Pieces of Ourselves

Our live has been wildly interesting. In fact I can't imagine having had a life that stayed static. I grew up in one town and knew everyone and everyone knew me, well actually everyone knew my dad and my brother, the athletes. However, everything filters down and by default Karen and I were well known too. It was a totally safe feeling; we knew exactly where we belonged in the hierarchy of the town.



Life changes though and people marry, have kids, move on. I now feel a bit like a porcelain statue....with bits of my nose, my toes, my skirt missing. Coming to Arizona for a few days has allowed all the missing bits of the statue to be replaced and it feels wonderful. As weird as this sounds I think I can explain it.



When I was a child I was the entire statue, everything about it was pristine. I married and had two children and the statue was still intact. Once I got divorced the statue was marred, a small piee of toe, say, fell off. People I met didn't know the other me. I was the single mom with two kids and a shadowy ex husband somewhere in the past. Then I remarried and another little piece of the statue was knocked off as people assumed that what they saw was the reality of my life. I'm fine with this as the reality of my life was great it just wasn't exactly who I was. Once Abe and I moved to Arizona things really started to change. I think a huge chunk of my skirt fell off because people saw the five of us as a family with no shadowy past behind me. This was great in that no one judged our family....Jon had the height and hair of Abe so we were regarded as a normal family, no ugly divorce history. Once we moved to Texas that changed. We were seen as a family of three. This is painful to a mom; you want everyone to know that there are two more additions to the family. Yes, people were were informed that there were two other vibrant, intelligent, fabulously marvellous members of our family but they were more ghostlike. A few lucky people got to meet Jon and David and even Kim and that helped but basically we were a family of three.



Now my statue has developed a large crack down the centre. People meet me at the store in Telluride but assume I'm one more single woman who has lost a husband, suffered a divorce, never had children. It makes me want to scream. It is for this reason that almost every customer coming in suddenly gets a big long monologue about my husband, kids, where they are, why I'm in town, why I can' afford to have any more parts of me disappear into thin air.



When Abe suggested joining him for three days in Arizona while he mountain biked, I wasn't sure I needed to come. I was so wrong. It isn't roots that make me feel entirely whole again it is deep friendships that I formed while living in different communities. Without deep friendship full of honesty I would have no strong connections, aka roots. I did develop those. Coming here has been like a major tonic. I sat for four hours with Peg Gavillot yesterday and felt all my little porcelain bits flying through the air and adhering to my statue once again. How was David? Are Jon and Kim married yet? Remember when David crashed the car? Is your ex still with Deborah, how are their children? Is your dad still karaoke king? got his girlfriend? partying all hours of the night?



I think I did the same for her. I KNOW her story, her life, her sad bits and her happy memories. I completely understand why her children are the world adventurers that they are. I can ask about her dog, her dog Diva that we hiked with for several years through the desert, she remembers Boris. It was like drinking a tonic and feeling healthier afterwards.



I may not have roots but I have something better. I had a wonderful life of travel and living in places completely different from anything I was used to AND I have deep solid friendships that can carry me through the hard times. Something bad happens and I can call someone who knows the real me, the real us, the face of the child who may be having a hard time, the laughter of the kid who is enjoying his new life so much that he just doesn't want to come home. We all need people who make us feel whole again and I found mine.



My adventure today will be to hang with my trainer who knew me when I didn't know what a free weight was, and who remembers me telling him, I want to learn how to do a real push up, but please don't make me do 100.....I know you. He will laughingly remember that he made me do 101 in that session before he let me get up. Maybe I don't need to visit him at all......god knows what memory he will create today.