Dropping the Other Shoe

“You look good.” she said the last time she saw me.  And then silence.  “But?” I asked.  “But what?” she answered.

She would always finish a sentence like that with a slam like, “but you could lose some weight”, or “but your butt is too large for those pants”, or “but that hair of yours is too long for your age”. She could ALWAYS be counted on to drop the other shoe.  Every time.

This time she replied with nothing.  Forget the shoe, I nearly dropped to the floor.  For forty-eight years, the proverbial shoe dropped out of her mouth with every quasi-compliment.  Flattery and criticisms were commonplace from a woman who was described to me by the psychologist as a sociopath.  No surprises here. 

But this time, for whatever reason, maybe it was her age and illness that curbed her tongue, or just a softening of her narcissistic demeanor, she delivered only the compliment.  Of course it had no effect on me.  I laughed to myself.  Possibly for too many years of bracing myself against the barrage of maliciousness she shot at me in reliable intervals, carefully timed to inflict the deepest wound at the most inopportune time, when retaliation was impossible, knocking me off guard, my vulnerability exposed.

Maybe my shell had thickened over time or my ears had learned to reject the sound of her voice. Over the decades, I had developed immunity from her viral assaults to the point of beating her in her own game.  I started dropping the shoe for her, answering the “buts” before she got her mouth open.  I got pretty creative with my own criticisms.   After all those years of dodging and/or being hit by her arrows and the therapy it took to remove them, I learned to laugh at the insanity of it all.   If you can’t find the hilarity in the absurdity of the madness all around you, then you might as well live in that prefab hole dug just for you by the crazies around you. 

Or, you can dig your own primo hole, fill it up with water and jump in for a nice swim. As Carrie Fisher once said, “If my life wasn't funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.” It’s my life.  I’ll drop my own damn shoes.

Loud

I thought I could sit in the peace and stillness of the morning with my cup of coffee and the beauty of my garden, but alas, the music in the basement has begun and the noise begins its escalation to the heights of the trees where it will remain throughout the day and continue into the late night hours.

I used to enjoy this cacophony, this modal harmony of the minds of young artists finding their voices in a sea of notes and rhythms.  Now I just want some peace.  Is this old age?  I don’t want to hear the dissonant notes, the practice songs, the scales, the vocal techniques repeated over and over again till perfection is reached.

I just want harmony in life now.  And protection for my overworked ears. I have stood in front of booming amplifiers most of my life, the Marshall stacks and the Fender Super Reverbs.  The bigger the better, we would say.  “My amp goes to eleven”!

Now I am horrified to hear the dreaded words of my youth coming out of my very own mouth.  “Can you PLEASE turn it down”?!  Horrors!  I have become an adult!

After scaring myself back to my youth where I lived in a perpetual state of loud, I fast forward through the sounds of drums, guitars, bass amps, horn sections, Hammond organs and Jimmy Paige vocals to today, where my son and his band prepare for a gig later this evening.  It is 10AM, an unheard of hour for band practice.

How can they call themselves musicians?  They should still be in bed.  But alas, we live in a town of poets and writers, architects and artists, a quiet contemplative place where people search for their souls in words, Froebel blocks and paint, not steel strings, drum skins and high frequency wattages.

A farm on forty acres is where we need to be – me in the farmhouse overlooking the trees and vegetation I have come to love, to balance the old rock star of youth – and the boys, in a barn way down in the valley, where they can serenade the birds and crickets. 

It’s a balance nowadays between the noise of my youth and the quiet I now covet.  In the pause between the pendulum clicks of the metronome is where the music expands, the liminality of what was and what is.  That is the place I like to play in now.  I can still hear the music here; believe me.  It will live in me forever.  Like Kiki Dee once sang, I Got the Music in Me.  So Please.  Turn that music down.

The Patient Gardener

I finally got back to my garden after an almost six year hiatus.  So much happened in those six years.  I opened and closed a business; I terminated my landscape and horticultural therapy contracts; I started roller derby and finished it (unfortunately due to a really bad fall on my tush bone which still hurts almost three years later!)  My body got really angry with me for disregarding it all those years.  Stress.  The silent killer.  Ain’t it the truth.  It’ll getcha every time.

 

But my garden didn’t revolt. I did lose my beloved smoke tree (Pop’s Pink Champagne cultivar stopped popping its cork!)  Not to neglect.  It was beyond anything I could do.  It did its best, as did my entire garden, to patiently wait for my return.  That’s a lot to expect of a teenager.  My garden is sixteen years old.  And as anyone who has teens knows, they have their own minds and do what they want!  My wild hippie garden, too, has this independcnce separate from me and was fine living on its own for those years.

I have now been spending time with my “child” daily.  Moving what’s left of old perennials to open spaces, contemplating life after a massive change.  I find that it is assisting me now, without asking.  After every adjustment, it thanks me by settling into the changes gracefully and without the typical teenage angst.  I feel like it’s saying, “Ahhh, that feels good” after each change, a “welcome back, nice to see you again”!

As I stare at its beauty it offers me suggestions of what it would like next.  And I say, “Of course, that would be a wonderful addition”!  Unlike my own teenager, it is assisting me with the work.  I think it needed to stretch its legs after a long slumber.  It did it’s best, letting go of what was unnecessary, much like what I am currently experiencing; a change of my own seasons; what to keep and what to let go of.  As I play in my garden, it gets easier and easier to let go.  Like my garden, I never really owned those things in the first place.  They were just offering their beauty to me, to savor and ponder as they passed through, blooming and fading, blooming and fading.