Drastic changes were staring me in the face like a dog with his leash waiting at the door. Point of no return. My life that day looked more like the tangle of the holiday lights lying at my feet. It was rife with details that shape-shifted with the age of my son and the men that hovered around me with expectations. Old memories were coming back as I packed Christmas bulbs back into their original boxes. I had preserved the boxes carefully, so they were reusable year after year. That was a thing. I was always neat and organized. I had to be though. My life was full of details and limited resources.
There were LAN parties for years with teen boys that could empty my frig of all contents in two hours. Pizza rolls and Sobe drinks kept them fueled and off the streets safe in the house wired to each other. They were a clever bunch and always full of fascinating stories. I remember the birthday ritual. No one bought each other birthday gifts (not creative, I was told). Instead, they passed around the same $20 bill hidden in a variety of ways. The gift was the challenge in the clever way they presented it to each other–like suspending the bill upright in ice in a tall soda bottle or hidden in the rings of a large log.
There were men taking me dancing and men breaking my heart. The betrayals made and kept me a single mother but strengthened my relationships with the good men in my life–and there were (still are) many of those. There is always a reason for the events of our lives–something to be learned. You just have to look hard for some of them. Soulmates are not always as they seem. More likely meant to teach a lesson and move on. And although that’s painful it is a necessary part of learning, adapting, and becoming resilient against that which you will need in the future.
There were the brilliant suns in my life–my son and the friends that have remained through all the trouble and tears. There were also the nameless strangers that appeared just when I needed them. There was the young man at a take-out window that leaned over, handed me my bag, and said, “I put a piece of pie in there no charge. You remind me of my mom, and I miss her.” Ahhhh.
There was a 30-something man that stopped when my car threw a rod on the highway in San Jose. I was frantic. I was in a big hurry driving home from work to pick up my sixteen-year-old son to take him to his driver’s license appointment. Ohhh, the hell I would pay if I missed that appointment! It was barely a minute before the man was looking under the hood with me. It was not good news; he said I would have to have it towed. I was in such a hurry, and he offered a ride to the rent-a-car place not far away. I stared at him for a few seconds wondering if I would end up bound with duct tape in a plastic sheeted room in a warehouse basement. Silly. There are no basements in California. Turns out he was just a good Samaritan, and I can’t even remember his face. Then there was the woman who talked to me though a bathroom stall when I was crying after a restaurant incident with my, then, husband. “Are you okay? Honey, if a man has made you cry–time to get a new man.” It wasn’t the first time I had cried in a restaurant stall. Turns out I followed her advice.
There were work colleagues that appreciated and rewarded my talents and some that would have promoted me or paid me more if I would have slept with them. I had a couple of opportunities to marry rich which would have saved me so much work–but then I would have felt owned so the marriage would have failed anyway. Somewhere in the old journals are the deaths and disasters–both parents, a couple of young relatives in accidents, two friends by suicide, a young man that adored me and died of cancer, another that preferred drugs to a life of courage in spite of his many gifts, and a divorce that stained my soul like black mold in the drywall.
There were family members that disappeared because we disagreed on politics. How sad to choose pointless ideologies over family. Nothing really changes. Disagreeing on politics is like arguing over your preference for swiss or cheddar on your tuna melt. They’re both dairy, the tuna is toxic with mercury before getting hammered to death, then the whole thing is covered in mayonnaise and white bread toasted in butter. It’s all bad for you and in the end, the results are the same–a diminished expectation of truth to justify an irrelevant point. Why can’t true friends and family have an open non-hostile debate? There is a psychology behind this, but I don’t care anymore. I have curated my friends, family, and passion pursuits like I have my possessions–I only keep the best now. Behind are the fragments of the life I led for the better part of three decades before my current self began to emerge like a fearful cat after a thunderstorm.
My work-lives were now fading away, some hold good memories but little true joy. Some were better and some worse–I have no complaints, specifically. Things were accomplished. Lessons learned but so much time was lost–wasted on trivial pursuits. Time to go. We all have our stories, and I was ready to make new ones.
It took years of thinking about making a personal transition–a re-purpose. Obstacles were always in the way. Eventually, I wrote a plan, devised a strategy, and revised it a hundred times. In 2012 I took that first big step–the one that turns everything around one way or another. I decided to take a two-year road trip alone.
After much research, I bought a travel trailer–a brand new 2015 Camplight 14DBS. Then, I bought a new car–a tow vehicle. Even though I had done plenty of research, it wasn’t until I was towing the trailer home from the dealer, about 40 miles away, that I realized my 2004 V6 Explorer Sport with a wheelbase of only 101″ was not going to do a safe job of hauling me and the trailer around the country. A few weeks later, I bought a Ford Expedition. Suddenly I had debt where I had none before. I played the choice over and over in my head; the old SUV would have been fine. Maybe. Probably not. Just another thing I had to let go.
I cried as I sat in the driver seat of my giant Expedition I had just purchased and watched them drive my Sport to the back of the dealership. Funny because I don’t cry very often but I shed tears over the loss of that hunk of metal. But some things had to end for the new to begin. Now I own a tow vehicle that could haul twenty elephants up a mountain.
The road trip was from 2014 and into 2016. I hope you enjoy the stories and the information here. If any of you saw me on the road let me know. I was recognizable! There was a decal on the back of a cat holding on and “Live Laugh Roll” decals on the sides.