Freedom Precious Freedom

I just got back from a great weekend. I was invited to perform at a house concert/party on Saturday night in northern California where I will be doing some touring in the near future, so it was great to get out there and connect with new people.

I made plans to come into town early Friday, and then leave late on Sunday, with the intention of hooking up with friends. But after I had made all my non-refundable plans, I learned that everyone I knew was either out of town or unavailable that weekend, so I decided take a mini-vacation for myself.

I went online to Hotwire.com and got a room in a cutesy little art gallery/Bentley-infested beach town for $79.00 a night. Cool!

The first day, after I finally got there, I was a little tired from all the traveling (only got lost 2x though & new IPhone GPS was a big help!), so even though I managed to get in a little beach time, I shortly retired to my room with a take-out from the downstairs chop house (kobe beef & gruyere cheese on thinly sliced chip-style potatoes – yum!) and watched the debates. It was actually pretty great. The beef, cheese & chips combination I mean.

The next morning I got up around 7 and had to walk outside in order to get to the hotel lobby where the free coffee was, and the air was incredible. Cool and sea-breezy. So I got my coffee and just kept walking. For about a mile,  down the relatively deserted streets, past all the cute houses and shops and purple flowers everywhere, humming the Joni Mitchell song “When morning comes to Morgantown.”

I kept walking, all the way down to the beach, where I passed a few fisherman and people walking their dogs. It was a perfect morning.

—————-

A few hours later when I was preparing to check out and leave for the place where the concert was going to be (about an hour away), I decided to pick up some flowers to bring to my hosts. I drove to a nearby (very cute!) market and there was a very nice looking man holding a motorcycle helmet standing in line in front of me. He said “Are you buying those flowers for me?” I said “Yes. Thank you for last night.”

We spoke briefly outside as I admired his Harley, and exchanged #s. He had a wonderful, Armenian accent and he said “I’m going to call you when I get back to… but it might not be a few days till.. etc. etc.” He said he was just trying to reassure me that he wasn’t a “typical guy” who said he would call and then not.” I reassured him. I said “That’s ok. I don’t care.”

————–

Then I drove to my hosts’ house where the party would be. It was an amazing house – the second to the last one, high up on a hill. There was only one house higher, but you couldn’t see it from the road because it had it’s own little entry gate and road to get to it. I asked my host if that other house was fancier than his, and he said oh yes – it was about double the size! Which was something – because the guestroom I was staying in was already bigger than my first house.

The concert/party went wonderful. A lot of great music, and I made a lot of great, new connections with wonderful people.

Then the next morning I hung out with a fellow singer/songwriter/philosopher who had also spent the night there. We sat on the veranda (as someone had clarified for me – this was not a “patio”, or a “deck”, but a “veranda” – seats around 60-80 pretty comfortably) overlooking the valley, as we sipped our coffee amidst more purple flowers.

He’s been divorced a long time and we got to talking about how people sometimes move right into new relationships, too quickly, and end up with a clone of the previous one.

I get it. I get lonely.  Sometimes a little scared. It would’ve been nice to have someone to hold hands with on the beach the day before, or to eat cheese and chips with (although they would’ve had to order their own:). And then, so many of these not-quite-right but-sort-of-ok men or work opportunities have come along, and I can almost see those little birdcages with their doors open calling to me: “come in! come in!” Ready to whisk this  hayseed out of the sky and lock the door tight behind me.

But this precious freedom right now… Lock yourself in the wrong birdcage and there is no romantic beach to walk on, even if you do catch the bird.

 

Soundtracks of our lives Part 3 – a Joni Mitchell day and rich hippi memories

When I was 12, my family moved from New Jersey to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, across the river from New Jersey and an hour’s train ride from New York.

When I was 13 I met my first boyfriend at a youth group talent show in New Jersey. His name was Perry and he lived in Long Island. To visit him, my parents would put me on a train in Trenton, New Jersey, I would change trains at Grand Central Station in New York, to go to his house in Long Island.

Yes I was 13. Yes times were a lot different then. It was the late 60s. Perry and I wanted so badly to be hippies, but the “real’ hippies were a few years older than we were; but we weren’t too young to ride the wake.

Perry and I would take the subway to New York City and spend the day running through Central Park in our ground-scraping bell bottom jeans and tie-dye shirts as the totally free spirits we were. Then we’d peruse the head shops of the East Village shopping for luxurious hippi-wear and accessories, among other things.

We had no money worries, because our parents were well off and we had no expenses. Between my babysitting money and Perry’s money on top of that (which I think came from “other things), we could afford nice trinkets.

In one of the little walk-down shops in the the East village, Perry bought me a purse that I treasured. It was a luxuriously rich velvet tapestry carpet bag. I think it cost $20, which was a lot of money for a purse (and for a kid!) back then. I carried it everywhere.

————-

It’s funny how my parents used to talk about their teen and young adult years like they were yesterday and I used to think I can’t believe you remember it like that – that was centuries ago! But now I’m the age that they were, and I can see how the past can still remain so alive and part of the present. And it definitely doesn’t seem like “centuries” ago.

——————-

Today was a very Joni Mitchell day for me. A musician friend has recently asked me to learn “Woodstock” to sing it with him, so I’ve been listening to it.

Then today I went to meet RN, my jewelry designer, at an art festival in the hills where she was exhibiting. As I was leaving, another song kept running through my head and I realized it was “Gallery”, another favorite Joni Mitchell’s song about an artist and his gallery of paintings.

RN had just completed our first jewelry piece that we had designed together for my store, and she gave it to me to take home to photograph. The stones we had selected are called denim lapis. The stones’ natural color is the color of blue jeans.

That rich hippi is still very present in my soul. It only takes a song lyric or just the suggestion of it to call it all back up. I’m enjoying wearing my new piece. Naturally rich, beautiful stones, in the real color of freedom.

 

I’m Starting Over. Sept. 11, 2007

I’m starting over. 

It’s hard to know where to start.  There’s just so many things.  All the cliches – one foot in front of the other life hands you lemons you make lemonade etc etc etc. 

I went to see an accountant the other day with my soon-to-be-ex-husband.  We want to know the best time to divorce for tax purposes.  We’ve run a business together for many years and both have been terrible at bookkeeping and haven’t been profitable and the books are a mess.  The accountant said well maybe I can go through all your records and help you straighten everything out, or maybe you have one big knot and you just want to chuck the whole gourd and start over cleanly.

 

Chuck the whole gourd and start over cleanly.  That sounds good.  There’s not a whole lot I have I want to keep.  We went through the house like you’re supposed to do to say you take this and you take this and it was a no-brainer.  30 years of marriage.  I didn’t want much of anything.  Just the equipment I need to do my work (I’m a musician), half of the new purple sectional  – custom colored – it’s beautiful – it arrived the day my son left home and I realized my marriage was over.  That was about almost 2 years ago.  Everything since then has been moving through the logistics. 

 

Anyway, my son flew the nest and (the spirit of) my husband was gone and there was this beautiful purple couch sitting in my den.  My friend EL came over.  She was the first to see it.  We talked about the pillows.  They had sent the wrong ones and I didn’t think I liked them as much as the ones I thought I had ordered, but EL really liked them so I kept them and I’ve grown to like them too.  We sat on the couch and I think we watched a movie or something.  The name of the couch is big purple. 

 

So I’m trying to take stock of where I am, where I want to go, how I’m going to get there, all the great & inspirational books I’ve been reading, trying to “look at the positive”, “choose what I want” and “create my life.  I believe those books.  It’s just hard to wrap around them sometimes on those days when you get caught up moaning around and feeling sorry for yourself.  But I’m taking those messages to heart and doing my best to pull out of this.

 

It’s funny, some of my friends have actually expressed jealousy of my situation, if you can believe that.  I look at them in their pretty houses with their families all around in that same pathetic way someone who is going through a break-up looks at all the lovers in the park and wails to themselves “That’s not for me now!!!!!!”  Well, I’ve done (& continue to do) my share of that, ok?  But anyway, my friends look at me and say “You’re free!  You can do anything you want now! Your son is grown! You’re healthy, beautiful (I like that one:), young (51) and can do whatever you want!  How many people get that second chance?”

 

It’s true, most of my friends have been married 20 years and more at this point.  They love their husbands, but have all had their issues and come to this half happy stalemate where they just kind of keep going along going along.  And then I have one friend whose been married 30+ years and she loves to go places and do things, and her husband never did, always had reasons, excuses.  A real home body.  She had all these brochures and flyers of places she was planning for them to go.  The latest was a rail trip through Canada. I was at their house and she had all these fantastic brochures and she was actually starting to plan it for them.  Anyway, then, 2 years ago, he had a major health scare, and is still under doctors’ care, and he’s not going anywhere.  Neither is she.  He might be around for another 20-30 years.  I doubt she’ll ever leave him.  She loves him, they’ve been together their whole lives.  I would never leave my husband if he got sick (might resent it even though I’d pretend not to, but I wouldn’t leave him).

 

But anyway, my husband didn’t get sick. He asked for a divorce.  And if truth be told, I was the one who probably should’ve asked for the divorce, but I didn’t, I kept limping along with the status quo thinking things could get better or change – ever the optimist who wanted things to stay the same.  Even if they sucked, I wanted to pretend it was all ok.  Why do we all hate change so much?

 

But like I said, he asked for the divorce and I know it’s a good thing.  But what do I do now? 

I had my whole life running so well on autopilot.

 

It’s not like I haven’t started over before.  The first time I think I started over was when I left my parents house at 20 and into the arms of my husband, declaring my “independence”.  It was a bad situation in the home I grew up in.  But the joke is, instead of declaring my independence, I probably should’ve been declaring my “co-dependence”:).  One dysfunctional situation into another.  It’s ok.  I’ve done a lot of work and “I can see clearly now” (music here) and I’m ready to move on.  But no more of this “lemons-to-lemonade” crap.  The lemons have been squeezed and sugar-coated enough and I’m trading it all in for orange juice.

 

More later.