memoir

The End Days

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

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?

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Stevie’s Favorite Treats Were Marshmallows

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Stevie, bless her heart, would do anything for a marshmallow.  If you could make her understand what you wanted, she would enthusiastically do it.  For a miniature marshmallow.  Cold fusion in her in water bowl?  No problem.  Come here now.  With pleasure. Potty Outside. Well, maybe.  That one was a little more difficult. Dachshunds are notoriously difficult to housetrain. 

Stevie was short for Frauleinen Stephanie von Whomper. Yes Frauleinen. Leinen had been my married name.  Dachshunds were originally bred in Germany. My ex-husband’s people were German.  We thought we were so clever with that name.

Stevie was my son’s birthday gift one year. 

An internet friend had come to our house to meet me for the first time.  Negley was a story in herself, but we’ll save that for another time. She brought with her Whomper, her miniature dachshund.

Jeremy fell in love with Whomper.  In all fairness, she was an incredible dog.  It was Jeremy’s first experience with a dachshund. Whomper and Stevie both left an impression on his heart. It took us a few years, but we finally gave Jeremy a dachshund. He’s 40 now and has two dachshunds. He will never not have a dachshund.

My son might disagree, but Stevie was the best dachshund of all.  We got her as an 8-week-old puppy, and I had to keep her hidden for almost three days.  It was over a weekend, and I spent hours in the master bathroom sitting on the floor with a wiggly and tiny dachshund who was falling in love with me. And I her.

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The Smell of High School

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In 1976 and 1977, the scents of Charlie perfume and Right Guard deodorant collided in my high school.  All the cool girls wore Charlie, and everyone used Right Guard.  The May that I was due to graduate was hot, and the school wasn’t air-conditioned. Imagine hundreds of puberty-ridden teens filling stuffy hallways.  The scent was overwhelming and accompanied by the slamming of metal locker doors.

Built in 1916, the school was massive and architecturally interesting.  It still stands and is used for a variety of things, but in the late ’70s, it swarmed with students. I was one of them.  There were more than four hundred in my graduating class. 

The basement opened into an outdoor area called the arch.  It was cool and dim and packed with teenage smokers.  The arch smelled of burnt tobacco, as well as Charlie perfume and failed Right Guard.  Sometimes you could catch a whiff of pot.  We stood there during lunch, smoking and talking.  I mostly listened.  I was still considered the new kid, and nobody knew me.  Nobody tried to know me.

I had an advanced biology class in one of the coolest rooms, although it was on the third floor.  The biology lab was furnished in 1930s-era lab tables, and the teacher, Mr. Berry, was a legend.  We were dissecting fetal pigs, and the room reeked of formaldehyde as well as Charlie perfume and Right Guard.  Sometimes I would sit in there at lunchtime with other students and work on my pig. 

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National Pancake Day was yesterday

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National Pancake Day was yesterday. As usual, I’m a day late and a dollar short. Nevermind that I had a pecan waffle with extra pecans sans syrup at the Waffle House this morning.

Still and all, I offer you this, my homage to maple syrup (and to pancakes though indirectly.)

As a child, I did not like pancake syrup though I loved the shape of the Aunt Jemima glass bottle. Everyone thought I was weird, but I much preferred my pancakes and French toast with tons of butter. Dripping with butter. Drowning in it. Floating.

Some time during my misspent early adulthood, I did not mark the day in my calendar of things to remember, I was unceremoniously given pancakes with syrup already applied. Not wanting to be one of those people, I unenthusiastically loaded a forkful and put it in my mouth.

Oh my. All the pleasure pheromones and chemicals and other assorted signals lit up like a Christmas tree at the North Pole and I smiled big and broad.

Real maple syrup tapped from trees is one of God’s gifts

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