Fast forward a year or almost two. Now Im a realtor schlepping summer rentals and summer homes on the Southcoast of MA. I think I love it- too soon to tell- all going well, having sold three houses and complated a summer of rentals.
My Summer Life and My Winter Life
For 20 months now I have been living in a community comprised mostly of summer homes. There’s about 100 houses in the area- about 10 are occupied in the winter, and most of those folks are retired and take off for the coldest months. I think I am the only person under 60. This is drastically different from the summer months here, when I work less and the community is pulsing with people, kids and bikes, golf balls tinging off the 1st tee and tennis balls thwacking across the street. It is like I have 2 different lives- My Summer LIfe and My Winter Life.
My Winter Life is mostly quiet and solitary. My only child is far away at college, I work full time, and long hours, so some days I leave in the dark and get home in the dark. A saint of a dogwalker comes three days a week to let my roomate (the dog) out for a walk and a pee, but I never see him- we exchange cash and little notes. I go months without a visitor, and yet I still make my bed every day, well trained by my mother. I spend a lot of time staring at my exercise bike and occasionally get on it. I eat granola or frozen lima beans with a dollop of sour cream for dinner. I have recently gotten hooked on old episodes of Law and Order SVU. I drink a lot of tea. I sleep unnaturally close to my dog. My sock drawer is really organized.
I am enjoying my solo life in the off season. I have a few friends from the nearby town that I can call up, but I rarely do, and a nice long distance boyfriend I visit most weekends. Onceo r twice my college friends have come en masse to visit for a weekend; I’m convinced they leave wondering how I survive alone, but also they’re kind of jealous. A former boyfriend plows me out when it snows (he gets to check if theres any extra cars in the driveway or not- there never is). Once a week I see someone from my street, either at the mailboxes, or maybe when I’m walking the dog. Once a month I get home late enough to catch the security guard going on duty, and we catch each other up on the local dirt… “Did you hear Mrs. Smith took a fall? Yea, they had to call an ambulance..” or “Yea, did you hear the Porter house is on the market for 3 mill, what are THEY thinking?”… “How come that crazy Reynolds guy can buy a new car but I hear he cant pay his assessment fees? ” I pass the few occupied houses and see TVs flickering at night when I get home and the same houses are still dark with sleeping inhabitants when I Ieave in the morning. I dream of being able to sleep in! Can you imagine going to bed when you wanted and sleeping in every day? (Will I ever be able to retire? )
I also dream of My Summer Life. I dream that people are out and about, kids are riding by, dogs are barking hello to my dog sitting at his perch on my front steps, that I am having 10 people for a dinner of steak and corn, that we are blasting my beloved Ipod mix from my friend Kim’s BOSE speaker in the barn and sweating profusley under the battery powered twinkle lights, or maybe swimming to the raft, or lying in bed waiting for my daughter to come home, grateful she’s a 5 minute walk away at the beach and not in a car….
My Summer Life comes on quickly. First, the birds come back, then the people. People knock at the door and ask how my winter was, and I say, “Long, cold and quiet! SO glad you’re here!” Memorial Day quickly becomes 4th of July which turns into Labor Day and then Columbus Day… and the cycle begins again…
Reunions… DANGER! DANGER!
I have a high school reunion coming up. I managed to miss a college one last year due to my only child’s graduation… but this year… not so lucky.
I loved my high school; I still love my high school. Being able to attend this amazing place set me up for a happy and successful life. In the past I have ORGANIZED most of these damn events. But these days, the idea of making myself look good, deciding whether to take the latest boyfriend or not, and committing to the whole weekend… is painful! I don’t think I felt this way when I was married. I think it’s something about being single. It is seriously the only time that I feel like my career path is less than adequate, my car isn’t flashy enough, I didn’t have enough children, my body is not up to par… you name it. Like the robot in “Lost in Space” that yells “DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! DANGER!” Reunions say to me ” FAILURE! FAILURE! Betsy Lawrence FAILURE!!!!
I have to learn to love parts of the reunion and not to expect to love the WHOLE of it. I am writing this in a cathartic way to help me prepare.
Theres no way you will remember who everyone is. Not everyone you want to show up, will. And yes, the people you don’t treasure will show up, with their 3 perfect kids in their navy blue BMW wagon with the red racing stripe. What you have to remember is you’ll have a few great conversations and laughs with people who knew you as a teenager so many years ago! You can laugh about how it all ended up differently than you expected it would. I usually end up reminiscing about things like how Diet Coke and light cigarettes did not exist back then, and do you think the dorm faculty knew what we were all doing and were just too petrified to come out of their apartments? We are will all complain about the nasty Lobster Newburgh that they always serve at lunch, but we all keep coming back and eating it.
I was one of only a few day students at a boarding school. I had a great experience many of my peers did not. In those days, some kids really did get shipped off when their parents were splitting, or moving or being sent to the loony bin and/or rehab. I was in the first class of girls in a school that had had all boys for 74 years, and the last graduating class said they liked it that way, so there. Whenever I am involved in organizing a reunion (I have a hard time saying no to this) I have to remember that not everyone had a good time, and some would never thing of returning. I guess I also have a hard time taking NO for an answer because I am always trying to get these same people to come back, or make a gift, when they never have previously. Glutton for punishment, you say? Well, I guess I somehow believe that maybe if they come back they can exorcise some demons or erase their bad memories, or maybe change their mind about something/someone… they’ll have their Aha! reunion moment and thank me for it! Am I pathetic? Why do I care?
Well, I have 5 weeks to lose 35 pounds, go gluten-free, get an amazing 6 figure income job for me and a fab paying internship for my college student, run a marathon, join a country club, cleanse my colon, buy a ranch in Montana, whelp a litter of puppies, and get my PhD in nutrition… so I’d better get going! Adios. Wish me luck! Thank god I started a blog… at least I can talk about that….
Don’t End up a Spinster!
Many of you who know me know I was married for about 10 years, separated for almost two and amicably and then happily divorced about 12 years ago. Happily, you say? Well, if it’s possible in today’s world, yes. We were fortunate enough to have one daughter , and she is incredibly awesome and successful, so the bottom line is always… if I had not married her dad, I wouldn’t have her! So I consider myself extremely lucky. No regrets…
I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, well, she must have been happily divorced because it was mutual, nothing bad must have happened. No one had an affair. No one created scandal. Not exactly. A lot of bad stuff happened, but that turned out to be all stuff that was out of our control and with lots of therapy and twelve step programs we overcame it . We saw it as simply a catalyst for change in our marital status. We decided to break our wedding vows together and create a new vow- to co-parent out daughter (then 6) as well as if not better than we could have done living under the same roof. It helped that we weren’t broke (a miracle, actually) and that we could afford counseling. I had my therapist, he had his , our daughter had hers, and we saw one together as a family. We didn’t have a lot of support from our parents. They had a harder time with all of it than we did, as they had been life long close friends.
I guess this brings me a topic that no one ever wants to talk about, like peeing when you sneeze in mid life, and eating junk food when you’re alone.( I love to talk about stuff no one else wants to talk about. This drives my ex-husband crazy, but even he knows it’s healthy to, to talk, not eat junk food)… this would be The Pressure to be Married.
I had a great childhood; it was happy and fun and for the most part, crisis free. I was the oldest and the only girl. We lived in the same house in a fabulous neighborhood, and we knew we were loved. I was raised to do the following: do well in school, get married, have children. (Oh, and drink; in our house hitting the drinking age was much more important than getting your drivers license. That’s a post in itself!). As soon as I graduated from college, every boy I dated was secretly scrutiinized. I dated a dirtbag from a nice family who brought my parents nice wine and gave my little brothers presents, so everyone loved him. I had a really nice Jewish boyfriend for a while and my mother assured me it was “just fine for me to marry Gary”. Too bad he didn’t ask me, Mom! Then there as “You must have done something to disappoint Neil, when he went off to law school”. It got to the point I was afraid to bring guys home because I was afraid I would let my parents down if we subsequently broke up. If I got dumped, it was all my fault and if I dumped him, I must be looking for perfection, and didn’t I know that perfection didn’t exist?
Well, to escape this pressure, after 4 single gal years in New York City I moved to Seattle when I was 26. I had reconnected romantically with a friend who was living in Seattle at the time but doing business in NYC. It was not hard to convince me to leave the Big Expensive Apple and experience greener pastures, literally. He thought I had decided to leave NYC for him, and maybe to climb Mt. Rainier. In actuality, I left because my friends were all getting engaged and the pressure was on!!! Why not just ditch? (All I had to lose was my rent-controlled studio). Luckily, the West Coast Tomcat dumped me before I even arrived in Seattle (I went anyway, unfazed) and I managed to secure an amazing job at the newly public company Microsoft, in the job of a lifetime. I must take this moment to thank my Seattle friends, Chris and Rick who put me up, and basically gave me the courage to do what I did. My friends bail me out ALL the time… it is for them I write all this…
Two years in Seattle produced no husband, but I had a helluva time. Had a few doozie boyfriends! First , The Poet, a handsome writer who drank too much, Brian the Canadien Microsoft Boy Wonder who was much too young for me, but was a love, and last but not least, Howard the Unemployed Alcoholic Housepainter. (Seeing a pattern here?) . One late night, thanks to the quick action of a true friend, the abusive Howard was sent packing, and after two rainy years and many microbrews, I headed back to the East Coast with an expanding software retail chain that needed me. Phew. Doesn’t it make you tired just thinking about it, this husband hunting thing? I obviously was no good at it.
OK, so here I am back East in my old ‘hood, age 28, clock ticking. My mother was RABID that I get hitched! (sorry, Mom, I don’t think you meant any harm, you just couldn’t HELP yourself). In retrospect, I cant really blame it on her. She just started a pressure-to-marry snowball that kept getting bigger and bigger. I felt the pressure- no matter where it came from, to be fair.
Some friends of mine used to say they could tell right away if a date was someone they’d want to marry. I never experienced this- I was confused by this concept. The thought of living with one person forever and ever just never got me jazzed up. Everyone said,”It is because you’ve never been in love, you just haven’t met the right guy”. Well, I was beginning to believe that the right guy might have passed me by in high school if that was the case. I had given up my amazingly handsome, sweet, smart, athletic, long haired, younger hometown honey for a 15 minute affair with a Colgate football player my freshman year- oops. Was that as good as it was ever going to be? Did I blow my one chance at love?? OMG!!! (Emoticons were not invented yet- it was 1998!)
Well, to make a short story long, I ran into a long time family friend that fall (while on another date, actually) and exchanged numbers. It wasn’t a logical match for me, but he was a great guy, our parents approved (understatement), and I was 29 years old and worn out. He literally chased me down in Washington DC for a date and would not take no for an answer. The rest is history, we got married 18 months later. I figured I’d fall in love/lust, eventually…. right? Sort of sounds like something from Downtown Abbey, doesnt it? Something that would happen to Edith? The good news, even though we are no longer married, is that I have some great memories, amazing stories, crazy experiences, and an angel of a daughter. I am older, wiser, a better mother, daughter, friend, and girlfriend for it. Thank you, John. I love you.
The Color Purple, or Things We Did We Still Can’t Explain
I wore purple for an entire summer once. Everyday. Pants, shirts, sweaters, bathing suit, the whole nine yards. I was a rising junior in college, so I can’t blame it on youth. My mother did make me dress the way she wanted me to look until I was 17, so perhaps it was a latent desire to make her mad that I did this. (In actuality I was away all summer causing havoc in upstate NY so she could have cared less). It all started when my roommate and I decided to tie-dye a few things. We had a fuschia bin of RIT dye, and a blue bin of dye which eventually became the purple bin of dye. We must have been deprived from arts and crafts in our childhoods because we became obsessed with dyeing things and did our socks, our underwear, every white T-shirt we owned, our curtains and dish towels, anything that was dyeable. Nobody liked to be near us in the Laundromat for fear our dye was not fast! But God, we looked good. It became my mantra, my persona, wearing purple. I even had a purple stone necklace I never took off.
I remember going to an Allman Brothers concert that summer (in Saratoga, maybe?) in my new purple garb on and wondering why the 3 fraternity brothers we went with were not impressed. They were certainly impressed by my ability to drink down large quantities of Genesee Cream Ale (without stopping to pee) and recite lyrics. Or they pretended to be. Ah, life was so simple then.
That was the summer of living over Hickey’s Tavern. In the summer in a college town (where students were doing the required “summer term”) it was easier to find a great off campus pad. We were very proud of our subletted lair. It had brick walls and a big living room, and we each had our own bedroom with full size beds (!!). One relatively quiet Sunday night, as we sat around listening to Diana Ross’ Greatest Hits and Johnny Cougar (now known as the more refined John Mellencamp), my roommate discovered a bat hiding in her drapes. After some initial hysteria, we decided the only thing to do was to go down to the bar we lived over and rustle up some men to hunt down and dispose of the bat. What were we thinking? No one within 100 yards of our residence was the slightest bit sober and it just ended up a melee of drunken stumbling men and screaming women, and a tennis racquet… and things were broken. We would do anything back then to meet guys. To this day when I hear the song, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, I am transported back to the peace and quiet of the evening… right before The Bat.
As I recall, this was also the summer of Waxing. These were the early years of waxing. Systems were not perfected. It was all a big experiment, just like Life itself back then. I have blocked out most of it, but Rebecca tells me in one attempt to “lighten the load” in my nether regions, I injured myself and would not come out of the bathroom for hours, and when I did it was only with the promise of a cold beer and many a hot compress. Yea, I know, too much information. But those of you who know of which I speak, can relate. Again, things we did that I still cannot explain.
I’ve been noticing that purple and lavender are showing up in stores and in catalogs it is IN again. It is now my daughter’s university colors, so once again I am drawn, tempted, and somewhat inspired to wear purple once again, but I try to keep it to a minimum at games. I believe it was the glorious summer of 1980 that I made my purple impression on the world. I tell my daughter about this occasionally and she usually just grunts and says, “Nothing you did ever surprises me, Mum. ” I think that means we’re close.
heavenstobets 