Most Embarrassing Moment

 

Photo by Erik Mclean

When I was in junior high I read this "girls" magazine that had a column of four stories each months called, "My Most Embarrassing Moment."  I always read these before and sometimes instead of everything else.  At least I don't remember anything else.  I remember being amused and horrified while empathizing with those who told their stories.

I had a most embarrassing moment just a few minutes ago.  I left the mic of my zoom on (fortunately video off) while in the bathroom and then was called out for it by name.  I waited a few minutes for the call out to sink in and then left the zoom.

I felt anger at being called out and made to look stupid in front of a bunch of friends, especially since I did a wake and bake this morning and WAS stupid.  Oh, well.  I wasn't looking forward to attending that particular meeting anyway.

I also carry anger at the meeting leader for past thoughtless behavior.  

Yes, I know.  I could communicate to him my thoughts about things.  But would he change?  Probably not.  When he is stressed and trying to be "nice" in spite of his irritation, his unconscious takes over and mean things come out of his mouth.  Like this morning my name.  Would he have chosen to embarrass me?  I hope not.

My new therapist says anger is a secondary emotion covering fear.  So what am I afraid of?  I'm afraid of thinking that this meeting leader is a jerk and/or doesn't like me.  Or maybe she said sorrow?  Or grief?  That my anger covered my grief?  Do I think I will lose this group of friends because they maybe heard me peeing?  Will they now think of me as the pee-er?  

If Will could still understand my longer thoughts, my contemporary thoughts, I could tell him and we could laugh about it.

But for right now I'll content myself with saying, "Fuck you, team leader."

Time Lord

 

Caribou Coffee sign at Dragon Con 2014 from wiki commons

Something new today.  He took a memory of a trip we took in 1999 and stuck it before his school years, at least that's what he did verbally.  Was he joking or unstuck in time?  I asked him, "do you mean that your trip to Russia allowed you to lord it over other people in school?" and he said, "Yes."

So the upshot of this downturn is that he seems to me to be truly unstuck in time.  He hasn't been aware of specific days, months, year for some time but today was the first time it seemed he actually remembered something that didn't happen -- that he went to Russia before he went to graduate school.  I may check in with him about it tomorrow.  He won't remember what he said today, however, so maybe I won't check in with him about it at all.

And now he has refused to eat dinner.  I have to tell myself it's okay.

Would it be easier to deal with Daleks?  

Probably not.

POLITICAL STATEMENT Don't read if you're offended

 

But Ya Got Ta Have Frie-ends....

Out the window this morning

to make the day last long . . .

the song "Friends," written by and sung by the Divine Miss M.  I have the song memorized because it appeared at a time I felt friendless and I listened to it over and over again.  

Happily, in these latter days, I am blessed with many friends.  Oh, I can still feel lonely sometimes when days go by and I am alone with my lost love.  But I know there are people I can call, people I can speak with.  And not just people I need to pay to listyen to me.  And there are people who actually seem to enjoy hanging out with me sometimes.

Becoming a caregiver has deeply changed what I value in other people.  It has also turned me toward the path of Christian community.  I've been a born again believer since 1983 (now that situation was a baptism by fire that I won't talk about here but, honey, if I ever write a memoir, be sure to get a copy if you can stand the heat) and since then tried one church with Will back in the last century and now my love of ritual and progressive theology have brought me to "the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement," as our Presiding Bishop Curry likes to say.

I've misplaced some connections along the way.  I know from reading the posts in a Facebook group of spousal dementia carers that this loss is common for dementia carers. There's one friend who I told we should meet again under the influence of alcohol and I think she heard "we shouldn't meet anymore".  If I had the energy, I'd do the hard work of repair but, you know, I don't have the energy.  The reason I said that was that whenever she drank she'd wind up telling me how mean I am or was.  She regularly reminded me, in some way or other, that I was an asshole.  I used to feel like, "well, this is great that she's honest."  No I feel like, "Why doesn't she give a friendlier interpretation to my behaviors, like - you're under tremendous pressure from your grief/fear/mental illness."  

Over time, I've also been limiting my connection to a family member and an old friend, both of whom sometimes pop some reference to my imperfections into conversations by email or phone.  I think they probably try not to do so but, ya know, Mark 6:4 -- ya feel me?  

This morning, as the sky changes from mauve to salmon and the river slides silver beneath chilly geese, I am feeling very George Hearn  (No no, not Sweeney... ZaaZaa!

 

 

I am the Kakester goo goo ga joob.

 

Saga

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Last week someone tried to take over the USA and foment violent revolution.

Madam X

But now lets talk about MY life!

This is the saga of the letters!  I will not be giving names but I am going to run a photo of the to-you-anonymous woman with whom my spouse was in love the year before he met me.  Let's call her Madame X.  This photo is a few years before he met her.  She has now gone on to the next world, though I'm not sure exactly when as the ancestry.com info on her death just noted it was between 2015-2017.

So.  As I noted in my last post, I spent last Monday using Ancestry.com, Google, Newspapers.com, and Zabasearch to track down the surviving son and daughter of Madame X.   I'd seen the names of three children on a Christmas card.  Tuesday I posted letters to the only addresses I could find for the two children, now in their sixties.  The letter I sent to the son came back as no longer at that address.  The letter to the daughter I paste below:

Are you the daughter of Mr. and Madame  X? 

 

If not, read no further.  Thanks for your time.

 

If so, I hope you will have the patience to read on.

 

I am a retired teacher and current dementia-carer/writer.  As my spouse and I have been traveling the last stage of our journey together, I’ve been digging through his boxes of papers (this man I’ve been married to for 47 years never threw out a piece of paper related to him) and ran across a big old stack of letters from a Madam X (mother to Son, Son, Daughter) in the years 1969-1970.  I met my later-to-be-husband in 1971.  If you are indeed the daughter of Madame X, I wonder if you would be interested in either writing to me or talking to me about anything you might remember about Will Huck, a friend of your mother’s.  

 

If you got this far, thank you for your time.  

 

 I don't know what I expected.  Certainly not to be called at a few minutes before 4:00 pm last Thursday for a twenty minute chat with Daughter X.  From her I learned that Madame X and her spouse each had affairs, that Madame X left her children alone much of the time and was neglectful. It was Daughter X who asked what kind of relationship the letters revealed and I paused and then said that it was an affair she said that she had guessed as much.  That both Madame and Mr. X had affairs and that it was a hard way for kids to grow up.  I couldn't talk for very long because I had an appointment for which I was late.  

Suffice to say we exchanged some photos (which Yahoo wouldn't let her send but which came through at my Google account) and she recognized my spouse.  She recognized her mother in this photo which I'd tracked down in a yearbook online.

Then on Friday, I read all 50 letters (which included two from Daughter X).

These are my take-aways from the 50 yr old letters of Madame X.

1.  This woman had some of the same seductive behaviors that I exhibited in my younger days.

1. She flirts by using the word "love" and telling him how smart he is and how he delights her and about how she longs for their hugs.  (She also winds up having a sexy nickname for him.)
2. She flatters by talking about his intelligence (I actually did a lot less of this than she does.)
   
3. She talks about her attractions to other men.
4. She presents her wounds (she mentions being sick fairly often).

2.  She also exhibits some similar boundary-making behaviors I used with those folks with whom I had "flings:"  

1. In response to what may have been a protest of love, she wrote the "I love you but" line: -- she was married and didn't intend to become unmarried.
2.  When Will clearly became too serious for her, she found ways to slow then terminate the relationship.  The last letters clearly show a decline of personal connection.
3. Unlike me, she also used her children to protect herself.

3.  She is similar to me in enjoying her alcohol and weed.

 

4.  The letters are filled with book and theatre chat and stories of parties, so she loved what he did and what I do.

 

5.  After his mother died, she began a single letter with an "I'm sorry . ." sentence and then went off talking about her own life.  I did not find a sympathy card.  When I got to that letter on Friday I wanted to reach my Dr. Who hand back 50 years and slap the shit out of the bitch.  "This man loves you, desires you, is giving you the passionate letter writing and hugs for which you hunger and you don't understand what the loss of his mother, the woman he's been traveling back to Nebraska to see every summer since he left home, over half of his 40 year old life ago?  Come here, ghost, and let me backhand you!"

After doing my online research, reading the letters, and exchanging information with Daughter X, I've had some freeing thoughts about my relationship with Will.

 

1. Before me he was attracted to another crazy, promiscuous woman who sought a variety of men for balance in her life and who misused intoxicants.  I wasn't his first one!  This frees me up from taking all the responsibility for his woundedness when he finally realized I wasn't kidding about my devotion to the "free-love" ideals of Bertrand Russell.
2. Will lucked out, however, in that I am a kind and loving narcissistic neurotic whereas it sounds like Madame X. was mean and manipulative.  
3. Will was very sparing in using the word "love" to me and actually admitted at one time that he wasn't "in love" with me and that companionship and friendship were as good a basis for marriage.  Now that I have an understanding that his betrayal by Madame X (who threw the word "love" around with indiscretion) may have led to his own damping of that particular emotion and the words used to express it.
   

AND about my choice to not bear young'ns -- clearly Madame X was not a good mother and left some damage behind as I believe I would have as well.

What's up next?  I'll copy the letters for future reference (people keep telling me this would make a good novel) and then send them to Daughter X.

 

And, as always, I wish that I could tell my beloved friend Will about what I've learned about my husband Will now that the latter has dementia. 

 

tears emoji

ADDENDUM:

I have photocopied the letter collection for future use as a reminder of Will's hidden-from-me self, and sent the letters on to Daughter X.  I would be overjoyed to get a bunch of information like this about my forebears as a heuristic tool of self-inquiry, so I hope she enjoys them as well.  I know they've been very helpful to me in rounding out my understanding of my sweet friend.  And they remind me so much of who he was in ways that his own letters don't.  (Of course I have saved all his letters and now I have all of mine to him.  I may do something with all of these some day.) (Then again, I may not.😁)

 

   

 

 

 

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Love Letters

 Well, fuck-me-in-the-neck as my fellow student, circa 1983, Bob Picklesimer used to say.  The phrase stays with me!

I have been getting rid of stuff for the last couple of years...academic journals, old textbooks, videotapes, vinyl -- and I ran across a box of letters and grade-books.  SIXTY YEAR OLD GRADE-BOOKS!  Fuck-me-in-the-neck. The man never threw away a fucking piece of paper.

So yesterday I decided that the boxes of old class notes had to go.  I'd only transferred these notes from cardboard boxes to plastic boxes six years ago.  I carried each box up from the basement to the recycle bin in the garage.  I didn't want to even accidentally run into Will to explain to him that I was throwing out his old class notes.  These were teaching notes AND notes from classes that he TOOK in the 1950s.  Wow.  I used to throw my class notes into wastepaper baskets on my way out of my classrooms.  Very insulting.  But, I mean, whew!

Among the boxes of notes was this one with letters.  So I got a bee up my butt and decided to sort them for him.  As I did, I ran across a tall stack of letters that I looked into and saw that they were love letters!

So, I've been trying to track down the woman with whom he was having this relationship.  Of course I have.  I know so little of who he was when he wasn't with me.  He kept his life and relationships private, though as I read I began to remember what he had told me about this woman.  

Am I reading these letters to him?  Of course.  I'm curious.  He isn't going to be hurt by my reading these and I will get a deeper understanding of him through the eyes of this other woman.

But right now, I'm looking for her on the web!  Of course I am!  I'm a 21st Century Fox -- I know how to track someone.  I see that she and her husband got divorced in July, 1973.  Will and I got married in August, 1973.  

I wonder what happened to her?  Should I send an email to her ex (who still resides in Washington and is about Will's age)?  I'm just so fucking curious and I have no idea what her maiden name is and today, once I do my homework for my class tonight, I'm going to read the rest of those letters.