The Road Trip

This weekend Ryan, Ivy, Trevor and I are going to Las Vegas for an impromptu weekend getaway. Our two friends J&M are coming with us. Since Ryan and I haven’t been on any sort of trip since COVID came along, this is a big deal to me. We’ve gotten our vaccines, cases are low, and the idea of glittering surfaces, fun, neon lights, and bright colors is enticing. I’ve been pretty excited about the trip for a while now and so have been working on a playlist for the long drive.

Ivy has an EP on Spotify so I downloaded the app. Since then I’ve been adding songs left and right, mostly from when I was a child. Though Ryan is only five years older than me, his musical tastes run older and he’s not a fan of most of the “new” music. Most of the songs on my “nice music” playlist are ones I memorized all the words to throughout my life. Because most of the songs are from the 1960s and 70s, those are also the “add new song” recommendations I get. The list is pretty limited.

Last weekend Ivy and Trevor were visiting and I showed them the playlist. Sadly, I realized that Ivy didn’t know a lot of them. I wondered how that was possible. Weren’t these all the songs that were a soundtrack to her life too? No. I was inadvertently leaving out whole chunks of my life on this playlist, still stuck in the songs I “grew up” with and leaving off the ones that carried me along as I was actually growing.

This got me thinking of all the road trips I’ve had since Ivy came along. We made many, ten-hour, each-way roundtrips to our relatives in Prince Edward Island in the summers. We took many trips (car, ferry, ferry, ferry, car) to East Hampton to see those same relatives. We made trips from Massachusetts to New Jersey to see That Writer who was in our lives for a while. We had lots of plane trips all over the place (Curacao, Canada, Florida, New Orleans, Chicago…) but the car trips were the best. Stress free and plenty of time to sing ourselves hoarse.

Before Ivy was around, Arnie G. and I made a few, six-hundred-mile trips to see my Dad, stepmom, and sister in western New York. Back then we listened to Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, and Pink Floyd on cassette. Then Ivy joined us and it was the Annie or The Little Mermaid soundtrack on CD. When Ivy and I were with Husband # 2 we often drove to Poughkeepsie, NY to see his family. We didn’t sing as loudly and openly on those trips but music was always a backdrop. I’d taken Ivy to see Mama Mia in Boston so that soundtrack was a regular favorite in that era.

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I tried to think of which songs we’d listened to during those other times, the ones that brought me here. Suddenly I wanted to immerse myself in all the music from those unsettled years, the drama years when I was always searching for something instead of just living. There’s some 80s music in my list but then it sort of stops in time. I called Ivy yesterday and said, “Hey remember that trip we took to western Canada with That Writer that summer? Besides that schizophrenic psycho song, what was that other one we really liked that he played over and over in the car?” Without missing a beat, she blurted it out, though the trip was from about thirteen years ago. “Second Chance. By Shinedown.” All these years later it was fresh in her mind. Once I listened to it again I remembered so many others from around that time. Shine by Collective Soul, and some Kenny Wayne Shepherd. Zombie from The Cranberries was a memory from the time I sang in the Writer band in Burbank.

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I deleted some of the old songs, because my life playlist can’t be solely from one, short time period, or handful of bands. I have been vibrantly alive for fifty-two years and that’s a lot of music. Once I started adding songs from the 1990s to current time, Spotify changed its recommendations to paint a better picture of my past. The new collection of songs remind me of old relationships, old houses, new towns, fights and friendships, relatives I don’t see enough or those who have passed. They remind me of loneliness and celebration, middle school, high school, night school, all the jobs and towns, and years and years of becoming who I am now.

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As we take the road trip this weekend, I won’t be the Carly curled up in a ball of safe music from her childhood , but the woman she has become because of everything that happened since then, with music playing in the background along the way. Ivy’s life playlist and ours intersect but they don’t totally overlap. I had special songs before her, and since she moved out, with Ryan. And she has loads of them that are hers alone, and some with Trevor from their many trips.

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When I was young, my mother didn’t listen to music much because the songs reminded her of other times and other people. For me, I want to be reminded. During this trip I’ll run the gamut of all my years in music and be all the happier for it. I am woman, hear me roar. Yes, I added that song too.

We look back at pieces of our lives and sometimes only remember the bad, or only the good. However it actually was, those times and people need to be remembered, and celebrated, for better or worse, because they got us where we ended up.

To playlists, and the biggest road trip of all. Life.

What Could Have Been

Ivy sent me a meme the other day. It was in block colorful letters and said “Remember that once you dreamed of being where you are now.” This made me smile. There’s something dreamlike about how our lives have turned out. Ivy said she feels the same and suggested looking at my hands to make sure I’m awake. That’s the telltale test which seems to have replaced “pinch yourself.”

It’s not that we have perfect lives. My job entails a ton of brain activity, and hot flashes and too many pets in the bed rob me of a good night’s sleep. I switch between being exhausted and overly energetic. I’m overweight and drowning in credit card and student loan debt. My Five-Year, Debt-Free plan keeps getting extended. The animals are old, most of them, and very costly. Ivy has chronic pain and a future filled with medical uncertainties. Will her disease progress? Will she have a stroke, or need a new kidney? Will her future baby inherit her disease? What if she never lands a high-paying job that will allow me to stop paying her bills?

But beneath all those external situations and possibilities, there’s a tangible sense that we belong exactly where we are, a certainty that’s plunked us into an unwavering state of contentment.

Opportunities are appearing and falling into place with inexplicable swiftness.  I’m writing fiction again after a hiatus of what feels like a year. Ryan’s friend, now my friend, Debbie, has been nudging me to write a web series for a couple of years. I’ve been saying no, resistant for reasons I can’t defend, but she finally pushed me hard enough until I conceded. It helped that only a week or two before, I got to “act” on a reality show/ courtroom drama, a last-minute opportunity that popped up. It was surprisingly fun, and being in the studio, getting “hair and makeup” and improvising lines was alluring. I finally grasped the “acting bug” phenomenon people talk about. When Debbie took me to a studio later, and we brainstormed the series idea with another friend, I left in an exhilarated, manic state, suddenly back to writing, for better or worse, with chronic excitement and boundless energy.

Everything I wanted is finally coming to fruition.

Ivy just got grades for her second semester, the end of her junior year. All As, all year. In her spare time, she joined a band and has been recording with them; and her summer job will be co-manager of a theater camp for kids. All endeavors that feel more fantasy than reality. She meditates every day, does yoga, often by the ocean as waves crash just beyond her.  She has found an inner peace and quiet she never imagined possible. It’s all clicking into place.

Yet sometimes I have neurotic panic moments when I worry I’ll wake up and be back in another part of my life, where none of this happened. I made so many choices over the years and my life could have turned out differently. This fear grips me sometimes, and despite the inner voice that talks me off the ledge and convinces me this is real, it’s an irrational dread I live with.

When I was in high school, I was dating a boy from Maine. Mean Guy was still with us then and I was about as miserable and hopeless as I ever have been. At one point I came home and told my mother that I was going to quit school and move to Maine. Thankfully she told me no and I listened. But if I had done that, where would I be now? Not in Southern California with Ryan, pets, Ivy, and this life.

When I was a senior in high school, I signed papers to join the Air Force. It was settled. I’d go to boot camp in the summer, get free college, and serve my time at the end. I was going into Military Intelligence because I had a flair for languages. But my mother said no and since I was only seventeen, that was that. She would NOT sign the consent form. She was correct in that by the time I was eighteen that following September I no longer wanted to join the military. But what if I had? I could have been killed. Or maybe I’d have excelled and found myself in a nice little life. I’d have a degree and solid career, maybe a military husband and a rigid, ordered life. But it wouldn’t be this life.

After I graduated from high school, I was supposed to go to college but canceled last minute, which has been mentioned before. I often regret that I didn’t get my degree. I have remorse over this I can’t get past no matter how old I get. But if I had gone, I wouldn’t be here now. Maybe I would have gotten the psychology degree I was pursuing and then gotten a Masters. Maybe a PHD. Maybe I’d have gotten a nice husband and a big house and several kids. Maybe I would have been happy. But I wouldn’t be where I am now and I wouldn’t have Ivy or Ryan or the experiences that make me who I am.

When Ivy was four-years-old, I almost moved to Canada, to Prince Edward Island. I honestly think I would have loved it as I still maintain it’s a magical place that always felt perfect. I would have been happy there, no doubt, but I would have been away from the family that helped me so much when I was raising Ivy. Even so, if I had to pick an alternate life to wake up to, it would be that path. But if I had moved to Canada, Ivy and wouldn’t have ended up here, in this life. I get grief-stricken just thinking about it.

There were a thousand other choices I’ve made over the years, ones I looked back on and regretted. Ones that seemed pointless and foolish, and that derailed advancement in my company or in my writing career. I think of the tears I shed over boys or men who broke up with me, or friends or family members who left me behind.

But those missteps and tears led me here. If I had made even one different decision, I would not be where I am now. In this life where Ivy and I belong, a life that despite its often-ethereal quality filled with uncanny coincidences, is evidently not too good to be true.

If you’ve ever done a jigsaw puzzle, you know the exhilarating feeling you get when after countless hours and days of adding one piece at a time, first the edges, then the middle and connecting pieces, you get to the point where there are only a handful of pieces left. And your excitement is overwhelming because every piece you pick up fits exactly where you think it should. It’s effortless.  You forget the frustration of the time you spent picking the wrong pieces, the drudgery of working toward something whose completion seemed an impossibility.  Instead you rejoice in the thrill of adding one piece after another with no guess work. It all flows perfectly and each little click into place brings you one step closer to finishing. You know finally, you have achieved exactly what you set out to do.

I know this is all real because I just looked at my hands. My life’s path could have led anywhere, but I’m relieved that I ended up exactly where I needed to be.

To finding all the pieces,

-Carly G.

 

Treading Water

Ivy and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We spent it with Ivy’s Dad’s family. Ivy’s Dad wasn’t there. He is absent from nearly all aspects of our lives. I haven’t discussed him much, out of privacy, and won’t now except to say that in many ways, he’s in over his head. When we first split up, he slid from a regular life, to another  more dangerous and sad one. We look at him and think, “How can he live like that?”

I mention this because we all have limits of what we can and do live with or without. And sometimes things get so out of hand, we don’t realize how far it’s gone or how bad it is. And that’s how we live in situations others say they couldn’t tolerate.

When I was with husband #2, the control freak who “kept me on a diet” for seven years, I’d panic if I gained 2-3 pounds. Then after we split, I gained another two and another two. I see how tubby I am, and wonder how this got out of control. But I manage. I bought bigger clothes. If I saw ex #2 on the street, he would look at me and wonder how I could be happy living in my own pudgy skin. I’m happy enough. It’s not as out of control as he would think. It’s a matter of perspective.

I’ve got a lot of credit card debt too. Just like the weight gain, it snuck up on me a bit at a time. I juggle it. It’s a nonstop juggling act but I pay everything on time, usually extra. I’m treading water until I can sell my place and move to California, where I’ll be sharing my expenses with Ryan. Some people, like Ryan, look at my mountain of debt and are speechless. They wonder how I can live like that, with so much owed.

A few years ago, one of the local moms said, “I don’t know how you do it. I could never be a single mom.”  I’m not sure if that was a slight or she respected me for it.  I told her that if she was forced into the situation, she’d figure it out.  I find that when we tread water long enough, we find ourselves comfortable in that pond, and that becomes the new normal. We forget we’re treading water. We call it living.

Humans only feel comfortable with what they know, what they’ve experienced. They point fingers at others, astonished they could live with fat or poverty or abuse, or live in a tiny apartment or a condo or a mansion. Or hell, a house full of cats.

On the way home from Thanksgiving dinner, I blew a tire. I ended up having to get four new ones. It cost an unexpected $650. Credit card debt. Today I took my car in for an oil change and was told I also needed spark plugs. Long story short, I paid almost $500 for various things. The clincher is, the mechanic said I need something else done that will cost $1500. I panicked. Where the hell was I going to get another $1500?

I came home and took a nap. When I awoke, I had calmed down. The car repair is just more credit card debt, more money owed, more water to tread. It’s not cancer, or death, or job loss. I’m not being evicted. And I don’t shop in the Big Girl section of the clothing store yet.

I think of Ivy’s dad and how he lives. He seems okay with the road he chose. He has grown comfortable. No matter how much we wish he lived differently, he’s not going to. Maybe forty-five is the age where all of a sudden everything clicks in. When we realize there’s no point being upset over what we can’t change, and that eventually, one way or the other, things work out. Maybe not the way we want, but somehow, things settle down.

I’m hoping when I start the next chapter of my life, I am able to reduce debt and reduce my weight. Until then though, I’m doing all right even if some people worry that I’m not like them. I resist the temptation to  tell others they should live a certain way. Life is what it is.

Here’s to treading water.

-Carly G.