Monday Mimisms ~ Toes Out the Window

I was seventeen. 

Performing in 1974

My hair weighed more than I did.

We'd just finished a Beatles medley for the student body of our high school

and all I wanted to do was step out of the Yellow Submarine we'd build out of  cardboard and slide into the passenger seat of my boyfriend's car

 Toes out the window. Coca-Cola in my hand.

Hair-in-a-ponytail-happy-I was.

Fast forward forty-seven years. 

and volcanoes are exploding in my pencil head

Pandemic Me

So much time on my hands

Thinking about the one I should have married

Thinking about the one I could have married

The one I shouldn't have married

The one I didn't marry

All of those shoulda-woulda missteps brought lifelong consequences unbeknownst to the long-haired girl.

The one who got away before I found myself at the ripe old age of thirty-something. 

What is it about sixty-something that causes one to psychoanalyze the whole of a life?  

Shouldn't I be knitting sweaters or something? 

Who does that?

Me. This week. That's who.

Then I hit a big bodacious bad brick wall. SCREEEEECCCCHHHH.

BAM. OUCH.

Last Thursday night I was sitting on the couch staring at the wall in silence, evicting a few rickety ghosts from my head, watching them fly away into mist. Scribbling on paper. I'd been there awhile...just kind of numb. Needing to not-think. You get that, right?  There had been unpleasantness, you see. 

I don't like unpleasantness. I like peace.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Meditate. Pray. Listen.

Before I knew it, all the ropes that held me down had been untied. I lit a match and symbolically burned a paper full of angry words in my left hand. 

Watched it burn. Watched it burn.

Ashes. Poof. Gone.

Then picked up what was left of those I-should-have-could-have-shouldn't-have people with my right hand and blew. them. away. 

I looked at the clock. It was 2 am. 

I straightened my dented crown and went to bed.

I've been on a slippery slope you see.

Trying to function and still save me.

There. I said it.

It doesn't matter how long ago your loved one last misused a substance or drank to excess or suffered a bout of depression, in a mother's head and heart they're always a fool's breath away from active destruction; except with addiction or alcoholism or even narcissism it's mutual destruction. A person with a substance use or personality disorder can look at you stone cold sober holding a Bible in one hand and Holy Water in the other and you still won't believe they're sober or truthful.

That's my problem, not theirs.

I don't want to cover it up anymore.

Not because of my beautiful loved one - he's been successfully working his sobriety for many years - 

but because of ME.

Standing in the wide weary gulf between helping and enabling 

when I found myself alone and climbing out of the recent brief foxhole we shared,

it resurrected all kinds of emotional baggage from years and years ago when he was actively struggling with substances. Oh, the memories. We found ourselves dancing to that worn-out record despite ourselves

my eyes were opened

to what I had become

what I needed to deal with

what I needed to admit

what I needed to understand

what I needed to

stop

doing

Don't you hate that word?

What word, Mimi?

Codependency

Yes, I hate it.

The day I started blogging, half my face fell off

Then all kinds of wonderful adventures began

Today, this many years young,

I found the other half again.

There is a thin line dangling between the edge of authenticity and the need for dignity and privacy. My writing has always walked that wire. But in every word and every story I try to err on the side of transparency, in the same way I would want less shame-based words applied to the people I love.

Addict is not a noun or an identity. Alcoholic is not a noun or an identity. Codependent is not a noun or an identity. They are disorders and struggles, not moral failures. The disease is not the person.

I've wanted to say it for years.

That I am proud of him

That I love him with all my heart

That I see him

Despite me and my uneven walk with worry and faith

But just for a little while, I think we need a mini-divorce.

Hush Homer. I'll be checking your medicine cabinet tomorrow..

 Just until I regain my sea legs and he sprouts more of those beautiful wings.

He can be free to make his own adventures 

 I won't be holding him hostage with my smothering

I can be free to make my own adventures 

 not holding myself back with fear 

What codependency does to your peace of mind is insidious and suffocating 

You don't even know it's happening! 

It's a learned belief and habit that I must unlearn

Have you ever seen your son or daughter nearly dead from a disease?

You'll do anything to keep that from happening again. Even when you no longer need to. Even years later. And therein lies the devil of enabling.

The job of addiction is to kill and destroy. When you enable (helping someone do something they can do for themselves) at first you believe you're actually helping. You feel good about it. You get a rush of feel good dopamine. Sound familiar? 

Here's the problem. The real sneaky job of enabling is also to kill and destroy. 

 My hardwired need to protect, spills over into the decisions I make about everything and everyone else in my life. Now that was an eye-opener.

Codependency grows from a normal natural parental instinct which screams protect.my.child. Mothers have it the moment their babies are born.

There's no shame in it. It's motivated by love. 

But with substance disorder, because of the unpredictable trauma that goes on in families as a result, it can grow wild and out of control and you start looking for a recurrence of symptoms in your loved one. It drives them away. It feels like moral judgment even when your intention is to only throw love. 

Sometimes I move about the world in shoe-drop mode, post trauma reactions that aren't even real in the moment. It's not irrational or hypothetical. The triggers of past events can still be seen in my mind and felt in my heart.

So I make up my own scary stories in the now and convince myself that I need to DO something to prevent them from happening again. It's that dead-child-coffin-dream fear, to put it bluntly. It's very common for parents of children who've suffered from substance abuse. It's like you're watching a horror show on the big screen of your life. The substance has the starring role, the protagonist. Everyone is in desperately twisted love with the alcohol, the pill, the high, the drama. Your loved one is drowning. You are the unintentional antagonist. Everyone dies.

You run yourself ragged trying to help. It doesn't help. It makes things worse because they lose the dignity of making their own choices. And you lose your mind watching them suffer.

I think I dented my crown when I hit that wall, my friends.

But I'll be OK.

No matter how many times I stick my toes out the window and put my hair in a ponytail, some days are like a roller coaster ride.  You either hold on or fall off.

But mostly, I discovered the amusement ride in my head wasn't fun.

I joined a support group. I took an assessment. I signed up for a codependency class online. I wrote emails and ask questions. I watched podcasts on parents who also struggle with enabling NODDING and NODDING and NODDING my head.

Who knew I belonged to a club that no one wants to belong to all these years? 

 I didn't join to fix him. I joined to fix me.

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Monday Mimisms ~ Getting Back To Me

         The housing market exploded into doom-for-buyers about the time they settled in. No reasonable rent to be found. No affordable housing on the horizon. 
          They were stuck here with me, Homer, Snickers, squirrels and trees. For the past eighteen months I've had guests in my house; changing jobs, seeking housing, and going with the flow of economic turmoil. The bonus? A delightful 3-year-old who calls me Mimi liberally planted kisses on the mirrors....and on me...every single day.  It's been challenging and wonderful all at once. At times the experience forged our relationships with in-your-face fire, followed by loving transitions of the heart, only to be followed by more fire. All necessary. Part and parcel for three generations under one roof. And probably long overdue.  I'm happy and proud to report they've moved on to a home of their own ... new commitments, new adventures. I still haven't washed the lipstick marks from the mirrors.

Now there are only the ghosts of Bloggingham... and me.

While I love them and will miss them, I'm rediscovering what it means to be truly finally retired and free.My life has been on pause for a few years. Lately I've been to a couple of lunch meets with old friends and colleagues, bought a new dress for Friday night tip-toeing into a nightclub (if I remember how to walk in heels), found a new Farmer's Market and stocked the freezer with healthy foods. 
And the music? UP. LOUD.
Sleeping?IN
Clothes and shoes?FLUNG OFF(did I say that??)
Mostly, I appreciate and value my independence. I don't think I'll take for granted, again, any little thing in my home.  Did I fully appreciate my space before? NO. Did I remember to stop and be grateful for pine cabinets, wood floors, porches and tire swings? Not always. 
I'd almost forgotten what it meant to hear silence.
 I have learned to be thankful for the smallest of things: the forks and spoons I now wash in the quiet of morning, the sound of a perking coffee pot, the sight of birds making new nests under inconvenient eaves and dust...even dust...because I get to do a big spring clean and spruce my home new into what I want it to be just for me again. I feel like I walked into a brand new house.
I need rugs. And lamps. And art on the walls.I'm throwing out carloads of accumulated junk from attic to basement.VERY liberating.
 I've lived alone for the past twenty-one years! Having others here for so long was an intense experience for me. I like my own company. I like my own space. I like my own routines. And let's face it, I drive people crazy!!!(Just ask them!) Hush Homer..
Someone said to me the other day during one of our post-pandemic marathon phone calls, "You never apologize.""Excuse me?" popped right out of the snarly mouth of mine. "I don't apologize??""You're the most unapologetic person I've ever known," he said. "You don't explain yourself. You're just who you are all the time. I admire that about you.You don't care what anybody thinks....I pay attention."
I appreciated the insight but me thinks I need to do some serious tweaking on this codependent thing and learn what boundaries I'm sabotaging for mySELF that causes me pain and stunts my personal growth. Inner Truth time. 
So this time in Act 3 of my lifeit feels like starting overfrom scratchlike flour and dough-making scratch  mixing mud in a wild strawberry mud-pie scratchmaking love in a cold backseat scratchmoving off to college starting overscratchlyrics and crazy chordsout of thin air scratch
staying home BEING
88 keys of blank pagesjust waiting for meand my time

That's what musicians do. That's what writers do.That's what I do.No apologies.


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Monday Mimisms ~ Who Would Ghost a Queen?

So THAT's where you're
hiding the candy..

Why am I explaining? Questioning?
Again. My newest non-resolution. Stop explaining. Just be.
My days are nuttier than usual. Busier than usual. Mostly I'm spinning this one around in a chair 'til she's "Bizzy!" as only a three-year-old can hilariously proclaim, gently fighting with Beans (age 11) about the battles he's "not" fighting in video games when I walk around the corner and hear him declare "victory" over his enemies. Can't he just learn to meditate?

Learning to "watch" 
in the doctor's office. Fun times.

Or relentlessly checking the "watched" spot on my back. Watch it? I can't SEE it! So, I've decided not to "watch" it. I told Dr.Derm that SHE should be the one watching, not me. I will drive myself and the whole Blogosphere crazy if I watch.

You see it, right?

Maybe I should take a picture of it backwards in the mirror and let YOU watch it. Oh, I crack myself up.All I know is that when I go back in March to see if all this "watching" has produced any crazy results, I shall declare ('cause I'm a Queen) that I'm done with  the eye and body contortion routine. Just take it off. Please. Now. "These take yeeeeaaarrrsss to develop into a problem," she said, "Don't worry."Then. Why. Are. We. Watching???

Bree "watching" flower roots

She knows how to get to the bottom of things.

Which brings me to my latest sad and silly malady.

I've been ghosted. Ghosted! Me??!

Who would ghost a Queen?

It started out so lovely. Five-hour phone conversations. Morning texts. Goodnight emails. Mutual commonalities and laughter. Then New Year's happened...er....or didn't happen. And I realized that the more I talked to him about my own personal goals and aspirations the less interested he seemed to be in understanding that independent streak in moi. He could have just said what I suspected...that he wanted to be joined at the hip. I can't even FIND my hips.

 Instead. Ghosted.  

I'm going to talk to Baby Boy. Since he's eighteen now soon-to-be majoring in Computer Science, he should know the ways and whys of intraweb romance. Or not.All I know is that he never had any trouble with dating in Kindergarten. Wait...there was that Tiffany girl.....and Amy...oh, and Susie (!) who popped him in the head with a paper airplane. Maybe I'd better not ask Baby Boy.


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Monday Mimisms ~ Mama's Lipstick

It was the purses

and maybe because I never got to see her things....

or know the name of the last lipstick she used

or pick up the hairbrush from the oval tray in her bedroom

and brush my hair with the combs of life left from mama

perhaps it was the lingering smell of giggly laughs

we tossed about

on summer days of shopping

 'round the thrift markets

the way she would bid

the way she would fight

for what she wanted

and laugh

when she got

what

she

wanted

The roses were lovely

in the market today

on the face of the painting

she would have loved

so I fought

and I bought

it

thinking it was for me

when it really was for her

"I know that box," she would have said.
"Pick it up, my girl, and we will take it home to our treasure pile." 

Oh, how she would have loved the Lillian Vernon pink. And the lining. And the way it fell from her slender shoulders, prancing around in the store of trinkets like a Queen sitting high on the Nile with no one to judge and no one to care. I picked it up three times and felt the silk way down on the inside before I put it in my basket. There was something about the way my hands knew the cloth. Inside the deep well of the purse I felt my mother's hands..only realizing later that's why I kept picking it up and putting it down...so much like our complicated way with each other 

so I bought it

 thinking all along it was mine; when all along, I knew it was hers. Always hers.

She loved purses

and priss

and me

"Isn't that print just the finest? she'd say. "I know just where I'll put it and it matches the roses in my garden. The ones on the bush you gave me for Mother's Day that's grown so tall and full of you, my girl. I think of you and pray for you when I see them bloom," she'd say.

So I bought it

for me

And I gave it

to her 

And no one would believe - not even I - that she had shopped with me today

Until some time later

 in the evening

when I needed her in a moment of pain

 for no reason I can logically explain

 she knew

and she came

into my room

carrying

this perfumed

purse

 and all the exquisite days with her

came flooding back with her presence

 and it no longer mattered what lipsticks

she left behind

and suddenly I remembered

a kiss

placed on my lips 

by my mother

on the day I was born

It was the shade she wore

and 

I

will

 always

always

wear 

it

    

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The Single Woman's Staircase ~ Monday Mimisms

Once upon a time in a land faraway, I moved out of Bloggingham and into a tiny one-bedroom apartment on the second floor. Divorce. The dreary building was gray. With lots of concrete. I so hate concrete.  No elevators. Just creaky stairs and unlit corners.     At least the back deck looked out onto a patch of woods and sometimes I could pretend I was still home in the forest. And I didn't have to clean two stories and take care of dust mites in the dandelions. At least for awhile...

                                              

A beginning teacher's salary was not going to pay the bills. I was sad to discover through the years that any teacher's salary is not nearly enough. But that's another story for another day.   

              

After having some luck online selling WWII ephemera and postcards, I decided to try porcelain. My grandmother's beautiful table-setting ways ran through my blood. She adorned her simple table in that tiny tiny kitchen with love and beautiful dishes, even for mundane Monday lunches. She had no idea what she was teaching me. 

Or did she?

But back to the land of porcelain poverty...

I needed to make money. Inspired by my grandmother's pottery flair, I went to a huge china sale and bought several hundred pieces of antique and vintage china for $300.00. That was a big expense for me at the time. From the trunk of my car I carried boxes and boxes of tiny teacups and saucers  up the single woman's staircase and sorted them out on the floor. I researched comps and history and patterns. I took photographs with a small Kodak camera and learned to edit. That inventory investment netted several thousand dollars and kept me afloat while I transitioned to life as a single woman who would have to support herself. I hadn't been single since I was eighteen-years-old.

It also taught me that I could do what I had to do. 

That was twenty years ago.

not me...but close

Teaching by day and side-hustling china by night, kept me out of trouble but exhausted; jumping through academic hoops to earn tenure and writing endless lesson plans at night, grading papers (I had 249 students), then sitting on the floor wrapping reams of bubble-wrap around tiny little delicate dishes and shipping them all over the world. Rinse. Repeat.   Strangely enough, through the first few months of that leaving, I was remarkably happy way down on the inside, even though I remember crying myself to sleep at night too. Divorce will do that to a person - even if you are the one wanting to end the marriage. It's still grief. I had been married for a very long time.  I felt strong and weary at the same time, if that makes sense.

  It took me some time to get back to Bloggingham Forest (which wasn't even "Bloggingham" until 2006). Concrete became trees again and life finally settled down. I was back to mowing dandelions, serial dating, and dusting the dungeon.  One of my boyfriends at the time called it "Our Grotto"...oh, those were the days. 

But I digress.

I wonder what happened to him...

A couple of years ago, just before the pandemic rolled in, I started re-selling again. China, not boyfriends. I had leftover dinnerware that needed moving. The first day back online I sold an Aynsley England Rosedale teacup and saucer for $150.00 that I'd paid less than five dollars for. Eureka! Ummm....you might say I was inspired. 

Steubenville porcelain in my store
Mid-Century Modern

Aynsley Rosedale

During my recent COVID recuperation, I binge-watched EBAY resellers' videos and took notes. So much has changed in the world of retail and online business. There's Mercari and Poshmark too!  But I can do this. I know I can. It will take a giant sweep of organization and cleaning in the basement grotto, but I'm feeling better now and besides, I've been on this floor before. 

Life, indeed, is cyclical. 

Sitting here tonight looking at bubble wrap and boxes on the floor and Ebay in my tabs window, facing another stretch of exciting unpredictable singlehood, I feel a little bit like climbing those stairs again. Not the dismal ones that led a tired teacher to a lonely parking lot, but the ones that lead from my very own underground grotto - whose walls shall never speak a word -  to the woman who lives upstairs, still fighting dragons on her own and punching words in the air to see if they'll land in a place she can love. I'm remembering the feel of bubbles on my skin, pennies in my pocket, and the warmth of a strong and saucy man who loved to light candles and kiss me in the dark. Balancing....me....balancing him....swaying and laughing...silk on slippery stairs. Have you ever been carried in arms that would not let you fall? 

 That's the thing about words and porcelain - as surely as fine bone china is forged with fire, so are words formed with love. And if they are flung with the strongest of care, not a one of them will shatter into pieces weighty enough to break something valuable and true. 

And if, by chance, you see a cup marked "Aynsley England" 

I have just three words for you -

Pick.It.Up.

 

Photos: Mimi Lenox and Pixabay's bubblewrap woman

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