Tag: Love

I Just Haven’t Met You Yet

LesleyPearlLeave a comment

walking in the worldI’ve been keeping a nightly gratitude list now for close to 10 years.  The practice was first suggested by my then spiritual-business teacher, Anne Sagendorph-Moon.

I would buy small, lovely journals and packages of 36 fine-point markers, and each night, in bed, write my list – a different color for each blessing in my life.

The practice has taken different shapes and forms over the years.  For the past few, I have done it on my computer, exchanging my list via e-mail with a friend in San Francisco.

So whenever a gratitude list is suggested as a part of any spiritual practice, in my head I tick it off as “Got it.”  “Done.”  Until yesterday.  When I had a *new* experience.

I am in week 2 of Walking in the World, Julia Cameron’s follow up to The Artist’s Way.  The book resonates deeply for me as walking and writing were the only things that made any sense during my divorce.  Either action had the power to ground me – almost immediately.  Still do.

My assignment yesterday was to take a 20-minute walk, with the intention of naming the blessings in my life with each foot fall.

Off I went, down Ainslie Street towards Winnemac Park – a few short blocks away from my home.  A place where I can duck into short paths, surrounded by tall, weedy plants, and feel like I am far away.  As I began walking, I began naming – to myself, my lips moving in the silence.

“I have a home.  I am in Chicago.  Japanese maples.”  It felt contrived, forced…but I kept muttering to myself anyway.  “My friend Julie.  Michigan blueberries.  I know how to be alone.”

I was flummoxed.  Was it really true?  Did I really know how to be alone?  Not just survive sans partner, all the while “wishin and hopin and dreamin,” but really know how to be alone and really be ok with it?  Even grateful for it?

Yes.  I think so.

This is not to say I wouldn’t like to meet a mate.  It’s a pretty universal desire, as my friend Mary Kate pointed out to me.  But it is how I live my life “in the in between” or “until that time” that determines my “ok-ness.”

I’ve been great with the action part, filling my life with dance, writing, friendship and family.  Travel.  Writing.  Recovery.  It’s the perception part that was kicking my ass.  Until it wasn’t.

I’m not sure what happened.  I used to think being alone meant I was a loser.  Unloveable.  Undesirable.  I suddenly don’t feel that way anymore.  I see my aloneness, to quote a good-bad Michael Buble song, as “I just haven’t met you yet.”

I remember being in my 20s.  My friend Carlos set me up with his business partner – a Jewish doctor.  He owned a great, stone cottage on a lake.  Good art work.   But we had little in common.  Little to talk about.  I wasn’t excited.  About him.  About us.

But I liked the idea of him.  Of us.  And I thought, “I can make this work.”

Thankfully I didn’t have to.  I got a job offer in San Francisco not long after we met.  The universe at work.

I recently had that thought again.  I met a man.  Nice looking.  Easy to talk to – especially about our divorces.  But that was where it ended.  We didn’t have much else to say.

As I was having those “this could work” fantasies, it hit me – why would I bother?

I know what it is like to meet someone and feel literally swept off my feet, equilibrium disrupted.  To wonder how it is we ever didn’t know one another.  To have so much to say to one another that we both wonder how we will ever get it all out…but delight in trying anyway.

This wasn’t it.

So I added to my list: Grateful to know what excited feels like.  To have experienced it.  To remember it.  To have faith that I will experience it again.

Grateful to know when I’m not excited.  And to know I would rather be alone than to settle.  To know how to be alone so that I am never beholden to anyone again.

And then…

I am grateful to know what great sex is like.  I am grateful to know what it feels like for someone to be wild about me.  To not be able to keep their mitts off of me.  Touching my hair, my face, my hands, my ass.  Kissing me in the middle of a crowded room because he “just had to.”

Thank you Mr. Sexy Photographer from Detroit.  Thank you short, horny, Jewish artist.  It was a long time ago.  But I remember.  And I have got to believe these weren’t limited-one-time exclusive offers either.

That is a new idea.  To believe in abundance in ALL things.  Including love.

I am grateful for that too.  And for the women who promised me I would arrive here one day.  The ones who cry when I share this with them.  They are abundance.  They are love.  I am loved.  And grateful for it.

Like Trying To Hold On To Lightning Bugs

LesleyPearlLeave a comment
My mother must have the photo I am referring to...This is me and my brother, before the training wheels came off.
My mother must have the photo I am referring to. My brother and I, before the training wheels came off.

I’m trying to hold on to a new idea.  A new behavior.

It’s like trying to hold on to lightning bugs.

It’s like riding a bike for the first time without training wheels and turning around to see if mom is still holding on.

I have a photograph of myself on a pink two-wheeler.  I’m wearing a t-shirt that says A-Jerx.  (There was a whole series of these – gum and trading cards too –a play on words of household brands with artwork leaning towards the grotesque.)  My hair is in pig tails.

I remember leaning side to side, riding in an S-shape pattern trying to steely myself.  Shaky.  But most definitely upright.

Until I turn around.  My mother is several feet behind me, standing in the driveway.  She is no longer holding on.  I am delighted.  I am doing this thing.

And then I’m down on the ground.  I don’t yet know how to keep my balance looking anywhere but forward.  (Do I even now?  In all things…not just biking.)

I feel like that now.  Excited by self-awareness and the practice of new behaviors – seemingly without effort.  And yet a little uncertain at the same time.

I spent the day with my friend Pam on Saturday.  It began with gelato, moved into thrifting, dinner and ended with a stealth run to Trader Joes.  All told we were together for probably six or so hours.  And I could have kept going.

We never run out of things to talk about.  And we giggle, constantly.  When I am with her I feel like I am at a perpetual Bar Mitzvah party at Tam O’Shanter Country Club circa 1982.

Except for when we are baring our souls.  Speaking the words we only whisper to ourselves in the dark.  And being met with love and compassion, always.

It’s awesome.

I told her so on Saturday night when she was dropping me off.

We were giggling about the cute boy at Trader Joes.  The one I chatted with for 20 minutes in front of the canned beans.  The one I gave my number to a couple of weeks ago.  Who sweetly explained that he hadn’t called because things were “complicated.”

While he and I were talking, she posted on Facebook that she was watching a “love connection.”  So she was surprised that he didn’t ask me out.  That we spoke for that long.  That he seemed completely unaware that anyone else was in the store besides us.   That the chemistry, to her perspective, was palpable.  And yet, nothing.

She asked what I thought I might do about it.

“Nothing,” I replied.

He has my number.  He knows I’m interested.  And his landlord is a friend of mine.  He knows where to find me.  “It’s like you taught me,” I said.  “I don’t ever again want to be a dog begging for a bone.”

It was, as they say, a moment.  A spiritual awakening.

I also told her I decided to not contact an old flame when I head to Detroit later this month.   He’d been dancing around in my head for weeks.  And yet I hadn’t contacted him.  Suddenly I knew why.

I “played the tape.”   I realized that, best case scenario…even if I did see him,even if it was like it used to be, that I would be trading my serenity for a passport stamp at Crazy.

I had learned I’m not the kind of girl who can casually physically connect, then say, “That was fun.  I’ll see you next time I’m in Detroit.”  That I get attached.  That I want more.  Deserve more.  That my life is here, in Chicago.  Looking forward.

I told her, and here’s the kicker, I only want to date someone who I have as much fun with as I do her.

She smiled.  I knew what she was thinking.  What she has said to me so many times, “You are growing.”

Pam and I.
Pam and I.

I felt chuffed.  That great British slang my ex-mother-in-law used to use, that roughly translates to “pleased with myself.”   I felt like I had “licked this problem.  This old way of being.”

And then this morning I felt differently.

I saw Mr. Detroit on Facebook.  I immediately thought how nice it would be to catch up on nearly 20 years.  Just coffee…riiiight.

GRRR!!  I thought I “had it,” I told my friend, Lynn.

I told her how I felt like it slipped right through my fingers.  Like the lightning bugs – which half the time I cannot even believe are real, they are so magical.

I remembered all the times I thought “I got this,” in Weight Watchers.  And all the times I gained my weight back.  And then some.  I wondered what was different this time.  How it was that I had maintained a 35-pound weight loss for 11-plus years.  Through three cross-country moves, getting sober, finding my birthparents, getting divorced, and burying a birthparent.

The only answer I could come up with is that I just kept practicing the behaviors.  When they were new.  And when they weren’t so new.   Even when I didn’t feel like it.

I kept weighing and measuring.  Writing down my food.  Moving my body.  Making better choices.  Most of the time.  I haven’t been perfect.  Thank goodness that wasn’t demanded of me.

It isn’t demanded of me with Mr. Detroit.  Or Mr. Trader Joes either.  I can, and will, have these thoughts…these suggested detours to Crazy.  But I’m no longer a slave to them.  I can notice them, perhaps name them, and…not react to them.  I can do different.  And keep on doing different until different becomes the new normal.

Until it’s like riding a bike.  Which today I can do AND look over my shoulder.  Even take my hands off the handlebars, and stay upright.  No longer on the ground wondering what the hell happened.

A Year After the Day Before Everything Was About to Change

LesleyPearl3 Comments
Wandering in Brussels with my friend, Tim. I love putting the camera in front of faces and seeing what is captured.
With Tim, in Brussels

A year ago today I was in Brussels.

I didn’t know that everything was about to change.  Or maybe I did know.  The universe did.  Perhaps that’s why I was blessed with an extra day there, even though it didn’t feel like a blessing at the time.

I’d spent the past two days in what I’d come to call “Paris Small.”  One of them, with my old roommate Tim, who flew in from Dublin for just one night – just to be with me.  We rented an IKEA-decorated studio, a few blocks from the train station.  Its red wooden shutters opened onto the square.  It was perfect.

That day, we Skyped with Tim’s boyfriend Martin, who was living in Yorkshire.  We got our heads shaved.  Ate Belgian Waffles covered in powdered sugar, walking and talking until the sky turned navy.

I spent the next night alone.  I called my friend, Michael, my divorce pal in the States, before going to sleep.  Just as I did most nights back at home.  Ever since my ex asked me for a divorce and he and his wife also decided to separate.

The next morning, a year ago today, I arrived at the airport and learned that my plane had been grounded due to a cracked windshield.  I stood in line for more than two hours before reaching the counter to re-book my flight – surrounded by people loudly sighing and complaining.

I made friends with a gay boy from Missouri.  I watched the family in front of me – husband and wife, and almost grown kids.  They seemed nonplussed.  Almost enjoying the time.  As we approached the counter together, I commented on how happy they seemed.

“What else can we do?” the father responded.

Happy, even though they had missed the Chicago portion of their vacation.  Would miss their connection to San Francisco.  And were just hoping to recoup their time in Los Angeles.  Happy.

They wrote a list of suggestions for how I might want to spend my extra time in Brussels.

We wished each other well, and parted ways.  Me, with a voucher for a hotel room across the street, and a boarding pass for a different flight tomorrow.  No longer direct, I would fly to Frankfurt – the first airport I landed in overseas, nearly 20 years ago – before arriving in Chicago.

I took the train back to the City Centre after checking in to the hotel and retraced my steps down the cobblestone streets.  Enjoying another waffle.  Purchasing pale nougat studded with almonds and dried orange pieces to bring home as gifts.

I walked to a park overlooking the city and read in the cool sunshine.  I browsed a museum gift shop, as I arrived too late to see the exhibit.  And then I took the train back to the hotel, stopping in the airport to buy a phone card, hoping to speak with Michael again.

I tried phoning him from my room, and then realized I hadn’t put enough money on the card.  I stuffed it in my wallet and went to the lobby to take advantage of the free WiFi.

I noticed it was my friend J’s birthday while trolling Facebook.  I sent him good wishes, which he was on the other end to receive.  It was still afternoon in New York.

He told me he would be spending his birthday eating crab legs with his girlfriend.  I told him I was on my way home from Rwanda.  That I was grounded in Brussels.  That I was divorcing.  And that I was moving back to Chicago.

I threw up on him.  And then I went to dinner.

When I left Seattle nearly a month earlier, I didn’t know where I would settle.  Now I had a plan.

I arrived in Chicago the next afternoon.  (I was fortunate, for those who were able to re-book on the original flight remained grounded in Brussels for another day.)  I informed my friends I was now going by Liora – my Hebrew name – as that was what I was called in Rwanda, the result of having two Lesleys on the trip.

I had dinner with Michael.  And after, we stood under a street lamp, holding on to one another for what felt like forever.  I didn’t want to let go.  I told him I would see him in a month.

My friend Emily picked me up at the airport that evening.  She remembered what re-entry was like after spending time in Africa.  We had dinner.  She took me grocery shopping.  And then she dropped me off at home.

The cats greeted me at the door.  My then soon-to-be-ex-husband was noticeably absent.  I felt painfully alone as I rolled my hard orange suitcase into the house.

I saw Michael sooner than anticipated.  At my request, he flew to Seattle, helped me pack my car and drive home.  We stayed with friends of mine in Missoula and Bozeman.  I shot a gun for the first and only time somewhere between the two cities.

2012-08-31 10.30.32
Hiking in the Badlands.

We camped along the Missouri River, under a blue moon, at Teddy Roosevelt National Park.  Hiked the Badlands the next day, and stopped somewhere outside of Fargo that night, sharing a room at The Bison Inn.

We stayed with my college roommates on our final stop in Minneapolis.  They stuffed us with homemade treats.  Michael replaced the radiator in my 2000 Honda Civic.  It failed just as we were entering the city.  My job was to hand him the tools he called for.

We arrived home the day before Labor Day, around 11 p.m.  I dropped him off at home in his questionable neighborhood, sobbing on the front lawn.

July 19, 2012.  I didn’t know everything was about to change.  That, in many ways, it would be the last day of my “previous life.”   How could I?  And yet, how could I not?

I believe my brain was protecting me from that which I could not yet conceive of.

My divorce was final a little more than 10 months ago.  I live alone for the first time in my life.  I buried my birth mother in the spring.

I felt new lips over mine for the first time in many, many years.  And I watched my heart crack open.  Then again.  And again.

A couple of weeks ago, I initiated the process of separating our monies.  When that is complete, only our condominium, which we rent out, will bind us – financially.

I applied for a job today.  The first in more than 11 years.  I’m excited.  Fingers crossed.

This morning, two women commented that I sounded really good.  A third asked for my blog address.  Later, my friend Jess asked if I could have imagined how much I would have healed by now.  It struck me as funny, as I didn’t feel particularly healed.  I decided to trust her perspective, and that of the three other women.

I wrote J a birthday greeting.  I wished him what I wish for everyone I love – joy and the causes of joy.  And then I wished him something special – something  just for him:  a nice piece of liver for dinner.

He knew exactly what it meant.  And suggested a watermelon instead.  I laughed out loud.

It is comforting to know not everything has changed since July 19, 2012.  To know that some things have survived.  Friendship.  Love.   Shared memories and private jokes.  And most of all, me.

When You See Yourself…or, Memory is Tricky

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black beautyI stopped calling my ex by his name in writing.

It happened a little while ago, when a friend casually asked me if he minded being named.  I didn’t know.  So, I asked.

He said it didn’t matter.  But I stopped anyway.  As a show of respect.  To allow him to retain his anonymity among those who don’t know him, or me, or “us.”   And quite possibly, as another way of letting go.

I have a habit of inserting lost loves names into conversation, just to make them real.  To keep it, them, alive.  I didn’t think I was doing that with my ex – but maybe I was.

I started thinking about naming people.  I don’t do it often.  When I do, I ask myself why, and how they might feel about it.

Some people love it.  It brings attention to their art.  Or it feels like an honoring of our relationship.  On occasion, it has led to a burgeoning friendship, like with a local actress to whom I owe a phone call.

But for others, it has caused pain.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend took exception to the moniker I had assigned him.  He called me out on it – citing the sometimes negative connotations associated with it, per Wikipedia.

I was devastated.  I adore him – perhaps too much so, sometimes.  After receiving his email, I phoned him immediately.

I did not pause – even though I know better.

I got his voicemail and I left a message.  I said I regretted causing him any pain, that it was never my intention.  I shared my interpretation of the moniker.  I told him that he was my teacher.  That he inspired me.  And I told him I loved him.

That was about a month ago.  I haven’t heard a peep.  I am letting him have his space, his own experience.  This is new for me.

Something similar happened between my mother and me.

I had written about my over-emotional nature as a child – recounting a story that took place in the dollar movie theatre.   She remembered the situation differently than I.  She too called me out on it.

This time I did pause.  And because the harm was done electronically, I made amends in the same way.  I told her I was sorry that my writing had caused her pain, just as I had done with my friend.

This time the result was different.

It led us to a conversation about memory.  How tricky it is.  How three people can see the same accident and yet each remembers a different color, a different make car.

call of the wildA few weeks later I received a package in the mail from her.  Inside was a vintage copy of Black Beauty that she found in an antique store.  Actually, it is two books in one.  Black Beauty on one side.  The Call of the Wild on the other.

The memory in question was in regard to The Black Stallion, but I got it.  Completely.  I was touched by her sweet gesture, her way of letting me know we are more than fine.

A couple of days ago I posted a blog about exs.  One of them commented – favorably.

I wrote to him, “I trust you recognized yourself.”  He did, and we began chatting — online.

We too talked about memory.  About the last time we saw one another, on Venice Beach.   I had just returned my roller skates.

I remember him calling my name.  Going to him.  And him asking if he could see me.  I remembered him kissing me.  He didn’t.  He remembered me angry.  I didn’t.

I asked him what happened between us.  I never understood.  I had asked before but he never answered, and I didn’t push it.  This time he told me.

He told me that I awakened something in him.

He told me how he remembered me. Kind.  Open.  Dirty.  Loving.

He told me our time together mattered, that I mattered.  That I was important in his life, as he had been in mine.

I asked him if we might speak.  Moments later we were.

I had forgotten what his voice sounded like.  Seventeen years had passed since we had last spoken.   I felt a strange sense of relief mixed with joy.  As if to say, “Oh, there you are.  Of course.”   As if he had been there all along.  Which in some ways, he had.

A flood of memories came rushing back.  Hazy.  Not completely formed.  Together, we tried to put together the pieces.

We talked for about an hour, tripping down memory lane.  Talking about our lives today.  The time in between.  Slipping in the occasional flirty quip.  We were always like that.

I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I didn’t.  Instead, I let him know that he is in my heart and I am grateful to know I am still in his.  It is more accurate.

I feel like a piece fell into place in my life.  And a peace, as well.

Have You? Do You?

LesleyPearlLeave a comment
Me and my cousin, Andrew. He was my first crush. He shows me what a good man is. What love looks like.
Me and my cousin, Andrew. He was my first crush. He shows me what a good man is. What love looks like. He has also heard most of these stories.

Have you ever held onto a crush because it made you feel like you had something going on?  Even though you had nothing going on?  With him or her or anyone else?

Even though you haven’t spoken a word or had contact in quite some time?  Even though he knows he could have you if he just said the word…but doesn’t?

Have you ever latched on to a few kind words from an ex?  Allowed a simple sentence to set your mind reeling with possibilities?  Wondering what he is up to now?  Even though you haven’t seen one another in more than a decade.  And you aren’t even sure if he’s married or not?  Have you ever wanted to inquire with a mutual friend of his relationship status but decided against it only because you didn’t want to appear tacky?

Have you ever rifled through old journals looking for entries about your time with the above-mentioned ex because you are certain you wrote about it?  And when you found those few pages read them over and over again until the images were seared onto your retinas?

Have you ever lingered over every detail about a romance that happened nearly 20 years ago?  The one where you were 25 and he was 40 and you asked him, “What is 40 like?”  Where he made sure you didn’t die or kill yourself in a drunken frenzy – your first time overseas?  And then sang to you in the airport when you said goodbye, lamented over the things he didn’t do with you, knowing you would never see one another again.

Do you tell it with such vivid color all these years later that your girlfriend insists you to write about it?  But you don’t.

Have you ever felt closer to your crush after spending time with his friend?  And felt guilty about it even though you didn’t do anything wrong?

Have you ever slipped his name into conversation just to keep it alive? To keep him alive?

Do you ever wonder about the ones you call unfinished business?

Your first real love.  The first one you got naked with?

The one with good boundaries, who kept you at arm’s length because he was your professor and you were his student.  But sometimes you wonder if maybe…just maybe, it could have been different.

The one who slipped his hand down the back of your pants and guided you down the street by your crotch.  Made you praise God for dirty minds and dirty hands.

The one who wanted a partner when you wanted a parent.  You couldn’t see it then but you can now.  And sometimes you wonder what it would have been like if you met later?

Have you ever looked up your ex’s current on Facebook and wondered if you were thinner? Prettier? Better in bed?

Have you ever waxed nostalgic over others and wondered what the hell you were thinking?

Do you sometimes forget that you are making a choice every day?  Not to settle.  Not to post a dating profile online.  But to grieve.  To get your own house in order.  To trust in magic and serendipity and the divine rhythms of the universe.

Do you sometimes forget that you actually have said, “no”?  Not because the suitor wasn’t perfectly lovely, but because you didn’t have romantic feelings.  Because you wanted to honor the feelings you did have, wanted to honor yourself and honor him.  Because you remember what it is like to say “yes” when you really mean “no.”

Do you congratulate yourself when you remember?

And yet, choice or no choice, do you sometimes feel that strange sense of empty space – like a wall waiting for art?  You know nature abhors a vacuum because your friend Teresa told you so and she’s rarely wrong.   So you wonder when nature will come charging in.

Do you sometimes wonder if the universe remembers exactly how long it has been since you have had sex?  Does it sometimes make you cringe?  And other times fill you with a sense of esteem for discernment you had never previously known?

Do you sometimes know that God has done you favor because you otherwise might have stayed somewhere you shouldn’t have. Or gone somewhere you didn’t need to be?

Do you sometimes still have a little bit of crazy that tells you that you are better, worthier, more interesting and more attractive if you have a partner?

Do you sometimes look at someone new and think “maybe,” and know in the past you would have forced that “maybe” into a “yes?”  Made it fit, damn it.  Made him fit.  Like Cinderella’s shoe on a stepsister’s foot?  But for now you just say “maybe.”

Have you?  Do you?

Me too.

Artist’s Date 24: Finding “Epic” Acceptance

LesleyPearl1 Comment

epic flyingWhen I was about eight, my parents took me to see The Black Stallion at the Keego Theatre, a movie house where they played second-run shows for a buck.

Onscreen, a storm is raging.  Passengers of a luxury liner jump into life rafts.  A young boy cuts free an agitated, tied-up horse, and it leaps from the boat.  The horse’s angry owners hold the boy at knife point before he is flung into the dark, choppy waters.

I am hysterical.  Sobbing.  Unable to catch my own breath.  I do not know the horse will rescue the boy.  That the story is just beginning.

My mother pinches me under the arm.  “Do we have to go out to the car?” she asks.

My feelings are too big for my family.  This is what I believe, true or not.

It is why I often watched television upstairs in the guest room, alone – my emotions leaking out with Folgers commercials and documentaries on PBS.  It was a source of teasing – mostly good-natured – in my family.  But I was too sensitive to realize it.

Sitting in the Davis Theatre watching Epic – Artist’s Date 24 – I remember all of this.  The fear.  The anxiety.  The shame that is tied to these feelings.  I am experiencing it now.

I’m old enough to know that good will prevail.  This is a PG movie.  I know that the Leafmen will “win,” that the pod will bloom in the full moon, that the forest will be saved.

And yet.

There’s this loud, foreboding music.   Crescendo rising.  Bats flying.  Forest dying.

The Images are dark.  Mandrake, nemesis of the forest, of life itself, wears a rat skin like a hooded cape.

I feel my heart quicken, a desire to turn my eyes away.  I am afraid.  I do not trust it will end well.

I am the only adult in the theatre without a child in tow and I feel a little bit self-conscious.  I retreat to my head.  Do the parents think I am suspect?  A child molester?  Why aren’t the children afraid like I am?

A dad ducks and scurries out, gripping two little hands, one in each of his.  Are they frightened?  Or do they have to pee?

epic flowersI saw the trailer for Epic a few weeks ago, on another Artist’s Date.  I was enchanted by its beautiful images – flower-people, with heads like cotton pom-poms, dandelions turned to seed.  Faces on sunflowers and gerbera daisies.  I was called by its questions about belief.

This is what brought me here, on a day I find myself emptied out, running on fumes – the promise of loveliness.  Of faith.  Of possibilities.  This is what I receive:

Professor Bomba’s unshakeable belief in something he can’t see, but only knows.  Like God.  Like Horton Hears a Who.  His willingness to be perceived as crazy.  His willingness to lose seemingly everything for his belief.

The Leafmen’s simple code, “Many Leaves.  One Tree. You are Never Alone.”

I learn that love can bloom riding gently on a deer.  And a pod that blooms in full-moon light is the source of all creation.  That hummingbirds make great horses, but common brown sparrows can do the job too.

I am reminded that relationships between fathers and daughters are sometimes hard.  And that it’s ok to hold on to someone you hardly know – if they offer you a hand or a torso and you need one.

That each of us has a purpose – even slugs and snails.  We might not know it.  Don’t always ask for it.  But we can embrace it.  And continue to put one foot in front of the other.

That life is about finding out what we are capable of.  How high we can jump to get ourselves out of a hole.  And that each of us can learn to fly.

That we all experience loss.  Of a parent.  Of a friend.

And that sometimes, love comes back – oftentimes in the most unorthodox and unexpected of ways.

Queen Tara’s energy, twinkling light like Tinkerbell, speaking to Ronin and to MK after she has left this-worldly plane.

MK’s reunion with Nod, straddling “normal” and Lilliputian-sized worlds for the promise of connection, of love.

I think of my own recent reunitings, seeing someones I never thought I’d see again … and then did.

The tears stream down my face.  Gratitude.  Beauty.  Joy.  I feel their salty release.   I notice them, like I notice the fear, and do nothing.  I let them roll off of me in the darkness.  I can sit with them.  They are not too much for me.

Return to the House Where Love Died

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1825 n washtenawI just left the house where love died.  I can’t take credit for that line.  My friend Jonathan came up with it to describe the place where his relationship fell apart.  But I borrow it, because it is apt.

It’s the condominium my ex and I purchased together in 2007 when we moved to Chicago for his residency.  We still own it jointly, but I am not responsible for it in any way.

Our tenants are moving out, and I offered to do the final walk through before the next ones move in.

I never wanted to buy it.  Home ownership was never my dream.  I liked the idea of freedom.  To change neighborhoods.  To upgrade or downsize, as needed.  To leave paint and snow and water heaters to someone other than me.  But Lee thought it was an investment, an opportunity to step into the real estate market, something we couldn’t do in California.  And I went along with it.

When we are no longer under water, we will sell it.  Lee will pay himself back for any financial losses and we will split anything that remains.  I am expecting nothing.

The tenants have already moved out.  They’ve scrubbed it with organic cleaners they make themselves.  It is immaculate.  They are wonderful tenants.  We have been lucky.

I look at the floors.  I forgot how rich the walnut is.  That the kitchen is big enough for two to dance in.  How excited I was to have new appliances, cherry cabinets and granite countertops.  A bathroom with a pedestal sink and good water pressure.

The curtain hooks and rods we left are still up .  As is the full-length mirror in the second bedroom.  The shoerack.  And a piece of fabric I used to cover the master bedroom window that faces a brick wall.  I made a hem using an iron and tape I bought at Poppy Fabric.   I brought it from California.  I loved the pattern.  I forgot it is here.

There is a built-in wine rack next to the dishwasher.  I had big plans for it.  Ironically, I stopped drinking not long after we moved to Chicago.  I kept rolled up cloth napkins and tablecloths in the slots instead.

There are pin size holes in the wall where we hung a spice rack.  A nail drilled into the exposed brick where I hung the Napa Valley Mustard Festival poster.  I bought it my first year in San Francisco, years before I met Lee.

I remember arriving here on a steamy, grey July day.  Putting the keys we received via FedEx in the door and the relief we felt when it opened.  We slept in sleeping bags on the floor until our truck arrived later in the week.

I thought about Passover Seders – sitting on the floor, on pillows – sometimes more than a dozen of us, recounting the story of the Israelites liberation from bondage.  I thought about parties we had, cramming 50 or more of my coffee-swilling comrades into the 800 or so square feet.

I thought about the day we left Chicago for Seattle.  The movers had come.  The condominium was empty.  We stayed the night at my friend Pam’s.  She made us egg and cheese sandwiches for dinner and we watched her daughters perform an interpretive dance to Simon and Garfunkel – the oldest, a little bit flirty with my then-husband.

We came back to get the cats.  To put the pod on the roof, load up the car and go.  The pod didn’t fit.  Lee had to jerry rig it and hope for the best.  When we were packed, I went back inside a final time.

I walked to the back office – the only room where the sun streamed in.  It created a rainbow pattern on the dark, wood floor.  I got down on my knees.

I thanked God for this home.  For my time in Chicago.  For my friends.

I thanked God that I was sober.  For all that I got from this place I didn’t think I wanted to be.  In a home I never wanted to buy.  I knew I had been exactly where I was supposed to be.  And now I was leaving.

I wept.

Nine days prior Lee told me I didn’t have to come to Seattle.  That he had taken me from my home once before.  That he didn’t want to do it again if I wasn’t willing.  But it was too late to turn around.  It was easier to go than to not go.

And so I went.  Because it was easier.  Because, I believed, that’s what married people do.  Because I wasn’t quite done.

I thought I would feel more emotional being at the house.  That I might feel more sadness.  More anger.  Wistful.  But I didn’t.  I watched the memories as I would a current-events film loop in the third grade – the kind that was no longer current by the time it arrived.

Our tenant showed me photos of the home he and his girlfriend just bought, not far away.  The kitchen, the bath – not unlike ours.  The walls he painted – turquoise and slate.  He seemed proud. Hopeful.

He offered to hand over the keys to the next tenants.  I gratefully accepted.

He is done here.  Me too.