May I Offer You Some Dates?

All right, I've avoided it long enough. The taboo material. Oldster dating. Odd, because I have much to say on the subject, and I don't usually hold back when something is on my mind. Perhaps I've been too self-protective because I know that in telling the anecdotes I will be mortified from time to time. However, when I slipped in one short sentence on the topic a few posts back, esteemed follower JF responded that it seemed we had some experiences in common. Then I was taking a walk with another woman friend and said the "d(ating)" word. She rolled her eyes and shook her head. Another good and decent woman of a similar age with some less-than-wonderful experiences. So let's talk about this. Disclaimer: no part of this post or future ones on the subject is meant to generally bash males. It is more to express my amazement and confusion at some human behavior. And, yes, sometimes even my own.

I am on record as having little understanding of other human beings and even less about males than females. My father, my husband of 32 years and the love of my life were much too close for me to make objective observations about the species. I know today that those 3 are pretty sterling examples of the breed. I was sheltered and fortunate for the men I knew well. I did not date from 1971 until 2007. I was rusty. Nor had I ever been the prom queen, so I was no serial dater, even in my teens. On my best day of life, which was many decades ago, I was likely a cutie and not a beauty. I was reasonably intelligent, dressed all right and was probably somewhat interesting. I could dance and I had all the newest records. I did OK. When Ex and I set up housekeeping together, I looked forward to a happy future, and was just a little relieved to be done with the dating thing.

To my surprise, in my maturity, I found myself uncoupled and I felt like a square peg. No, I didn't need anyone to help feed, clothe or house me. I simply wasn't sure what to do without a man hanging from me like a charm bracelet. I was in a female-dominated work situation and developed my plan after much consultation with women of all ages. After deciding all the safety measures I would exercise at all times, I went online. There were lots of men out there! All the websites said so. I made firm rules about always having my own car at hand, cash, credit cards and my cell phone. I would go on no date without telling someone where I was going and with whom. Bring someone back to the apartment? Not in the immediate future. Always park close to the doors under a light standard and don't be shy about telling someone, "I don't think this is going to work for me." Be both honest and truthful. Don't waste anyone's time. Talk to people just like I talked with business associates - this would just be a "getting to know you".  And do not cruise for a man on a free website. If both he and I had not paid a fee, I should not even consider him.  "OK, gotcha, roger and check. Thanks, ladies."

I know many more things now than I did then, about myself and others. I needed to spend some time alone, getting to know myself as I was "right now". Why was I looking for a date? What did I want or expect and what would I not tolerate? Did I have anything whatsoever to offer a companion, and what were the things that interested me?  What did I like to do and what would I like to learn about from someone else? Who knew? I didn't ask myself any of those things. I just blindly went looking for a date. It took no time to attract some e-mail attention. I am a quick learner. Men who seemed illiterate wouldn't be a match for me. Those who seemed to only check their e-mail once a week weren't operating at the same speed as I. Telling me in the first e-mail they were hopeful for a job and a car soon (hey, this is Las Vegas!) - delete. If "I make $150,000 a year!" was his hello, I thought, "I bet you don't, actually." Hey! I was a pretty quick study. This wasn't so difficult.

I was fortunate the first time I went out. He was a very kind, age appropriate, long-time recovering alcoholic. I'd ridden on the back of his fine motorcycle to the Fremont Street Experience. This was a completely different mode of transportation for me, and kind of fun, though I've never again sought it out ~ he'd thoughtfully provided both helmet and goggles. We stepped first into Hogs & Heifers Saloon where I was immediately knocked to the floor by a very large woman dancing like there was no tomorrow. Picking myself up and dusting myself off, I had to say, "I'm not really so comfortable in bars." My friend was OK with that. Walking outside, we came upon a Soul Food Festival and Street Fair. I stretched out of my comfort zone ~ the fried catfish was good. My friend insisted that I be photographed (twice) with the Chippendale's dancers on the street, which is also not at all what I do. But I did, with fairly good grace. I did not like this experience. I had to ask hotties how to pose. They told me. Hey - they pose with young and old women all day every day in little clothing and for a price. I wasn't anything new, special or different. They shave their backs. Apparently about once a week, judging by the prickly new growth. They autographed my picture frame. "Vegas, baby!" wrote Matt. In case I forgot where I lived, I suppose. He is the one with the offensive belt buckle and the Vegas tan. "Love Ricky," wrote the one whose zipper is down about an inch in the photo. He didn't have to spell as many words as Matt. I'd be the one who looks like a carousel horse mounted on the head of that silhouetted Chippendale's dancer. How did they get that so perfectly?  We rode on the motorcycle to the other side of the valley to hear live music. And finally, freezing on that bike at an hour I had forgotten existed, he yelled, "Want to come to my place?" I said no. "Can I come to yours?" I said no.

Returning to work on Monday morning, I was greeted by expectant faces and exhortations to "tell". I did so. Now the faces wore shocked looks. "How many of the rules did you break in one short evening? He could have boiled you into soup and eaten you!" I admitted to a few infractions of my own rules and adopted a hangdog look. I think the women felt I was behaving properly remorseful. I was. For not the reasons they imagined. You see, I was studying what I felt I should "do" with this man I now knew. He was pleasant and bright and he was interested in me, trying to present me with things to do that he thought I might enjoy. He'd called all weekend after our Friday night outing. I dodged the calls. For not only did I not know what to do with him, I wasn't sure I even wanted or needed anything to do with him. Although it took some thinking time, I was on the way to learning that I do not need or want a date or, necessarily, a man only for the purpose of filling time. For that, there are friends of longstanding and books and writing and camping and hiking and meditation and movies and music and walking and pets and shopping and any number of things. If I wanted a date for the specific purpose of developing a relationship with a man, then that was different. I didn't learn that until I was 55 years old and it would still take me awhile to land there firmly.

I've traveled a little. I've often tried to familiarize myself with some rudimentary phrases for communication in the native tongue so I'd feel more comfortable in a new environment. With the vast experience of one date tucked under my belt, I now felt qualified to analyze what should and should not happen for the dating future. I needed to speak the language more fluently, for sure. Absent a Berlitz course or Rosetta Stone, I decided I could use my own talents of observation and online research to develop dating eloquence and comprehension. Once again, I was a pretty quick study. It took me little time to understand that "This is not a recent picture" could mean the background music was K.C. and the Sunshine Band. "A few extra pounds" might mean 50-75 extra. I filed these away for future reference. The best early lesson, however, was the one that taught me not to lower my personal standards in the interest of "just going out". Oh, I knew better than to test this. I did it anyway, for I have a history of pushing the boundaries. "Considerate smoker," he wrote. "Don't do this, Les," thought I. I did it. The wind blew like hell and we were meeting at a coffee house. I thought maybe he'd forgo smoking for the short time it takes to meet, greet and down a cuppa Joe. But no. No. And that evening I learned that "considerate smoker" could be construed as a man who puffed like a locomotive, tucking his date against the stucco side of a building while the wind shrieked by at a sustained 25 mph. Almost as useful a discovery as "Donde esta el bano?"

Between the Covers

I'm reading a book I own for, I believe, the fourth time: Savage Beauty, The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, by Nancy Milford. It is an extremely well-researched and beautifully written record of the very complex and difficult alcoholic, bisexual, repeatedly aborted, first female to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. (Side note: Milford's biography of Zelda [Mrs. F. Scott] Fitzgerald is an equally wonderful read. One feels that Milford brings these women to life before our eyes.) So what, right? Well the quirks are these: when one recommends a writer to me, what I really want to know is about the writer, not necessarily what s/he wrote. And I am a sheepish poetry ignoramus due to failure of teachers to prod me and lack of sufficient interest to dig out poetry on my own until about the past year and I'm doing nicely, thank you. Oh, and I do not, do not, appreciate most of Millay's poetry. But I love reading her life story. Though much celebrated, she suffered many harsh cruelties and few of life's truly beautiful things. I wonder if, after earliest childhood, she ever had a moment free of worry except when she drank.

My friend loves poetry perhaps above anything else because she considers the beauty of the desert and of light through glass and of flowers purchased at the farmers' market poetry, not to mention what she finds in print. She sought out lyric in school and has a minor scandal in her past relating to her tremendous desire to own a particular volume of rhyme. We'd only known each other a short time and she'd been sending me favorite poems frequently. "What are your favorite poems?" she asked.  I had to confess I was ignorant and a little bit prickly about being ignorant and not, after all, starving for the relief that only verse can bring. I was doing OK without poetry. She persisted in sending me sonnets and quatrains and then began to assign me the task of interpreting certain of them. WTF? I'm not a schoolgirl. But my friend is an oldest child and I think her sister and brother probably jumped when she said "jump".

I reluctantly began to scratch the surface and learned that I did know Charles Bukowski's writings quite well and who wouldn't consider Bob Dylan a poet? I can recite volumes of his words. I have been fortunate to read and enjoy the offerings of unpublished everyman kinds of poets, so perhaps I wasn't quite as benighted as I feared. I actually like Emily Dickinson and Robert Service and I've happily read some Sara Teasdale after being exposed to her in the book about Vincent Millay. My friend and I got into a  discussion - perhaps a spirited debate - about Millay after I began the book this time and after she confessed she'd never finished reading her copy even once. I commented that I skipped right over her poems when they were printed in full in the body of my book. "What?" exclaimed Friend. I admitted I just didn't like Millay's poems for the most part. Friend immediately began to shoot me some of her favorite Millay pieces. "No," said I. "Don't care for it at all."  Friend couldn't understand me at all.

Our discussion rolled on and Friend e-mailed me Recuerdo (don't Google it, Reader, you're about to have it from the source). I wrote back that though I am the woman who likes Victoriana, I find Millay's language stiff and dated. I did, however, describe to my friend the spirit of the poem as I believed it to be, and the sun broke through the clouds. "Yes!" she cheered, "You've got it exactly." Well, yes, Friend - I'm not soulless or stupid. And I do understand that Renascence rocked the world 100 years ago and rocks the world now, expounding on beautiful, lofty concepts, but I don't care for the words presented to relate the concepts. My friend commented that she likes old-fashioned language and does not care for today's overused hip, slick and cool talk. I agreed that I like good, descriptive language that people from many generations would understand ("rock the world", notwithstanding), but I'm unlikely to say that I am "merry" about anything. We congratulated one another for making a good case for our respective beliefs and I imagine she grinned as widely as I did.

The next morning I dawdled at the computer nursing coffee more slowly than usual. My friend is a night owl and often drops e-mails late at night to greet me on my virtual breakfast tray. I wanted to send her something, and on a hunch I Googled. Oh, yeah!  There it was! YouTube, of course. Millay reciting her own Recuerdo. I played it for myself and nearly toppled over. I'd been reading about Vincent's beautiful voice and speech patterns. I'm not sure who highjacked her and gave this reading, but it was a mean, mean trick. Had I paid a quarter or half-dollar in 1940s money to attend a reading, I'd have demanded my money back, I'm afraid. I just sent it to my friend without comment and said "Let me know what you think."  Even my poetry loving cohort had to admit the rendering has lost something across the decades. We shared a laugh and she quickly sent me another poem. Edna St. Vincent Millay was from Maine. I know Maine. My father lives in Maine. I have never heard another human being speak in Millay's manner. Not from Maine or anywhere else. I still absolutely love her story.

Something that charmed me:  I have found one of Millay's works I like, read beautifully by a man who sounds like perhaps he is from Maine. Have I mentioned I love learning new things?

Learn From Yesterday

I'm dreamy-like. Kind of moony. In my head a lot. I am focused more on the past, both good and bad, than present. Perhaps this is because I've been actively working on "what's next" in my life. Having the past to retreat to is soft and gentle, or at least familiar, when I need that. I don't feel completely capable of moving myself along.

Apropos of absolutely nothing:

"You aren't very demanding. You don't ask for much."

She didn't reveal she'd given that up in vain long ago.

Last night we went out for Chinese food, a treat because I've had no one with which to share that particular cuisine in awhile. It was good food and I loaded up my plate like a greedy pig. I can only plead, "Yeah, but this will feed me four meals for the cost of one moderately priced dinner." We sat as far as possible across the restaurant from the family with the, ummm . . . , energetic young children, none of whom will have to worry about being heard if they ever have to holler for help in an emergency. As we sat dining, I got rather dreamy, viewing snippets from a past life, and I'm not sure what triggered that. The tastes?  The smells? What, doesn't everyone go into a reverie with the fragrance of Beijing Beef?

Amber was 2 1/2 that summer. We'd learned in the previous February that Ex had ruined himself with drink. He wasn't expected to live until Christmas. He lived, dying, for 18 more years.  There weren't very many pleasant moments during that time for him. I had the job that defied every description - time commitment, stress, pay, health benefits, travel, fulfillment of every sort. Now I was afraid to go to that job. What if Ex fell ill while driving Amber to daycare or passed out while taking care of her at home?  I sometimes left at 5:00 a.m. and didn't get home until midnight. Who would know if they were in trouble?

The finest case of employee representation I ever delivered was spent in getting Ex removed from his job as a union organizer. Oh, I wasn't fighting cruel monsters, even though labor unions can be notoriously evil employers. No, I was still going to work there, and we were valued. They weren't out to cut him off at the knees. When he became so ill he couldn't walk to the car any more, I basically had to quit for him. He couldn't throw in the towel himself, verbally. He was 90 days from being vested in his pension.  The union kept him on the books for 91 days, paying him all salary and benefits, giving us time to apply for state and social security disability. And get him to doctors for tests and medication and heart monitors. He was 38 years old.

I'd always been convinced Ex would ruin us by killing someone in a drunk driving incident or in a round of fisticuffs over the pool table at the bar or that he'd cripple himself and I'd be required to push him around in a wheelchair. Because I'd given up hoping for a child in our lives, I'd never contemplated him getting ill and leaving me alone with that child. In all of my life, through everything, I have never before or since been as sad and frightened as I was that summer. Amber deserved to have 2 parents. I was not capable of taking proper care of her, giving her a good life, taking care of Ex and being the breadwinner. I had other burdens, as well, not yet written about for publication, but soon to come. I began therapy, Ex took his medications, both of us deeply depressed.

Surprise! This post is not going to go down the path of what a great savior I was. I "god-damned" Ex so many times each day, he may have thought that was his name. I was terrified and hugely angry at him. "I told you Budweiser was going to take us down."  "And now we have this beautiful baby who needs every good thing we can give her and I don't have everything it takes to give her by myself." It didn't take me long to lose a little of my edge on the job. I had an enormous early mobile phone that rarely had signal and I listened with one ear constantly for it to ring with the bad news. I was as harsh and unkind as a person can be toward another person. He mostly was not harsh or unkind. It took him 7 years to learn to do something with his time and little stores of energy.  For that first 7, he sat a lot. Watched TV. Visited doctors. Once he got up from the recliner, he was fairly admirable for awhile, taking our little dogs to visit shut-ins, volunteering for sedentary activities.

That summer I allowed something to happen many times over that shames me still. I allowed Amber to get a little bit lost in the shuffle. I hope to god I never said, "Leave Mommy alone." I don't believe I did. But when she fell in love with The Jungle Book video, I just let her go with it. Though she'd never been one to sit for hours in front of the TV, now she did, Mowgli and Baloo and Bagheera and Kaa playing over and over again. She'd nap and snack and call me over to see the best parts, which I tried to do with great cheer. No, she didn't miss bathing or meals. I just couldn't push hard enough to get myself and her up from the damned Jungle Book. It is painful and one of my lowest sins, to have diverted my attention from her or to have allowed Disney to care for her for great blocks of time.

I turned 40 that August. After Labor Day, I bought winter clothes for all of us and my work schedule picked back up because school had started and all my union members were back at work. Ex had fallen into a slow, quiet, predictable daily schedule and wasn't exhibiting any signs of imminent death. It wasn't too soon to start shopping for Christmas gifts. One day, I snapped off The Jungle Book and Little Black Eyes looked at me. "No more, Mommy?"  "Uh-uh. Let's go find something to do.  Maybe Daddy would like to take a ride with us."

So why is this gray little slice of life popping up now? Because I am undertaking change again. I do not care for change, even good change. I do not feel strong or capable in many ways. I think I am reviewing times when I had to take difficult steps, about which I did not feel secure. Oh, in a life as long as mine, there are plenty of face-plant episodes, but there are some glowing successes, too. The little child was not ruined by her summer of The Jungle Book. It gave me time to regroup and devise a new "normal". And then I went on.

We went to a different library branch, larger and farther away. I've pretty much read my local branch dry, at least the books that interest me. I don't love the Library of Congress Cataloging System, mostly because each branch puts up a poster describing it, but one can't find the books in the right places from one location to the next. Finally, I hit a treasure trove, spinning me from a Virginia Woolf study on the effect of her sexual abuse on her writing, to a Tennessee Williams bio, a Violet Trefusis study and Nigel Nicolson's autobiography "Long Life". Not sleeping more than an hour or two, I am holed up with books, dreaming and doing little else. My version of The Jungle Book for just a little while so I can think things through.

No Offense!

Old age and menopause (not always 100% the same thing) have loosened my tongue. No longer am I choked by the harsh words that bubble into my mind when I am assaulted, affronted, annoyed or attacked. They now pop out into the sound waves. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. No longer am I nearly ready to explode with pent-up resentments. But I have had to learn to make a quick getaway. Yes, yes, I do understand that we all go out into the world with our own individual makeup of education, experience, culture and personal sensibilities. I get it that many of the strangers we encounter won't have all that much in common with us. Strangers aren't necessarily friends we simply haven't met yet. They may not speak our language, even if we all appear to be spewing English. I am fascinated by the utterances that get a person's goat. Or don't. I live in a place where people seem, increasingly, compelled to throw words around at high volume. I'm as bad as the next old bag with a surly attitude.

Early in life, I learned how to deal with "Hey, Baby" and later with "Hey, Mama". Those come less frequently now, and most often when he can see my clothes, but not my face - maybe hidden a little by sunglasses or hat. I've yet to hear "Hey, Granny", but that could come. While I do not invite or appreciate those greetings, usually I put an end to the quick exchange with "Not your baby, not your mama!" I've always felt those gents are not looking for an actual dialog and the very sound of another person's voice in reply shuts them up. I believe those comments are made for some show of bravado for the entertainment of other males and really have little to do with me. More recently, the barbs contain the word "bitch" which angers me immediately. "F*#king bitch" or "old bitch" get me going. "Old white bitch" is worse. I feel like that takes unpleasantness to a new plane. I have found that women almost always use only the word "bitch" toward one another. Shame on us.

Replying to the unexpected verbal assault is tricky business. I'm already on record with the reasons I no longer flip strangers off. Nope. Not since July, 1976. So, for me at least, sometimes I censor myself out of concern for my safety and well-being. I'm small, older, possess no martial arts skills or weapons. If I assess that we're going to restrict ourselves to verbal warfare, I'm likely in it to win it. This works well with a pack of not too scary adolescent males who are too afraid to make eye contact. Maybe I decide not to say anything because of security worries, but walk off muttering brilliant bon mots to myself. Observation: the best riposte in the world loses steam if delivered over coffee with friends rather than right in the face of some lexical antagonist. One feels kind of chickenshitly brilliant. "Wish I'd said that right in his face."

It is important to me to explain I don't go looking for trouble, at least not out in the streets among strangers. Mostly, I do not carry a chip on my shoulder. By nature and by training, I am a peacemaker, a mediator. I'd much prefer to converse with a stranger about the 8-inch dog she's walking on a string than get into a mouth fight. But I grapple with the fact that I've also allowed myself to be attacked too much in life, abused, without objection. Turning the other cheek too often can result in sore, chapped skin. Neither aggressive nor timid, I am looking for the middle ground where I can live with myself. I try to weigh whether I'm ever going to see some spouting fool again, whether I think s/he is a threat to myself or others or offensive to people who cannot defend themselves. Then I decide whether to waste my breath. Mostly, I don't. Sometimes I cannot contain myself. Occasionally, I resort to good, strong Anglo-Saxon  words of no ambiguity.

Each of us has our boundaries. I won't tolerate overt sexual epithets, or those that touch on race, gender, creed, disability and more, whether the comment is aimed at me or someone else. I have to bark back about those, unless my safety is in question. I get that men do not wish to be called "boys". I understand that certain descriptors of country-of-origin have changed across time and I try to be aware of the most acceptable, least hate-inciting versions and to use those. Having suffered a few pangs of my own when I pushed my biracial baby in her stroller, I try to walk very, very softly and carry no stick at all. Sometimes, the less said, the better.

I heard the phrase when I was a child and I thought it was hilarious. It contained no terrible individual words but conjured up, in my fertile imagination, contortions and results that I found funny. It packed a lot of sass and told the recipient just exactly what s/he could go do, short of the big guns phrase involving the word "f*#k". It is still hilarious to me and I might pay the price of - oh, say - lunch or a beer to watch an attempt made. I wouldn't attempt it myself.

School is out and there are vehicles everywhere filled with excited young people. I stopped at a red light, cars both in front of me and behind me. I read sign language well, and the gesticulations of the driver behind me indicated he wanted me to pull up a little so he could scoot around me. I guess he and the other 16-year-olds were in a hurry. I didn't intend to move. I didn't have more than 18 inches clearance. He tapped my bumper twice. I didn't care for it and hung my head out to say, "Look, Asshole." I used the appellation "Asshole" as if it were his given name as his mother christened him. He did not care for that and maneuvered his urban assault vehicle alongside mine, using bike lane and gutter/sidewalk. From a pretty sharp tilt, he began to go off on me, his face not 12 inches from my passenger's own countenance. When he stopped for breath, I unleashed it, my smarty phrase. "You go piss up a rope!" The young Turks in Asshole's SUV truly loved my repartee, but it appears Asshole took exception to it. I suspect it was his youthful inexperience that caused him to accelerate his Suburban right into the trunk of a pretty substantial palm tree located on the same sidewalk that had so recently given him a leg up.

So how about you? What gets your goat out in the world of shouted warfare?

Something that charmed me: I've driven past it for years, the Dental Implant Institute with the shaded, rolling green grounds that make me think about the place Simon & Garfunkel's Mrs. Robinson went for her rest cure. Oh, the place clearly uses entirely too much water that we don't have to keep its lawns emerald, and I've never understood about the dolphin statuary here in the desert, but - hey - who am I? Maybe the owners love dolphins or come from an ocean environment or maybe there was a sale on dolphin sculpture. And I've pondered whether, should I decide to get dental implants after my free exam, they'd send their courtesy limo or their "fun van" to pick me up and deliver me safely home. So today, I'm rolling along the road. It's a little warmer than the past several days and soon we'll hit summer heat. WTF? I spun the block. New statuary at the Dental Implant Institute! Great big dental implants, brand new, judging by the condition of the paint. Custom made it would appear. Taller than I.

The Bear Came Back

Hey, I've been wrestling bear again, with a bit of a twist. This time I brought no bottle to help me either beef up and whup the bear or to help me high-tail it and run out of the woods. With apologies to those who are adept at problem solving, I have not always, nor have I often, been good at making positive decisions on my own when it comes to my problems. Oh, put me in charge of 8,000 school employees about to lose their health benefits in a bad economy and I am the go-to-girl. I advocate nearly to the death for others in trouble, but I don't support myself as well as I represent a stranger. These things belong in the "I'm not worth it" basket. That basket belongs in the long line of character defects I'm (re)discovering as I work my very hard AA Step Four. The basket, however, is being dismantled. It seems to be more gap, more split than basket, more "not there". It seems to sieve the rot a little faster, the torrent washing away. But it won't be completely fixed immediately, if ever.

A change was to occur in my day-to-day living situation. It was beyond my control (thanks, Serenity Prayer, for helping me to figure that out, for this would have been a big order to micromanage). I had no vote. Really, it was only very nominally any of my business except for the way this change would feel to me. I was given 3 weeks notice. On paper, it didn't seem like it might affect me all that much. Two hours into the "new", and I was done. Not having it. My whole world had just changed and I had to "do something". Frequent visitors to this blog know that I am very big on "doing something", often too soon and too ill-conceived to have any positive results. I got annoyed. I got a little too quiet. I got angry. I disappeared into my private quarters and refused to come out. Note: this is the point at which I typically introduce the bottle or some really regrettable behavior to break the tension and ratchet it up a little. But I did it differently this time, if not so prettily.

It can't have been attractive. It was hell for hot and my scalp dripped perspiration. I spread out all the books on the bed. I printed a few worksheets and threw out the cats, to their shock. I lined up phone numbers I might need. Oddly, I ran from both music and TV/movie white noise and just sat in near-silence. And sat. Scribbled and sat. I did not cry. I flipped through the books to the pages I've highlighted so diligently for 7 months. I Googled some things. I used some self-soothing techniques I have learned. It may be interesting to know that in one particular modality, self-soothing can range from masturbation to eating a favored food. I did not feel sex with myself was the best choice in this case. I made some phone calls. I looked in the mirror (literally) and I did not care for what looked back at me. It was a face that revealed all the flaws from my internal landscape. I looked old and mean. I went to an AA meeting and told my woes, spinning in a little humor, because I am driven to do that. When they laughed, I had to laugh, too, and sincerely. I'm goony and I know it.  Soon began e-mails, phone calls and knocks at the door. "What's wrong? You almost seem depressed." That was a good word for it, though I didn't intend to succumb to it. "Are you eating and drinking fluids?" I was. As much as I felt I needed. "Do you need me to come over?"  No. Please. Finally, the insistent plea I did not care for, but relented to: "I need you to open the door and let me see you, just for a moment." I resented that. There was no bottle in there with me. I opened the door and proved that, delivering up a few harsh words to show my displeasure. She just grinned at my foul mouth.

Although I am an advanced age, there are certain basic skills which are not well-developed in me. I talked myself down this time, without alcohol or drama (if one dismisses my running to my room and slamming the door - please, it was a first attempt). I walked out realizing that my whole world had not just changed. One element had changed, no matter whether I supported it or not. Now I have options. I can do anything I want to do. This may require me to rise up out of my comfort-wallow and do some things differently, but it was time for that anyway. Perhaps I was growing just a little complacent. I'm not really all that entitled, one knows. Or I can just hold completely still and suck it up, tolerate that which does not please me. I'm not drunk, I'm not homeless, I've lost nothing. I've simply had something enter my atmosphere that does not charm me, and now . . . . what will I do with that? I wonder. Biggest lesson learned: I could have set fire to my hair, slit my wrists, and jumped off a bridge simultaneously while brandishing a bottle. Then I'd have more problems to solve. I didn't choose to go that way. The choice is within my power to make. It may shock the reader to learn that this may well be the first time I've ever made such a conscious choice in a matter that has thrown me, unless I was being managed by keepers stronger than I. That may be literally true.

When I first started in AA, I was told I only needed to be willing to believe in a higher power, not actually have one. This was a relief to me as that higher power thing was difficult and I was already struggling. At first, like many of us, I chose the AA group itself as my higher power. Surely that collective had to be more powerful than I on my own. No Jesus Christ for me, I began to read voraciously, in search of my higher power who has developed into a loving power, with the appearance of a lizard made from many spare lizard parts (I have seen such a lizard in the desert). Higher power's name is Roland. Come on, of course this is not literally true, but this is what I am willing to share - I've been told I can pray to a lightbulb or a doorknob if that's what works for me. The tenets of Rolandism draw from many learned writings and I seem to have well integrated one narrow precept fairly well. I applied it to my problem, worked it until I believed it, and came out healthy and sober, with a plan.

As much as I would like things to remain static, black and white, they don't. Everything changes every moment. I don't control that. But I do have to live with it. It occurs to me (lighting bolt at age 58) that, as nothing is black and white, then my tendencies to assign like/dislike, love/hate or right/wrong designation to a situation probably contribute to self-delusion. Rather than opposites, those things seem to be integral parts of the same whole concept, which I cannot dissect. I am forced to accept things as they are, not as I wish them to be and then stab them with a poster pin to hold them in place at the opportune stage. So, as the wind screams and my appointment was just pushed out until tomorrow, I believe I'll go put a few miles on my aching body.

Something that charms me/disarms me, that I like/dislike, love/hate:  I have lived a life down a groundhog hole in the dark. Reveal nothing! I am musing on the dichotomy of my groundhogly self now superimposed by someone transparent enough to be understood, even just a little. When I went too quiet, others noticed and asked me about it. More yin and yang? I'll have to meditate and let you know.