The other day my former father-in-law asked my son why I was
poor. He gathered his opinion from
pictures my son shared with him of my 250 sq. ft. attic apartment in Portland,
Maine where I live with the proud ownership of $80 couch, $90 foam bed, laptop
and stand, two vintage night stands, lamp, a couple towels and sheets, two
pillows, three plates, three drinking glasses, some utensils, four pots and a self-standing
fan I use in the summer.
I’ve thought about my former father-in-law’s comment for some
time because the last thing I thought was that my new life resembled anything close
to poverty. If anything, I was under the impression my life in Maine was a
testament to a new style of living and thinking, sans the
clutter that once dripped from every cubicle of space in my other life.
My magnificent former life boasted a 4000 square home on a golf course with a pool and Lexus and BMW parked in the driveway (at the time my ex-husband and his father owned a multi-million dollar overhaul engine company). Then there were gardeners and maids. My lifestyle was high maintenance and I its loyal subject. There was no time for much except overseeing its management: I checked and ordered the barrel tiles on the roof that needed replacing and had the house painted yearly. I weekly overlooked the work done by the lawn guy and the pool guy, and ordered the landscape guy to cut the overgrown trees and replant flowers and shrubs in the gardens. I yearly traded in luxury vehicles, purchased larger screen tvs, redesigned and renovated the back room, porch.…
My magnificent former life boasted a 4000 square home on a golf course with a pool and Lexus and BMW parked in the driveway (at the time my ex-husband and his father owned a multi-million dollar overhaul engine company). Then there were gardeners and maids. My lifestyle was high maintenance and I its loyal subject. There was no time for much except overseeing its management: I checked and ordered the barrel tiles on the roof that needed replacing and had the house painted yearly. I weekly overlooked the work done by the lawn guy and the pool guy, and ordered the landscape guy to cut the overgrown trees and replant flowers and shrubs in the gardens. I yearly traded in luxury vehicles, purchased larger screen tvs, redesigned and renovated the back room, porch.…
After I divorced and my son went off to college, I ran away from
my luxury life as far north from Florida as I possibly could. I returned the leased car, $10,000 couch, $8,000
mattress, $15,000 dining room set... to my ex-husband, who gave it to me after out divorce. After I decided to start anew, I got a credit card at Walmart, ordered my stuff online and hoped it would be waiting for me when I arrived in Maine.
Now I have lots of room to think, and its feels like space
travel, like entering clear regions of dark matter with shiny nuggets of
brilliant insight to be bestowed on me, a simple
traveler. And from these insightful
nuggets I’ve learned I’m adventurous with a desire to travel, including taking a pilgrimage to San Compostela, Spain. I want to read all the
world’s classics of which I’m now undertaking Celine’s “The Other Side of
Midnight” and Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and master Spanish and English grammar. Learning French is on my to-do list as is ballroom dancing and surfing.
In all this open space for thinking, I realized time
goes fast, energy is limited, and the mind is easily distracted, especially
by things that grab its unguarded attention so that
allegiance to structure and discipline is necessary to achieve personal, heartfelt
goals.
In Dr. Estes's "Women Who Run With the Wolves," she writes that "if, in our modern societies, the hands of the ego must be sundered to regain our wild office, our feminine senses, then go they must in order to take us away from all seductions of meaningless things within our reach, whatever it is that we can hold on to in order not to grow. If it is so that the hands must go for awhile, then so be it. Let them go." Now, I decided I only wanted those things I can keep track of on a daily basis, so my new routines now include washing the dishes I dirty, sweeping the floor, and giving the apartment a weekly cleaning.
In Dr. Estes's "Women Who Run With the Wolves," she writes that "if, in our modern societies, the hands of the ego must be sundered to regain our wild office, our feminine senses, then go they must in order to take us away from all seductions of meaningless things within our reach, whatever it is that we can hold on to in order not to grow. If it is so that the hands must go for awhile, then so be it. Let them go." Now, I decided I only wanted those things I can keep track of on a daily basis, so my new routines now include washing the dishes I dirty, sweeping the floor, and giving the apartment a weekly cleaning.
The other day, my landlady gave me a beautiful, expensive Persian
area rug she no longer wanted (now I’m thinking she must be of the same mindset about my "poverty" as my former
father-in-law). I accepted her gift and begrudgingly placed it
on my bedroom floor. For an entire week,
it interfered with my measures of austerity and took more time to sweep in my weekly
cleaning of the apartment. So I folded, put in my closet, and returned to larger
swatches of mental space travel.
My memoir, "The Continent of Ruby," available at:
My memoir, "The Continent of Ruby," available at:
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