Of free-falling and roosters wearing socks...
How I'll make my start on Substack
I’ll start my journey here with more of a blog post than an essay. Thanks for your patience as I find my footing on this new platform…
If you’ve read my bio, you’ll know that I am leaping—taking a free fall out into places unknown with this account. I don’t have a following elsewhere, but I did many years ago. There were reasons I went silent. Those thoughts are for another day.
Today, I’ll take a gentle tug on the bandaid that I must rip away to get started. I’ll close my eyes, I’ll hold my breath, and I will step out and push away any anxiety over writing publicly again.
——
Yesterday was the kind of day I have not experienced in some time.
“I was firing on all cylinders today!” I proudly told my husband as I wrapped up the workweek.
I always feel happiest at the end of Friday lately.
I walked my tall frame into our large kitchen with a pep in my step for a change. I’m rapidly approaching my mid-fifties, and so trudging about work seems to be my norm. I am at that in-between age where I am not quite to retirement or grandchildren. Work sometimes feels like a sentence, and not a blessing.
My husband grinned back broadly, his warm smile and twinkling gaze welcomed my announcement. Most Fridays I meet him disheveled, without a stitch of makeup on my fair freckled skin, barefoot, and wearing yoga pants with my blonde hair wadded into a ponytail. I regularly sport a dazed look and share a grumble as I shift gears into dinner preparation.
It isn’t that I have much right to complain.
I work from home for a large technology company where I make a very decent wage as a product manager. The gig affords me the time to throw in a load of laundry, dash to the store, and keep the home fires burning, in between leading Zoom meetings and a heavy workload. It is not lost on me, that this is a blessing that many do not have in front of them. I try to focus on that gratitude any time I start to slip into “woe is me” thought patterns.
These days, I find myself subconsciously shifting priorities, looking for more personal peace and happiness, as my husband and I sit on the edge of a cliff in the land of empty nestdom. Perhaps having our children leave us one by one or a recent blended family fallout of drama, has resulted in a sort of craving inside of me for change.
Today, for some reason, it all came together and my job fit me like a glove in a way it has not for many months.
Highly technical concepts that sometimes take a while to sink into my non-technical brain were absorbed and understood immediately. My communication skills, a strength, were on full display and I sensed I gained more trust from my coworkers. Most notably, I crossed every item off my list at both work and home, which is quite a rarity.
One thing that has surprised me as I grow older is that among the gifts of new wrinkles comes also a surge of thankfulness for any mastery of the ordinary. Is this this wisdom that is said to come with age? Or am I learning to become more kind to myself, at long last? Maybe, I am just THAT tired,
“Everything today just fit,” I added. “Most days at work feel like putting socks on a rooster!”
My husband’s eyebrows raised and I giggled, my mind immediately flashing back to a dear face from the past.
My former father-in-law had many fun sayings and was quite an entertaining guy. “Like socks on a rooster” was one of many verbal gifts stored away in my memory, that I find I use more these days—a full decade-an-a-half after his youngest child and I chose to part ways.
I can still see him. The gray fedora he would pop on his balding head, white tightly trimmed hair peaking out of the bottom. He’d wear it multiple times a day on his trips outside to examine something about their house or more often for a quick smoke behind the garage. We’d pull up to the driveway and see the tell-tale sign of his activities—a trail of smoke wafting from behind the narrow walkway, peaking around the detached garage siding, tattling on his bad habit.
Later, he’d recline back in his dark burgundy, well-seasoned, leather recliner, always with his loafers on, dress pants (I never saw the man wear jeans), and some variation of a polo shirt that only gave way a little around his elder man belly. He entertained us with his sparkling commentary for whatever sporting event was on the television that day.
He and my then-husband would loudly complain over the latest Oilers football loss, and share how the team always seemed to have so much promise only to fall short in the end. This discussion was one of only a few that could truly get him fired up, and his voice would elevate as he voiced his disappointment.
The man would insist he did not need a thing at birthday or Christmas time, sharing he had way too much as it was. He’d be fine with some of his wife’s chicken fried steak and his family circled about the table, debating the finer points of whether the best side was mac and cheese or rice with gravy. (My mother-in-law always made both so that no one was disappointed, which tells you a little about her as well.) The meal would often be followed by a boisterous card game, much to his pleasure.
You could completely dazzle him with the surprise gift of a set of 2-liter Delaware Punches, which might set you back a whopping five dollars, or a $10 gift card to James Coney Island for the next time he felt a craving for chili dogs.
There were things about my then father-in-law that reminded me greatly of my own Grandaddy who had left us when I was a teenager. I think it was the sort of personal grit and toughness he had, with a surprising sense of humor about life that drew people to him. He had an integrity about him that he imprinted on me—perhaps during one of the many times he attempted to teach me how to drive a standard in his small red pickup truck, something he felt was important for every young person to know.
All of this draws to mind one of the biggest things no one ever shares about divorce. As hard as the tearing apart of two people can be, it is the unexpected parts that leave the deepest wounds. For me, it was the way I had to let go of half of a dearly loved family, including parents who inspired me, siblings for whom I spent much time and felt a kinship, and my precious nephews and niece.
In my divorce experience, it was as if someone waved a wand, proclaiming:
“Poof! You are gone!”
With that, I was quickly wiped from their lives as seamlessly as if I had never been there. The abrupt estrangement in the wake of what was a mutually agreed-upon divorce that by most standards was quite amicable was not something for which I had prepared at all.
Sadly, my kids were not blessed with having their grandfather very long in their lives, as he left us not long after the divorce. My daughter was five and my son was ten that year. We somehow managed to keep our bad news from their dear Paw-Paw, as he was spending his remaining days in a nursing care facility. In those last months, I was told that he’d asked about me when my ex-husband went to visit him, noticing I was not joining along as I always had. It makes me sad to think he might have realized what had happened to us. This was a person I never wanted to disappoint.
Months later, I regulated myself to a back pew at the church of which I had been a member many years prior, for his funeral. My mother and sister sat next to me in a show of solidarity. My heart felt ripped apart when I realized that I would not be invited by the side of my children, to hold them as they wept. And, so I wept myself, my broad shoulders shook as I tried to muffle the sound of my crying, so as not to call attention to myself. I was embarrassed by my emotions, but altogether unable to handle the scene. I could not swallow this loss, feel this hurt in the midst of trying to wrap my head around my greatest life failure enough that I could start to heal. Divorce was never something I envisioned for myself, but who does?
A dear older woman who I considered a faith mentor, rushed towards me after the service, having noticed where I was sitting. She took quick strides to approach me, a brightly wrapped scarf about her neck—one I had seen her wear to many a Sunday service. Billowing silvery round curls encircled her warm face. Through her familiar glasses, I could see her tender eyes welling with tears with the compassion that I’d come to know as her trademark.
“He was your family too, dear.” She said, angelically.
With that, she wrapped her welcoming arms around me. I soaked in the support for a moment, catching my breath for a second, and feeling a warmth that I needed so desperately.
Years later, I can thankfully look back at these moments without pain. My kids are now young adults and on their journey into adult lives. I think about my former father-in-law fondly for what he brought to our lives and for his precious words and the moments that I was able to share with him and the whole family. I can take that with me as part of who I am today as I hit middle age and later, if I am blessed to welcome any of my children’s spouses or new grandchildren to my family.
I hope that my remaining work days are a bit easier—that I can have fewer that feel like I am trying to put socks on a rooster. I hope I can find the words and the grace and humor to embrace each day as it plays out. Most of all, I want to take delight and pleasure in the small things in life, just as he did.