My sentiments exactly….

But I knew. He was drinking again.

When he came back through the door a few weeks later, he had his hat pulled back down over his face and dark glasses covering his eyes. He sat next to me in his chair and I rested my hand on his knee. When they called on me to speak, I started sobbing like someone who has just been told she is missing a limb, but OH WAIT!! Here it is again!! — a strange combination of relief and sorrow and grief at how fragile this life is. How much I depend on the others, my sweet friends like P., to get me through. Am I really this weak and dependent? Yes. Absolutely yes.

P will have 6 months this Saturday and yesterday he told me, eyes lowered, that he is moving away. I felt the lump in my throat and looked away long enough to swallow my fake good wishes. “It will be ok, sweetie, we can still email,” he tells me, but I’m not so sure.

I turn to him and pretend to joke, “You know, P, I find this move of yours incredibly selfish. What about me? We were supposed to keep taking our time together!!”

He knows I mean it. He puts his hand on my knee. I put my head on his shoulder and breathe, fingers crossed, prayers sent to God or whoever, Please keep him safe. Keep both of us sober.

***

I had the great honor to be included in a wonderful dinner the other evening in Seattle. L and I have known each other through emails and stories from our partners (who are good friends), but I wasn’t prepared for how sweet, kind, funny, and completely adorable he is in person. The dinner was a farewell of sorts*** and I had to excuse myself part way through because I couldn’t keep my composure. No greater buzz kill than a sober person at a goodbye dinner who is crying into her Diet Coke.

***Message from L. who has Terminal Cancer***

Please get your skin checked by a dermatologist for a baseline and then regularly after that. Please do what you love NOW and don’t put it off.

We love you J & L!!

I’ve caught up with some of my lovely on-line writer pals and will meet some more of them this evening.

Kid-free vacations are so relaxing.. which is perhaps obvious to most thinking people but hasn’t always been so obvious to me.

I just returned from the Frida Kahlo Exhibit at the SF Museum of Modern Art and was blown away by the beautiful lengths many of us go to kill ourselves off for love. Here is a woman who suffered, transformed physically and emotionally and transformed her suffering into art. But her sorrow in many of the paintings is palpable. It jumped out and grabbed me by the throat until I had to swallow and breathe.

I turn 40 this week. It is something I’ve dreaded for over a year now. 40 seems so auspicious, so significant. At 30, I was newly divorced and childless, sad but carefree. At 40 life is so much complicated, more rich, more varied than I ever imagined. So this is it. The gateway to another decade.

What will happen?

That question used to have this answer: something better will happen. Something someone somewhere better than this will happen.

And now, for the first time, I feel down to my bones that the real answer is this: I don’t know. I never ever did know really… but a combination of wishful thinking and a very rich internal life kept me imagining other scenarios.. grander vistas than just this moment.

One year ago today I was still drinking more than ever, miserably unhappy in my marriage and with my life. I’d just ended an affair and felt like giving up, like all my life was good for was raising the kids and trying not to die. It was a grim and terrible secret.

Sobriety has given me my life back, has opened up new possibilities for work, family, love, that I honestly could never have imagined, but that is all so trite compared to this simple fact: I am happy now. Not always, not forever, but in this moment.

I do not drink anymore, one day at a time. I have a place to go every day, a fellowship of people who are also trying not to drink so that they can be better stronger more loving people. In their brokenness and hope, I see something majestic and lovely.

This week I am 40. This week I have 9 months of sobriety.

I am grateful beyond words…

***

On more life happens notes:

1. The book is tooling along – 1/2 the manuscript is due this Friday… Thank you to everyone willing to slog through this first draft.

2. My parents are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary tomorrow – congratulations folks!

3. Looking forward to attending BlogHer next week sober… I’m sure it will be an entirely different experience this year

4. At Babble: 10 Signs that Daddy Isn’t Slacking Anymore…

Who wouldn’t want another adult around? I think kids need an adult-child ratio of at least 1:1. When you’re tired or they’re sick, 2:1 is probably more like it. Grandparents can provide some of this type of assistance, especially if your crew is as divorced and remarried as mine, but grandparents usually come with strings attached, and much less energy than they need to wrangle little people. When we have a babysitter around (every other year or so) to help with bath-time or cooking or cleaning up, it is astounding how much easier childrearing becomes. I think some of the wisdom of days gone by (boarding schools and governesses and “children should be seen and not heard”) is not fully appreciated by modern parents. We are so hands-on much of the time. Even when we work full-time, we’re full-throttle with the child psychology books and the guilt and the creeping belief that every little thing we do will land our kids in years of therapy.

Read more today at Imperfect Parent…

The thing about paying attention and trying to live more honestly, is that you have more accountability to yourself. It’s a good thing, but it often interferes with that old fun of “following one’s heart” (translation: doing whatever the hell you want if it makes you happy).

I’ll not claim anything even close to improvement or clarity or life is perfect, but I will say that sobriety and following a spiritual program is something I cherish now… sometimes even more than having fun, or following my natural inclinations and instincts.

Plus? I’m getting too old for this shit.

Today at Babble: When Parents Talk ‘Street’ 

My brother was extremely popular… One girl fanted when he graduated (I kid you not) and other girls pretended to befriend me just to be near him “Hi Rachael. I want to come over and hang out. Is your brother there?” His powerful beauty and charisma spilled over to the Blue Pinto so this car became cool by association.

I was a band-nerd who didn’t talk to boys until I was 19 unless it was about God, and unfortunately hanging out with my beloved (if at times indifferent) older brother did not have the same cool-by-association effect on me.

But the Pinto was different. It was an automatic and it could go zero to 35mph in under 30 minutes. It was a love machine.

I have a warm place in my heart for junkie cars that you can pay for with cash. I was raised in a series of beaters each given names like “The Blue Bomber,” “Mystic Sea,” and “Gloria.” These were cars you could really connect with… The kind you could talk to when they failed to roll their windows down properly. The kind even 12 year old younger brothers were allowed to drive around neighborhood parking lots.

The days of driving cars with more character than safety are long-gone… but the love lives on…

To get paid to do something I love is an honor I cannot completely fathom.

Thanks to all for the ongoing love and support.

***

In other wonderful news, my beloved younger brother Mark and his beautiful wife Rebecca have a brand new healthy gorgeous baby boy! Welcome little angel!

***

Also, a reflection on Memorial Day and LBJ’s Great Society

This Babble post on 5 Mother’s Day Do’s and Dont’s was intended as a jokey gift-guide anti-Precious Moments commentary. But the smoke is coming out of their ears, people!!

Clearly, mothers should be glad of any gift they’re given and just be quiet already.