u/Eastern_Spray_2213

Let me tell you a story. It happened a long time ago, and it goes like this.

A newly out lesbian mother of five meets a seasoned lesbian at nursing school. One wants a summer fling, the other a partner for life. Only one of them is telling the truth. When they are still together, by Christmas they become partners. They muddle along for a few years, breaking up often and reconciling, but the exit sign is always lit up. There are the usual tensions, unrealistic expectations, and external forces of aging parents and young children. It was hard for them both. One of them lived in a pressure cooker all the time, while the other took time-outs on her mothers couch. And even when they got married and lived in a house with children and eventually, grandchildren, one of them made sure that the other wouldn't benefit financially, if things didn't work out.

One day an incident with one of the children heightened the tensions to the point where ugly things were screamed, things that could never be taken back. They will both tell you different stories about what happened, and they sound true enough. In any case the relationship was broken beyond repair. There was nothing left and only rubble to divide. One moved on as easily as changing a pair of shoes, the other was thrust into grief so raw, it carried her to hell.

The End

It's nearly nine and the kids are still sleeping. We have central air, but it just can't keep up to the relentless, sweltering heat. The only place it's cool in the house is in the bedroom, where the window unit is banging out frosty air. Only three months ago we were wishing for winter to pack its bags. Humans are fickle.

It's an ordinary Saturday. The market, lunch with N and the grand-babies, rehearsal in the afternoon, and then prep for tomorrow's family dinner. There are always requests. H wants mashed potatoes and gravy. N wants jalapeño cornbread. L wants lasagna or stuffed shells. It's too hot to turn on the oven. Everyone will have to be happy with pulled pork in the crock pot served on buns, mashed potatoes and gravy, and some corn on the cob. Ice cream for dessert, though none of us are big dessert eaters. Sometimes when the weather is cooperative we take our food to the park at the end of my street and eat there. Those are my favorite Sundays.

I love the grounding of rituals. Sunday dinner, a weekly visit to the market, hot milk before bed. It's the ordinariness, that provides the scaffolding for the spectacular moments and makes those extra special. Happiness for me isn't a state. It's more like beads of joy on strings, woven into the fabric of my life. A tapestry of my existence.

This morning I pulled the Transformation card in my Osho Zen deck. In a regular deck it corresponds to the Death card. When I was younger, it used to frighten me. Something or someone is transforming, changing, shape-shifting. Back then I wanted security, not change. It was before i learned that change can bring security too. I've been feeling it for awhile now. My circle is widening again. New people are coming into my life, and while no one is leaving, my focus is shifting from family to personal goals. My youngest grandchild is five. There is less emergency childcare, and more free time. There has been a lot of letting go of old thoughts and beliefs that no longer serve me.

The second card is Maturity. In this deck it does not indicate financial prosperity, but rather a reward earned for hard work completed. The reward? A solid base. Im here for that. My final card, the one I need to focus on right now, is Patience. It is represented by a very pregnant woman with the phases of the moon above her head. She is sitting cradling her belly in her arms, her breasts heavy with milk. She is ready. All she has to do is wait. We've forgotten how to wait. There is so much noise everywhere, we can't hear the voice inside us that tells us, "now, now is the time!" Timing is everything.

So cards, what are you telling me?

I want to reflect on my expectations. I have an idea of how I want certain things to go, and that's fine. But becoming too attached to the outcome is always a recipe for spoiled stew. Focusing on things that contribute to stability is especially needed right now. When all else falls apart, I want to be able to come home and lock my door from the inside. Patience, well what can I say? The only way you can learn patience is by waiting or through tribulation. I pick the first one. I know what I am waiting on. It's just not time yet.

It's the first week of summer holidays and this insane heatwave has thrown a wrench in our plans. It's too hot to be outside for even a little bit. So it's been indoor activities only. Today, just to go from going stir crazy, we went to the mall that has the Asian super store. It's not just a grocery store, its a culinary adventure. I love it there. When I don't have two very bored children. It was a short trip.

This morning there were printing delays, and an unhappy production team. We are two weeks away from opening, and far from ready. The heat saps the energy in the rehearsal room, and everyone is exhausted. Including me.

The grandkids just left. The house is in a state, but let's be honest, it will be that way until Labour Day rolls around. Tomorrow I'm getting up early, having my coffee outside and then I will work on my own play. The second draft is halfway done. I need a couple more weeks. For now I have to grab the hours where I can. There are a couple of deadlines looming, but for now I'm mostly ignoring them. Don't scold me. Procrastination is part of my personality. My therapist once said she has never seen such an elaborate structure of avoidance. These days I just procrastinate, I don't avoid altogether. Sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks.

It's hard to believe that this morning I woke up to bird song and coffee in the gazebo, and here I am five hours later, at my desk writing reports. Can I go back to watching the full moon please?

My cat Luna is happy to have me home. I'm glad to see her too, and I am so tired. I don't know how I'll get myself through work and rehearsal. It was worth it though. There were too many ciders and so much food. It seems like we were eating constantly. It was hard hugging L goodbye. I won't see her again until probably Thanksgiving.

Time to switch lives again. I call it my city life. City life comes with different grandchildren and I can't wait to snuggle them tonight. It also comes with lots of responsibilities and stuff to tackle. In the country, there are quiet nights around a campfire, and in the city there are poetry readings, live music, open mics and theatre. I like both chasing the sun and the comfort of shade. Embracing duality creates balance in my life, which for me is the most comfortable state to be in. Humans are wired for it. Even our bodies try to maintain homeostasis at all cost. This week I need to go back to healthier eating, exercise and rest. But my time in the country was fun.

We just walked in the door after spending all day outside. Morning soccer games for the grandchildren, a picnic lunch with family, and this afternoon a visit by all of us to the strawberry festival. Walking in the blazing sun was so hot, but we found a stand that sold Hawaiian shaved ice, which was delicious and refreshing. We sat in the shade while the kids searched for crayfish, pretending they were looking for lobsters. Such a simple childhood pleasure. Summer living at its best.

I'm taking a few minutes to myself before dinner. I don't know if it's because I'm getting older, or because I'm an introvert, but I need those mini breaks a lot more these days. I'm surprised by it myself.

Our family is big into sports. Someone is always either playing on a field somewhere, or they are watching a game, discussing trade deadlines and debating top player picks. I enjoy hockey and baseball too, but occasionally it feels a bit lonely, being the only one in this family who is deeply invested in the arts. I am always outnumbered, and there are moments where I feel profoundly unseen by the people I care about the most. The way I usually handle it is to put my life in a little package that I stow away until I get back home again. I'm fortunate that I have created community for myself with people who share my interests, but sometimes I wish my family was just a little bit curious about what I do when I'm not with them. It's a bit like being a founding.

Dinner tonight is Chinese. We are all too tired and hot to cook, and Chinese feels easy. Tomorrow morning there is hockey practice and then a pool party, and then in the evening the long bus ride home and then work on Monday. I'm so glad for this little break.

I'm up past my usual bedtime. My friend T is in a punk rock band and I went to see their show. The music was loud enough for my body to vibrate, exactly what I needed tonight after a day of writing. There is nothing like loud music to shut my brain off. In between sets, burlesque models strutted their stuff in gorgeous costumes made from upcycled materials. It felt dark and a little bit naughty. I sent my daughter a picture, and she said, "Mother, where are you??" How the roles have reversed.

I met some really interesting people too. A born again Christian lady in a leopard outfit, grinding to the music, who said she can't be around anyone who uses the Lord's name in vain. She wore blood red lipstick and had roses in her hair. I don't think the Lord minded her being high. A lesbian named Molly, with sleeve tattoos who told me I am beautiful, and I almost believed her. She had arms that could hold you all night long. But the best part was seeing T slay the room. She is a pretty new friend, and I love getting to know her. Every time we meet, we discover new things about each other.

Sleep is calling my name. Maybe just one more podcast, to take me over the threshold. Good night dear world, I'm so glad I get to be here.

I got up with the sunrise this morning and I wished I could go for a hike. Mondays used to be my day off, but my schedule has changed, and my brain hasn't gotten used to it yet. This weekend I will get up with the grand-babies to watch a sunrise. We'll bring a blanket and some snacks, and a big thermos of coffee for me.

Work was work. Lots of emails, scheduling and reports. But late afternoon we had rehearsal, and that was fun. We're three weeks away from opening and the stress is creeping in. Everyone was a bit touchy today, but there were also a lot of laughs. We added a couple of rehearsals and scheduled some line runs to help the actors get off book completely. I love production energy. It's intense, but time limited. It works perfect for someone who needs regular time-outs. When I was small, my mother would send us children to separate corners, facing the wall, when our play fighting got too rambunctious. It never bothered me one bit.

Once August hits, things will slow down until the fall, when grant season opens. I always vow to be better prepared, but then fall comes, and I hit the deadlines just under the wire. It won't be any different this year.

On Thursday I'm heading north to visit my son and his family. L, my daughter who lives in the States is home too, and I can't wait to hug her and see those grandchildren. There will be baseball games and BBQs, and a trip to the strawberry festival. Early mornings and late nights in the gazebo. Visits with friends. It'll be a whole different life for four days. I guess that's what makes being human so interesting.That we get to experience it all. Still, these shifts always make me a little anxious. Be where you are, says my wise mind, bloom where you are planted, says my granddaughter, and they are both right.

Can I just say that women over fifty are amazing? I mean that from the bottom of my heart. The actors and director in the theatre company I'm involved in are all women past their best before date, including me. The world gives women like us barely a second glance. My own children regularly forget that I'm in the room.

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This production has turned out to be the most fun one I've ever worked on. Every one is on time for every single rehearsal. Really, every time. There are no lame excuses of why they couldn't make it, and they never arrive intoxicated. The support for everyone is as tangible as the cookies, coffee and fruit that show up at rehearsal. Rides are co-ordinated as if by magic, the group chat crackles with energy. I like the heart beat of the room.

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I've been in other female rooms before. They are not all like this. But every once in while it happens. Some special alchemy occurs when women show their authentic selves to each other. The act of being known. I know you're going to object. This isn't some feminist lesbian mythology. I concede that I too have known viperous women, especially in the arts. Women are not all goodness and light. And why should they be? The female of the species holds enormous power. She is the giver of life. If women everywhere were free to stand in their power, they would create a tsunami that scorches the earth. The ability to give life is a dangerous thing, and it should be.

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But in my rehearsal room calm prevails. Rehearsals are like being in a womb. A play is born, from the cocoon of our collective energy.

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Last night I attended a poetry reading with a friend. She is going through a lot of stuff right now, and listening to poems together was a good way to spend some time without burdening her with the need to talk. The event took place at a pub, and to my surprise our server was a young woman, a friend of my daughter's, who many years ago lived with my family, when she had no place to go. It was such a happy surprise to see her again, and to see her looking so beautiful and well. Serendipity. One of my favorite words.

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With great trepidation I took my play out of the drawer it was marinating in. Second drafts can be intimidating, but once I got immersed, the work went well. It's a historical play, set in a 1946 kitchen and prison cell. There are three characters, all women. I love being in that kitchen with them. The play is based on a true event and the characters were real women. Let me tell you this: women in the forties had a hard life. So many societal expectations and no room or time to have dreams of their own. The atmosphere of constantly being watched for any moral misstep was stifling.

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Today is our venue walk through. I always look forward to them. As stage manager, it's like finally seeing the playground. What's the best and fasted way to get actor A to spot X? What are the sight lines? How loud to actors have to speak, so that the audience in the back can hear every word crystal clear? Then tonight there is rehearsal. It's going to be a long and busy day.

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My heart is still bruised, like an over-ripe plum, but it is no longer leaking. I think that's what we do as humans. We incorporate grief into the daily fabric of our life, where it gets to live like silver strands in a tapestry.

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The last couple of days have been better. It's surprising all the things you can get done, with a permanent splinter lodged in your heart. I puttered, weeded the garden, and took N and the kids out for dinner.

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A Ukrainian church in our city puts on a community buffet for fifteen dollars, kids half-price. There is a huge table loaded with food, all of it homemade. Yesterday they had turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, cabbage rolls, pierogies, ham, baked beans, pasta, lots of salad and veggies, and to the delight of the children, corn dogs. It's communal eating, and every time we go, we get to know new people.

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Sitting at that table with family and strangers was exactly what I needed. My body, which has been held together by tension and sadness, released, and I felt the exact moment it surrendered, and a deep sense of peace took over. I wanted to stay there, in the church basement forever. I didn't want to break the spell.

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This morning I have to buckle up and do some work. Write boring reports, but I don't feel ready to dive back into playwriting yet. That's for Monday. Tomorrow is rehearsal which will energize my creative brain, and hopefully bring me back close to baseline.

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I still think of him all the time. I hope that wherever he is, he can still feel the rain on his face. I want to hug him and pull him back into this life. His life. The one he occupied for such a terribly short time.

This week has been tough. We are all still reeling, and nothing has come easy. But there have been moments of comfort, and even joy, along with profound sadness. I have been crying a lot. It's a strange kind of crying. I don't even notice the tears pooling in the corner of my eyes, running down my cheeks like silent rivers until my face is covered with wetness.

At my lowest moment I found consolation in a poem by Dorianne Laux.

"Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling. It's not so terrible she tells me, not like you think, all darkness and silence. There are windchimes and the smell of lemons, some days it rains, but more often the air is dry and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase built from hair and bones and listen to the voices of the living. I like it she says, shaking the dust from her hair, especially when they fight and sing."

This one will take awhile before it gets better. Meanwhile this life goes on. The children need bedtime stories and milk. The cat wraps herself around my ankles, begging for attention. The moon rises and sets and and rises again. The rocks on my walk have been here for four hundred million years, and they hold more sorrow than any of us can imagine. We are wounded but not broken. And so I wrap my grief in a sheepskin blanket and let the trembling of my heart soothe me to sleep.

My granddaughter just found out her best friend overdosed on Fentanyl. He was gay, and just turned seventeen. He used to come to our family dinners. My granddaughter had a fight with him, over the drugs. They didn't speak for a while. Last week he texted her out of the blue, telling her he was sorry. Then, on Wednesday, he was doing drugs with a friend who left him to die because she was scared to tell her parents. By the time she did, it was too late.

Im gutted. Sad and so damn angry. Seventeen years old. Just a boy. He loved my chicken enchiladas and always asked me to make them. He was wild, like a wizard who hasn't learned his power yet, but he would have. He was a thinker and an explorer. A risk taker, because he never knew what safety felt like. I hope you're out there, dancing with the stars, free from all the bullshit that this life dealt you. But you deserved so so much more.

It's a beautiful day out. The birds are singing and the sky is so blue, you might mistake it for a lake.

I don't want to write reports. And I don't want to go to rehearsal. I want to write. I'm obsessed with writing. I have so many ideas floating inside my brain, it's hard to navigate the real world. It's almost like a fugue state. Transitioning between fiction and reality. It's not a comfortable space. I love day dreaming, but I have so many things to do, that when I re-enter reality, it's with an unpleasant jolt of guilt. Is it deserved? I don't know. While most of these ideas never go anywhere, a few of them do.

Right now I have to feed the kids, get a load of laundry in, write a report, and go to rehearsal. And tonight my new friends invited me to come pub crawling with them. I'm pretty sure I won't be doing that. Not tonight anyway. I'm all socialed out. I really need to protect my solitude. And my writing time. Tomorrow is family dinner, we are going to the Open Street festival. On Tuesday I want to go hiking.

Sometimes it all feels so chaotic, like a fever dream I might never wake up from. Would that really be so bad?

My son L and I had a disagreement. It rarely happens, and it was a long time coming.

The argument itself started over a small incident. The last time I went to visit him, I left a day early. He was hurt, said I prioritize his sister and her kids over him and his family.

I get why he feels this way. His sister lives ten minutes from me, he is a three hour drive away. I make it a point to visit his family at least once a month, and I stay from Thursday to Monday morning. But this time I left on Sunday afternoon. Mostly because my other son was going to visit his sister, and I wanted to hitch a ride to avoid taking what I call the germtube. And L and his family attended a birthday party, so I would have just been sitting around, waiting for them to come home. Those were my justifications.

But as always with these small, trivial seeming arguments, there was an iceberg below the surface.

Visiting his home has become increasingly more uncomfortable. His wife is incredibly passive aggressive. When I first arrive, she doesn't say hello, does not acknowledge my presence. It's only when my son says, "my mom said hello", that she greets me, pretending she didn't notice. She refuses to let me sleep in the spare bedroom, and puts me up in the toy room, where there is zero privacy or space to put my belongings. Every time I go there she serves sausages or hot dogs for dinner. My son has reminded her many times I don't like sausages, yet, every single visit they appear on the menu. She has an obsessive need to control everything, and flies into rages when we run a few minutes behind, or when we cook things she hasn't specifically approved. She is the family scheduler, and every time I visit, the weekend is packed full with visits from her side of the family and invitations to their friends. L used to come to visit once a month for family dinner with the boys. She rarely attended. He hasn't been here in a long time. His Sundays are booked months in advance. But the biggest reason why weekends there are problematic, is that her moods run everyone in the house. We all walk on eggshells when she is home. L sees it and says, "My wife is batshit crazy. I know it's emotionally abusive, but I want my marriage to work, so I take it." They've been married for 11 years, and because I love my grandchildren, I have also quietly put up with it. To keep the relationship. But it was definitely part of the reason why I left early, and why I have been dragging my feet a bit over visiting. And of course my son has noticed, and feels hurt.

So yesterday, during the argument over me leaving early, I told him the truth. I told him I hate the eggshell walk, the way she humiliates him in front of others, the passive aggressiveness that seeps into every interaction.

It didn't go over well. He immediately jumped to her defense, which I expected. And this was exactly what I wanted to avoid for the last eleven years. My son feeling caught in the middle.

Two years before my son and his wife got married, her mother was murdered. As a former psych nurse, I can see that most of her behavior stems from severe, untreated PTSD. She has never sought therapy or mental health help for any reason. She mocks my son and anyone who is in therapy, which is for "crazy " people. But the behavior is escalating, and it affects all of her relationships.

I don't know where this will go from here. I love my son and my grandchildren and I want to have a good relationship with them. And it's not even that I wish I could undo what happened. Pretending everything was fine stopped working, so it would have happened sooner or later. But I felt incredibly sad last night, and the sadness still lingers this morning.

I know my son and I will work through this eventually. Something has been fractured, but like Hemingway said, "The world breaks everyone but afterward many are stronger at the broken places." I'm holding out hope.

Let me tell you a story. It happened a long time ago, and it goes like this.

A newly out lesbian mother of five meets a seasoned lesbian at nursing school. One wants a summer fling, the other a partner for life. Only one of them is telling the truth. When they are still together, by Christmas they become partners. They muddle along for a few years, breaking up often and reconciling, but the exit sign is always lit up. There are the usual tensions, unrealistic expectations, and external forces of aging parents and young children. It was hard for them both. One of them lived in a pressure cooker all the time, while the other took time-outs on her mothers couch. And even when they got married and lived in a house with children and eventually, grandchildren, one of them made sure that the other wouldn't benefit financially, if things didn't work out.

One day an incident with one of the children heightened the tensions to the point where ugly things were screamed, things that could never be taken back. They will both tell you different stories about what happened, and they sound true enough. In any case the relationship was broken beyond repair. There was nothing left and only rubble to divide. One moved on as easily as changing a pair of shoes, the other was thrust into grief so raw, it carried her to hell.

The End