Blair’s Eulogy

You died a long time ago now. You had just been resurrected in my facebook pond of the past. We were getting divorced. Both of us. It was going around at the time and you pinged me from the Ukraine. I wonder if you had not taken that bottle of pills if you would be huddled in some steel factory right now knowing you were the first punches in the next big fight. 

I was adding music to my library. Inspired by a new rush of feeling. This new guy, he brings up thoughts of you. And I stumbled on Van Morrison and paused.. The first real all day, sweaty sex partner in crime. We were such good friends. I was so young back then. 17? 18? Young to your 25, old man. But we would lie on your torture device of a pullout bed, smoking cigarettes, ashtray on my naked chest listening to Van Morrisson admitting that it was indeed the best album to fuck to. 

You had this comforting voice. So low and deep, the Scottish edges still there. So easy to laugh and take things in stride. I knew you were a drunk back then, we all were. It was our job. You were the smartest of all of them, Blair. Such an easy brain you had. Learning Russian fluently to read all those Dostoyevsky tomes. It took you to the wilds of the East and you never came back. Bringing with you your Scottish pride and punk rock super stardom. I miss you. I only realised that this morning. 

Somehow you faded. We all did as we dispersed, degrees in hand. You were always so kind. Even when you would come back, tail between legs apologizing for some drunken discretion. I never minded. The best break up as we sat in our haunt, you having again admitted to sleeping with someone you found repulsive and I said, “I just don’t think I can be with you anymore.”

I did not feel betrayed, I just never understood how you could want these women you hated and still want me. Maybe I thought I was one of them. That it made me less beautiful. You just nodded and said, “ I would do the same.” And we smiled and had a beer and seamlessly moved into friendship. 

That moment decades later when the little friend request poked me. We started chatting and you told me about your life. Your kids , your troubles, your band. You were the same, flirting like the first time. Impressed with me as you always were, making me feel smart. You sounded sad. I think whoever she was, she broke your heart and stole something. You almost came home. You would have lived down the street and your kids would have met mine. The what ifs that were not enough to pull you through. I wish they had been Blair, and I could show you my dog. Though I think it would be my ridiculous cat that would have pleased you the most. He’s kinda like you. 

I am sorry it was too heavy, but I understand. Just like back then. That draw to the dark places that you could not help. I don’t know why today is the day that I started to mourn. It’s grey outside and I have been feeling romantic again for the first time in almost as long as it was since I heard you had died. Maybe it’s that. My heart is back where it was when we first met as I mentioned you in passing during one of those expose yourself talks that you have when sliding into love. He looked genuinely sad when I said you had taken your life. 

So I wanted to just write you here. Let you know. I always love you, even in those scotch soaked moments where the Russian tragedy plays out. Goodbye my friend.

Plants and Animals

I am sitting  in the waiting room as some sweet doctor roots around in my child's brain to try and see why things are so hard for her sometimes. It makes me feel strange. I always thought I'd given her enough love and safety that her wires would not have been crossed this way. I did not withhold. I did not repress. I did not helicopter. I set reasonable lines in the sand. But it happened anyway. 

I talk to my clients about children. How to parent. What does it mean? For most, they see their children, unformed lumps of clay, ready to be moulded into productions of success. 

I say to them, you need to see their person. A child is a seed you plant. You can water and fertilize it. Put stakes in to hold it straight , or chicken wire to keep the foxes out. But the plant will grow how it will grow. We cannot determine the size of the leaves or the number of flowers. We have to take steps back and see what the plant wants to be. Let it reach for the sun in the direction it is drawn to, and revel in its own choice of bloom. 

I know I am a good parent. The other day, after sharing something inappropriate, as is my bad habit, I asked her. How do you feel when I don't filter ? Have I crossed a line from parent to friend? Will you end up on a couch wishing that I had put more fences around you? 

She answered,

" I know you are my mum. I am not confused. I admire you and want to be like you."

I tried not to cry. Of course I am bad at that. The tiny droplet of water pooling in the corner of my lid, I quietly push it aside, and say,

"That makes me feel so nice, kiddo."

But sitting here waiting in this flourescent lit chair, I doubt. I doubt that I did it right. Or that I didn't push. That she was clay and I was wrong. That firmer hands should have moulded her on the wheel. That  I should have fired her in the kiln to keep her strong. 

She is so beautiful, this child of mine. The most right of the choices I ever made. We drove over singing Violent Femmes at the top of our voices sharing angst laughing. I introduced this album to her a couple of days ago. 

"This is your new favourite band but you just don't know it yet,"

As I cranked up the volume...

Just last night 

I was reminded of

Just how bad it had gotten

And just how sick

I had become ....

 

She wears my old McGill jacket like a blankie. Always on her. Her face is mine, or so everyone says, astonished when they see her. And there we are, head banging and scream singing in the car on our way to the shrink. 

She's growing. I know. Pots chip and break. Plants adapt, not rigid in their construction. I know she is loved and fed and watered. She is not topiary. I cannot snip and trim and control, obsessed with every branch at wrong angle.  But there are days. Like this day, sitting listening to noise machines and soft murmers from behind doors, where I wish that I was a better gardener. Where I wish I could make her a hothouse flower and not a wild rose, with perfect symmetry, trimmed and beautiful, thorns removed. 

In truth, I won't though. I love her too much not to see her leaves. Not to see her expand into herself. At the mercy of the elements. I love her too much to protect her from all things. Still...

Found it!

I have been away. Or at least AFK. I feel a bit like the teenager that used to apologize to her journal for neglecting it. I think every entry I ever made started out with an excuse. An excuse and an a apology for being a terrible friend to my imaginary audience then knowingly confess to the sin of only writing when sad.  Well I am not sad. I mean there is crying. But not sadness. This is not that kind of comeback. It's just that I found it.

I found it in the rental car I was driving listening to Lord Huron on the roads around where it is.
I know it's a white lady thing. The privilege of looking for something. It has always made me feel strange. We look in love, we look in kids, we look in our community. Where is it? Erikson would call  me on battling my 7th crisis. Sorry, social worker humour. Look him up. It might be worth it. Just shows you that you are always growing. I find that hopeful.

So yes, in the car, crying. But a cry I have rarely felt. A cry of happy. A cry of relief. A cry of having resolved a battle I did not know I was waging. Marcel, one of my dearest loves, once said he felt like I was searching for something, and I agreed, but I didn't know what it was. I knew what it might feel like, but I could not imagine where it could be located. I was crying in the drive of The 100 Acres (plus 42) Woods.

A few months ago, the other dearest love of my life and I were exploring. We were exploring where our future might go. So we went on a hunt for some land. I have always wanted to be in the forest. I have always wanted to live in a tree. When I was a kid, I would go to sleep away camp. It was my perfect place. School was a shark tank of abuse, but camp was like the heaven they tell you they send dogs to. Romping through the woods, getting your hair petted and swimming in lakes chasing after things. Running with your pack.

I found a listing. The agent seemed to think I was nuts. "That's not what you want," he said, "It's a wild mountain, you can't do anything with it." He didn't even come. Just told us the back door was open and we could check it out. We did.

I love this land like I love a person. I love it with that kind of crazy, desperate, hopeful love that you only find a couple of times in your life. It makes me calm when I am with it, and anxious about its safety when I am away. I love it like my daughter. Without judgement and with the kind of fear that comes along with the knowledge that the world it lives in is not always out for its best interests. I love it like my lover, it turns me on and makes me want to breathe it in and explore it. And I somehow know it loves me back.

Walking the land, my friend who is a wonderful builder and dreamer and lover of the wild, showed me where its old logging/ATV road was washing out and how we would need to do maintenance to keep the road from becoming impassable in a few years. I noticed after buying it that I was hamster braining a bit about how to afford fixing and keeping it in order. Last weekend I came up and was walking the trails seeing all the ways the sand and rock were sliding. Marcel who was with me said it's because there are no trees to keep the sand in place.

Suddenly I knew what I was going to do. I thought, it's just trying to heal itself. The sliding would just return it to its mountain state before we cut its body with motors. I said I want to let it do that. I don't want to fix this mountain, I want to be the one that gives it freedom to heal. We can walk where it wants us to walk. Make trails that it wants to show us.

There are a 142 acres. My lovely "wife" jokingly said, the 100 Acres Woods. And then Tigger said, plus 42. The meaning of life. We are a funny family. All chosen. And there is a place for all of us. My daughter and her friends summoned ghosts and played asshole and today, her dad saw his sweet and PTSD'd dog leap across the creek and bound into the woods. "She's figured out she's a dog," he said smiling from ear to ear.

So there I was today, crying in the car after driving through the rolling hills with mist rising through the trees on the way back to the woods. I had found it. The thing I didn't know I was looking for. I can't pay a debt that is incalculable. I cannot repair the critical wounds that we have inflicted.
I can however, put a towel draped welcome sign at the bottom of my hill to greet other kind visitors with a cheerful "DON'T PANIC!" and tend to the woods.

This Kind

I am giving you hopelessly crushed,
writing your initials with mine in hearts 
on my notebooks and back pack kind of love.
Giving you can't concentrate in class,
staring out the out the window daydreaming,
kind of love.
Giving you first time ever in love, love
The un-erasable love,
written in sharpie on my jeans kind of love. 
Little girl love. 

Mushroom Cake

Dedicated to Philip Seymour Hoffman

This is not post about that. It's the final instalment of the Hart trilogy and it just seemed right that I should write it today as I texted him the news that Hoffman had OD'd.  In case you  might have been wondering what happened in my holiday rom-com caper. Was it Hughes or Solondz who won in the end?  It's deserving of a post regardless. 

As Hart sat across from me in a certain restaurant where in the past, its soup had been so delicious it made me giggle, he said, "This makes me so angry." Grinning from ear to ear he took another bite. 

"Fucking mushroom cake, I mean c'mon."

I got it. Fucking mushroom cake. How can  I write to describe a taste so wonderful it makes you angry? I can only write of the feeling it gave us. The knowledge that all of a sudden all other food that had been put on our lips in our lifetime was simply mediocre in comparison to what possibility had just been shown to us. The inescapable fact, that as you swallowed, you were one bite closer to never tasting it again. Yet you are forced to keep taking bites because it is so extraordinary. Realizing that one of the most sensual moments of your life will only be a memory in a matter of minutes. Angry Joy. Simultaneous emotion. Wonder and loss. Painful in its fleeting. 

It was a week of angry joy really. I knew the risk. That seeing this overly romanticized ghost from my past was playing with matches. My worst case scenario, I imagined, was if he were a bore. Or an asshole. Or just plain irritating, and I would be forced into politeness when all the while counting the minutes till he left.  I never imagined angry joy. Who imagines that? Who imagines a feeling of complete comfort and familiarity, like you remember it from some distant dream coupled with that kind of lust you only feel the first time you touch somebody? 

"I haven't slept as well since I was a 7 year old, " he said and I agreed. Feeling weird. Knowing as I slipped my hand across his chest and around his ribs to nestle on his shoulder blade, curled inside an armpit, head on chest, listening to his voice, that I was living déja vu. Knowing too, that this was in a bubble. 3 more days. Trying to imprint smell and feel,

I could write about the week in detail. I would like to keep every little part  written down somewhere so that I can go grab one when I wanted one. Already the week is fuzzy and unreal, with only snapshots of moments sticking out anymore. I feel too oddly protective of them though, to write them here. It's not that they are secret, it is just they wouldn't feel the same to you.  I will sum it up. Bed, joints, music, skin, words and food. Focus. 

On New Year's Eve, his last night in town, we stare at each other annoyed and dumbfounded that Jim Henson was the only famous person we both ever cried for. Like mushroom cake, words don't describe the meaning of coming to realize this perfect bite is about to be the last bite. Perfect connection at the moment of loss.

"Fuck you.. " he smiles at me

"Jim Henson. You asshole, " I shoot back at him.

"Of course it's Jim Henson. Fucking Jim Henson."

He went at 5 in the morning, An early plane back to the other coast. We are rooted in our distance by kids and work. It is our reality so we chat and text and he is my friend. I sent him a mixed tape of angry love songs, my tribute to Hughes. It felt like Hughes while it was happening, but it ended like Solondz. The irony of having perfect fit taunt you from an impossible place. Funny and dark and sad. No real start or end, just an excerpt. Out of context. But so well written and directed.

Solondzed

Happiness is probably my favourite movie. Well it's up there at least, cause who am I to choose favourites? I prefer a grouping to a singularity. Regardless, for those of you who have not seen Happiness, you might well be thinking, sounds like a charming movie. Nothing wrong with happiness. For those of you who have seen the movie, you might well be thinking, what the fuck is wrong with her? And for the tiny few of you who get it. Get why Happiness is such a fantastic movie, this post is for you.

Over a year ago I posted about the breaker of my young heart. Astoundingly named Hart,  which is why I mentioned it before. And his actual name is really that, and I wish I could change that I used it. I used it back when he was  mostly imagined. He was constructed out of memories drugged with young person passion, so he was not so much a real thing as he was the perfect story. And I had to use his name, because it was such a perfect name.

I was sitting playing nerdy boardgames with my ex and kid. We have family board night in a kinda cool little cafe that has some superior coffee. I was distractedly looking at my phone while my kid was off playing with a friend. I saw an email came in. It was from Hart. The real one, not the imagined one. I was surprised as my heart actually skipped a beat. But I left it. To be read later, when kids are in bed and ex husbands are home.

He was feeling nostalgic. It made me smile that I was a source of this for him. When I wrote the post Superheros, I was in those feelings too. What I want to say here is not the details, but the feeling, the very strange sensation of walking slowing into your memories with a person you have not seen since those memories were made. I sent him to this blog, but to the front page, knowing Superheros was in there, buried and dripping with young girl angst. I thought, if he reads down far enough he will find it. I woke up the next morning with a message. He had.

We started going over memories and trading one liners and I caught myself flirting. With Solondz -esque compulsion I could not keep myself from talking to him. Here I was chatting with a memory.
Though bit by wit we started to catch glimpses of the older versions of ourselves. And with what I can only describe as discomfort, I began to yearn just slightly for the lost possibility. He did too, and upon his discovery of my love of the afore-mentioned movie, it came into sharp focus what he had lost. A girl who could see the humour in the pain.

I got him on okc. To get him laid, I guess. Who knows, he seemed to be in need of connection, and for me it's always been a good place for that. He lives a million miles away, so compulsive need to seduce aside, it was impractical. Plus it's funny. It's Happiness funny. It's bittersweet, sarcastic and darkly human funny. The kind of funny that not so much makes you laugh out loud, but rather makes you shake your head and shut your eyes. He showed me who his first date will be with, and she looks perfect. I don't mean, sparkly teeth, shiny hair and nails perfect, but smart and sassy and able to hold her own, perfect. She looked like a good fit.

When Hart first wrote to me, he wrote of compersion. It's the word poly people give to the feeling of happiness you feel when your partner is happy with someone else. You are happy for their happiness. It's a Solondz kind of happiness. One that hurts to feel. Happiness and irony and pain all in one. Hart later wrote that what we we doing felt like the opening of a movie, and maybe it is. Perhaps more in the middle or the end. But it has the elements.

It's not a Huges', boy meets girl/ boy loses girl/boy gets girl... it is  more, boy meets girl/ girl loses boy/boy finds girl/girl gets boy to go online to find another girl/girl ends up back where she started. In there somewhere, the boy keeps losing the girl too. But it's whimsical and funny and smart and filled with nostalgia. It shows the reality of trajectories. How sometimes you just jump in at an opening and jump out again at another. I love Solondz Happiness, its hard to watch, but if you do, there is stuff in there that is beautiful.

Rub me the right way

I feel like I am coming out from under a rock. The Masters is done and now I have been unleashed into to world "qualified." It's strange, our identities. We wear them like clothing. My last fashion statement was a hit at parties. "Oh a massage therapist? How interesting  I have this clicking noise in my shoulder...."

My new counselling therapist incarnation brings out some the same kind of thing, albeit a very wormy can indeed. "Oh that's amazing. You know my uncle is a pedophile..."
People have always offerend me their skeletons though. I seem to invite the TMI. Truth be told I like it. I am interested. As you regular readers know, I love a good story. I don't get invested in the moral, I more just enjoy the journey. My story today kinda bridges that gap, the massage therapist meets emotional pain gap. I am not sure it has a moral, it was just a day I spent and I thought I would write it down.

Last month I had a vacation planned. A small one. Superman and I had rented a beautiful cottage and I was about to head off for 5 days of peace, quiet and dirty dirty sex. I havent really had a vacation in a long time and it was truly well deserved. As is our destiny, best laid plans and all, became unravelled.  He had to fly off and rescue family and I ended up taking my other favorite boy instead. He was about to leave to move to another coast and was a lovely substitute cuddle, but I was still a little sad that my time away had been upended. Massages were in order at a local spa I decided, and my friend and I set off, happily high to cook ourselves in hot tubs and get rubbed by people trained to do so.

I had called the spa and asked for an experienced therapist, because truth be told, I am not easy to massage. Let's just say I have lots of stuff, and I really don't like being petted. I need an elbow or two and some strong hands and I love gettting massaged. This particular day I was ready for it. I just wanted to lie down, close my eyes and let some hands take away some of the crap that had decided to crawl under my shoulder blade and hide.

So there I sat..patiently waiting, and time kept ticking by. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen. I could feel the anxiety rising. Where was he?  I went to a staff member and said, "I had an appointment 15 minutes ago and no one came to get me." I felt like a kid whose parents were late picking them up at school. Panicked, sad and worried that they would never show. They called and looked for him and assured me he was coming. I didn't believe them and my eyes started to sting with tears of disappointment.  Finally this very frazzled looking middle aged man showed up. He looked a bit like a younger Nelson Mandela, strangely enough. Not whom I would have pictured, but my experience has told me, that the most unlikely looking massage therapists were often the best. He was profusely apologetic. He told me he had made a mistake and had given the previous client 90 minutes instead of 60. He said, don't worry, I still have 90 for you. I was so relieved that he was there that I didn't mind. I just told him I understood. I was a massage therapist too and I knew how things happened. He was there now and that was all that mattered

We walked to the little hut. He was still so filled with apology, and I did my best to assure him. It was Ok. As we entered into the cabin he looked at me and said, "I have had my mind all over the place today. I don't usually make that kind of mistake. You see, I just found out this morning that my wife has a brain tumour."

The information hit me like a punch. But trained as I am, I didn't show it. I told him with as much empathy as I felt that that was terrible news. I was sorry to hear that. I said to him, "I understand. Just massage me. No need to talk or think." For those of you who are not massage therapists, you may not quite get it. There is something about going into someone else's body where you can leave yourself at the door and just enter into the moment of exchange. It is a very beautiful place we go sometimes when we work. Hokey as it sounds, it's healing to massage. It's hard to explain in words, but he knew what I meant and he gave me a very grateful smile. He said, "It won't affect the massage."  I said, "I know."

For the next 90 minutes I received one of the best massages I have ever had.
How do I really explain how absolutely beautiful that afternoon really was? I think I will just leave it at that.