Auld Lang Syne

New Year’s Eve…and a cuppa noodles.​

To say that 2018 has been a year to remember is an understatement.  Losses, changes, and transitions occurred on all fronts, personal and public, and for so very many people.  In spades!  It is amazing to me how over the course of just one single, solitary year, lives have been altered every day as one devastating loss or change drifts like soft, stark snow into the next. 
 
In the milky way of music alone, the world lost postwar crooner Vic Damone.  Old romantics everywhere still feel as though they’ve lost a friend since his death.  They recount amorous tales of meeting the loves of their lives as Damone poured his heart out into the hearts of others, a demitasse of hot love tea.  For that generation, Vic Damone’s music set the tone for beginnings of relationships that sprouted into romantic interludes often customary for the day.  For some, Vic Damone’s voice brings back a flood of both memories and tears alike.  And for that same lot of some, his voice leaves people with the open-ended question of their very own mortality.  RIP, Vic Damone.
 
The strung-together mess of the past 365 days also brought about the death of ‘Hee Haw’ host and highly-regarded and renowned guitarist, banjo player, and fiddler Roy Clark.  It has been written that he was skilled in the traditions of many genres, including classical guitar, country music, Latin music, bluegrass, and pop.  Me?  I remember watching him on television every Saturday night with my GrandMaud as she told me the lineup on the ‘Hee Haw’ show for that week.  Together, we witnessed the evident joy his music-making brought him.  It radiated in his smile and in his eyes.  His round cheeks puffed when he smiled…and he was usually smiling.  Roy’s pickin’ and grinnin’ linked him to millions of viewers who mirrored his smile when he played.  Us common folk felt not-so-common when we would stop to consider his roots.  We recognized, too, that our roots were nothing to be ashamed of and, instead, meant to be celebrated and hung on the wall for everyone to see.  RIP, Roy Clark.
 
Finally, we also saw one of the greatest losses of a legendary recording artist, Aretha Franklin.  The daughter of a Detroit minister, Franklin was a singer, songwriter, civil rights activist, and pianist.  Appropriately dubbed the Queen of Soul, her voice was strong, a definite voice to be reckoned with.  No shrinking flower, Ms. Franklin naturally demanded R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and so the red carpet was deservingly rolled out for her.  She further made history in 1987 when she was honored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the first female performer to ever be inducted.  She made her own history and undoubtedly influenced up-and-coming performers.  To say Aretha Franklin was a “just a performer” is a drastic miss of the mark…To say Aretha Franklin was born to sing is on target...But to say that Aretha Franklin was made of song and had the passion and the courage and the ability to change lives through her song and emotion is bullseye.  RIP, Aretha Franklin.
 
On a more personal note, almost nothing in my life is the same as it was on New Year’s Eve of last year.  Lots of changes have taken place, and for those changes I truly am grateful.  I had worked from home for 10 years while being able to stay home with my kids and bring in an income, but early on in 2018 my work began to taper off.  It felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel and working at any and all hours of the day and night to be available when the jobs were available, and I had always worked on holidays and weekends, too.  It was a given.  No vacation pay, no sick time, and no health insurance. 
I was hanging on by the one long and lonely pre-menopausal hair of my chinny-chin-chin, and I could certainly feel the pressure of bills mounting, kids demanding, and of a husband rejecting.  I decided to begin envisioning a different life for myself.  A happier life.  It was a vision that did not include expensive things or more things, but it was a vision that included myself finally being happy and content with myself and my relationship with my children.  I tried with Todd a little more, but I had been “trying” with him for a few years.  Nothing, it seemed, was good enough or right enough or strong enough.  After he told me early in the spring of 2018 that he held no more love for me, I decided to let it go.  It felt monumental, that letting go, like a death of something you can never hold or touch or even get close to.  It felt like the kind of death where you step back, assess what has happened, and say with relief and love and all the kindness you can collect within yourself:  “At least there’s no longer any suffering.” 
 
I had been feeling called to get back to my writing.  I am a writer, after all, and that is what writers do when we have been numb and hollow for so long that our love for it dries out.  Sometimes just that one little something has to happen, and boom, we are again beckoned to get back to our art.  For me, this is exactly what I did.  While it was intimidating for someone like myself who has a keen love/hate relationship with all things technology, I knew I wanted to catapult the story of my not-so-boring life from a blog platform.  I knew the way you know about a good melon.  I knew the way you know about love.  In March 2018, I launched my blog, and I have never looked back.  It has been the impetus for processing so many emotions, so many confessions, so many thoughts, and coupled with my change of mindset and outlook, my blog entries have truly been my catalyst for change.  A grown-up diary, of sorts, situated at an address on the worldwide web for the entire world to read, if I am ever so fortunate.  I fully intend to turn it into a bestseller, too.  We watch. 
 
In early summer, I was laid off from my work-at-home gig.  I was devastated.  Losing my only source of income meant I would be unable to move my kids and I out of the turbulent atmosphere that my unhealthy marriage had created.  Losing my job meant unemployment income, though, so I decided to trust God and know that there just had to be something better right around the corner.  I maintained my thankful heart.  I maintained my positive outlook, my hopes, my vision of getting out from under the shroud (the cloud!) that hung over me in the house I had shared with the same man for almost 14 years.  The house where we lived when the kids were born.  The house where we lived throughout the early years of marriage that eventually drifted into years of resentment and unforgivable words and wounds.  The house we almost lost, but somehow managed to save.  The house where it all grew up and out until it finally spiritually and emotionally caved in.  Emotional implosion, indeed.  I clung fast to my vision of just getting out.  Getting out of the house for work, getting out of the house for lunch with various friends who loved and cared about me.  Getting out of my stifling and hate-filled marriage.  I began to apply for work to different places.  I began to nurture my connections to the people in my life who were positive and healthy and who wanted to be with me, right back.  All the while, I could feel myself transforming, and at that point in the summer of 2018, I felt very much like a juggernaut just careening through space and time, picking up the pace with every day.  I smiled more.  The frequency I felt myself emitting seemed to draw others to me, and in turn, I  was drawn into the loving circles of others.  For the first time in years, I had begun to get a taste of the person I felt had gotten lost in the details of the day-to-day, in my 3-year struggle with alcoholism, in caring for everyone around me and letting myself go straight to the birds that seemed to have pecked out my soulful eyes.  I caught glimpses of that person in the mirror.  I caught the familiar sparkle in her eye.  I caught the touch of her old and dry humor not a lot of people appreciated or knew how to receive.  I caught my old interests and hobbies (Writing! Traveling! Reading! Skating! Music!) peeking in at the door of my heart.  I felt the best I had felt in more than 15 years!
 
August 2018, my dad had his third heart attack.  It scared me, and made me reconsider a lot about my own life and the life of my children as to what I would and would not put us through or tolerate for the sake of someone else, someone else who did not seem to want us there.  When my husband declared in anger one day that he wished my father would just die, I knew right then what I had to do and that I could no longer be a willing participant in a half-assed marriage with someone who did not value one of the very few people who had ever helped him (my dad).  It cut me to the core when Todd said what he did.  It hurt me so that he had said it in the presence of my children.  After all, isn’t hate a learned behavior?  I knew I could not in good conscience raise my children in this dynamic.  Whatever we witness, hear, and see growing up all too often becomes accepted and welcomed patterns as adults, to the tune of dysfunctional sameness; to the song of disjointed familiarity.  Still, I held onto my vision.  Didn’t know how it was going to happen, but I continued to believe and be thankful that it was in the process of happening.  A better way was in constant, invisible motion around me, and call me crazy, but I could feel it happening.  I felt my old, dull self and my old life molting.  I began to give thanks even more for the new growth that was taking place…physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally.    
 
The very next month, September, I was hired on with a nonprofit where I’d worked for 8 years prior to coming home to have Molly and the twins.  During this time in my life, I had a very special older friend who prayed for me and helped me with various scriptures and understanding my role in all of this.  While she never really told me what to do, she did direct me to my Bible on several occasions when she knew I was hurting and needed it.  In many ways, it was like my mother had returned to me, disguised as someone else.   Linda and I had a lot of laughs and fun and she gave me some of the best and realest advice I have ever been given.  I remain thankful for her to this day.  I marvel at the outpouring of her love for people and her desire to teach them about the Lord.  At that point this past summer and fall, she was definitely one of my greatest cheerleaders, and I fully believe that we are sent people in different seasons of our lives who are really angels.  It’s like God is up above, casting characters and directing this big play called Life, and I don’t believe in accidents.  He knows what He is doing.  He knows the story before we ever, ever do.  He wrote the book, after all. 
 
Now.  Fast forward to December 31, 2018.  I have moved out of Todd’s house.  My kids and I have our own place, and it is lovely.  Just so happens, it’s right next door to my childhood home.  My dad continues to live there, too.  In so many ways, I have come full circle.  I am no longer the youngest in a neighborhood full of retirees.  These days, I’m in my early 40s living right next door to the very home where I grew up, and my kids are among the youngest on the street now.  These days, there are other young children, and I guess that is how it goes.  I will be divorcing my husband soon, and the wild thing is that we both seem to be a lot happier.  It’s almost as though we should have done this a few years ago.  Alas, it was neither the time or the season then.  But, by being still and focusing on the good and the possible, things have changed.  Situations have evolved.  Lives have grown and flourished.  We have all bloomed.  We are continuing to thrive.  
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The World Laughs in Flowers.  -Ralph Waldo Emerson