Time

“Welcome to Orlando!” the woman at the rental car counter chirped. She tipped a finger at the mouse ears on her head. “Are you here to “Welcome to Orlando!” the woman at the rental car counter chirped. She tipped a finger at the mouse ears on her head. “Are you here to see Mickey?”

I could feel my brother losing it beside me. I put a hand on his arm, but he spoke before I could stop him.

“Actually, we’re here to pick up our father’s ashes,” he said through gritted teeth. “Could you just get the car, please?”

At least he didn’t tell her where she could shove those mouse ears.

There is something particularly cruel about a death happening in a place whose tag line is “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Today marks four years since my father’s sudden passing. He was at Disney World with my mother and the youngest two of my six siblings. He ran ten miles under the full moon — a Supermoon that night, which I am sure he enjoyed — then he went to bed, woke with a cramp in his leg, and was killed by a pulmonary embolism.

Four years. It is unfathomable in so many ways. Some days, it seems like just yesterday. I still have moments where I pick up the phone to call him. Sometimes, though, it seems his death was an eternity ago. I meet new people and it’s one of the rote details of my life: I’m the oldest of seven children, my son is eighteen, my mother is alive, my father is not.

The other morning, as I prepared to give this post a last proofing, I saw a Facebook message from a friend whose mother had just passed away.

Please tell me it gets better, she said, because right now I feel like throwing up most of the time.

I remember that feeling. And it does get better, though it doesn’t seem to be a progressive sort of thing. One step up, one back. Sometimes I can talk about my father easily, happily. I can be grateful for all the years he enriched my life. I can joke about his quirks. Other times the loss still feels fresh. I get blindsided by tears and that lump in my throat.

The thing I try to remember is that I had my father for nearly 37 years. He was my role model, mentor, and ultimately my friend. We worked together, ran together, consumed unholy quantities of beer and pizza together.

Because nothing in my life is normal, perhaps least of all my family, my youngest two siblings are twins who were only seven years old when our father passed. (Go ahead. Let that sink in. My parents had seven kids over 30 years. Yup.) Seven years old. Eleven now. Where I have memories, they just have loss.

So…gratitude.

Daily I work at being grateful for all the ways my father made my life special. I try to share with my younger siblings in a way that won’t feel like salt in a wound, offering funny stories or singing along to songs he liked, telling them when they share his strengths or mannerisms.

I’ll share with you, too.

Here are some of the things that made my father unique:

My father loved babies. The whole deal. When my mother was pregnant, his hands were always on her belly. When she delivered, he was there (and would excitedly recount every graphic detail to anyone foolish enough to ask how it went). He loved holding babies, changing them, bathing them, bouncing them around and singing to them. He spoke to babies in a tone that completely engaged them. If you wanted a baby to stop crying, my dad was the man for the job. (In hindsight, I should have just left The Boy with my dad — Papa Al — for those first six miserable, colicky months.)

• When it came to singing his kids to sleep, my father had the most unusual repertoire. He favored songs about ill-fated lovers and tragic teen deaths: “Teen Angel,” “Tell Laura I Love Her,” and “Running Bear” were staples. My personal favorites were “Everglades” by The Kingston Trio (go ahead and Google the lyrics; it’s especially screwy when you consider we were living on the outskirts of the Everglades at the time) and Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” No matter how restless I was when I first climbed into bed, you could bet I’d be sleeping soundly by the time “the church bell chimed 29 times for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Sweet dreams.
• My father was a culinary whiz — if you like Spam and egg sandwiches, potato-chip-and-cheese on Wonder bread with Miracle Whip, or chowder with Cheez-Its.
• My father was fiercely protective of his kids, and determined that his daughters should have every opportunity afforded his sons. When one of my sisters was threatened and sexually harassed at school, and then school officials mishandled things in a way that reeked of misogyny, my father hired an attorney to advocate on her behalf and bring about some changes in the school administration. Nobody put his Baby in a corner.
• My father was the best youth sports coach ever. Not exaggerating. Everyone got playing time on his teams — not because he subscribed to the “everyone is equal” nonsense that seems to be taking over all youth activities today, but because he brought out the best in each player and made everyone truly work as a team. He found ways to connect with every child he coached. He never belittled, always encouraged.
• My father thought it was perfectly normal to waterski — slalom — in 200 feet of water, dodging bluefish, or to swim with seals in the frigid water off Monomoy Island — a favorite feeding place for Great White Sharks.
• My father played as hard as he worked — and he passed that trait along to his kids. I’d need more fingers than I’ve got to count the number of times he and I stood together at the starting line of a road race saying, “Yeah, we probably shouldn’t have had so much [beer…pizza…fill in the blank….] last night.” But once we’d crossed the finish line? Beeline for the pizza, maybe a beer on the way home.
• My father had a twisted sense of humor. Think Pulp Fiction. That was my dad, through and through.
• My father was the Grammar Police. I totally inherited that gene, yet I always went to him for editorial help. Writing his obituary was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I actually sent the draft to his email. He didn’t respond. I suppose he had better things to do at that point.
• My father was an actual police officer prior to going to law school.
• My father always carried a nail file in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. In a world where people wear their pajamas in public, he still polished his Florsheim shoes and always had a perfect executive manicure.
• My father loved watching YouTube videos of live music. In his office, where he often passed fourteen hour days, one of his two computer screens was almost always displaying music videos: Queen, David Bowie, Talking Heads, The Smiths. Yep. He was an attorney, the VP and branch manager of a national title insurance company, and there he’d be, bopping around the office cheerfully singing, “Psycho Killer.” When employees came to him with questions, it wasn’t unusual to be encouraged to join him in singing a few bars of “Girlfriend in a Coma” before discussing the issue.

The trip my brother and I made to Orlando four years ago to bring our father’s ashes home was a brutal comedy of errors. From the relentlessly cheerful people everywhere we went to the backwater funeral home across the street from a taxidermist, it all would have been darkly funny if it had been happening to anyone but us.

And still, there was a moment when I looked at my brother and started laughing. Crazy, maniacal laughter.

“You know who would find this really, really funny?” I said.

He laughed through his tears.

“Yeah,” he said. “Dad.” 

The beginning!

Showoffs! (They actually did this right up until the summer before my father passed. And my mother is still waterskiing.)

Maybe his hair was too long for police work?

The next step.

Tiny me!

My brother tortured me for years, but here it is…photographic evidence that I may have started it.

Another baby.

And another one.

I guess someone neglected to take pictures of babies for a few years…

Go Pats!

Wild Dog Tri. We swam, biked and ran for brunch.

Kicking my butt in the NK 5K. If you look closely, just over his right shoulder there’s a redhead totally giving up.

On the water. As usual.

RIP AKA

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Stitch

Years ago, when The Boy was still small, he and I watched the movie Lilo and Stitch. For those unfamiliar with the premise, Lilo is an orphan being raised by her older sister. Stitch is a space-alien-critter who happens into their lives and (of course) endears himself to them over time. There’s a poignant moment near the end of the film where Stitch, referring to Lilo and her sister, says, “This is my family. It is small and it is broken, but it is good.”

This was the moment when The Boy, all young and naive and bright-eyed, enthusiastically said to me, “Just like us, Mommy!”

I had to hide out in the bathroom crying for a good hour or so.

Single parents will understand. That whole broken-family thing will nail you in the gut every time. It doesn’t matter how great a parent you may be, or how the world is changing to accommodate different family structures. Single parents always feel second-best. And they always worry that their kids do, too.

I thought of that Lilo and Stitch moment recently, as I found a copy of the DVD while I packed up the last of my belongings still remaining at my former home in the wake of my recent divorce. Here’s where my convoluted life probably requires some ‘splainin.’ The Ex, about whom I’ve blogged until y’all likely wanted to scream get over it already, is not my first ex-husband.

That’s right — I’m 41 and twice divorced.

Yay me!

The Boy’s father — let’s call him Tee — and I met when I was young and foolish and he was old and horny. He was a lot older than me.

A lot.

So much older that, after my family first met him (whilst I waited for the dropped jaws to to be retrieved from the floor) one of my smartass brothers deadpanned, “Well, I think it’s nice. Dad didn’t have much of a father figure. He could use someone to look up to.”

Ouch.

In the face of such quips, I did the only thing I was likely to do at that stage of my life. I married Tee. It didn’t take us long to realize that what we’d done was idiocy. Two weeks after the wedding, I packed my bags and left.

And then I found out I was pregnant.

In hindsight, I think Tee and I get an ‘A’ for effort. We did our best to make the unworkable work. Ultimately, we parted ways, fought and made a couple of attorneys richer for a while, then settled into co-parenting amicably. Tee adored The Boy and was always a great dad. For a number of years, Tee actually worked for my family, managing their golf business. He played golf with my father and brothers. He joined my family for holidays. It was about as good as it gets for an odd couple like us.

Still, I was ever aware that The Boy and I had this awkward, broken little family. His father was old enough to regularly be mistaken for his grandfather. I wondered if we would ever escape the weight of past errors.

Then I met the man you now know as The Ex. He was handsome and funny and, I thought at first, just quirky enough to fit right into our awkward, broken little family. I dared hope he might be Stitch to The Boy’s Lilo.

Over time, though, their relationship became one of the major issues in our marriage. They were just too different, and I was forever caught in the middle. There were other issues, too — stuff I couldn’t make up for any novel. As one who appreciates life most when it’s drama-free, I knew something had to give.

So, once again, I found myself divorced. I worked my tail off to keep things amicable, and before long I landed in the most unusual of situations: living as The Ex’s neighbor. Serving as his housesitter and dogsitter while he was away on business trips. Continuing to help him with management of our former home and rental properties.

A neighbor teased me as I helped The Ex dig one of our tenants out of the snow that had drifted against the apartment door.

“Forget about you writing another book. He should,” he said, nodding at The Ex. “He took your house and your dog in the divorce, and here you are still taking care of both! Now that’s a story!”

Haha. Funny neighbor. There’s a guy who’s lucky not to have taken a snow shovel to the face.

But a lightbulb went on.

There’s keeping things amicable.

And then there’s being a doormat.

The Ex had not been particularly kind to me for years. I walked on eggshells in my own home. When I begged him to help save our marriage, he was willing to do exactly nothing to that end. And yet, every time he appealed to me for help, I was there.

I began to wonder why.

I also began to wonder if I could truly move on while living so close to him that I saw him daily. We would walk and drink beer together at the dog beach while our pups played. Sometimes it seemed nice, as if we should win a medal for being the Best Divorced Couple Ever. More often, though, it was just weird and painful. Sad.

A child’s movie might seem an unlikely catalyst for change, but when I found that Lilo and Stitch DVD, something clicked.

I’d been small and broken too long.

The question was how to move forward. I took inventory.

The Boy is currently living with Tee, attending community college, and trying to figure out the path ahead.

I have plans for a small house I’d like to build. I need to save money toward that goal while helping The Boy pay for college.

Meanwhile, Tee has an in-law apartment in his home, something he and I had spoken about recently. It’s been in need of renovation since he bought the house years ago, and he wondered if I might be interested in doing the work in exchange for an affordable place to live. At first, I thought he was crazy. It sounded like the sort of thing likely to end in an episode of Dateline.

But then again?

Maybe not so much.

Tee and I have functioned as friends and coparents for over 15 years now. And I realized that, while I have been living in one of the most beautiful places in the world, it’s no longer the right place for me. Every lovely aspect of the area is steeped in memories of The Ex. And if the memories aren’t enough, there he is in the flesh: driving past the front of my house in his car, past the back of my house in his boat, walking on the beach, calling me for help with this or that.

While there may be no geographic solution for most problems, this may be an exception.

One of my very best friends lives right across the street from Tee, on the river where she and I swim together as often as possible in summer. Several other good friends live in the same neighborhood. I don’t know what’s in the water there, but it’s Good People Central. And I need good people around me right now.

So I’ve found someone to sublet my little piece of paradise for the duration of my lease. I’m working on making the apartment at Tee’s my own, an affordable place to call home while I find my way forward. The Ex seems to understand that I need to move on, and has promised to enlist a proper dog- and house-sitter.

Here’s a snapshot of my life right now:

I am 41 years old.

Twice divorced.

Escaping my second ex-husband by moving into an apartment owned by my first ex-husband.

And feeling better than I have in a while.

Truth is stranger than fiction, right?

The other night, Tee and The Boy and I were surveying the progress on my new digs, talking and laughing, and a thought made me smile…

This is my family.

It is small, and it is broken, but it is good.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Midwinter

I was born in Miami.

Because of this, I am quite certain, my body lacks some sort of requisite insulation for the New England climate I currently inhabit. I was built for beach days and balmy evenings, afternoon thunder storms and scorching sunshine. I can weather 100% humidity like a Southern belle, fresh as a daisy.

But winter in New England?

I break out my parka in September. From then until approximately June, I feel like I have ice water running through my veins. Hot baths and hot beverages are my BFFs. Y’all think I am constantly adopting animals because I’m kind? Nope. Just looking for more warm, furry bodies to occupy my bed and keep the heating bills in check.

It’s now February, that time of year when I regularly scour the internet for deals on airfare to warm, sunny places. I dream of escape. This year, though, I have also been trying something new. I’ve been trying to make friends with winter, to reclaim a little of the joy the season used to hold for me as a child.

And whaddaya know? It’s working. This weekend was an excellent example.

Morning: I took a long beach walk with a neighbor, chatting as our dogs ran and played. The sky was stark white and the air smelled of snow. There was no need to worry about leashes or tourists. We had the beach all to ourselves.

Afternoon: I went snowshoeing with a friend. We talked and laughed our way through the pristine winter wonderland surrounding a small pond. The wind stirred the tree limbs above and sent flurries swirling down around us. We scooped up handfuls of snow and ate it like ice cream.

Evening: I drove home on dark, winding wooded roads. Snow fell in my headlights. I saw deer and rabbits. I passed very few other cars.

This, my friends, is something you can’t get in Miami.

Winter in New England is long and solitary. But the days are starting to lengthen, and the snow — while a nuisance — is pretty. How many ways can one weather the bleak midwinter? Let me count a few…

Bundle up and get outdoors.
Catch snowflakes on your tongue.
Sip cocoa by a fire.
Sip wine by a fire.
Paint your toes a summery color.
Eat breakfast in bed.
Eat dinner in bed.
Make breakfast for dinner. Eat that in bed, too.
Bake cookies.
Make snow angels.
Make love.
Tell stories.
Write letters.
Plan a summer garden.
Learn something new.
Make Valentines.
Snuggle.
Read! Read! Read!

Tell me — what would you add to this list?

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Type

What could the dating experiences of little old me - a 40-something, recently divorced mom - possibly have in common with those of a 23 year old gay man?

As it turns out, quite a bit.

In fact, as it turns out, gay men and straight men may have far more in common with one another than either group might like to admit.  A recent chat with my friend Kyle had us both in stitches over the “types” we’ve discovered in the course of our (mis)adventures in dating.

A sampling:

• The Pretty Boy.  I can’t go out with this guy because his hair always looks better than mine.  Ditto for Kyle (and really, this is a crime, because Kyle has fabulous hair).  Ladies and gents, if it walks like a Ken doll, talks like a Ken doll, and never met a mirror it wasn’t ready to make love to, it’s likely The Pretty Boy you’re dealing with.  Nice arm candy, but be warned: he’s only got enough love for himself.
• The Clooney.  This is a tough one.  Dashingly handsome, but with serious talent and substance to boot.  Has avoided commitment thus far, but causes everyone he comes into contact with to swoon in hopes of being ‘The One.’  But let’s get real, kids.  How many of us are truly in a class with Amal?  Keep your head on straight.  Your skivvies, too.
• The Pious One.  Maybe he’s an actual pillar of his particular religious community.  Maybe he’s just religious in his devotion to yoga, meditation, or his vegan diet.  But this is the man who gets you singing ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ in the shower and has you swearing you’ll convert.  You know - right up until the religious exclamations at romantic moments throw a wet blanket over your desire.  Put down the Kool Aid.  You know he’s gonna dump you for a blonde with family money anyway.
• The Trust Fund Brat.  Speaking of family money…  This is that delightfully soft, sweet guy - the one with wild stories, sparkling eyes, and a prep school past.  He’s the one you fall for immediately.  And it’s mutual.  The problem?  He comes with more strings attached than a marionette, and at the end of each is a family member so horrific only monarchies are creepier.  Give it a whirl - but keep scissors and running shoes handy.
• The Life of the Party.  This is the guy whose dating site profile lists him as “fun loving” and features an adult beverage in every photo.  It’s also sort of silly that he even has a dating site profile at all, since Tinder is more his style.  If you’re looking to wake up bruised, hung-over and naked on a yacht you don’t remember boarding, this is the guy for you.  Otherwise?  Not so much.
• The Strong & Silent.  Oh, this one’s a doozy.  He’s handsome.  Mysterious.  Says more with a glance than he ever does with those sultry lips of his.  And you know what?  It’s because he’s got nothin’.  There’s either not a whole lot going on between those lovely ears, or he has some terrible, soul-deep scars that prevent him from expressing himself.  You’d do better dating the Dos Equis guy.  At least he comes with a script.
• The Momma’s Boy.  This man-child starts out looking great (He’s so good to his mother!  So respectful!  So deferent!  What’s not to like?), but eventually he makes Norman Bates seem rational.  His mommy’s got him convinced that he’s Special…and no one is good enough for her boy.  Are you deluded enough to think you are?  She’ll spare no effort in slowly, painfully proving you wrong.  And your Prince Charming?  Don’t wait for him to come to your rescue.  There isn’t even a problem.  There couldn’t be.  His momma can do no wrong.  Advice?  Run.  Just run.  For fuck’s sake, run now. 

We identified a couple of notable others (God’s Gift, The Wandering Penis), but as these types seemed to overlap a bit with those detailed above, I’ll leave them to your imagination.

As for me and Kyle, we have no idea why we’re still single.

After all, we’re perfectly pleasant in every way…  ;)

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Dream

Passages are a funny thing to consider.

One soul leaves this world.

Another enters.

Certain lives may never intersect or overlap, yet one may still impact the other.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, five years before I was born.  He didn’t know my parents, and they - young white people getting their start in the world - surely felt their lives in New England were worlds removed from his death in Memphis.  They wanted a kind, gentle world for their family, so they appreciated Dr. King’s words.  They may have nodded, hoped, said a prayer, even shed a tear or two.  And then they moved on.

That is white privilege.

To agree, to hope, to pray and even to work for a better world - all in the absence of fear.

It’s an odd thing to try to understand.  As a white, middle-class female, it’s not something I asked for.  But there it is.

I remember being in elementary school and learning about the assassination of Dr. King.  I remember going home terrified that my own father - an intelligent, eloquent man who never hesitated to stand up for what he felt was right - would suffer a similar fate.  While clearly the intent of the lesson had been to illustrate our nation’s history of racial inequality and the impact of the civil rights movement, I’d somehow missed the crucial part.  My young brain couldn’t grasp the inane notion that skin color could have anything to do with hatred.  What I’d gleaned was that using one’s words to help others in this world could get a person killed.  What I’d felt was that such a world was surely insane, and terrifyingly unpredictable.

In time, I came to understand that my father, a white male, had the best armor possible.  This only amplified my belief that the world was an insane, terrifyingly unpredictable place.  As a child, I was certain my father was a great person - but I knew it had nothing to do with his gender or skin color.  It was because he was smart, kind, funny, and pretty much always carried candy for his children.  What sort of idiocy had been law in our country long enough that adults didn’t get what was so clear to a child?

My father told me about the Florida courthouse where he first practiced law.  Technically, Jim Crow laws were done for, but right there in the courthouse, next to the scales of justice, the words “WHITE” and “COLORED” remained inscribed in stone above the drinking fountains.

And people still used the fountains that matched their skin color.

How sad, how silly, I would like to say now.  I would like to look back and shake my head at the insanity of the past, gratefully beyond it.  Yet 2014 proved that the racial divide in this nation remains far from bridged.  There is quite a bit that is sad, yet nothing that is silly, about that.

I don’t believe this means we are doomed.  I sometimes think this nation’s past is so painful, we almost viscerally need to believe we’re done with it.  It hurts too damn much to consider the ways we might have benefited from an ugliness with which we disagree, or the times our behavior may have been guided by unfair instincts.  Still, we might do better to acknowledge it, to own up to the way prejudice can seep into the marrow and infect generations.  To look it in the face and say: I will not let you infect my children.

My daily experience with people is that they are generally good and kind.  I believe we are capable of bringing that goodness and kindness to our every interaction.  Call me Pollyanna, but I cannot read or hear the words of Dr. King without thinking he is still the key, and his dream is still possible.

I hope and pray 2015 is the year we each commit in our hearts to being done with drawing superficial lines.

That we work at treating each other gently.

That we take a moment before we speak, before we act.

That we remember that each of us is not the flesh and bone structure we see on the outside; it is the soul within.

With love and gratitude for the life, lessons, and memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dream.

- k.c.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Ripple

For most of my life, I have been lucky enough to live near the water. Salt ponds, rivers, bays, the ocean — I never cease to be amazed at the variety of landscapes possible in liquid form. There are days when the wind whips the surface into whitecaps, evenings so still the water is a mirror for the sunset. The change of seasons brings different birds and fish. Where I live now, the winter brings seals to my back yard.

One constant with any body of water is what happens when you touch it. Dip a toe, wade in, toss a stone — the water will ripple. That ripple will stir seaweed, send crabs scurrying. It’s one of the things I love most when I am on my paddleboard. I can see the impact of my movement on my surroundings: the swirl around my paddle, the gentle wake behind me. I can also so clearly feel the effect of my environment on me: the waves made by a passing boat, the wobble of my board as a fish passes underneath. I can feel my connection to everything in the world.

The ripple effect is something I tend to think of literally, given the way my life is so connected to water, but most probably think of it as a metaphor: each action we take has a ripple effect on others, often in ways we will never know.

I’ve been floundering a bit lately, having a tough time finding the meaning in some of what I’ve been through in the past year. It sometimes seems nothing in my life goes as I imagine it will. The reminders of plans gone awry are everywhere. I go for beach walks with Kimba and see The Ex and my former dog, Harry. No happily-ever-after there. I sit at my desk with the ashes of Tiny Tim, waiting for a warm spring day to release them at the dog beach. So much for my dreams of seeing him playing there with the other dogs, all-terrain wheels making up for the mobility he lost.

I’ll be honest: on bad days, I sit at my desk and look at Tiny Tim’s ashes as a symbol of all I’ve tried and failed. I wonder what the hell the point of any of it is.

And then last night I heard from Erica, one of the Guardians of Rescuewho’d helped save Tiny Tim. There was another dog the Guardians had been working to get safely from Oklahoma to Long Island, a blind Lab called Tiny. Of course, I noticed the name, and I followed his story. I was glad to learn he’d arrived safely in Long Island and was given a new name, Tulsa, in homage to the starting point of his journey.

What did Erica tell me that caught me off guard?

Kasia, the woman who drove from Brooklyn to Oklahoma and back as part of Tiny/Tulsa’s rescue team volunteered to do so in part because of a blog she followed. It was a Girl on a Wire post about a dog named Tiny Tim she’d seen on the Guardians of Rescue Facebook page. It moved her to tears, and ultimately, moved her to help another dog named Tiny.

Whaddaya know?

Miracles do happen.

The dog I tried to rescue may have passed, but he just rescued another dog. Tulsa will find his family, and his story will inspire others. Tiny Tim won so many hearts, and he is still changing lives.

We really are all connected. And while I still may not know what the hell the point of any of it is, I’ve been reminded: there is a point. We just have to trust.

As Kimba ran on the dog beach this morning, I tossed pebbles into the water. Some dropped with a plunk, others skipped across the surface. A cormorant emerged and looked at me, perturbed. A little farther away, a seal popped its nose out of the water.

I watched the ripples.

And I smiled.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

The sweetest hello

Resting safely

Tiny — now Tulsa — seems pretty happy to be making the journey to find his forever home.

Watershed

Up on the watershed

Staring at the fork in the road

You can stand there and agonize

'Til your agony’s your heaviest load

Yep.  Those are Indigo Girls lyrics.  I thought I was done with that angsty duo some twenty-plus years ago, around the same time I decided I really ought to have role models other than Sylvia Plath.

But just a year ago, Pandora landed on ‘Watershed.’  I had to pull the car over.  There on the side of a road in the middle of a sunny winter day, I totally lost my shit.  I was a crying, sobbing, snotty mess.  It was the kind of thing that happens when you realize you’ve been living too long in limbo.

In the months since our second wedding anniversary turned into the sort of colossal train wreck that illustrated all the ways our marriage was not ever going to be what I hoped (and no, he didn’t just forget to buy flowers), I’d known I had a choice to make.  For too long I’d clung to the little moments of bliss: our walks with the dogs on the beach, sunset cruises on the salt pond, the way it felt to wake curled in his arms.  If life were all beach walks and sunset cruises and lazy mornings, I suppose we’d have been okay.  But it isn’t - not in my experience, anyway - and whenever slightest of difficult times hit (a bill that was more than expected, a phone call announcing that his folks would be visiting yet again, the wrong weather on a day off from work), I found myself feeling more alone as a wife than I ever had as a single person.

And then came that damn Indigo Girls song.  I had to make a choice.  I knew that.  The agony was indeed my heaviest load.

I’ve blogged the hell out of what came next.  There was the brutality of separation, the finality of divorce.  2014 was, for me, a year of moving away.  Of treading water.  Of trying not to be dragged under.

As the year came to a close, I realized there is a burden even heavier than the agony of indecision.  It’s the agony of having no goal to move toward next.  If you know me, that may sound funny - I am rarely idle, and I always have about two dozen goals toward which I am feverishly working.  What did I lack?  A larger plan.  A vision of the life I want.

I’ve kept walking with The Ex at the dog beach, kept dogsitting my former dog and housesitting my former home when he’s traveling for work.  Daily, I see what I’ve lost.  Sometimes - when The Ex seems more like the fun guy I fell in love with than the moody man I found myself married to - it’s difficult to remember why I left.  Things always seem so much better from the outside looking in.

Then came Tiny Tim.  If you haven’t read the story of how his life intersected with mine, please do here.  As one who has been rescued by animals time and again, it should be no surprise to me that my focus - my vision of the life I want for myself - crystalized in the very short time I spent with a crippled, abandoned dog at the end of his own life.

I’ll share more in next week’s post, but for now, suffice it to say I feel 2015 is the year I stop moving away and start moving toward.  It’s the year I stop looking back.  (And if I forget this, I know I have at least one good friend who will help me extricate my head from my ass and get back on track.)

There are good things ahead.  I finally know just what they are.

And because life is nothing if not serendipitous, I just received this in an email from my friend Jude, and I pass it on to you:

WHATEVER YOU CAN DREAM, BEGIN IT

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy-

The chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation)

There is one elementary truth the ignorance of

Which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

That the moment one definitely commits oneself, 

Then Providence moves, too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would 

Never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision, 

Raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen

Incidents and meetings and material assistance,

Which no one could have dreamed would have come

One’s way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can.

Begin it.

Boldness has genius,

Power, and magic in it.

Begin it now.   

GOETHE

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