Traveling, traveling! I’ll be away from the computer for a couple weeks - I can’t wait to visit with special friends and family. Turning 50 has emphasized the importance of staying connected with those that matter. I managed to re-connect with a friend I haven’t seen since high school on Facebook! It will be great to see her…think of me, pool side, exchanging our stories and pictures. Smile!
My husband asked, “Why do these things always happen to us?” We live between enough and not enough. We depend on plumbers to call and honor warranties without hesitation. We wait, in our ignorance of basic home maintenance, shivering through cold showers when our hot water heater quits working. At the mercy of our own choices, some foolish, others misguided, some crafted out of the naïve assumption that love always finds a way, we fight bitterness as we splash cold water on our faces each morning.
I ponder the inequities of our lives. My students face the same or worse than we do. Many of them come from families that rent, so are free from the cost of ownership we face. Class discussions reveal they have intimate knowledge of the dangers of using credit. I rejoice that they may avoid the mistakes that now plague my own life. I should have known better, but we financed with an A.R.M., using our equity to pay down debt. We need to refinance again, but our credit is bad due to cut hours for my husband and our own financial errors. We can’t refinance. We’re stuck.
Our hot water heater is broken. We’re miserable, tempers flare, as we face our inability to fix what’s broken by ourselves.
We’ve ignored basic financial sense. Money sluices through our fingers, feasts of roasted pork followed by thin soup. We heat hot water on the stove to wash the dishes. Filling the basin once more, we mix hot with cold, step into the tub and raise our arms, shivering in anticipation of the hot downpour, water rivulets on the scalp and skin, cleansing fear from our skin. Thus we remain, not giving way or giving in.
My daughter and I walked down
to the bridge on main street, laughing
as we slipped along the sidewalk in the
dark, she cuddling her small dog to her
chest, and I leading the way, walking
swiftly, ducking the fingers of low branches
that sought to snag our hair. We stopped
on the corner, before crossing, listening
to the loud report of fireworks. Still, we
could not see their bloom in the sky
before us. Misty rain coated our skin,
hair-raised, goose-pimpled. We laughed.
Should we go on? The rain began to soak
into our clothing. The sign changed to walk;
we raced across the street, turned, and hurried
past the apartment building blocking our view
of the river. We reached the bridge
on
looking down the river towards the park,
we gazed in admiration as the fireworks
continued to pepper the sky with color,
man-made thunder blasting through the rain.
My daughter’s eyes sparkled. So beautiful,
she sighed. Delight stretched the minutes
as we watched in wordless wonder,
together in the rain.
Two old cars and a full size van are broken down in my driveway. Two of the cars belong to my oldest daughter. The first I convinced her to buy only to discover its electric system is a mess. The blinkers don’t work, so it isn’t safe to drive. Now, the battery is dead. The second, her Dad helped her buy from a friend of our oldest son, Rob. My husband knows how to replace the necessary part. But, he’s been stymied by the right front wheel. In order to replace the broken part, the wheel must be removed. The wheel can’t be removed because two of the five lugnuts are completely stripped. We’ve had a mechanic over, who couldn’t remove them and didn’t charge (thankfully) when he couldn’t. Friends of my son Danny have all taken a hand in trying to remove them. It became a strength contest. Strong, young men versus the car. Guess who has won so far? The next suggestion is to use a blow-torch to heat the nuts to make them come loose. My husband borrowed a small torch from a friend. Rob and his roommate, Jared, came to help. Unfortunately, the torch wouldn’t work. So, the car still sits in the drive.
As the car saga unfolded, the school year came to an end. I was discussing, somewhat manically, the car situation in my yard. In addition, the roof of the garage is rotten, and the backyard fence is sagging inwards in various places. Our old house continues to molder in various ways. We continue to fight the fight against termites, sagging floors and an electric box that needs replacement. However, my bedroom is redone and the bathroom was recently remodeled (after replacing a termite-infested floor). There is some hope.
I asked my co-worker why no end-of-year party was scheduled. No one had volunteered to host it, Debbie told me. “Well, we could have it at my house, but for the dead cars, broken fence, and house in need of repairs.” I laughed. “I’ll call it a ‘white trash’ party and we’ll be all set.” We both laughed. Pause. “Why not?” The motto of the party became, “It is what it is” which I painted on a piece of barn wood pulled off the wall of another room we are renovating. Nailed to the back fence, it looks quite inspiring. It was the final touch to our comfortable outdoor room furnished with various chairs picked up from the side of the road. It has a great fire pit, made from a Weber grill that lost its legs. When my husband had the inspiration to bury the grill and surround it with gravel, our outdoor gathering area was born. We added some “party lights” and were ready for company!
Turning fifty has brought home to me what matters most: people and relationships. Why worry about appearances? So, my house is old and needs a ton of work. So, half my yard is weeds, rather than grass. Since we bought our house, my husband and I have rarely entertained. I constantly put off having friends over, waiting for that elusive time when our house and yard are finished. Deciding to host the annual end-of-year staff party gave me a chance to shrug off the supposed barriers to entertaining and chose having fun with friends over worrying about our housing and car issues. As we grilled hotdogs over the fire pit and enjoyed a wine tasting (Boones Farm, of course) I relaxed and appreciated the chance to laugh at life’s difficulties. I may have to recognize that “It is what it is” but I’m not what I was.