Category Archives: d is for divorce

Jul
07
2014

And So It Goes

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tumblr_m7di7b27fc1rpjvnkThis is a funny story:

I was sitting at my kitchen island one night last week watching Jeopardy and eating dinner with my 21-year-old son when a commercial came on for the new Diane Keaton movie called “And So It Goes.”

Son (putting down pizza bagel, annoyed): What is with this woman?

Me (looking up from salad): Who? Diane Keaton? I love her. She’s, like, who I want to be. (“Something’s Gotta Give” happens to be my all-time favorite movie because who doesn’t want to live in that beach house and write a successful musical that throws the guy that broke your heart under the bus while getting it on with a much-younger fellow with a trip to Paris on the side?)

Son (picking bagel back up): She’s so annoying. She’s always playing some woman who finds love late in life.

Son (stopping mid-bite to look at me): Wait a minute.

 

Jul
02
2014

The Price of Freedom

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My ex-husband and I finally and completely called it quits on our marriage on July 4, 2009. Afterwards, even though he was the one who pushed me off the steep cliff of indecision, he sent me a text wishing me a “Happy Independence Day.” And while that was kind of a snarky thing to write, it was also kind of true.

I was finally free.

We had initially separated about seven months earlier and then agreed we would go to counseling together to try and find a way to make things work. But honestly, I don’t think I ever really thought that was going to happen. Neither of us ever got what we needed from the other.

And I keep going back to the notion of things we want versus things that we need. Because even though I initially wanted to stay married and keep our family intact at all costs, a divorce was the one thing I really needed.

I remember standing in the foyer of our house after he’d rushed over early that July 4 morning to confront me about something that had happened the night before. Something pretty stupid and not something you’d end your almost 18-year marriage over. But we were at the end stage where you didn’t really need much to snuff out whatever life was left in the relationship. It was like the bad fall that beats cancer to the punch.

As we stood there by the front door and he asked me if I was sure I wanted to end things, I remember thinking about how good his arms looked. He was wearing a sleeveless grey workout top and his biceps looked pretty great after months of living on his own during our separation and working out twice a day. It was hot out and he was kind of worked up from the heat and the situation and his tanned arms kind of glistened from the exertion of it all and I stood and admired how good he looked and thought how much I’d miss those biceps.

And then I looked into those beautiful blue eyes of his – the ones I looked into that rainy day all those years ago when we said “I do” and the ones I kissed, between and over his perfect brows countless times – and told him that, yes, our marriage was over.

And he walked out the door.

At the time, I didn’t even shed a tear. I was more terrified than sad about the rapid turn of events. It would take at least another year and countless hours on my therapist’s couch to really start feeling the sadness of what happened. To start burrowing a tunnel through the fortress I had built around my heart.

But over time, I’ve learned that the takeaway from my marriage is that being a part of a relationship shouldn’t cost you anything. Sure, you might have to barter and trade for certain things – you need to be willing to compromise – but you shouldn’t have to pony up, like, your dignity or self-respect just to be a part of a couple. That is a steep price to pay just so that you don’t have to be alone.

This revelation came in handy recently when I found myself seeing somebody who just couldn’t give me what I needed and my options were to go along with it but feel yucky about myself, or cut bait.

And because I can no longer compromise what I need out of a relationship or the way I have to be treated, I had to cool things off. We didn’t totally close the door, but we’re taking a break.

But I’m just not willing to sacrifice the freedom I’ve tasted to be a part of a couple. I’ve worked too hard trying to be true to who I am for that shizz.

I still miss the barbeques and fireworks we shared as a family and of course, those really nice biceps, but not how much it all cost me. I really want to be in a relationship – I know that now – but not at any price.

Freedom is too expensive to waste.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jun
30
2014

The Family Food Chain

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FoodChainI don’t know what it’s like at your house, but over here it’s Game of Fucking Thrones without all the nudity.

It’s like, everybody wants to rule the world, and I’m just waiting for my head to roll.

As such, everyone who lives here is embroiled in a non-stop power struggle in an effort to usurp control from whomever is perceived to be the one in power.

And, mostly, that top banana would be me.

Even the cat has been known to make a power grab or two in an attempt to inch her way further up the family food chain. She came in half dead off the streets four years ago and now is practically second-in-command, so she’s someone I’m definitely keeping my eye on. She’s always quick to jump on my bed if I get up and sits like some weird Buddha, her back pressed up against my pillow as she licks her midsection. When I return and discover this gross scene, she just looks up, mid-lick, and stares. It’s really quite scary.

The jostle for power kicked in about five years ago when my ex-husband, the undisputed alpha figure, moved out. When he lived here, there was a natural order to things. Like, he was at the top of the food chain, since it was generally accepted that– as the one earning a paycheck — this was his house, and the rest of us just lived here.

After he moved out, everybody made a play for the top. Even Rudy, truly the sweetest dog you’d ever want to meet, made no bones about the fact that he viewed me as his subordinate. He thought he was the boss of me, and to prove it he would just sit down in the middle of a run or poop on my family room rug.

In a house brimming with scheming animals and ruthless teenagers, I had to work really hard to establish myself as the top dog, so to speak. So I set boundaries, stopped putting up with disrespectful behavior and suspended cell phone service on a regular basis to get my point across, which was: I am the fucking boss. Nothing gets people attention like the inability to send texts.

And slowly, over time, it started to work.

One of the things that helped the balance of power shift in my direction was when I started working full time because for some reason, a paycheck connotes power around here. When I was a stay-at-home-mom for many years, everyone viewed me as some kind of freeloader, just looking for the easy way out – like getting to spend my days wiping butts and hanging out in supermarkets with a bunch of whiny toddlers — in exchange for some laundry folding. So when I started to be compensated for my services, like with money, the kids took note. Not that they loved it and weren’t jealous of the time my new job took away from all my sandwich making duties. But it somehow helped to elevate my worth.

Now that I’m back out of work, I think it’s helped them to appreciate the seemingly endless supply of Boars Head Chipotle Chicken in the refrigerator and homemade dinners on the table. They like having a ruler who is so good to her people.

But I’ve watched enough Game of Thrones to know how quickly the tides can turn. How you can be sitting pretty on the throne one minute and choking on poison the next. Like last week, I went into the bathroom while my little guy was eating his Cookie Crisp and returned to find Joe and Mika had been replaced by SpongeBob dancing around in spandex like Jane Fonda on my TV screen. Doesn’t my son know that the queen likes her Morning Joe and the remote is off limits before noon?

Or, when we sit outside on our deck to eat, it is a truth universally acknowledged that I sit in one of the two bouncy chairs but just the other day, daughter #2 sat right down in one of them, at my spot at the head of the table, and started to eat.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked her.

She looked up from her plate and said, “Eating a salad.”

“That’s my seat,” I said, trying to move her plate to a nearby seat and she looked at me like I was crazy.

“Okay, crazy,” she said, and moved to the next chair.

But the power struggle that vexes me most lately is the parking game being quietly played out each day by those of us who drive one of our three family cars. In my mind, there’s a parking hierarchy, with my car getting the coveted spot in the driveway closest to the house, my son’s car next to it and my daughter’s jalopy parked in the street. But it seems every time he returns home and finds my spot open, my son pulls right into it. He’s worse than the cat and makes me want to throw him in the dungeon.

I even ran out in my pajamas the other night and moved my car into its rightful spot when I noticed my son pull out of the driveway. He returned about 10 minutes later and was like, “Really?”

Maybe I’m like Cersai Lannister, always on the lookout for anyone trying to seize her power and willing to have her own brother killed if necessary (and we all know what she’s doing with her other – albeit infinitely hotter – brother).

But the difference between Cersai and me is that I don’t have to depend on my dad or some potential suitor to maintain control.

I already own the castle.

 

 

 

Jun
24
2014

Being True to Yourself

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This print sits on my desk and is referred to often as I try to make sense of things in my life.

One day, during the early days of my divorce – when I lost 10 pounds in a week subsisting on wine and carrot sticks – I went to get my brows waxed (and mustache if you must know) and spilled my tale of woe to the woman grooming my facial hair.

Aside from my therapist, my brow and hair coloring ladies serve as important sounding boards for my life. I’ve been going to them both for so long, they knew me when I was a brunette with babies instead of the blonde-of-a-certain-age I am today.

So after I filled her in on what was going on, I laid still on her table as she tweezed away and talked. She explained that I had just entered a dark tunnel of my life, with no light yet visible on the other end. She said I could see the light from the entrance growing dimmer, but had to just keep moving forward and have confidence that at some point, I would see the light again.

I can’t tell you how often I thought of that tunnel metaphor as I moved through the darkness of my divorce. How often I wondered if I’d ever see the light on the other side and then, finally and without warning, I could see a little pinprick of sunshine coming through the other end.

As I sat up on her table, the paper crinkling as I adjusted myself, my brow girl reached down and pulled a silver cuff bracelet off her wrist and said, “I want you to have this.”

It read: Be true to yourself.

I read the words etched into the metal and as I slipped the thin bracelet on, became emotional as I told her how special it was. It became a part of my armor that helped me get through my darkest days and reminded me why I had to go through the pain and sorrow of divorce. It reminded me of whom I needed to be.

I wore that bracelet religiously for about two years – I never took it off — and then, one day, I returned the favor. I was with another woman struggling with similar bullshit and slipped the bracelet off and gave it to her to wear. “Be true to yourself,” I told her.

Because I no longer needed to look down to be reassured by those words. I had read them so many times that they had become etched on my own heart. I didn’t need a piece of jewelry to remind me I needed to honor who I am.

Who is, of course, some chick with nice eyebrows and no mustache, at the very least.

 

 

 

Jun
20
2014

The Stages of Divorce

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Here’s the benefit of dating someone who’s not really ready to be dating: You get to see how far you’ve come since your own divorce.

I’ve been trying to keep it in perspective. I’ve been trying to remember what it was like when I was in the thick of ending my own marriage five years ago. When my days were filled with attorney letters, financial spreadsheets and venomous texts from my soon-to-be-ex.

How I had to let go of everything to learn how to fly.

Contrary to what I thought I knew about metamorphosis, I recently learned that a caterpillar doesn’t just go into its cocoon and sprout wings. Instead, it dissolves into some gooey matter and then reshapes itself into a butterfly. It literally dies and comes back to life.

Curious whether butterflies remembered life before wings, scientists subjected a group of caterpillars to a horrible odor and subsequent terrible noise. Eventually, the creatures freaked out every time they came into contact with the yucky stimuli. Then, after the caterpillars transformed into butterflies, they were subjected to the same noise and stink and had the same negative reactions.

Memory carried through the metamorphosis.

I think it’s safe to say that during the whole terrible divorce process, the period when your adrenaline is kicked into permanent overdrive and you eat, sleep and breathe heartache, you are reduced to a puddle of goo. You’ve crawled inside whatever your chrysalis is – like a giant glass of wine – and start to let go of the person you were just days before. Everything you’ve known for sure up to that point begins to dissolve.

But eventually, you do become more of a fully-formed human being who can talk and think about stuff other than divorce, much to everyone’s relief. You’ve sprouted your wings and can feel the wind from them as you flutter through your days.

In an effort to recall my own dark days, I dug back into the journals I kept around that time. It turns out that during most of 2009, I was a bit of a wreck.

Witness an entry on Oct. 1 of that year in which I recount my reaction to learning my husband had just returned from a 10-day trip to Italy with his girlfriend after we had split up just three months earlier. “My pain is searing,” I wrote. “My agony has no end.”

I then recount how, in what in retrospect could only be described as a psychotic break, I tried to smash the Murano heart necklace the pair had brought home as a gift for one of my daughters with a giant bottle of Bumble & Bumble hair conditioner. I pounded it repeatedly with the heel of the oversized plastic bottle like a crazy woman.

I had forgotten about banging the shit out of the necklace, a symbol of how seemingly easy it was for my husband to move on with his life. How easy I thought I was to replace.

Turns out, Murano glass is pretty fucking shatter proof and held up to the attack, which could also be a handy metaphor for my own seemingly-fragile heart. It, too, survived a pounding.

But I never would have remembered that incident if I hadn’t written about it in 2009. Turns out, my memory of that gooey stage of my life is pretty sketchy. I can recall big moments, like the day we stood in front of the judge in the seedy courtroom and ended our 20-year marriage. But the day-to-day occurrences, all that yucky stimuli that I reacted to during that tumultuous time, have started to fade from my memory.

I think it’s a matter of self-preservation.

But here’s something else I learned about metamorphosis: that memory also works in reverse. If you carefully peeled back the skin of one of those tiny caterpillars, you would find structures within of the future butterfly: Microscopic wings, antennae and legs.

And I think if you had peeled me open in 2009, you would have found — deep inside — pieces of the girl I was to become.

Wings and all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jun
12
2014

Crossing Over

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UnknownI guess I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love” when it came out in 2006, along with every other woman of a certain age living in the United States.

I was turning 40, had been married about 16 years and spent my days as a stay-at-home mom with four kids living in New Jersey.

So my life at that point could not have been less like Gilbert’s, who famously wrote her memoir about her year-long journey to Italy, India and Indonesia to recover from her divorce and subsequent meltdown.

But I dutifully read it because that’s what I do, read the books that everyone is talking about. I mean, I even read “Anna Karenina” when Oprah said we should all read Tolstoy because I can’t stand letting pop culture pass me by. Or not doing what Oprah says.

At the time, I remember liking the book. I certainly didn’t take issue with the author for her existential crisis and search for herself. I definitely wasn’t as judgmental as a woman in my book club who declared during our discussion of the book that Gilbert was selfish. “If you’re a mother, then you know what life is all about,” she explained.

That line of reasoning — believing your way is the one true way — is really the cause of much suffering in this world.

Anyway, it’s not that I took issue with Gilbert’s journey; I just got kinda bored during the whole “pray” part at the Indian ashram and was in a rush to get to the good stuff in Bali.

But then things began to change in my life. Or, more specifically, I finally started making some changes.

Coincidentally, the movie version of “Eat, Pray, Love” came out on my 44th birthday and I made an event out of it. My sister-in-law and I took our teenage daughters out to get Tarot card readings and dinner and then we sat way up close in the theater (the only place to sit) to see the movie. I mostly remember loving the trailer for the movie more than the movie, which featured Florence and the Machine’s “Dog Days Are Over,” which I would totally use in the movie soundtrack of my life.

Anyway, while I was on my own, albeit more domestic, journey at that point, Gilbert’s story was still just that. A story with a really great ending. I mean, she ends up with Javier Bardim, for fuck’s sake. Oh. Wait. That part was pretend.

But sometimes, you just can’t see things clearly while you’re in the midst of them. You need distance to get the right perspective on things.

So recently, I was looking for an audiobook to listen to while I’m out and about. I’m okay with sitting in silence, too, but sometimes I am in the mood to listen to something other than my blabbermouth inner voice.

After an extensive search through, like, every audiobook on iTunes, I came across “Eat, Pray, Love” and, having just watched one of Gilbert’s Ted Talks, decided she would be a pleasant person to spend 13 hours listening to and downloaded the book.

Okay, I need you to stop reading this right now and go and download the book, too, so you can be as obsessed as I am with Liz Gilbert. I can’t tell you how much I love her and want to hang out with her.

And I don’t know if that it’s because I’ve done a bit of my own soul searching/navel gazing over the last few years and can relate more to Gilbert’s journey – I’ve now been known to chant — or it’s just that I love hearing her read to me, but I thoroughly relished listening to it. Even the ashram part.

Gilbert’s voice is so warm and full of personality. It’s like she can’t wait to tell you what happens next in her story. I especially loved hearing her speak Italian, describing how the sandwich maker called her “bella” each day and how Italians are masters of “bel far niente” (the beauty of doing nothing).

I listened while walking up a tree-lined path on a sunny spring afternoon as she ate pistachio gelato for breakfast in Rome. I knelt in the dirt and cut back the woody stems of the hydrangeas in my front yard, as Gilbert struggled with and then embrace her meditation practice. And I drove down the New York State Thruway under a clear blue sky while she described just how thoroughly she was adored and loved by her Brazilian lover in Bali. She may have even used the words “unpeeled, revealed, unfurled and hurled” to describe the situation.

I pulled into my driveway yesterday afternoon after a trip to the orthodontist and some errands, and sat in the car as my daughter brought in the Trader Joe’s bags and listened as Gilbert read the final lines of her book. She described how she and her lover carefully got out of the little fishing boat they’d been sitting in, moored off the coast of a remote Balinese island, and as they did, she turned to him and said in Italian, “Attraversiamo.”

Let’s cross over.

And it killed me. It had me so teary and swooning, I had to go back and listen to her read those last lines three more times, just sitting there in my car alone pressing the rewind button.

Because while in Italian, “attraversiamo” is used for useful tasks, like crossing the street, it can also be applied to larger concepts, like moving from one stage of your life to the next.

And I think what resonated for me is that I have, indeed, crossed over. I have moved to a place where I no longer define myself by my divorce. I stand in a place where it’s no longer strange to go places by myself, like dinners and vacations. And most importantly, I have sailed to a place where I know I am ready to open my heart to somebody new. I’m no longer afraid of taking that risk.

Because, as Gilbert so eloquently writes:

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”

I’ve recently spent some time with someone who’s in the thick of a divorce and it’s been a reminder of how far I’ve come. It’s shown me what a big mountain of grief that puppy was to climb.

I have been on a journey, too, even though it’s pretty much happened right here in suburban New Jersey. I’ve come so far personally — traveled so far from the girl I used to be and closer to the one I intend to be — that my imaginary life passport should be filled with stamps by now.

All that’s missing is the Brazilian lover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jun
09
2014

Chakras and Quinoa and Chants, Oh My!

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photo-26When I’m not driving long distances or pissing my oldest kid off by writing about him, one of the things I’ve been busy doing lately is contemplating my chakras.

Stay with me.

Now, the seven chakras are like your energy sources – spinning wheels – that line up along the center of your body, beginning at your root chakra at the base of your spine and running up to your crown at the top of your head. Each point along the way is like a pocket of energy connected to different aspects of your nature. So, like, the throat chakra is tied to your ability to communicate and your heart chakra with your ability to love.

When all of your chakras are open, the energy flows freely through you and allows you to connect with everyone and everything around you. But when a chakra is blocked, it can really mess you up good. Like, prevent you from speaking your truth or lead to loneliness and alienation.

I know, really flaky and woo-woo but I still love the whole idea that the only thing standing in the way of me and happiness is a couple of blocked chakras.

I was going through my divorce five years ago when I first learned about the whole chakra thing. I’d discovered yoga around the same time and spent most of my days flowing through Vinyasa sequences, and striking the more rigid 26 poses of Bikram, while trying to find myself on a mat in a 100-plus degree studio. I hoped to regain the power I’d let go of years before by channeling fierce energy in my warrior pose — staring down the length of my arm with a narrowed gaze — and I bowed in supplication during child’s pose while trying to let go of all the anger and disappointment I’d harbored for years. More than once, I found myself in tears at the end of the class lying flat on my mat in shavasana, my palms facing up to the sky, willing myself to let go.

The daily practice brought a calm and a focus to my life that had been missing for 40 years. I left my mat each day imbued with a sense of grace as I returned to my messy divorce, confused and angry children and empty side of the bed each night. I had come to yoga as a new way to exercise and discovered it was my spirit that grew stronger than my core through my practice. That bitch was like rock hard when I was done with it.

And then, I kind of moved on, mostly because I started working full time and didn’t have the window in my schedule required for the 90-minute hot yoga class and hygienically-necessary shower right after. But I kind of felt, well, fixed. Like I had done my job, gotten my shit together, and it was time to move on.

So when I signed up in January for a writing retreat called “Writing Through the Chakras,” which would use yoga to help open chakras and tap into blocked memories with a writer I really liked, I was all about the destination and not the journey. I looked forward to gleaning some inspiration for my own writing practice and maybe dipping into my memory reserves by tapping into my chakras, but the yoga part was the least interesting piece to me. I hadn’t taken a class in years.

Wasn’t I surprised, then, when I discovered this weekend during my stay at Kripalu – a yoga institution nestled in the Berkshires that bills itself as “largest and most established retreat center for yoga, health, and holistic living in North America” – how much I had missed being on the mat.

But it wasn’t really the actual poses I’d missed – although there is nothing better than a good Warrior 2 to make you feel like a badass – as much as the whole yoga vibe. Be the best person you can be. Love everybody. Let shit go. And chant. Christ, I love a good chant. I love the way the room fills with voices belting out “Om” and the vibration left inside me when the silence comes in and fills up the space. It makes me feel so alive.

So I spent the weekend chanting, eating beautifully made food like curried cauliflower and baba ghanoush (that probably left me smelling like an ashram) and walking the path of a hillside labyrinth surrounded by the bright purple spires of lupine meadow flowers and sweet white daisies. I wrote in my journal, took 6:30 a.m. yoga classes and had my aura photo taken (it’s all pink and green, like my iPhone case). Oh, and I even made a friend.

I had arrived Friday afternoon kind of cranky and resisting the whole kumbaya-ness of the place –opting for a nap instead of a yoga class that first day. But by Sunday afternoon when it was time to leave, I wished I had more time to take the noon dance class. And I hate to dance.

And in between I sat with about 99 other people in Kripalu’s big hall to listen to writer Dani Shapiro and yogi Stephen Cope intertwine the practices of writing, yoga and meditation. We went through rounds of poses and chants to open specific chakras and then wrote in our notebooks using prompts like “Write a letter to your younger self,” and “Tell about a time you thought you were broken.”

The retreat came on the heels of a new round of searching I’ve been on since I lost my job in January. I’d been feeling blocked – professionally, creatively and romantically – and I’d kind of been exploring ways to fix that.

So I’d already been kind of working on the chakra thing and by the end of the weekend I just felt open to everything. The group formed a circle as the last exercise of the class and we held hands and went around the room as each of us gave one word that best expressed how we felt. “Ready,” I said when my turn came.

The drive home to New Jersey Sunday afternoon was quick and easy and I passed it enjoying the rolling hills of Massachusetts out my car window and listening to Liz Gilbert read her “Eat, Pray, Love.”

Bliss.

I finally pulled off the Garden State Parkway and in the few miles left of the trip to my house, found myself stuck behind a black Ford Explorer whose driver was either lost or confused as to the proper rules of the road. When the vehicle suddenly stopped short in front of me and quickly made a left hand turn, I slammed on the brakes and screamed, “Are you a fucking idiot?”

This particularly vile sentiment out of the same mouth that had been all “namaste” and “om shanti” just hours before. Seems like I might have a chakra or two that still needs to be pried open.

Which is a great reminder that there are no quick fixes. It’s all a work in progress. Keeping your chakras open and not being an asshole is a lifetime’s work.

It’s all practice, practice, practice.

 

Jun
05
2014

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

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The Black Lagoon redux.

The Black Lagoon redux.

When I am dead, I would like the following engraved on my headstone: “She got what she wanted.”

And while you might think that that is a really awesome thing, getting what one wants, I’ve learned over the last 40-blah-blah years that actually getting what you want is not all it’s cracked up to be.

I read a quote recently about women never really wanting what they actually need — and that might be a giant blanket statement — but it seems to be one of the major themes of my life.

Witness the swimming pool in my backyard.

When we bought the house about a dozen years ago, it was everything I ever wanted: a traditional colonial in a nice neighborhood with four bedrooms and pool out back.

Who wouldn’t be happy in that set up?

But it turns out, having all the trappings of a happy life does not guarantee actual happiness. No, no it does not. That my friends has to come from within, which took me a couple of years and like, 800 hours of therapy, to figure out.

In the meantime, I still have this pain in the ass pool to deal with. For some reason, the monster has always been my problem. Over the years, I’ve had to figure out the complexities of vacuuming, maintaining chemical levels and scooping the inevitable bunny or mole that finds its way into the water but, alas, not its way out each summer.

And, because the pool was already about 20 years old when we moved in, there’s always something that needs to be replaced each season and it always costs $1,500. It’s weird.

There’s so much else that still needs to be done to keep it up, like fixing the concrete deck that’s steadily sinking near the deep end and replacing the robotic cleaner that meanders listlessly along the bottom of the pool like some drunken sailor, pushing the debris around with its tail. The money and energy required to keep the thing going can be overwhelming.

When I called a few weeks ago to schedule this year’s opening with my current pool service – and I’m convinced that they are all thieves — the woman on the other end was like, “Well, we’re pretty booked up so you won’t have it open for Memorial Day,” all condescending like she was simultaneously crushing my dreams and kind of happy about it.

She didn’t know whom she was dealing with. “Fine by me,” I told her happily. “Perfect, in fact.”

I was in no hurry to unleash the monster.

The best day of the year for me – well, aside from my birthday in August and the day after Christmas – is the day my pool is closed for the season. It’s just one less thing to clean and take care of. In fact, the pool is often the one thing that tends to slip through the cracks each summer. But unlike neglecting, say, a child, no one’s going to start making regular visits to make sure I’m taking care of my pool. No one’s going to arrest me if my pool walls turn green.

I finally had the pool opened last weekend and much to my surprise, it didn’t look half bad. Historically, the pool dudes pull aside the green cover and the water underneath seriously looks like it just got back from a stint at the Black Lagoon. You really expect to see some scaly dude with gills pulling himself up from its murky depths. But this year, the water was pretty clear although the bottom covered in some mysterious type of silt that just seems to absorb its way through the pool’s cover each winter.

That was on Saturday and as of this writing – some five days later – that crap is still clinging to the bottom of the pool. It’s hard to motivate to get out there and go through the whole rigmarole necessary to vacuum, but I don’t know how many more days I can stand the disappointment on my 11-year-old’s face when he bursts through the door from school asking if he could go for a swim.

I mean, what’s the point of having a pool?

I’ll admit, when it finally comes together, the pool has proven to be quite fun. The girls and I have spent hours over the years soaking in the steamy water of the spa at night, surrounded by candles and watching the bats swoop low over the pool’s dark water. And the kids have gone through hundreds of plastic bottle caps playing “dibble” (in which they pitch it into the pool and then have to find it) and seeing who can make it across the pool the fastest in one breath.

I know I sound like a brat — boo hoo me and my pool – but I’ve just figured out that more/bigger/better isn’t what makes for a happy life. Just a more complicated one. 

In the future, I’m going to focus on nabbing the things I need instead of the stuff I want, or think I want. I mean, the idea is certainly not revolutionary — Mick Jagger figured it out about 100 years ago. But still. Some of us are just a little slower than others to figure out what’s really good for them.

Just ask the guy whom I work out with who was constantly baffled that a woman of fairly reasonable intelligence could not figure out that eating a box of Wheat Thins in bed each night was not the path to weight loss and good health.

I’ve finally cut all that extracurricular nibbling out of my diet — as he had been suggesting — and lost some weight recently and he was all, “It’s about time.”

“What can I tell you?” I said to him. “I’m a late bloomer.”

Maybe it’s not too late to start making smarter choices — from what I eat to whom I love — in my life so I’ll be able to edit that tombstone to read: “She got what she needed.”

 

 

 

 

Apr
28
2014

The Day I Went South

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400px-Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On_Poster.svgThe following is based on actual events. 

This. Totally. Fucking. Happened. 

Let me begin by issuing a disclaimer: I have never purported here to be particularly smart. And while I often seem to by trying to prove quite the opposite in the stories I share on my blog, hopefully I come off – at the very least – as someone who knows her left from her right. Her up from her down. Her north from her south.

Until now.

Okay, coming on the heels of my Jamaican getaway, followed by my brush with poisoning last week, I had to make the long drive south to the very southwestern, middle-of-nowhere part of Virginia to visit my college kids for parents weekend.

I hate that fucking drive. I’ve now officially done the eight-hour, one-way leg 22 times in four years and most of the driving. One time my son pitched in. One time my daughter pitched in. And one time my ex-husband actually did a majority of the drive. Other than that, I have driven the five-state journey myself and I’d say about 75 percent of the time it’s through a torrential downpour and always seems to include one giant traffic snarl that narrows the highway down to one lane for miles.

The return trip yesterday for me and my 16-year-old daughter started on a promising note, under clear blue skies and with our tummies full of Cracker Barrel biscuits and gravy. We filled up our gas tank and headed north on I-81 a little after 11 a.m. towards New Jersey.

A few hours into the drive and finally breaking free of the stop-and-go traffic that clogged up the Virginia portion of the trip, we stopped to refill the tank and use the restroom shortly after crossing the border into West Virginia .

And here’s where things get fucked up, fast.

The first person I’d like to blame for events taking a turn for the worse is Kelly Ripa. In all this time blogging, I have failed to mention my obsession with the Live host, which started with her hairdo and then spread to just about everything about her. Sure, she’s kinda skinny but she says things like this:

Amen, sister.

Amen, sister.

And she also told Cher that she grew up watching the Sonny & Cher show and wanting to be a part of their family (I TOTALLY wanted to be Chastity Bono), so we’re, like, practically the same person. Sadly, the closest I’ve come to being Kelly is finding a great stylist to mimic her hair. I’ve yet to lose the 40 extra pounds.

Anyway, I follow the show on Instagram (which is pathetic since it’s one of, like, 10 people or whatever I follow and Lena Dunham and Oprah are two of the others), and there was a video around Easter of Kelly with a giant basket of Goldfish products. Apparently Pepperidge Farm sent her the array of fish in anticipation of the end of Lent and her 40-day abstinence from the snack she told Shape magazine she was “addicted to.” And it planted the seed.

So, I left the teenager outside filling the gas tank and ran inside to use the restroom and passed a beautiful display of Goldfish products. Seriously, every flavor. And it reminded me of Kelly and even though I am not really eating carbohydrate-y snacks anymore, I reasoned, “Well, Kelly does.”

And she weighs, like, 98 pounds.

I ran back outside to tell my daughter and grab my wallet, and she asked, “Do they have Original?” (her total favorite) and I nodded and she pulled the keys out of the ignition, unsnapped her seat belt and announced, “I’m coming in.”

We giddily made our purchase, got back in the car and back on the highway where we ripped open the bag and ate handfuls of the saltine-like crackers. I could imagine the pounds just starting to fall off me with every handful I shoved into my mouth, letting the salty sides melt on my tongue a bit and trying to split them in half with my teeth. We restarted the audiobook we’d been listening to during the ride down and were probably seven hours into the story at that point.

And now we’ve come to the second person I’d like to blame for the bad decision-making that occurred in my car yesterday afternoon: the novelist Rainbow Rowell.

Let me give you some background: my daughter and I listened to Rainbow’s young adult novel, Eleanor & Park, during one of our college visits a few months ago. I’d already read the book but figured it was the one audiobook I could get my hard fast non-reader (“I hate books.”) to listen to with me and I was more than happy to reconnect with Rainbow’s teenage characters whom she breathes this incredible life into and creates the most lovely romantic moments over mix tapes and comic books.

I found this quote from Eleanor & Park on pureimaginationblog.com.

I found this quote from Eleanor & Park on pureimaginationblog.com.

She references Star Wars, Twilight and the Gilmour Girls and uses the F-word. She really makes me want to write.

So for this trip, I got the go ahead from my daughter to download another one of Rainbow’s novels, Fangirl, and as the audio version began on the way down and the narrator said the author’s name, I got excited.

I turned to my daughter and said, “Promise me you’ll name one of your daughters Rainbow.”

“We talked about this, Amy,” she barked. She tends to call me by my first name when she’s annoyed with me. Apparently, I’d already tried to get her to promise the same thing during that earlier trip. But I forget everything. “I already told you I’m not naming any of my kids Rainbow,” she finished.

Whatev. Luckily I have three more kids to work on.

We drove on and since the traffic had let up significantly, started to make really good time, flying along the interstate and thoroughly engrossed in the story and our Goldfish.

“Let’s guess how much time we have left,” I said, and my daughter paused the book and we both estimated our ETA. I guessed four hours and she said three hours, 15 minutes. She checked the map app on her iPhone and looked up, confused.

“It says five hours and 25 minutes,” she said. “I think I need to refresh the app.”

And here is the third person I’d like to blame for the no-good, very bad thing that happened: My daughter, who, obviously forgetting whom she was dealing with, went along with me when I told her she could turn off the annoying guidance hours earlier. “I know where I’m going,” I told her.

We continued to hurtle down the highway with my cruise control set at 79, listening to our story, our hands digging deeper into the Goldfish bag, until I noticed one of those green signs along the side of the highway that lets you know how far away the next few major cities were, and saw that “Roanoke” was one of the spots listed.

“HOLY SHIT, WE’RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!” I screamed, my whole body breaking out in hot sweat. It was like my seat heater had been jacked up to full blast.

“WHAT???” my daughter shrieked, and we started screaming and cackling and banging our fists on the dashboard. We both needed to be slapped.

“That’s why our drive time to get home kept getting longer!” I yelled at her, searching for the next exit to turn ourselves around. “Why didn’t you notice that on your phone?”

“No way, Amy,” she spit. “Don’t you put that on me.”

And she’s right, I guess. It wasn’t her or Kelly Ripa or Rainbow Rowell who stupidly drove our vehicle onto I-81 south instead of north an hour back in West Virginia. It was totally me.

“I wondered why we were back in Virginia,” my daughter said later (um, red flag number 8?).

Needless to say, we had plenty of time to finish listening to Fangirl (adorable) and spent the rest of the almost 10-hour drive listening to the Frozen soundtrack (twice and with very dramatic interpretations of “Let it Go”) and dancing our hearts out to “Single Ladies” and Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas.”

We are quite the car dancers.

Every once in a while during our race home under darkening skies, one of us would just start laughing hysterically about what had happened and the other would whoop or hit something. Overall, if I had to make that mistake with anyone, I’m glad it was my 16-year-old. We finish each other’s sandwiches (Frozen/Arrested Development reference).

“Please don’t tell anyone about this,” I begged when we first discovered we’d been driving in the wrong direction for an hour and she instinctively picked up her phone to start texting all her friends.

“You better write about this, Amy,” she said smiling, putting down the phone. “It would be your one blog post I’d actually read.”

And so, I figured, it was the least I could do.

You’re welcome, girl.

 

 

 

 

 

Apr
13
2014

Postcard From Paris

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Spring time in Paris, courtesy of my 16-year-old.

Springtime in Paris, courtesy of my 16-year-old daughter.

I didn’t leave the United States until I was 23 and out of college. Up until then, the extent of my air travel consisted of a handful of trips to Florida and a visit to St. Louis to stay with my aunt and her family the summer my parents separated when I turned 12.

As the oldest of six kids, before two more would join us after my mom got remarried, vacations didn’t really happen much for me as a kid. We did drive from New Jersey to Orlando one year – my parents, five siblings, a grandfather and me, and I was tasked with sitting in the way back of our station wagon with an 18-month-old struggling with diarrhea (sister, you know who you are). And for about five summers I joined my mom’s parents on their annual journey to western Maine, with the occasional pit stop on Cape Cod to stay with a great uncle.

But when I finally travelled to Europe with a girlfriend for two weeks in the spring of 1990 — a super-low-budget affair funded using my VISA card and cash advances — I got bit by the travel bug. We rode the train from Paris to Rome to Florence to Nice and back to Paris and frankly didn’t know what the hell we were doing. We did, however, stuff in as much as we could – including the Louvre, St. Peter’s, a day-trip to Cannes and a makeout session with some Italian guys – before heading home.

Unbeknownst to me then, I’d be married six months later and a mom less than two years after that. International travel was pushed to the back burner while I learned to navigate the foreign soil of breastfeeding, night terrors and potty training for another dozen years.

So when I had the opportunity to join my then-husband for his annual trip to London around 2006, I jumped at the chance even though farming out four kids and their assorted schedules – basketball games and birthday parties – for a long weekend was akin to brokering a Mid-East peace deal.

But it was worth it. We had tons of fun – we were always good at having fun together – and got to hang out with an assortment of people he worked with in shipping from all over the world, and I returned with him two more times before we split up.

In the perfect world, we would have introduced our kids to international travel as they got older but, alas, the marriage went the way of the pound and with two college tuitions coupled with an addiction to Amazon Prime, I couldn’t exactly swing taking four kids to Europe on my own.

Which is why I encourage them — constantly – to to jump on any opportunity that comes their way to get out of the United States and see the world themselves.

My oldest daughter went with her high school to Italy over spring break of her junior year. She traveled to Rome and Florence and came home with an appreciation for wine and Nutella and artsy photos she took of the Coliseum.

I’ve been trying to push her to spend a semester abroad now that she’s in college, but she just drags her feet and her older brother says he doesn’t want to miss anything going on at school – a rocking tailgate or fraternity party – and that Europe could wait.

What they are both failing to understand is that if they don’t go somewhere now, they’ll never again have the opportunity to be immersed in another culture for an extended period of time and able to travel from there, on their parents’ dime.

They’ll be stuck jacking up their credit card balances to cram as much as they can in 14 days and staying in sketchy pensiones, unable to afford anything but like the cattle car on the overnight Eurorail from Paris to Rome. Believe me, I know.

My 16-year-old daughter took off for Paris Saturday afternoon for a 10-day trip with her high school. I literally scraped together the money – which I really didn’t have any business spending – for her to join many of her good friends tour the City of Light and discover that there’s a whole world outside the good ol’ US of A.

We really spent a lot of time getting her ready for the trip — making sure she had appropriate rain gear, walking shoes and a fashionable Old Navy ensemble – unlike when her sister flew to Europe three years ago. Back then, I don’t think I was involved in the clothes she packed and couldn’t tell you if she even had an umbrella, and I think that it’s a sign of how much things have changed around here since then.

Three years ago I still had four kids living at home and had started working full-time and I don’t think I could even see straight, much less worry about how many pairs of jeans my daughter had packed for 10 days in Italy.

I didn’t even know what time to pick her back up from the high school the day they returned . I actually had to call another family whose son was on the trip, people I didn’t really know well, to find out and you should have heard the tone in the dad’s voice when I had to lay my clueless cards on the table. He was surprised, at best. He had obviously never spent any time trying to operate as a disorganized, working, single mother.

But to my older daughter’s credit, she didn’t really need me. Later, I learned that some of the kids had called their families while in Italy, but my girl left her iPhone at home and never really felt the need to check in. I probably don’t blame her.

Flash forward three years, one job and two fewer kids later, and I had a lot of time to focus on my younger daughter’s trip. And, unlike her sister, she brought her phone along and I’ve already gotten filled in on the adventure so far through iMessages and Snapchat. There’s Wi-Fi in her hotel, so I’ve gotten a picture of the view from the rooftop and one of her pretending to lick the Eiffel Tower in the distance.

I asked her to sum up the experience so far in three words and she wrote back: “Foreign. Fabulous. Frightening.”

“What’s so scary?” I asked.

“It’s just so different here,” she texted. “And I can already tell they hate Americans.”

I reminded her to keep smiling and to try to use the little French she knew – lots of pleases and thank yous – as much as possible and she’d be okay.

“I’m trying, it’s just hard,” she wrote. “But I’m loving it.”

As the kids started to board the bus yesterday that would take them to the airport, I grabbed my daughter and pulled her aside for one last hug. I looked into her big blue eyes and tried to impart important final pieces of wisdom: Don’t talk to strangers. Sleep on the plane. Take notes on everything interesting you see and hear. Be careful because the alcohol there is a lot stronger than it is here. We laughed and she gave me one more big squeeze and I could feel my throat tighten and the tears start to sting my eyes.

“Stop,” she said and gave me a kiss and got on the bus with a wave.

As the bus pulled out of the high school parking lot, past the group of moms and dads gathered to wave the kids off, I had to wipe the tears leaking past my sunglasses.

Because as thrilled that I was that she was on the cusp of this great and possibly life-changing adventure, I hated to see her go.

It scared the shit out of me.

But, like figuring out how to navigate the Paris Metro or an overnight layover in the Milan train station – or, hey, even a divorce – these challenges have made for a richer, fuller life.

Just add Nutella.