Endings And Beginnings

Life is really just a series of endings and beginnings, isn't it?  When our lives begin, wet and raw, our parents' lives are ending - or life as they knew it.  Although it's hard to imagine the 'before', there is a before and after in their lives, in that moment.  And there is for each of us, many times over.  We grow in stages, defined by where we are, who we love, what happens to us.  If you could shear your history with a chainsaw like a tree, you would see the rings of those things, those people, those decisions, those heartbreaks.

In the history of my life, this time will leave a number of rings, perhaps a few sizable knots, as well.  It is a time of upheaval, a time of many endings and beginnings, a time of coming to terms with that realty of life, and of learning to see the beauty in even the pain.

This week I told the Professor that I can't continue spending time with him.  I told him I am grateful for the time we have shared, that we get along, that we're on good terms, but that I am ready to move away from everything.  I didn't say all that I think or feel, or everything I would like to have said (in love, anger and hurt) but I said what needed to be said.  I said what I needed to say with respect for both of us, with dignity and kindness.  I said enough, and I let the rest go - with sorrow and relief.  It is an ending for me (if not for him), but it looks to another beginning.  For my Aunt J:  it is a broken hallelujah - but without doubt,  it is a hallelujah.  And there will be many more of those.

I also learned this week that my sweet, brilliant best friend of almost 14 years is no longer a puppy.  I adopted Chase when she was eight weeks old.  I was only 21, and so Chase has been with me for more than one stage of my life.  I was living in my parents' basement when I got her, without their permission or knowledge (the getting Chase part, not the living in their basement part), and if I recall, they were less than pleased.  Five years later, they were equally thrilled to invite Chase to live with them while I finished law school, so I wouldn't have to give her away.  Notwithstanding her middle-of-the-night guarding of the house (by way of hours long barking sessions) and the carpet of white hair with which she blanketed their front porch, Chase found a place deep in their hearts.  A few years ago, after a Christmas visit with Chase, my mom called me an hour or so after we left the house.  We were driving through the deep North Carolina mountains.  She asked if we could turn around, bring Chase back and leave her there to live.

But Chase is no longer the puppy who would chase a ball for hours, panting to the point you thought she'd drop right there, and so you hid the ball and forced her to rest.  She limps with arthritis and waits patiently for me to lift her onto the bed to snuggle me at night, where once she bounded.  Recently, she wheezes when she's excited or hot. This week, for a few moments, it was clear she struggled to breathe, pulling air in sharply and deeply, sounding like an angry goose.  The vet says she has laryngeal paralysis.  The muscles of her larynx no longer open and close properly.  They need to open so she can breathe, and close so she can eat and drink without aspirating food or water. The only treatment is surgery.  The Professor and I agreed long ago that we wouldn't put Chase through surgery at her age and with her arthritis, and the vet concurs.  The palliative treatment is cool air (I'm anticipating outrageous energy bills) and relaxation to keep her breathing normal.  If she has an episode of respiratory distress, she will have to go to the emergency vet for sedation and oxygen.  We won't let her go through that multiple times.  It would be selfish.  All that matters now is that she is comfortable and happy.  The rest of it is my problem to deal with, not hers.

Good news: the vet wrote us a scrip for Valium.
Bad news: unfortunately, it's not for me.

There are also beginnings happening this week.  A multitude of beginnings.  My sweet "baby" cousin Timmy and his effervescent fiance, Ashley, are getting married.  This will not be your greet-the-relatives-and-endure-it wedding.  This is a weekend of celebrating the soul-mate, life-changing, can't-live-without-it kind of love we all desperately want, admit it or not.  It's also a weekend of celebrating the newest addition to the family - Tim's nephew, my brand-new gorgeous second (I think?) cousin, Julian.  And, from my point of view, (and perhaps most importantly), it's a weekend of celebrating the Walker women - who have reared siblings, children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, and, most importantly, friends, among their family.  I love those women. They are the women that novels and songs are written about.  The women who make moments happen (and without whom moments do not exist).  They are the women who make life, who make you stop in your tracks and hold your breath, because of their strength and their bonds and their beauty.

Endings wind down, and beginnings burst forth.  And that is painful. But it is also beautiful.  And the Walker women - they know it in their bones.  And so they love, and they live, and they cry, and they go on. And then they begin again.

And I am one of them.

Look Kids, Big Ben!!

If the scenery starts looking a little too familiar, you might be going in circles.

The Professor and I have been spending a lot of time together for two people who are getting divorced.  It started shortly after the new year.  First, he came by every week to grab some things he needed from the house.  Then he asked me to help him with some minor surgery.  He was snowed in here for a few days.  March rolled around, and with it the first anniversary of his father’s death.  It was a tough time for him.  I wanted to be supportive (and, frankly, I was afraid of the consequences of acting otherwise), and so I made myself, and the house and doggies, available.  I told my therapist that, after March, I was sure he’d stop wanting to come around.  I was wrong.  As the weather improved, the back yard became an appealing hangout, I got a job and the Professor started coming over more frequently, sometimes to help out with the dogs, sometimes just to hang out.  Lately, there hasn’t been a weekend we’ve both been in town that we haven’t spent a day together.  After a recent week in Germany, the Professor called from a cab at the airport to ask if he could come over.  

You might ask, as many people have, why I would want to spend time with the person who left me, who stood in the doorway and said our marriage was a mistake he could fix.  The answer is ironically simple:  it's complicated.  Isn’t everything?

I have enjoyed spending time with the Professor.  Strangely, I'm sure even he would agree that we always had fun together -- when we weren't fighting, that is.  And I’m glad we’re on good terms.  I'm proud of myself for that, because it's required a lot of self-control on my part -- which is something I needed to practice.  I'm proud to be learning that skill.  And I’m glad that the end of our relationship hasn't been a sudden rending, leaving a ragged abyss between what was and what is, but instead a slow withdrawal.  For me, at least.  It's the way I wanted to do things, if they had to be done.

We go to lunch, cook dinner, talk about work, law, research, food, the doggies, and life in general.  Sometimes we even talk about the divorce.  But we never talk about anything too real.  No emotions.  There is no validation of anything, at least not for me.  No acknowledgement of what he’s done in leaving me, of what it’s done to me, of what it’s been like.  No suggestion that we still love each other.  (Or, rather, that he still loves me.  I may not always like, or even think very much of, the Professor, but my love for him nonetheless abides.)  In that sense, it leaves me feeling kind of empty.  And so it's also been very difficult – an ongoing emotional upheaval of sorts.  It’s been confusing, particularly because I haven't felt like I was allowed to ask any pointed questions, raise any serious issues, be real. As a result, there are many things I simply don't know or understand.  And there are many things I feel or think that just go unsaid and unacknowledged.  I've accepted that.  I had no choice.  But I cannot continue to do so.  It's just not working for me anymore.

For months, my wise mind (as opposed to my emotional mind) has been asking me how long this will go on.  How long it possibly can go on.  I have felt (or known?) that it could not go on forever, that at some point the Professor and I would have to stop moving forward on close parallel paths, and move apart.  More recently, I have felt frustrated and somewhat stagnated by the state of our 'relationship' -- although I have been reluctant to draw any conclusions, make any decisions, or take any action to change things.  I haven't been ready, and I haven't been sure.  It is a sad, and lonely, and scary thing to decide.  

But I have finally come to the conclusion (or had the realization) that I'm not going anywhere.  I've moved as far forward as I can on this particular path.  I've journeyed a long way -- but now I'm seeing familiar landmarks.  I've traveled over these mountains and through these valleys in years (and months) past, and I'm ready for new scenery.  I'm also tired, worn out, exhausted by the familiar.  I am completely spent.  And the gas stations along the way that used to fill my tank seem to have gone out of business.    

So I'm consulting my map and heading off in a new direction.  I'm afraid of flat tires, endless stretches of road with no one to talk to, radio stations that don't come in, and losing my way.  But I'm hopeful about what new wonders I might discover -- both along the way and wherever I end up.

C'est La Vie

It's my new catch phrase.

Car breaks down:  that's life.

Dog pees on the floor:  that's life.

Husband leaves you:  that's life.

I know it's cliche, but it's cliche for a reason (another cliche, I'm on a roll).  Somehow, though, when the French say it, it sounds so much more hopeful.  Not, 'that's life' (resigned with a frown), but 'that's the life' with a shrug and a smirk.  What can you do about the car, the dog, your husband?  Nothing - c'est la vie.  You can shrug and smirk, maybe even laugh, and then get on with it.  Notwithstanding the cliche, it sort of puts things in perspective, because that is life.  And life is hard, and life is good, and most of all, life just keeps on going -- despite the hiccups, the speedbumps, the twenty car pileups that leave you mangled.  

Years ago (before I had the experience, the scars, required to understand her wisdom), my mother told me something that (for me) resonates with the French version of the cliche:  you can never control what another person does, you can only control how you respond.  Although she was far more eloquent, she said there is a moment between what happens to you, and what you do about it -- and that in that moment lies your control of your life.

I have found (as have many daughters before me) that my mother was right.  In small moments (second by second) and in longer moments (month by month), there is a time after what happens but before you respond, and in that moment you have a choice.  And in that moment, in that choice (be it seconds or months), you will find the only control you have.  

That's it.  What happens before that moment - that's life.  But what happens after, c'est la vie:  it's entirely up to you.

Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid

There are a lot of things I don't say -- on this blog or otherwise.  In the last nine months, I have learned the art of saying nothing.  Letting the moment pass.  I have learned that sometimes silence makes the point better than words.  Or sometimes there's not a point to be made, although accepting that takes patience and time.  I have learned that if I sit back, hold my breath and wait, the moment passes.  Things often work themselves out or become clearer -- or even irrelevant. Circumstances change, my emotions evolve.

Maybe I just come to terms with the way things are.  Deal with it.  Move on.  Or maybe I don't.  It's not too late to say what I wanted to say, only now I can say it thoughtfully, not emotionally.  I am learning, as my therapist would say, to listen to my wise mind instead of my emotional mind.  You might say I am growing up.

This lesson has been important for me, perhaps necessary and too long in coming.  It doesn't fundamentally change me.  It doesn't change my emotions, my hurts, my needs.  It doesn't make those things any less important or any less valid.  But it alters my perspective.  I have tended to say what I feel when I feel it, without really thinking it through. I have regretted many things I've said emotionally in my life. In the last nine months, I have not once regretted saying nothing.  To the contrary.

It's also been a tough lesson -- one that required suffering deep emotional pain in silence, and one that required (and still requires) looking back on certain things I've said and done with a critical and honest eye.  That means coming to terms with having acted like a child, with having been unnecessarily nasty and cruel to those I love most. (And, in that regard, I am not referring only to the Professor, but also to my dear parents, siblings and friends.)  It means acknowledging that I have often let a flare of intense emotion dictate my words and actions in shameful ways.

I will almost certainly always be emotional, sensitive and reactive. Those are aspects of my temperament that I probably cannot change.  And I don't know that I would change those things, anyway, because they are also what make me empathetic, open and loving -- and connect me to those I love, and those I don't even know, in a way that feels right, and real, and necessary.  But I can continue to practice patience with my emotions, to step back from them, to be aware that they will pass.

If nothing else, it's a good thing to come of this last difficult year. And, for that, I am grateful and blessed.  

Truth

There has never been a moment that didn't pass.   Just wait.

Inconceivable

There is an uncomfortable dichotomy in having been left by your husband.  On the one hand, you accept it.  More than that, you begin to agree that he is not for you, not a good fit or perhaps even not good enough.  Maybe he was never a good fit - or maybe he was (or could have been if he'd wanted to be), and the idea that he was not is merely an inevitable part of your progression, regardless of the previous reality.  The fact of his having left you makes that old reality a part of the past that is simply unknown and unknowable.

What you do know, however, is that his having left says something about him - and even if you can't quite figure out what that something is, you know it's something that alters everything else.  And even if he came to you, professed his love and asked for redemption, it wouldn't change what you now know, however elusive and ambiguous that knowledge is.  And (although you still love him, despite that confused and uncertain knowledge) you're not sure you'd want to change it, anyway.

On the other hand, it remains inconceivable.  Your husband left you.  Your husband.  Your best friend.  The loss is ineffable.

~~~

The alarm forces me from restless sleep.  It's five-thirty.  I lift Chase from the bed, follow the dogs downstairs, let them out, start the coffee.  The morning routine.  Wrapped in a winter coat, I sip coffee outside.  I look at the patio, the firepit, and remember laying the stones last April - me on bruised knees, the Professor with gloved hands, handing me the pavers, calculating which to put where, leveling the firepit.  We rented a 100lb compactor, heaved it from the car, wrestled it to the back yard and filled it with water.  It had a geyser of a leak.  We wrestled it back to the car and went back for an encore.

~~~

For two soft-handed intellectuals, the patio is a masterpiece.  It survived last winter - which is more than I can say for the Professor and me.  Kneeling on those stones, sweating in the Chicago spring (a feat in itself), I never imagined the patio would outlast our marriage.

Inconceivable.  But true nonetheless.

Red Light, Green Light

When I was six years old, my mom's youngest sister spent the summer with us in South Carolina.  Aunt J was 21, and she waited tables at a Chinese restaurant in town.  The front doors were a large red circle.  Red circle doors - those are the things you remember when you're six.

I can close my eyes and see the pjs I wore that summer - white with orange ribbing on the cuffs, a basket of peaches and "Just Peachy" on the shirt.  That summer Aunt J started calling me "Peaches" and it stuck.  I was just a kid, and so was she.

I remember riding in the car with Aunt J, telling her not to stop because I could make the light turn green.  Aunt J inched forward until the car nearly bucked and stalled, and I willed that light to turn green.  And when it did I shrieked in a peal of six year old laughter.  Despite knowing better, Aunt J laughed with me.  Time and again I willed those lights to turn green.  She never let me in on the secret that, of course, the light would always, eventually, turn green.  

Close to thirty years later Aunt J is my dear, beloved friend.  Her sisters and her children have my heart, and have been my haven.  And she still helps me make red lights turn green. 

It's impossible to know what will change someone in an unexpected and profound way.  But if you can be someone's round red doors or light that turns green at the very last, crucial moment - it just might stick.  

Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

Tomorrow I'll finish my sixth full week at my new law firm. It's hard to believe it's only been six weeks. It seems like I've been there forever, and I mean that in a good way.

After only six weeks, it's impossible to say whether this is my forever-job, but it's the right job for me right now. I've been working long hours (by my standards, anyway), but the partners I've been lucky enough to work with are genuine and decent. I haven't been yelled at for binding documents with a clip instead of a staple. (Yes, that happened to me.) I haven't been told I committed malpractice three times in the last five minutes. (It happened to someone I know.) I haven't told someone to stop screaming at me, and walked out of their office and back to mine, only to be followed while they yelled the whole way. (Yes, that really happened. And, yes, they told me I was unprofessional. I begged to differ. To put it nicely.)

Instead, I've gotten so much positive feedback that I'm literally glowing. I'm radioactive. And I know it probably doesn't mean much in the long run because, let's face it, I just haven't been there long enough to screw anything up yet. And I will screw something up - many somethings. But for right now, in this moment, this job is precisely what I needed.

In the last six weeks, I've been slightly altered. Just a nudge here and there. And, somehow, that changes everything.

I feel valuable and competent and appreciated. I feel relieved and vindicated - because in the last six weeks, I have learned that I can take care of myself. I have learned that I will not only be okay, but better than that. I have what it takes, come hell or high water.

When I was considering this job offer, I emailed my mom and told her that if I turned it down, my only reason was fear. Almost right away, my sister emailed me. She said she was thinking of my job offers, and she wanted to tell me that I shouldn't turn this one down just because I was afraid. Assuming Mom had forwarded my email, I called her. It turned out that she hadn't seen my email to Mom. She just felt it was something she needed to say.

Perhaps that isn't a good reason to accept a job, but it was mine nonetheless. Call it God, call it kismet, call it coincidence. It was what I needed to hear, and I'm so glad I did.

If this job doesn't work out, there will be another job. And if there isn't another job, I can work for myself. 

I'm not afraid anymore.

A Brief History Of The World

In the beginning, sadness choked out the living.  


Later, there was life in the midst of sadness.  


Now there's sadness in the midst of life.


I didn't write that.  I wish I had, because it's beautiful, and my true history, my past and my present.  It is painful poetry.


Last weekend, at a bridal shower for my sweet cousin-to-be, I sat at a table surrounded cousins, aunts and my grandmother's sister.  We celebrated the love that brought us all together, the new family being formed, the extension of our family.  We celebrated one another, and ourselves.  I was struck with awareness of the pain, the deaths, the illness, the loss that those women had experienced, that many are going through at this very moment.  And yet we reveled in the joy of one another, in the joy -- in the painful poetry -- of our lives.  

It Happens

The office was quiet today.  Too much work to do, but quiet nonetheless. I spent most of my day doing research on the computer.  After eight or nine hours spent staring at pixels, I looked up and outside, noticed how the sky and lake melted together in a gray haze.  And I realized that my husband left me.

I started crying.  

It happens.