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Falling in love with a grown up as a grown up is a gift. It is hard. It is beautiful. It is a collage. All relationships are collages, but this is a mindful one. You set out to be a collage artist, rather than setting out to fall in love and be passionate and beautiful — a Surrealist, an Impressionist — and then waking up years later to realize what a collage — messy with glue and layers, gorgeous in places and kind of awkward in others — you’ve created. This is mindful layering. This is “You take my ugly stress-outs” and “I’ll take your car problems” and “You take my noisy, crazy kids,” and “I’ll take your large-ish family.” This is consciousness.
I asked my kids this last night as we drove home on a slick and black November evening. I’d been hoping for one of those effervescent, magical kid comments. Like an art teacher friend who asked elementary students where the light came from in a particular Goya painting. “From a window that you can’t quite see,” said some. A few of the older kids were able to talk about perspective and provide a direction from which the light emanated. But a six-year old said simply, “From God.”
Well, my six-year old said nothing quite so soulful. “When you think someone is hot,” said Thomas from the backseat. He was snuggling with his lamb blanket and looked about three in my rearview mirror, but his words belied the little boy he has become of late. We were passing the parking lot where I drop them off for two weeks every summer to go to a day camp out on a farm with animals and art. That camp, to my mind, is love.
On my way to them last night I’d seen a buck dead in the road. The traffic was all backed up. It was a windy road that ends with a traffic light and it was hard to imagine that anyone had been going fast enough to collide with the animal, much less kill it. I was stuck right next to it for several minutes, the lights from another car lighting up its face as though on a Hollywood set. Its eyes were wide open. “What is this?” it seemed to be asking, trying to understand its fate.
What is love?
I knew that at that exact moment, a dear friend was sitting in his office where he works as a therapist and explaining to a mother–a woman I imagined to be about my age–that her teenaged son has schizophrenia. I couldn’t even imagine how she must feel, what was going through her mind and heart. Instead, I focused on C. and the task ahead of him. The care I knew he was showing just now, but also the way in which his heart was surely breaking. I would have given anything to be invisibly holding his hand right then.
What is love?
“Ok, so yeah, you usually think someone is ‘hot’ when you’re in love, but you can love plenty of people and things and even ideas without thinking they’re hot. You love Django, right?” I ask my kids, “but probably not Syrup,” the neighbor’s cat. My kids both get this. “So why is this? And how do you know? What do you feel inside of you when you love someone or something?”
I can hear some real digesting of ideas going on back there. Why on this dark night as they cup little bits of the banana bread I baked for them am I asking them this? I know I won’t really get an answer, but I wait to be surprised. I want them to consider this, even if for a few minutes. What is love?
My capacity for love grows with age. It expands and can fill me with a grace and purpose that amazes me. There are days, too, when the source seems to be blocked – as though my access to a higher power has been cemented over. My absolute terror over money, especially, and my anger at Alex, can block it out as certainly as a tornado sky kills the sun. But yesterday, the love kept burbling to the surface at unexpected times. During a meeting as I watched a group of colleagues who were trying so hard to do the right thing in an issue involving race and gender. As I navigated my way around that giant animal in the road, its life just ended. As I thought about C. and the news, such immense and life-altering news, that had been his to discover and his to share. As I picked up my children up from their nature-outing van, holding them against me in the park where just weeks ago I’d been able to see them, and where now they were dark figures, pressing leaves and rocks into my gloved hands. I held Bea so tightly that I think I startled her, but then Thomas joined us, hugging me from behind. Two little people with backpacks and lunch sacks, muddy boots and winter coats. One mother seemingly alone and yet so enormous.
Did any of you see the Hal Hartley film, Trust, about a girl considering an abortion and a glowering young man who carries a grenade? I loved that film. I should revisit it. The title certainly seems worthy of revisiting, alone.
Trust – what is it? How do we earn it? How do we maintain it?
A big reason why my marriage failed was a lack of trust. Alex lied a lot. About stupid things. Incredibly mundane things. Like whether he’d returned the library books or if he’d eaten the lunch I’d made him for work. I always found out. When he eventually lied about having an affair, in some ways it was only a confirmation for me of what I’d sensed all along: he was dishonest. I had feelings for other people – I had relationships, of sorts, and I told him every inch of the way. It was my own hand grenade. I don’t think he liked it – I know he didn’t, who would want to hear from his wife that she had feelings for someone else? – but it kept me honest in a weird sort of way and kept the shit at the surface instead of wadded down some place to hide and getting messier and smellier.
There was an episode of Night Stalker (I wrote about it before) that terrified me as a kid and for years after in which a monster appears as a loved one from the front. You have to get it to turn around to show itself. Ultimately, the Night Stalker has to decide whether to drive a stake through his dear older secretary – is it her or the monster? When I finally understood that I’d been sexually molested by a male babysitter – a trusted family friend – when I was a kid, the power that this show held over me made so much more sense. For years, I’d make boyfriends TURN AROUND, because I got so freaked out that that they may not be who they appeared to be. AND YET – I was very quick to trust at the beginning of a relationship. I still I am. We are all good at heart is my very strong belief, and puncturing that belief is more painful than not trusting.
I trusted Alex. I’m sure I did because it was his love and safety that allowed me to deal with the memories of the sexual molestation. But with every small and insipid lie, I trusted him less. I waited and waited for him to show his true colors. Now, I think his true colors were less about dishonesty and more about a lack of courage. There is a central line missing in him — or, at least, it is very weak. A line that allows one to be Big when necessary, and own up to shortcomings. A line that helps us to do the right thing even when it’s not so appealing.
I just read this article about kindness, which includes this about trust from an Italian therapist/author, Piero Ferrucci :
“You have to swallow your pride before you can see that your happiness depends on others. You can rigidly continue to cling to being ‘right’, but what do you gain from this? We may not always realize it, but every one of us craves to be loved and above all to be trusted. When someone opens themselves up to you and puts their trust in you, it is the greatest gift of all. Just think about it: which relationships in your life have enriched you the most and why? These are nearly always relationships in which people gave you their trust, whereby you had the feeling that the other person trusted you. Putting your trust in someone is precious. It is the gift we should be the most grateful for. And it is scary to trust. Behind every act of trust lies a shudder of fear.”
It is a gift. Wow – that’s a thought. We are GIVING someone else a gift when we trust them. It’s not just about opening ourselves to possibilities but also about behooving someone else an opportunity. … An interesting thought. I’m going to sit with that.
Tonight I visited my friend, D., who is in the hospital receiving stem cells that were harvested from his body five years ago. He has a form of blood cancer that is technically incurable. When the cancer first occurred, it brought him to Iowa to be near his brother and to receive care at a top-notch hospital. Though I didn’t meet him for years later, I remember seeing him then at a coffee shop. His conversation with a mutual friend attracted my nosey attention (I have writer’s ears – unable to ignore interesting conversations), and I somehow filed his face away.
After initial treatments and while in remission, D. went to a party and met R.- who happens to be an old classmate of mine from childhood. R. was divorced and, more recently, coming off of a sour break up. She had no expectations for another relationship any time soon – was even a bit allergic to the notion. Focused as he was on recovery, D. wasn’t much in the mind for a relationship either. But it just happened, as these things sometimes do. They fell in love and were married in Italy, D.’s soul home.
Tonight, as I did Reiki on D., with R. in the room meditating, I could feel at once the connection between them and their individual souls. As a couple who came to each other with strong self-knowledge and a commitment toward growth, they have a wonderful togetherness and separateness. Each is very much his/her own person with a lifetime lived. Each is very much there for the other in the now and in the present.
When I finished and was resting in a chair next to D.’s bed, R. held out her hand — not actually touching him as D. currently has no immune system to speak of – and asked him so plaintively it made me tear up, “You OK, sweetie?”
What a simple question. But how absolutely beautiful and full of grace to have someone who cares enough to ask. May we all be so lucky.
And then last night a lovely conversation. Standing in the kitchen late at night. Barefoot and both snacking from the fridge. Long and funny and connected and like, “Oh, yeah! You are a good person. I can like you a lot - even love you.” For all its goodness, this feeling was almost as unsettling as the icky sense I had the day before of And who are you?
I am wanting stasis but knowing that it doesn’t exist. Heavy into the Buddhist concept of impermanence at the moment. (Yes, fellow travelers, I get the joke therein.) I found out on Sunday – just hours after Alex returned – that my mother is moving out of her house. I’ll no longer have that parental home base. I went with her to look at condos and then we drove to the cemetery to say “happy birthday” to my dad. His cancer and loss still feel fresh. Who I am without him in my life remains a weekly process of discovery. And bringing the illness up afresh is a friend’s stem cell therapy for cancer, beginning next week.
While it would be easy to focus on the notion of things falling apart, of dissolution and the fear thereof, I’m trying hard to think about evolution instead.
From an article “Impermanence and the Fourth Noble Truths“:
Impermanence, in the Buddhist view, comprises the totality of conditioned existence, ranging in scale from the cosmic to the microscopic. At the far end of the spectrum the Buddha’s vision reveals a universe of immense dimensions evolving and disintegrating in repetitive cycles throughout beginningless time. . . . In the middle range the mark of impermanence comes to manifestation in our inescapable mortality, our condition of being bound to ageing, sickness, and death, of possessing a body that is subject “to being worn and rubbed away, to dissolution and disintegration.” And at the close end of the spectrum, the Buddha’s teaching discloses the radical impermanence uncovered only by sustained attention to experience in its living immediacy: the fact that all the constituents of our being, bodily and mental, are in constant process, arising and passing away in rapid succession from moment to moment without any persistent underlying substance. In the very act of observation they are undergoing “destruction, vanishing, fading away, and ceasing. “
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.
Eight years ago today, I became a mama. I hadn’t thought I wanted to be a mama until suddenly I really, really did. And nothing has been the same since. My daughter has taught me so much since she first appeared in my life eight years ago tonight. Beginning with labor, she’s taught me to let go. Through her laughter, she’s taught me to fly. Through her kindness and enormous heart, she’s taught me to be a gentler person. I’ve also learned that I AM a good mother, something I feared I wouldn’t be, and that I have great strength and wisdom to impart to her. All of this is made only more true by being a single mother. I am staggered by this ongoing opportunity.
I’m worried I freaked everyone out by giving a verbatim of my therapy session. I was just so delighted with my map that I had to share. I’ve stayed pretty delighted, too. Or pleasantly content, is perhaps the better descriptor.
I’m proud of when I manage to stay in this state. Yesterday as I made a big pot of soup and one kid got caught up in a tree and I got him out and went back in to cook, and then the other bumped her head and I went out to check her and then came back in to cook, and then and then…on and on it went. Ridiculous! But through it all I remained pleasantly content. This morning when Thomas was a complete pip, hitting his sister for no apparent reason and screaming at me, I called my mom and had her take Bea on a much-deserved journey away from her brother, then got busy with house work and remained pleasantly content. Little by little, Thomas came to the same state of being.
While cleaning, I came across a receipt from a restaurant in Sonoma, CA where Alex and I ate almost exactly a year ago. That was just before everything cracked open and changed for good. Weird to think back to t that still place, like the meal just before the tornado. I have fond memories of that trip. It was so beautiful – one of my favorite places on Earth – that I was content. Though I wasn’t ecstatic to be with Alex in the way I wished I felt, I was also fine with it. We traveled well together, and away from the daily stresses, we were easier on each other. Through that week, we were in tandem, in a state of parallel play. We weren’t fighting but we also weren’t really together. Example: There was a hot tub at the house we rented, but we were never in it together. We made several meals, but did not cook them together. We went on long walks and drove miles together, but never really talked.
Driving through Sonoma County last year.
One night, I asked him over dinner, only a bit teasingly, “Why should I stay with you?” The best he could come up with us that he is the father of my children and he is smart. That wasn’t enough for me, so I started trying to make my own list, which began with his funny bow-leggednes. It didn’t extend much further, because soon our lives went haywire. Two months later, we’d decided to divorce.
How often in life do we believe we’re ok, that things maybe aren’t stellar but they’re alright. They’re enough. And then all it takes is one apple to roll the wrong way and you realize how incredibly askew the whole damn pile really is. How rotten. How decidedly not right.
Last Friday, I stood next to a woman at a school event who I know in passing. “How are you?” I asked. “Trying to decide whether it’s worth it to stay married,” she said, surprising me a little but not much. Such comments never really surprise me any more. We talked about her marriage; they’d had a fight that day, a big one. “I think we’ll get through this round,” she finally said. “Really, I can’t imagine not growing old with him. That would be a pity.”
A year ago, sleeping next to Alex near the ocean, I would have said the exact same thing. In fact, I’m pretty certain it was on my list. It’s a sort of we’ve come this far argument for staying together — not altogether wrong, but not necessarily right either. Now, I think it would have been a pity if I’d stayed and grown old with him. There’s so much growing that I would have missed if I’d have stayed.
Bea in the bathtub playing a game with multiple characters: ”No, no, silly; he’s not my daddy. He’s my mommy’s friend.”
Bea while reading a variation of Cinderella before bed, looking truly concerned: ”You won’t let a step mommy turn me into a servant, will you?”
Thomas cuddling with me after school and laughing: “I’m your daddy!”
Me, smiling but still wanting to remind his of his grandfather: ”No, my daddy – your grandpa – passed away. Remember?”
Thomas: “Yes, but I’m your daddy now.”
Thomas to Bea: ”When we get married, do you promise we’ll stay married?”
Bea: “Of course. You’re my brother forever.”
I am not wracked with guilt about the effect of divorce on my kids. Maybe that’s selfish or short sighted of me, but I’m also so aware of how absent their dad is that it just doesn’t seem all that different than if we’d stayed together. It does strike me sometimes – and with a thud – that their concept of marriage and long-term relationships will always be different from mine. My parents were married for forty years, separated only by my dad’s death. They rarely fought. They were friends (though I’m not sure if they were really lovers). My concept of marriage as a partnership that lasted was formed by watching them. And now my kids’ will mainly know their parents as apart, not married. Alex and I were married 15 years, and yet in our children’s memories, we’ll be mainly unmarried. Thomas was only two when Alex started going to grad school out of state. He was five when he learned his parents were divorcing, and he’ll be 6 1/2 by the time it’s actually legal – an event he hopefully will hardly know about, as any disruption is hopefully done for him. What will “marriage” mean to him when he’s 16? 25? 45?
I am not happy to admit it, but I spent a good deal of my early marriage to Alex desiring care taking. I was depressed. I was needy. I had memories of sexual abuse that surfaced. I was not easy. I could beat up on my 20-something self and all her shortcomings, but I don’t think that I was much different from a lot of young women my age circa early 1990s. Nor was I without my abilities – I’d lived on my own for nearly ten years by the time we married, could balance a checkbook, cook and clean, and keep my car on a maintenance schedule. But rather than build on these skills, I was very relieved when I met Alex and gained the sense of being taken care of. In fact, right after we got together, I became very ill, to the point of nearly needing to be hospitalized. I ran a 105-degree fever for several days before the doctors figured out was wrong. It was like I was testing to make sure he’d come through in a pinch, and he did.
And he wanted to take care of me. He had that knight-in-shining-armor thing going on that so many “good” guys of that age possess. He would make everything alright. But it was an impossible task – only I could make myself alright, and his trying only frustrated me. And so he failed. And failed. I’m simplifying hugely, but this the knight and damsel is definitely one layer of our story.
I’ve always had a fear of being alone, of being abandoned. It boils down, I think, to a fear of not having anyone to take care of me. When my dad died, I was faced with that fear. He’d always been my safety net in ways that Alex never had. Financially responsible, morally upstanding, he was my rock. And when he died, I understood that he had certain expectations of me that I needed to fulfill. I also knew, little by little, that if I could watch my father die from a painful disease, I could do anything else that needed to be done.
One of the most gushed after men in my corner of the universe is a gray bearded gy of indeterminate age who drives a beat up old van and runs a daycare. He is not the typical stuff of female fantasy, and yet women gush over him. He’s kind, amazingly patient, funny and off beat, but I think what really appeals to women is his ability to care for others. We watch him take care of little kids and we wonder what he might be able to do for us.
This is not unlike the initial appeal of Other Guy who is a repairman. He came to my house and fixed it. Could he fix me, too? I suddenly got why there are so many repairmen in porn – it’s not that they appear at your door in the middle of the day, it’s that they fix things. They make it all better, whatever your “it” may be.
Now, as I find ways to care for nearly every niggling, annoying part of my life – or to find people who will do it for pay or barter – I wonder what happens when you become the person who doesn’t need any taking care of? Do you cease to desire care? Do you appear so hard and capable to the rest of the world that you lose some allure? Or do you finally find the right person? I’m hoping for the latter.
Snuggled up on a sofa in the coffee shop, I tell my friend about NYC, about the part of the trip that included being naked, about my disappointment on one hand, but a certain amount of relief on the other to have the first post-marital tryst done. I don’t want to make light of it, but there was a certain relief.
I tell her, too, that it just wasn’t that good.
“You have to ask for what you want,” she says. I wrinkle up my nose.
“I’ve never had to do that. I mean when I was really learning what I wanted, I was with Alex. We learned it together. I never had to direct anyone.”
“Think of what you’d want for your daughter. You wouldn’t want her to go along with something that’s not good for her.”
I nod. Right. So right.
“You had this adventure – I’m proud of you – you didn’t build sex into some insurmountable wall that you avoid for years. But now you know better what you want and need. So next time, don’t settle. That might mean that you only go so far. Take it back to junior high speed — kiss. stop. touch. stop. — if you need to. But don’t let yourself down.”
Next time. There will be a next time, right? And I’ll be more ready, right? And maybe I’ll manage to not wear the giant cotton undies and my legs will be shaved!
p.s. I don’t know the backstory of this image, but I think it captures something of that morning-after feeling when you’re somewhat on display, sensing an omniscient narrator watching you and commenting on the post-coital mood, on the rightness or wrongness of the situation. But then again, I’m a writer; I go through much of my imagining an omniscient narrator.
1. I’m glad I didn’t marry a lawyer who talks on his cell all the way from DC to NYC about winning a settlement against Cargill. How tiresome.
2. Sleeping with one of your oldest friends can seem like a good idea in the first flush of travel.
3. The same thing can feel like not the best thing 24-hours later. Am I too vulnerable to be naked with a man again?
4. I really miss kissing.
5. It’s fun to flirt with smart men during quasi-meetings.
6. I like seeing couples who adore each other and who both seem sane. They give me hope more than they make me feel left out of the club, and this seems like a good thing.
7. When the kids aren’t around, I hardly think about Alex. He is years and miles away. And when I did think about him, it was to realize with full force that I’m really pissed at him and want a divorce NOW, not in August when he returns from Africa.
8. The fact that I’m too easy on Alex and too hard on myself is totally transparent to some of my oldest friends – including ones with whom I’ve been naked.
9. Nothing beats a quiet tea with a girlfriend, or even a quick walk from a restaurant to a bar with another woman, loitering behind the men in order to get in a few confidential words. (Okay, this wasn’t learned on the trip, but does seem worth repeating.)
10. I can wear skinny jeans, even if they are a size bigger than I’d like.
Northern Lights
I had a dream the other night – long and detailed. It concerned my oldest friend who no longer liked me and was also dying of cancer. Then a very ornate, newly opened hotel with a festivity in full swing. I ended up sitting next to the architect. He was kind – very kind. We were drawn to each other. All night, we kept finding each other, even though we were trying not to. Then, during dessert, I was seated next to him and a handsome – not pretty but very kind-faced – woman. His wife. It turned out that he’d sewn the dress she was wearing. It had exceptionally detailed embroidery on it. I was amazed; it was as beautiful as the building he’d designed, and I loved him even more for it. I was sad but was pleased to know how happy he was with this woman.
It was so hard to wake up – away from my kind architect, away from such beauty. Truly, I had to force myself awake after ten hours of sleep.
A friend in a difficult marriage described the other day the act of sitting in the late afternoon and sharing a cup of tea with a contractor who is working on her house and has become a friend. They shared news of their days. They talked about the president’s speech. About kids. About the weather. “It was such a good reminder,” said my friend, “of what a relationship is supposed to look like – and how much mine doesn’t.”
I remember years ago in Seattle when I was ending an especially dysfunctional relationship with a guy who was my polar opposite – bleach-dyed hair, heavily tattooed, skinny jeans and old Converse sneakers. A dear old friend with whom I’d had an on-again-off-again physical relationship came to visit me for a few days. We spent an afternoon at the beach, walking and talking. We went for pizza and then a movie – the Tom Stoppard one about Hamlet’s friends. When we got home near midnight, the Northern Lights were dancing over my house. We went upstairs, got in bed and curled together, reading and sharing snippets of sections that we liked. It was the best reminder I could have asked for as to why I needed to leave the tattooed boy. It was a beacon of what I truly wanted.
Yesterday I loaded up the car with sorted plastics, glass, tin, cardboard and multiple kinds of paper. I often think our whole life is represented in our recycling – from the beans we ate at dinner, to the reams of kids’ schoolwork and our toilet paper tubes. But I digress. What I wanted to tell you about was the elderly couple in the 1970-something bronze boat of an American car. He had on big black-rimmed glasses and sensible boots and the kind of jacket that my farmer grandpa used to wear. She wore a wool knit knee-length coat and one of those plastic bonnets that ties under the chin. She was the one driving and made the car lurch into park by yanking on the big handle next to the steering wheel. Between them was a chihuahua in a little elfin knitted hat. They argued over the paper, and complained over the plastic. She snarled at him when he dropped some newspaper, hobbling under a too-big box. They exuded not a single drop of pleasure, happiness or love.
It’s easy to idealize long marriages, those who stay together “to death do us part.” But this couple, with their canine love child, was a reminder of all that can go wrong if you decide to stick to your guns.
Yesterday: Met with the new lawyer. Liked him. I’ve got a game plan. I’m moving ahead, far away from the chihuahua!
by Jen Lemen
I have everything I need.
I don’t believe this statement. Why not? A lot comes to mind. I grew up in a house that was fearful. Not over-the-top, puritanical cringing fear – but a low-level anxiety that there wasn’t enough in the bank, that the other shoe could drop at any time. My dad was a fundraiser and worked his way up the ladder from an entry-level job for a small health-related foundation in the late 1960s to the president of a major university foundation. It was his job to be careful, to be a bit fearful. He clenched his teeth to the point that he had to wear a jaw guard. He ironed his shirts until they were crisp, shined his shoes once a month, and soaked and pushed back his cuticles. The current economic crisis would be turning his stomach in knots, if he were still alive.
I’m not sure if my mom is a worrier by nature, but he wore off on her. Now she frets about rotten garbage while on vacation and driving after dark. She suffers from a lack of confidence that is masked by her twin habits of smoking and drinking – three packs a day and two bottles of wine a night. Stripped of these safety mechanisms, she’s scared of her own self – not to mention The World.
There was a lack of love in my family that left me with a gap where a deep-seated surety of self-love should be. My parents loved/love me a lot, I’ve no doubt, but weren’t very good at showing it. They were better at helping me to doubt the ground on which I walked, to believe that it might open up at any moment and I should be ready to fall in.
I sought the love I didn’t get with them in men. No surprise there. I could have done worse than Alex (e.g., abusive, mean spirited, manipulative), but his love never felt like enough either. This was partly because of my own perception, and partly because of his extreme passivity. “I can take it or leave it,” is the approach he’s had toward our marriage, or, “I’m not asking you to leave, but I’m not begging you to stay.” For a long time – too long – this seemed to represent a marriage of equals (as I type this, I realize the huge gap in such a belief). But now it is just so obviously not enough.
I have a friend who believes the Universe brings whatever she needs. “My television broke, and I asked the Universe for a new one, and then next week I found one on the curb.”
I will never have such blind faith in the interconnectivity of all things. There’s some hubris, it seems to me, in taking this line of thinking to the extreme. Where does that put someone who wanted to escape a brutal environment? A hopeless situation? Did he or she just not ask the Universe in the right way?
Still, I want to believe that there will be enough when I most need it. That I won’t fall through a crack in the ground, swallowed whole. I want to believe the sentiments of this lovely painting by Jen Lemen, which seemed waiting just for me when I found it this morning on her blog. Hope, joy, love, wisdom – I possess them all and they will take me far.
Bea has been having trouble sleeping. She’s never been great at it, but lately she’s become so anxious about it that she’s often awake at 11 or even midnight. We went to talk to a friend who is a therapist about the problem. Our friend went through the usuals: a bedtime routine, the bed as a cozy spot, visualizations for self calming. We’d heard it before, and though Bea earnestly listened, trying to be good, I could tell she was disappointed that the therapist wasn’t going to give her a silver bullet, a surefire trick. But then, unbeknownst even to the therapist, she did.
“What do you every night? Maybe not right away, but eventually,” our friend asked.
Bea looks stumped for a second, then made a guess: “Sleep?”
“Yes. Has there ever been a night when you didn’t sleep?”
Bea nodded no and I noticed a light coming on behind her eyes, a light that simultaneously indicated that the idea was simplistic and yet very true.
Three nights have gone by since and it’s worked like a charm. Each night, Bea says, “I am a good sleeper. I am a good sleeper. Every night, I fall asleep.” And by-golly, she does it! Just like that. She’s recalibrated her relationship to sleep.
There’s a lot of recalibration going on in the world right now. Altering perception. Seeing gray where before there was only black. Feeling thankful where previously you felt presumption or even ignorance. A friend’s husband came home from work tonight in a much better mood than when he’d left that morning. A lecturer at the local college, he’d expected to be laid off today, but instead discovered that he and his colleagues would have to teach an extra class. For the time being, their jobs are safe. Though I know the same job has struck him as a ball and chain at other times, today it is a blessing.
I got a notice that one of the several jobs I’ve applied for is on hold until spring due to the employer’s financial situation. But a book project is suddenly heating up and I’ll be plenty busy through spring, even if some of the payment won’t come until later. Still, I have just enough money to get me through. So I’ll recalibrate and see it as a good thing – time to finish a project that has the potential to be fulfilling.
The snow is starting to melt. This weekend when it gets near 50-degrees, the patches of mud and the months-old dog poop will suddenly be an aesthete’s nightmare. But there will also be the tiniest whiff of spring in the air. The sun is starting to feel a bit closer, a little more intense. It’s a reminder that winter will end, and so much of what appears to be frozen or ugly will warm up to blossom and nourish us again.
