Labyrinth

There's only one way in and out of a labyrinth. Like life, I guess you could say. Unlike a maze, you can't get lost going this way and that, looking for a way out. There isn't any ambiguity. But as you follow the path around and around, there's a lot of switching directions, and just when you think you're close to the exit, you end of somewhere else entirely, and there's still quite a bit of walking to do.

I've been at a T'ai Chi Chih retreat in New Mexico, and it felt completely luxurious to give myself over to the practice for a few days. I ignored my email and forgot about Facebook. And I walked the labyrinth shown above every day.

I also walked to the Rio Grande with my friend L, and that made me remember the trip cross country the summer of 2012 when my daughter M and I drove my mom out here to live with me. We wrote down all the names of the rivers we crossed. We crossed the Platte River over and over again which made it seem a bit like a labyrinth.

And in walking the labyrinth at the retreat center, I thought of the labyrinth in the meditation garden at one of the hospitals where Dan stayed before he died. I walked through it over and over one evening. I think I had an inkling then of where things were leading for Dan. I just thought it would take a lot longer to get there.

It's brutally hot here in southern California. The drought is intensifying, and very little lush green was visible from the sky. Flying into Burbank the mountains looked brown and sharp like the spines of desiccated pre-historic animals.

My next destination as I wander around taking a break from caring for my mom will not be at all brown and spiny. Stay tuned. I will ramble on again from there.

This Morning (again)

Calm and gray. The mirror of water outside the window just beginning to ripple. We sit on the couch (Dan's daughter, his sister and I) asking ourselves why he is hanging on. There has been no change in Dan's condition in the last 24 hours. The nurse asks us if we have had "the talk" with him. We have. Go, we've said. Separately, we've said it. And together. His daughter and I stood on either side of him  yesterday afternoon and told him we love loved each other. I will take care of Dusty, I said. I will take care of Denise, she said.We've delivered messages from others. Held the phone to his ear for a number of one-sided conversations. Read him the emails that keep filtering in from long-ago school friends. Filled the room with music from his own iPod.

In my experience, the nurse says, it's the women who hang on. Men, when they can't use power tools, are done, she says. The women want those grand babies.

We don't know what Dan wants. To say something, Dusty says. He would say the most perfect wonderful thing, we are certain, if he could talk.

I am done with questioning. Instead, I sit at the foot of his bed. I'm watching. I'm waiting. With every email, phone call, Facebook message, every old photo, every family story, the heart of this man I love grows larger even as the shell of his body grows smaller. My house hums with the fan that blows across his fevered body, the sound of his oxygen machine merging with the sound of my mother's oxygen machine, the rustle of newspaper pages being turned, the click of laptop keys. My house hums with life.

The trick is in knowing when to let it all go
hanging on til you're sick to your soul
saying yes and forever and never and no 
They're just spots on the dice as they roll

---lyrics from the chorus of a song Dan wrote long before I knew him.

The Blob

The blob is my day. My week. My year. The blob is me.

I suffer from blob-itis, a condition of acute shapelessness that struck me when my thirty-year marriage ended at pretty much the same moment that my well-feathered nest launched its last fledgling. After decades of running, tending, and attending the clock wound down and the calendar emptied out. Oh, there was plenty to do, but nothing as regular as seeing a kid off to school or putting breakfast on the table or waiting for the sound of the garage door opening. The band was still playing, but no one was keeping time. I made appointments and forgot them even though I wrote them down because the days felt interchangeable. The things I did seemed  non-essential--things that someone else could do just as well or even better.

I'm still struggling with trying to construct a regular schedule. In this fantasy of attacking the blob, I harbor secret desires to meet the same friend every Sunday for tea and yet another friend on Mondays for Margaritas. The first Thursday of the month? Well, that must be my writer's group. The last Tuesday? Knitting circle. Sunday? Well, what should I make for the potluck? None of these regular engagements are real, but in the calendar of my dreams, they are inscribed in big block letters and I relish their approach calendar page after calendar page. And of course, the largest portion of my day would be hugely important. To someone or something.

I sometimes wonder if I might have been a good nun or a soldier or a school teacher. Instead my days dissolve without the sounding of a single bell to mark their passing. The fact of the matter is that everyone I know is busier than I am. They have husbands and jobs and meetings and kids or grandkids or elderly parents that live nearby. They have people who are counting on them to do whatever it is that they do.

But the battle of the blob continues. Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays, I will walk dogs for the San Gabriel Humane Society--dogs kenneled for days at a time--like the ones I walked this past weekend.




On Thursdays I hope to do some kind of something (notice how this is already crumbling?) at the DWC while I wait to see if they have room in their schedule for a writing workshop. One weekend a month I will drive 400 miles to see my son and his family. One weekend a month I will fly to Baltimore to see my mother. Quick, if you want to schedule a regular anything, now's the time. I'm gonna harness my life into some sort of shape.

photo credit: vintageadbrowser.com

What I Hear at Night When I am Alone

I live very near the 110 Freeway, but there's an incredible lay of the land here that emanates silence. I hear nothing most nights when I sit quietly and listen. If my dogs cough from their allergies, I give them a pill and it's back to silence. They clatter in and out of their dog door from time to time, but I hear no traffic, no hissing of automatic sprinklers, no helicopters, no barking, no mating racoons, no sirens, no screeching tires. It doesn't seem right. I like city life. The countryside frightens me with its vast silence. This is the quietest place I've ever lived in the L.A. area. I long for the sound of another person breathing.

photo credit: www.laist.com

I have a life

I have a life--a writing life, and it goes like this:
Alarm. 5:45 a.m.
Feed cats, walk dogs, clean up after dogs, give out pet meds, feed dogs. Then I take my yogurt and coffee to my desk and write. Another alarm goes off at 8:15. On Monday, Wednesday and Fridays I go exercise. After exercise I write some more. Except Wednesdays when I have a volunteer job at 1:00. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I just write. Right now I am working on my novel with the goal of finishing it by July. This is the 2nd draft. It's better than the first draft. My dogs sit by me while I work.  

 Layla in the bed. Lola under the desk.

Noonish I eat--usually at my desk. Then I shift gears. I read or send stuff out or look for places to send stuff out and read about the business of writing.
Another alarm. 4:30. I walk the dogs. More meds. I have a snack. Mondays through Thursdays I exercise. (There's a very fat person waiting to burst out of me & and I fight her) Then I come home and shower--or not. By now it's 8:15. I might have a certain lovely man spending the night......in which case I'm likely to ignore the morning alarm and stay in bed a while longer.
It's a nice life.

Stressing: Here's Why

The joint assets remain undivided.

My mother is in pain and I can actually kind of feel it in my body.

I haven't filed taxes yet for '08 because my accountant wanted to wait until there was a final financial settlement on the divorce. The extension deadline approaches.

My dear Aunt Mille is in pain and I might be feeling that, too.

My health insurance application is in some bureaucratic limbo and my coverage through Mr. Ex's law firm runs out Sept. 1.

My thesis is due in November.

My flying anxiety came back on my last flight and I have to fly again Sunday.

Mr. Ex has met the magic number we set way back when & now I have to pay my own attorney fees.

I really don't like being in L.A. but the man I love lives here.

I just don't understand why Mr. Ex is seeking all this bitterness.

Sounds Like...#2

Submissive. Submission.

Lots of weird & not-so-good things are happening in my life right now.  I have no control over any of them.  I must submit. (Submit: 1a: to yield governance or authority)

Meanwhile I am writing & submitting (Submit: 2b: to make available, to offer) my work, hoping to get published again soon.  Writing is how I am breathing now.  Fingers clicking against keys equals oxygen drawn into lungs.

Submissive: submitting to others, yeilding

Submission: the act of submitting something (as for consideration, inspection or comment)

La Meme

I've been tagged by an excellent blogger, Elizabeth Aquino at http://elizabethaquino.blogspot.com  Her blog a moon worn as if it had been a shell is nothing short of remarkable.

This is one of those question things like they do on Facebook.  I'm supposed to answer them and then tag more people who will do the same etc.  I like the title of this one--La Meme is French and translates to "the same."  We are all more alike than we imagine, I think.  Plus, I guess La Meme  is also a brand of absinthe, which sounds really good to me right now.

Here goes:

What are your current obsessions?

The man I'm dating but very rarely see these days. The indelible mark that seems to have been left on me by my divorce.

Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?

White silk pajamas

Last thing you bought?

2 wallets--for my mom and for her twin sister for mother's day

What are you listening to?

Birds singing & one of my dogs breathing deeply in her sleep

Favourite kid's film

Lady and the Tramp

Favourite Holiday Spots

southern Greece, anywhere in France, Rome, New York City,Cambria on the central coast of California

What are you reading right now?

I just finished Pope Brock's American Gothic and am about to start a book that mysteriously ended up in my stack--I think because someone (I can't remember who) said I had to read it.  It's called The Living End by Stanley Elkin.

Four words to describe me: 

moody, struggling, grateful,sad

Guilty pleasure?

kahlua in a glass of milk at bedtime

Who or what can make you laugh until you are weak?

So many things...I once could not get up out of my seat after a performance of Noises Off that I saw on Broadway.

First Spring thing?

I planted a lemon tree and a kumquat tree on my patio.

Planning to travel next?

Minnesota, Iowa & Greece--all in the month of May!

What do you wish for most?

Other than world peace, etc? My one true love.

Best thing you ate and drank recently?

A made to order tofu bowl from Whole Foods

When & with whom did you last eat dinner by candlelight?

3 days ago with my daughter and the elusive man I might still be dating.

Favourite ever film?

Cassablanca .

Care to share some wisdom?

Asking for help is very difficult, but sometimes necessary...and very, very...helpful.

If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?

I would never ever think of my ex-husband again.

What's your motivation for starting another day?

My dogs have to be walked or they'll eat my couch and tip over the dining room chairs.

Rules of la meme:
Respond and rework. Answer questions on your own blog. Replace one question. Add one question. Tag 8 people (I'm tagging only four)

I tag:

Barry at http://www.schwumpdumps.blogspot.com

Julie at http://www.julesarose.blogspot.com/

http://tovadarling.blogspot.com/

 Musings of the Lame

My Pretend Life

When my so-called real life ended about two years ago, I began trying to re-imagine myself.  I considered everything. Answering those work abroad ads, joining the Peace Corps (I have an application in progress and yes they do want people my age), moving back to my hometown, or at least back to the midwest where I'd be closer to family if I felt myself slipping off the deep end (yes, the deep, deep end was an option I considered, too.) I thought about putting my stuff in storage and just moving around from this to that or getting into some kind of communal living situation.

But now I've done something that is none of those things.  I bought a second condo.  My daughter and her friends will live there and cover the expenses and I have an air-bed there tucked into the corner of the strangely big-as-a-bedroom laundry room.  An air-bed with white sheets and a white comforter and two feather pillows waiting for me in a room with plaster cracked like a roadmap so that I can lie there and study the wall and wonder where I am going.

I've made up a pretend life for myself in St. Paul.  Where I practice yoga. The cooking class I've registered for.  Where I buy yarn and the bar where I never miss a happy hour and the bookstore where I work part-time.  There's a good smelling  salon where I get the perfect haircut and my neighbors have me over for dinner every week.  I like my imaginary life.

And I like my new real life, too.

Reincarnation Check

In the aftermath of his big fat Indian wedding (which occurred in September) I am trying hard to be a new person. The new layers of me include: 3 writers' residencies, 2 published personal essays, 57, 000 words of a new memoir manuscript, 2 short stories, progress 1/2 way through an MFA program, & 2 blogs. So I hope that means I am shedding the skin of attorney's wife and becoming a writer.

I also hope to become an increasingly better daughter, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, & friend & colleague.

New projects for becoming: mother-in-law for a second time, more socially/politically involved citizen. Incredibly thin and attractive 57-year-old hottie.  Comedian.

Almost Gone

After today, only four more days here.  I'm tired of hunting for moose.  Tired of deciding if the glass is half empty or half full.  Forget the glass.  Let's just drink out of the bottle and marvel at the wine slipping through its shiny narrow neck.

Backwards

There are two trails through the woods at this place where I'm staying in Virginia. This morning I walked them in the opposite direction and was surprised to find how different things looked. Yesterday I completely missed the family of giant toadstools that look like an illustration from a children's fairy tale.  I didn't see that two towering evergreens were uprooted and only remained standing because they were leaning against other trees.  The expertise of the steps carved out of the clay soil was more evident climbing up them than it had been going down.  I can only imagine how different my life would look to me now if I could walk backwards through it and see it from the other other side.

Court(ing)

I spent three hours in family court today. The end product was temporary spousal support. I don't like the word "temporary," because the marriage is permanently over. He's married to someone else.  Eventually though, we will reach an agreement on permanent support and I will have that for the rest of my life--which is...temporary. 

Everything, it seems to me, is temporary.  And, if you have a good memory, everything is permanent, too.  Temporary.  Permanent.  It's hard to separate them.  

I never imagined my marriage as temporary.  I never believed that my husband's leaving me would be permanent. But as "they" say, "Life goes on."  Temporarily, that is.

I'm off to have coffee this afternoon with bachelor #1.  It's an exercise, more than anything else. He's semi-retired--a businessman. In the wings, there is also an architect, an attorney, and an investment broker.  I may have coffee with all of them eventually, but the dating websites have been un-bookmarked.  No more profiles, no more guided questions, no more "must haves" and "can't stands."   Meanwhile, I'll just try to look people in the eye when life presents an encounter.  What we all want, I think, is connection.  Can you hear me now?  How about now?