An Unmarried Woman

Get out of town.
2.10.10

Let’s talk about a super diversion when the blues come calling: a spa trip!  Actually, depression is optional. I cannot think of anyone who wouldn’t benefit (fellows, that includes you) from a visit to a resort focused on exercise and pampering. I’ve just returned from my first experience with such a destination. Another first was being on holiday with a girlfriend. Of the 10 women in our group I think I was the only virgin on both counts. No surprise; always been a late bloomer.

First, let me clarify… I was not pampered head to toe (as my envious mum imagined), though I might have been. Instead I logged well over 20,000 steps daily, danced, stretched, swam, rode and listened… to lectures, travel companions, music and that voice inside me that said, “do this more often.”

I admit it. Since starting this blog with the intention of grabbing life, I had fallen head first into “situational depression,” I just didn’t have a two-word tag for it until Judith (my Tulsa roommate) mentioned it recently in conversation. Jud is one of my inspirations, a woman ahead of me on the journey of becoming single after a long marriage.

I Googled the term, AKA “adjustment disorder.” Didn’t need a doctor to confirm it is what has ailed me recently. Check it out: http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-adjustment-disorder Good news is it tends to run its course in six months. Summer 2010 is now in my sights and I feel better already.

Back to Red Mountain Spa in St George, Utah. If you can reach Las Vegas, it’s a scenic shuttle ride ($25 each way on the St George Shuttle 800.933.8320) well worth the stretch on Interstate 15 built in the 1970’s at a cost of $1 billion per mile.

We arrived well after dark so the resort – unfamiliar and cloaked in darkness under a cloudy, starless sky – seemed massive. The light of day revealed a charming, intimate collection of buildings the color of the surrounding, stunning sandstone and gardens exquisitely landscaped.

I was slow to change gears. The first day I was quite content to hike in Snow Canyon, show up for meals, spend time struggling with a WiFi connection in the business center (determined to be productive on the work front), participate in a Chi ball class and attend a lecture about the seven chakras. The word “chakra” is Sanskrit for “wheel.” The chakra system was developed in India in the middle ages. I drifted off to sleep that night resolved to tackle my yellow or Solar Plexus Chakra imbalance (Jud – my roomie – tells me I talked “a mile a minute” in my sleep that night).

Toward that end, the next day I hiked further into Snow Canyon, took my first yoga class in nine years, sweated and giggled through a Zumba class (shaking your body to Latin music that leaves you completely drenched and very happy) and managed not to drown in, yes, my first water aerobics class by a fancier name before returning to the outdoor whirlpool to emerge myself up to my ear lodes in warm, bubbling water.

The third day brought yet another experience – riding to the south end of the canyon on horseback. I was hoping my love of animals would give me a leg up; I last remember being introduced to riding at age 8 on holiday in Hawaii. All I really needed was our guide’s introductions: “Tits in the air, upper back arched, lower back relaxed and moving with the same motion as making love.”

Two weeks ago the facebook page “Falling asleep while cuddling” had 1,936,898 fans when I somehow stumbled upon it. The site isn’t the type thing I’d know to look or search for on the Net. Since I “friended” it, 42,802 more have joined it. I am a student of social network marketing and an incurable romantic. Watching this number tick upward warms my heart.

2.2.10

The inside of an icebox tells a lot about a person.

Think about it. The bookcase may say, “Great cook, poetry reader.” The appliance contents may instead say, “I live on TV dinners and am not sensitive to mold.”

When a friend traveling in Arkansas over the holidays sent me a photo of the inside of the cabin’s icebox, I didn’t ask “why?” Instead I solicited friends to send similar photos for an album of “Icebox Art.” One sent me a saucy photo of all the hot sauce bottles arranged together in her icebox.  Others willingly participated but offered excuses for the state of their icebox.

What is in your icebox? What does it say about your life?

I have enough OCD to ensure a tidy icebox. Countless times I asked Joel, “Do you really need 5 jars of pickles?” Now my icebox answers, “the pickle, olive, canned tuna fish, celery loving fellow no longer resides here.”

2.1.10
I went searching tonight.
Searching for comfort.
Searching for rhythm.
Looking for the brighter side to life.

For several days I have had a craving for fried chicken and mashed potatoes; buttery corn on the cob would have been the piece de resistance. Even more than a flavorful, fatty meal (I had a show-stopper lamb dish Sunday night at Wild Wood), I desperately needed new music – a powerful mood setter.

The brilliantly performed old torch songs, high-energy soundtracks (yeah, I’ve defied gravity with the witches of Wicked) and free-spirited Reggae classics in my iTunes library were worn out and not fitting the bill in terms of boosting my mood. And the Safeway Deli fried chicken had the aroma and taste of cardboard. All was not lost. I did discover a wonderful 1974 recording by Irene Kral titled “Where is Love.”

Irene Kral died at 46. She was a ballad singer inspired by Carmen McRae ( big chapter in my music library) and made more famous posthumously when Clint Eastwood used her recordings in his 1995 movie, The Bridges of Madison County. Her recording is intimate, passionate and will speak to your heart.

As recently as this summer I told my friend Elizabeth, “Anyone going through a breakup should eliminate love songs and listen only to instrumentals.” But maybe there is some comfort in being reminded we are all vulnerable creatures seeking love.

1.30.10

A mere whiff and I was transported.

I was walking to the dog park in Portland’s Pearl district today with the Whippets. I intersected paths with two skinny teenage fellows dressed in tattered jeans and hooded jackets as I turned north at 13th and Northrup. They had a few step lead on the three of us. That’s when it happened.

The taller one was smoking. I usually give these types space but before I could rein in Leo and Bliss, a wisp of clove cigarette smoke met my nose.

I was instantly transported to a flurry of images. I was nine years old and hanging out in the alley behind our house in Sungei Gerong with the live-in staff. The air was dripping with humidity. The sun had set beyond the Musi River precisely at six o’clock. The clove cigarettes were hand rolled by Konta and not very tightly rolled. One puff and a mouthful of loose tobacco filled my mouth.

I was in my early twenties, disembarking from a Qantas flight in Jakarta, returning to Indonesia for the first time in over ten years. I was on an audit assignment for MAPCO.

It was 2000 and I was in Bali with our son Clay, overwhelmed less by the scale of the resort than by many familiar scents, visual, sounds that hadn’t been part of my life for over 20 years but were almost painfully familiar and carved.

Close your eyes and inhale. And don’t just do it as you read this but inhale at different venues throughout your day. What comes to mind? What emotions surface?

Ask me about my mother and I will tell you, as I once told Tulsa World Reporter Laurie Winslow, childhood memories of my mother are of a woman hosting cocktail parties overseas for Exxon ex-pats. Dressed in black after-five ensembles, she often took time to tuck me into bed. I took comfort in the party sounds beyond my bedroom door, much as I did hearing a TV tuned to Perry Mason other nights. The scent that rounded out the party nights was a delicate combination of Shalimar, bourbon and cigarettes.

Two years ago I was very fortunate to be in New York during the opening week of August: Osage Country. The play, by Oklahoma playwright Tracy Letts, went on to win the Tony for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize.

Sitting with nine friends (as well as Tom Hanks and his family at the end of our row) I was dressed in a black evening dress and wearing, for the first time, Shalimar. I had purchased a bottle earlier during the day at Saks Fifth Avenue from an elegant sales clerk who had herself worn the scent a time or two.

It was a memorable evening.

“There are a lot of sexless marriages in this town,” a friend confided to me over breakfast earlier this month at the Blue Moon Bakery in Tulsa.

Didn’t know that. Been a pretty private person up until now. Does that mean “loveless marriages?” I don’t think so, do you?

I think it means couples have become distracted and lazy and romance has suffered. I suspect many a mid-life crisis might have been avoided if we practiced what a friend from Little Rock observed tonight: “Everything changed the day I figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in my life.”

Remember the standard time management illustration involving rocks, pebbles, sand and then water? There’s time when we know our priorities. But we get distracted and when distracted we lose things…keys, sunglasses, gloves, love.

In the New York Times Bestseller, The Five Love Languages, author Gary Chapman identifies the love languages as:

• Words of Affirmation
• Quality of Time
• Receiving Gifts
• Acts of Service
• Physical Touch

Three struck me as vital. Three sounded familiar. A friend loaned me the book last night. With limited time over morning coffee today I went straight to page 115: Physical Touch.

Sex gets headlines. A Dartmouth College study found women retrospectively rated sex as the activity that produced the single largest amount of happiness. The study also found sex has a stronger effect on happiness in highly educated people and in people who had only one sexual partner the previous year. Where do they come up with this stuff? I put more stock in a poll by WomenOntheWeb.com that found 47% of women considered sexual fulfillment “not the most important factor but up there on the list.” Up there indeed.

Chapman appears to get it…at least my version of the language of physical touch. What is important is the nuances, the hand held while crossing the street, the arm linked around a waist while mingling at a cocktail party, the foot that brushes yours under the restaurant table, the neck nuzzled while standing at the kitchen sink, the look across a crowded room that says (and speaks volumes), “Lots of people here but I see you.” That electricity is what I unexpectedly found this past summer for the second time in my life. What an eye opener and the beginning of learning more about myself at age 50 when I really envisioned pursuing a simple solo life with my two Whippets. His name is Jake.

As always, Trix

• A Portland Prince.
• Stuck Women.
• Roommates.
• Habits.
• Casual Relationships.
• Two Dogs.
• A Good Read.
• Exploring Thrift Shops.
• Seeing A Therapist.
• Having An Affair.
• Single Vs It’s Complicated.
• Spa Trip.
• Pole Dancing.

1.13.2010

I think it possible every person in a relationship has at some time thought, “What if?”

All our friends’ marriages are on the rocks, are we “special” or next?
No one knows me better but do we still relate?
Would being alone be better?
In the hope of finding love again, do I risk being alone at my age?
Can I make it alone?
Am I expecting too much, when look at what I’ve got?

Some of us part ways. Others stay married.
But do we ever stop asking, “What if?”

I am sitting in the Denver Airport waiting for a Southwest flight. I am going home to “my” apartment in Portland. For the first time Joel won’t be there to greet me, to hug me after our two wildly enthusiastic Whippets, Leo and Bliss, predictably respond to my return with a wild dance involving eight slender limbs propelling them in all directions simultaneously. Leo will bark and nibble on Bliss ears, determined to get all the attention for himself. But tonight, in five hours, my best friend won’t be standing behind the Whippets grinning at the spectacle as he has every month I’ve returned to Portland from business trips to Tulsa.

Tonight, without an official document, circumstances and situations within and beyond my control have brought me to tonight when I become an unmarried woman.

Have you pondered separation? If you’ve done it, what was your experience?

I wonder, do separations result more often in reconciliations or endings?

As always, Trix

1.9.2010

This is a story about coming of age at 51. The heroine in this madcap adventure is me.  Someone, by recent disappointments, made smarter, wiser and better able to appreciate what comes my way than I was at say 21. The setting: my two cities, Portland, Oregon and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The story is of surviving and hopefully flourishing by embracing not just another man, but LIFE.  Think of what that means. Auntie Mame described life as a banquet. I don’t intend to be one of those fools who starve when so much is within reach. I am hungry.

As I see it, this is the time to live loudly in order to find my true center. By loudly I mean boldly, uninhibited by who might be watching or judging even when faltering frequently is a certainty, as in ending a 25-year marriage to one’s first boyfriend.  Don’t we usually applaud and cheer on the brave soul who willingly risks making mistakes, dusts herself off and jumps back in the game?  I do!  Gotta love someone with spunk and passion, even if guided by a compass absent a true north. What better, more endearing role model is there?

This blog will be a dialogue (between you and me) about artful, thoughtful exploration and living. I will share the good and the bad of all manner of discoveries (food, shops, activities, books, art…) and reflect periodically on the nuances of changing status from “married” to “unmarried,” including what I recall of the events leading up to this outcome.

Stats reveal in 2005 “unmarried head of household” became the USA majority. Hoping my writing might strike a chord with an occasional visitor is the powerful motivation fueling this endeavor.  Scribbling in a journal might be ideal therapy during a parting of ways, but as it is for many women, doing something solely for myself frequently kills its chances from the start.  I am a giver, a person defined by her relationships. I make a home, feathering my nest, intending it to be a place for others to visit often.

January is an ideal time to slip between the covers with a good book.  Shall we start with a few suggestions for winter reading or ask the question, “Why not stay married to your best friend when the spark is gone?”

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” Alan Cohen

As always, Trix