Tuesday, October 13, 2009

For Elenna on the Eve of our Marriage

June 2009.

A few years ago, I began gutting my basement. My sons had lived down there for years, and—to be frank—it smelled like every age of “boy” they’d passed through. They each grew up to be good fine men, left home, and left me with the task of deconstructing the space as I was also, at the time, deconstructing my life. After all, I’d been a mother for most of my adult life, a student and teacher who woke early and went to bed late, a writer who wrote above the din of boy-ruckus below my feet, and now that I was alone, it seemed right to reconsider how to live next part of an un-partnered life.

When I began tearing out walls, pulling down ceilings, and ripping up floors, I had also become single for the first time, to be truthful, ever. From the age of twenty one when I’d married my ex-husband, to the day I’d turned forty-five the month of my last and awful relationship, I’d pretty much been attached to another human being to one degree or another. But this time, this single felt different from my other interim-singledoms; it wasn’t the kind of single where you immediately begin the quest for the next one: placing ads, crossing fingers, and hoping for the “right” one to come along; or the kind of single where you crawl off and lick wounds until you’re ready for the next round of emotional sparring. No, this single was like none I’d ever experienced before. This single meant by myself, solo, alone, solitary—I, me, mine. It was intentional, deliberate, focused, determined, scary and thrilling, a cause for opportunities and celebration – and lots and lots of thinking.

Friends had made a few early attempts at “fixing” me up, but deconstructing even the thought of that experience was nearly as overwhelming as the deconstruction going on in my basement. And so, I made a personal declaration of independence and demanded a cease and desist from my well-meaning pals. In the meanwhile, I’d hired a dumpster and was tossing out so much garbage, so much old news, so much moldy wood, wall, insulation, and simultaneously, on a more psychic level, I was also cleaning out my own personal garbage, old news, and moldy ideas.

As all this was going on, I’d written two books, sold one, agented another, finished a fifth and began a sixth—I’d turned into a bit of a writing machine and that isn’t always a good thing—I was immersed in writing about others’ lives and not paying much attention to my own. At about the same time as I was tearing out all but the pulsing wires of electricity downstairs, I’d all but torn out the pulsing inclinations of relationship as I had come to know it, which admittedly, was not with fondness. And so, (3 years and 7 dumpster loads later) with a now hollowed space in front of me, I began to re-envision the kind of place a newly liberated mother and single woman might enjoy being in. I also began to re-envision the kind of relationship – if any – I might also enjoy being in now nearing fifty years old.

After awhile and for a few months, I caved into the well-meaning attempts at blind-dates orchestrated by friends, met a couple of great people, but the idea of giving up my new-found freedom for another try at something so seemingly embedded in what felt mostly limiting was evoking dread and, sadly, a kind of revulsion at the very notion of another human being clinging to my life. I began making a myriad of conditions that the next one would have to meet in order to get near this newly independent newly re-envisioned woman.

But sometimes, in spite of the lists, limits, and dictates of a clear and deliberate mind, we don’t always know what we need, even if we think we know what we want. In much the same way that I’d been making lists of building materials, designing room arrangements on graph-paper, budgeting time and money, I found myself in the same process of laying out the criteria for that poor person who’d attempt a pass at this bastion of deliberate intent; in hindsight, while I’d envisioned ceilings, floors, and walls for my new space, I’m not sure I’d figured so much as a door to crack open in that great wall of singledom I’d built around myself. For the most part all was nearly perfect in my world: great family, great friends, great job, great home, great book career….I mean, there was no more wrong with my life than there was wrong with my vision for my basement. In both places, heart and hearth, there appeared a clear clean space to fill—tableau Rosa.

I then, as one will, began to take stock in what was missing in both in my hearth and heart. The space below, I’d decided, was going to be for entertainment, my entertainment, for friends, family, even my colleagues and students. There would be a bar, a fireplace, room for big parties, and one thing I’d been envisioning from the start – a pool table. But as I could immediately imagine the whole flow and flavor of the basement, the only notion I could conjure for my heart was that I thought it would be nice to be in love again. Silly at my age. I’d been in love just one time before in spite of many years of serial-monogamy, and I suddenly wanted to feel that way oncee more, but acquiring that feeling was a wholly different story.

You see, what we want and what we need are often one in the same whether we know it or not. And so, I shed all preconceived notions of my version of perfect-love. I tore up my long list of conditions, got rid of every story I could tell (and believe me, I’m good at this). Finally, I made a late-night confession to a friend when I told her of my desire to just plain be in love. And with this understanding came another kind of revelation. Somehow, I knew that I would not fall in love on the internet, that I would not fall in love on a blind date, that I wouldn’t even fall back in love with the one I’d previously loved; no, this time, I told my friend, this time whoever I fall in love with is going to just show up, knock on my door, and knock my socks off….I’ll wait, I said.

While I’d planned to do most of the work of the basement myself, after all I’d been a carpenter for a number of years, I had my own tools, and in spite of the aches in some of my joints, I was pretty sure the only additional help I needed would be in the form of an electrician to install those many outlets I knew I wanted and thought I needed. I called a friend and asked for a recommendation. The electrician was a girl. The day she knocked on my door, the only thing I noticed were her eyes—sea-green like no other green I’d ever seen (my left sock flew off). When I brought her to my basement and pointed to the barren back wall where I wanted many, many outlets, she instead looked to the ceiling and asked: “What about lights?”

I won’t go into the illumination-revelation-epiphany that struck at that moment, but can I just say I hadn’t thought about lights, didn’t have a clue about them–the idea had never crossed my mind! My sudden and absolute need for light was only inspired in that very moment, flashing a giant metaphoric bulb over my head, and then my right sock flew off. See, I needed a lot more than outlets and lights, a lot more than help hanging ceilings, it was going to take a lot more than the trips to Home Depot in her truck (hello?) to bring this whole picture all together, and that’s when I realized, in fact, that I somehow needed her.

All the clichés apply: love at first sight, soul-mates, love of my life, match made in heaven, but no one ever really believes all that junk (unless you’re in it yourself and feeling all mushy instead of cynical), and so my friends, I will not try to convince you of depth and breadth our souls have reached, because for me, the proof of the mystical ways of love lies not in language of clichés, or in the romance of poetry, but instead is reflected in the blue flame of a blow-torch.

The pool table came in seven boxes. We felt emboldened to build it ourselves, having already built the basement room. And so after reading the directions thoroughly (seemingly): first putting together the base, then the apron, then setting and leveling the three slabs of slate, we were now prepared with the beeswax candles to seal the seams. Who knew that a mere lighter would not melt the wax fast enough (as I had thought), but instead, referring back to the directions, it appeared that we needed a blow-torch for the job?! Who the hell has a blow-torch? We live far from civilization. Where the would we get a blow-torch at this late hour? As I fretted, the electrician with the green-eyes disappeared into the tool shed and reappeared moments later, grinning, blow torch in hand.Sometimes, what we think we want and what we think we need are miles away from what we really want and what we really need.

Life has a funny way of offering up options. In my novels, I understand that it is always up to me to decide the trouble for my characters and then plot ways for them to work through it; they mostly cooperate because we all want the same hopeful and happy ending.

But similar outcomes are not so easily cultivated in life, since the characters are rarely ever as cooperative or situations near so complicit, it sometimes always feels haphazard the way things tend to “work out in the end” whatever that end might be. So even that fiction writer who determines hopeful and happy endings, I was a little surprised that this chain-reaction of the events of my own life began by my simple desire to be in love again, and wound up manifesting in the form of an electrician with a tool belt and a blow-torch (Okay I know, cliché, every lesbian’s dream date) who knocked on my back door and knocked my socks off. Sometimes life really does mimic fiction, or is it fiction mimicking life?

Some three years and many games of pool later, we leave this weekend, me and my green-eyed mate, for Provincetown, Massachusetts where they let two girls get hitched together for life, and mine is about to be spent with Elenna the electrician who, one day, knocked on my door and knocked my socks off; all it took in the end was a grin and a blow-torch to convince me.

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