Going Home

A sunny December day on La Crosse Lane

On Friday I taught an out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new themed yoga class. In the new year, I won't be teaching on Fridays anymore, just Tuesdays, which will be easier to manage schedule-wise, but I'll miss seeing my yogis twice a week.

We began with letting go of anything that 2016 asked us to let go of, and for me, that included, among other things:

1) The need for any pretense about my relationship with my parents. They refuse to acknowledge what transpired in my childhood, and yet they act as if I should be ok with having a relationship with them where I pretend everything is fine, that they haven't denied this huge aspect of my being. Definitely letting go of my need to go along with that. Unfortunately, it seems to come with a cost -- I have been sick on and off in the month since I dropped this pretense -- and I'm feeling that way again now. Wah.

2) So, so many musical geniuses, including the masterful Canadian poet, Leonard Cohen. I just read an article in the New Yorker about him, which was written before he died. It was beautiful, and it discussed many of his songs, including this one that has particular significance for me as I welcome the new year (which was the second part of the yoga class):

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore

You know the corny old expression: "Home is where the heart is"? Well for me, realizing on this hasn't been as easy as it sounds. (Get comfy, days fans, what follows is rather lengthy, and for many, it's a review, mostly for my own benefit as I close out a big year of my life and welcome an even bigger one.)

You see, I came back into my heart, after fleeing it during the abuse in my childhood, when my son was born. And my heart grew again exponentially when my daughter was born.

But it wasn't until I was able to heal considerably more than I had when I married that I was able to truly fall in love with a man. And, oh, did I ever: With the New Englander. And I dreamt of a home with him. Of a baby. Of a second marriage.

Instead, he moved away, at the end of June, 2013. Because he wasn't ready for any of that. And my heart broke. It straight up broke. It broke along the fault lines that had been created in my childhood. Which meant that the heartbreak I experienced in his absence was SUPER magnified by all that I hadn't yet let myself feel (but needed to feel to become whole) from my childhood. Which meant mostly that I cried. A lot. When I heard songs. When I rode my bike, either bike, that he added (or helped add) to my fleet. When I camped. When I got into bed at night. When I woke up in the morning. When I had an orgasm. When I heard his voice. When I saw his name. Etc. Etc. Etc. My poor kids -- they didn't know what to do with me.

The New Englander wasn't happy without me either, and over the course of the next couple of years, we went back and forth about whether we were going to get back together, did for a while, broke up again, etc.

And then at the beginning of 2016, I started to write a book. Well, another book. I start writing books quite frequently. This one was about the two of us. It reprinted all of the emails we exchanged, and through the process of putting it together, I realized a lot of important things, including:

1) We have an awesome love;

2) I wanted an awesome love in my life again.

So I asked him if we could talk, and then we did. I told him about these realizations. I told him I still loved him. He said that he loved me too, but that he thought you could still love someone and be over them. I cried, sobbed, really, saying: "I am definitely not over you. Are you over me?" And then he admitted he wasn't, that he hadn't met anyone else that did it for him in the same way.

I was relieved to hear that, but there were other things I heard during that phone call that were less promising: He was happy in his little mountain town, disconnected at home from other people; this made him feel safe. Also: He worried that if we got back together, it wouldn't stay good.

And I heard him. I really heard him. And I accepted what he said. If that's what makes him feel safe, I thought, he should stay there. And if he doesn't have faith that we can have a fantastic life together, then maybe we can't.

So, in March of this year, I wrote him a letter, in which I told him that he knows just how truly, madly, deeply I love him, but I want love in my life again. I want the things that we had. That I had a nearly impossible time believing that he wasn't the person that I was going to get to have them with, but it seems maybe he isn't. And I told him not to contact me again, please, unless he could be all in, in a way that he couldn't be before.

Fast forward to November 1: the day he got back in touch. After a few emails, a letter, and several phone conversations and texts in which he expressed, among other things, full faith that we've got 50 years together ahead of us, making life feel like a dream vacation, I'd say we've come full circle.

To a place where when I text him the photo above to show that the sun was shining outside our house, he texts back that it breaks his heart with yearning to see a picture of his home. His home. With me. And my kids. Nothing, but nothing could make me happier: All my loves under one roof. Coming in 2017! Yay!

I was watching an episode of The Crown tonight, and there's a scene where Winston Churchill is admonishing the Duke of Windsor, once King Edward the VIII, that the love he had for his wife had destroyed everything (including forcing him to abdicate the throne).

The Duke answers:

"It is love, Winston, love, the greatest thing on Earth."

Yup. I'll say it is. And that's one of many realizations The New Englander had in 2016. Hip, hip, hooray for that!

In little more than a week, he'll be coming home, if only for a visit this time. And on the eve of this new year, in which I get to be reunited with my love and even have my home become his, I couldn't be more grateful that we're both:

Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without this costume
That I wore

Going home
Without the sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before

Going home
Without the burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without this costume
That I wore

...going home to where the heart is, to where it's been for both of us since about August of 2010, shortly after we met.

...going home without the burdens of our childhood traumas: We've both spent significant time handing those burdens back to from where they came.

...going home without the costumes of protection we both needed before: We're both in a different space to trust our love this time around. We trust ourselves more, making it infinitely easier to trust each other.

Yep, it's gonna be the happiest new year ever for this girl!

Auld Lang Syne

Cabin play on the frozen lake with cousins

We spent New Year's Eve up at the cabin with my parents and my sister's family. Although it was a really cold day, the kids managed to get outside to play, and so did my sister and I.

We also played games and watched a movie inside -- Parental Guidance -- featuring Billy Crystal. My favorite movie of his is of course, When Harry Met Sally, which has one of my favorite New Years scenes ever -- one that I believe I linked in a post not too long ago about the moment when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone.

I'm hear to tell you, kids, in case you haven't already learned it through your own experience, that sometimes even when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, and you tell them so, you may not actually get to spend your life with that person.

Yep, it's a big, huge drag, but you do your best not to let it drag you down, because you've got two great kids and a whole lotta love to give to some lucky man who wants to spend his life with you too. And you'll find him. Or he'll find you. Maybe even in 2015.

And this, my friends, is the circuitous path by which I arrived at the song to mark this day, a song also featured in WHMS:

Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We'll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne, for auld lang syne

Yep, that's right. The link I provided is to a Mariah Carey cover. What can I say? She has a beautiful voice...

Live and Let Die

Ah, New Year's Eve. An evening that used to necessitate copious amounts of alcohol and almost always end in some form of disappointment. Not this year. This year, I'm all about being with what is.

I started the morning with my kids, and then took them to their Dad's and went off to the gym to go for a run and do some yoga. After that, I went to a coffee shop to do some consulting work and contemplated my options for the evening. Which, in terms of social offerings, were admittedly pretty limited. I'd been invited to a 5:30pm run downtown that ended with beers at a brew pub. But the temperature didn't even reach 10 degrees today, and while I know and like one of the people who was going to be there, it just didn't seem like the thing for me this evening.

I've been wanting to see a couple of movies, and have put the call out to a few friends, not just for tonight but in general -- hey, wanna see a movie -- and I've gotten no takers. I'm not sure how I got here, to this point where I'm feeling pretty socially isolated, but here I am. I know two of my main people moved away in 2013, but it's feeling obvious to me now that I let my circle get too small.

So I took myself to a movie. On New Year's Eve. It took a lot of strength to face seeing people there -- couples, families -- and I knew I would. Madison is a small town and I know a lot of people, even if I don't know a lot of them well. I did my best to channel my dead Nana, who liked to see movies by herself.

Whatever discomfort I was feeling went away when American Hustle started playing. What a phenomenal movie. There was so much to love about it, but most of all, I loved Jennifer Lawrence, and the scene where she sings and dances to this song with her kid watching is absolutely priceless:

When you were young
And your heart was an open book

You used to say, "Live and let live"
(You know you did, you know you did, you know you did)
But if this ever-changing world in which we're livin'
Makes you give in and cry

Say live and let die
Live and let die
Live and let die
Live and let die

What does it matter to ya, when you've got a job to do, you gotta do it well
You gotta give the other fellow Hell

You used to say, "Live and let livin'"
(You know you did, you know you did, you know you did)
But if this ever-changing world in which we're livin'
Makes you give in and cry

Yes, sometimes this ever-changing world in which we live in makes me give in and cry. Quite often, actually. And I think that's ok. What I think needs adjusting in my life is the size of my bubble. It's true that I've been through a lot, and I tend to keep people at bay, except for a select few. And look where it's gotten me -- alone at a movie on NYE.

Thank god for Jennifer Lawrence. She made those two hours some of the most delicious I've ever spent, with or without a companion:

Say, live and let die
Live and let die
Live and let die
Live and let die