This Is Us...Really

USA is showing a THIS IS US marathon and I find myself re-watching and feeling even more than I felt seeing this show the first time. It's got everything you've seen or wished for in a family — a Dad who's a dreamer but shows love; a reluctant mom who clearly does her best but is flawed.  There's sibling rivalry, not fitting in, weight, cancer, success, fame, dying, regret, family — relationships.

I know people don't understand my deep connection to watching TV.  Television is a source for me.  Of company, of information, of sentiment, and vicarious emotion.  When I'm feeling lonely, disconnected, sad, depressed, I find something to watch that will fix that for me.  

It seems frivolous I know.  But there are so many pluses for me watching TV:  It's right here and it's here all the time; I've already paid for it; and between satellite and Netflix and Showtime and HBO, I can usually find something that will give me what I'm seeking.  I don't have to risk that I'll seek something and it won't be gotten.

My friend Susan believes it's better to ask — even if you don't get what you're asking for — than not to ask at all. I don't feel that way.  Yet.  It's too disappointing and too hurtful and too — well — just "too".

But I understand that when you don't ask, you definitely have no chance of getting.

My struggle (well, one of them anyway) is to let go of the outcome.  That's what a therapist tells me.  Let Go of the Outcome.  Let go of resentment and regret.  Let go of expectations.  Let it all go.  I'm trying.

I understand the concept and it makes sense to me, but it's one of those easier said than done.  But I'm trying. And at times, I'm succeeding.  So far my best success — I think — has been with some of my friends and my daughter.  Still a ways to go with the son and the once-husband.

So This Is Us allows me to see a family — across time — struggling and loving and hurting and supporting in ways that virtually never existed in my family.  I get to watch how they do it and I get to momentarily feel the bonds of being with a family.  I hope we managed to live that give-and-take for our kids so that they'll have a better sense of what it means to be in a relationship, to have a family.

That voyeuristic view of family life (whether it's real or not) allows me to experience what I currently lack in my life.  

Right now, luckily, I'm really pretty happy.

I love my little home.  It's filled with everything I absolutely love, arranged just as I like, only used by me and for the first time in I do not know how long (if ever) I'm neat.  Everything is in its place.  I'm no longer sloppy but I'm also not racing and juggling to manage and provide for a family of four.  

It is just me.

What a change.  I'm continually surprised by what can change.  

I had an open house on New Year's Day.  Twenty-six people came, it was wonderful, my daughter was there and saw my new place for the first time, and for the first time EVER, I didn't kill myself to have company!

I didn't have to stress about cleaning up days before everyone came because pretty much everything was already clean.  I didn't go overboard on getting drinks or food and I almost cooked NOTHING.  I had a great time, I was relaxed and I didn't pay for it in a horrible way.  HOORAY!

I miss having a fireplace and of course the companionship of someone next to me, but all in all, I'm enjoying my life at the moment and I feel secure.

So while I may be watching This Is Us — finally, joyfully, amazingly — 
I'm much more intently watching —  This Is Me.

Doodling for Direction

For a long, long time, all my doodles were arrows coming and going, up and down, sideways, never getting anywhere.  Pointing, reaching, looking for direction.  I often felt boxed in by those arrows.  Trapped in no direction.  In elementary school, in high school, in college, in every job I've ever had — I was always worried about where I would end up.

Now I'm sixty-three and where have I ended up?

Back at the beginning.

After a working career of 40-plus years (I'm not including working at the dry cleaners from ages 8-15,  or pricing at the pet-supply warehouse, not counting serving in the cafeteria at Northeastern or working in the Registrar's Office at Finch); after a number of apartments, single and shared, a six-year relationship, a 29-year marriage, a townhouse that almost foreclosed, a big house, two lovely children boy-girl twins; now after all that I'm again seeking direction.

Direction is a funny thing because there's no one "right" direction in life.  For any place you want to go, there are oh-so-many ways of getting there.  Will you walk? bike? or drive? Do you go the fastest way or take the most scenic route like my friend Nancy who bobs and weaves this way and that, avoiding the main roads, even highways if she can.  Unlike me, she goes the "back roads" while I — well I just want to get there quick as I can.

Part of the difficulty now is just deciding direction.  My first choice of direction was to leave our town and live in New York — return to the hustle and bustle of of city streets teeming with people, alive with music and plays and magnificent art and always, always, always, the possibility of human connection.  I have had great moments of "positivity resonance" with men, women, and children here in the Big Apple.  People like me/unlike me, close in age/decades away, of similar persuasions/of radically different views.  These connections rarely seemed to happen in the town where we raised our family because we lived in cars to and from the same places.  And we didn't have many couple friends.

Most couples attach to other couples and do things together.  They go to concerts or movies, camp, play cards, take vacations together. I think these couples usually meet through their young children — but that didn't happen for us.  We moved to teach in a small school where most of our colleagues were far younger and single and transitory — each around for a few years and then on to the next career phase in another part of the country or the world.  Our friends are in Iowa and Santiago, Chile or elsewhere but not so many here.

Now it seems that the dream of New York may be a dead end and my direction points me back to North Carolina where I've spent the past 24 years. In a way, and surprisingly, that's beginning to excite me.  There are new things for me to focus on.  We're selling the house and emptying out 35 years of objects and memories.  Every Monday night I'm free-form dancing with about 25 other people for 90 minutes and NO talking!  I'm back to volunteering for the two non-profits  that I support.

Maybe the time has come to procrastinate — to start doodling and see where those arrows take me.
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For the past few months, I've been in a women's writing group that meets weekly at a neighborhood senior center.  I am by far the youngest of the seniors but they're a real bunch of characters, all with interesting thoughts to write.  We spend about 20-30 minutes writing and then we each read aloud and share our piece, followed by comments.  Before we begin, the table is strewn with pages of images torn from magazines (brought  by our writer-facilitator Rosalie) to help prompt one to write if needed.  

This is the image I saw that prompted me to write this post. 

NOT MATCHED by match.com

For the purposes of this post, all names have been altered to spare anyone embarrassment...except for ME.
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Thinking it was finally time to start seeking male companionship I thought, "Why not try match.com?"

I already knew three people — all slightly older than I am and all people I liked — who found five, yes FIVE, successful, happy marriages between them.

Clearly this was an indication that through match.com it was possible to find true love.

And — this is important — there was a free 7-day trial.  What was there to lose?

My sanity for one.

Not to mention time.

First, you answer a series of questions that categorize you and the person you're looking for — in the broadest of terms: physical characteristics, age range, hobbies, likes, religious and social habits.  Fair enough.

Next, you write a profile...how much or how little is up to you.  I simply said I was looking for someone to share a meal, movie or museum visit with — I wrote next to nothing because I just didn't know what I wanted to say. And yet soon my inbox was filling with all sorts of unknown and difficult-to decipher communications.  

There's 

a "wink" 
                 a "like" 
                                a "chat" 
                                                 possibly leading to ... an email.

At first, it seemed novel and fascinating...guys were reaching out to me, wanting to contact me, liked me!  Each communication I opened was a new possibility, an opening in the closed universe I'd been living in this past year.  I clicked on the link to view their profile, looked at their photo (if there was one), and then read how they described themselves and what they said they were looking for in a woman.

Some wrote gushingly; others forthrightly, some with humor.  Some put next to no effort; everyone was looking for the love of their life.  

Often when I'd click on someone who really looked promising, I'd get:

The profile you're looking for is not available at this time.

Instead take a look at these.

It made no sense. Where were they? Why weren't they available to see? 

And then there were the ones I was able to see.  Well, they were time-consuming.

I'd read through and be interested but then — then I'd see that the guy was in his 30s or 40s or be living in Miami, Baylor, Texas, San Diego, even Nashua, New Hampshire or Butte, Montana! What the F**K? Why would anyone be trying to date someone that lived states away?  MY profile I said I was looking for someone within 20 miles of New York City...how was this filter not working?

It took me three days to figure out that I wasn't actually seeing my "mutual matches." To see the guys who fit what I was looking for, I had to go to Search Mutual Matches...and then a whole crop of pics and profiles popped up.  And it took me that long to figure out that there were people who were just looking for an electronic pen pal. Someone to add a little vicarious excitement to one's life and "chatting" through match was a way to do this. 

Love2loveU thought I wrote "a lovely profile that makes me want to get to know you" and worldtraveller "enjoyed my profile and thinks "we could meet for coffee and start a conversation ..I'm looking for a serious relationship, but leave me a text and I will send you one." Or TruthfulOne who emailed "I wanted so much to meet you from your profile and pic. You have this intriguing and intense look about you that I love it. I would enjoy talking with you... " and more and more and more. But their emails often seemed as intense as a therapy session.  Way too much information for an opening salvo and far too revealing for my sensibilities.  It just seemed insincere and uncomfortable.

I went through those mutual matches but anyone who said they played basketball five times a week, or put camping and hiking first on their list of interests or said they were "God-fearing" or "NEVER" drank, well these were clearly not the best matches for me.

If they were looking for "athletic and toned," not me.

If they were looking for someone who wanted to settle down for prolonged kisses and a life together, well, that just wasn't me at this moment.

Eventually, after days and hours of sorting, reading, deleting, replying, "You look nice but you're too far away...good luck in the search!", I got down to three men that looked good to me, sounded nice, had similar interests and were in New York City. [Or so I thought.]

I decided to email a message expressing interest.  And they each replied.

All looking for true love, a "one-man woman," someone who wouldn't break their hearts.

One was in Shanghai on extended business.

The next was in Brazil.

The last was deployed in Iraq handling bombs and ammunition, not due back until end of March. (Or was he? Turns out there's a huge scam of men claiming to be in the military but simply wanting some electronic entertainment from the wife, and saying you're in the military gets you a free pass from any one-on-one involvement.)

It left me totally, totally, TOTALLY confused and disappointed.  I just want to sit across from another human being at a Starbucks and talk.  Is that so impossible?

How are people successful at this?  

What am I NOT getting?

On day seven, I was relieved to quit the whole thing and give up on the online version of the dating game.  The thought of trying eHarmony or OurTime made me squirm.

Time to go back to the old-fashioned way.

Tried going in to a neighborhood bar by myself for a glass of wine, just hoping to meet some other singles to talk to but couldn't do it.  I just stood outside the door looking in or walked back and forth thinking I'd propel myself inside, but didn't have the nerve to go in...

Know someone you want to introduce me to?? 

The Price of Being Right

There is a "couples" story that makes the rounds periodically; it's in reference to one of my many flaws that my husband always found infuriating — I never admitted when I was wrong.  Now I grant you, there is truth in this. I had a very skewed upbringing that left me with an intense compulsion to do everything perfectly and if it wasn't perfect, if I'd made a mistake of any kind, well then that was tough to live with.  

Still, one time when our neighbors Alice & Dick were over, something happened and I was wrong.  My husband was incensed and looked to Dick to enforce his indignation, "You see she won't ever admit when she's wrong!"

"Well, when she's right so much of the time, can you blame her?" Dick replied taking the wind out of my husband inflated cheeks.

Dick's response lived and grew larger within him.  For years and years, whenever he had the opportunity to bring it up, bring it up he did.  He couldn't believe that a male compatriot hadn't seen it his way.

I did have a hard time admitting when I was wrong.  I still have a hard time admitting I'm wrong but...I've gotten much better.  Over the years there were so many times when in the heat of some discussion or argument, I'd reply to my husband or children, "I don't want to be right!  I just want you to see what I'm worried about!"  But they didn't believe me.  

It took me a very long time to admit when I was wrong.  But even when I did, I don't know that it ever wiped out their experience of all those other times when I didn't.  They thought I always wanted to be right.  They still think that.

Now, with distance between us, as my husband and I communicate more honestly about our relationship — our past mistakes, the places we each chose a certain way that was probably detrimental to the long-term health of our partnership — this separation becomes more real.  Just the other day he reluctantly shared an observation, "I think you were right."  This in reference to my decision to leave our marriage of 29 years.

This was one time — my first time — that being right was incredibly painful and sad.

An Auspicious Beginning

Guess somebody else had the same idea.

I got married late (33) after many failed mishaps with older men, married men, and numerous short-term flops — from bar encounters, blind dates and Club Med calamities.  At one point (when my Gramma asked me for the four thousandth time, “When you gonna get married hokeesie?”) I considered parading up and down Madison Avenue wearing a sandwich board sign with the message 

READY 

FOR 

  MARRIAGE   

No, I did not resort to that.  But it was the age of dating before cell phones, the Internet and texting.  At the time, the most advanced (and risqué) form of dating was placing a  personal ad in the back of

                                                                    Magazine

and though I remember writing and rewriting what I hoped would encapsulate me in 75 words or less, I know I never actually paid and placed an ad. Too chicken or too cheap.

So when I met my future partner — through a chance meeting with his sister on a plane to the middle of America (we were headed to St. Louis; for that story read here) — I was incredibly happy to have finally found someone I loved, laughed with, was a great fit sexually, and — to make it even better — who felt the same way about me.  

The early years were fun and challenging.  To begin with I had never lived with a guy and I wasn't planning to do so now.  To start our life together, we needed to find an apartment in Manhattan we could afford.  Given our work circumstances then, it was his job to scout out places, narrow down the options, and bring me to the ones fitting our requirements and budget — a real Everest of a challenge.  

The first option he scheduled an appointment for was a small one bedroom at 97^th and Fifth.  It was sweet and just a block from an entrance to Central Park, but at $1800 @ month — what was he thinking?? [This should have been my first indicator that finances weren't his forte.] 

The next was an apartment in the opposite direction, Chelsea on West 25^th, close to Ninth Avenue.  It had an Art Deco feel and a sunken living room but...it was dark inside, far from the subway, and $1500 @ month.  Yes, better, but still a no.

Then, a large loft-style place on East 14^th for $1200 @ month — he was getting better at this.  Open plan, light-filled, high-ceilinged BUT — you had to “buy” the kitchen the previous tenant had installed ($800 bucks!)and in the walls at floor-level there were these very large, dangerous looking grates for heat.  Horrifyingly I imagined our someday-child crawling in and being grilled alive on the spot.  This apartment?  No way.  

He was very discouraged.

Finally, an apartment he was convinced would meet ALL my expectations.  A four-story building with an apartment on each floor on a lovely tree-lined street (it was in fact the street he was already living on — East 89^th close to First Avenue).    I liked it.  It had charm.  It was quiet, it had light and the price was the best we’d encountered — just $1000 @ month!  Still — it was a fourth-floor walk-up.  I couldn't imagine hiking up and down those four flights of stairs with the groceries or the trash — let alone a stroller and a diaper bag and a baby one day.  I had to say no.

My soon-to-be husband was dejected at this rejection.  Frustrated from looking every day, convinced that nothing, nothing, NOTHING would please me, HE was ready to give up.  [Maybe this was his first indicator of what it would be like living with thinking-through-every-last-detail crazy me.] 

Things were at a stand-still and still, we had no apartment.  It was already April.  The wedding was in May.  The where-are-we-gonna-live clock was ticking.  I suggested that we walk building to building on the east side in the 20s and 30s in the neighborhood where I was living — bordering Gramercy Park.  I’d met a woman who managed a small brownstone on Lexington at 31^st and in my mind surely we could/would get an apartment in that building so we headed to the premises.   When we arrived on her stoop, the landlady sweetly said with a smile, “Nothing available” and shut the door in our dumbfounded faces.

I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I had pinned all my hopes on that  apartment.  We had no choice but to continue on. Door by door, building by building, we kept walking.   Up and down numbered side streets we zigzagged our way through “No” after “No” after “No.”  We walked between Second Avenue, Third Avenue, and Lexington, block after block after block.  We were tired and cranky and discouraged.  After walking forty blocks in two and a half hours with no success, we were just about back to where we started.  We were standing a block from where I was living in an 800 square-foot studio that I owned (or more accurately the bank owned) with a doorman, no natural light, and much too much stuff to ever clear enough space for another human being without my feeling displaced and resentful.  If we had to resort to living in MY studio we sure-as-shootin' were gonna be starting off this marriage on the WRONG foot.

Feet aching and hungry, we rounded the corner at Lexington and 24^th, placing us on my block in front of the shop for all things equestrian, H Kauffman & Sons with its yellow wooden carousel horse parked outside the doors.  Across the street was a building I’d always wondered about…brick with these enormous leaded glass windows six feet high by eight feet wide!  At the top of the maybe ten floors was a two-story penthouse with windows even more spectacular. 

“Let’s go in,” I said as I crossed the street.

“Not another one,” he groaned, “Aren’t you tired of all this?”

“Yes, but just this last one.”

Inside the vestibule looking at the buzzers I pressed the one labeled SUPER.

A fairly decrepit old man shuffled to the door and stuck his head out. “Yes?” he queried.

“Hello, we’re looking for an apartment and I’ve always admired this building.  I live around the corner at 330 Third and I was wondering, are there any apartments available for rent?  We’re getting married and we need a one-bedroom.”

He stared at me intently with his unshaven whiskered face.  He opened the door for us.  “Come in.”

We were ushered into a door just off the vestibule into a messy office with old desks and office furniture, a haphazard accumulation of things that were probably left over and abandoned by others. The super slowly made his way to the back of the long room, went through a door and came back with a white-haired elderly woman. 

“I’m Mrs. Booke. I own the building. What do you want?”

I repeated what I’d said at the door but added that I owned a studio around the corner, that we were getting married in three months, and that we were very reliable.

“We don’t have anything," she snapped and said suspiciously, "Who sent you here?”

“No one.  No one sent us.  I pass this building every day.   I love the windows and I’ve always wanted to see what it was like inside.  We’ve been out all day looking for an apartment and not finding anything.  I just wanted to stop and ask.”

“We have nothing available.” she stated very firmly.

“We’re very good tenants and would take excellent care of an apartment," I said making my case.  " We both work and expect to stay in the city for a long time.  You’d be getting really trustworthy tenants.” 

“There are no vacancies.” Mrs. Booke declared, but, I kept on trying to convince her.

After five minutes my exasperated fiancé was whispering insistently in my ear, “There are NO apartments. I’m really hungry and tired.  Let’s GO!  She already said ten times that nothing’s available!” I heard the tone in his voice and I felt his frustration with me.  He didn’t understand why I was still talking when her answer was clear.  But my persistent nature allowed me to shut out his annoyance, ignore his breath on my neck, and keep making the case that we were a wonderful couple for anyone to have under their roof.

He was more than ready to give up.

I was just beginning to dig in.  

Then after more of my talk about the need for a fresh start and the wedding date and the impracticality of a couple in a studio, Mrs. Booke begrudgingly offered, “I may have something.” 

Twenty minutes after first walking in that door, a chink! 

I rushed on with a tumble of words. “Mrs. Booke you’ll NEVER be sorry with tenants like us, so I HOPE you’ll show us whatever you have, because we’d be VERY interested in seeing it,” I said anticipating a possible triumph.  The wizened, old super who had been listening to this whole exchange was quietly smiling, scratching his stubble.   My partner was utterly dumfounded.  

“My tenant in 2R is moving out and the girls upstairs on seven wanted it, but perhaps Frank can show it to you.”

Compared to everything we’d seen it was huge.  Living room/dining room 12’ wide by 30’ long with nine-and-a-half-foot ceilings!    A doorway (no door) into an incredibly small kitchen with a compact four-burner oven, next to a big stainless steel sink, jammed next to a tiny 4’ high frig complete with a minuscule top freezer.  Not a single inch of counter space. Some metal cabinets above that would require a stool for me to reach the upper shelves.  A narrow rectangular chicken-wired window covered in pigeon poo that looked out into an alley.  No view but at least some natural light.   Everything was in arm’s reach. You could stand in that kitchen and turn around but that was all you could do.  

This is an updated, renovated, today-version of the apt
we had back then with its HUGE casement windows.  
Our place never looked THAT good.

A 1950s pink and gray tile bathroom — dated yes, but perfectly serviceable.

A decent bedroom with decent closets.  Best of all the living room and the bedroom had these ENORMOUS inset casement windows 6’ high by 8’ wide.  True, being on the second floor there was no view to speak of, but the buildings behind us were only three stories high so we would get southern light during the day.

My heart was pounding.  Back in the office Mrs. Booke was fiddling with her papers.  I was trying to suck in the torrent of words about to pour from my mouth begging her to let us have the place.  I dreaded the question that had to be asked.

“It’s perfect, perfect, perfect.  We love it.   I hope you’ll be willing to let us come start our married life here.  Can you — can you tell me the rent?”  In my mind I was already thinking, given what we'd seen, we would go as high as $1100 if we had to, because we HAD TO get this apartment.  

“Well, I’ll have to check on it and let you know because the previous tenant was here for a long time (22 years it turned out) but I think it’s going to be — she took a breath (ours was bated, waiting for the financial shoe to drop) — it should be around $600.”

SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS!   $587.42 cents to be exact, once all the paperwork was complete.  It was this great apartment, at an amazing rent, in the neighborhood I already knew and loved.  

In Manhattan?  This was a MIRACLE — and an incredibly auspicious beginning to our 29-year marriage.