Fifty-one

Today, at 1:21 pm, I turned fifty-one. I decided to start this blog as a way to record my voice. I’ve been writing for years. I have seventeen notebooks full of stories and poems, but have not had the courage to put any of them into the world. I am tired of being such a wimp. Here I will tell my story honestly. I will also share fun stuff, like crafts, photographs, recipes, and random ideas. Bear with me, as I am technologically impaired, but trying to improve. I hope that someone will leave me a comment sometime. Here goes. 

 My life has been a collection of tattered bits. I was raised by a single mom. We’d moved thirteen times by the time I turned eighteen. Moving was something of a hobby with Mom, which, over the years, she’d pretty much honed to a minimalist art from. Her strategy was to send my sisters and me on ahead with some relative, while she stayed behind to “pack our stuff,” which was code for “have a giant yard sale”. But I was a dumb kid, and never caught on as my stuff increasingly got lost in the move. I have one memento left from childhood: a troll doll with pink hair named Iggy. I got it in second grade, and used to crochet little outfits for it out of variegated yarn. I always carried this doll in my pocket on moves, so maybe I wasn’t entirely dumb.

 Mom divorced my dad, an alcoholic, when I was a baby, then proceeded to court a dying man, a priest, a gangster, and a prisoner (in that exact order). Her taste in men was not boring. I was off and grown by the time she married the prisoner, then died within a year or so, at fifty-two. Sometimes I almost forget these events of long ago, but I tell them here because they are where my story starts.  And because I’ve discovered that everything that happened is carried in my bones.

I married my college sweetheart at twenty-one. I always say he was a bargain. He is quiet and unassuming, so most girls did not notice his stellar qualities which I, on the other hand, immediately zeroed in on. It was easy. I’m nothing if not a natural born treasure hunter. I’d been studying the men in my family for years, so basically all I had to do was sniff out their opposite. Kind? Check. Hard-working? Check. Sober? Check. Law abiding? Check. Sane? Check. The handsome part was a bonus. The quiet man and I have been married almost thirty years now, making him my all-time best bargain ever.

We have two daughters. The oldest is in business school. The youngest is a civil engineer. They are the finest things I’ve ever made. Okay, so maybe I can’t take all the credit for their awesomeness. I’d be happy with a tenth or so. They’re both grown and independent – that’s the good news. They both live on the west coast, and that’s the sad part, as I live in Texas. To say I miss them is a bit of an understatement. Cellphones and skype help a little. Visits help more.

I develop new interests all the time. I’m verging on a new photography obsession right now. Taking photographs seems something like wakeful dreaming to me. So interesting, even mesmerizing at times. I’ve realized that I need a new (better) camera. Luckily, today is my birthday, so we’ll see how that goes.

Two years ago, I developed an interest in scotch. Scotch is a world unto itself, what with all the regions and types, not to mention the history and production process. In my opinion, the Islays are best, especially Laphroaig quarter cask. There is no such thing as too peaty or too smoky. I hope to get to Scotland one day to tour the distilleries.

I’ve been through hard times, but I try not to let disappointment stick. I took up running at forty-seven, then kickboxing and hip hop dancing. These activities made me happy, helping with the empty nest thing. I could lose myself, becoming the whoosh of my stride, the power of my roundhouse kick, or the rhythm and words of a song. Then, one day, something happened and all of these activities were taken away.

I was not ready for the thing that happened. It left me searching my pockets, once again, to see what I still had. In life, one must always carry something along to the next place.  The thing happened on a September Saturday at dusk.  I was sitting in the backseat, riding home from a barbeque dinner out with friends, Quiet Man to my left. I didn’t see anything coming, never got to brace myself. In midsentence,  I went catapulting from side to side: spinning, spinning, unable to control the motion of my head, as it knocked around like a bowling ball, or my body as it, at once, fought against and was subsumed by a force seemingly beyond a tornado. My body shot ahead of my thoughts, beyond reach, and I was suspended somewhere in between.

Next, the car was still. I heard myself screaming, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,” again and again. I thought I would die from suffocation. My lungs would not work. Quiet man squeezed my hand telling me he was okay. He was not. His hip was shattered, his neck broken. The friend to my right was passed out, drooling on my shoulder. He seemed lifeless, which was terrifying, but came to while the medics extracted him and quickly recovered. We’d been T-Boned by a car running a red light at fifty five miles per hour.

In the accident, I broke fourteen bones, some shattered, some broken in several places, and my spinal cord got tweaked. The recovery has been physically painful, obviously, but hardest mentally, as I tend to overanalyze and fret over every little aspect of every little thing. I’ve had to fight hard to regain my cheer while working equally hard to accept that crappy days are okay: a part of life. I’ve had to find new gentler ways to enjoy exercise. I’ve discovered walking instead of running, and yoga to replace hip hop. The Quiet Man is doing great. He’s even planning to hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail this April.

I have a lifelong obsession with rooting through other people’s junk. Give me a Goodwill store, or an estate sale, and I’m happy for hours. It’s not the buying that attracts me so much as the looking. I like to think about the objects, and ponder the people that owned them. Several times I’ve come across funeral tee shirts, with a picture of the departed on the front with birth dates, death dates, and slogans. It never occurred to me to print up such a thing when any of my relatives died, but the idea is extremely interesting.

I try not to buy too much, and often leave empty handed, but the items that call to me most loudly, I snag. These are mostly handmade items, art, old ties, retro kitchen items, or carved wooden containers. When someone makes a thing by hand, they leave a bit of themselves behind. I collect these bits, and make sure they get appreciated. My great uncle Vic lived with us when I was in high school. He had bowls he’d carved out of mahogany when he was in World War II, and a beautiful walnut sewing cabinet he’d made. I always loved those things. There’s something so beautiful about wood grain.

In some odd way, writing helps me collect the pieces that got scattered before I had a say. At least, that’s what seems to happen. Today I am fifty-one, and these are my thoughts. Some are random, some are wrong, but in the end, I hope they turn out good. I am a hoper.