Moving On

Santa Monica, California

No one comes from nothing; we are haunted by our past every day. Months ago, while dancing with Joel at our local salsa dive/club I caught sight of a man out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing my husband's shirt. Surely, it was not his shirt; the shirt from Banana Republic he is wearing in a photo of us taken at a Christmas Eve dinner in Monterey, back almost four years ago. But I was still near stopped in my steps, as I had given that shirt away to a local charity thrift store just before seeing this man, this salsero, the one dancing away in my dead husband's shirt.

In the beginning it happened a lot. I would see him driving on the 405 freeway, or hear him around the house. But he is gone. Gone from my life after three and a half decades. And as days pass he is even more so. Still, I sit at his desk, at my business, with much of him around me; his handwriting on files and file boxes; his Cholula sauce still in the refrigerator; the reading glasses at the bottom of a desk drawer. And yet. And yet, he is gone.

Sandra passed away two and a half years ago, and my mom, just two. Eighteen months since he has been gone. I live alone. And I am different. "Funny," he had said to me. "You used to be afraid to be alone." And sometimes still. But I come home late, after meeting a friend, or dropping J off at his home in Agoura Hills. Mostly, I have remembered to leave lights on. I don't always remember to close the gate. But I do my best as days, months, and now more than a year has dropped off. And I am leaving the business. Retiring.

My therapist speaks to me about moving on. My pilates trainer and friend talks about being mindful and present. You can get stuck, so you try not to. You try to build new memories on top of the ones that will always be there. You try to wipe what was bad, or, at the very least, let it go. Drop. In the beginning it was navigating a moguled course. There wasn't a flat space to catch my breath nor look around. You're strong so many people repeated. I didn't feel strong. I don't feel strong. Joel tells me that I don't have to feel strong; that people tell me that because I get up every day and keep going. I run the business, I administrate my mom's trust, and I do my best to keep up a house that is too much of everything.

Moving on means making decisions, not just getting up every day and going, strong or weak. I will try to make decisions before the end of the year: to stop being sad; to be more thoughtful to the people who mean a lot to me, especially Joel; to try to get on the road. I will try to sleep, laugh, and dance more and more. I do understand that moving on means deciding to live, and trying to really live each day. I am ready to move on. Or, as I have been told to think, I choose to move on. Are readiness and choice different? Must they come conjoined in this process? Regardless, I fear both are wishful thinking at this point in time while there are still the dancing ghosts who are wearing his shirts...

Tattoo You

Los Angeles, California

A while back, our mutual friend, Debra, asked Lydia and me if either of us had ever thought about getting a tattoo. Lydia immediately said no. I said that I had considered it. The big surprise was when Debra came back saying that she had, as well. I doubt if there was much surprise engendered by learning that I had considered it, but Debra? She doesn't seem like the tattoo type, though I am sure I am dating myself by revealing that I think there is such a thing. Tattoos are now ubiquitous on women, starting with the tramp stamp and progressing to sleeves. In the salsa world, there is an abundance of tattoos, and that might be a random sample of the world at large, or at least Los Angeles at large.

This all came back to me tonight as I was watching Thelma and Louise. I love Thelma and Louise, which is probably inconsistent with who I am, though with tastes that lean towards watching Downton Abbey, reading The Spellman Files + listening to both A Prairie Home Companion + Dodgers baseball games on the radio, my choice of entertainment may be hard to pin down.  Anyway, I love Thelma and Louise. I love the unraveling of their journey, and the way it all gets looser, including the look of both of them, as their story tumults towards the end. And it's got some great lines in it, like when Thelma states something like Call me crazy, but I think I've got a knack for this sh*t, after they lock the state trooper into his trunk.

Even though (spoiler alert!!) the girls don't make it, it is nevertheless a story of survival and confronting what crosses their path. It's about their finding the strength within them. I could go on, but it's Thelma and Louise. If you don't know it, or you couldn't figure out what it was about when you saw it, maybe you should watch it (again + again, as I do).

So, as I was watching it tonight, I thought of another tattoo. My fantasy tattoo is a hibiscus. I once had one drawn on my ankle when I was in Hawaii, freehand + in henna. It was beautiful and I grieved as it faded. So I thought about getting one, permanent. Then I remembered that my friend, Todd, told me that the anklet tattoo he got was so painful that he wanted to stop in the middle of it, but he was too vain to walk around with what would appear to be half a tattoo. So I put the ankle hibiscus on the back burner. Still, thinking about Thelma + Louise, I thought that the calligraphic initials, T+L would mean a lot to me. Not for the girls, but for my father and my uncle's initials-- two men who meant a great deal in my life. And that it would be emblematic of the courage and survival I have come hard to learn is essential in life.

Just after my life changed forever, Matthew, a member of the outlaws (in-laws) who, nevertheless remains in touch with me, showed me his most recent tattoo. It is of Hiroshima. Matthew is mixed Japanese-American, so I initially thought he felt that connection to it. But, he explained that he had gotten it because it reminds him daily that, regardless of whatever he is going through, someone else has had it worse. I don't think I need that reminder, though I do have to poke myself with it now and again. And it is true: T+L sail off into the sunset, because not everyone gets to go home like E.T. And while some of us may feel that a dark cloud is attached to us as we cope with whatever it is that the universe has thrown at us, that dark cloud is very different from Hiroshima's. So while I currently struggle with what feels like a total eclipse of my very own, I try to get a purchase on what I have accomplished so far. It has been more than two years of plain and simple hell. But, so far, I have survived. I have survived. And that is no small thing. I never want to go through anything like this again, but I have learned that I am stronger than I ever knew. Though, truth be told, I am far from thinking, like Thelma, that I've got a knack for this sh*t. While I have so far survived the journey, there were a vast amount of stretches on the road that I will always, always wish I could have detoured. But that is surely true of all of us, including Thelma. And, most certainly, Louise.