Where did you find this card? It is scrumptious — hand-made paper and a soft watercolor image that I think might have been an original. You didn’t make this, did you? Was this all your handiwork?
If so, I’ve never had a handmade card deliver an I’m breaking up with you message before.
Your card arrived in the mail today. I noticed the pink envelope first, and then my heart beat faster when I saw it was your handwriting.
You’ve always been an original.
My heart stopped for a minute after I read the first line. Although those opening words were innocuous, I knew what was coming. I knew as soon as I saw your writing on the envelope.
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?
“The uterus is not a homing device,” Rosanne Barr screeched. I was channel surfing and happened upon her eponymous sitcom just as she uttered that line. I had never heard the saying before. It turns out that it is an old feminist slogan that is considered overused.
I laughed out loud. I did. I sat back and enjoyed the rest of the show.
I’m not much of a television watcher, but that one line hooked me. Barr was blazingly funny and insightful until she wasn’t. I was a faithful viewer until she, and the show, went off the rails.
Neither my now-ex-husband nor my son can find their own asses with two hands and a flashlight. I was the designated Finder of Lost Things. By the time I heard Rosanne say, “The uterus is not a homing device,” I was weary of always and forever spending my free time trying to find their lost stuff.
Something snapped, and one time, I quietly responded, “I don’t know where your jockstrap is. I put it away the last time I used it.” And that was my standard response unless the missing item was something important to me.
I’ve taken my typewriter to the hospital with me for kidney infections. I have taken it on camping trips, and the sand has gotten in the keys. It is just like the most fierce habit you can imagine. It is there, and it stares at you like a conscience.
Erma Bombeck
And I take my computer but unlike a typewriter, it needs a power source. So, not camping. But then I haven’t been camping. I haven’t been anywhere the computer can’t go. In fact, I have a computer dedicated solely to travel. If if gets lost, stolen, or damaged, it.’s no big deal. It’s old and it’s cantankerous but this is, as Bombeck says, a fierce habit. You do what you have to do.
I write daily. Sometimes several times daily.
On the rare days when I must miss my 7 am writing group, I am at loose ends and discombobulated. I am not myself and there’s nothing for it, but to write.
I am not writing important treatises or compelling prose. No heart rending poetry. I am just babbling in my own little way. Bombeck turned her unique writing into a multimillion dollar enterprise.
I have no illusions. I am no Erma Bombeck, but she is my heroine and I use the feminine because she started her career when women were housewives.. She wrote about her little Dayton Ohio life and family and made a career of it0. I can, at the very least, make a habit of it. And I have.
I average 800 word a day. Stephen King does 2000. I am no Stephen King. Plus I have a full time job that is not writing.
It is the most fierce habit. I am in a really bad place when I can’t or don’t write.
I write essays, I write slice-of-life, anecdotes, snippets of short stories, character descriptions, rants, prayers. Promises.
I write a little bit of everything and while I am not successful, I am happy.
I will continue to carry my travel computer around.
W. Va. Fur and Root 