falling down is also a gift

the world is not the same

I can't think of anything funnier than a 42-year-old woman with 2 children trying to figure out how to date again.

I probably need to watch more comedy, though, because I suspect that something involving monkeys would get more laughs, especially if they were super nervous dating monkeys. Maybe.

For instance, on one of my first dates I tried to explain that I would not be interested in any sort of  exclusive relationship, given that my life is too unsettled to expect anyone to go all in with me at this point (plus low expectations on all our parts mean less likelihood for disappointment). In explaining that he also was not interested in any sort of exclusive relationship with me, I got the reassurance that this would not be an issue, as I was just not awesome enough for him to fall in love with. Problem solved.

A part of me feels like I should find this more disturbing than reassuring, but another part of me wants to applaud his bluntness. After all, how many of us are actually awesome enough to fall in love with? There are just not enough spectacular people to go around, right? By this age we are all carrying around our little personal failings, tucked into our pockets out of sight, although we all see the bulges anyway.

It's strange to begin dating now, in a world so different than it was 17 years ago. Evidently it's all online now. No one actually knows any single people in real life, but it only takes 24 hours of putting your profile online to discover that there are at least 50 single guys nearby happy to message you with varying degrees of grammatical facility. I would probably have found fewer single guys in my area were it not for the fact that I mentioned that I hadn't had sex in a year, and that I found this fact to be a total bitch. I probably need to learn how to dial back the frankness. Actually I probably should have learned this lesson ages ago.

Nevertheless, I am trying to remember how not to take this part of my life too seriously, because otherwise it would be terrifying.

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 Then one night Frankie comes home and she is singing a song that she heard at her dad's, and it is a song from an album that I recently bought, too. So I burn it onto a cd to play in the car for her, because there is nothing I love better than to hear my daughter singing.

And suddenly I realize that I am not constantly having to remind myself to let go of the anger and the hurt, because I remember why I fell in love with him in the first place and it no longer matters that that love is no longer there. I don't have to doubt myself for falling in love with someone who eventually no longer loved me. Maybe I do still doubt myself, but I don't have to.

And it's also ok that we are off buying the same albums and therefore paying for them twice with our two separate lives that will never completely separate. It's ok because I am happy here in my little house with my girls, and our dog, and our night-attack kitties. It's ok to admit that we are clearly both happier now, and to inch toward a forgiveness. Or, if not a forgiveness, at least a more relaxed air of unconcern, which might be a more attainable goal for right now.

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Then another night comes and my phone rings. My stomach flutters; I reach for the phone; I step into the river to be swept away.

And then I answer the call.

the world is the same

Today we went to one of our very favorite places, Sugar Grove Nature Center. The girls kept inviting friends until our car was full. When we got there, we discovered that there was a Golden Retriever group holding an adoption event, and neither girl asked me to adopt another dog. I take this as a sign of happiness, that they are not feeling a lack or an empty space or a failing we need to distract ourselves from. It is progress measured by demands not made.

The place was exactly as I remembered it, except that the girls were almost too big to fit on the tree swing, but not too big that climbing the big tree wasn't a little scary. The creek still occupied most of their time, and the canopy of trees above my head as I lay on the bench looked the same as I remembered.

Friday was full of bad news, but Saturday reminded me that everything important is still the same. I made my own Mother's Day gift with the girls, and I think it will be my very favorite one, ever.

MSA

I have wonderful friends, friends who (I think) worry about me, living on my own as I am with almost exclusive caretaking responsibility for two kids, and with two extremely unstable jobs, and out there still throwing myself into the ass-kicking ring of jobhunting at 42 with the world's weirdest resume.

Because I have these wonderful friends, they often remind me how difficult marriage is, how unsatisfying it can be sometimes, how underappreciated one can end up feeling.* I know they are telling me the truth. But I also think that they are telling me this because I am a person built for marriage, and I am no longer married. Or I am as good as no longer married, anyway.

In exchange for this kindness from them, I issue my own sort of public service announcement, a Marital Service Announcement. "Don't get divorced," I tell them. "Just, don't. Dating in middle age with kids sucks. You cannot even imagine."

Of course this is not always true. There is the thrill of a first date, and the excitement of getting to know someone new. But there is also the anxiety of a first date, and the difficulty of getting to know someone new. I've met at least one intelligent and engaging man through an internet dating site who has used his newly single status to complete rethink his approach to relationships, throwing monogamy right out the window, and he is as excited as a puppy at a dogpark about his new exciting (exciting! exciting!) dating life, while also maintaining an enviably balanced and committed relationship with an equally intelligent and engaging woman.

But the fact of the matter is that I was built to be married. Maybe like a lot of women. Maybe it's an evolutionary thing. Maybe it's the way we're socialized. Maybe it's the stories we're told, and the stories we tell ourselves. But there's no denying that I would have taken my husband back, if he had ever shown the slightest interest in being taken back. I think I'm like most women that way, no matter how tough we talk.

Of course now I realize that taking him back would have been a huge mistake, for him and for me. So I guess I owe him one for that bit of stubborn unkindness.

Still, dating. Now. Shit. A friend of mine wrote a lovely piece about how her older body tells a story about her life, and I know she is right. And I love that I understand my body now much better than I did as a twenty-year-old. There's nothing like looking into a giant mirror aimed right at your vagina while you sweatily push out The World's Largest Baby (they all are) to make you get right with your body.

But on the other hand, you can never quite get away from the certain knowledge that you are getting naked with someone who would have been so much more impressed twenty years ago.

On top of all that inevitable Naked Time anxiety, then someone (her name was Esmeralda, voice of reason and also the voice of every tiny freakout I have had contemplating the possibility of Naked Time) left a comment on my last post about STDs, and reminded me that they can be passed even with standard safe sex practices, and all the Wonder of the New disappears like so much morning fog. Only a lot faster, and without any actual poeticism involved whatsoever.

Oh, yeah, that. Dating. Now. Shit.

And finally, perhaps worse but at least more poetic, there is the ouchiness of my heart. Or it would be more poetic, if I didn't refer to it as "ouchiness." And it's probably not poetic to the poor guy who has to date the idiot who constantly moans, "Yes. You like me now. I see that. But soon you will find me boring and unattractive, right? That's the way this is going to play out." And as soon as I say that, I know that "soon" just got a lot sooner. You end up steering your car straight into the wall to avoid all sorts of imagined obstacles. You buy into that stupid, nonsensical reasoning that tells you that, because one person got completely sick of you, you probably induce that sort of nausea in most men. And then it turns out that you actually have done that, with all your worrying and moaning. I guess at least it is good to be right.

Marital Service Announcement. I'm all about the MSA.

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 The divorce has gone in stages. I'm going to resist the urge to name them all, because they are legion and boringly predictable. I'm sure the moment at which our divorce became final, in my head if not legally, was when we moved into our new house. I could let go of most of the financial worry, and instead focus on reimagining my life without J, which turned out to be not so difficult. I just hadn't bothered using my imagination before, which is a shame because I have a great imagination.

But because I am a music junkie, I kept looking for the music that would symbolize the divorce for me. I was looking for some album that I could listen to and think, "Now. Now this music sounds different because I am no longer married to him. This is the way music will sound now."

I listened to The Wailin' Jennys pretty much nonstop for the first couple of months, which was probably not helpful. Although I think they could have been helpful, were I to have had the right attitude.

But the problem with The Wailin' Jennys (and also their advantage in those first few months) was that J never really enjoyed them. So they didn't really work for me to understand how I would be able to reconcile my past, which was so defined by my partnership with him, and my future.

I really thought that Nanci Griffith's Other Voices, Other Rooms would be my divorce album. It was one of the very first albums we listened to together. The fact that he, a boy from Berlin, knew and loved that album might have been a big reason he got lucky with me that first time. ("Got lucky" is a terrible, terrible phrase. But also funny enough to keep using.) Although he was very cute and very smart, so he probably would have anyway.

But I listened to it, over and over, and nothing. It sounded exactly the same, and I felt exactly the same person, listening to it.

But then I realized that the Lucinda Williams Sweet Old World album was missing from my collection, even though our agreement to split the CDs was that I take the women, and he take the men. This realization was followed by an overwhelming urge to hear that album again right damn now. It was also followed by the realization that there were probably a large number of our CDs in his office, which had not been split up, which he had simply kept.

There was this weird way I felt betrayed all over again, because he knew how much I loved that CD, and he had kept it, despite our agreement. But then I remembered that he was the one who actually gave me that CD in the first place. 

It was a party at the house we shared back in graduate school, before we were married. The party was nominally celebrating my birthday, but with the explicit instructions not to bring presents. But J presented me with that CD, and I loved it, and thought it was the best present anyone had ever given me (ever) because it showed how well he knew me, above anyone else in the world. 

I headed straight for the CD player and interrupted the party music so that everyone could hear this song I loved, about suicide. Party on, good people.

This meant that when we got married, we then had 2 copies of this album. I ended up taking the second one in and selling it at the CD store, because no way would we ever need 2 copies of that album. 

So I wrote him an email, not demanding that he give that damn CD because Lucinda Williams is very damn well a woman dammit, but asking if I could borrow it, to make a copy on my computer. I guess maybe I should have just bought another copy. Number 3.

But I picked it up late from my office mailbox, where he left it for me. I played it loud in my car on the way home, and I cried for the optimism that had led me to sell that other copy. And then I guess I got divorced in the court of Lucinda Williams.

* In case any of my friends' husbands ever read this entry (not likely), the answer is "No, of course I am not talking about your wife."

 

not going to write about my dreams

much, anyway.

Because one of the great things about having a husband was that I always had a captive audience to tell about my weirdest dreams the next day. Not that I don't realize that hearing about another person's dreams is boring and a pointless waste of time, which is why you have to pay a psychologist all that money to sit and listen to your boring and pointless dreams. Also not that I don't realize that my take on what a psychologist does is probably, oh, a hundred years out of date.

But I do love my dreams, and now have no one even mildly invested in nodding and pretending to listen. That's where the practice of blogging really shines, my friends, when you have something to talk about that no one really wants to hear about. 

So the other night I had a dream that I woke up in a grocery shopping cart, with the girls nestled beside me. As I slowly came to consciousness (in my dream while sleeping, so confusing), I realized that I must have gotten sleepy while shopping and just climbed into the cart. I was in the Jewel I always shop at (the one where I cried in front of the pharmacist), so knew that they must have recognized me and decided that it was OK if I just spent the night curled up in a cart with my kids. When I finally sat up, using my fingertips to explore gingerly the shopping cart grate marks on my cheeks, it slowly dawned on me that I had been sleeping in the Jewel, in a shopping cart, every night that week.

It doesn't take a degree to unpack that one, does it?

But while I get what my overwrought subconscious was getting at, I really don't know why it is going all exaggeratedly dramatic on me. I have a place lined up for me and the girls to move to. It is smaller and less expensive than our current house, and allows the girls to stay in the same school. It is maybe not the house I would have chosen were I not trying to choose with an eye to keeping the girls with their same school friends, but I can see us coming to love living in that house. Certainly of all the moves I was contemplating, this is the one that is the least nervewracking for the girls. And given how Annika behaves when her nerves are wracked, this also means it is the move least nervewracking for me.

On the other hand, I'm still waiting on word that the financing for the house will work out, so maybe it's the niggling uncertainty of waiting that's getting me down. *

The night before I decided to put in an offer on this little house, I had the most vivid dream of driving myself off a mountain when I fell asleep at the wheel. Mostly I'm having a lot of bad dreams about all the bad stuff that can happen when you're sleepy, so this probably just means I should investigate insomnia as a lifestyle choice.

In our waking lives, the girls and I are doing very well and only using shopping carts in the appropriate manner. Well, except for Frankie, who still likes to climb in the shopping cart and then have all the food loaded on top of her, which I am hoping is not an eating disorder waiting to happen. And also except for Annika, who likes to take control of the shopping cart herself, especially when it comes to rounding the blind corners, where it's never very clear which side of the aisle you should be occupying, which is surely not the sign of a thrill-seeking teenage driver of the future, is it?

I got the girls another dog, Leonardo di Prancio, shortly after I broke the news that we would need to move from this house. He is adorable and hilarious, and he is also a total little shit. I mean it, but in a completely loving way. I have the feeling that there are not many households where this little guy would fit in (I suspect that his breed is something like Cocaine Terrier), but I am rolling with it because he snuggles up to the girls in the evening and he makes me laugh, and I would forgive a whole warehouse full of broken and destroyed household items in exchange for those two qualities. **

Cleo, sweet, mostly well-mannered Cleo, is enjoying the fruits of  Leonardo's stubborn refusal to learn the House Rules. Like the time I came home from dropping off the girls and discovered that Leonardo had knocked the box of organic, whole-grain granola with flax seed off the table, where both dogs devoured the entire box in the 10 minutes it took to get the kids delivered to school that morning. We spent the rest of the day taking frequent walks, where Cleo looked more and more dismayed as the interval between poops became alarmingly short. Leonardo, on the other hand, was clearly beaming "Worth it! Worth it!" every time he hunched up. By the end of the walk, he was barely breaking his proud stride to get them out. I tell you, he's a rock star of a dog.

Between the dogs, and the kitten, and the girls, and the working, I am busy. Not too busy to neglect updating on facebook, where you can just post the one good sentence that you can't really figure out how to work into an entire blog post, but busy enough to feel my own forward momentum. 

I was driving the girls to a birthday party the other day when I saw J walking down the sidewalk. I thought about how, before, I would have yelled, "There's daddy!" And the girls would have rolled down their windows and waved and been as excited as if they had just spotted a cheetah in the wild. But this time I drove on, and they were too busy talking to notice him out there.

This shouldn't be taken to mean that I don't think he's important to them. The complete opposite is true, and it's a big part of why I decided to stay here in town. I'm not sure exactly what it means, though. Maybe simply that I am no longer a part of their relationship with him. He has to figure all that out without any help from me, and don't think I'm so deluded that I don't realize that that might be a good thing for him. Or it could also be not so great, but let's hope for A Good Thing for all our sakes.  

Also, he was walking with a woman. I have no idea who she was, or what her relationship with him might be, but I realized that I absolutely did not care to know. I do know what that means, and I think it is a good sign.

Especially since I did not dream of him at all that night, and, as has already been well-established, my subconscious is not very good at ignoring the worrisome stuff. 

I think it's time to get packing. I've got more than will fill a Jewel shopping cart, but less than will fill this house, and that's as it should be.

 

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* As a matter of fairness, I should point out that J helped me get the bank on board with this downsizing plan of mine by using the equity in our current house. That's my obligatory sentence of fairmindedness. Funny how I couldn't seem to figure out how to work it into the flow of everything else I was writing. Fair breaks my flow!   

** Although I did move the girls' collection of pottery to a safer spot, because those aren't "household items," that stuff is ART.