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July 1, 2003Catching up, first.Isn't this always the way it is. I have a project I have to finish (aka, the Hawaii epic), and yet there's all this other stuff I need to write about. Perhaps I shouldn't be complaining - it's infinitely better than having nothing to write about at all. The writing bug awoke so strongly in me this morning that instead of going back to sleep after Calvin left for work (going to Flagstaff today, poor baby, and not happy about it in the slightest), I got a cup of coffee, turned off the morning news, opened up the blinds in the bedroom to let in the morning light, and got cracking. My good friend Heather called us last night with some very bad news - she'd been laid off from her job. Calvin worked with her and introduced us a few years ago, but it wasn't until sometime in 2002 that she and I really started becoming good, close friends. She had suffered the loss of her mother right around the same time that I lost Grandma, and we bonded over our mutual griefs. We had a memorable lunch at The Olive Garden in the midst of some Christmas shopping, during which we shared our memories and the pain of our losses, along with some good ol' fashioned girl talk and wine. Pretty much from that point forward, I've considered her one of my closest and most cherished friends. We've had some late night IM sessions and have kept each other company during long boring days at work, exchanging e-mails that turned into twenty page conversations. I'm hoping to spend some time with her today, if she's up for it. She sometimes does a drawing-inward thing as a defense against negativity, but I'm hoping that this bad news turns out to be a blessing in disguise for her. I just know that there's something positive on the verge of turning up for her. Early bird that she usually is, her name's not popping up on my buddy list, so she must be turning this negativity into an opportunity to sleep in, for once. I hope that's it, anyway. It's only ten of seven, but she confessed to me that she got up at 5:00 in the morning on Saturday. On the weekend! I ask you. Calvin and I had a very nice anniversary on Sunday. We slept in late, and went to Patsy Grimaldi's for The Most Awesome Pizza There Ever Was, Period (roasted red peppers, kalamata olives, and pepperoni (nod to Calvin's Need For Meat) on their most excellent cracker-like thin crust), for lunch. Back home, we sat around and conversed with Marie for a while before going out for a nice long soak in the hot tub. The conversation turned, at is usually does when we're sitting out there, to what we want to do with the dirt lot that is our back yard. Big plans, people, big plans! That require big money! Which may or may not be accomplished within our lifetimes! Calvin hollered up to Marie and asked if she wanted to go to dinner with us. We'd originally told her that we were going to do something for just the two of us, but the mood of the day was family oriented (after yet another one of those two hour long conversations about life, the universe, and everything) and it didn't seem to make sense to leave her home by herself while we went and stuffed ourselves at The Cheesecake Factory. I had to laugh - after Calvin asked her if she wanted to go, she cleared it with me first, before she said yes. As I told her, "Well, we took you on our honeymoon, so we might as well take you on our anniversary dinner!" She stuck her tongue out at me, which I deserved. The food, OH, the food! I'd only eaten at The Cheesecake Factory once before, for lunch with some co-workers. I'd seen their extensive menu and was delighted by the salad I'd had (I'm a sucker for a restaurant with a good salad), and so suggested it to Calvin. He manfully tried to suppress a wrinkled nose when I stated where I wanted to go (he said I could pick dinner if he could pick lunch), but I told him to trust me. I know what my man likes, after all. Heh. We started with Buffalo Blasts, the leftovers of which are still in the fridge and I just may have them for lunch. They were, if I may lapse into my native vernacular for a moment, "wicked good". For dinner, I stuck with the Luau Salad, which is what I'd had before and completely enjoyed as possessing all the Primary Ingredients for a Truly Great Salad. Which would be: 1) varying lettuce types; 2) crunchy nibbly things (in this case it was two sheets of wonton which provided for platforms with which to layer the salad ingredients); 3) really good dressing that's impossible to find at a grocery store; 4) some sort of fruit (in this case it was mango); 5) some sort of protein (in this case it was chicken); and 6) excellent presentation. Calvin had the Chicken Marsala, and Marie had Farfalle with Chicken and Roasted Garlic. Both were excellent and I could only finish half of my salad because I kept stealing bites of their dishes. We rhapsodized over the meal throughout, and topped it off with a very fine dessert of German Chocolate Cheesecake and coffee. Because one cannot eat at a restaurant called The Cheesecake Factory and not, in fact, have the cheesecake. Marie kept exclaiming that she was so glad we didn't leave her at home. We told her we would have at least brought her a piece of cheesecake, and she said, "But then I would have missed out on the really good food!" We're all about our tastebuds in this family, yes indeed. We had our leftovers for dinner the next night. This detail is significant in the fact that our family Doesn't Do Leftovers. Which means that the food was good enough for us to eat it two nights in a row - a Very Big Deal in the way that we rate things. Only my meatloaf has rated thusly, and that's just for lunch sandwiches the next day. I just paused to grab a bowl of cereal to fuel my efforts, and realized that the only milk we have in the house has an expiration date of June 26th. It doesn't smell funny, it didn't curdle in my coffee this morning, but as drinking slightly expired milks is something I Don't Do, I'm vaguely icked by this. I may die. Don't people die from expired milk? I finished "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" in two days. All 870 pages, it was that good. And yes, if you were curious, I managed to get all of my chores done, too. The afternoon that I wrote that entry, I was sitting in the living room reading. Calvin, after coming home from work, was in the bedroom for a while. He comes out, clears his throat to get my attention, and dramatically rolls his eyes. Wiseass. I occasionally have meltdowns. One was back in February, sitting in the hot tub with Calvin. Michael and Lilly were home, and had just confessed about getting married. They hadn't yet confessed about the baby, though we already knew. I started getting all choked up about our decision to not have children together - a decision I still support, but just because I support it doesn't mean I can't be sad about it. I wanted to hear someone call me "Mom". I wanted that kind of connection with Calvin. I was afraid that we couldn't be as close as we possibly could be, if we didn't have a child together. I wanted to be able to see things of myself in another person. I blubbered something about not having parents from whom I could tell where I get certain things, and would miss having a child that would further define things about myself. I cried about being rootless. Really, I just pretty much emoted and confused the hell out of Calvin. One of those bawling, slobbering sessions of incoherently hiccuping words into his ever-dampening chest. It was something I was going to write about in more detail, but at first I was avoiding it, and then I was telling myself it wasn't such a big deal. I'm sure the decision to not "write myself out" on the subject will come back to bite me in the ass one day, and you may yet see The Rest of the Story in these pages. The reason I mention it now is because I recently suffered another, out-of-the-blue type meltdown, and they seem to have a consistent theme. The subject was, again, family and roots. It was the Tuesday after we'd come home from Hawaii. I'd just finished unpacking and sorting through the laundry, and was sitting in front of the TV in the living room, aimlessly flipping through the channels while Calvin surfed on the web in the bedroom. I paused on "The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood", somewhere in the middle. It was the scene where Sidda and her dad are outside of the family cabin, talking about how screwed up her mother is. She asked her father, "Daddy, did you get loved enough?" He says, "What's enough? The question is, did you?" She shrugs, and leans into his chest, and he wraps his arms around her for a hug. Queue the quivering lower lip. The big fat tears. The feeling sorry for myself. The sense of rootlessness. I shuffled into the bedroom in search of Calvin. He took one look at my face and said, "Uh-oh, what's the matter?" And then as I started to sob, he said, "I knew you shouldn't be watching that damned movie." He held me as I wailed into his chest about not having a daddy, not having someone to know all of my stories and tell me what I was like when I was little. How I never knew and would miss out for the rest of my life on the special relationship a daughter can have with a father, in childhood and as an adult. The relationship that Marie has with him, that I'm sometimes kind of jealous of. Not jealous of their relationship with each other, but jealous that I can't have a relationship like that with my father. Ironically, I never really missed having a father until I saw how Calvin was with the kids. All through my childhood and teenage years, even through my first marriage, never a twinge. Now, messy blubbery emotions all over the place. Riddle me that. Calvin, while immensely supportive, is at a loss on to handle these emotional outbursts. He wants to fix it, and there is no fixing it. He reminded me that my actual father is not exactly someone that would be a good "daddy", and I agreed that I still don't want to have anything to do with him. It never really was about my actual father - I'm just sad at the actuality of the circumstances of my life. My lack of parents. The lack of connection with my childhood and past. The things I'm missing out on now, and the things I'll miss out on in the future. The stuff I never had. The absolute irrefutable fact that there's nothing I can do to change any of that. Calvin is my therapist - and how much do they usually get paid to listen to these childhood issues and drama about not being loved? He has probably saved me thousands of dollars. It's incredibly relieving to be able to drop the shields in front of him, be upset about whatever I'm upset about, and have my feelings listened to, acknowledged, supported, and validated. He's never told me I'm stupid to feel a certain way, never told me to just "forget about it", never mentioned that it's useless to go on about things I can't change. He just listens, and hugs, and wipes away my tears, and helps me deal with things. Sometimes, I just need to be weak for a minute. And he's there to be strong while I am. He sees how much love I need, how many different kinds of love, and he's not afraid of it. He just gives. I never for one heartbeat forget how lucky I am. Michael and Lilly are coming home for the holiday weekend. Marie and I are flying out on Saturday morning for our trip to Maine, but we'll still be able to spend Thursday and Friday with them as they're driving home Wednesday night after work. So! Today's agenda includes:
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©Laura Charon 2000 - 2003.
