It was a beautiful summer evening. That time of evening before the sun completely sets and bluish gray daylight lingers on hanging shards of pink light on the horizon making everything seem tinged in golden pink hues. We ventured forth, my 8-year-old, blonde haired-blue-eyed little diva and I, on our evening walk to the neighborhood grocery store where ice cream cones, scooped the old fashioned way, the two-scoops-in-one grand size way, the smashed-down-and-flowing-over-the-cone way were still only 75 cents a scoop. A cone of two flavors, a lot of ice cream from this particular ice cream fountain, only set me back a dollar fifty. That was usually the amount I could find on the top of the dryer, in the car ashtray, or lying around on my bathroom counter or on my bedroom dressers, so funding the excursion as a reward at the end of a hot, sweltering, one hundred degree summer day was not a problem.
The Little Dynamo Diva motored fearlessly on her scooter, weaving in and out of driveways, tracing figure eights and circles a few yards ahead of me as she waited for me to catch up. I walked at a brisk pace, yes, but certainly my middle aged feet and speed were no match for an 8-year-old on two wheels. As was her habit when we reached the top of the small hill, she gave two quick pushes with her left foot and sailed down the sidewalk, short cropped blonde hair flying and voice raised in triumph, “Wahoooooooooo!”. She sped downward at a breathtaking breakneck pace toward the T intersection and the 90 degree corner at the base of the hill. It amazed me that she could rip down that hill at such a death defying speed and come gracefully to a complete stop just before it seemed she would hurtle out into the street doing so without ever once having to drag her feet to slow her descent. I caught myself stifling the panic as she turned around and headed back up to me, eyes sparkling, smile wide and ready to give it another go. We rounded the corner together and she sped the agreed upon distance ahead, not too far that I should worry, but just far enough for her to experience a measure of freedom.
On this night night, just over halfway through our third summer in our post divorce life, I was feeling more than the usual measure of peace, gratitude and contentment. No, life was not perfect and no we’d not arrived. Whatever ”arriving” means. I’d spent the better part of the month of July dealing with an outrageously frustrating and exhausting algae infestation in our large backyard pool created by my own negligence combined with my own even greater ignorance about the appropriate pool products, when, and how to use them. Thank God (and I do mean that reverently) for the internet where I stumbled upon a wonderful site that helped me realize that I could cut my costs to a fraction by using bleach, Borax, baking soda, a specific brand and type of algaecide (purchased at Wal Mart for approximately twelve bucks instead of the useless thirty dollar brand I was purchasing elsewhere) and an occasional bit of stabilizer also purchased at Walmart for a mere $15. Thanks to this site, my chlorine costs alone have gone from $30 a month to $5, and for a single mommy of four, that’s not a bad thing. After all, that $25 savings gets us into a feature movie or gives me some extra spending money for treats like our summer walks down to the ice cream counter in our neighborhood grocery store. I’d also recently experienced the failure of our refrigerator/freezer which was a $75 garage sale find five years ago. The cooling beast is huge and has operated faithfully for us in spite of it’s less than trendy appearance. It was disappointing to have it die. As if pool problems and appliance issues weren’t enough, I’d chosen this particular year to repaint, clean out even more of the dead weight and clutter from a lifestyle we no longer had nor missed, and tidy up every closet, shelf, and, yes, that meant the garage. It was an overwhelming job, one that is still a bit “in progress, and will be for a bit longer, I’m afraid. I haven’t even mentioned the blackberry infestation in the backyard either. No, life was not perfect, not by any means, but it was manageable. My life, I felt for the first time in almost my entire adult life after graduating from college, was finally manageable. It was finally sane. It was finally what I actually wanted or at least more what I actually wanted than it has been since I left myself stranded somewhere back in my 20’s when I gave up me to try to become something I wasn’t for the purpose of pleasing people other than me. It was this that I was feeling on that warm almost magical summer evening as I walked with my daughter a few nights ago.
In the movie Marley & Me, John Grogan (Owen Wilson) poses this question in frustration to his wife, Jenny Grogan (Jennifer Aniston), “Was this part of the plan?!” Her reply (to the best that I can recall it, because I can’t find a quote of it anywhere!) is, “No, this wasn’t part of the plan…but this is so much better!” She says this while motioning around her to the chaos and exhaustion that three young children and a large dog can create in a home.
Ah, yes, the demise…or surprise…of life is that it never quite goes as expected does it? At 22, looking out on my future as though riffling through the blank unsoiled pages of a brand new empty journal, I never imagined it being filled with the sloppy handwriting, the scattered smudged ink splots, the many scratched out beginnings of botched stories that I now see as I gaze back of the pages of that once clean book called my life. There are pages I truly wish I could tear out. There are pages I have torn out and wish now that I could recapture. My life, at least most of it, and certainly not what I have experienced in the last decade and a half is not part of the plan….but is it so much better?
This is the question that stymies me. Of course, the honest answer to this is that I honestly do not know. Is this better than what? What I imagined? I don’t think so, because what I imagined was a life not unlike the Grogan’s in Marley & Me. A good marriage enduring the test of time, for better or for worse. Not perfect, but certainly worth it. But I was no Jennifer Grogan and I certainly didn’t marry a John Grogan. So, in that regard, no, this is not better than that. “That”, however, is not real it is only what I imagined, what I hoped, what I envisioned. How does one compare what is to that which never, at least for me, existed? Is this better than the plan? Well, clearly, I had no real plan, only a bunch of possibly very misguided and unrealistic ideas. Is this better than what was or what would have been had I not gone where I went?
Now I might be onto something because where I was in those 20-something days was frightened, insecure, afraid of failure, so much so, that I was afraid to try anything. Anything. It literally took me 9 months to get up the courage after graduation from college to go for a job interview. Seriously. I could laundry list the things I was afraid of trying for fear of failing but that could easily fill another post. Suffice it to say, that just over 20 years later, I landed myself right smack dab in the place that I tried to avoid so many years earlier, the place of failure. Failed career goals, failed dreams, failed marriages, failed parenting and step-parenting efforts. What I can say about all that is this: Failure, has been my friend. Each “failure” has really been a success. It’s taught me, strengthened me, clarified for me what I am and am not about. Each failure taught me more about me and how I’m wired. In the process, I’ve become more courageous and less fearful. This is definitely a good thing. I wish I’d started failing earlier, because I’ve learned so much. I wish I’d faced my fears earlier and worked through them. Doing so may well have prevented some of the other failures in the domino effect chain reaction of failures in my life. In that respect then, I don’t regret any of those smudges, spots, scribbles or scratchouts on the pages of my life. They all tell a story. It’s a story that only I can tell with lessons, hopefully, from which many might learn.
Was all this part of the plan? No, don’t think so.
Is this better? Well, it sure beats being afraid to live, because for the first time in a very, very long time I can honestly say I am happy. And, that, trust me…
is
so
much
better!
