Life

It seems I came close to losing my son today...again. And never even knew it. Got a call this afternoon that he'd been in a wreck and was taken to the hospital. We've been down this road a few times. When he called me, he was being his normal self complaining about how long it was taking for anybody to do anything. Another dry, dusty, well traveled road. He couldn't answer any of my questions...how, where, who. When I told him to calm down, he hung up on me. Well traveled road. I didn't go to the hospital. I guess I should have, but previous experience did not encourage me to do so. He eventually walked out, in paper scrubs. Then walked until he found a phone and called me. I picked him up near his work. He then tells me that he thinks his car rolled, then wrapped around a phone pole after being broadsided. He was ejected through the driver's window. He still has no idea where this occurred. I guess I should be glad that he could get up and walk out of the hospital...no matter how much I want to ring his neck for doing it.

Does experience count?

Having been married over 30 years, I never did internet dating. I have, however, poked around in a few with single friends. Some of the questions are so weird...and useless. I guess they are trying to poke into some deep psychological space, I don't know. It seems there could be more appropriate questions.

I remember seeing my husband eating ketchup on his fried chicken shortly after we got married. I was shocked! It didn't gross me out...as ketchup on scrambled eggs does, but we had dated for two years. How did I not know this? I often used this as an example with friends that proclaimed they knew everything about their mate. After 30 years, we each still occasionally surprise the other.

Actually what set my mind to this subject, was my tossing and turning, like a fish on dry land, trying to get comfortable in bed. I pull on the comforter, turning this way and that, covering and exposing body surfaces. I can NOT stand to have the foot of my bed tucked in...can not, can not, can not. When I stay at a hotel, the first thing I do is pull the sheets free. Imagine if I married a man that required a neat, pristine, made bed. We would drive each other insane. But I would never have thought to ask him. 

We also, in the beginning, disagreed about where the bed goes in the room and which side we each slept on. Changing sides is easy for some, not so much for others.

There are so many issues when you decide to share your space with someone else. Who knows maybe those psychological questions are valid. I've been married for 30 years, what do I know?

Challenges

I often explain it away as, I am an only child. That might be part of it...a small minuscule part. I am also hard headed, having not fallen far from the tree that was my mother. I think my desire to win battles started with her. It was be strong or be ground to dust under her heel as she trod over you. Whatever the reason, I will not let go of a fight once I have sunk in my teeth, especially if I feel wronged.

Recently, I have had three challenges that fall into this category. Incidents that left me feeling like I was being taken advantage of, treated like an idiot, blatantly ignored and or lied to. This, as usual, was not setting well. Today, I think the last of the three was settled. Promises were made, just waiting for the action. Promises made by the owner of a company after I logically disputed my way through his underlings. They could not argue or belittle me into believing what they wanted...I just would not see it their way. Going to the top seems to be the way to success. This can sometimes be very difficult, as the top is often shielded by layers upon layers of people that interfere with attempts to contact them. After all, the President of a company can't be bothered by a peon like me. Though sometimes, with enough persistence, you get lucky. I did once, after many phone calls, emails and the such, something of mine ended up on what I would guess was a pretty big desk in Detroit. After that, things happened fast. To this day, I get a reaction every time they look up my name at a Ford dealer.

Other times, it's not so hard to get to the top. I recently dropped the Mayor a nice email asking why I had a gigantic whole in front of my house that I couldn't get the powers that be to address. First, this was not a pothole. When I say gigantic, it eventually took two dump trucks worth of gravel to fill in. It had been slowly expanding over the course of ten, or so, months. My pleas had gotten crude, temporary, fixes...they threw plywood over it and put up barriers. One polite email to the Mayors office and, wham bam, I got hardhat crews bending over backwards to get that hole filled in. I sent a nice thank you to the Mayor's office as well. And it should be easy to contact our elected officials, they should not be high and mighty ensconced in towers unreachable to the average Joe...or Josephine. But I will admit that the response was better than I expected.

So I have managed to tackle, one by one, these challenges to my mental well being. So for now, I am pleased and unencumbered by annoyances. I am sure it won't last long. But for now I will just relax and bask in my victory.

Amazed

I spoke to a young woman, a friend of my son, last night and she said something that has remained with me. She recently survived a forty foot fall from a waterfall. As she climbed to the top, the rocks gave way. An accident that should have killed her, and did buy her much time in the hospital and continued therapy. What she said, that struck me, was her plan to have the waterfall tattooed on her back. At first, I wondered why she would want to permanently commemorate such an event on her body. But as she raised her shirt and showed me the nasty scar that stretched across her abdomen, I realized the water fall had already left physical marks...nasty, angry, permanent marks. I didn't ask her her reasoning. But as I thought about it again this morning, I realized that the tattoo would show the beauty of the place that had drawn her to climb those rocks. Maybe even a reminder of what she had survived. A reminder of her strength.