So This Was Christmas

Christmas Eve dinner for four. Clean-up left until the next morning. "I know you're probably thinking someone has kidnapped your real mother," I told my daughter when we walked away from the mess smiling.

Then with Christmas morning light edging the window shade and me still in bed full of love and cake, I woke to a clatter in the kitchen. The man who loves me had cleaned up the entire mess.
Do I want my old life back? Oh no. For a million reasons, no.

Sleepless

This Friday night wasn't so different from many Friday nights of my marriage. I spent it alone. But unlike back then, there was no waiting for sound of the garage door opening, no hoping for a few shreds of affection, communication...something....anything. I knew I would be alone tonight and settled in on the couch to watch Sleepless in Seattle. I saw this movie with Mr. Ex when it first came out and was only moderately taken by it. But tonight it got to me. "Well, I'm gonna get out of bed every morning... breath in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breath in and out... and, then after a while, I won't have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while," says Sam Baldwin when he talks to a radio psychologist about the death of his wife. Under the blanket of holiday angst that has fallen over me, it's easy for me to remember my year or so of breathing in and breathing out. It was a lot of breathing and there were days when many of those breaths were delivered with a searing ache. I have it pretty great & perfect right now, but I think it's good to remember the ache, feel the remnants of it, and wear it for a little while. Like Sam Baldwin, I have a dead spouse. Oh sure, there's this guy Mr. Ex. still trudging through life--but he's not the guy I fell in love with. He's not the guy I weep for when the hurt throws itself over me. That guy is dead and it's sad.


My dog Layla tries to help when I cry. She falls all over herself rushing to me and hurls her 55 pounds into my lap and pokes her pointy collie nose into my chest as if she's giving me some kind of canine CPR. But she seems to know the difference between the wails that tore out of me when I was still struggling to get out of bed every morning and the phantom grief I feel every now and again these days. "It's okay," I told her tonight and  she settled right down. But I wonder if she misses Mr. Ex when I clip her leash to her collar or pour a cup of chow into her dish. If she's sniffing for the scent of the guy who used to do those things and she wishes would come back. I'm glad Mr. Ex hasn't returned my calls or emails about taking the dogs. It's probably better that way--if he's  dead to them, too. 

Irrevocable

What we have here is 47 pages of muck in which the division of Mr. Ex's and my joint assets are hopelessly mired. Established in 1995, our Irrevocable Trust is just what it sounds like--unalterable. Except that Mr. Ex seems to be treating like a pair of pants that has gotten too tight. A lot of things in life can be altered, revoked, annulled, dissolved, taken in, or let out. But an irrevocable trust is not one of them. So here we are, nigh unto 2 1/2 years after the split tethered to a past compulsion to plan for a future that won't ever happen. I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating. Invest in love. And trust--the sort that doesn't need to be set up by an attorney and spelled out in 47 pages.

Wisdom from the Silver Screen

After worrying for hours last night that the hard copies of my thesis are stuck in a snowdrift on I-80, the pages clumped together and the ink defrosting off the page, I've declared today a day off & have been watching movies. We have a well organized collection of DVDs, so I began with the As. Here's a tidbit  from Adam's Rib: "Lawyers shouldn't marry other lawyers. That's called inbreeding. It results in idiot children and more lawyers. Lawyers should marry piano players or song writers..." A nice bit of writing.

Really?

I feel so naive sometimes I don't know what to do with myself.
The scene: A party.
The speaker: A gorgeous young woman. Tall. Centerfold body. Pretty face. "Men cheat," she says. "that's what they do." I've gleaned from the previous bits of conversation that her ex-husband is a producer. She has a couple of kids with him, and they're not exactly divorced. Separated, but they live in the same house or something like that...sort of.
I hear this and think, "What if?" What if people were honest and then just coped with the honesty? What would that mean? In my particular situation. I can't quite imagine it. Would Mr. Ex have treated me better if  he could have had his new young thing and me and I'd said, "Well that's what men do..." I don't know. But I do know I wouldn't have wanted that.
Lack of imagination bothers me. Imagination is key. Now that I've been cut loose, I imagine my future with  many different scenarios. But accepting a cheating man isn't one of them.  But then it's not quite cheating if you admit to it up front. Still, I don't like the idea. Not one little bit.
And I don't really believe that's "what men do..." unless they are crazy Hollywood producers, or sheiks, or are part of Mr. Ex's law firm.

"If you drive too sexy, I'll tax your seat.."

There's an unfortunate fact about alimony and income tax that I didn't know...until recently. Alimony is taxable income. That's bad enough, but I find it particularly irritating that Mr. Ex gets to count the alimony he pays me as a tax deduction. So here's how our little math problem shakes out. California (a community property state) + 30 years of marriage = half of Mr. Ex's income for me - 50% of what I get for the taxman + a tax credit for the dastardly Mr. Ex.
Sigh.
Update on the division of joint assets: Still undivided.

Making My List & Checking It Twice

I keep a list on my sidebar--"People I Owe." I don't know how I will ever pay them back.

Illusions

Sometimes things are not what they seem. The moral center of your universe slips into a black hole. The person you thought was too different from you turns out to be someone you can't get enough of.

And--these packages of printer paper. Look closely. Not blank paper at all. A thesis. My thesis.

The Art of Finding

In roughly one month, I will finish my MFA in Creative Writing so I'm obsessing a little on this milestone in my "new life."
This advice from the poet Linda Gregg seems applicable for prose writers, too. 
She's written this piece, The Art of Finding, as a prose poem. This is how it begins:


I believe that poetry at its best is found rather than written.
Traditionally, and for many people even today, poems have been
admired chiefly for their craftsmanship and musicality, the
handsomeness of language and the abundance of similes, along with 
the patterning and rhymes. I respect and enjoy all that, but I would 
not have worked so hard and so long at my poetry if it were primarily 
the production of well-made objects, just as I would not have sacrificed 
so much for love if love were mostly about pleasure. 


If you'd like to read the rest follow the link above.

What Counts

This is my 3rd post-divorce Thanksgiving, and I guarantee you there will never be a post about the 4th one because I am done counting--done using the end of my marriage as the marker that defines me and my life. I am away from family and friends this year, dining with "strangers" at the Ragdale Foundation where I've been doing a writer's residency. It's a good vantage point from which to see the profound value of friends and family.
Next year I might be home, my table set with the china my mom gave me, her silver, the crystal from my stepsister, the candlesticks from my grandmother whose name I now claim as my own, and I hope it's not too late to persuade the people who used to share that table to come back. I hope too, there will be new people at the table and that we might even round up a mystery guest or two as we have done many years in the past.
Of course, I'm at the stage of life where my children have dispersed. By next Thanksgiving, it's quite likely, they will be flung across the country in three different states and maybe we won't all be at the same table. I may become a new version of a Thanksgiving pilgrim, traveling from turkey to turkey.
Or maybe not. Maybe my Thanksgiving dinner will be much smaller next year. Two cornish hens instead of a turkey. I really don't know what the future holds.
That's why I'm thankful right now--for this first Thanksgiving in Ragdale, for new friends, for all of the old friends, for family, for all of the people I love.