Losing True

Thirteen years of sweet

My girlfriend’s daughter, with whom I just spent a week (along with my own children) woke up smiling this morning. Come to think of it, she woke up smiling every morning, her sweet face framed by tousled dark curls. I told her, as I passed her on the stairs at 8 a.m., that I had just come back from the bakery and had gotten her an apple fritter.

“That’s why I love you,” she said with a tiny giggle.

A few days ago she and I swam out into the center of a gorgeous freshwater pond together. No one was near us; the water rippled gently in the sun, and swallows swarmed overhead. It was so quiet I could hear their wing strokes. She swam ahead of me, and kept turning back to grin. “This is heaven,” she said, without a trace of irony.

As her mother and I were getting ready for dinner that night, the two of us traded typically middle-aged girl talk: I was make-up free and modestly dressed; my girlfriend was worried she was showing too much cleavage. Her daughter stood behind us, her hands on her hips.

“The two of you!” she said in exasperation. “You both look fabulous, but you don’t realize it!”

When my children’s father came by tonight to bring our dog home, we pummeled him with stories about the trip, including my youngest jumping off a landmark bridge into the ocean many feet below, gorging on seafood, perfect weather—typical details. Then I said how sweet my girlfriend’s daughter had been.

“Was she pretty?” he asked my oldest son, who smiled down at the floor and kept his counsel. For once.

You could gobble that girl up with a spoon. If only she had fit in my luggage.

Cecilias

Have you ever seen a sky filled with stars and a thunderstorm both? Tonight I sat out on the deck of this house that looks over the ocean, and I saw that. And I thought: that is the sky I want for my life. I want to see the pitch black ball of the storm and the clear sky behind it and the stars. I want to see the trees and the beach and the lights from houses and the expanse of no houses. I want it all.

I read Ann Patchett's The Patron Saint of Liars today. I have been reading the way someone who's motion sick keeps their eyes trained on the horizon to steady themselves. The minute I start to feel that sinking, that gravitational pull into sadness again, I open a book and start reading. At the bookstore this morning, I asked the two women behind the counter to recommend something, anything. They looked at me, so differently dressed than all the milling customers nearby, most of whom were wearing pink shorts patterned with lobsters or martini glasses. I stood there in my grubby black t-shirt and jeans, my hair wildly curling with the ocean's humidity, wearing glasses. They blinked at me. "I have a broken heart," I said, gesturing vaguely toward my chest. Without missing much of a beat: "Ok," said the older one. "I've got something."

And in that book, I found a character who reminded me of my boyfriend. Her name is Cecilia. (There are two Cecilias; this one is the namesake of the second.)

"When a person has left you as many times as Cecilia left me, you could see it coming from miles away. The first thought of going makes a sound as clear as somebody saying your name." 

I read that and laid the book down on my stomach. I was stretched out on the floor next to a bunk bed, keeping my younger son company as he fell asleep. The passage soothed me, spoke that sinking feeling, the dread that came over me again and again because I always knew I had a Cecilia on my hands. I'm forever choosing Cecilias. 

Now, sitting on this deck, I want to wave them all away, but I'm too worn out by their antics to move an inch. I'm just watching the storm slide off to the north.

You probably think this post is about you

Ask yourself: why are you reading these words, what is it you want from them?

A changing wind was sent from the south overnight, howling past the house. 

When I woke I expected a black sky, after that mournfulness. But it was clear.

This is a poem, then, in its sound, and it is what I was trying to tell you.

It is not the words as much as how they cause you to think, act, be.

Now choose how you will: but the words I sent went through you, are yours.

Nurse Betty

I woke up this morning to a persistent phrase of music—it was hopeful, determinedly so, and a little offbeat. I couldn't place it for over an hour. My children and I sat on the deck of the house we're renting, looking at the turquoise water of the Atlantic while we ate breakfast. "What's that song you keep humming?" my son asked me. I didn't know.

Then while I was in the outdoor shower it came to me: the song from the movie Nurse Betty. Within the first few days after my boyfriend left me, I watched that movie, wrapped in a blanket and stupid with pain.

It's interesting how the brain works at things, turns them over and over even as it seems to be walking forward, how it ruminates even when no process is apparent. Somewhere in my subconscious that song got recorded and carefully placed in the slot: Remember this. Remember that you identified with Betty's half-sleep, and the way she kept herself asleep in a pretend world, like a drug-induced coma, to keep from knowing what was wrong until she could stand it.

Fresh meat

 

I remember when someone—possibly my brother—got the first cordless phone in the family. “Talking to you from the deck,” he said when he called me—or wherever it was he was standing. He was outside. It seemed impossible.

One week without a laptop and that sensation of luck and freedom came back to me when I opened my new one. Oh little rectangle that cost so freaking much, you and I will go through a lot together, and I’ll use you in places beyond imagination.

Though right now the crappy couch in my family room is doing it for me. And speed? I could live three lives at once, at this rate.

What can endure

Coming out of this depression has been like waking from a dream, but in slow motion: varying stages of awareness present themselves to me--strings of images without real context at first, then memories, then periods of sleep, then layers falling away and back again, redraping themselves across my psyche. It's possible that none of this has been the right sort of content for a blog, but there you have it: the cat is out of the bag, and I'm writing about it.

My husband’s betrayal of our marriage, of me, left me reeling, dazed, and reaching out for something real. The life I had poured my heart into turned out to be a kind of mirage, and the love I had for my husband had been leaking out for years into the pretend universe, that I mistook for real, until I awoke one day to find that I had nearly bled out.

In my unsteady state I found someone who I loved, impossible as it seems, fearlessly.

But there were clues. When he said about my ex-husband’s affair, “You can’t help who you fall in love with,” I should have run like hell. Or at the very least, probed, “What do you mean? You mean if you’re married to someone it’s not a permanent decision? You mean the vows you take are only good for the good times when you’re “in love”? You mean that love isn’t a decision and a behavior – it’s just an unpredictable emotion that sweeps over a person and disencumbers them of their word and their family?”

“What a terrible ax to have hanging over your head for two years,” someone said to me the other day. Yes. It threw a very long shadow.

My sister sent me the lyrics to Southern Cross by Crosby Stills and Nash, and in doing so she was pointing out this man, this writer, who was saying he was sailing all around the world to find this woman/girl who believed that love can endure. Well, that's what I believed. I loved my ex-boyfriend, and I loved x-man. And it was that enduring love that broke my heart and my brain. It was the way I love, the passion and the commitment and the unconditional faith I had in that love, that undid me. That undoing--the fact of my ability to love that way--will also be my salvation.

Two weeks

Today I drive both of my kids to camp, where they’ll stay for five days. The weather is resplendent—perfect for opening day. A year ago when I dropped them at this same camp, it was the first time my youngest had been away from me for so long; of course it was only me who suffered. I couldn’t sleep for the first few nights, imagining him in his little cabin pining away in tears.

This time they’ll fold into the waiting scene seamlessly, and the counselors will smile at my reluctance to leave, and I’ll drive home and start getting ready for our vacation.

The day after they come home from camp, we leave for the island we go to every summer. Friends are joining us this time, including an ethereally beautiful 13-year old girl, who my children have never met, who will no doubt beguile my unsuspecting older son past all help and redemption. She loves to cook, which will enchant my youngest. My friend being with me will help, will let me keep working through my sadness, because she’s good at that. And she loves the island we’re going to.

(Because it must just be sadness and loneliness that infuses the world with such intense sensation for me right now. The effect is difficult to function within.) 

Before the summer ends (thank God) and the fall clears away this last horrible month, I get to go home for a little while.

A moment of silence please

My laptop, which has had several near-death drops in its past (no surprise considering the turbulence in my last few years), quietly died today for no particular reason. Based on how it died, I should be able to get the files off it—and that there’s a doubt doesn’t freak me out as it would have six months ago. If they’re gone, they’re gone. I’ll write more.

It means I have to buy a new laptop, which should fill me with dread as well. But I know I’ll figure something out.

It means I can’t be cuddling with the internet all night, which should also fill me with angst. But I think it’s for the best. I’ve got more important things to do (and, as you may have noticed, other avenues through which to post).

Just before my little dinosaur of an IBook drew its last breath, there was  a vicious thunderstorm over my house. I looked to the west, from which the weather typically marches, and it was sunny. So I jumped in my car and drove a little way until I saw a rainbow. I parked in the lot of baseball field to watch it solidify. Every color was distinct—the green was so brilliant. A woman was walking along the edge of the parking lot. I called to her and pointed at the sky. At first she seemed to think I was a weirdo; she ignored me. But finally she turned and looked at the rainbow, then back to smile at me. She hadn’t been able to see it because her umbrella was so big.

Such a flirt

The other night—or morning—at 4:30 I woke to the sound of someone walking up my stairs. Because it was not a logical sound for me to be hearing, what with both of my children ASLEEP, I stayed curled in bed for a minute trying to figure out what I was hearing. I wasn’t afraid; it wasn’t an aggressive or stealthy tread. Just someone walking up the stairs. Then I went across the hall and checked my sons’ bedroom: they were both under the covers.

I crawled back in my bed, figuring I had been dreaming.

That morning (actual morning, with sun shining and birds singing) the father of my children was coming to take over so I could go to my office. My younger child got up on his own and settled down to watch cartoons. I waited until the usual barely-enough-time moment, and then went upstairs to wake up my older son. I opened his shades and threw some clothes on his bed.
He didn’t budge.

“Hey, come on,” I said. “You have about 20 minutes before your father gets here.” I nudged his back with my knee.

Nothing. Not even a finger moved.

I looked at the devious lump of sin under his comforter.

“Are you telling me that you stayed up until 4:30 last night?”

“Ummmm. Maybe.”

“Are you nuts? What happened to ‘I’ll come up at midnight, Mom, I promise’?”

“Mmmm.”

“What were you doing? What were you thinking?”

“Mmmm. The time got away from me.”

He got dressed and stumbled downstairs, and I slapped a bowl of cereal in front of him. His head rolled around on his neck and his eyes were still closed.

“Welcome to sleep deprivation, big guy,” I said. He opened one sleepy eye at me and then grinned. And I was lost.

I had a horrible vision of marching him out of a holding cell in some jail, my hand steering him by his elbow. “Stop smiling,” I’ll be snarling. And he’ll pass some cute girl on the way out and give her that grin. And she’ll be lost too.

Fabulous

Everywhere I go, people say I look fabulous. Last night, today in the supermarket, talking to a neighbor. That’s the word: fabulous. My first instinct—which perhaps I had better continue to repress—is to bitch slap them and snap: get a grip, I’m SUFFERING here.

It does bring me up a little short; I guess I needed to lose 10 pounds.