Ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaaaanges...

19 years of crushing.  5 years of electronic contact.  5 years together.  This fellow I thought I'd spend the rest of my days with.  This fellow who has a huge mooshy heart...  who served his country for 20 years...  who marked every special ocassion or date large or small with no less than a sentimental card and, more often, with extravagant, extraordinarily thoughtful gifts...  who believed in truth and honesty...  who got misty eyed at the sweetest things...  this fellow I had my first experience with and who I thought I'd have my last experience with...

This fellow changed...  career issues, life issues, money issues...  depression...  the mooshy heart became angry and bitter...  the 20 years of service became the albatross around his neck...  special ocassions became things marked by distant humorous cards at times and a few times were forgotten all together...  this fellow I had my first experience with and would clearly not have my last experience with...

The grass looked greener to him, I think...  through counseling I'd 'learned to fight'...  which simply means I learned not to be a screamer and learned how to listen...  how to try to disengage if things got heated...  how to keep nastiness in check since I've never learned how to put the toothpaste back in the tube...  but this fellow hadn't learned how to fight...  he hadn't learned not to use his career command voice...  he hadn't learned how to listen or disengage or, the worst, how to keep the nastiness in check...  and the more heated things became, the nastier it would get...  and the grass looked greener to him...

I used to say "How can you say such bile-laden, hateful, nasty things to someone you say you love?"  I never got an answer, really...  not that I guess I expected one...  and I kept right at it...  through the nastiness that even eventually turned to my 'fighting method'...  "Just because yoooou've learned how to fight...", "Just because yoooou know what to say in a fight to wiiiin...".  Um.  No.  It's not a game and it's SO totally not about winning.  Which, I suppose, was our failure to rise to the same level and, alternately, if I'm honest with myself, is probably why I never should have stayed so long at the dance; he wanted to win, I wanted to be better together.

Better together...  I always thought eventually, with enough support and love from me, he would reach a point that he was ready to do something about all the problems and issues he felt were holding him back...  and when that day came, I'd stand behind him and support him and work like a mule to help him...  what I didn't understand was that a gargantuan wad of insecurity clogged his every thought that there was no way up, over or around that mountain...  he was smart and funny and quick...  he thought I was smarter and funnier and quicker...  I won't even go into other things he felt inferior in general about...  and it didn't matter how many times or how loudly I proclaimed that he was funny and quick and smart, it wasn't enough.  That was MY failing; not understanding that I could never support him enough because he doubted himself so deeply.

Better apart...  we broke up the first time and my universe was shattered...  I cried for weeks, spent weekends on the couch sobbing...  couldn't eat, couldn't sleep...  every love song made me sad and angry and sent me weeping...  I felt so lonely I ached and I thought I might never recover...  I'd NEVER had this reaction (let's remember 3 marriages here!)...  for about 5 months I'd see him once a week or so, get a text every other day or so...  and that's what worked for him.  Yes, I was desperately unhappy with the way things were before the breakup, but it was the death of a dream and that's damned hard to bear...  so even though I wasn't crazy about the way it was going after the breakup, at least his presence made it easier to get through.

I mourned and dealt and then I started dating.  It didn't go well.  After a couple of weeks he 'got wind' and went screeching howler monkey, making it painfully and loudly clear that he didn't want any other dogs pissing on his tree and then labeling me as all but a 'cheating whore'...  so I went back...  he must love me to react like that, right?  Only things were no different.  I saw him once or twice a week, text every day or so...  and then two and a half months later I went on an annual girls trip over the weekend of my birthday.

The night we returned, the day after my birthday, I hadn't seen him in a week.  I'd texted him to tell him I was bringing his favorite - fresh scallops and lump crab - back and we could have dinner.  "Breaking Bad comes on at 8:30 and I can't miss that." was the reply.  Um.  ::blinkblink::  Whaaaaa'?  ::ahem::  Ok.  A few more sporadic texts arranged we'd have dinner together when I got home.  The day after my birthday, I hadn't seen him in a week.  He wasn't living at my place any more but he still had a key.  I decided that he was just fooling me.  When I came up the street his truck would really be parked in front of my place and he'd be inside with a card, maybe some flowers, candles...  guess what?  It wasn't.  No truck, apartment dark.  Hmmh.  The day after my birthday, I hadn't seen him in a week.  "I knoooow, he's parked around the corner and is inside waiting for me to get in and he'll jump out and grab me and hug me and wish me happy birthday and tell me how happy he is to see me like he did in the beginning..."...  guess what?  Nope.  I carried all my bags up, dropped them in the floor and proceeded to crawl directly into bed and weep.  I gave it a week, didn't say much of anything about being so utterly crushed.  He was having a hard time after all and maybe he meant to make it up to me the following weekend with a quiet dinner at home and some time together.  Long about Thursday that week, I texted to ask if we had plans.  No plans, why would we have plans?  I don't know, maybe since I didn't see you last weekend, or when I got back the day after my birthday?  "I need you to just bear with me, I'm having a hard time at work."

My turn.  Screeching howler monkey.  "I'm DONE with bearing!  I've borne with you for FIVE F*CKING YEARS!  I've borne with you through EVERYthing!  I've borne and borne and borne until I'm SICK of f*cking BEARING!  I'm DONE bearing!"  No response.  For a week, no response.  I call the next Saturday.  Maybe we should just break up for good, he says.  Yup.  Maybe we should.  Better apart.  Than we ever were together because you just wouldn't try to help yourself.

A MONTH later, I find out he apparently thought the grass was greener in another pasture and had been hiding it.  That he'd hooked up with an old neighborhood friend a few weeks before my birthday when he broke it off the second time.  That he wasn't truthful and honest.  That he'd've let things go on for who knows how long.  That this misty eyed fellow with the huge, mooshy heart was just as damaged and black inside as anyone I've known.  Two weeks after that, this fellow I used to know asks if he can bring 'her' to my/our church.  I broke inside then.  It was all gone. 

Ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaaaanges... 

It's been nine months...  I've healed, I've moved on in my mind and in my heart...  and I've tried to do a little introspection...  I know from my counseling no one can do anything I don't let them do...  why the hell did I let him do that to me for four and a half years too long...?  The death of the dream is the only answer I have.  If you've been crazy about someone since you were 15, it's a dream.  And when it comes true, who the hell wants to let go of that? 

He sent me a messsage the other day...  "You spoiled me with knowing how to fight...".  Saaa-WEET!  Seems maybe the grass wasn't any greener and maybe he should've quit worrying about winning and concentrated on being better together.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaaaanges... 

I love him and wish him every happiness and good thing...  the best of all possible things in the best of all possible worlds...  and with my changes, I realize I not only want to, but have let go.

All I Need To Know, I Learned In Kindergarten

Bullshit.

All I need to know I did NOT learn in kindergarten. Yes. I learned to say please and thank you and you're welcome. I learned to share and to take turns and to "do unto others" as I wanted them to do unto me. I learned colors and shapes and numbers and that naptime was a great time to play "Wild Wild West" and be rescued by James West, played by my crush, James Tesh.

I did NOT, however, learn that sometimes I would love people and they just wouldn't love me back, that sometimes people are crappy for no apparent reason and there's not a damned thing I can do about it, or that I'd come to love adult beverages despite their horrid taste and that eventually there would be many of the things I didn't learn that would leave me craving it.

I didn't learn that the day I first heard my childrens' heartbeats on the tinny monitor in the doctor's office I would weep with the utter joy of it and I damned sure didn't learn that to love my children unconditionally would at times be the greatest happiness and at times the hardest trial of my life. I didn't learn about the value of friends and/or lovers who know your history and love you anyway, that gray hairs grow in the DAMNDEST places, that cooking can actually be therapeutic and enjoyable, that one day I'd quit buying wash & wear and learn to love linen, that my brother would die at 17 or my best friend at 34 and that I, by turns, would feel like I also wanted to die in dealing with the tragedy of their losses.

I didn't learn I'd have to put on my big girl panties when the going gets rough or that I'd smile and eat despite how bad the meal is that I've been served with love. I didn't learn that I would understand what it meant to hand my whole heart to someone, and I damned sure didn't learn that person would have the power to bring me to my knees by rejecting it.

I didn't learn that music would speak to me on multiple levels, that music would indeed be a soundtrack of my life, nor that music and lyrics could and would move me to tears. I didn't learn that a flaming bag of dogshit on someones doorstep who did unto me what I wouldn't do unto them would make me feel better, and I didn't learn that I would have the capacity to love so many people or that my love would be returned by just as many. I didn't learn that I would have puppies and kitties who would be like children to me, that they would comfort and love me boundlessly, or that I could lose them as easily as human family and mourn them as deeply.

I didn't learn that my joys would be so high or that my lows would be so bottomless or that I would be able to persevere, regardless. I didn't learn how limitless the human soul can be in its capacity to forgive nor how many times in a lifetime mine would be called on to do so. I didn't learn that there are evil people in the world whose transgressions far exceed human ability to comprehend, nor that there are victims of evil whose innocence I would cry for.

I didn't learn that I would come to believe so deeply in "truth, justice and the American way" or that I'd come to love fabulous hand-bags and runway shoes to distraction.

Kindergarten taught me a lot of important things that carried through in life, but it didn't teach me all I needed to know...

And it certainly didn't teach me I'd still be learning...

"Happy Noo Year to Yoose from Edwin Newman, NBC Noose"

(the ending of Newman's doggerel poem that reviewed each year's events when he worked on The Today Show...)

The news that Edwin Newman died August 13 was reported today.  A small part of my childhood died when I heard.

When I was very young, my grandparents were a huge part of my life.  It was the early 70's, my mother and I lived in Greensboro, my grandparents in Purcelleville, Virginia.  Though my mother says it was only for a week or two at a time during the summer, in my memory I was with my grandparents every summer, all summer long, and there is no distinction between years.

My family life was, at best, highly disfunctional from the start and my grandparents were the ties that held my world together.  Nearly every good memory from my childhood is tied to my grandparents and sometimes I wonder if my lack of a particularly significant recall of life with my mother then was/is a defense mechanism and, therefore, the reason the summers of my memory have no beginning or end.  Regardless, they are memories I hold the most dear. 

I would wake each morning to the smell of coffee percolating, the sound of my Gramma in the kitchen getting things ready for my Baba to eat breakfast before leaving for work, and Baba just down the short hall using the electric razor and preparing to start his work day.  I would lay there and listen until I was ready to get up or until my Gramma called me, whichever came first.

Stumping down to the kitchen, I'd pull out the tall, red and white 50's metal stool with folding step that sat under the edge of the sun-room side of the bar that divided the kitchen area, pull it as close to my Baba's stool as I could, and climb up.  Gramma had the percolated coffee ready to pour, the small saccharine bottle set out next to my Baba's coffee cup with a couple of the small tablets layed out, the AM/FM radio tuned to AM news, small juice glasses of ice cold O.J. sitting at our places, and whatever she'd prepared for breakfast ready to serve.  I almost always wanted cereal; Rice or Corn Chex or Rice Crispies since my mother would only allow me Puffed Rice or Cheerios...  which to a 5+ year old may as well have been cow dung.  The added bonus was that Gramma, unlike my mother, would allow me to not only put sugar on my cereal, but copious, heaping spoonfuls of sugar...  and oooh how I loved that white and silver wheat patterned sugar bowl and the pretty scalloped spoon that gave me such a roguish feeling to use!

Breakfast done, Baba would get his briefcase, do his Mr. Rogers change into his suit-coat, leave for the school board offices in Leesburg, 20 minutes away, and Gramma and I would begin preparation for whatever she planned for us to do that day.  I'd help clear breakfast dishes then head upstairs to wash my face, comb my hair, brush my teeth and change from my nightgown into the shorts and summer top 'uniform' I lived in with when I was with them, then hustle back down the carpet runnered wood steps and off to start the day. 

First thing each day, we would go to the garden and pick whatever green beans, cabbage, bibb lettuce, onions, radishes, etc., were ready for harvesting, over to the strawberry patch and/or the peach tree to do the same, then head off to the Purcelleville post office, P. O. Box 405, to gather mail from the little brass and glass box Gramma would let me twist and turn the little combination lock to open. 

After that, the day might hold a trip to the cool, dark stacks of what was even then the ancient Purcelleville Library (which stands nearly unchanged today), a stop at the recycle tractor trailer parked to receive newspaper bundles my Gramma would tie up with string, or to the Safeway a few blocks down Route 7 to stock up on whatever list items there were, as well as cardboard cartons of green bottled Coca-cola and Sprite, that would sit stored just inside the basement door on the top step to keep cool. 

We might go walk the greens of the Loudon County Country Club with someone from Gramma's ladies golfing group or she might take out the tennis raquets and try, with the patience of Job, to teach me not to lob the tennis balls over the fence but, instead, to volley them over the net...  and if I got REALLY lucky, it might be a day to swim in the country club's small pool and wrap up in Gramma's 50's beach towel replete with buxom, swim cap bedecked diving-beauties.  I still have that beach towel.  One of my most prized possessions.  I wanted to look just like those Barbie-esque beauties. 

Home most days for a lunch of cheese and just picked bibb lettuce with mayo on white bread, an ocassional piece of Juicy Fruit from the ever present pack in the tiny drawer by the fridge; though sometimes, my favorite times, we would drive over to Leesburg and meet Baba at the bowling alley for lunch that, for me, had to include piping hot crinkle fries those places make so well.  Back home to wash laundry and/or clean house and I would be turned loose to explore the neighborhood or ride the bike my Baba had borrowed from his secretary.  The same bike which I promptly, not knowing how to ride a bike yet, got onto the morning after he brought it home from work and careened down the side yard to a bone rattling crash into the side of the VW bus sitting in the neighbor's driveway.  I could ride that damned bike after that, I'll tell you!

Late afternoon would be dinner prep and ironing any of the sheets and clothes that had been, as always, hung on the line to dry.  Gramma would let me 'help', saving Baba's undershirts for me to iron as most women from her generation did for their husbands; his shorts were ironed too.  =)

Then one of my favorite times of day would start...  Gramma would begin making dinner and I would begin my contrbution to the dinner hour, taking out the folding black metal 50's (are we seeing a theme here?) T.V. trays and setting the three of them up along the opposite wall at the end of the kitchen bar.  I'd pull out three dinner plates, three forks, knives, spoons and napkins, and I'd set them all just-so on each tray.  Then Gramma would let me help her make our dinner...  maybe measuring and mixing together coleslaw ingredients, maybe snapping garden fresh green beans for the pot, washing silk from just picked corn or slicing fresh, ripe peaches or strawberries for the cobbler or shortcake dessert...  and she would make the meat.  We might have pot roast or whatever long-cooking main dish she'd prepared or, another of my favorites, on would go the stove eye and over she'd pull the well-seasoned iron skillet to heat...  pork chops and hamburgers were the best...  juicy and browned with just the right salt to them from the seasoning in the skillet.

Baba would arrive home at some point during dinner prep and once Gramma and I were done, I'd be sent off to 'get ready for dinner' - which was code for Gramma and Baba were having their small pre-dinner high ball of scotch and a few minutes alone in the den to talk and relax.  Once in a blue moon they would have a second small scotch and get quite jolly in very short order.  Gramma laughed a lot more than usual when she had a second scotch.  She had a lovely laugh.

Dinner would follow with Gramma and I plating the food and the three of us carrying our trays into the den to watch the NBC Nightly News with Edwin Newman or Walter Kronkite (which bored me to tears then and moves me to tears to hear in old news reels now).  Dessert of strawberry shortcake, peach cobbler, or my personal favorite, root beer floats in the green bumpy glasses with the bronze colored melamine tea spoons.  After, I could always count on Gramma to patiently play round after round of Go Fish or Old Maid with me until she'd finally, gently, shoo me up to shower and scrub with the pink resin, long-handled scrub brush, followed by liberal application of her bath powder.  I'd brush my teeth and reluctantly head downstairs to kiss and hug Baba good night, then begin the slow final trudge of the day up those carpet runnered wooden stairs to the roll-away made with outdoor-smelling, sun-dried sheets and set up for me in Baba's study.  Finally, a solemn recitation of prayers with Gramma sitting on the bed by me, making me feel as warm and safe and loved as I've ever felt.

I met Edwin Newman once.  In about '89 when I was working front desk at the Hotel Roanoke.  He and the fellow who played Ike Godsey on The Waltons, along with a handful of other celebrities, were in town for a charity golf tournament.  He looked the same as he had 19 years earlier delivering the news from my grandparents' television...  sounded the same, too...

That meeting took me back to a very happy time in my life.  His death today takes me back again.  Rest in Peace Mr. Newman, and thank you for the memory.

Signing off.

Chapter 1; It was a dark and stormy night...

Snoopy sits atop his doghouse typing his novel...

"CHAPTER 1"
"It was a dark and stormy night..."

It's no secret to anyone who knows me that my love life is, well, sketchy. First marriage two weeks after high school graduation, baby, divorce, late 20's second marriage, clinical depression, baby, divorce, and an utterly ill-advised third and possibly last marriage towards the tail-end of the clinical depression that skated me right to the edge of suicidal. Aaaaand divorce.

Dark and stormy all right.

The last two marriages and my depression were "counseled" by a doc who (obviously) was my kind of people - plain talking, no-nonsense, funny, down-to-earth - and when we had our last session he said "Well, I think you're...", and I filled in "Normal?" He laughed and said no, he preferred to use the term healthy. He said he felt healthy was a much more accurate adjective because in his estimation, what passes for "normal" in this day and age is pretty damned scary.

Or dark and stormy.

And this is where the two converge... a long-term relationship with a man I thought I'd be with the rest of my life ended last year and I was left feeling mentally and physically like someone had beaten me with a blunt object...  that I was the only person, probably in the world, maybe the entire universe, who was such a bad judge of domestic partners and going through the failure of another relationship at the ripe old age of 43. That although I was healthy, I was an utter and spectacularly flaming failure at love.

Dark, dark, dark.

I turned to online social networking to alleviate the crushing lonliness and to feel connected.  In short order, I  found hundreds of former high school friends...  jocks, heads, nerds, princesses...  and learned again and again and again that time had indeed been the great equalizer...  that though we'd fallen into cliques and categories in our 'Glory Days', we were now in the same foundered life and relationship boats by (as one friend noted) way of having lived the "same shit storms in life".

Storm, storm, storm.

And oddly, these friends I connected or reconnected with - save a few who forgot to wipe the sprinkling of bitterness from around their lips - seem pretty healthy to me...  searching for that rewarding existance and/or that healthy personal relationship, but all essentially on the same plane in terms of views and beliefs...  healthy...

::WAAAAAHHHHHH:: 
(picture winged, horn-blowing cherubs and parting clouds with rays of sunshine beaming down)

Now.  I know it seems sophomoric but what I finally "got" is that it's not just me.  Much as this universe circles me and only me sometimes, it really ain't just me...  that there are a butt-load of healthy people my age out there who made good decisions about domestic partners and who, whatever the reason, are in the same sad little boat I am.  And they're searching, too.  And, like me, they're hoping that the stats are wrong, that we aren't shit out of luck because we're in our 40's, and that we still have time to mold rewarding existences and/or find healthy, loving, long-lived domestic relationships.

But even if we don't, what I try to hold onto is this... with the multitude of close friends I have, the family I have, the connections and reconnections I've made and now cherish in a way I couldn't "back when", I'm not a failure at love - I love many people very much and they love me back - and I'm damned healthy...  it's mastering the decisions about domestic relationships I suck at and since practice makes perfect (and I've surely had enough of that), and I can be damned tenacious, eventually I believe I'll master that too.

::and the curtain falls::