I have perhaps twenty more years of life left in me. Maybe less. Maybe a lot less.
The years have been kind. The years have been brutal. I have experienced great joy as well as great sorrow. Through it all, I hoped for a tranquil journey. Through it all, tranquility has been elusive. Fleeting glimpses here and there. Moments of contentment were rare.
But I had hope. I believed in someday. If I were organized enough, if I worked hard, if I was a good person, if… if…if… all would be well. Life would be like boating on a placid sea with a colorful sail rippling in the gentle breeze of deep summer.
I handled the chaos. The stress. The upheaval.
I was often overwhelmed, but I continued moving forward. I tended to my child, who was and is the love of my life. I tended to my house. I tended the garden that brought me glimpses of tranquility when hummingbirds fed at the trumpet vine. I tended to my job. I was not so good at tending to my spouse. We divorced just shy of our twentieth anniversary.
These past twenty years as a divorced, perimenopausal woman have been chaotic and heartbreaking. I often quip that my New Year’s resolution is to be bored. I have been accused of being dramatic, but the drama invaded my life uninvited. I did not conjure it, nor did I encourage the spectacle.
When sent home to quarantine during the pandemic, I hoped for three weeks. Three weeks to hole up in my house and find my equanimity. Three weeks to figure out my life. Three weeks to decompress, regroup, and emerge again fortified and ready to take on the world.
The previous year had been eventful — much of it in not a good way. Still, there were things to celebrate. I turned 60, and my only child had a small destination wedding in Spain. I was the only person on my son’s guest list able to attend. His father had health issues, his grandmothers were too old to make the trip, and so on.
With some trepidation, I planned my first solo international vacation. I raided my 401K and gifted myself an epic two weeks on the island of Ibiza. It was my 60th birthday present to me. The expense was considerable. It was also my only child’s wedding. It was an escape from the stressfest that was my life, and I pulled out all the stops. Sixty! Who would have believed such a state was possible?
Shamelessly Stolen from Vintage Hawaii on Facebook
I’m standing on the boardwalk between teahouses, looking down at the koi glistening in the Honolulu sunset.
I am so thin that everyone thinks they’re being original by calling me Twiggy. This evening, we are celebrating my 8th birthday at the Pagoda Restaurant. August 3, 1967. We didn’t know it yet, but I would soon be diagnosed with a serious thyroid problem that was rare in kids.
There were not enough calories to keep me unhungry. I was never sated. Never full. My metabolism was always on overdrive due to my hyperactive thyroid.
My father, a career Marine, had been transferred to the Marine base in Kaneohe. We – my mother, brother, and I – joined him there in May. We also didn’t know it yet, but my father would soon ship out for another year in Vietnam. He had just gotten back from his first tour. By the time he left the Marine Corps, he had been through four combat tours.
But on the night of my 8th birthday, we stood on the boardwalk of the Floating Pagoda Restaurant waiting for a table to open. I was entranced by the fish, but hungry. As usual.
I think this was my first experience with fine dining. It’s the first one I can remember. The open-air restaurant was all white tablecloths, glistening china, and cold ice water in the first goblets I’d ever seen. The Asian waitresses wore exquisitely embroidered kimonos that gleamed in the light.
My father was finally back, and we were all together again. I was so very happy. I was a Daddy’s girl until the day he died at 79.
Upon the occasion of my divorce, I developed a deep, nagging need for a luxurious bedroom. No. I didn’t have a lover to entertain. I wanted such for me. When living at home as a young’un, my bedroom had been my sanctuary. It had been decorated with Sears French Provincial and a 70s-worthy floral wallpaper quieted down with jungle green paint on the three other walls. Pink shag carpeting.
It was in-your-face early 70s pre-teen.
I loved it.
I clocked some hours in that room. I dreamed there. Wrote bad poetry. Listened to good music. Traveled the world in books. Sanctuary.
When I left my family home for my first apartment, it was furnished. Just dreadful. But for $90 a month what can you expect. The freedom was heady, and I was never there. My first “real apartment” was a partially furnished two-bedroom duplex and I luxuriated in having a real kitchen of my own. Yes, at the tender age of 20-something I loved to cook, and I loved kitchen toys and dishes.
Eventually, I moved in with the man who would become my husband to a fully furnished house. I had little in the way of furniture, but I packed his kitchen and dining room. Piece by piece we refurnished the house from bachelor digs to earnest couple in love with antiques.
Then we moved here and undertook the barn. Put all the furniture and kitchen stuff in storage and set to on the barn conversion. We moved in far before it was habitable. But it was easier to work on that way. Turn on the television and sand drywall after dinner. That sort of thing.
The barn conversion was one step-forward-five-steps-back and after ten long, long years, we’d had enough. The idea had been to be debt free. We threw in the towel and got a construction loan, hired a contractor, and ran out of money before it was quite done. The next 6 years found us finishing what we could, ignoring what we couldn’t and divorcing.
I got custody of the barn and a master bedroom that was an eyesore.
I had plans to finish the barn without the never-ending argument with a husband about how to do it cheaper. When I refinanced to pay off the ex, I took out some equity money. I also raided one of my retirement accounts.
My plan? A bedroom Martha Stewart would ooooh over.
It’s a long story, but I could not find the furniture I wanted, and I’m very fussy about furniture, at a price I was both willing to and able to pay. Fine furniture is expensive. I found the suite of my dreams in a magazine, tracked down a store that sold that brand online and had it priced. $26,000.
Um no.
So, I went looking again. But my heart was broken. What I’d found was perfect in every way and I had some odd requirements of size and pieces. But $26,000 is just crazy talk.
So. I’m driving home from work, and I drive by The North Carolina Furniture Outlet Store. I’d been in there looking and he had some brilliant furniture but nothing that would work. However, he’d told me over and again that if I found something elsewhere to bring it to him and he’d see what he could get it for.
Not hopeful, I presented him the furniture of my dreams. He pulled a big dusty showroom catalog off a shelf, flipped through it, turned it around so I could see, and said, “Is this it?”
I shrieked, “Yes!” So, he set to ciphering. Got out the calculator. And the little wheel of white paper spun like dervish. When he was done, he wrote a number on a legal pad, tucked the pencil behind his ear and said, “That includes, tax, delivery and set up. Take about 12 weeks.”
I took a breath. Looked at the numbers and gaped.
“Are you sure this is right?” I said. He looked at his page of calculations again and declared them solid.
$5600 for a king poster bed, an oversized dresser, nightstand, leather bench, vanity with matching leather bench, and a lingerie chest.
I closed my eyes. Clicked my heels together three times and whispered, “Let’s do it.”
$5600 was a good 2K more than I had budgeted. But…but…but I wasn’t finding anything other than particle board in my price range. I am a furniture snob.
The frenzy began. I had 12 weeks to find bed linens, draperies, a mattress, paint the master and the dressing room with it’s 20-foot ceilings and clean the carpet. I also had to hire a contractor to move a doorway so things would fit where I wanted them. I worked like a madwoman. The bed linens are another story, and they too were far more than I wanted to spend but they were just too perfect. And then there were the lamps and chaise. The whole thing was out of control, but I was going to have the bedroom of my dreams.
And I have for about seventeen years now. The comforter needs to be replaced. I’ve found another set in a icy blue that will be astonishing against the dark wood, and is highly impractical, luxurious, and I love it with an abiding passion. I believe these linens may be my 65th birthday present. If that’s the case, I need new draperies, new paint, new carpet, new lamps .and I will have to have the chaise reupholstered.
I can’t afford this.
There will be no clicking-of-my-heels-three-times-impulse-buy. Nope. Nor gonna do it. I have spoken.
Melissa stood at the crosswalk waiting on the light to change. It had been long enough now that she was concerned the button wasn’t working. When for the second time, the north-south traffic lights turned green she was certain of it.
She wondered again where her strict adherence to rules came from. The thought of crossing against the light without a walk sign gave her the jitters. She was close to sweat popping out on her forehead. She stopped, channeled her yoga instructor of thirty years earlier, and breathed three long slow inhalations and exhalations. Elaine’s voice popped into her mind, “Three deep breaths at times of stress will almost always relax you enough to cope. “
Melissa needed all the coping mechanisms she could get.
On the other side of Third Avenue, she headed right towards her office. The sun was warm on her back and the thought of confining herself to her office on this lovely lovely birthday eve day was anathema.
W. Va. Fur and Root 