The Freedom Tour

Over the last few days I've seen America the Beautiful. The Columbia River from Vancouver east: moody, foggy, mystical; 

Bridge of the Gods;

Highway 30, a picturesque road leading to Hagerman Fossil Beds in, um, Hagerman, where Grace wanted in on the picture;

and to Balanced Rock;

and Balanced Rock Park in Buhl, Idaho, where I boondocked one night and still can't believe that not only was I allowed to stay there, I had the park to myself when the day trippers left. That's Grace in the background. Again.

And then I hit Utah. There's a reason one of the license plate choices says UTAH!. I've traveled some here and there and I have never seen a more breath-takingly, heart-achingly beauty than in Utah. Have you ever experienced depthless beauty in whatever form - music, art, a brand-new baby, a spiritual awakening, looking into your lover's eyes - that has so filled, filled, filled your heart that you almost can't stand it, that if you look or listen or stay in that moment for one second longer you know your heart will burst with joy? I hope you have.

It is transcendent.

It is unforgettable. 

I drove up a long, steep road into Arches National Park the other day and thought my heart would explode with the joy of the magnificent loveliness everywhere I looked. This sounds pretty darned flaky but if you have ever been overtaken by this powerful awareness you know exactly what I mean. I will never forget how that place made me feel. I was, most simply, touched by grace. It was elevating, humbling, exhilarating, and bittersweet. I knew I would have to look away but I also knew it would stay with me. It was one of the most power-full moments of my life. 

No photo I could ever take can do the place justice. That night I boondocked in Manti-La Sal National Forest, down a dirt road a couple of miles off the freeway. Nothing there but me, total and utter silence, and a night sky flooded with stars. It was a very good way to end the day. 

The next morning I stopped at Newspaper Rock,where the only other visitors were a man my age and his teenage son, from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I followed them to another place down the road, an unmarked trail a person at their hotel told them about, and we set off on foot to find dinosaur tracks and supposedly better, older petroglyphs than were on Newspaper Rock. It was rough, rocky country. We were climbing at what felt like a 45 degree angle and at an elevation of probably 5300 feet, and me in slippery-soled sneakers. I made it, though not without thinking I'd break my ankle any time now, and we saw some spectacular art. 

That's a dinosaur footprint, or so we told ourselves.

I questioned myself at the start if I was being an idiot, going off into back country with these two men, but I felt no danger at all. They were just two nice people who let me tag along. We then hop-scotched our way down the road to Canyonlands National Park, where they went their way and I mine. Here's Grace again. What a camera hog.

I've met wonderful folks even early on in this trip, people who've extended kindness, offered any help I needed, and engaged in conversation. The freedom in the title of this post means a lot of things to me. One of them is the freedom to talk to people and to learn a little about who they are without the uncomfortable awareness of an I'll wait outside impatience or an all-purpose distrust that have been in the background for years. I lived with that. I accepted it! What an fool I was to compromise my self to keep someone else happy, which never worked anyway. No more.

I may have had this different life imposed on me with unending shards of cruelty, but I will now admit to the world that I was done a favor. I was given a gift I would never have given myself. The divorce was, from the start, all about him despite the words he said, but I am surprisingly feeling like the winner (she said with quiet satisfaction) and life is looking good.

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Thought for the day:

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. (Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

Identity lost, identity regained

When the bomb dropped, back in the ancient history of January, that I was to be Suddenly Single at Sixty, I became overwhelmingly disoriented. I was actually a lot of things but disorientation was the most unsettling and frightening. I've described it as being in a foreign country that has an unrecognizable language, lost, not a penny in my pocket, and a hostile population that refuses to help. That kind of disorientation and fright, with an intractable and immovable weight as though I were trapped under an enormous blanket of chain maille.

I'd suddenly lost my identity because over the years a slow and insidious change had come over me, the kind you can recognize only from a distance, transforming me from Kathy to Bob'sWife. I felt I had no sense of my own self but only as his extension. There are many reasons for this change, each one not powerful enough on its own, but the cumulative effect was transformative. When the one identity I had was gone, I was lost and alone in that foreign country, not having the first idea how to get home.

Since January I've been finding link after link of the chain maille breaking and falling away with the considerable help of friends (which includes my family) because who they're helping, welcoming, and offering kindness to is Kathy, not Bob'sWife. The friends who are always willing to listen, to offer a different perspective of events (he's shining you on), to give always-welcome advice, are offering it to me, not to an appendage of another person. The friends who narrow their eyes with anger or widen them with a Good news! look and say You're better off without him or There's a weight off you or What do you need him for? The friend who cut my hair for free as a going-away gift. The friends who were genuinely sorry to see me go because it was the individual me they would miss, not the merged me I'd become in my mind. The friends around the country, some whom I've not even met yet in person, who are opening spots in the driveway for Grace, putting out the welcome mat, making up the guest room, and telling me that I'm their role model for strength and courage. I'm astonished by this support. Bob'sWife was sure she wouldn't deserve it but Kathy is tentatively recognizing her own value. It's becoming an amazing rebirth back to the land of the living.

I had my iPod plugged in yesterday, turned up loud, with the music I wanted to hear and, yes, to define it loosely, even singing along. One of my favorite songs of all time is Molly Magdalain's The Open Road. Her open road is a literal road trip that revealed what's important in her life. I see my open road as not only my own literal one, but also my journey of transformation, my travels along a path with heart.

Like gypsy souls we travel, most of all we look within.

Reflections I'm confronted by

  will make me change as much as I can.

In the mirror of these strangers I see clearly who I am.

On the open road, this is where I find the truth of my soul.

There's no place like my home on the open road.

Anatomy of dysfunction and divorce

I had a conversation with the ex-husband the other day about his grievances versus mine.Technically, he's not ex yet, but I'm trying to get used to saying and thinking it. It's getting surprisingly easy for a number of reasons. If you've been in any kind of long-term relationship, there will be grievances but ours had attained mythic proportions because they festered for years. He'd sent me a lengthy email citing chapter and verse and I wanted to give him my take on his complaints. It could also be called the last word if you wanted to argue about it. The conversation was an amazing revelation. We have memories 180 degrees apart. How do things like that happen? In our case, it was because we never talked about anything of substance. Ever. It started with his Vietnam experiences. Off limits from Day 1. I met him a few years after he returned to the States but even in the early days of being together, when it seems people share every memory and experience they've ever had, it was obvious this topic was off the table for discussion. That should have been the canary in the coal mine but I was starry-eyed and only saw this wounded man that I thought I could make better if I loved him enough. When you start to tread lightly on shaky ground with one topic, it becomes easier and easier to avoid all other shaky ground when it appears beneath you. It was especially true for me because he turned cold and distant when asked about anything he didn't want to discuss, and the last thing I wanted was to be banished from his orbit. What a silly, naive, trusting, needy girl I was because nothing ever got better or resolved and I came to accept this as normal. Not good, of course, but normal. Our story is textbook dysfunction. It's a wonder we lasted as long as we did. I used to joke it was because of inertia but that pretty much sums it up. I read not long ago that some marriage therapist could predict which marriages would succeed and which would fail just by observing how couples relate to each other during a disagreement or argument. The primary predictor for failure was what the therapist called Stonewalling. Well, shut the door. That is exactly the problem we had. If he didn't want to discuss it, it didn't get discussed. When another problem arose I thought I'd get even by refusing to talk about it, and around and around we went. Whatever issue we had became the elephant in the room, until one day one of us would say something innocuous like needing to get cereal for the kids, and then we'd talk to each other again. So not only were we not talking about the problem, we got to where we would not say a word to each other for days at a time. Yeah, we were a mess. Here's the point of this confessional. If you think you want a lifetime with that great guy who's charming, charismatic, and attentive, take notice of his behavior when conflict arises. Give the courtship enough time to let conflict arise. Then run like hell if he shuts down on you, if he withholds attention. It will not get better. Trust me on this. I kept hoping we would get back to the magic of the early days, when I was silly, naive, trusting, and needy, when I thought his brooding was sexy and attractive, and didn't know it takes more than just having my skirts blown up, to quote a friend, to make something of meaning last. His memories of my wrongdoings against him stopped at the point his feelings were hurt and he shut down rather than be subjected to more of the same, but he also missed out on remembering any attempts at all to make things right. I truly believe my memory of the same events is the correct one, if only because I can still hear the words in my head and picture where we were and what we were doing. I could be wrong. As has been pointed out to me, that was often the  case, but if we could have shown each other our vulnerabilities with the trust that we wouldn't be betrayed by them down the road, would things have turned out differently? =====

Perspective

In addition to cruisingat60 I keep a journal, where the raw, bloody pain goes, the wounds that are so soul-scarring I can hardly stand it. Sometimes I write just a few lines if the day hasn't been bad but I once wrote two full pages when I had a day from the ninth circle of hell. Go look it up. Regardless of how much pain I'm in, though, to try to maintain some level of perspective, I make a point of also writing down five things I'm grateful for that day. On the day I wrote two pages I could come up with only three but thought later I could have at least listed each cat separately to get to five, although it's often stretching it to say I'm grateful for Hyacinth, the High-Strung Cat. Just one day out and she's already a trial. She dislikes change, very much like one of my sons who will remain unsingled-out, so I guess that's proof right there of genetic similarity or whatever it's called.

Yesterday was easier, though. As hard as it was to leave my old home for my new one, as surreal as it was to say goodbye-goodbye and not see-you-later-goodbye to the man I was married to and thought I knew for 34 years, as torturous as it was to realize yet again that my life as I've known it for more than half of it would never be the same, and that every expectation I've had for the rest of it is now like smoke in the wind, there were still gifts all day. These are the things I was grateful for last night:

~ A purple Karmann Ghia I saw on on 6th Street in Bremerton, with a red and yellow interior and wooden roof and trunk racks. Far out.
~ Trees in pink and white bloom everywhere or with that ephemeral green haze that I wasn't sure was spring growth or my imagination and for once I hoped my imagination was failing me.
~ 65! degrees! this afternoon. It didn't last long but I read the number with my own eyes.
~ $3.55 gas at Costco. I don't know about the rest of the country but this is a miraculous price risen from the dead.
~ And finally, Michael, my therapist and friend. He should be first on this list but everything else would have been disappointingly anticlimactic if they were listed after. It was my lucky day, when due to divine intervention or the roll of the dice, I was assigned to him. Thank you, Michael. You did good work. I will miss you.

It's all about perspective. I need to grieve. I have reason to grieve. To keep one foot in the world of the sane, though, I have to look for balance. The journal not only chronicles the grimmest parts of my life, it also prompts me to look for the joyful ones. They're there, no matter how hard I have to look or how far I have to stretch the definition of joyful.

A path with heart

I leave today. I waited this long to go because I had one last appointment with my therapist, the best therapist I've ever had, and I didn't want to miss it. The cats are in the van, I'm as stocked and ready as I'm going to be, and I'll be on the road by noon.

It's frightening. The closer this day came, the more fragile I felt. I worry about everything, even being so ridiculous about where I'm going to be next winter. How crazy is that? I worry about failing at this, at finding myself six or eight months on the road, wondering what I got myself into. I worry about some catastrophic repair that's going to wipe me out. I worry about finding a place for the night because I haven't planned ahead and now it's dark and there's nowhere to go. I worry about being so lonely it will immobilize me. I worry about getting sick with no one to care for me. I worry about my new health insurance and finding a provider when I need one. More on that train wreck another time. And I worry about money. It's the mother of all worries. It's the one that's taken up permanent residence in the pit of my stomach. Not having actually gone on the road full time before, I don't know what the cost will be. I can guess but I don't know. Gas is going to eat me alive, I'm sure of that. I won't be able to see this museum I want to see, hop back in Grace and drive 400 miles for the next thing, because at today's prices, it costs me $100 to fill the tank that takes me 400 miles.

So traveling will necessarily be a slow process. I follow people online who've fulltimed it for years and they take it slow. They plunk down into a spot and stay for a week or two, then drive 100 or 200 miles and stop for another couple of weeks. I think I can live with that pace. I'm going to have to live with that pace.

The cost of camping is another worry. It's not unusual to pay  $35-$40 a night at commercial campgrounds. Weekly rates are a little less, monthly even more of a break but not necessarily a bargain, and many campgrounds cost much more. We stayed in one about a year ago that was $70!!! a night and the pool wasn't even open. Federal and state campgrounds are fairly inexpensive but may not offer any or all hookups, so then there are the worries of finding fresh water to fill the tanks and dump stations to empty the waste tanks. The same goes for camping on free federal land: no hookups because it's undeveloped land, and there may not even be potable water available, but if I can dry camp half of each month it will alleviate a lot of the financial worry. Everything is a trade off.

It's crazy to worry like this. Buddhism teaches that the present moment is the only one that's real. Already that sentence is in the past and the one you are about to read is in the future. The only moment that matters is this present moment. And now this moment. And this one. Worrying about the future does not affect what will happen; it will only take away from what is real in this moment right now, just as being mired in the past with regret doesn't change what's back there. It's gone. Living in the moment is a difficult concept to understand and adopt. I like to know outcomes, good or bad: if I know I can prepare myself. But how can we know the future? If I could do that I would be rich on Apple stock and would probably be trading money worries for something else.

Finding meaning in this life at the moment I live it is traveling a path with heart. If I can get a good grip on it, living in the moment will change the way I live and appreciate my life. I'm workin' on it.

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Thought for today:
We're so busy watching out for what's ahead of us that we don't take time to enjoy where we are. (Bill Watterson. (You know, of Calvin and Hobbes fame))

Missing

Time is drawing short. There are only a couple of days left before I leave this house, with no reason ever to come back. I would rather not do it. No, that's not right; I would rather do it under different circumstances, but it's not a choice I get to make.

I loved this house when we bought it less than three years ago. We saw it in August when the sun was high and warm, when raspberries were weighing down the canes in the garden, and the apple trees were promising a bounty. The mountains were out, the water was sparkling, and it seemed like just the place we'd hoped to find. Real estate prices were down and suddenly we could afford waterfront. How could it be any better than this, a dream we never thought we'd see realized.

Then, not long ago, I remembered times when I was out in someone's boat, looking with envy and longing at the beautiful houses at the water's edge, thinking how lucky the people were who lived in them. What great lives they had, how happy they must be, living in places like these. But of course, you never, ever know. You honest to God don't know what goes on behind closed doors. There are no guarantees that come with any possession that your life will be bliss or even averagely happy.

But there's no amount of money that can buy this bliss: An eagle gliding by, right at the edge of the bank that drops off to the canal. The sound of coyotes outside the bedroom window at night. A full moon shining in the skylight or gleaming over the water. Chickadees, nuthatches, brilliantly blue steller's jays, and goldfinches swarming the feeders. Sun slanting low and golden across the yard. Hummingbirds fighting with aerobatics. Bushels of apples and buckets of raspberries, warm from the sun and fragrant with summer. Clouds creating an ever-changing peep show over the Olympics. A doe picking her delicate way through the apple trees. A deep inhale of the fragrance of newly-cut grass, made sweeter because I didn't have to do the cutting. Fishing boats crowding the water during salmon runs. Submarines heading out to sea and returning home.

And then there's the canal. I don't have words to describe how much I love the water that constantly, constantly changes, with warring currents, patches inexplicably smooth as glass, the ebb and flow of the tides. Choppy waves capped with white when the wind kicks up. The sparkle, the shimmer, the blue and the gray and the silver that grace its every surface every second of every day, ever changing yet ever constant.

I'm not even gone yet and I'm missing it, every bit of it, already.

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Thought for the day:
She felt like parts of her soul were missing, had left her body long ago...[She] realized those parts had left her and were never coming back. (Ann Brashares (Sisterhood Everlasting))

The pros and cons of a toad

The last motor home I had was a 31' Winnebago, which is considered weensy by motor home standards. (Weensy: "It's an industry term" and points to you if you get the joke.) It had two nice slide outs to give some breathing room inside which made it good for several weeks on the road for two people. The insomniac could go to the "living room" and let the other one sleep. The TV watcher was separate from the reader. The shower was big enough, if a little cramped, it was separate from the room with the toilet and sink, and didn't require a $200 shower curtain. It had a decent-sized fridge and a freezer big enough for ice cream, most important. The table didn't need assembly when a meal rolled around. The space was nice but it was too big to take just anywhere. Parking garages were off limits and we needed to go to the back forty in parking lots because it took up two spaces. Driving on city streets was a nightmare and it had a quarter-mile turning radius. Because of this, we had a toad.

A toad is a towed vehicle. I just love a play on words. We towed a Honda Civic hybrid (what a good little car that was) on a dolly so the front wheels were up and the back wheels were on the ground. It worked great for mobility but what an exquisite pain it was. The car had to be lined up with surgical precision to make the front tires nestle in the tire wells exactly right. Then the tires were strapped into place with ladder-like webbed straps and cinched down tighter than a drum. Another strap went over and around the car axle and frame of the dolly as a fail-safe. All of it had to be tightened again a mile or so down the road. This was the easy part.

It was impossible for me to take the car off the dolly by myself. The straps that continued to tighten as we went down the road needed to be removed from the ratchet buckles. The manufacturer says it's simple: just lift up the buckle to loosen the ratchet! So easy! Liars!! It involved grubbing around on the ground, jamming a monster screwdriver under the buckle to lift it, and another person to worm the strap out little by little. The good part was once the car was off the dolly we were as mobile as we wanted to be.

The other option was a flat-bed trailer, which we used for a Mustang (red, GT, convertible, gorgeous. Oh, baby, I miss that car.). The Mustang was rear-wheel-drive so it couldn't be towed back wheels down. I wasn't going to risk putting the back wheels up and the front down where a good bump would take off the nose of the car. Also, the trailer itself is a million pounds and you can imagine what that does to mileage. And the car still had to be strapped down.

So everything is a trade off. The bigger motor home gave space but took away mileage and maneuverability and strengthened the need for a toad. There were also some trips where it was too much work to unload the car for a couple of things we wanted to see so they went unseen. What's the point, then, of having it in the first place?

I elected, as you know, to go with a camper van. I can drive it nearly anywhere I can take a car. It gets somewhat better mileage than the Winnie with or without a toad. The trade off here is the inconvenience of having to put everything away before driving off to see the sights:  disconnecting and stowing water, sewer, and electric umbilicals and anything loose inside that will go flying once I'm on the road. This hasn't been put into play yet so I don't know how exasperating it's going to be but it can't be worse than loading and unloading a toad.


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Here's the joke: In My Cousin Vinny, my all-time favorite movie EV-er, Marisa Tomei is arguing about a dripping bathroom faucet with her fiance, Joe Pesci. She says she knows she turned it off just the right amount to keep it from dripping because she used "a Craftsman model 1019 laboratory edition signature series torque wrench. The same kind used by CalTech high energy physicists and NASA engineers." Questioned about its accuracy, she said it had just been calibrated by the state's department of weights and measures "to be dead-on balls accurate." Joe Peschi asks her, with eyebrows raised, "Dead-on balls accurate?" She gives a sweet little smile and answers, "It's an industry term."

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Thought for the day: For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)