Plan B…further thoughts
[January, '07]
I think Anne Lamott and I were separated at birth. At least she seems to come from a much closer gene pool than my own sister. Truly. About halfway through her book she’s got an essay on being a single parent called “Heat”. Man, did this resonate with me. I know that I’ve come a long way from the days (which seem so long ago now, but were actually just months ago) when I was panic stricken that I couldn’t take care of this six year old child by myself. Not to mention, myself and a full time job and an apartment, etc. I had to learn to mow a lawn, take out the garbage, shovel snow, fix things when they broke, and keep going even if I felt sick or out of sorts. That may make me sound like a total princess but I always did all the domestic housewifey things.
At any rate, I learned that I could take care of my son all by myself. I could get him up and dressed for school, get decent meals into him, pack his lunch, get him into the bathtub, provide him with the best education possible, kiss his boo-boos, and just love him as much as I could. But lately, I’ve found that I get annoyed with him so easily. Because it is just the two of us we circle each other like pent-up cats in a cage. He wants to play, I want to lie down and lick my wounds. He wants to pounce and I want to nap. He wants to play ball and I just want to stare dreamily out the window and think about my next weekend blissfully and peacefully alone. I’ve become this total shrew. I lose my temper and I yell and I say irrational things. I get frustrated with having to repeat myself twelve times and end up trying to enforce consequences only to be faced with all out war on Mom. I hate myself this way and I want to love him unconditionally and be ready to play with him all the time but I feel like my whole world has been eaten up by my child and there’s nothing left of me until he falls asleep (the little angel then that I love to watch) at which point I’m so exhausted from being such a bitch that I can’t even keep my eyes open any more.
These were some really pertinent passages I read today while waiting for my long overdue grease and oil and all of the sudden I didn’t feel like the world’s worst mother at all. Just probably pretty normal….
“I’m pretty sure I only threatened not to intercede. But there have been other nights when I’ve made worse threats, thrown toys off the deck into the street, and slammed the door to his room so hard that things fell off his bookshelf. I have screamed at him with such rage for ignoring me that you wuold have thought he’d tried to set my bed on fire.”
“…at other people’s homes, my child does not suck the energy and air out of the room…But at our house—comment se dit?—he fucks with me. He can provoke me into a state similar to road rage.”
“…This is a closely guarded secret; the myth of maternal bliss is evidently so sacrosanct that we can’t even admit these feelings to ourselves. But when you mention the feelings to other mothers, they all say “Yes, yes!” You ask, “Are you ever mean to your children?” “Yes!” “do you ever yell so meanly that it scares you?” “Yes, yes!” “Do you ever want to throw yourself downt he stairs because you’re so bored with your hcild that you can hardly see straight?” “Yes, Lord, yes…”
I love my son. I love him with all of my heart and soul. I would die for my child. But he makes me crazy. He makes me a crazy person. I don’t WANT to sound like a shrew but I do want to be able to take a crap without his sitting on the edge of the tub. I do want to have a half an hour to watch the evening news. I do want to lie down with a migraine for an hour without having him come in every ten minutes asking if it has been an hour yet. I DO want a social life more than every other weekend! I want adult interaction and I want other parents to admit that they honestly feel that they could choke the life out of their kid although they know they won’t because they’ve been spared that part within others that permits them to cross a line that should never, ever be crossed.
Parenting is the hardest job in the world. Single parenting is a nightmare. But I do it and he and I are new at this and we’ll find a way to bob and weave and get through each match unscathed. Relatively. And every morning, no matter how hard it was to get him out of the house and into the car because we’re running late and I’m shrieking like a banshee about catching trains he still kisses me goodbye and tells me he loves me when I leave him off at school. I hope I provide enough love and good times that he forgives the old crone in me that I’m afraid will scar him for life.
Just Supersize Me
[early May, '07]
Salad and I just don’t get along. This morning I’m all chipper and Holly Golightly as I hit the Milton Fruit Center at 8 a.m. in my little orange denim skirt and my white sleeveless tee and sandals (very Miltonish). The scale said I’d lost 5 of those pesky pounds this week – chalk it up to water weight or to eschewing the carbs again – but it’s 80° out and I’m a happy fucking camper. So I pick up a few necessary items – protein and veggies and hit the salad bar for a huge lunch of romaine, balsamic marinated tofu, mushrooms, chick peas, a little feta cheese, some eggplant…eh, you get the picture. I’m psyched. Top it all of with Tahini dressing and lunch is mmmm mmmmm good.
Until I get the hershey squirts. What IS it with me and salad? Honestly, this doesn’t happen with a double quarter pounder at McDonalds and it doesn’t happen with my beloved cheesy tots at Burger King! Try to eat healthy and you wind up hanging out in the loo all afternoon. Good thing I picked up this week’s Star magazine to keep me company. God knows I can’t live without another update on Brangelina. Especially when my ass is on fire!
Maybe it’s the Tahini. What the hell is in that anyway? Lord, give me some meat and potatoes. I don’t want to leave the house and now it’s time to go pick up my son and play Mommy. I’m sure the first thing he’ll point out is the emanating stench from the bathroom. He’s always so tactful. Huh, maybe I better grab the Febreeze first. Or some heavy duty Lysol.
Thanks for joining in. That was refreshing.
Stop, Drop, and Roll
[Written in May '07]
Yesterday I got to meet Don’s mom for the first time. She lives in New Hampshire but spends her winter months with her hubby (who I haven’t met and have been told that’s a blessing) in South Carolina. So we all pile in the car and head up to her condo complex which is actually a seasonal “resort” of sorts. Everyone has golf carts to tool around in and there are signs posted that state you can’t go over 5 mph. Granted a golf cart doesn’t exactly do 180 but I’m here to tell you that they can damn sure do better than 5 mph, particularly on a hill.
Don’s mom has two golf carts and we “kids” had a wee bit too much fun with the pizza, beer, and yes, I even participated with a *gasp* Mike’s hard lemonade. I was definitely tipsy when we started out on our joy ride. I pile in the front seat with his younger sister Rose who can’t drive a car much less a golf cart. Don and his nephew Bobby decided to bumper surf on the back. His older sister Chris and her boyfriend Tommy (who contributed to my already stunted mental condition with a good contact high whenever we were downwind) took the second one. Let the games begin!
We spent a good 20 minutes playing tag with the golf carts, then Tom tried to run us off the road and I ended up eating a good chunk of pine needles. They disappeared and now we had a little game of Hide ‘n’ Seek going on until they ambushed us. We were off and running. Rose had that little son of a bitch pushing a good 15 when we hit the hill heading for the beach which is entered by a pretty good gravel decline. She whips the corner almost on two wheels and the next thing I know a body is flying off the back of our cart and hits the ground with a really ungodly sound. I don’t know who screamed louder – me or Rose. All i know is my only thought was “I just found the love of my life and now he’s dead”. The entire rest of my lonely existence played out in my brain in a matter of seconds.
Don rolled about four times. He must have practiced this because he had his arms up and saved his face. Now he swears he was just trying to save his beer. Which he did. He got up, albeit a little woozy, but fuck if that Bud wasn’t still firmly gripped and nearly crushed and he’s still drinking from the damn thing. His elbows were a mass of blood and gravel and his forearms looked like road kill. I was completely speechless. And pissed. I couldn’t even talk to him for the tears I was choking back for scaring the living shit out of me. Rose was a wreck and I was in total shock. He swears I will look back on this and laugh but when i got up this morning and saw his bloody bandages and purple bruises I thought there is no way I’ll ever laugh about this.
I have two fears in life: losing my son and losing Don. Throw whatever else you have my way but don’t take away what’s dearest to me. Even on a joyride. What a buzzkill that was.
Hole in My Heart
[written in July of '07]
My son is off on an extended summer vacation. Originally he was supposed to go with my ex for one week during the Fourth of July, which he did. Then my parents asked if he’d like to come down to North Carolina for two weeks, one of which would be spent at the beach. Way back when they first broached the subject we were still living in Milton and he was still going through a lot of separation anxiety. When I took him to get enrolled in the public school there back in March he clung to my leg and sobbed because I couldn’t sit with him during the tests they needed to administer to gauge his comprehensive skill level. Then, about two months ago, we talked about it again and he suddenly got excited at the prospect and said he wanted to go.
The first week was okay. I missed him but I knew he’d be back shortly. Then we only had a few days together before my sister and her family picked him up on their way back from an upstate NY vacation. He immediately fell in with his cousins, whom he rarely talks to and sees even less. But within minutes he was building pillow forts with them and wrestling with my sister’s eight year old son. I got a hug and a kiss from him and left him to worry about their entire drive home.
In the beginning he was having a blast during the day but would become homesick at night. One night he called and asked if I would sing him to sleep over the phone and requested certain songs that I always sing each night we’re together. I hung up and cried. My heart ached for the longing to have my arm wrapped around his thin little body – warm against me – telling me over and over that he loves me all the way to God (who is everywhere, by the way, as he taps his heart). He may know how to push my buttons and I may get intensely fried from trying to keep him occupied at times but I do so love that little man.
Now I am starting a new job and my parents offered to keep him another two full weeks to let me get acclimated and to save the trouble of childcare until I start getting paid. I hemmed and hawed but knew he’d have a better time there than stuck at the Vietnamese woman’s house down the street day after day playing video games and watching teletubbies with the younger kids. I acquiessed and was silently heartbroken when he jumped on the chance to stay longer. I have started sleeping with the Winnie the Pooh blanket that was given to me when I was two weeks pregnant and he so recently stopped sleeping with.
I miss him. I have so much happening, so many changes, all in the most positive of directions. But there is a hole in my heart where my son should be. When he gets back I want to spoil him, get him excited to go to his new school and new aftercare Discovery Club. I want to plan a special birthday and just hug him until he pushes me away in his typical “I’m almost seven” exertion of independence. I have cherished my time alone with Don. I have had time to land this job and really plan for a much better future. But, yeah, I want him to come home.
“miss you like a child misses his blanket.”
Summertime Dreams
[written in August of '07]
Lately everything seems to remind me of the best part of my childhood…summertime. Maybe it’s the season itself or perhaps the fact that my son is off on probably the longest summer vacation of his life. Or maybe, just maybe, it was sitting on a bench in front of Don’s dad’s house the other day, smoking a cigarette and noticing the way the setting sun hit the roof peaks, bathing them in a certain golden hue that I have always associated with summers in Indiana. Nothing about summer as an adult can compare to those long, stretched out months between one grade and another.
The land was flat. So flat you could see a dark, thin tornado miles away while standing on your front porch in the safety of perfectly flat, still air. That air was dry and the heat was never overpowering. The Charles Chips truck came to deliver on a regular basis. Big tins of crispy, salty potato chips and giant crunchy dark pretzels. We’d leave the house first thing in the morning and join our friends in a line of banana seated bicycles with our ponytails flying behind us and no destination in mind. No one wore helmets and if you fell down you scraped your knee, laughed about it, got up and rejoined the band of the best friends you’d ever have in your life.
We were children in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Untouched by Vietnam or Watergate. We were free, unfettered, unaware of anything that didn’t revolve around our neighborhood. Practicing the dance routine made up to Rockin’ Robin. Reading Tigerbeat Magazine. Putting up posters of Donny Osmond or, in my case, Tony DiFranco (“Heartbeat, it’s a lovebeat, and when we meet, it’s a good sensation…”). Ice cream dripping down our hands to become a sticky mess we licked up with eager tongues. By the time we were six or seven we could walk to the drugstore by ourselves and get bags of candy. I always bought the giant pixie sticks – plastic striped wonders filled with tart powder that I poured down my throat, followed by little wax bottles filled with some kind of colored sweet liquid.
Before I moved away and before they started expanding our little neighborhood into a development, we had a dirt track that ran around a field next to a farm behind our street. My friends and I would head there at sunset and watch the surrey races. Nowadays, surrey races involve BMX, but back then they were low slung black two wheeled buggies built for one rider and harnessed to the beautifully small horses. The dust would fly in the late summer afternoons as we perched on an old wooden fence and sat in comfortable silence together watching the men prod their leads around and around in a seemingly neverending cycle. Tammy. Dini. Julie. Betsy. Scott.
And when my eyes grew dusty and tired of watching, they’d wander across the street to the small, flat ranch houses and the way the setting sun hit the roofpeaks in that rosy, golden hue that would never be matched at any other time in my life.
Playing Dad
[Written in November of '07]
My son is the product of my egg and the sperm of donor BFM9368. He spent the first 5 years of his life in a lesbian household with two moms and now has a mom and a “dad-to-be” who, having had no previous experience with the matter at hand (ahem), it fell to me to have “THE TALK”. Since Lucas is only seven (and I never in my life thought I’d be talking to him about this subject this early) this wasn’t the birds and the bees talk. It was the “spanking the monkey”, “pulling the pud”, “playing with jack rabbit” talk. Oy vey – was I nervous.
So it all started with the “Sam’s Happy Time” scene in Transformers. Yeah, let my kid watch a PG-13 movie and this is what I get. And this is how it went down…
“honey, I need to talk to you in your room. You aren’t in trouble but I need to talk about something important” Heart racing, palms sweating. Just plunge right in. “Have you ever heard of the word masturbation?” blank stare “no”. ooookay. Well, I’m into it now, might as well follow through. I said something about this being a common thing and pretty much everyone does it and he’ll never get in trouble for it but he needs to do it in private…blank stare.
Yeah. “Um…you know how you wake up every morning and your penis is standing up?” He’s bright red and looking in the other direction. Now we’re getting somewhere. I went on to talk to the back of his head. He couldn’t look at me and I was having a really hard time with this. i think I covered all the bases – do it in private, it’s cool, we’ll respect your privacy but it’s something you keep to yourself and you don’t do it with your friends….etc. etc. etc. Then I had to get into the difficult part about the inevitable first wet dream. It’s normal…yada yada yada.
I’m so done with this. i finished up by saying that he could always ask me questions and never be embarrassed but he should always respect my privacy and my private time with Don too. Okay, I wasn’t ready to get into THAT subject so much to his (and my) relief, I let him go back to the regularly scheduled program already in progress.
I hope I don’t have to have the actual SEX talk for awhile. I mean, he IS only seven. But, then again, he’s MY son and if the apple doesn’t fall far from the forbidden tree then I’m in trouble for sure. Just put a wrapper on it at all times or I’m installing a chastity belt. This kid is college bound and I’ll be damned if he’s going to be a father at 16. But that, hopefully, is a story for several years from now.
In the meantime, I’m going back to Mommy mode and resuming my lullabies and kissing of the boo-boos and hoping that I didn’t just hand my kid an instruction manual in the art of jerking off.
Time to Shut the Door
Okay…so a couple of months ago I wrote a blog called “Playing Daddy” because I had to give my kid the masturbation talk. I thought that was bad. Turns out it was a lot easier than the talk we had to have this morning. You know what’s coming right? Heh…that’s right…
Last night Don and I hit the bed around 11 or so and a little talking led to a little smooching which led to A LOT of other things. About 1 a.m. after we’d both cleaned up, gone to the bathroom, etc. we’re back in bed and hear this loud thump. Sounds like Lucas may have fallen out of bed, which would be unusual at his age (reminder – he’s seven) so i go to check on him wearing next to nothing because I assume he’s asleep and I find him face down in his pillows on a totally made bed. Okay, weird. I put him to bed at 8:00 and know for a fact he was under the covers then. I go to wake him up and he’s got this majorly shit eating grin on his face and I tell him he needs to get back under the covers. I snuggle him in, kiss him goodnight and tell him I’ll wake him in the morning.
6:15 a.m. and I’m checking the news when Lucas comes wandering in – wearing that same strange shit eating grin. Okayyyy…a) why is he awake at this hour and b) why does he look like the cat who swallowed the canary? I take him to his room and sit him down because now I’m really, really suspicious and starting to feel a tad sick to my stomach.
Here’s the thing: I cannot lie. Honestly, if you ask me something and I don’t want to tell the truth, I just burst out laughing. I can’t help it. I couldn’t tell a lie if my life depended on it. And THAT gene got handed down to my son without a single mark on it. So I’m asking fairly pointed questions about why he was awake last night, what he heard that woke him up, how long he’d been awake, etc. and he’s looking at everything BUT me. Suspicions confirmed. We’d been totally snagged – en flagrante delicto, if you will. Oh yeah, the crime was blazin’ big time. Door wide open (because normally this kid sleeps like the dead) and yes, the lights were on, and yes, Mommy makes a lot of noise and says things that no one should hear until they are, like, 30. And if, like he says, he was up for about 30 minutes then he could have witnessed any number of unbelievably compromising positions, any one of which could scar a kid for life. No one should see that much of their mother’s anatomy.
I ask Lucas if this THING that he saw/heard would be more embarrassing to him or to me. He points to me and giggles his little ass off. Right. Now I realize I have to do the dirty deed. I so totally had hoped this wouldn’t come up just yet (no puns intended here and there).
me: honey, do you remember the talk we had about things you should do in private that are just for you and no one else?
him: yeah.
me: okay. well then. ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…when two adults love each other very much they sometimes like to do things together that feel really good and itmakesalotofnoiseandthatswhyyouheardthebedbangingandmommymakingweirdnoises okay?
him: okay.
me: so it’s like a private thing and uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…is there anything else you need to know about me and don having sex?
him: nope.
me: scurries red-faced to the bathroom with the cell phone and relays the entire conversation to Don.
Is it child abuse to chain your kid to his bunkbed and force earplugs on him?
Not all Wine and Roses
[Written in January of '08]
Relationships are hard work. I don’t think I ever realized that before now and I have been single all of four months during the last 26 years. I have lived in a world that revolved around me. I am the sun and everyone near me circles around just far enough away not to get too burned. Sadly, pretty much every time I send off a solar flare, someone gets hurt. Sometimes severely.
Sometimes you wonder why you ever get into relationships at all. I have had two great loves in my life. One, I let pass out of my life because I was young, selfish, and stupid. I endured intense heartache but couldn’t get him back. Over the years we would bounce off each other. Keep in touch and then back off. He got a wife and kids, I continued in a relationship that was never meant to be in the first place. Eventually, we became friends and confidantes. He is, finally, happy. Truly happy. And I am ever so grateful because it turns out that the true love of my life was waiting for me waaaaaay down the long and winding road.
I have entered into relationships on a whim. Lived with women that I should only have had a passing affair with. Had a child with a woman that I should have left years before. But she made me laugh and at the time that was enough. Then there was our son. And the laughter was replaced by unspeakable acts. The burden for which I may never forgive myself. I should have taken my son and begun life as a strong single mother years ago. But, then again, destiny has a way of taking over.
The past week or so have dealt us some heavy blows. As is my way, I become tender to the touch. I become the femme equivalent of Superman turning into Clark Kent (to paraphrase my friend Barbara’s favorite line). The wry, witty, self-assured, and yes, beautiful me becomes this pitiful excuse for a woman in need of constant affirmation of love. As soon as the storm starts to blow over I expect to be back in his arms and everything to be “perfect” again. It’s not perfect. We have perfect moments – perfect days – perfect weekends. But until I met this man – who drew me first to him with this intensely magnetic attraction and then continued to nurture my love by balancing out my whirlwind personality – I never “worked” on making it work.
I went to therapy the other day and had one of those rare and amazing “aha” moments. I was talking about the fact that everyone I have ever been with accuses me while we are arguing of making every situation “all about me”. I never understood that until I said to her “I feel like I am a giant raw nerve and everything that touches me sets off sparks”. My sweet little Indian therapist, sitting with one leg tucked underneath the folds of her long floral dress and clutching her pashmina tightly to her said “Diana…you do make it all about you.” I had just compared myself to a “giant nerve” (translate that to the center of the universe) and that everything that touches me sets off sparks. Dr. Goodheart, (yes, that actually IS her name) told me that if I am that much trouble and that overly sensitive, then everyone that has anything to do with me has to tiptoe around me. It is a great stress and a heavy load to have to worry about someone’s feelings at all times.
My tears immediately cleared up. I GOT it. I don’t GET a lot and I say that with a sad smile because I’ve been asked to GET IT over and over recently. So, yes, it’s hard work. But I do believe that true love conquers all and that if I am patient and maintain a thick skin then we shall persevere and spend the rest of our lives together. Preferably, without my overblown expectations and delirious dreams of a perfect world that spins around me as the center of all creation.
Sayonara
[written in February of '08
Yesterday I finally finished (well, finished is a bit premature as I look out the window and see the looming job of unloading my car this morning) a distasteful and overwhelming task that I had been procrastinating about for, literally, months. Yes, I finally went back to my old apartment and got the rest of my stuff. Well, the rest of what I wanted to save anyway and that really is the gist of my story. But let me back up for those of you that haven’t followed the “saga of the loony landlord and the woman who refused to leave.”
Last June, after the loan from my folks finally ran out, the utilities were about to be shut off, and I had no job prospects in sight, Don opened his one bedroom apartment to Lucas and I and we moved in. With no money to get a Budget Rent-A-Truck or a storage unit to put everything in, we packed some summer clothes, my computer, and a few toys and movies and left everything else locked in a sweltering second story in Milton. It soon became apparent that we were going to need a larger place, primarily due to the fact that my son was sleeping on a futon in the living room and my ex was threatening to call DSS (this becomes extremely ironic but that is another story, and probably one I won’t share publicly out of respect for someone who has actually become my friend after 14 years of trying to be lifelong partners and not very good co-parents).
At this point, I’m sure you are wondering how I can walk away from a $1350 a month apartment without continuing to pay rent. That’s where the loony landlord comes in. I actually hadn’t paid rent in almost two years. That’s right…I was living rent free for quite awhile before I finally started accepting some responsibility in life as well as a certain amount of accountability to others. Loony is an attorney, the house was in shambles – bad plumbing, broken porches that threatened to collapse if too many people stood on them at the same time (which made for interesting dinner parties when everyone had to take turns smoking), cracked plaster, a kitchen cave-in when the roof finally gave way. Each time, Loony would finally call me with her credit card number and have me arrange to fix whatever had broken. Yes, I contracted a new roof for $12,000 billable to Loony. I started out sending her rent on time every month. And every 90 days that same amount would magically reappear in my bank account. Our downstairs neighbor had given up long ago. We called and harangued and reminded her to cash checks and even talked about a PayPal arrangement to no avail. Evidently, she simply forgot to collect the rent. So when I left, she didn’t even know about it and since I didn’t pay, I just didn’t tell her I was gone.
I’m so digressing, but you needed backstory. I guess. Anyway, the point of this blog was about getting my shit out. Let me first state that I had not only an apartment filled with over 22 years of accumulated detritus, but a garage and attic too. The walls simply bulged with STUFF. And every bit of it seemed precious at the time. How does one live without the $250 cericell of Tigger, Pooh, and Piglet charged to some long avoided credit card on yet another $10,000 trip to Disney? Or what about the boxes and boxes of camping gear? I may not have camped for over 9 years, but I might and then I’ll need it all. Every single inflatable mattress, every single tin cup.
It became evident that I needed to start letting go. And I started with the one thing that was probably the hardest. My dining room table and chairs. A beautiful, formal country style in honey pine with six chairs and a leaf that had once been home to a six course Thanksgiving meal for eleven. That dining room set was the very first real purchase I made with my very first freelance check. Provided by months of illustrating Emily Post’s Book of Wedding Etiquette. I had envisioned it as an heirloom piece, passed down for generations of future spawn of Diana. When I really looked at it, I realized that it was SO not me anymore. If Don and I were serious about really LIVING together, hopefully forever, then we were going to have to abandon our current tastes (mine ran to shabby chic which he referred to as “nothing fucking matches” and his…uh…well, I kindly called it “bachelor pad decor” but it more closely resembled the rec room at the Delta House Fraternity…I was always expecting to wake up and find Bluto sitting at the kitchen table) and mesh them into something far more streamlined and Ikea-esque. The Dining Room set was put into Craigslist and then loaded into some stranger’s truck for $400 cash.
And so it began, large pieces of my life being sold off. Each one endured with pain and anguish and a fair amount of complaining. Eventually, my ex found a new girlfriend and they decided to move in together, I offered her anything but the big maroon chair and a half which Don had grown attached to, Lucas’ furniture, and my bookshelves. Those were non-negotiable. In September we found a beautiful, very large, new apartment and it became time for me to make more frequent trips to pack up the remainder of my life in Milton and start weaving my things into our new life. I hemmed and hawed. I would plan to go for a day and get the packing done and suddenly develop a massive migraine or back spasms that would preclude my plans. On the occasions I did actually make it I would become so overwhelmed by all the shit I had accumulated that I would call Don in hysterics and whine into the phone about how I couldn’t do this alone. I really think that I just didn’t want to face the loss of all that stuff but reality told me that it just wasn’t practical and you shouldn’t keep crap around if you haven’t opened the box for more than 15 years!
Slowly, I started packing boxes and donating more and more to the Veterans for Thursday pick-ups. We finally reached a place where we needed to get the biggest things from Milton to Marlborough and got the box truck and some (I use this term loosely) help and spent a half a day moving what I termed, absolute essentials, into our new home. I now had the artwork I couldn’t possibly give up, Lucas’ bedroom furniture, the chair and a half that fit cozily into our cavern of a bedroom, my bookshelves, my large collection of hardcovers, and my even larger collection of totes filled with Christmas decorations and not one, but two, trees.
We left the place with so much behind. I knew I’d have to return. Thanksgiving came and went, as did Christmas. Weekends filled up with plans and I always found excuses not to return. Eventually, the landlord decided it was time to overhaul the place and rent it out again. Now I had to come face to face with the rest of my life. In the wake of the jarring realization that I never follow through with whatever I say I am going to do, I made my plans, went to Lucas’ last basketball game and then drove the hour to Milton to finally close the door and turn my attention to my real life. One that desperately needed tending to.
I was ruthless. And it was hard. I pored over decisions about puzzles, about dishes that we didn’t need, the china that I had spent $200 for in an antique store but was really, when I finally looked at it, quite ugly. In the end, I took what was sentimental. Pottery from my mother, my yearbooks that I discovered in a tattered box just moments before I was set to leave, stacks and stacks of loose photos which I will still need to go through and organize. I left behind all of the material possessions that I had thought I couldn’t live without. Boxes upon boxes of books that I kept for show more than their readability factor. Who really needs a copy of Plutarch’s Lives anyway? I left vases, so many pieces of serving ware, all of the book covers that I had designed through the years…
I thought I would mourn the loss of all of that stuff as I had never been able to let it go and it had moved with me from place to place for so many years that it was like a huge boil on my ass that just wouldn’t go away until I excised it. So I did. I grabbed that knife, cut it open, let it ooze and puss and bleed and was ever so much lighter for it. What remained will be ransacked by the contractors hired to resurrect the house, inside and out. Plutarch’s Lives will undoubtedly wind up in the Dumpster alongside a crate of ancient and warped record albums. A black satin ball gown will go to someone’s size 8 wife or girlfriend. The 1969 metal hockey game will likely bite the dust.
I felt good. Really good. I learned a lot over the last year. The first lesson was that you CAN live without THINGS. I really did use my stuff as a wall to hide behind or so much window dressing to impress those who might stop by. At four thirty yesterday afternoon, I loaded the last box into my car and went back upstairs for my coat and keys. I turned around and looked at all that remained and just smiled. I saluted my apartment and, yes, aloud, said “sayonara.” I closed the front door and, without looking back, I pulled out of the driveway and headed home. Where we did find a comfortable mix between our styles, where we have a real home, not just a place to put your stuff, and where my man was waiting with a hug, a kiss, and couple of good movies.
Now it’s time to throw on some old jeans, grab a quick breakfast, and unload and unpack. I am here to stay. Lighter, happier, proud of finally accomplishing what I had thought was a Herculean task, and ready for the rest of my life.
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