It is amazing, speaking of what we already know and yet reacting the same way each time, how we are always so blindsided by death.  Not one of us know exactly when we'll die, unless we choose to do so by our own hand (please don't, dear ones, please, please don't...) And yet, yet...when someone dies, our immediate answer is 'but he was just here!'  And we walk through rooms they won't see again, picking up a sweater that still carries his scent, the book she was reading to me just last night, the letter you were writing that he will never see, now.  And we just can't believe it.  How could this happen? 

History repeats this, over and over, in big ways (Pearl Harbor, 9/11) and small (a baby who didn't waken from her morning nap, a cousin on his way home from Fort Hood) and we replay that reel of thoughts and memories and conversations over and over, as if we could rewind it and somehow get a different ending.  I know I did that, endlessly, when Grizzy and I broke up.  Magical thinking.   Joan Didion got that exactly right, in her wrenching memoir of grief and loss.  I've done a lot of that in my time.  I just wanted whatever hurt so much not to be true, wanted to wake as if from a nightmare.  But some nightmares are true, and even in sleep you feel the pain.   

As my marriage, my heart, my life blew apart, I took my comfort where I could. And I trusted my friends--those who quickly made themselves known as real friends, as opposed to good-time acquaintances--and put myself on autopilot until the worst of what was happening was over.  I seemed to find significance in so many simple phrases......there were days when I'd be just silently screaming "I can't go on, I can't go on, I CANNOT go on...." and then I'd go on.  (After all, what else can you do?)  Other days my mantra was "I will not think, I will not feel, I will not cry."  And my journal at the time had a lovely cover, an Oriental watercolor calligraphed with "I fall down, I get up.  Meanwhile, I keep dancing." 

All of those thoughts were true, and truly felt.

But I got sucked into what seemed to be the best friendship that was leading into something more.  Someone older, 'wiser', certainly a fox in the hen house who had used the same words, same poems, same lines on every single woman who ever crossed his path. I didn't see it that way at all, as I think he must have known I would.  Stupidly, I believed him when he said it had never been like this before, because I so desperately needed to be everything to someone.  It never occurred to me that anyone would play someone like that, that they could cast out the same bait to every single person in the pool and see who bit.  I never thought someone who sounded the way he sounded could really have so little respect for women, could have such an empty soul. 

And  I bit. 

~~Because of my birth, adoption, and marriage, I have had five different names.  I had a couple of engagements through the years that I DIDN'T marry--my name is Beth, after all, not Elizabeth Taylor--or it might have been eight.  Or not.  Who's to say? If I'd married my very first love I might be married to him yet.  The world will never know.

And...funnily enough...I use a different name from any of these for my publishing.

...completely ignoring Gallagher's oh-so-sage advice: once you get past 40, don't put your butt over your head.

Okay, so I'm not really doing cartwheels.  Never could.

But I CAN put my butt over my head, if I care to, a yoga move, you know....lie on your back, stretch your legs up, up, up, and then bring them on over until your toes touch the floor behind your head.  Feels good.  Really!

But I digress.

The library called me for an interview.  Tomorrow, 1 p.m.  They are interested in me!

Well, of course they are, she says modestly....

Am I surprised? Not really.  I knew going in that if they looked at my application, they would at least want to talk to me.  And they do.  Grizzy says I am way overqualified, and I am, but this would still be a kick to do.  I mean, I have to be around books on a daily basis...if I am to breathe, that is.

And I am gonna knock 'em dead.  Watch me!

And finally:

I NAILED that interview.  There is just no question about it.  I could see it in their eyes, and feel it in the energy in the room.  I could hear my own inner voice telling me, 'This is yours, now go get it!'  I felt so good I didn't even need to wear red for confidence--today it was black velvet pants, olive green shirt and black/olive/peach jacket. 

Had three tests.  One was to read aloud, to see how well I could do that.  I do that very well, and I didn't stumble once over a single line.  And I have a good voice, too; I know they wanted to see how I'd sound if someone asked a question.  Grizzy always said I give good phone, so...go me.

Then I had to alphabetize a stack of cards, the kind that used to be tucked in the little pockets in the books when you checked them out...but they're pretty much history now that it's the computer/scanner age at the checkout desk.  I did that, and then, because I knew how detail-oriented librarians are, I tamped them back into a neat stack and double-checked my work to be sure it was correct, before handing them over.  And it was.

And while I was doing the last phase, which was to put the cards in order according to the Dewey Decimal System, I saw (peripherally) how both of my interviewers looked over my first stack of cards and nodded to each other.  I double-checked my work a second time and handed them over, knowing that was correct, too.  It's just a matter of waiting for the phone call, now.  They will make the decision this week. (AND it's gonna be me!)

Do you KNOW how good this is for me?  To once again stride into a place and know it can be mine, if I want it?  I've always been able to do that--make you notice me if I want you to, or be totally invisible if I don't want you to see me. 

They hired me that same afternoon. By the end of that year I'd moved up two levels from page to assistant, or 'hey! liberry lady!' Still, oh, still and always, I have to be around books if I am to breathe.

This is from April and oh! I can still hear every word of it and all the fun we had.

She's always had quite an imagination, this daughter of ours, and we've done everything we could to encourage it to blossom.

When she was 3, her favorite game to play was school bus, and she'd line up all the chairs in the house and then get into the 'driver's seat,' cautioning everyone to sit down and fasten their seat belts.  (And having seen the way she drives in her favorite arcade game, that's just as well.  Does the term "hell on wheels" mean anything to you??) 

It means we've often had imaginary playmates--I'm often called upon to make pancakes not just for Betsy, but for Tori and Whitney and Hope and Stephen and Jaylen--none of whom are actually standing anywhere but in the mind of our child.  But I play along every time, especially when she uses a half-dozen different voices to thank me, and I am careful to repeat every name in my "you're welcomes."

I like it.  I do.  It's nice to see where all she goes and the details in the scenarios she spins.

Today, she decided, is her wedding day.  She's going to marry Stephen, she says. (Fickle girl.  Last year before we moved here, it was Colin, a little Aussie boy who was utterly charming, whom she fell for on the spot the minute she met him, saying "Oh my GOSH, I HAVE to marry you!")

Then she decided that there were some details yet to be arranged, and would I take care of them.  In no particular order:

~~I'm supposed to buy some flowers.  Pink.  And I'm supposed to get some more flowers, pink ones, and take off the petals and put them in a basket so the kids can throw them at her.

~~I need to bake the wedding cake, tomorrow, so it'll be fresh.  Half chocolate and half  'nilla.  And though she handed me 'the little dolls' to put on top, she also asked me to cut out some cardboard dinosaurs--green ones--because that's Stephen's favorite--to put beside the little dolls.

~~I need to get a CD with "Here Comes the Bride" on it.

~~She would like me to bake cupcakes for the kids.  (We had a cupcake tree at our second wedding, instead of the traditional wedding cake, because we thought she'd like that best of all.  And she did.)

~~I need to set up the playpen for all the little kids.  (I'm not just sure who all these little kids are, but no matter.  We can imagine as many as are wanted.)

~~I'm supposed to get one hundred pink sparkly scarves and sew them together, and then get on a ladder and hang them up on the ceiling in a big U.

~~I'm supposed to get a big slide for out back for the bigger kids.  But nothing for the teenagers to do because they'll just want to watch the wedding.

~~I'm supposed to buy two wigs, for her little daughter, who is having a bad hair day.  (You think I'm making this up, don't you?)

~~I'm supposed to buy pizza and some drinks for the party for after the wedding.  And some water.

~~I'm supposed to get some poles to keep everyone in straight lines.

~~I'm supposed to take her husband to the ring store and that way he can pick what rings he wants to give her and then I can just buy what I think will look good on him and then he can choose.

~~Oh, and I can choose her dress, too.

My daughter, the bride.  In her wrinkled pink dress (worn over ever-so-attractive grey leggings) and bare feet.  With a temporary tattoo of a butterfly on her cheek.  Reminding me, as she walks down the aisle, "Mom! Remember! You're supposed to cry happy tears!"

Please join us for the festivities.  Mr. and Mrs. Stephen "I don't know his last name" are registered at Toys R Us and FAO Schwartz. 

(I really doubt we will have any MORE fun planning her actual wedding.)

That summer I had a spectacular struggle with the Beast, as I call it, and it lasted longer than any depression I have ever had.  In fact....I have to say that when weeks turn into months with no new posts from me here, it's a pretty sure bet that I am fighting off the demons yet again....it is the only time I cannot write and that simple fact only adds to the agonies.

For two months I've pretty much felt I was behind a thick and solid wall of glass.  I could see you, but not hear you.  I could not talk to you, because I had nothing, absolutely nothing, to say.  I was on autopilot, functioning just enough and no more.  It reminded me of the summer of 2002, when I was passing through the worst pain of my life, but you would never have known if I did not wish you to.  Even Grizzy and Betsy, and my parents, have been largely unaware of so much inner turmoil, because when you feel the same way day after day....you learn to keep it to yourself.  (No, really, you do.  Think about it.  How often when someone asks 'how ya doing?' do they really want to know?) 

And so I've dealt with everything I could, as best as I could, and let go what I could not manage.  I keep reminding myself that I'm not really as worthless as I have felt, though there are those who would surely disagree. 

Time heals.  There are always scars, but time heals.

"Pharmaceutical wonders are at work
But I believe only in this moment
of well being. Unholy Ghost,
you are certain to come again."

This is undoubtedly true.  But when that Ghost comes again....I will not go quietly.