mystic_savage

I'd like to learn how to love without either a) trying to find constant distraction in a partner, or b) trying to find constant comfort with a partner.  I'd like to trust life, live it without looking at the constant act of breathing as a struggle.  And I don't.  Trust life, that is.  Suspect that if I could, the loving without seeking rescue or entertainment -- that would just happen. 

Very pleasant weekend with an unusual amount of introspection...lots of lying around on my bed in a semi-drugged state & thinking.  Some really good thinking, I think.

One thing I've decided:  it's so much easier to like whatever the weather is doing that I'm giving up my weather preferences.  I've decided I'm going to be passionately in love with summer when it's summer, with rain when it's rainy, with winter and cold when it's wintery and cold.  Every kind of weather has its fans, but I've noticed most people prefer one thing and then don't like the opposite thing.  For decades I've hated sunshine (it hurts my eyes and burns my skin (which sparkles like diamonds when I'm out in it so...but I digress)).  Every time I've gone outside into bright sunshine I've cringed and groaned and complained and sometimes that was enough to set me into an irritable mood.  But how much energy it takes to keep up that resistance!  I've decided it's not worth it.  Just easier to like the day, whatever the day is doing.

Another thing I'm trying to give up is the luxury of disliking people.  Throughout my life I've had one or two people at a time whom I just can't stand, who set my teeth on edge.  And then I get to know them over several years or through a crisis or something, and often they end up being a good friend or someone I admire a lot.  Well, right now there are two people who just put me on edge if I even see them coming down the road--they can be 50 yards away and I've conditioned myself to respond with hostility on sight.  A bit pavlovian, I guess.  So how much energy do I free up in my life if I just decide that I like everyone?  Or, if not like, if I can like most people and just stay neutral about the rest?  My strong dislikes are irrational.  This is much harder than giving up disliking the sun, but I think I can do it, or work toward.  Life is so much easier if you just accept every thing, every one, every condition for what it is.  

Everything is blank and flat and slow. What do I mean by that? Nothing is sharp, except in writing. What is blank? I would continue to write until I got a clue about myself, but I could write for a thousand years and compile a billion clues and I still wouldn't have a self. Self must be an illusion, a construct, a god we've created to have an image that we can say is in our own. Double intended, this construct. Nothing I write or do or say or think makes any sense. Nothing is sharp, even in writing. Everything is -- I am -- blank and flat and slow. But even that is constructed. "Meaning" is meaningless. I could do this -- say anything about myself, and it would be simultaneously both true and untrue.

Must bring myself into focus.

Today I will be a person who likes hummingbirds and enjoys math. Someone who wears a too-bright hand-painted t-shirt her mother bought for her just because her mother bought it, not because she likes the t-shirt. Someone who wears tennis shoes and black twill pants and waddles over to the south campus center to read a book at lunch. Someone who will enjoy sorting mail and updating spreadsheets. Someone who would never think about stopping, who will not be halted by the blankness of a computer screen or overwhelmed by a list of a dozen tiny tasks.

The friction of motherhood, what happens when I lose it, and how ashamed I am. My decision to go back on medication. The healing my parents did around all of it this weekend, and the talks and repair my kids and I have done with each other. What happens when I'm not true to myself, and how unsure I am of what that is. My decision to be celibate and single for a few months and the emotional fall-out from that in my own heart as well as in other people's. Why I did that, what it is about, the dismantling of my okcupid and fetlife profiles, the phone conversations, the in-person conversations, the weekend with A, the feeling of life-and-death struggle with myself, too familiar to be interesting, aging, fear of aging, and pain and where the hell is all this going? Don't know. Again: back to taking it one day at a time, not knowing. Allergies, chest cold, bronchitis, suffocation, inability to breathe, punishing myself and --- don't feel sorry for me, I'm a monster -- and the struggle to stay alive, affirm life, be human and find a way to accept it. I feel so, so, so...? odd. broken and not broken at the same time. On the right track, though you'd never know it to look at me. Unless you saw auras. Dunno. I'm probably (once again) much more ok than I feel like I am. Don't feel bad. Just...kind of don't feel. And then feel too much. So all this? Maybe medication's not such a bad thing.

Just thought you should know.

So.  I've been intentionally, consciously polyamorous since I was in my late twenties.  With one notable exception--the first four years of my relationship with K, which, as it turned out, was not actually monogamous at all.  But I was monogamous within it, having adopted monogamy as a spiritual path to see where it led me.  Lots of good places, as it turned out.  I may not have actually been in a monogamous relationship, but I did discover that I am capable of monogamy and could find both peace and freedom in it.  Ironically, those years when I thought I was monogamous were the least lonely and the most emotionally stable years that I've had. 

 

However, I am now intentionally consciously polyamorous, and have been in three stable relationships for over a year and a half and have dated a lot more people.  I love the people I'm with.  I love breklor, with his joie de vivre and immense repertoire of wink-wink nudge-nudge and his spiritual perspective, often more zen than pagan, but certainly affirming of the moment to moment experience of life.  I love iguanahey, whom I burbled about earlier today.   And I love doctorturvy, who has turned out to be the mind-expanding, understanding and wise friend and brother that my real brother (nice and intelligent and bound by convention as he is) could never be.  doctorturvy often feels like a twin to me -- his mind is as dark as my own and we explore a lot of areas in conversation that I would not trust many other people with.  All three of these men are amazing, wonderful lovers, more beauty in human form than I could possibly have imagined two years ago.

 

And I date other people, some more significant than others, some short relationships more troubled than others, some just hedonistic play partners, some who become good friends over time.  Right now, I'm cautiously excited about a new relationship.  He lives within a mile of my house & we can see each other weekly, although he, too, has kids and a full time job.  He is very, very devoted to his wife and very new to poly (thus the caution), but honest and open-minded, and, it turns out, fun.    I have a couple of phone sex friends, and sometime I'm going to have to write about phone sex, because it is its own thing, isn't it.  And those calls aren't limited to sex; they're all over the map, more relating and perspective and processing and perspective.   So:  I'm busy; I love my partners; I have this great full platter at a huge and bountiful feast, and yet…

 
You know--there is this whole other side to my life:  what I call my real life, the part where I work and go home, am greeted at the door by four kids, eat dinner with my housemates, supervise homework, snuggle into bed between my two kids, am asleep by 9, and get up to do it again.  That's the Dragonhouse, my house, with K & J, two lovely monogamously married people who have been my friends for a long time.  We are a community of sorts.  We manage food and housework and yard work together.  We talk late at night sometimes when the kids are asleep.  We share history in the same cohousing community and we share our joy about not being there anymore.  In this side of my life, I am sex-less.  I am unpartnered.  I have work, and responsibility, and lots of parenting woes and financial struggles.    And yet --

And there's my work life, where I am a receptionist and secretary, supporting a handful of people every day, greeting and being greeted by several dozen.  I am liked.  I am reliable.  The atmosphere is positive.  and yet --

There's something missing.  I don’t know if it's something as simple as a piece of perspective, or if it is the true and unfettered intimacy that comes with people who are both in love *and* living together and raising kids together, but there is a disconnect between my love life and my real life.  No matter how much I love my partners and how much I share the details of my life with them and learn the details of their lives, it feels very different from having real economic sharing-the-walls and raising-the-kids partners.  And I realize that for me being polyamorous has never been about having lots of sex or dating a lot or being loved by lots of people.  That's all very nice, but no.  For me, being poly as always been about the hope of being part of a tribe.  Creating a community.  Being part of a damn S-group family a la Robert Heinlein.  Sharing walls with my lovers, and raising kids with them, and growing old with them.  And here's the disconnect:  even though my lovers may share some part of that dream, they're each already living the center of it with somebody else.  There is no one in my life to move in with.  No one to marry.  No one to put a yurt up with in a circle of other people's yurts.  And that, my dears, is the essence of my discontent and the reason that -- in the middle of this huge banquet, surrounded by luscious and tempting dishes of all kinds -- I am hungry.

It's always Life 101, isn't it? It never seems to get to be Life 220 or Life 457. I have this feeling of being perpetually at the beginning and unschooled/unaccomplished -- a feeling that is uncomfortable juxtaposed against my age and my expectations for where I should be at this point.

I feel generally uncomfortable right now. Not "anxious" or "sad" or "hurt". More like "squirmy" or "restless". Settling into my new room with Karen and James and my new job at UWMC--it seems to be happening by degrees, and the sediment rises again with each social opportunity or break in schedule or turn of events. I have a list of those things that are bestirring themselves in my life and debate with myself about whether I really want to go into them here (resulting in a long post about all the things I can't control right now) or not (resulting in me looking back at this post in six months and going "hunh...wonder what that was all about"). Opting for the latter.

NaNoWriMo rises up again at the end of this coming week. I don't know what I'm going to write. I don't want a detailed outline this year (in previous years, those have resulted in miserable failure), but I don't want to start with nothing (that has yielded two lousy first drafts with big plot holes in them). I think ideally I'd have a protagonist, an antagonist, a conflict, a climax, and a setting. As of yet I have: lots of ideas and none of those things. The only thing I'm clear about is that I want to avoid anything even remotely related to my life. No characters working at the UW in thinly-disguised jobs; no overblown assaults; no very cute word-for-word conversations with small children; no coffee-shop acquaintances. I guess to me that says "fantasy" because I'm not sure I have the discipline to write in any other genre and not reference myself. The detective or spy would be in her 40's, for example, and it would be a slippery slope from there to her life as divorced, starting over, with kids, etc.

So. Fantasy. That's more than I knew at the beginning of the last paragraph. Thanks LJ!

This weekend I'm in Vancouver with Andrew. We went to Parade of Lost Souls last night, which was as robustly artistic as any festival I've ever been to, and a lot less drunken. Amazing to see all those people in costume and all that wonderful art, and to have everyone still being well-behaved. Canadians, man. *shakes head*. They will never cease to amaze me.

I just made toast for Penny and Elessar. P needs to take the butter and
jam out of the fridge herself. If I've already taken the butter out
(which I had this morning) she has to put it back in the fridge so she
can take it out herself. This is what she calls "helping".




Had a great night last night with K and the kids. K came home from work
pretty early and took us to the beach at Alki. We laid around and
played in the sand and the kids chased the water as it advanced and
receded. Elessar got knocked over by a wave and panicked, but K let him
save himself (E was maybe two or three feet from K). K and I talked
about it later. K wanted E to have the experience of knowing he could
get himself out of a bad situation. Also, he didn't want to get his
shoes wet.




I sculpted a...well, a vulva, actually, on the beach. It wasn't
conscious so much as it was tactile. I was just digging around in the
sand and patting it down, and tunneling underneath, and gradually,
there it was in front of me. I liked it. Seemed to fit the sound of the
water and my internal mood.

"Sar, I love you. I love you Elessar."

peanut butter, red chips, blue jeans, Mary screams, gotta lotta nothing in the soup today/but swimming anyway. Pot is hotter/boiling frog. Writer stew. It shouldn't mean anything to you.

( More mumblings of a surreal and schismistic nature )

Not all dramas are large. Any NYU film student will tell you that. There is a theater to hands, for example. Watch people's hands and you can tell their stories.

Your hands tell me your story. You thumb the mouse alongside your keyboard and you are longing for connection. You massage your right wrist because you have been at the computer too long. You type slowly and make mistakes because you are tired. Your hands are generous, impatient and self-conscious. You are the person who will drop the quarter when you try to roll it across your fingers in the parking lot. You will say "whoops!" in case anyone is watching, but you will let the quarter go. This is how you regularly lose quarters.

My hands are stubby and square, made for practical things like changing diapers, but my secret hands are graceful. They play concertos on my keyboard and write symphonies for other people to hear. They smooth like silk across a stretch of skin and make a moment into a prayer of gratitude. They speak in their own sign language, asking you questions. Can you hear what they're whispering?

That half edge of something almost sexual-- a yearning--to feel more focused in fantasy than in reality, to live another life in the moments before sleep, to tell yourself stories so vivid you stumble around in your day life with no energy for it. To feel homesick for a place you've never been to. To feel known only by people you don't know. To be flayed open by a single glance and consumed by that which you would consume. Sometimes you don't want sense made of your senses. TC

I know I'm not the worst mother in the world. There are plenty of guilt-ridden Demeters vying for that title on Oprah. But I'm not proud of yesterday. Lost it with P. Apologized of course. As clearly as you can to a 3-year-old. Told her the things I always tell her when I stomp and rage and scream--that it's not her fault, that she has the right to be angry with me. But man, oh man, oh man. She's going to grow up to hate me as much as I used to hate my own mother. --V

I'm so bored that I'm tempted to answer all my spam with long, sincere letters that say things like "Thank you for your concern, but I really don't feel trapped in a low-paying job. I hope things are going well for you, and though I'm not interested in XYZ Promotion! I hope you have great success with it." Or: "Hmmm, it's interesting that you keep asking if I'm interested in a penis enlargement. I would have thought that my continued silence on the subject, in addition to my traditional, feminine first name might have signalled to you that I was most likely not interested. Today, however, I find myself somewhat interested in a penis enlargement, and wonder how I might go about it. I assume I'd need to get a penis first, and wonder if you might help me with this endeavor. Sincerely,..." Or: "Viagra. Now that's interesting. I know that you must believe in the product because you are so persistent in selling it, but I wonder if you're aware that Bob Dole was paid to mention his use of it in straight news interviews. Do you have an opinion about that kind of marketing?"

VL

E just broke a plate I made when I was 7. The plate had a picture of a smiling butterfly on it and said "Ginger 1972". It was the only thing I had from my childhood. Dumb little plastic plate.

I didn't yell at him, just put him in the highchair, put P in her chair, and swept it up. It's just a thing. It's just a thing. It's just a thing.

VL

The summer before 7th grade I lost 8 pounds. I got my braces off, and bought a really cool bra. I was hip and happenin', ready for the jump to junior high.

First day of 7th grade, first class: life science. Mrs. Brown is talking about what we'll be studying. I'm sneaking glances right and left--there's no one here from my grade school. A really cute guy sitting behind me--tall, with freckles. In a fit of desire to impress him, I raise my hand.

"Will we be studying extra sensory perception?"

"Uh, no," says Mrs. Brown.

"Will we be studying any paranormal phenomenon?"

"Hmmm...like what?" she says.

"You know, like, uh...magic, witchcraft, how people affect how plants grow..." I could have gone on, but everyone's giggling too hard for me to continue.

"She thinks she's a witch!" The tall cute guy (who turns out to be the mean tormenting guy) hisses. The class breaks into out and out laughter.

"Uh no." Mrs. Brown says, with admirable restraint. "We'll be doing lab experiments..." The presentation continues. Of course, in those few minutes, my junior high social life is shot to hell.

Flash forward two and a half months. It's my second-to-last day at this miserable junior high. I've gained 15 pounds, my skin is a mess. I'm making D's and F's in every subject. "Just call me Janet", my reading teacher, is trying to make a deal with me.

"So if you do just one book report tonight, I'll bring you up to a C," she smiles.

I shrug.

"No thanks," I say. That sets her off--and I remember this clearly--she leans into me and whispers, "Don't. you. EVER. look a gift horse in the mouth!" with great fury and intensity.

At the time I have no idea what that means. I'm just glad to be gone.

So that's when I learned about how other people may view something as a gift to you whether you actually want it or not. I didn't want the C--the whole point of making D's and F's was to get my parents' sympathy and attention, and to make them worry. Same thing happened a few days ago: someone came to do something for me that I didn't need or want done. The difference is that this time I kept my mouth shut. And you know what? I'm glad I did. Sometimes people just need to think they're giving you something. What does it cost to let them?

Look, people, you don't have to tear the square off perfectly, even if you're three years old and everything must be perfect. Six times a day--sometimes more often--there's a long, complicated ritual event called "going potty" that involves: a) finding the red potty, because no other potty will do; b) peeing or pooping into it, which can mean sitting for a long time; c) carrying one side of the potty while Mommy carries the other side of the potty up the stairs to the bathroom; d) lifting the toilet lid ("by myself") and dumping the potty ("I do it") while Mommy holds her breath and hopes nothing spills; e) wiping self, which involves the perfect quantity and shape of toilet paper (to my daughter's credit, I will say that she's the only one who puts new rolls of toilet paper on the roll in our house), chanting "front to back and drop" while doing it completely backwards anyway; f) getting up on step to wash potty in sink; g) squirting the soap by herself; h) washing the potty (can take several minutes if not closely supervised); and i) washing hands (also several minutes if I don't turn off the water at some point).

It drives me up the lemur-hoppin' wall!!!

If any tiny piece of that ritual is rushed or if I try to help with any of it, meltdown. Today's meltdown was about toilet paper. I found myself gritting my teeth and yelling: "The toilet paper doesn't have to be perfect!" Penny's great. She said "Stop it, Mommy. You don't have to yell at me," and went about her business. I tried to explain it to her more calmly, but she just persistently doesn't get it. In Pennyverse, the toilet paper does have to be perfect, and the soap has to make LOTS of bubbles, and if an adult washes the potty or flushes the potty, it has to be done all over again, right this time, which means Penny is in charge. If she weren't so damned cute, she probably wouldn't survive her childhood.

Anna

By some miracle of the gods and goddesses, my children have both been asleep for the last hour and a half. I've been: enjoying the softness of the air on my skin, drinking diet coke, reading Range of Motion, making up new burritos (cold garbanzos and broccoli), rubbing lavender oil on my newly-shaved head, catching up on email.

I've not been: doing laundry or dishes, writing query letters or cover letters, organizing paperwork, doing any committee work, or talking on the phone. I can hear my next-door neighbor's wind chimes, my fingers typing away here, the hum of the computer. The faintest trill of bird sounds. A light mewling sound from the kids' room, which subsides as the kid in question falls asleep again.

Today has been the kind of day I love: no plans, but not too lazy either. K was home earlier this morning and ran out to the Uptown to get some coffee for us before disappearing for work. We started with a big family cuddle when I woke him this morning. It was the kind of morning that reminded me of how things were back when we were a couple: I'd tickle him awake and he'd "bedmonster" me. Now he bedmonsters the kids and I sit on the edge of the bed and act as a rebounder to toss them back into the action. It was a very fun, lovey, cosy little morning time, and I almost forgot all of my bitterness long enough to wish we were in love again. So I got up and went downstairs. I wouldn't go back to that blind time--I like this time, the freedom of it, the truth of it, how much more and better it fits both of us than the time when we were stumbling along trying to seem like a Mr. and Mrs. Sunday Morning. But I digress.

So: K. got us coffee, then the kids and I went to the common house and did laundry and played in the playroom. Nutmeg played on the swingset with some other little kids and Boulevard toddled around the playground while Fiona watched him and I got to talk with a couple of neighbors. They both teach during the school year so they're home during the day only in the summer and there was some novelty to having a long conversation with them. At lunchtime, the kids and I ate at the common house: a chilled ginger-carrot soup left over from last night's meal, then I mopped the kitchen floor, retrieved my laundry and headed home with kids to shave my head while they took a long bath. Nutmeg says she wants to shave her head too, but I tell her it's an adult thing, something she needs to think about. Still, I'm flattered, even if she is 3. We watched a little t.v. today: just cyberchase, which moves way too fast for my children, but keeps them completely absorbed so I can call a friend.

Tomorrow is Boulevard's second birthday. I'm having cake for everyone in the common house. And karaoke. Just in case anyone wants to karaoke.

Anna

This morning I’m going to sit here and type and let the words take me wherever they will. Or, to be more accurate and less metaphysical, my imagination will take me where it will. The first place I always go is Paris, because desire and memory fuels imagination, and if I could go anywhere in the world today, it would be there. I wish I had the kind of money to travel on. I haven’t had what people call a “vacation” for a long, long time...maybe in all my adult life. No, wait. In the early 1990's I went to LA to clean-up after the riots–that would be 1992–and the next summer my parents paid for me to visit Shadowcliff in Grand Lake, Colorado with them and I ended up staying all summer as a volunteer. Shadowcliff is a retreat center and youth hostel. It was beautiful. So maybe I’d go back to Grand Lake, Colorado if I could go anywhere. Or maybe I’d go to Breitenbush in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, or to Vancouver B.C., or to the Olympic Peninsula. Gosh, I guess I have travelled a bit. True, these are all places I’ve been on long weekends. Oh shit. I just remembered. I did go to Disneyworld with a guy I met through an ad in the Stranger. Now that was a miserable vacation. Disneyworld is like a concentration camp for rich people.

But guess when I say I haven’t been on a vacation, I mean that I haven’t been on the kind of vacation I used to go on with my family when I was a kid. You know, when you load up the station wagon or the borrowed camper and head out on the open road for ten days to stay at KOA campgrounds and in the occasional hotel and go to things like the Pueblo caves or Dodge City, or you stop to eat at Nickerson Farms, where they harvest their own honey (not bad for a chain) or Denny’s, and you fight with your brother in the car, but you have long hours talking to your Dad up front while the other two are asleep, and sure, you may get carsick and throw up on the foam rubber pad, but you also wander by yourself down a street in Taos and get lost in other people’s art for the first time. And the stars are incredible. And when you come back, your house feels like another planet, a dusty home port for your ship, a well-remembered place that is now quiet and new for awhile.

I’ve been home several times. That’s where my money and time and travel energy goes: to visit Grandma, and my parents and brother in Kansas City, and to my ex-partner’s family in Sacramento so the kids can visit their Nana. And this isn’t a vacation for me by a long stretch of imagination. The thing about being the mother of two toddlers on vacation is: you work a lot harder traveling than you do when you’re at home. The vacation is your normal life.

So I’d love to go back to Paris, by myself. Or travel with C and A and W to Wales. Or go visit K and A in Australia or K and J in Sweden. Maybe go on a writer’s retreat to Hedgebrook for several weeks and finish my novel.

I got the small envelope from the Artist’s Trust the other day–I didn’t get a GAP grant. It was a long shot, I knew that, but I was really hoping. I’ve got some other stuff out–the essay about being bald is out at BUST and a couple of other places; “You Know You Live in Community When...” is out at Communities Mag; I’m sending my picture book out to agents. And I’ve done this often enough to know that it’s like looking for a good job in the newspaper. You might land it. You might get an interview. But your chances of getting a job are better if the boss is your Uncle’s best friend from college. Same thing with publishing. All the national clips I have are from assignments that were handed to me by personal contacts. But it’s nice to have things in the mail anyway, because it’s an act of hope that gives my daily life just a little more flavor, like putting ginger in my favorite tofu recipe. It’s not necessary. But it is nice.

When E is weaned I’m going to go to a hotel by myself for a weekend. I live in one of the greatest cities of the world. Why wouldn’t I want to visit it as a tourist? I’m going to stay in the Edgewater or the Westin and I’m going to wander around Pike Place Market and catch the Van Gogh exhibit at the SAM. I’m going to have some kind of aromatherapy body wrap at Nordstrom’s day spa, and then I’m going to go to Elliot Bay Bookstore and write. And I might call up one of my friends and have them come meet me for a ferry ride to Bainbridge and Back. And at night, I’m going to watch t.v. from the hotel bed and eat corn chips and I won’t have someone in the room telling me all the ways that corn chips are bad for me and mocking my t.v. viewing habits. I might even catch 10 minutes of The Simple Life, as stupid as it is and as disgusted as I get watching it, because K won’t be telling me in his superior voice how stupid and disgusting it is as if he was sharing information I didn’t know. It’s not easy living with someone who has appointed himself your guru/motivational coach. So yeah. I could use a vacation.

I love mornings like this. I've been awake for an hour, but the rest of the family is sound asleep. It's cool, birds chirp outside my window, and I've just spent 45 minutes browsing images on the web and playing around with a paint program.

When I was in high school I used to get up at 4:30 in the morning just to have a long shower and some solace in the morning. I lived with nine people; the quietest times of day were right after school (when all the other kids had activities and I could watch Charlie's Angels at my leisure) and early, early in the morning. I used to make coffee, read for an hour, walk out into the garden after dawn to pick early peas and eat them right off the plant. We lived in the middle of 80 acres. The smell of earth and cows and pond frost and the patches of fresh mint one of our housemates had planted all mixed together to create morning. Morning was my favorite time of day.

Now. I don't see much of morning. I wake already surrounded by active little people with a busy to-do right in my forebrain: change E's diaper, make sure P gets on the potty, unload dishwasher, load diswasher, make toast for kids (P always insists on helping, so that involves pulling out the step stool and guiding her through the buttering process), make coffee--and usually somewhere in there the phone rings or a neighbor stops by or a fight erupts or someone's whining and it's a matter of blindly stumbling through all my tasks, while sleep deprived, while trying not to yell at anyone, while dealing with whatever comes up...and all I want to do is stop. Drink coffee. Read.

But today. Today is a wonderful morning. I got enough sleep, I've had time to write. I got nothing to complain about. Color me content.

Hapless, aimless, clumsy, dopey, and all the other dwarves spew forth from me, slow my steps as I wander into a neighbor's house. She's fighting with her daughter and it's not my fight and instead of retreating I stand there, haplessly, aimlessly, clumsily--well, you get the idea--with one of those goofy smiles on my face, hand extended, holding two books I'm returning to her, knowing I don't belong there at that moment but unable to turn my body around and move because I am caught by the molasses of my own agenda. So instead of nodding discreetly and backing out, I lumber my great head back and forth between them as if watching a tennis match in slow motion until she says "You can go now Virginia" and the spell is broken and I turn to go and can feel the blush come over my neck and up my bald scalp. Feeling 14 and stupid, rather than 38 and competent and experienced in life. Tonight, I exhibited all the social skills of a wounded duck.

TC