Storytelling: Camping Out in the Past for a Minute.
The journal where this essay was originally written, with one of the kids’ and my souvenirs from our adventuring days before LongCovid, with its signature national-park graphic style.
C/W: Brief mention of SA.
This true story takes place just this past Saturday.
I was ready to come home and claim my place in my li’l garden castle by early evening, I swear I was. But the moment I walked in, I was right back to being that little girl, that first wife, that third wife, again.
All I want to do is get away from them, now: All the dissatisfied men in my life. But I can’t get away from the one I’m raising, yet. He’s only 14.
Triggers are a bitch.
It’s only the first month after the 5-years’-medical-fun bankruptcy, and we’re being Very Careful with money. But The Trigger Pit calls for rescue outings, and I was there this morn, so out Elspeth and I went.
We were going to grocery shop, but Great North called to us first, for coffee - and then, The Waterfront.
Vancouver, Washington is investing heavily in creating a Columbia River waterfront destination strip. Last week we were near there for a pro-Palestine community-building event, and discovered Salt and Straw (https://saltandstraw.com/pages/about) has a stake in the new waterfront strip venture. Oooh.
They win for creative flavors, but I’m gonna be honest: They don’t beat Alec’s. But we were there, and it was hot. And we hit Wild Fin’s takeout window for some nummy beer-battered Alaska cod and chips. We shared a 3-piece. We turned our Pit Rescue Day into a girls’ outing, which we’ve both earned. Not that we need to earn rest, but we’re working with crazy focus, both of us: Elspeth on getting through pre-algebra so she can dive into college prep math, now that her TBI-injured brain can take it; me on the portrait studio business - always on the portrait studio business.
By mid-afternoon, we were both tired enough to head home (for more work! Now that I’ve SEO’d up the website, I’ve got new photography to post). But on the drive home, I was hit with the urge to revisit that first wife, who was me - the one who didn’t even know she wasn’t a Bad Girl, she was an SA’d girl who didn’t know she was broken, so didn’t know she needed to heal. So, we drove by the house she (I) lived in, 30 years ago, with the first husband.
You wouldn’t have believed the gardens, I told Elspeth as she drove Moondancer past Wy’East Middle, per my directions. We bought the house from two lesbians who were crazy amazing gardeners, and it featured a perfectly finished perennial garden - but I was overwhelmed. Care for a garden? I couldn’t even care for myself, let alone a husband - which he gave me an earful about on our last phone call. He was tearful, angry, triumphant. I just took it, ‘cause, you know: “Bad.”
We rounded the corner past my old dentist’s office - 132nd, that’s right, I remembered. Then a right turn on a dead-end and it’s right there, now with a suntanned, middle-aged man straightening his “USA” door decor, this weekend before the Fourth of July. There’s a big US flag waving above the garage where we hosted that haunted house with the bookstore kids, too. We did good on that one.
The man sees Elspeth and I parked outside his house, gives us an inquisitive look, then walks out to our car, halting politely when I tell him I have LongCovid with a “Stop” signal of my hand, but still friendly, and very happy to talk about his house. When did I live there? Oh, 30 years ago, I chuckled. His wife bought it from someone 21 years ago (“What was the last name?”), and the last name sounded familiar to him. His (first husband’s) kiddo bicycled by once, said he used to live there (apparently). Now they live across McGillivray, this friendly fellow offered, unsolicited. Soon he flashed us a peace sign and welcomed us to look all we liked, walking back inside his patriotically decorated house, now sans perennials clinging to its every corner, all those mums replaced with middle-aged rhodies and evergreens, and grass lawn.
It all came pouring out. The lonely hours spent at that window in my writing room, unable to write a word. The family holidays and his pizzas, and the bike rides allll the way to my parents’ home in Ridgefield. The expectations to be happy in suburbia, to like marriage, children … anything. How disconnected I was from it, all of it. The other window, where I sat in a chair and wouldn’t get up that fateful Thanksgiving. Done, I was. Done.
I cried. I hadn’t been enjoying hurting anybody, but that didn’t seem to occur to anyone in my life at the time. I hurt for that girl, who was me.
And then, I was done looking at that house. It hurt to look at it, still.
“Can we go now?”
A minute later, we’re at McGillivray. The old me would have been convinced we happened upon that house at that time for A Reason.
But I have a copy of Carl Sagan’s ‘Science as a Candle in the Dark” on my bookshelf now, and while I’ve been a little too busy to read it, I know, when I get to it, I’ll find he’ll have been right about that, too. He was right about almost everything - everything but the value of damaged goods. These particular goods were waiting for her princess to rescue her. Her princess was then, and has always been, me.
P.S. After I un-triggered myself writing this essay, the 14 year old once again showed he has more humility and grace than any of these other dudes combined (you too, Dad. Sorry).
The 14 year old’s the keeper.