartment, and I sat awaiting the delivery of him in the still silence of my apartment. That's when I read this email.
But I've gotten ahead of myself. Let me tell you how we came together before I tell you how we started to split apart.
I met this man on December 22nd of last year, just three days before Christmas. By New Years Eve, we were speaking to each other every day. By Valentine's Day, we were seeing each other exclusively. He began talking about moving in together when his lease expired in January.
Meaning now. Thus the movers, the boxes and bags. But again, I'm getting ahead.
The spring came, and with it came changes. His work, normally busy, had become overwhelming. The loving, funny, gentle man I was falling in love with became almost a different person--like someone related to my boyfriend and bearing a striking resemblance, but of a completely different spirit and humor. Irritable most of the time. Short-tempered. Pessimistic, critical, sometimes mean and cutting behind a veil of humor. As his work intensified, so did the appearance of this look-alike interloper.
One morning in early May, perplexed but still smitten, I was eating breakfast before work and browsing through Facebook, a rare guilty pleasure--rare because I seem to have lost the time I once spent socializing online; guilty because as soon as I enter that realm, I seem to have lost a guaranteed minimum of ten minutes of my life.
I saw an update in my boyfriend's status--some witty remark, very Facebook-y. Following it was a short string of dialog between him and a woman I'll call Monique. Monique happens to be her name, but I don't think we'll meet her here. So let's call Monique Monique.
This dialog, this burst of banter, between my boyfriend and Monique made me uncomfortable. It was flirtatious, but more: It was intimate and comfortable in its flirtatiousness.
I knew of many names from my boyfriend's past--too many, in truth. Names of two former wives; names of girlfriends, lovers, dates. Monique was not one of them.
I called him when I realized that yes, there genuinely was a knot in my stomach.
Who is Monique, I asked when he picked up his phone, And why are you flirting with her on Facebook?
He laughed. He wasn't flirting, turned out. For god's sake, Monique was married!
AHA, I said. Which of your friends is Monique's husband?
I believe that you already know the answer.
He had never met Monique's husband.
I can say now that the months followed--I am not exaggerating here, this is embarassing enough without additional embellishment--months of rageful arguments, all centering around my boyfriend's conduct on Facebook--were the most hostile I have ever spent in a relationship. The fights were not only about Monique, but about most of the women of his Facebook friends to whom he wasn't related. My boyfriend had dated most of them--some many years prior, others within the past few years. And they all met up regularly on Facebook, exchanging double entendre, lascivious comments, emoticons extraordinaire.
That is the part I did know.
What I didn't know was that following that very first conversation I had with my boyfriend in May, the conversation about Monique and how my boyfriend was not flirting with her, he had sent Monique the email you saw above--the one that starts, "That girl I'm seeing is SO jealous of you!"
Back to what I did know. The topic of Facebook, and my boyfriend's conduct on it, was a ball of twine that, once I started tugging, seemingly had no end. A ball of adolescent twine. Adolescent, defensive, defiant twine.
I may not have KNOWN, but I knew. The man doth protested too much. Week after week, argument after argument, we seemed to be locked in a groundhog day of words -- my interpretation of his conduct in these online relationships; his self-righteous denial and disbelief that I could be so paranoid and so lacking in trust to think that he would flirt with other women.
As a couple, we pushed on.
The summer was hot and long and mostly unpleasant. My boyfriend worked 60- or 70- hour weeks, including weekends, and complained bitterly throughout. It seemed as if I spent those months waiting for him to finish--he was always about to hang up a conference call, about to get off the computer, about to really start the weekend. I can picture him giving me the "just two more minutes" sign as he peered over his laptop at me, working from home on yet another intended long-weekend Friday. On one of these occasions I left, drove to the next town, took a yoga class, and drove home. When I walked back in he looked up from his conference call, rolled his eyes, and gave me the "just one more minute" gesture. Almost two hours later, his two minutes still hadn't passed.
At some time around October, the conversation about our moving in together became more serious. It had to; his lease was expiring on January 1, and he was ready to move on.
The Facebook arguments mostly died down, too. In the end he'd deleted most of the women whose interactions I found offensive. It felt like some subtle shift had taken place while I was sleeping. He seemed closer to understanding that there are things we just don't do when we're involved in a committed relationship. Out of respect, or something like it.
We picked a date for him to move into my 1-bedroom apartment: December 26. The plan was that we would shoehorn ourselves into my apartment for the few months before my lease expired in April--or for as long as we could stand the cramped quarters. We agreed that if time proved the space just too small, we'd forget our schedule and start looking for a bigger apartment sooner.
The holidays came without my really noticing. Work was busy, life was busy, and I had closets to empty.
It's not that I wasn't excited about my boyfriend moving into my apartment. I was. I was nervous, too: This apartment had been the first place I had chosen to live after leaving my marriage, and I had chosen it because the first time I had seen it I'd known, I will find peace here. The brick walls and high ceilings and tree-lined street had felt like home as soon as I moved in.
And I had found peace here. I had recovered from my lost marriage; had a couple of meaningful relationships, and the requisite number of crazy, newly single relationships. I had lived through and recovered from a major surgery; lost my grandfather--for so many years my ballast in this unsteady world. After all that, I had found my soul still mostly joyful and excited to start the day. The place had worked some magic on me, though no doubt plain time had something to do with it.
Which brings me to the morning of December 26. There I sat, surrounded by boxes and bags, when I heard my boyfriend's iPad bing with a new message.
Do you know how you know you're going to regret knowing something, but you ask the question anyway? I have always been the asker of those questions.
I lifted the cover of his iPad and saw the beginning of a message from Monique--my old friend Monique from Facebook. I knew my boyfriend's password because he'd given it to me to watch a movie over the summer. [And let me offer some advice to you here, readers: Always play the luddite. Pretend to not have a mind that can remember passwords or understand how to delete a browsing history. Adapting a persona of technical ignorance can be an enormous advantage when you least expect it.]
I entered his password. And witnessed months of flirtatious, endearing emails between Monique and my boyfriend. The last one he had sent was in mid-October: "Miss our conversations. Miss you terribly, as always. Love,..."
This new email from Monique, the one I'd heard come in on the iPad, started, "It's been awhile and I haven't heard from you..."
I thought it would be a good idea for me to reply to Monique. Who, I should mention, is married with two children; pregnant with a third. I did. I like to think of what feelings might have flooded her as she read my message. Whatever my imaginings, I hope the reality was much, much worse.
I also thought it would be a good idea to copy the words from my boyfriend's email to Monique--the email from May, the one that started those months of argument; the one that started, "That girl I'm dating is SO jealous of you..." I copied those words into a text message, and sent them to my boyfriend as he directed the movers handling his furniture and other belongings. I wondered if he'd remember them.
He did.
Anyone who has ever lived through a scene like this knows the stages that follow. First, his outrage at my reading his email. Then the confession. Then the apologies.
These apologies are their own sort of rollercoaster of emotions. They're not the pure mea culpas one might expect. There's quite a bit of anger at having been outed woven in with the apology. This has surprised me. But lately everything is surprising me, so take this with a grain of salt.
There are more details, but the details seem to matter less every day.
Here is what I know.
I let him move into my apartment after all. The timing had all the makings of a tragicomedy.
Most of the time I believe what he says: That this romantic flirtation was a last vestige of his single-man status, and a vestige that he allowed to linger for too long. "If you could see inside my head," he keeps saying, "You would see how ridiculous and meaningless it was." They had never dated--never actually even held hands. They had met at the home of a mutual friend, years before. Monique lives on the other side of the country. They are perfect for each other, actually--perfect illusions, untarnished and untarnish-able.
I know that if he could see inside my head, he would see how much has been lost.
I've synched up all of the dates of his email exchange with Monique--the ones that he saved, just since this past May--with dates in our relationship. The last email he sent, in mid-October, he sent a day after I'd taken a picture of him at lunch at one of my favorite downtown cafes. I loved that picture--he looked so boyish in it, so carefree. After the summer we'd had, it had felt triumphant to see him looking back at me through a lens like this.
I don't like looking at this picture anymore.
I looked forward to my boyfriend moving in to my apartment with real excitement. This, I had told myself--and really believed--this was a good man. My marriage had split apart under the strain of truths half-told. But this man, I'd believed--this man was a different creature altogether.
This part is actually true.
Just not in the way I thought.
I don't know what happens now.
There are moments when I think, Just believe him; accept that he was an idiot, and move on.
There are moments when I think, Why?
Why?
On May 18, 2011, just one day prior--though unbenowst to me at the time--my boyfriend had written an email to a woman he'd been having a years-long correspondence with. His May 18th email went like this:
That girl I'm seeing is so jealous of you! Somehow she knows I have a wicked crush on you--I wonder how. I miss you terribly.
I only just read this email last week. I read it as my boyfriend stood with movers some 20 miles away, amidst the boxes and bags of his soon-to-be-former apartment, and I sat awaiting the delivery of him in the still silence of my apartment. That's when I read this email.
But I've gotten ahead of myself. Let me tell you how we came together before I tell you how we started to split apart.
I met this man on December 22nd of last year, just three days before Christmas. By New Years Eve, we were speaking to each other every day. By Valentine's Day, we were seeing each other exclusively. He began talking about moving in together when his lease expired in January.
Meaning now. Thus the movers, the boxes and bags. But again, I'm getting ahead.
The spring came, and with it came changes. His work, normally busy, had become overwhelming. The loving, funny, gentle man I was falling in love with became almost a different person--like someone related to my boyfriend and bearing a striking resemblance, but of a completely different spirit and humor. Irritable most of the time. Short-tempered. Pessimistic, critical, sometimes mean and cutting behind a veil of humor. As his work intensified, so did the appearance of this look-alike interloper.
One morning in early May, perplexed but still smitten, I was eating breakfast before work and browsing through Facebook, a rare guilty pleasure--rare because I seem to have lost the time I once spent socializing online; guilty because as soon as I enter that realm, I seem to have lost a guaranteed minimum of ten minutes of my life.
I saw an update in my boyfriend's status--some witty remark, very Facebook-y. Following it was a short string of dialog between him and a woman I'll call Monique. Monique happens to be her name, but I don't think we'll meet her here. So let's call Monique Monique.
This dialog, this burst of banter, between my boyfriend and Monique made me uncomfortable. It was flirtatious, but more: It was intimate and comfortable in its flirtatiousness.
I knew of many names from my boyfriend's past--too many, in truth. Names of two former wives; names of girlfriends, lovers, dates. Monique was not one of them.
I called him when I realized that yes, there genuinely was a knot in my stomach.
Who is Monique, I asked when he picked up his phone, And why are you flirting with her on Facebook?
He laughed. He wasn't flirting, turned out. For god's sake, Monique was married!
AHA, I said. Which of your friends is Monique's husband?
I believe that you already know the answer.
He had never met Monique's husband.
I can say now that the months followed--I am not exaggerating here, this is embarassing enough without additional embellishment--months of rageful arguments, all centering around my boyfriend's conduct on Facebook--were the most hostile I have ever spent in a relationship. The fights were not only about Monique, but about most of the women of his Facebook friends to whom he wasn't related. My boyfriend had dated most of them--some many years prior, others within the past few years. And they all met up regularly on Facebook, exchanging double entendre, lascivious comments, emoticons extraordinaire.
That is the part I did know.
What I didn't know was that following that very first conversation I had with my boyfriend in May, the conversation about Monique and how my boyfriend was not flirting with her, he had sent Monique the email you saw above--the one that starts, "That girl I'm seeing is SO jealous of you!"
Back to what I did know. The topic of Facebook, and my boyfriend's conduct on it, was a ball of twine that, once I started tugging, seemingly had no end. A ball of adolescent twine. Adolescent, defensive, defiant twine.
I may not have KNOWN, but I knew. The man doth protested too much. Week after week, argument after argument, we seemed to be locked in a groundhog day of words -- my interpretation of his conduct in these online relationships; his self-righteous denial and disbelief that I could be so paranoid and so lacking in trust to think that he would flirt with other women.
As a couple, we pushed on.
The summer was hot and long and mostly unpleasant. My boyfriend worked 60- or 70- hour weeks, including weekends, and complained bitterly throughout. It seemed as if I spent those months waiting for him to finish--he was always about to hang up a conference call, about to get off the computer, about to really start the weekend. I can picture him giving me the "just two more minutes" sign as he peered over his laptop at me, working from home on yet another intended long-weekend Friday. On one of these occasions I left, drove to the next town, took a yoga class, and drove home. When I walked back in he looked up from his conference call, rolled his eyes, and gave me the "just one more minute" gesture. Almost two hours later, his two minutes still hadn't passed.
At some time around October, the conversation about our moving in together became more serious. It had to; his lease was expiring on January 1, and he was ready to move on.
The Facebook arguments mostly died down, too. In the end he'd deleted most of the women whose interactions I found offensive. It felt like some subtle shift had taken place while I was sleeping. He seemed closer to understanding that there are things we just don't do when we're involved in a committed relationship. Out of respect, or something like it.
We picked a date for him to move into my 1-bedroom apartment: December 26. The plan was that we would shoehorn ourselves into my apartment for the few months before my lease expired in April--or for as long as we could stand the cramped quarters. We agreed that if time proved the space just too small, we'd forget our schedule and start looking for a bigger apartment sooner.
The holidays came without my really noticing. Work was busy, life was busy, and I had closets to empty.
It's not that I wasn't excited about my boyfriend moving into my apartment. I was. I was nervous, too: This apartment had been the first place I had chosen to live after leaving my marriage, and I had chosen it because the first time I had seen it I'd known, I will find peace here. The brick walls and high ceilings and tree-lined street had felt like home as soon as I moved in.
And I had found peace here. I had recovered from my lost marriage; had a couple of meaningful relationships, and the requisite number of crazy, newly single relationships. I had lived through and recovered from a major surgery; lost my grandfather--for so many years my ballast in this unsteady world. After all that, I had found my soul still mostly joyful and excited to start the day. The place had worked some magic on me, though no doubt plain time had something to do with it.
Which brings me to the morning of December 26. There I sat, surrounded by boxes and bags, when I heard my boyfriend's iPad bing with a new message.
Do you know how you know you're going to regret knowing something, but you ask the question anyway? I have always been the asker of those questions.
I lifted the cover of his iPad and saw the beginning of a message from Monique--my old friend Monique from Facebook. I knew my boyfriend's password because he'd given it to me to watch a movie over the summer. [And let me offer some advice to you here, readers: Always play the luddite. Pretend to not have a mind that can remember passwords or understand how to delete a browsing history. Adapting a persona of technical ignorance can be an enormous advantage when you least expect it.]
I entered his password. And witnessed months of flirtatious, endearing emails between Monique and my boyfriend. The last one he had sent was in mid-October: "Miss our conversations. Miss you terribly, as always. Love,..."
This new email from Monique, the one I'd heard come in on the iPad, started, "It's been awhile and I haven't heard from you..."
I thought it would be a good idea for me to reply to Monique. Who, I should mention, is married with two children; pregnant with a third. I did. I like to think of what feelings might have flooded her as she read my message. Whatever my imaginings, I hope the reality was much, much worse.
I also thought it would be a good idea to copy the words from my boyfriend's email to Monique--the email from May, the one that started those months of argument; the one that started, "That girl I'm dating is SO jealous of you..." I copied those words into a text message, and sent them to my boyfriend as he directed the movers handling his furniture and other belongings. I wondered if he'd remember them.
He did.
Anyone who has ever lived through a scene like this knows the stages that follow. First, his outrage at my reading his email. Then the confession. Then the apologies.
These apologies are their own sort of rollercoaster of emotions. They're not the pure mea culpas one might expect. There's quite a bit of anger at having been outed woven in with the apology. This has surprised me. But lately everything is surprising me, so take this with a grain of salt.
There are more details, but the details seem to matter less every day.
Here is what I know.
I let him move into my apartment after all. The timing had all the makings of a tragicomedy.
Most of the time I believe what he says: That this romantic flirtation was a last vestige of his single-man status, and a vestige that he allowed to linger for too long. "If you could see inside my head," he keeps saying, "You would see how ridiculous and meaningless it was." They had never dated--never actually even held hands. They had met at the home of a mutual friend, years before. Monique lives on the other side of the country. They are perfect for each other, actually--perfect illusions, untarnished and untarnish-able.
I know that if he could see inside my head, he would see how much has been lost.
I've synched up all of the dates of his email exchange with Monique--the ones that he saved, just since this past May--with dates in our relationship. The last email he sent, in mid-October, he sent a day after I'd taken a picture of him at lunch at one of my favorite downtown cafes. I loved that picture--he looked so boyish in it, so carefree. After the summer we'd had, it had felt triumphant to see him looking back at me through a lens like this.
I don't like looking at this picture anymore.
I looked forward to my boyfriend moving in to my apartment with real excitement. This, I had told myself--and really believed--this was a good man. My marriage had split apart under the strain of truths half-told. But this man, I'd believed--this man was a different creature altogether.
This part is actually true.
Just not in the way I thought.
I don't know what happens now.
There are moments when I think, Just believe him; accept that he was an idiot, and move on.
There are moments when I think, Why?
Why?
Thursday, May 19, 2011
The Tree
Last night when I got home from work there was an innocent-enough looking envelope in my mailbox from Bombardi, The Tree Experts. I had contracted Mr. Bombardi a few weeks ago to cut down a tree in the back yard of the beach house where I spend my summer weekends, and the bill's arrival meant the deed had been done. The tree--which I had identified for nine years as a dogwood but was apparently a cherry--is gone.
This tree had become an architectural challenge, but for two weeks in the spring it erupted into breathtaking pink blossoms. In the summer it shaded the back porch and kitchen from an otherwise scorching afternoon sun. To me, the house is as unimaginable without that tree as it is without the roof. Every year when I was married, every mid-month of May, I would rally our two winter-worn souls out to the house so my husband and I wouldn't miss at least one sight of its bloom.
I have a distinct memory of the morning when my former husband and I first looked at the house. The dizzy, giddy, hung-over morning after we eloped. He noted then that the tree should probably be taken down before we moved in. I insisted not. It was an October day and the leaves had just begun to turn; although I couldn't have known the glory that spring would bring, I already knew that the tree belonged with the house as much as I belonged with the man who had become my husband the night before. He let it be. So we bought the house, and the tree joined our little family.
Off and on for nine years, this man who used to be my husband would remind me, gently, lovingly, that the tree I adored should really be removed. He feared it was nudging at the foundation of the house, and the back deck surrounding it was obviously beginning to bulge from the growth of its sturdy trunk. I would adamantly shut the conversation down, or tease him out of it. He always relented.
The marriage ended, as you know. Although I loved him for a long time, through great joy and unimaginable pain, our foundation, if you'll pardon the obvious, actually had ruptured. A foreshadowing of what was to become of the tree.
As much as its blooming meant to me, last spring I didn't see it; I'd had surgery and couldn't make the trip to the beach. In truth, there were relatively few weekends last summer when I made it out to the beach house, even after I'd healed and gotten clearance to travel. Being there hurt savagely. Over the years the house had become the child my husband and I had agreed not to have: It was one thing we loved and tended together; a shared, beloved project. We were going to watch it grow old together, flourishing in our care.
This year I missed the tree's bloom, too--the last time I was at the house it was just about to erupt into blossom. Mr. Bombardi must have taken it down just at the height of its pink glory. Now, of course, I won't see it again.
It was so solid and so beautiful, I believed it would outlast both my husband and I, but keep the memory of us somehow, maybe in its intricate branches. I suppose it did outlive our marriage, just not in the way we'd thought. I'm bothered that I don't even know if I have any pictures of the tree in bloom, other than those saved in my mind's eye.
This is what I want to say.
Sometimes the things that are the most dear to us, that seem absolutely permanent, are actually built on a fault line. They are destined not to last. But this doesn't mean they weren't perfect in the lifetime they had.
Maybe the next time I go to the house, I'll see that the space where there used to be a tree lets sunlight into the house in a way I'd never imagined, and maybe I'll love the new light.
Maybe I will plant flowers in sunshine where there used to be shade, and maybe I will delight in those flowers even more than that precious, blossoming tree.
Maybe the man who was my husband will stop missing the beloved house, and our life together; maybe the next time I hear his voice it will ring with joy and hope, rather than pain and loss for what no longer is.
If these things came true, I might not miss the tree after all.
This tree had become an architectural challenge, but for two weeks in the spring it erupted into breathtaking pink blossoms. In the summer it shaded the back porch and kitchen from an otherwise scorching afternoon sun. To me, the house is as unimaginable without that tree as it is without the roof. Every year when I was married, every mid-month of May, I would rally our two winter-worn souls out to the house so my husband and I wouldn't miss at least one sight of its bloom.
I have a distinct memory of the morning when my former husband and I first looked at the house. The dizzy, giddy, hung-over morning after we eloped. He noted then that the tree should probably be taken down before we moved in. I insisted not. It was an October day and the leaves had just begun to turn; although I couldn't have known the glory that spring would bring, I already knew that the tree belonged with the house as much as I belonged with the man who had become my husband the night before. He let it be. So we bought the house, and the tree joined our little family.
Off and on for nine years, this man who used to be my husband would remind me, gently, lovingly, that the tree I adored should really be removed. He feared it was nudging at the foundation of the house, and the back deck surrounding it was obviously beginning to bulge from the growth of its sturdy trunk. I would adamantly shut the conversation down, or tease him out of it. He always relented.
The marriage ended, as you know. Although I loved him for a long time, through great joy and unimaginable pain, our foundation, if you'll pardon the obvious, actually had ruptured. A foreshadowing of what was to become of the tree.
As much as its blooming meant to me, last spring I didn't see it; I'd had surgery and couldn't make the trip to the beach. In truth, there were relatively few weekends last summer when I made it out to the beach house, even after I'd healed and gotten clearance to travel. Being there hurt savagely. Over the years the house had become the child my husband and I had agreed not to have: It was one thing we loved and tended together; a shared, beloved project. We were going to watch it grow old together, flourishing in our care.
This year I missed the tree's bloom, too--the last time I was at the house it was just about to erupt into blossom. Mr. Bombardi must have taken it down just at the height of its pink glory. Now, of course, I won't see it again.
It was so solid and so beautiful, I believed it would outlast both my husband and I, but keep the memory of us somehow, maybe in its intricate branches. I suppose it did outlive our marriage, just not in the way we'd thought. I'm bothered that I don't even know if I have any pictures of the tree in bloom, other than those saved in my mind's eye.
This is what I want to say.
Sometimes the things that are the most dear to us, that seem absolutely permanent, are actually built on a fault line. They are destined not to last. But this doesn't mean they weren't perfect in the lifetime they had.
Maybe the next time I go to the house, I'll see that the space where there used to be a tree lets sunlight into the house in a way I'd never imagined, and maybe I'll love the new light.
Maybe I will plant flowers in sunshine where there used to be shade, and maybe I will delight in those flowers even more than that precious, blossoming tree.
Maybe the man who was my husband will stop missing the beloved house, and our life together; maybe the next time I hear his voice it will ring with joy and hope, rather than pain and loss for what no longer is.
If these things came true, I might not miss the tree after all.
Monday, April 11, 2011
We Do Things Differently Here
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
L.P. Hartley
I threw a party recently. A Saturday night, an apartment filled with friends, a new man to introduce to these people—my chosen family. This was going to be fun.
In the life I had before my old life, before I was married, I gave parties often. Loud and smoky and crowded, the kind where you call your friends the next day to laugh and cobble together the pieces of what had happened the night before based on each person’s fragmented memory.
When my former husband and I first moved in together, we had one party. I remember that we had just redecorated our apartment, and it felt like the right time to celebrate our new lives. Even with a pale beige carpet, it seemed like a party was in order.
It wasn’t the same. Maybe we were awkward together in our new togetherness; maybe I was afraid of red wine and the carpet. But something, for some reason, didn’t click. It was one of those parties that feels like it never reaches critical mass—every time one group came, another group left. I remember one of my friends commenting on the new decor, “It looks like grown-ups live here. Where do they let you stay?” She was right. It didn’t feel like I belonged there, completely.
I remember what I wore. I remember a lot of the music I played. And as always, I remember worrying about the man I was now living with, who would eventually become my husband. I worried that he would be angry at me for worrying. Or angry at me for not paying enough attention to him. Or angry at me for paying too much attention to him.
I’m not exactly a wallflower, and I certainly would not have been able to articulate it at the time—or for many of the years that followed—but I worried constantly about this man’s anger. Like snails on the beach at high tide, sometimes you can’t see them, but you know they’re there. Step into the water and you’ll feel them.
So, anyway, I threw a party on a recent Saturday night. Originally, the plan was that my new man was going to come on Friday night; we would take care of all of the party miscellany on Saturday morning, and have the afternoon to relax and get ready.
I was determined not to be my old, anxious self this go-around. Those days were over. It was just friends coming for drinks, after all. I was going to relax and enjoy it. I was going to take care of the big chores before Saturday, and together my man and I would pull it together on Saturday morning. We would even have time to nap before guests arrived! Naps, friends, parties: Life as it should be.
As the week wore on, though, it seemed less and less likely that he would be able to make it to my house on Friday night; all hell was breaking loose at his job. Saturday, early, we decided. It would be plenty of time. It would be fine.
Saturday morning came and went without a word from him. I was hesitant to call—the man was exhausted, who knew how late he would sleep until? And there wasn’t that much to do. On the other hand, thirty of my nearest and dearest would be descending on my apartment in a matter of hours, and I needed help.
Finally, I heard from him. We exchanged messages. It was 1pm.
He was coming at 4.
As in, 4pm. Only a couple of hours before I had to get in the shower to get ready for my guests.
I started to become anxious. And angry.
This, finally, was familiar territory. Unfamiliar to me with this man, but familiar territory nevertheless. I was surprised, and disappointed, and hurt--this man does what he says he’s going to do. Like my grandfather, he seems to have mastered the art of simply showing up.
But he wasn’t showing up, this time. Not like he’d said he would.
I know how this rolls. I know how to keep anger and frustration at a low simmer—just low enough that it doesn’t ruin your night, but you never really stop feeling it, either. That old, familiar feeling. You put it away, but you know it’s there. Snails at the beach.
By the time he came, there wasn’t time to fight—not really. He saw that I was frustrated, he had good reasons for his delayed arrival, he kept assuring me that everything would be fine. It was only errands for a party, after all. And of course, everything was fine.
It’s just that I wasn’t hoping for fine. I was hoping for something completely different than what I had known for the past twelve years.
The evening came and went. My first party after my divorce was once again a loud, crowded, what exactly happened last night? event. This man was wonderful—fun, funny, hanging out with my friends, helping me recycle empty bottles at 3am, mopping my floor the next day as we stepped over smashed crackers and stray nuts.
All’s well that ends well, I told myself. It was a great party. So what if I was angry? It worked out. And while I had let the edges of my anger show, I had never really unfurled the full cloth of it. We had hit a glitch. Happens to everyone.
A few nights later, as we sat together in my apartment, he said something that caught me off guard.
I picture your anger, he said, as a balloon. He held his hands out, round, in the shape of an inflated balloon. If this is the shape of your emotions and how you express yourself normally, he said, when you’re angry—here he pulled his hands apart, expanding the size of this imaginary balloon—you allow yourself a different set of rules. You say things and do things you would never allow yourself if you weren’t angry.
I thought about it. I agreed.
I thought, Doesn’t everyone?
That question hung around me for days. Doesn’t everyone? It was impossible not to think of my former husband. I pictured the balloon of his emotions—always swollen with anger, sometimes stretched so full that it exploded on everything and everyone around it. That tension had kept me a little worried, a little off-center, every minute for twelve years.
I thought about my mother and my sister, too. Their balloons were the same. No: They were a bit worse. A bit more frightening. With my ex-husband, there was the occasional chance that I, my feelings, my heart, could temporarily be more important than his anger. At these rare times, the tension tugging at the sides of the flimsy emotional rubber would ease. With my family, though, those times never came. The man I married would never have called me a shocking, ugly name. My mother does, to this day. Only when she’s angry. But she’s always angry.
I kept coming back to the question: Doesn’t everyone do this? Doesn’t everyone allow themselves an expanded set of do’s and don’ts in those moments when they are really, really angry? Like, steam-coming-out-of-your-ears angry?
Here’s what:
No.
They don’t.
This man, he eased into my life like a rain shower on a hot day, and he doesn’t do this. I can no more imagine him raging at me—overtly or covertly—than I can imagine him pushing an old lady off a sidewalk. Or quitting his job to join the Cirque du Soleil. As in: Not. Happening. Ever.
In the beginning, the very beginning of what is becoming us, I believed that he was too uncomfortable with his own anger to express it. He doesn’t care for messiness in any form, and angry falls into this emotional category. I suspected that, like my former husband, he would eventually emerge from Best Behavior, and I would see exactly how far the sides of his balloon could stretch.
I am rethinking this, however. I have seen glimpses of his balloon by now. It seems to be the same size when he’s angry as when he’s not.
It’s not that he doesn’t experience anger. It’s that this particular emotion doesn’t change the substance of who he is.
So I’ve started to think of it this way.
It’s like we grew up in different countries, he and I. Where he grew up, anger was an emotion like any other. It didn’t get extra credit or special exemptions. When someone was angry at you, maybe it felt like they still loved you. I suspect that his parents, in anger, never told him terrible things about himself.
Maybe where he grew up, such a thing simply wasn’t part of the culture. Like the Japanese not wearing shoes indoors. Maybe no one had to explicitly tell you the rules; it just wasn’t done. You watched and you learned.
I grew up somewhere different. We spoke a different language. In the place where I grew up, when your mother told you that she wished you had been an abortion, you didn’t cry. You just let your balloon get bigger. The next time she said it, or something worse, you were better prepared. Your balloon had stretched to include words and thoughts you needed to protect yourself from the people whose job it was to take care of you.
It’s never easy, acclimating to a new culture. You fumble and get things wrong; you start again. But toddlers eventually learn to walk, I tell myself. I’m never going to be able to do this! isn’t even a thought in their minds. They just keep at it, and one day they’re upright.
So.
I’m living in a new culture, now. There’s very little chance that I will never master this. Only the very good chance that I will fail, and fail, and fail again. And eventually, bit by bit, the chance that someday I will get the hang of it. This new culture.
Because the past is a foreign country. We do things differently, here.
L.P. Hartley
I threw a party recently. A Saturday night, an apartment filled with friends, a new man to introduce to these people—my chosen family. This was going to be fun.
In the life I had before my old life, before I was married, I gave parties often. Loud and smoky and crowded, the kind where you call your friends the next day to laugh and cobble together the pieces of what had happened the night before based on each person’s fragmented memory.
When my former husband and I first moved in together, we had one party. I remember that we had just redecorated our apartment, and it felt like the right time to celebrate our new lives. Even with a pale beige carpet, it seemed like a party was in order.
It wasn’t the same. Maybe we were awkward together in our new togetherness; maybe I was afraid of red wine and the carpet. But something, for some reason, didn’t click. It was one of those parties that feels like it never reaches critical mass—every time one group came, another group left. I remember one of my friends commenting on the new decor, “It looks like grown-ups live here. Where do they let you stay?” She was right. It didn’t feel like I belonged there, completely.
I remember what I wore. I remember a lot of the music I played. And as always, I remember worrying about the man I was now living with, who would eventually become my husband. I worried that he would be angry at me for worrying. Or angry at me for not paying enough attention to him. Or angry at me for paying too much attention to him.
I’m not exactly a wallflower, and I certainly would not have been able to articulate it at the time—or for many of the years that followed—but I worried constantly about this man’s anger. Like snails on the beach at high tide, sometimes you can’t see them, but you know they’re there. Step into the water and you’ll feel them.
So, anyway, I threw a party on a recent Saturday night. Originally, the plan was that my new man was going to come on Friday night; we would take care of all of the party miscellany on Saturday morning, and have the afternoon to relax and get ready.
I was determined not to be my old, anxious self this go-around. Those days were over. It was just friends coming for drinks, after all. I was going to relax and enjoy it. I was going to take care of the big chores before Saturday, and together my man and I would pull it together on Saturday morning. We would even have time to nap before guests arrived! Naps, friends, parties: Life as it should be.
As the week wore on, though, it seemed less and less likely that he would be able to make it to my house on Friday night; all hell was breaking loose at his job. Saturday, early, we decided. It would be plenty of time. It would be fine.
Saturday morning came and went without a word from him. I was hesitant to call—the man was exhausted, who knew how late he would sleep until? And there wasn’t that much to do. On the other hand, thirty of my nearest and dearest would be descending on my apartment in a matter of hours, and I needed help.
Finally, I heard from him. We exchanged messages. It was 1pm.
He was coming at 4.
As in, 4pm. Only a couple of hours before I had to get in the shower to get ready for my guests.
I started to become anxious. And angry.
This, finally, was familiar territory. Unfamiliar to me with this man, but familiar territory nevertheless. I was surprised, and disappointed, and hurt--this man does what he says he’s going to do. Like my grandfather, he seems to have mastered the art of simply showing up.
But he wasn’t showing up, this time. Not like he’d said he would.
I know how this rolls. I know how to keep anger and frustration at a low simmer—just low enough that it doesn’t ruin your night, but you never really stop feeling it, either. That old, familiar feeling. You put it away, but you know it’s there. Snails at the beach.
By the time he came, there wasn’t time to fight—not really. He saw that I was frustrated, he had good reasons for his delayed arrival, he kept assuring me that everything would be fine. It was only errands for a party, after all. And of course, everything was fine.
It’s just that I wasn’t hoping for fine. I was hoping for something completely different than what I had known for the past twelve years.
The evening came and went. My first party after my divorce was once again a loud, crowded, what exactly happened last night? event. This man was wonderful—fun, funny, hanging out with my friends, helping me recycle empty bottles at 3am, mopping my floor the next day as we stepped over smashed crackers and stray nuts.
All’s well that ends well, I told myself. It was a great party. So what if I was angry? It worked out. And while I had let the edges of my anger show, I had never really unfurled the full cloth of it. We had hit a glitch. Happens to everyone.
A few nights later, as we sat together in my apartment, he said something that caught me off guard.
I picture your anger, he said, as a balloon. He held his hands out, round, in the shape of an inflated balloon. If this is the shape of your emotions and how you express yourself normally, he said, when you’re angry—here he pulled his hands apart, expanding the size of this imaginary balloon—you allow yourself a different set of rules. You say things and do things you would never allow yourself if you weren’t angry.
I thought about it. I agreed.
I thought, Doesn’t everyone?
That question hung around me for days. Doesn’t everyone? It was impossible not to think of my former husband. I pictured the balloon of his emotions—always swollen with anger, sometimes stretched so full that it exploded on everything and everyone around it. That tension had kept me a little worried, a little off-center, every minute for twelve years.
I thought about my mother and my sister, too. Their balloons were the same. No: They were a bit worse. A bit more frightening. With my ex-husband, there was the occasional chance that I, my feelings, my heart, could temporarily be more important than his anger. At these rare times, the tension tugging at the sides of the flimsy emotional rubber would ease. With my family, though, those times never came. The man I married would never have called me a shocking, ugly name. My mother does, to this day. Only when she’s angry. But she’s always angry.
I kept coming back to the question: Doesn’t everyone do this? Doesn’t everyone allow themselves an expanded set of do’s and don’ts in those moments when they are really, really angry? Like, steam-coming-out-of-your-ears angry?
Here’s what:
No.
They don’t.
This man, he eased into my life like a rain shower on a hot day, and he doesn’t do this. I can no more imagine him raging at me—overtly or covertly—than I can imagine him pushing an old lady off a sidewalk. Or quitting his job to join the Cirque du Soleil. As in: Not. Happening. Ever.
In the beginning, the very beginning of what is becoming us, I believed that he was too uncomfortable with his own anger to express it. He doesn’t care for messiness in any form, and angry falls into this emotional category. I suspected that, like my former husband, he would eventually emerge from Best Behavior, and I would see exactly how far the sides of his balloon could stretch.
I am rethinking this, however. I have seen glimpses of his balloon by now. It seems to be the same size when he’s angry as when he’s not.
It’s not that he doesn’t experience anger. It’s that this particular emotion doesn’t change the substance of who he is.
So I’ve started to think of it this way.
It’s like we grew up in different countries, he and I. Where he grew up, anger was an emotion like any other. It didn’t get extra credit or special exemptions. When someone was angry at you, maybe it felt like they still loved you. I suspect that his parents, in anger, never told him terrible things about himself.
Maybe where he grew up, such a thing simply wasn’t part of the culture. Like the Japanese not wearing shoes indoors. Maybe no one had to explicitly tell you the rules; it just wasn’t done. You watched and you learned.
I grew up somewhere different. We spoke a different language. In the place where I grew up, when your mother told you that she wished you had been an abortion, you didn’t cry. You just let your balloon get bigger. The next time she said it, or something worse, you were better prepared. Your balloon had stretched to include words and thoughts you needed to protect yourself from the people whose job it was to take care of you.
It’s never easy, acclimating to a new culture. You fumble and get things wrong; you start again. But toddlers eventually learn to walk, I tell myself. I’m never going to be able to do this! isn’t even a thought in their minds. They just keep at it, and one day they’re upright.
So.
I’m living in a new culture, now. There’s very little chance that I will never master this. Only the very good chance that I will fail, and fail, and fail again. And eventually, bit by bit, the chance that someday I will get the hang of it. This new culture.
Because the past is a foreign country. We do things differently, here.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
We Run Toward What Is Familiar
I was thinking that today while I was thinking about the man I'm falling in love with, and thinking how uncomfortable it can be that he is so different.
We run toward what is familiar.
And this man in so many ways is not familiar.
Familar, for me, tends to mean a little bit mean and a lot but what about me.
It doesn't necessarily mean kind or interested or engaged. And this man I'm loving is all of those things.
I think that when many of us run toward what is familiar, we are running towards what our souls feel calmed by the repetition of. Sadly, we often repeat what we've known even if it scared us, or tarnished our memories of ourselves or changed the stories we tell about how our lives happened.
I fell in love with this man about a week before I met him. He writes a blog and I read it, and fell in love. Hoped against hope that he wouldn't be horribly geeky and skinny and weird. Made an online date. And he wasn't geeky or skinny or weird; he was beautiful and tatooed and sexy. And he fell in love with me.
And it happened just like that.
Here is maybe the only meaningful thing I can really say about running towards what is familiar: It certainly feels weird to run towards what is utterly different. It is unsteadying to be held by a man who can hold all of you, and who wants to. It's fine to sit leg-to-leg with him on your living room bench, contemplating what the future might hold in a way that only two independent forty-somethings can. And it feels crazy when his face makes your heart leap like a nineteen-year old's.
Here's a really crazy thing: He gave me until the end of the year to move in with him. Or not.
He's not kidding. He says that if we don't know by January that we want to live together, we never will. And that that's not what he wants.
Who is this man?
Back to what I said:
Running towards the unfamiliar can be like plunging into icy water--you simply brace yourself and move in. You can't expect what's coming; your senses don't know how.
But once you're in. Oh...so warm.
We run toward what is familiar.
And this man in so many ways is not familiar.
Familar, for me, tends to mean a little bit mean and a lot but what about me.
It doesn't necessarily mean kind or interested or engaged. And this man I'm loving is all of those things.
I think that when many of us run toward what is familiar, we are running towards what our souls feel calmed by the repetition of. Sadly, we often repeat what we've known even if it scared us, or tarnished our memories of ourselves or changed the stories we tell about how our lives happened.
I fell in love with this man about a week before I met him. He writes a blog and I read it, and fell in love. Hoped against hope that he wouldn't be horribly geeky and skinny and weird. Made an online date. And he wasn't geeky or skinny or weird; he was beautiful and tatooed and sexy. And he fell in love with me.
And it happened just like that.
Here is maybe the only meaningful thing I can really say about running towards what is familiar: It certainly feels weird to run towards what is utterly different. It is unsteadying to be held by a man who can hold all of you, and who wants to. It's fine to sit leg-to-leg with him on your living room bench, contemplating what the future might hold in a way that only two independent forty-somethings can. And it feels crazy when his face makes your heart leap like a nineteen-year old's.
Here's a really crazy thing: He gave me until the end of the year to move in with him. Or not.
He's not kidding. He says that if we don't know by January that we want to live together, we never will. And that that's not what he wants.
Who is this man?
Back to what I said:
Running towards the unfamiliar can be like plunging into icy water--you simply brace yourself and move in. You can't expect what's coming; your senses don't know how.
But once you're in. Oh...so warm.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
One Year Ago This Night
A year ago tonight I lived in the place that was my home for the last time.
It was exactly one year ago--the Tuesday before New Year's Eve--when my then-husband walked in what had been my front door for 17 years, and asked the un-askable.
He asked, Are we over?
Not exactly in those words, but that's what he meant.
First, my mind started racing. How do I answer this? Is there any answer that will stop the world from collapsing?
Then, Maybe it's time for the world to collapse.
It turned out to be exactly that.
Later, when I could think, I thought: When he walked in, it was still my front door. By the time I walked out, it no longer was.
It took me less than an hour to pack what I needed, I remember. But we both kept stopping to cry, so it took much longer. I couldn't find anything that my pillow would fit into, so I ended up hailing a cab on the corner of Second Avenue, sobbing, clutching my pillow under my arm like a third grader leaving summer camp with a bad case of homesickness.
Really the homesickness had set in before I even made it to the corner.
The taxi sailed through the darkness to the apartment I was subletting. I let myself in and realized that even that entryway had changed. This wasn't my front door, either. Up until that evening it had been my great escape--the place I could go to figure out what was going to happen next, what I was going to be capable of. Now there was a clock ticking. My home was no longer my home, and this sublet was a home with an imminent expiration date.
It felt like I had gone from having so many things that felt like mine, to having almost none.
Except the pillow, of course.
A year ago this night I was not sure I would physically survive the pain of it. Ironically I was actually in quite a bit of physical pain, in fact surgery was imminent, though I didn't know it at the time. That pain had become the back-seat driver that kept me company every minute of my life--I wasn't conscious of its maneuverings, only its chronic annoyance.
It was the hollowed-out throbbing in my stomach and my throat that I feared had become a permanent fixture--that was the pain I didn't think I could survive.
The truth is that it has lasted much longer, and hurt much more, than I would have wanted to know on that night a year ago.
I can still call it back in its full force. Sometimes I want nothing more than to swim in it, this pain. I know there's no escape, so I might as well soak. And I do. It can be intoxicating. These are the times I reach for it voluntarily.
Another way to call it back is to become entangled with the wrong men--wrong meaning men who will not be careful with me, men who are not good for me. It's not that I have a particular skill for this, I've come to realize. It's that, when you have the sharp memory of losing your front door and hailing a taxi on Second Avenue with your pillow under your arm, you forget that you need more than someone who will weigh you down, prevent you from floating away.
You do need something to weigh you down when you've lost every anchor that once kept your soul tethered to the earth.
This is not the only thing you need, however.
And a man who will weigh you down may not weigh you down with love. He might weigh you down with meanness, or with the fear of his own smallness--and so many other things. None of this is good.
But the pillow, the front door, seventeen years...you don't, you can't see this.
You can't see that it's OK to be flying wildly about the universe with nothing holding you down. You can't see that it will hurt, and it's OK that it will hurt. You will bump into people and grab onto them and lose hold, and this will hurt. I remember reading first-hand accounts of the tsunami in Indonesia and when all of this came about last year, thinking: Yes. Exactly. You try to grab hold, you're holding on with all of your strength, but your strength has never met anything like this.
All of this started a year ago tonight.
The people who love me tell me that I should be proud of how much I've done, how much I've lived and how much I've survived; that I've loved and lost and loved and lost again. And again, even.
I don't think I will be proud until I've mastered it, however. It's like dance: The learning is challenging, engrossing, it can be grueling. But until your body understands the choreography without your brain interfering, there is no real, lasting beauty. You haven't really earned the right to learn the next series of steps.
So that is the way I will look at my memory of that night, I believe--of the whole year that followed up until right now, actually. It was just the beginning of cutting away from the anchors that kept me safely tied to my old life.
I haven't got this mastered. But I'm getting pretty good at the steps.
It was exactly one year ago--the Tuesday before New Year's Eve--when my then-husband walked in what had been my front door for 17 years, and asked the un-askable.
He asked, Are we over?
Not exactly in those words, but that's what he meant.
First, my mind started racing. How do I answer this? Is there any answer that will stop the world from collapsing?
Then, Maybe it's time for the world to collapse.
It turned out to be exactly that.
Later, when I could think, I thought: When he walked in, it was still my front door. By the time I walked out, it no longer was.
It took me less than an hour to pack what I needed, I remember. But we both kept stopping to cry, so it took much longer. I couldn't find anything that my pillow would fit into, so I ended up hailing a cab on the corner of Second Avenue, sobbing, clutching my pillow under my arm like a third grader leaving summer camp with a bad case of homesickness.
Really the homesickness had set in before I even made it to the corner.
The taxi sailed through the darkness to the apartment I was subletting. I let myself in and realized that even that entryway had changed. This wasn't my front door, either. Up until that evening it had been my great escape--the place I could go to figure out what was going to happen next, what I was going to be capable of. Now there was a clock ticking. My home was no longer my home, and this sublet was a home with an imminent expiration date.
It felt like I had gone from having so many things that felt like mine, to having almost none.
Except the pillow, of course.
A year ago this night I was not sure I would physically survive the pain of it. Ironically I was actually in quite a bit of physical pain, in fact surgery was imminent, though I didn't know it at the time. That pain had become the back-seat driver that kept me company every minute of my life--I wasn't conscious of its maneuverings, only its chronic annoyance.
It was the hollowed-out throbbing in my stomach and my throat that I feared had become a permanent fixture--that was the pain I didn't think I could survive.
The truth is that it has lasted much longer, and hurt much more, than I would have wanted to know on that night a year ago.
I can still call it back in its full force. Sometimes I want nothing more than to swim in it, this pain. I know there's no escape, so I might as well soak. And I do. It can be intoxicating. These are the times I reach for it voluntarily.
Another way to call it back is to become entangled with the wrong men--wrong meaning men who will not be careful with me, men who are not good for me. It's not that I have a particular skill for this, I've come to realize. It's that, when you have the sharp memory of losing your front door and hailing a taxi on Second Avenue with your pillow under your arm, you forget that you need more than someone who will weigh you down, prevent you from floating away.
You do need something to weigh you down when you've lost every anchor that once kept your soul tethered to the earth.
This is not the only thing you need, however.
And a man who will weigh you down may not weigh you down with love. He might weigh you down with meanness, or with the fear of his own smallness--and so many other things. None of this is good.
But the pillow, the front door, seventeen years...you don't, you can't see this.
You can't see that it's OK to be flying wildly about the universe with nothing holding you down. You can't see that it will hurt, and it's OK that it will hurt. You will bump into people and grab onto them and lose hold, and this will hurt. I remember reading first-hand accounts of the tsunami in Indonesia and when all of this came about last year, thinking: Yes. Exactly. You try to grab hold, you're holding on with all of your strength, but your strength has never met anything like this.
All of this started a year ago tonight.
The people who love me tell me that I should be proud of how much I've done, how much I've lived and how much I've survived; that I've loved and lost and loved and lost again. And again, even.
I don't think I will be proud until I've mastered it, however. It's like dance: The learning is challenging, engrossing, it can be grueling. But until your body understands the choreography without your brain interfering, there is no real, lasting beauty. You haven't really earned the right to learn the next series of steps.
So that is the way I will look at my memory of that night, I believe--of the whole year that followed up until right now, actually. It was just the beginning of cutting away from the anchors that kept me safely tied to my old life.
I haven't got this mastered. But I'm getting pretty good at the steps.
Friday, December 17, 2010
All of Our Hearts Are Broken
We all wish it had happened differently.
Every one of us can imagine a better ending.
It seems like it could have gone so many different ways, other ways than that.
But if it hadn't happened like that, who would we be now?
Would we be shaped differently?
I wonder about it in so many different ways, and always come back to the same thing: All of our hearts are already broken. We are going about it all with wounds that no one else can see.
So if all of our hearts are already broken, maybe that's why we're here.
To mend the broken places that only we can see.
?
Every one of us can imagine a better ending.
It seems like it could have gone so many different ways, other ways than that.
But if it hadn't happened like that, who would we be now?
Would we be shaped differently?
I wonder about it in so many different ways, and always come back to the same thing: All of our hearts are already broken. We are going about it all with wounds that no one else can see.
So if all of our hearts are already broken, maybe that's why we're here.
To mend the broken places that only we can see.
?
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