Aug
1
Whisper to yourself, I am strong, Adriene from Yoga with Adriene says in the YouTube video and so I do: I am strong.
I am strong these days. I think I’m actually in the best shape of my life, here at 51. I got into fitness for all the wrong body-hating reasons but over time it morphed from a punishment to a beautifully rewarding friendship. As though I worked at some ugly grit over and over, oyster-like, until something smooth and lovely and rewarding emerged.
A few years ago I was thinking that I should focus my workouts into some sort of goal, so that instead of doing a hodgepodge of things with no particular aim in mind I would be, you know, training. I wonder what I should be training for, I thought, considering things like a 5K or maybe something more adventurous like one of those scary-sounding obstacle events, never mind that last time I did one of those I fell and broke my knee and had to be driven away in a golf cart (one of the most humbling moments of my life holy shit), before deciding that I was training for getting older and that was enough. But now I wonder if there wasn’t a part of me that knew a hard season was coming, and that I would need to be strong.
I’m writing to you from the messy middle of a divorce. Some of you know this already, because I shared about it online. I suppose it would be better to talk about this once I’m fully on the other side and I can be more reassuring, it feels enormously vulnerable to say “Hi, my marriage of 24 years is ending and things are terrible!” but: my marriage of 24 years is ending, and jesus, it’s pretty terrible.
Not every single thing is terrible, of course. For one thing, we made this decision together, and there’s no big hateful drama going on. We are both sad and fucked up and angry and worried and hopeful, I can’t speak for his experience but I know for me it comes in waves and cycles. Some days/hours are much better than others. I feel certain it will continue to be raw and fluctuating for a good long while and maybe forever in some ways but eventually everything will start to heal and even out and we will both be in much better places.
The boys are foremost on my mind and they have been amazing. They took the news well, months ago, and they have been so loving and they clearly want the best for us. It’s a day by day thing but I hope our family dynamic will take on new loving shapes, it will not be the same but there’s no reason it can’t be beautiful. It was never going to stay exactly the same anyway, that’s just not how life works.
I am closing on a new house. It’s an older home that’s near where we live now. It’s a little yellow-painted beacon of hope, a new life waiting for me with all sorts of new possibilities. It breaks my heart to be leaving this home we made, but I will be making a new home. It’ll be all mine. It’s particularly hard to leave my beloved studio behind, but I tell myself: your whole life will be a studio. Your whole life will be just how you want it to be, yours to build and decorate and cherish. And I can do it because I am strong.
Why is this happening, you might be wondering. Why did we make it 24 damn years but we couldn’t keep going to the finish line. There’s no one answer. We tried, we did a hard good job for a long time. Our family was always foremost. We had so many wonderful years. We did so much, we changed so much along the way. The boys are older and the needs are different and we both want good futures for ourselves and for each other. We had a hell of a good run and I’m not sorry for any of it. Look what we built together, look at all those amazing adventures and memories. It’s just time to walk our own paths now. It’s time to love ourselves and each other enough to let go and let in new light, new life.
I was at the beach this week with Dylan and we had such a good, good time together. I could feel how things will take on new shapes. Our family was a great little four-pack, and I loved those times, and I also see how I was … I don’t know how to put it exactly, like I was diffused, or like my own nature was contained in ways that helped me fit into that four-pack, like I made compromises, I’m sure we both did. And now we’re in the open air. And it’s scary as fuck but there’s so much room for growth. Now there’s room for everything I might want to do and feel and say and experience. It’s not less, it’s more.
Divorcing just plain sucks, it’s really hard to untangle after so many years and I’m in the weeds of it right now, but I’m also excited about what’s to come. I’m so sad to lose my person, I’m so eager for the new possibilities ahead. I’m worried about being alone and I’m looking forward to feeling less lonely.
It’s time to be strong, and it’s going to be okay. JB and Sundry are ending, JB and Sundry go on. Our stories keep going and I’m going to keep sharing mine because it means something to tell you. God, it really means something that you’re listening. Some of you have been a part of my life for so long, and I can’t wait to bring you with me on this new journey.
May
5
This past weekend John and I drove to Corvallis to watch Riley compete in a track meet, we’ve seen several collegiate meets at this point and this was one of the better-run events in that everything happened on time. (I’ve been to a few where the jumps schedule seemed like a lofty and ever-shifting goal no one was particularly adhering to, a real bummer especially when the weather is crap.) Unfortunately he scratched all three of his jumps, which is to say he went over the line where you’re supposed to take off from even though in video playback it didn’t seem like he did, the triple jump is a grim bit of choreography where millimeters can fudge all the endless hours of training. Well, I guess you can say that about most sports pretty much? At any rate it was excruciating from a parents’ perspective, we don’t care if he wins or gets a certain number or anything like that, we just want him to feel good about how he performed, and of course no one wants to foul out. That is such a hard thing about watching your kid in sports! I feel like it’s so easy to celebrate successes but much harder to commiserate over the losses, and we’ve all been there. I’m so proud of this kid for working his butt off to get into a D1 track program, I’m so bummed he hasn’t had the season he was hoping for. I’m extra proud of him for continuing to apply so much discipline to his training, for not giving up, and for already planning ahead for next season.
He’s been doing great in school — his grades have been terrific, he found a part-time job, and he’s been managing a successful relationship with a lovely girl here in Eugene. The main thing I can really say about having a kid off in college is that you do get used to it, even if it doesn’t feel like you ever will when they first leave. It’s crazy what you get used to, isn’t it? I remember feeling that way during the early pandemic weeks and then months: I can’t believe what we humans just … get used to, after a while. We’re so adaptable, even in the suckiest of situations.
At first it was really weird and sad to have him come home and then leave again, and now I am pretty used to it. He does come home fairly frequently, thanks to the girlfriend, although we don’t see a lot of him when he is here. It’ll be nice to have him around for summer break, which will be here before we know it.
It’s going to be harder when Dylan leaves, because that will really mark the end of an era and will bring so many changes overall. I do think Riley was pretty ready to leave when he did, maybe because he was older than a lot of seniors, and Dylan will be less so. But who knows, one thing that never changes is how much things just keep on changing.
Dylan also has a part-time job, his first, and while he doesn’t work a lot of hours I think it’s been such a great experience for him. He was kind of dreading it, and now I think he kind of enjoys it. It sounds like there’s a lot of camaraderie, which is the main thing I remember with fondness about my early minimum-wage gigs. Standout jobs for me included working at Kinko’s, RIP, a movie theater, and a video rental store, also RIP. They paid absolute garbage wages, had lame hours, often involved being berated by the public, and I had more fun with coworkers there than I ever did at any decent job afterwards.
This is a real bittersweet stage of parenting, the season of letting go and almost-lasts. Dylan’s finishing up his junior year and then next year will be the final bit of high school for him and his last football season. I really have a sense of trying to soak up what I can, enjoy the final months of having a gangly teenager around leaving messes everywhere and available for impromptu Starbucks outings and Dairy Mart runs. It’ll be all too soon before he’s also off figuring out his next steps in life and I’ll be having to get used to a house that’s too quiet and too clean. And I will, even though it won’t feel like it at first. It’ll all keep going and changing, if we’re lucky enough.
Life is going to be really different for me in ways I can predict and some I simply can’t, and I’m just as anxious about the future as anyone else with half a brain cell, but I’m hopeful too. I so hope there are good things ahead for my boys, for me, for you.
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