Fast Forward

I love a good montage.  I find it rather unfair that one only gets them in movies. How convenient to condense days/weeks/months of hard work into a series of images that will fit within the space of one perfectly chosen song.  When I was dumped, years ago at this point, I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall over and over again.  Partly because it was funny.  Partly because I love Jason Segal, and he is stark naked for a good two minutes at the beginning of the film.  Mostly because I could relate to the very ugly, clumsy task of trying to pick your smooshed heart up off the floor and reshape it into something that once again resembles a beating organ.  But my favorite place in the film was the montage at the end.  He sits down at the piano to play his notable song from his vampire musical in sweatpants, hangdog expression dripping all over the keys.  He pity parties, gives up and goes to lie down. But then he tries again, and soon, the music is swelling, Peter’s up on the treadmill, his apartment is clean(er), he’s composing music in a J. Crew sweater, making dinner for his step brother and step brother’s wife and baby, and then the musical’s complete, he’s ten pounds thinner and has mastered ayurvedic cooking (okay maybe not that last one).  As much as I loved the film, in particular this moment in it, I felt gypped that no montage was coming to save me.  The hours of sitting on the floor in stunned silence, working through shame, rejection, hopelessness, and hurt had to happen in real time. 

In spite of the fact that we don’t get to fast forward in our own lives, perhaps we can relate to montages so well because when we look back at events, that’s what they seem to us: a series of well-chosen images.  Add the perfect song, and you’ve got yourself a montage, in retrospection.  It doesn’t make it easier to get through the muck, but it makes the muck look a little nicer once we’re past it.  The memory glosses over a lot, sepia tones it, hides the snot running down our chins because we’re too grief stricken to wipe it away. 

So, here’s my montage from the past five years, set to Ben Fold’s “The Luckiest” (and I can assure you I looked fabulous through all of it).  My good friend from high school stopped by to visit. We talked and laughed.  He showed up again.  We talked and laughed.  Eventually we kissed. We had dinners out, alone and with the girl.  We went to Texas and got caught on a beach by a hurricane-like storm. He donned cape and superhero body suit and saved us.  We married.  We moved.  The girl grew.  And through the movie watching, card playing, walks, runs, musicals, orchestra concerts, Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners with extended family, we became a family. 

Fast forward.  I was younger.  Now not so much.  In the five year span, I have moved into middle age.  It’s uncomfortable, and I want a montage to pull me through it to a place where my skin fits again.  Because middle age is puberty, round 2.  There are hormones.  You grow in places you wish you wouldn’t.  There are mood swings.  And through it all, you have the same teenaged desire to run away, from others and from yourself. But unlike in your teens, you can't run ahead to the better version of yourself that awaits in your 20s and 30s. Middle age has left all of that behind, and there are no more leading, romantic roles waiting up ahead (at least not in Hollywood blockbusters). Middle age is stepping aside, accepting a certain level of center stage invisibility, and having to decide what supporting role is worth your time. This struggle with identity is the perfect place for a musical interlude.  I don yoga pants and become peaceful and reflective.  I master ayurvedic cooking.  I support charity Mother Teresa-like.  Movies are made about my Stand and Deliver teaching success.  I do not spend years struggling to lose weight, or even worrying about my weight.  I do not snap at my husband and child when my rope is frayed.  I do not sneak the Cheetos for the child’s lunch and then claim that she must’ve eaten them already without being aware of it.  I do not lose days to Desperate Housewife and Office marathons. 

If only. 

The reality of any current montage would be messy.  My pants are tight.  I have never learned to deal with paperwork.  I see my dermatologist on a regular basis to fight acne that is worse now than it was twenty years ago (and I still pop pimples). I have read so much about nutrition, I’m no longer sure what to eat (sweet potato fries win out more often than they should).  The floor is still my favorite place for clothes that I have (or haven’t) worn.  I can justify not working out when the temperature drops below 30 (dangerous as we move into winter). It’s probably no longer cute that I can drink three beers over dinner.  I grind my teeth.  I laugh too loudly, or not at all. 

Unfortunately, there is no fast forwarding here, which is probably for the best, but I think I’ll still add a soundtrack while I roll up my sleeves and get to work.  Let’s go with Ben Folds again: “We’re Still Fighting It”.  Or maybe “Best Imitation of Myself”.  After all, Ben’s 48 now.  It sounds like he can relate.  

Dumped

Movies portray breakup scenes in montages: gorgeously made-up heroines, perfectly placed tears, and rain-streaked windows, all timed to soft, lilting songs about hearts that never recover; songs that are only acceptable to the audience because they, of course, know that the song doesn't really mean what it says until the fat lady sings it (and there are no fat ladies in blockbuster movies).

The reality of being dumped is actually quite different. Finding yourself in the middle of a dumping is shocking in its harsh, unexpected rush of grimy, undesirable emotions. It's jolting to watch your self-esteem plummet drastically to the bottom of the "unwanted party" well. Horrible to feel as if your stomach is trying to swallow your heart. And your heart is trying to crawl to the back of your spine. Stunning to watch the world drain of color, the dogs piss on the rosebushes, the babies with red, squinched faces squall with gaping mouths, the weeds choke the fragile daffodils.

Tuesday and Wednesday, okay and Thursday, alright and Friday, were days spent in denial. It doesn't mean what I think it means. Of course he'll call. Of course we're not over. The phone will ring. His headlights will sweep along the white of my closed blinds. The Cavalry will ride over the hill offering an excuse for his lame behavior, and all can be forgiven. I read, reread, reread, and reread, until memorizing his e-mail and finally convinced myself that, yes, it meant what it said. It quacked, it waddled, it floated, it was yellow, it had feathers. Need I say more? It was a proverbial duck, and the fat lady was trailing after it, warming up her vocal cords. On Saturday, I accepted that it was over.

In retrospect, the first cut really is the deepest. I can remember crawling to the back of my closet in high school and drinking from the twelve pack I begged my older sister to buy me, tears and snot running down into my mouth, mixing with the beer (ah, it was crap beer…who noticed a little salty phlegm?). I thought I would die. That moment, on the floor of my closet, in the dark, with my eighties wardrobe dangling above my head, would be my last. How did one survive a broken heart? At 34, I know it goes day by day, until you move yourself far enough away from it (day 154ish?). And you rationalize the hell out of it until he ends up the loser (yep…he'll regret it one day. I'll be the one that he never forgets.).

You do start to breathe again. Once you force yourself off of the floor and turn off the No Doubt/Sheryl Crow/REM/ /Sarah McLachlan song you've had on repeat for the last hour and a half. Pictures, love letters and presents get packed away. Phone messages get deleted. And you begin to train your mind to see the world as independent of him. The Mexican restaurant is just a Mexican restaurant, the weekly snuggle on the sofa television show is just a television show, and the inside joke that made you snort in the five-star restaurant loses its humor, or is forgotten entirely. Life pushes us past standing forlornly lost in one place, looking at our empty hands.

The reality is that the minute we get dumped, the person that dumped us is no longer the person that we are mourning. We fall in love with the person who is in love with us. And the person dumping us is so obviously not him.

How's that for a decent rationalization?

Only 147ish days to go.

Coupling Contemplation

It seems almost seasonal, definitely cyclical, to surrender to the pessimistic insistence that there is no future to my romantic relationship beyond our next date, and with tremendous weariness, I sit with loads of self-pity and beautiful despondency piled around me. I sip decaf coffee, chosen so that the bitter on my tongue matches the bitter of my heart, listen to songs of despair and heartache, and resist the urge to put my head in my hands and cry. I try to get my head to a point where I can see myself alone again. When the picture becomes a clear view of a resignedly pained but stoic and independent woman who fills her time with cooking classes, Sierra Club hikes, and public library book clubs, I know that it is time to move on.

The problem this time is that I don't know what moving on means. Moving on could mean cutting the ties of three years and negotiating all aspects of my life as alone as you can be with a seven-year old child and a very high-maintenance dog in tow. But in this case, it also could mean getting over my stubborn idea of what I need, or what all of this should look like, and just accepting that the way things are is the way things are. Moving on could mean accepting that, as I have for the past three years, what is between us is simply what is between us right now. We share no house. We share no kids. We share no money. We share no responsibilities. We share no vision of where we will be in four, twelve, or twenty-two years. It is not assumed in social and familial events that I will be with him, or he with me. Crisis in either household is dealt with alone, details relayed after the fact over a phone call that attempts to cover the space of the six miles that separate where we live. Date nights that allow us to fall asleep and wake up next to each other are few and far between and always require a packed bag with toiletries and clean underwear.

I don't know what moving on means because after three years, things are still good. Despite our lack or time, or maybe because of it, I am as in love now as I was then, actually, even more so. I still laugh at his jokes that often cross a frat-boy line and encourage me to blushingly cross that line as well. Conversations span hours on the sofa, my feet in his lap, or his in mine, covering nothing and everything. When something happens, wonderful or terrible, he is the first person I want to tell. His opinion, his advice, his rational, calm, and wise perspective are still anchors for me when the waters of the rest of my life get too rough. Pictures, music, cards, and even rooms in my house are testament to the fact that after three years, as separate as we have kept parts of our lives, we have blended enough that there are splinters of him that will be around long after we pack up whatever it is that needs to be packed up and handed it all back.

I don't know what moving on means after three years because despite the fact that things are still good, a switch has flipped for me, and it is suddenly not enough. I am heart-breakingly, disastrously tired of being where we are. I am sick of packing a bag, having done it so much, it is rote. I am so unsatisfied now by hearing about his day, or telling him about mine, over the space of six miles that the conversation turns flat most nights, and we hang up the phone before anything of substance is said. And I'm tired of looking four, twelve and twenty-two years down the road and alternately picturing him there, and picturing myself without him.

I don't know what moving on means because I will be more alone without him than I am now. And sometimes that seems okay. And sometimes, it doesn't. He is the best man I have ever known, and giving him up means giving up that. I know, with frightening certainty, that there is no one out there that will fit me as well as he does. Yet, right now, in this regard, we are mismatched.

With any situation, if I could pry back the cover of the future and see where all of this ends up, it would be so much easier to decide which road is the right one. And then I could get up off of this chair, chuck the bitter coffee down the drain, shut off the whiny "whoa is me" music, and do something that resembles productivity today. But, even though it's April, and the day before Easter, it's gray, cold, and snowy outside. And as harshly as it would be judged by an outsider, the music is slow-head-bobbingly comforting. And I really don't have much that needs to be done today anyway, house already cleaned, child running around in bliss wreaking havoc with her best friend, work left at work. So I think I'll sit just a little longer, head in hands, music pathetic, and futilely wait for a direction.

Fall, again.

It is usually after I've had that extra glass of wine that I become philosophic. It is always on the nights when my daughter is with her father, and I have the house all to myself. I've gone for a long run with the dog, and eaten whatever the hell I want to for dinner, which, if you've ever spent the better part of your week making sure that everything you prepare is balanced and nutritious, you'll understand is a great luxury. I've cranked the speakers on the stereo, and danced around my kitchen to bad 80's music while doing the dishes, and then, in the lull of activity between the end of dinner and bedtime, I unconsciously take mental stock of my life. I notice the very small pieces of framed art that adorn my colorful walls, my collection of random, but gorgeous pottery serving bowls, and stare with pride at the black piano that a work colleague sold to me for fifty bucks when she downsized her house. It isn't lost on me that at 36, I am wearing my wedding dress for a bridesmaid dress in January, and that I have the freedom, once again, to dance barefooted around my house with no one to stare at me with reproach. There is headiness in the realization that my life is completely mine.

Tonight, I sorted the recycling and paused to look at the ridiculously mature-looking tykes that J Crew uses to advertise its insanely overpriced juvenile clothing. I thought about my own daughter, worried recently about her classmates' occasional comments that she is weird. She looks so much like me: large, Disney character brown eyes that occupy more than a third of her face; wide, gummy smile that reveals teeth too small for her mouth. Her nose is dotted with freckles, and hints that when full grown, it will be slightly too pronounced for her delicate face. I wonder what her future will be like when her life has rolled her through my number of years, when her small face has grown to look even more like mine. At one point in her life, I wanted for her perfection: no pain, no bumps, no bruises, no angst, no tough choices. But I thought of who she might be if her path through life was too smooth, devoid of any close calls, near misses, or an occasional direct hit. I thought about who I might have been without the cracks in my sidewalk that sent me sprawling headlong to the cement, scraping knees and elbows, knocking out the occasional small, front tooth. Because it is nights when I've had that second glass of wine, and danced my single girl's dance of freedom that I am struck by how perfect it all turned out.

And this knowledge that, at least in my life, it all appeared to happen for a reason, is what allows me to release my seemingly too fragile child out into the world, and hope for the best for her, too.

Observations from a Freshman/Sophomore Final Exam

I am continually warning my students not to let bias affect their comprehension.

Actual questions from my final:

“Together we once stole a teacher’s grade book, changed some of our low marks, then dropped the book in the lost-and-found box. The savvy teacher never said a word about the incident, but at the end of the year, when report cards were issued, gave us the D’s we deserved.”
In the passage above, the word savvy means:
a. foolish
b. cruel
c. misled
d. knowing

“Paula reported that Len, a former class officer, was now a lost soul in Colorado , hopelessly estranged from his charming wife.”
In the sentence above, the word estranged means:
a. enriched
b. free
c. separated
d. rich


In the first question, no student so far has chosen the correct answer. “B” is by far the most popular, with “A” running a distant second.

In the second question (I love this one), if they didn’t pick the correct answer, the one most chosen was “B”.

The preferred answers to the first question explain why some days, I wish I were closer to retirement.

The preferred answer to the second question definitely shows that the divorce rate probably won’t be dropping with this generation.

The Age of Poetry

The writing of poetry should come with age restrictions.
Allow those with the chubby fingers
and cherubic cheeks
to write Haikus about dogs and birds
and acrostic verses that trace their love of space
to the A-astronaut of their first names.
Allow those with hands spotted by time
to pick up pens and give rhyme to
the paths that have worn the creases
around their smiles and blurry eyes
in sonnets that recount old loves,
the weight of a ripe tomato plucked off the vine,
or the fat, dark circle of a tear drop
on light blue polyester pants.
Even allow those in their twenties,
thirties, and forties
to write free verse detailing the curtain of hair
fanning across their wives’ pillows,
the rare findings of a crowded subway car
at two A.M. on a Tuesday morning,
or an ode to the college professor
with ivy-long ear hair,
coffee and spearmint breath
and a contagious passion for Fitzgerald.
But to the teens, we should prohibit the writing of verse.
Deny lines that begin with “I feel” and “I hope”
and make the use of
"blood", "betrayal", "agony" and "pain"
punishable by death
or community service.
We should force teens to write fiction
of adolescents in love
and coming to an understanding
with their misunderstood parents.
To write dramas about friendship
that defies all odds,
or at least lasts beyond first hour science.
Or, if they must write poetry,
we should limit their writing to Haikus
about dogs and birds.
Or acrostic poems that restrict their love of goth
to the G-grave of their first names.

Spitting Stones

Driving home today from the high school at 7:30 a.m., my daughter safely secured in her booster in the back seat, I found myself unfortunately stuck behind an empty car carrier truck. The interstate, while clear of the massive dumpings of snow that we have had, is still perilous in points simply because the gravel that was coated over the ice still remains. As I drove, the truck in front of me showered me with little pieces of this gravel.

"We've got to get out from behind this guy," I told my daughter as she watched with feverish eyes from the back. "He's spitting stones at us."

I like the alliteration of spitting stones. And as my mind is wont to do, I mulled it over within the context of my life. Because life has been spitting at me lately. Spitting stones though, despite its lovely poetic qualities, is not a fair portrayal of my reality. Stones have mass. They cause damage. Had the truck actually spit stones at me, my windshield would need replacing. He really spit small pebbles (and some dirt). They bounced off my car, a few may have nicked the paint, but most just impaired my visibility and made quite a racket. Life, then, seems to be spitting pebbles at me.

Pebbles are annoying. They're the unreasonable daycare director that I keep threatening to kill behind her back if she doesn't figure out how to do her job properly. The ex-husband who seems to be regressing to a maturity level lower than the high school students that I teach. They're the tooth that went bad and sunk me into debt, and then had to be fixed again, and again. The constant snow, and the sudden need for new tires on my car. Pebbles are the fact that I wake up every night at three or four and then can't go back to sleep. And that last night, just as I had slipped into an almost comatose state, my daughter woke me up to announce that she had thrown up in her bed. Pebbles are the stupid, innovative substitute request system that my district has just adopted that would not let me log in. And the help desk for that system that wasn't being manned by anyone until 6:00 this morning. Pebbles make my stomach churn, my teeth grind, and my forehead crease so much that I will always have to have bangs to hide the deep wrinkles that all this has caused.

We came to our exit, and waited behind the line of cars at the stop light on the off ramp. I lowered my shoulders and took a deep breath and looked over to the creek that runs along the interstate. A pile of rocks stretched across it at the point where it lay outside of my passenger window. Dense and heavy ice draped itself over the top of the rocks and glinted like crystal in the early morning sunshine. Evidence of our hardest winter in years. But water also caught the light as it tumbled over the rocks and in between the icy holes and furrows.

"Isn't that beautiful!" I exclaimed to my daughter, and inched the car forward a bit so that she could see it too.

Winter, relentless as it is this year, doesn't last forever. Day care workers are underpaid, and more patience exists somewhere within that thought. Teeth heal, or they get pulled. Vomit washes out of bedclothes, and eventually, a person gets so tired that they'll sleep through anything. Ex-husbands? Well, that's probably just a matter of finally coming to terms with the fact that things are what they are. Until they're not. Despite the pebbles, the ice is melting. Even if, as the meteorologists are predicting, it snows more tomorrow.

Zen and the art of interstate driving. Om.