rock and a hard place

1. Can’t sell the house because it’s worth more than we have in it.

2. Can’t renegotiate the loan because the mortgage company says I make too much money. (???!##$$@!)

3. Qualify for Federal “low-income” status but can’t get food stamps because I thoughtfully put money in a 401K way back when.

4. Need to work but everything I’m finding would just about come even with the expenses of childcare.

5. Want to kiss someone but can’t fathom who … or manage to meet anyone. 

Wanting sun but standing in the rain today.

 

Hoping one of these boulders moves soon.

counting the days

Alex gets home in four days. It also happens to be my dad’s birthday and the anniversary of a dear friend’s death. So it’s loaded all around. The kids are ecstatic. Especially Bea. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t care if he never came back, which is a weird thing to say about someone with whom I spent sixteen years. Just seems wrong to feel that way. … But back he’ll be. Living a block away in a dingy duplex that he’s renting. Taking the kids places. Maybe doing his date-a-thon routine again, maybe not. I’m trying to figure out what I can control about the situation, e.g., when he can come over to our house and when he can’t; how often he’ll see the kids, etc. What I want and need to control. The kid-time thing is soooo tough because after seven months apart, they want nothing more than to see him. I could use the break and have a mile-long list of things to do with a bit of free time. And yet, the three of us are a little unit at this point, and I’m not overly thrilled with him breaking that up.

Wait and see. Four days. We’ll see…

down on the men

After staring for too long at a man at the playground as our kids ran thither and  yon, seeing no ring on his hand, and exchanging one pithy line (”Does your daughter go to Longfellow?”  ”Yes, 4th grade.”), I came home and looked him up in the school directory. Married. At least, as of last August he was sharing a residency with a woman of the same last name. But he was staring – I swear. I’m dense about such things, so if I notice, I figure someone is truly staring. 

“God,” I blurted to a friend on the phone an hour later – being sure to shut myself in the upstairs bathroom out of my kids’ earshot, “I just want someone to fuck me!”

She laughed. In a similar situation, she agreed. But, she said, you need to find someone who is going to be nice to your head and your heart, too. I harrumphed: “Well, that’s not going to happen because there aren’t any men out there who can do that!”

“You’ll probably have to work through that belief until you can find someone,” she sagely proffered.

I don’t LIKE being down on men. In fact, I find it exhausting. And I cherish the good moments with men that I share and observe – my neighbor who has selflessly  helped me re-do my kitchen;  my self-effacing, kind boss. But, still, I find quotes like this one from a sociologist on why the rate of single mothers in the U.S. is sharply rising to be a learned confirmation of my worst fears:

“While this news is not surprising, it is sad. Kids lose out on fathers. Women lose out on husbands. And men lose out on the one institution — other than the military — that can pull them out of their extended adolescence. All of it reveals how little our communities actually expect from us anymore.”

Communities of women still expect a lot from each other. I find the bar that is set among my female friends to be admirably high. And kids, of course, expect the world of us. But men? Not so much. And I think the sociologist hit the nail on the head when he used the phase “extended adolescence.” That’s very much what Alex’s African boondoggle strikes me as.

In one of the many repetitive conversations we had before he left  -  me not believing he was going, him not really understanding what all my fuss was about – he said, “You can go somewhere when I get back. I’d be happy if you’d go somewhere for a few months. That would be great.”

I could have kicked him. I DON’T WANT TO GO ANYWHERE! I shouted more than once.

Sure you do, he’d say, and then he’d proceed to name places where I could go that I would surely love. He was right about the places. What he didn’t get – never on a gut  level – was that I cannot and will not leave my kids for that long.  Parenting isn’t something  you do as the spirit moves you:  This week Provence, next week the second grace teacher-parent conference. It’s a day by day, hour by  hour commitment. Because I will not leave my kids, much as a month in Paris sounds inviting, he has had the luxury to do as he pleases. I envy his freedom, but I don’t really want it. What I want is a partner who does his job. Oh, and a decent fuck.

“I need’a man!” she hollered from the gloaming…

That’s how the short story of my evening would begin – with that line hollered, no yodeled in desperation through the quiet of an Iowa evening.

But let me begin before it got so desperate. I’m at a BBQ with my kids and seven other families. Seven other intact families. (This is not entirely different from the notion of the intact hymen – pure, unbroken.)  I’m proudly sporting my new tattoo, flaking skin and all (purdy, I know), and not caring one wit that I’m the only one drinking the sangrias I brought. This is a squeaky clean crowd, but nice, and I’m generally feel pretty ok with myself.  I’d already tested the single-chick-at-the-family-event waters this morning, after all. My neighbors had a party for their 2-year old’s birthday. Pinatta. Juice boxes. Sagging diapers. Baby slings sported by both mothers and fathers. And every which way I looked, cute little intact families. And me: that spunky lady from next next door. (This is who I’ll play in the After-School Special:  That Spunky Lady Next Door.)

But that was then. This is now. I’m sitting in a lawn chair, sipping my third sangria, and thinking, “Maybe I’ll blow this popsicle stand for something really exciting. Something sweaty and au natural.”  I pull the hostess aside:  ”Mind if  I leave Bea and Thomas here while I go mow my lawn?”  

I’m having a party myself tomorrow – a party that was “inspired” by my mother’s complaint of how lonely she’ll be on the 4th …  Since my dad died, holidays make her weepy. Despite the fact, that my friends could care less, I know that she’d be  horrified if my lawn was all scraggly ass for the occasion. Given that my yard is already full of stuff that is weird or unkempt or just plain wrong — Exhibit A being the giant treehouse that Alex built and which my mother assures me is not up to city code — I think a little mowing might help to mellow her. Being a good daughter really blows sometimes.

I schlep the mower out of the garage, knocking over two bikes and a sled in the process. Start ‘er up. Round and round we go. And then she dies. I fill her with gas. Round twice. Then fizzle. I’ve been wondering about the oil. I don’t really get the whole oil thing, but I vaguely recall that there’s an unopened can in the laundry room, of all places, so I seek it out. I’m also aware of the sound of laughing and talking coming from the screened porch of one of my more capable lesbian neighbors. No doubt, she and a friend are watching me struggle and thinking, “Why doesn’t she just push the da-da-da button?” (You know, that magic button that if I were A) a man, or B) a butch lesbian I’d know about. But I’m not so I don’t.)

The oil is added. It smokes a bit as I pour it in, which seems weird, but I ignore it. She starts again. We get round less than half this time. Dead. Goddammit. Deep breath. Not a big deal. I push the mower under the treehouse and tell myself that I’ll figure it out tomorrow morning. You know – tomorrow morning when I’ll be cooking for the party, cleaning up, buying ice, clipping flowers for a bouquet, setting out napkins, walking the dog, encouraging the kids not to kill each other but, rather, to help me out. Really I’ll figure it out then. 

I’ll spare you the rest of the evening — the brass corn cob (if you live in Iowa, you have such things) that fell directly on the boniest part of my ankle. The scream I unveiled at Bea when she didn’t heed my repeated request to get off the top bunk while we were trying to change the sheets. Her ensuing tears. My immediate guilt.  The way the plastic Roman shade went flying off its brackets and how I couldn’t figure out how to put it back on but instead rolled it up and stuck it in the closet, thinking, “I’ll deal with it later.” Or how just as I stubbed my toe on the lower bunk, Thomas came hurtling out of the bathroom, screaming because he’d seen a moth “as big as a bat!” Oh yeah, I still haven’t bought the foam to stick under the window AC units … I’ll do it tomorrow. Or the next day. 

I’m tired. Dead tired. Sangria anyone?

Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

Firstly, I just went in and edited my last post after being told it was confusing. I re-read it. You’re right.  Now, maybe, it is better.

More importantly, however, as I continue my attempt to be your complete clearinghouse of all contemporary divorce literature with a liberal bent, I recommend an essay, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, by humorist Sandra Tsing Loh, in the current issue of The Atlantic.

Let me get you started, and then you’ll need to click over for yourself:

Sadly, and much to my horror, I am divorcing. This was a 20-year partnership. My husband is a good man, though he did travel 20 weeks a year for work. I am a 47-year-old woman whose commitment to monogamy, at the very end, came unglued. This turn of events was a surprise. I don’t generally even enjoy men; I had an entirely manageable life and planned to go to my grave taking with me, as I do most nights to my bed, a glass of merlot and a good book. Cataclysmically changed, I disclosed everything. We cried, we rent our hair, we bewailed the fate of our children. And yet at the end of the day—literally during a five o’clock counseling appointment, as the golden late-afternoon sunlight spilled over the wall of Balinese masks—when given the final choice by our longtime family therapist, who stands in as our shaman, mother, or priest, I realized … no. Heart-shattering as this moment was—a gravestone sunk down on two decades of history—I would not be able to replace the romantic memory of my fellow transgressor with the more suitable image of my husband, which is what it would take in modern-therapy terms to knit our family’s domestic construct back together. In women’s-magazine parlance, I did not have the strength to “work on” falling in love again in my marriage. And as Laura Kipnis railed in Against Love, and as everyone knows, Good relationships take work.

Which is not to say I’m against work. Indeed, what also came out that afternoon were the many tasks I—like so many other working/co-parenting/married mothers—have been doing for so many years and tearfully declared I would continue doing. I can pick up our girls from school every day; I can feed them dinner and kiss their noses and tell them stories; I can take them to their doctor and dentist appointments; I can earn my half—sometimes more—of the money; I can pay the bills; I can refinance the house at the best possible interest rate; I can drive my husband to the airport; in his absence, I can sort his mail; I can be home to let the plumber in on Thursday between nine and three, and I can wait for the cable guy; I can make dinner conversation with any family member; I can ask friendly questions about anybody’s day; I can administer hugs as needed to children, adults, dogs, cats; I can empty the litter box; I can stir wet food into dry.

Which is to say I can work at a career and child care and joint homeownership and even platonic male-female friendship. However, in this cluttered forest of my 40s, what I cannot authentically reconjure is the ancient dream of brides, even with the Oprah fluffery of weekly “date nights,” when gauzy candlelight obscures the messy house, child talk is nixed and silky lingerie donned, so the two of you can look into each other’s eyes and feel that “spark” again. Do you see? Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance. Sobered by this failure as a mother—which is to say, my failure as a wife—I’ve since begun a journey of reading, thinking, and listening to what’s going on in other 21st-century American families. And along the way, I’ve begun to wonder, what with all the abject and swallowed misery: Why do we still insist on marriage? Sure, it made sense to agrarian families before 1900, when to farm the land, one needed two spouses, grandparents, and a raft of children. But now that we have white-collar work and washing machines, and our life expectancy has shot from 47 to 77, isn’t the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?

“there is nothing wrong with that”

…that’s what my friend said to me while we drove through Minneapolis with our kids in the backseat. I’ve known D. since we were 20-years old. Now we’re both writers and in somewhat parallel situations as writers who stay at home with our kids. But his wife brings home a good paycheck and he salted a lot away during a decade in Hollywood as a screenwriter. I’m trying out the idea of moving to the Twin Cities during this trip but having a hard time figuring out just how or what would actually get me up here. Other than a leap of faith. I’ve taken a lot of those in my life, but I don’t have another in me at the moment.

“You’ll just have to find me some wonderful man, so I can move here to be with him,” I muse to D. 

“You don’t want that,” he says a bit sharply.

“How do you know?” I ask, wondering just what it is I do want.

“Don’t you just want to be alone?” D more says than asks.

“Some days yes. Some days no.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” he says. “I would love to be alone. I mean, minus the kid,” he nods to the backseat where his son is chirping about Pokemon with my son. This dark haired, big-eyed boy is clearly his favorite person in the world. As for his wife, they are in a detante. Things between them could be worse, but they could definitely be better. The two of them have begrudgingly chosen togetherness, but D, it’s apparent, dreams of solo-ness.

We whiz home because D has invited friends over for cocktails at my insistence. I’m hungry to meet new people, to feel part of an urban groove. She’s an artist who does large-scale installations and he has some lucrative writing assignments that I want to hear about. I’m imagining a slightly boozy, high-brow, funny talk.

Jack and Sal pull up in their mini-van with two kids. They’re all apologies because they only have a short window of time before they have to leave to take the boys to baseball games. The red wine goes untouched because Sal is detoxing. So much for the urban groove.  But he is worth the whole visit. He is lovely and I am smitten. I imagine her accidentally slipping off a ladder while working on an installation and me moving up to Minneapolis to be with him following an appropriate grieving process. His mouth is perfect…

My son comes into the room looking for his stuffed animal and I snap out of my reverie.

Last night, during a yoga class, I nearly touched the ankle of the man in front of me during one pose. He wasn’t an especially appealing person, I just can’t remember the last time I was that close to a naked male ankle. 

There may be nothing wrong with being alone – and certainly being around the subtle cat fight of this particular marriage is making me see its benefits – but I’d take a little togetherness of a certain ilk. There’s nothing  wrong with that.

stronger?

Well, The New York Times, at least, seems to think that marriage is stronger than ever. Not sure I agree….

“I’ll thrive.”

I find Jenny Sanford’s reaction to her husband’s Argentine fling to be so refreshing. She’s not saying it’s over. But she’s not petulantly standing by her man either. She’s kicked him out – for now – and is focusing on her kids. As for herself, she told a reporter, “I know I’m going to be fine. Not only will I survive, I’ll thrive.”  You can practically hear the opening strains of Gloria Gaynor, can’t you?

indelible

I’ve needed to mark this point in my life somehow. I wanted to remember the strength I’ve tapped into as a single mother and a woman who is realizing herself more and more each week. I never thought I’d be a tattoo person. Never. But this  just came to me. The image is inspired by Nikki McClure, who I wrote about awhile back. And the quote, though not exact, came to me while watching Obama’s inauguration and listening to Elizabeth Alexander’s poem, “Praise  Song for the Day.”  The eggs are my kids – and it has been my love for my kids that’s kept me rooted and strong through both my dad’s illness and death and my divorce. The nest is love. The nest is me. I love the image of a nest, which is made of many things to become a whole; which is seemingly weak but supports an entire family in its ingenious design; which is flexible and yet sturdy.

rings

The guy who came to put my window AC units in had one. The  man I talked to at the wedding who was standing by the wine table had one. I squinted hard at the photo of the novelist whose book I just finished but couldn’t see one. A google search told me that there’s one somewhere – maybe he keeps it in his underwear drawer. The dads at the swimming pool who toss the kids into the air all wear them. Neon signs of takenness, of belonging elsewhere. I liked high school and college better – no rings, only possibility. Now the world is a grid, a chess board with the ringed on one side and a ragtag army of the unattached on the other.

in favor of big love

Feeling decidedly un-lovely at the moment and snidely thumbing my nose at romance, I was nonetheless  taken with today’s review of “A Vindication of Love” by Cristina Nehring in the Sunday NY Times book review. Here’s a snippet from reviewer Katie Roiphe:

“Nehring sees in the grandeur of feeling a kind of heroism, even if the relationship doesn’t take conventional form or endure in the conventional way. For Nehring, one senses, true failure is to drift comfortably along in a dull relationship, to spend precious years of life in a marriage that is not exciting or satisfying, to live cautiously, responsibly. Is the strength of feeling redeemed in the blaze of passion even if it does not end happily? she asks. Is contentment too soft and modest a goal?”

being seen

I’m reading a short and gorgeously written novel called As a Friend by Forrest Gander. Came across this line last night: “Love solves nothing, but your love made me appear to myself.” That’s definitely how I heard this time last summer: SEEN. It felt so wonderful to be seen by someone else, just as it had felt wonderful several years before that to be heard by someone else. Alex never seemed to do either. I was hazily, gauzily there – a ghost presence to him. The trick is, though, how do we remain seen and heard by the world when we are solo. Just as the last comment from Shell suggests, too many of us rely on others to make us real, to help us feel necessary. When really we should be ok taking up space in this world all on our own. So on this sweltering day, I encourage everyone to be powerfully present — seen and heard — all on your own and for your own benefit.

stuck

“He supports me in an umbrella sense. You know – the house, money. …My mom says to consider it that he’s paying me to take care of the kids and the house for him. …. I can’t leave. I need Max to grow up with his [step]brothers. … but he’s never home, he doesn’t listen to me, he’s always busy. The other night I was in bed and was actually relieved he wasn’t there. … I love him dearly, but I need more.”

So spoken by a friend who has covered wars, famines, and genocides for some of the largest news organizations in the world. A woman who owns her own bullet proof vest. A woman who speaks, oh, maybe six languages, and can tell you the type of her favorite helicopter.

Which is to say, we can all get stuck.

fluid

I sat on a bench outside the library today as my kids played and read an article in a recent issue of O! Magazine, “Why Women Are Leaving Men for Other Women.”  The title is a bit misleading (what’s new from mainstream mags?), as most of the women in the piece are already separated from men before settling in with a female partner, but it was still interesting food for thought. Most of the women shared that an emotional connection with someone who is respectful, trusting, and caring is more important to them than towing the traditional line. Oh, and the sex ain’t bad either.

There’s been a fair amount of research  lately on what women want from a sexual relationship. It turns out that women are much more fluid than men in their sexuality. A potential partner’s whole person – personality, spirituality, ethics, looks, intellect… – affects a woman’s desire much more than a man’s. Thus, it’s more possible for women to, umm, flow (?)  between partners of different genders.

The Oprah article and my memory of the NYTimes article had me thinking as I sat on that bench that my options are more plentiful than they first appear. It also reminded me of something that my friend K., a married lesbian, said recently of my current state: ”It is sort of exciting that you get another chance to find someone now that you’re older and really know what you want.”

On most days, finding a partner feels more like an impossible hurdle than an opportunity, but I know what she means. In fact, last summer, I totally agreed with her and felt certain that I’d find that person. Now, after asking about several men in town, only to be answered: “married”, “gay”, or “Ewwwww! You do NOT want to go there,” I’m less certain. There was the tryst-gone-sour with the friend earlier in this spring. And more recently, a crush on a roller derby queen, who is sexy but so clearly my antithesis that it’s humorously wrong in ways that extend way beyond my four decades of heterosexuality. But truly? It’s been very very dry on my sexual/relationship horizon. I’m in the desert with no body in sight.

So what do I want? I actually know pretty clearly. Last summer, as I was leaving Alex, I wrote a lot about this – made lists and diagrams. My standards are high, but not outlandish. Part of what was so appealing about Other Guy was that he fit so many of the qualifications – if you don’t include honesty, that is.

Returning now to the list and the diagrams, I decided to speak them aloud; to see how these qualities sound when taken off the page. Just what is it I am seeking in the person with whom I’d like to join lives? What does this person sound like and feel like when described? After I spoke it, I sat in silence, realizing that there is only one person I know in my current life who comes close. And she’s a she. She also lives on a coast with a busy life and multiple suitors. The interesting thing is that none of that feels like a deal breaker to me, nor does the thought of her make go weak-kneed. When I think of her, I smile. And I feel sure about what an amazing person she is. For now, that’s plenty.

alone again, naturally

I feel lonely. It was my birthday today, so a hard day not to think back to where I was a year ago, five years, a decade… 

I am struggling with what to do in terms of work, knowing that my chosen path as a freelance writer is not enough to take care of myself and my kids, and, increasingly, feeling it’s not enough to take care of my soul either. There is so much about it that I love – the freedom, the opportunity to be curious and find answers, the chance to talk to people I’d never meet otherwise. And yet… An interview I heard last week detailing a girls’ school in Afghanistan stirred me. There is something else out there I’m meant to be doing. The not knowing adds to my loneliness.

I am trying very hard not to struggle with the lack of a partner in my life. I am trying to just be with it; to take advantage of this time to focus on my kids and the work issue. Still, it was an effort not to sulk today – and I didn’t entirely succeed – at the fact that I spent my birthday engaged almost entirely in activities that were about and for my children. It drizzled all morning. We went to “Up!” when I would rather have watched an adult film (the fact that there weren’t any showing at this particular cineplex made that a little less sad), and then had pizza for dinner when I’d rather have had a salad and some wine.

But my children – exhausting as they are – are the best gift ever. Ever. This morning before she was even truly awake, Bea opened one eye and groggily mumbled, “Happy Birthday.” Hugging me goodnight, she said, “It wasn’t much of a birthday, was it?” I winced, thinking how prescient my 8-year old can be. “Hey, I got to spend time by the water. I saw a movie. I was with the two most special people in my life. That’s a pretty fine birthday, don’t you think?” She smiled. And finally, I believed it, too.

I know that I was lonely when I was with Alex but in a different way. Sometimes being in a relationship can stave off loneliness or help you to ignore it. But when it becomes too large or looming to ignore, the shortcomings of the relationship seem that much clearer. On our last vacation together, I was so aware of the silence between us, of the ways in which I no longer recognized him, or him me. 

Walking along the beach tonight, as the kids dug holes, I declared aloud to the waves, “I’m not doing that again.” [Meaning to be lonely while in a relationship.]
“I will find a way to be okay with my solitude.”

On one hand, I really hope that I can make this so. On the other, I hope that I’ll be in a much better place when my next birthday comes around. Perhaps that’s hypocritical of me?

on the road

The kids and I are on a mini-vacation. We were supposed to spend the first two nights with my best friend and her family, but she read her calendar wrong so we’re here in their house without them. Which is a little lonely. Next up: two night at Lake Michigan. I’m finding that vacationing solo is a somewhat lonely thing, though probably not as lonely as the fake family vacation of last summer. You’re always parenting; there is no back up. No one to take the wheel when you get tired. No one to read the map. No one to hang out the playground while you go read the New York Times. And no vacation nookie either. But the kids are as thrilled as if they had nine parents – eager to see the beach. Excited by anything New – which can mean a different shaped house than they’re used to at home, or an electronic billboard. They’re easily impressed and that’s pretty sweet. Especially when you’re as tired as I am!

whisp

I am tossing out old cooking magazines and came across one from 1994, the year we were married and still living in Seattle. I could nearly smell our youth in its pages, not to mention life before arugula and chipotle and salted caramel. That’s what chokes me up the most, I’ve realized:  not the end of the marriage but a loss of a certain era, a certain age. I’ll never be 28 again. I’ll never fall in love in just that way again, with the  possibility of a house and kids still in the foreground. When we met, I believed I’d one day own a big puffy chair from Pottery Barn. I  no longer believe that. I believed that neither Alex nor I would ever hurt the other. I  no longer believe that. I thought I’d have many dogs throughout my life. Now, as I watch my 13-year old lab begin to falter, I wonder if I’ll even have another one. Not now, at any rate; I’m too tired. I’ve learned so much since 1994, but much has been lost, too. Naivete isn’t all bad.

life

I had an amazing massage yesterday, thanks to my friend Kristin. An intuitive healer, she said she felt the presence of Badger from the get-go of our massage. That made me curious, so I came home and looked up Badger medicine and found this:

Badger carries the energy of Saturn, the great taskmaster who pushes us to set goals of value and then to work like the dickens to make real! The foundation for the future is built in the present moment, through our day to day actions and activities. Both Saturn and Badger ask us what we would like to leave on planet earth once we depart from the physical realm: do we want to look back and see how we have frittered and wasted our time on sitting and waiting for something or someone to make our lives all we know they could have been or do we simply want to get on with things!

Interesting! This totally echoes the final lines of a favorite Mary Oliver poem that I’ve been turning over in recent days:  Tell me? What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I’ve been feeling this tug in me to find something else to do – beyond writing, or using writing in a new way. I’m at the beginning of the journey to discover what that is. And it’s connected, I think, to needing to finish the journey of the divorce, which technically, hasn’t even begun. No papers filed, that is. It is time to get on with things. To be awake. To not live in fear.

So today’s poem on the Garrison Keillor site spoke to me, too. We save ourselves as we need to — feigning sleep, drinking too much to numb pain that we’re unable to examine fully, even sleeping too much – as I did all winter. But when we’re ready to move on, we must wake up and be fully engaged.

Aperture
by Gary Short
From behind the screen door I watch the cat
in the bunchgrass stalking at dusk.
With the pure attention of religion,
he waits for the skitter of a field mouse,
a shiver in an owl’s dream.

The cat delivers his limp prey
to the chipped gray paint of the porch.
I step outside, not knowing
if I will punish the cat
or accept the mouse.

At the edge of the porch I kneel and see
the map of red capillaries
in the delicate mouse ear.

I lift it by the tail to toss,
but in the blink of a smug cat’s eye
I feel a tug—an escape
back into life.

In the African journals, Livingston tells
of the charging lion that knocked him down.
When he was held in the lion’s mouth,
the human body’s trance-like response
was to go limp in an ecstatic giving up
that saved. To assume death

to stay alive.

A Confederate soldier at Antietam
played dead when his battalion was overrun.
for a moment he thought he was safe,
but to make sure, the Union infantryman
drove a bayonet into each body on the ground.

When I pick up the mouse
and it jerks from terror-induced sleep,
I feel all that fear
in a small heartbeat.

My panicked fingers let go
and the mouse slips into the brush where it may be
safe for awhile. Though the cat
is all tension now and ready
to pounce again. I shut him in the house,
stand on the porch and watch the first stars
burn holes in the sky.
Dark enlarging around me,
the pupil in a cat’s eye.

waking

Yesterday was dark and heavy. Lonely – so lonely. I spent some time in bed – something I rarely afford myself during the day. But rather than feel nourished, I sobbed. But today, I woke up to a beautiful crisp and breezy morning – the world scrubbed clean. My heart feels open today, happy with what it has and open to newness, too.

I was reminded of this passage from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. When I googled it – not having the book handy – I had to  laugh because several reviewers dubbed it the single worst passage n the book. Hmmm, Master’s in English be damned; I rather liked it!

A word about masturbation, if I may. Sometimes it can be a handy (forgive me) tool, but other times it can be so acutely unsatisfying that it only makes you feel worse in the end. After a year and half of celibacy, after a year and a half of calling my own name in my bed-built-for-one, I was getting a little sick of the sport. Still, tonight, in my restless state—what else could I do? The potatoes hadn’t worked. So I had my way with myself yet again. As usual, my mind paged through its backlog of erotic files, looking for the right fantasy or memory that would get the job done fastest. But nothing was really working tonight—not the firemen, not the pirtates, not that pervy old Bill Clinton standy scene that usually does the trick, not even the Victorian gentelmen crowding around me in their drawing room with their task force of nubile young maids. In the end, the only thing that would satisfy was when I reluctantly admitted into my mind the idea of my good friend from Brazil climbing into this bed with me… on me…

           Then I slept. I woke to a quiet blue sky and an even quieter bedroom. Still feeling unsettled and unbalanced, I took a long stretch of my morning and chanted the entire 1782 Sanskrit verses of the Gurugita—the great, purifying fundamental hymn of my Ashram in India. Then I meditated for an hour of bone-tinkling stillness until I finally felt it again—that specific, constant, clear-sky, unrelated-to-anything, never-shifting, nameless and changeless perfection of my own happiness. That happiness which is better, truly, than anything I have ever experienced anywhere else on this earth, and that includes salty, buttery kisses and even saltier and more buttery potatoes.

Roy

I got an email from my grandmother yesterday that Roy is sick. My grandma lives in an apartment in Florida. The kind of place that you go into healthy but come out – well, you probably don’t come out as it’s attached to an assisted living center with a medical center. She moved there after my grandfather died – a move that was risky but has served her well. She’s made so many friends and is very happy and active. She seems to appear in nearly every advertising brochure the place has, so I take it she’s a model citizen.

A few years ago, a hurricane swept through and took off the roof, uprooted most of the trees, destroyed the pool, and made water and electricity non-existent for awhile. All of the residents moved into a Marriott up in Tampa for nearly a year during reconstruction. Whenever the hotel was pre-booked, they were sent on a cruise. Although it sounded cushy, my grandmother initially despaired of the situation. She had a roommate, which she didn’t like. And she missed her belongings. Her routine. But she also had a wonderful corner room with a view of the harbor and soon, a whole new group of friends were stopping by every night for cocktail hour at 4:00 p.m. Including Roy.

She brought Roy north to see us when my dad was dying. He was a tall  man with a perpetual smile. Sweet and gentle but no dolt. He’d been a sporting goods salesman and had covered Colorado and Utah. He was the antithesis of my grandfather, a gruff, Iowa farmer who kept to himself. My grandma was clearly smitten; “We’ll only need one set of sheets,” she told my mother with a wink. My mother was half appalled, but I thought it was great.

When my kids and I visited them this spring, the kids took to Roy immediately. He told them stories about chopping ice from the river in the winter and then selling chunks of ice from a cart all through the summer. He was full of stories like that. 

He’s over ninety-years old. It was hard for him to stand up straight when we were there in March. My grandma coaxed him on and they were still meeting at 7 am for their daily walk. “I really love him,” she beamed. After a first marriage that ended when the man – my biological grandfather, who I never met – hit her one time too many, and then a relatively affectionless marriage to my grandfather, I’m so happy she’s had these years with Roy, short though they’ve been. “You two give me hope,” I told her. She smiled, knowing what I meant. “You’ll find your Roy sooner,” she said, “I just know it.”