New Beginnings

We are moving out of our duplex in California, storing some things, selling some things and moving some things back to our house in Michigan.  People keep asking what we are going to do… what our plan is.  They want us to pin it down and have an exact course of action.

Well, it’s not the way my husband and I roll.  We never have.  Yes, we have overriding goals and ideas about our lives.  The family and children are paramount and always have been but sometimes the decisions and actions may have belied that.

Today I realized I am an artist, married to an artist who happens to be a jazz musician.  We both are creators of our lives.  Like jazz and blues etc, we have chord patterns, and perhaps a particular rhythm and a given instrument and all the other variables in a performance…. our lives are like that.  We change and we adjust and we improvise.  It can seem random (like jazz) but it never is.. and you always get back to the ‘head’ (musician stuff) and the tune resolves. 

Our lives have been lived that way.   I like it.  It keeps things interesting.  We have variations on a theme of family, art and music… wild variations that become complete improvisation.  It’s a good way to live if you can think on your feet and trust your perceptions and decision-making or even know that anytime you make a mistake, you can still make it look right..sound right… by resolving it (if you trust your instincts and are clever).   

Yesterday we went to Disneyland with my son, his wife and two little ones.  It wasn’t the best of days.  They kids got tired and grumpy because they were slightly ill.  I told them to wait until they were well.. but they didn’t.

We were all sitting watching the Tiki bird thing when my grandson got up off his seat and walked over to sit between me and my husband.  His Mother had been kissing him and being all lovey on his head.  He didn’t say anything and didn’t hit her.. but quietly changed where he was sitting.  I thought it was an interesting and very mature move.  He doesn’t like his mother.  Why does a kid not like his Mother at that age?  I have never seen that.

My right ear has been stuffed up for a week now.  I’m on antibiotics for an infection.  It’s really irritating.

A couple of sweet Jehovah’s Witness ladies came to my door this morning. I’ve decided to treat everyone the way I would want to be treated.  They really believe in their religion and I have no idea where these women have been and what has happened to them in their lives.  It is not my place to take away any comfort another chooses.  Particularly religion… really… it took them just 30 seconds to leave me a picture of Jesus.  He looks like a young Kenny Loggins.  Did you ever wonder if Jesus could sing?  I would love to hear a rap version of Sermon on the Mount.

We are strongly leaning to giving up our little duplex in Long Beach.  It will save us a boatload of money.

Yesterday was such a full one.  Helped build a fence around my son’s pool so the kids will be less likely to drown.  It was exhausting, since my job was to watch the two kids while intensive work was done by my son and my husband.

We left there at 5, drove an hour or so to my other son’s home to have dinner.  He, his friend Christy,  his ex-wife, her father were all there.  What a strange crew it was. But it was comfortable and real and what a great evening.

His ex-wife owns a restaurant and is a fantastic cook.  The meal was simple and delicious.  The wine was perfect. 

My children are each very different from one another and their lives are polar opposites in many ways.  It’s like visiting other worlds.

Back when I was in college way back when, I met a guy in class.  The men I meet in class and am attracted to have all been dark and moody looking.  It’s a thing.  Joel was a couple of years younger than me and he pursued me a bit, meeting up with me on a bridge I had to walk across to go home. 

We stood there one day talking and he made no sense at all, talking about whales and Moby Dick and strange dream-like scenes.  I liked it because everyone I knew were just predictably sociable.  Now that I think back, I wonder if he was maybe tripping or at least high. 

He invited me to his house, which was actually his Dad’s house … a really cool mid-Century modern thing, all concrete and open with custom furniture.  I’d never seen anything like it. 

He asked if he could photograph me.  And he did.  He kissed me and was a great kisser, but he said he was impotent and he couldn’t have sex.  In all the time I knew him, he never took off his clothes and now I’m wondering if he was a girl… seems unlikely because he had facial hair but he may well have been intersexed (is that a word?)

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about him today for some reason.  We kissed a lot but that was all and he was always attractive to me, played guitar, sang, eventually went to Vietnam as a Medic, came back an activist, got married, no kids, and is now a lawyer, still an activist. 

We exchanged a couple of e-mails but he was just too odd for me to continue the conversation… but I do still think about him sometimes.

I wish that drugs and drinking really helped in the long run.

I wish that religion and going to church and praying actually helped in the long run.

I wish that I could just rest and let someone else take care of me.

I wish I didn’t have to be so fucking responsible for myself and others, ALL the fucking time.

Today is my ex husband’s birthday.  I wished him a happy one on his FB page.  He rarely checks that site so I don’t know if he’ll see it or not.  I put up an old photo with it. 

I was married to him for seven years.  We had two children together.  He was a perpetual student.  I worked as he got a BA and two Master’s degrees.  Then I finally got to go and promptly realized he was not for me and I got a divorce. 

There were a number of boring, complicated, unethical, immoral and some terribly exciting facts I left out of that past paragraph.  So you can see, I have left out the parts you would most want to read.  

Anyway, he’s an okay person.  He bores me.  He is quite conservative but also plays in a blues band and rides a motorcycle.  He acts and dresses like a 1960s Ivy League college professor.  He bores me.  He was not a good lover.  He was not (and is not) a good father.  He was not a particularly good provider… and when he did make money, it often went for what he wanted with little regard for any of us. 

He’s been married four times.  His current wife and he do not share a house.  They date.  I like her quite well.  She’s  bright, artistic and seems to understand she shouldn’t live with him. 

There are those who say he is still in love with me.  I don’t know and don’t care.  It makes me feel a little sick to my stomach to think about it.         *shakes head and shivers.