Forty Years Later

Separation Anxiety Is Creeping In

I just got home today from picking Katy up at the airport in Denver.  She spent the week of spring break with her dad, Max.  It was a turning point in the effort to make her completely comfortable with and accepting of going back to Nashville to live with her dad after living here in Colorado for almost three years.  The trip was a roaring success. She didn't want to come home.  He said she began crying early last night, leaving furtive little notes when his back was turned trying to show him the logic of her staying there.

How great is this?  Really, it's great! Just great!

So why am I feeling so shitty?  When she got off the plane she didn't rush to hug me. Actually, she never did. I hugged her finally.  Her tone with me was impatient and a little edgy.  On the three hour drive home she informed me that she loves Nashville better than Colorado, loves the brand of car that her dad drives better than the brand that I drive, likes rain better than snow...is just sick of snow.  She doesn't want me to touch anything she got on the trip.  When she complained that her fingernails were trimmed too much, I said something like a little too short, huh?  Her dad had no way of knowing how she likes her nails and trimmed them too short. But No! they aren't too short at all, in fact it's better; I just have to get used to them.

You see what I mean?  But that is all to be expected I imagine.  I'll bet Byrd (who knows about these things) would say it's natural for her to begin switching her alliances now. She's preparing herself to leave me and Colorado and go to her dad. She's beginning her separation process.  I know all that intellectually.  But emotionally?  It smarts.  It's just ridiculous but throughout the drive I was secretly harboring hurt feelings.  At one point I thought I would CRY for heaven's sake. Thank goodness that was outside of the car at the gas pump.  I became snappy.  Ugh!  I was petulant, and I just hate it when I'm petulant. 

Here's what I worry about and have to guard against with all my inner strength:  I can't let my separation process take a negative direction. You know what I mean...so that by the time she goes we are so argumentative I'm just thrilled that she is leaving. I want her to go. I want the natural order of things to return to our three lives.  I do. Max is ready. Katy is ready and I surely thought I was ready.  Most of me is.  I long for the freedom it will bring me even as I'm worrying that I will have a sinking spell when it happens, and be so bereft and lonely I'll do something stupid like move to the wrong place; become a hermit, eat everything in sight and get really fat; or latch on to some man who is absolutely not right for me just to have something to fill the new emptiness. 

 I'm a little scared that I'll get all grouchy and reserved as these months progress.  Hold back. When the way I really want this to go is with love and patience.  I want these last two or three months to be some of our best...not our worst.  And I  have to make this happen.  She's just a little kid. I'm the grown up here.  My e-harmony guy reminded me of that on the phone tonight.

You're going to have to do a lot of hard swallowing for the next two months.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.  Xanax?  

Oh well. Enough of that...

My computer was in the repair shop for a week and three days.  I discovered I spend entirely too much time on it throughout the day and that is the big time waster I've been sleuthing for.  I'm going to establish my personal  Computer Usage Policy and then dredge up all the self control I can to stick to it. 

I spent the week of spring break with the e-harmony guy (I guess I need to give him a name.  Ok. From now on I'll call him Sam, a fake name of course to protect the innocent.)Part of that time was spent here in the wilderness with Sam.  I cooked for the first time, exposing a domestic side I'd kept under wraps until I whipped up perfectly cooked salmon, roasted asparagus and my very famous in these parts spinach salad with my own roasted tomatoes, caramelized-the- long-way onions and feta cheese.  I make the vinaigrette for that also. I made all the components before he came so the entire production would look almost effortless.  I like for my guests to believe I think enough of them to go to some trouble....but I don't want them to think I slaved over a hot stove all day.  There is a fine line between making dinner guests feel coddled and making them feel like they are impositions.  Anyway, I have no experience of this but I'll bet a dating woman has to be careful not to look too domestic or men will expect her to start doing domestic things for them.  Like cleaning their houses or doing their laundry.  Luckily I'm an outspoken sort of  person so it's doubtful I'd fall into that little trap!

After that I went to his town and we skied.  Altogether a lovely spring break.  Now it's a long dry spell with no school holidays till the end of school in May, though I do have a very cool babysitter that Katy loves for long weekends.  (Just one a month.)  She takes Katy horseback riding and lets her break all the rules when they play Scrabble. 

I'm back home with a new computer keyboard and a fire in my belly to get some things done that actually contribute to my goal of putting my house on the market.  

I am still in total darkness about where I'll go and what the heck I'll do when I do sell the house.  I've had moments of a panicky stomach just trying to work this all out.  

But I'll save that tale for another post. 

And About My Friends....

Change.

Seems it's on a lot of minds these days.  I'm not the only one.  Reading many of my favorite blogs this week I see that many of my blog friends are regarding change, embracing it, suspicious of it, planning it, wanting it, or resisting it.  All with varying degrees of enthusiasm and dread.

Susan at 29 Black Street is planning it.  A move out of her big old brick house. She'll make a brand new home in a new location near a beloved friend.  And, thinking of more little veins to send out into the world from her richly creative heart. 

J is seeming to finally be embracing change even if it isn't a permanent change (and really, what change is).  Who wouldn't look forward to a summer in the awesome landscape of Alaska growing raspberries and looking for peace.

Mmm is "facing great change...potentially...and not sure I want to face any of it", resisting it for the moment, seeming to dread it a bit. 

Judy did make a big change.  Moving to a new town, leaving behind so much that she loved and now not convinced at all that "change is good".  But as always happens in the course of a life another crossroads looms ahead and this time she's determined to put a positive slant on change.

Emily is contemplating a changed body: svelte, strong, supple, and submitting meekly to a hard driving trainer in order to accomplish the change.

Mim has gone through the trauma of unemployment...one of so many families stricken by the cruel economic crisis, but now is hopeful for change. As the season changes and is brighter, so she and her husband hope will their prospects also be brighter.

Paris plans a reinvention, a master change as her intrepid resilience carries her into a new life, a new world populated by new, loving people.

fire byrd is counting the minutes till her big change, a move to the sea that she's dreamed of for a long time.  She's relishing the idea of change, and already creating her base of support in her new home town well before she even moves there. 

Pherenike is receiving signs from the universe of an approaching change.  She's not exactly resisting, but she's wary.  Does she really want it?  Does she have a choice?

Robin is considering the idea of a change that reaches backward, not forward: to detatch significantly from the internet or not.  Whatever her decision she'll abide by it with an awareness and acceptance that the consideration of change will have given her.

I write encouraging comments to my friends urging them to take change by the horns and wrestle it into their lives.  And I mean it.  I'm a cheerleader for change.

But in the back of my head a little voice is laying on the sarcasm.....yeah, so when are you gonna wrestle your way into your garage?  The barn?  Except for the huge change of Katy leaving, all the rest of my potential changes rely upon my selling my house. But I can't show it until I tackle several areas of disrepute, particularly my big old garage and bigger damned old barn, both full of remnants of the past:  collectibles, tools, furniture, photos, books, rugs,...oh, so much stuff.

I am overwhelmed at the prospect of banishing it all, but I wonder if I'm truly overwhelmed or is it a disguised resistance to change?  A panic driven clinging to the known and comfortable.  A trepidation of the unknown.  I don't want to believe that.  I fancy myself an enthusiastic acceptor of change. An adventuress into the unexplored.  A traveler into virgin territory. 

That's what I want to be.  

So, you know what?

If I find that I'm something less....

well I'll just....

change!

Change on the Horizon

Certainly that was the longest hiatus taken yet!  And no really good reason.  A person can always find a little time to write...can't she? Life just got in the way and got me awfully preoccupied.....

our drama continues

A lot has been going on here with my little family caught up in a soap opera drama again. In this case more of a crime drama.  I won't elaborate; that one's not my story to tell.  It's Max's story.  I have to shake my head, though, at all the sordidness my ex-daughter in law has brought into our lives in the 10 years I've known her, and now she's crossed a line from which there is no return.

What I can talk about though is that the woman has fled to Canada and in the long run that will affect all three of our lives for the better.  I may not have mentioned before that she is not a citizen here. (Actually I'm not sure I've ever mentioned her.)  She's Canadian from Nova Scotia.  And the girl has gotten herself into a lot of trouble.

katy's big adventure

Katy had time off from school last week and she had two big firsts.  She went back to the city, Nashville, that she left three years ago, and she took her first unaccompanied airline trip.  Big deals both.  Three years ago when she left Nashville she swore, and has continued to pledge that she would never go back there.  She hated it.  It's surely a sign of Max and Katy's strong bonding since my divorce that she wanted to go stay with him in that town.  She kind of emotionally transferred all the nastiness of her parent's divorce to the city, so that Nashville became a huge negative symbol in her mind.   

In the dark car driving home from the airport confidences were shared as they often are under the cover of darkness, and she told me she believes she could go back and live with him in Nashville.  She's always been adamant that he move to Colorado so they could live together here. And she's still ambivalent about Nashville, though not about living with her dad. She was worried her remarks would hurt my feelings, but they didn't.  It was never the plan that Katy would live here with us and then me forever.  My dream was always that Max would fight for and get custody, and that eventually he and Katy would reunite and live as a dad and beloved daughter should live, together. And time's passing at warp speed. She goes into middle school in September.  Just a little more time and he'll miss her big, little girl life altogether.

Well, he did fight long and hard, and won custody. But he and I didn't want Katy to be in the same town as her mother.  So, and this is where these two stories tie together, with her mother on the lam in Canada, Nashville becomes a real possibility.  I won't deny that my dream had the two of them living in Colorado, but Max has a good job there, with a good income and a contract.  During these harsh times that is an asset greater than gold.  And I can not move there.  I will never move back to the south. I left there 30 years ago to come to Colorado, and my soul homesteaded here. I simply can not live in the heat and I would die if I had to leave Colorado.  I believe Max thinks I'm being a bit of a drama queen about that...Mom, you wouldn't die!  

Stranger things have happened.

He and I are talking this summer...possibly...no probably.

 

Living in the mountainous middle of nowhere.

so what about me?

Yeah...what about me?  I've been pondering this. I haven't actually been alone yet.  I've been without a husband, but I've had a lively, life filling person with me since the divorce. My life revolves around Katy and her needs.  Technically I'm a single mom living in the mountainous middle of nowhere with a 10 year old girl. It's my life and has been since the divorce, and in fact I think it is a large part of the reason I handled the divorce with such equanimity.  I had to really.  For Katy.  So I anxiously wonder what it will be like when Katy goes with her dad?  Will I dance with glee at my freedom? Or will I sink into the gloom of loneliness?  I honestly don't believe that I'll sink, I'm not a sinking kind of woman, but I do know I'll have to watch myself. Be careful.  Make interesting changes. Tackle it head on. Make still another new life.

Max said something that really made me begin thinking about this.  After she had left him, he told me that it was so difficult to let her go.  Every night I go home to a quiet, empty house. I cook alone, eat alone and then try to kill some time so I can go to sleep and wake up in the morning and leave this empty feeling house. I'm lonely.  But with Katy here, we do home work together, eat together, laugh and talk, talk, talk....she's such a presence.

And right now she's my presence.

It's kind of scary.