Box Box Box*

My daughter Clara didn’t visit this summer. She had other things to do, including learning how to drive, working a new job as a spa attendant, and spending time with her new boyfriend. To top it off, her father was getting married, and she was helping her stepmother-to-be prepare for the wedding, which I wasn’t invited to. Regardless, I was more hurt by Clara’s decision to not come to Maine, not even for a few days; it was tradition she come up from Florida during her summer break from college and spend time with me up North.  But I had to tread lightly with my request she visit. Already, we were on the heels of healing a three-month estrangement that sent me into grief and obsessive internet research on parents who overnight lost relationships with their children never to be repaired again.  

The estrangement was partly my fault.  Earlier in the year, twenty-two year old Clara had been acting irresponsibly with her drinking, including drinking alone at a bar in Miami, an experience that found her drunk and alone in a parking lot surrounded by three men she didn’t know; that is until her father, who keeps track of her on MyFriends app, found her and drove her home.  Her actions made me crazy, made me call her names like hooker and whore, and text her about how she was going to get herself raped or killed. I was enraged by her recklessness and told her so until she’d had enough, said I was disrespectful and negative, and refused to answer my calls or texts. 

I respected her wish to not have a relationship with me even though she was my baby, the one I watched like a hawk. But she was right: she was an adult and responsible for her actions, and I was disrespectful of her even though my cautionary messages, threats, and cuss words were well-intended. I had to find another way of communicating and not taking the hard, hysterical line my parents took with me life until it crushed me and left me with no confidence or trust in myself.  Strangely enough, I thought I had avoided this type of childrearing method with my children, but at the least sign of trouble, I unraveled and like my parents and took on their violent parenting skills.  

As much as I hurt, I gave my daughter space, further validating her boundaries and sense of self-worth, which I was determined to have her put into practice. My decision to allow her to retreat from our relationship also confirmed her right to be respected by others, including her parents; furthermore, I realized that I was not entitled to play the ferocious mother card, always demanding allegiance and respect no matter how grotesque my actions, like my mother had done. Eventually, I apologized to Clara and healed our relationship, curtailed the passing of the psychological hurt done to me my destructive, narcisstic, well-intended parents, and reversed the long history of estrangement in my family (my sister didn’t talk to my mother, my father stopped talking to his sons years before he died, and some of his sons no longer spoke to their children).  

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My twenty-five-year-old son came to visit for five days this summer (he also lives in Florida with his father). We visited a wolf sanctuary in Limington, hiked Sawyer Mountain, ate Lobster Rolls, drank local beer, picnicked on coves in islands of the mainland, swam in beaches in Kennebunkport and drove to New Hampshire to scale the peaks of Mount Washington in a rented car.

We had also had a rough patch earlier in the year when I confronted him about his drinking, which his father said was no big deal, but I had witnessed its ravages when I visited last Christmas and noticed his 50 pound weight gain, blood-shot eyes, morose moods, and staying out all night to drink with friends. I felt compelled to get involved in his life, so I texted him my concerns since he wouldn’t hear me out on the telephone. I told him that his drinking was out of control; that as a man he had to learn control; that his Russian birth mother would be ashamed of his behavior (both my children were adopted in Russia); that he owed the children in the orphanage where he had been adopted a good life in America because they probably never got such a similar chance or opportunity; that after the divorce I had sacrificed my youth, time, and money to make sure he and his sister were fine; and that he could not throw his life away on drink. I texted my concerns several times until I was prompted that he had “read” my texts.

Upon his arrival in Maine, we hugged at the airport, and I sensed that everything with him was okay, so I never mentioned his drinking again, and we had one of the most amazing summers together.

Box Box Box

This summer, my ex-husband remarried and sent me a fifteen-pound box of pictures we had taken together.  It was the official end of our chapter--on his term of course. I’d always wanted to end it with him right after the divorce sixteen years ago, but he wouldn’t have it.  After our sixteen-year marriage, we played psychological games: sex for child support and an open-door policy to my life and home, which he abused because I needed money. Even his girlfriend of ten years who he cheated on continuously sensed the strange dynamics between us.

For me, though, it was over last Christmas when I visited Florida and stayed at his house, which he promised I could stay at alone with the children (he said he would move into one of his father’s condominiums or his girlfriend’s house in Coral Gables), but he stayed at the house instead causing tensions between me, him, and his other women.  By then I’d had enough of his creepy behavior—and mine. During that time, I apologized to his girlfriend for my disrespect (I understand why she didn’t invite me to her wedding).

I still have a hard time forgiving myself for being my ex-husband’s victim so many years after our divorce.  I tell myself I learned victimhood in childhood and perpetuated it in adulthood; that its insidious, knotty grip tangled and blinded me in its web, both seen and unseen; that my relationship with my ex was part of the game of finding my true gem of a self in all the bullshit; that until I became exhausted of being his victim, or any one’s victim for that matter, and feeling its  grip on my entrails and its choking vile silencing my right to defend myself in my throat box, it was as integral a part of my being as other vital organs; that my tangled relationship with my “sickness” was as welcomed as it was sought out in covert soul-searching expeditions to find its habitat and wipe it out; that upon finding it, I had to stop my inclination to kill it thereby harming myself even more; that even now when I sensed the building of its phantom rage building in my chest, I must repeat, “I forgive myself. I forgive him. I forgive myself. I forgive him”; and that one day when I no longer fear his egomanical, cussing, and bullying nature, I’ll tell him how he victimized me, how I allowed it, and how I forgave him and myself for it.

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My friend Monique came for a three-day visit from Connecticut for the long 4^th of July weekend. She fell in love with Maine at first sight, especially its creative spirit on display in galleries with works by Maine artists, at the local print shop where she expressed a desire to take classes, and at MECA, the local college for craftsmen and artists... We went vintage shopping for a kimono she had been wanting, rode the ferry to Peaks Island, ate fried seafood at Becky’s, and drank Mead at the local distillery.

We also stayed up all night talking. She told me stories about her recent trip to do ayahuasca in Peru with the intention of psychically cleansing herself from a long line of men who trailed after her in a tortured being together, mostly for sex but never marriage—and that while on her “trip” a Native American danced for her in in full regalia and headdress chanting,  “Make them (men) dance for you.”

At some point that weekend, Monique had a breakdown about her life.  “Sometimes, I just don’t know. I don’t know.  She said dejected, exhausted by her efforts (Monique is black, born in Jamaica and raised in the United States).   Part of the challenge of living in Connecticut has been dealing with its mostly White people and how their how prejudices have rubbed her the wrong way; for example, how people at her yoga class make snide remarks about her being there.

You need to catch up to who you really are,” I said impassioned by my admiration for her life and adventures.  Who cares what people think about your race, gender…. You’ve never let it stop you, never!  You taught English in Japan, learned Aruveyda in India, took peyote in Peru, taught yoga in Indonesia…   Most men and woman, white, black, whatever, can only wish to have your courage and fierceness. Catch up!”

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I ran into Lana at the YMCA after telling her I was visiting with my sister and mother in NYC all summer. I lied!

Irene exhausted me. When I met her in the spring, we had an over-the-top, eating-drinking-and-driving-around binge of a friendship.  Granted, Lana was a 70-year-old Russian woman with passion for life, 24 hours a day of it.  She was like a character in the Russian film “Siberiade,” always bolting, blindly and madly towards her fate no matter what. She was also an amazing chef who had cooked for several United States presidents who had visited friends on Proust Neck, where she were worked as a cook for well-to-do families in the summer.

I ate all the delicious homemade meals she brought over— fresh, organic, Maine grown, colorful, seasoned ever so slightly, baked in ovens until golden brown, and fried until crunchy and bursting with flavor. I gobbled her almond cakes, blueberry crisps, and strawberry jams until I gained 20 pounds. When I told her I had work to do online, or friends to see, or that we should temper our friendship by planning one event or meal a week or every other weekend, she called anyway, made more plans,  stopped by my place with fresh lobster bisque, corn chowder, dill cabbage salad, and Chinese noodle shrimp. When I got in her car for drives to Scarborough beaches, I thought she would never drive me back home.   I stopped writing, became lethargic, and lost sight of my personal boundaries until I couldn’t do it anymore. Then I lied to Irene and told her I was leaving town for a while.

When I ran into her again at the gym, I had the same three days of binging, drinking, and driving around town.  This time, when I told her I was leaving for New York City and not returning until after the holidays her tears didn’t make me feel bad about lying.

Then I broke up with my friend Leo, not intentionally at first.  After I lost my cellphone and forgot to transfer the contact information, I was relieved not to hear from Leo, who for the last six years had texted me once or twice a week about meeting up for lunch, dinner, or coffee to talk about HIM: his gay relationships, challenges at work,  money problems.  I doubted he knew much about me, but when I first moved to Portland, I didn’t mind the company. I was lonely and afraid of being alone. Also, I didn’t know my self-worth or boundaries--as much as I know them now--so I met up with Leo anyway, even though I didn’t enjoy his company.

I’m not afraid of my aloneness anymore and am thrilled to have lost contact with Leo.

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I went to the last Old Town Festival this summer.  City officials said the local art, food, drink and music festival had done what it was intended to do.   People around town figured it had accomplished the gentrification of Portland, Maine.  It broke our hearts. Our secret, magical place was now filled with a new noise, people, expectation. The brick sidewalks rattled with construction, renovation, and fast walkers who were mostly rich, White Northeasteners, with a conquering, exhausting temperament.

Several of the rundown multi-level homes on my block, once considered to be located in the cheapest and most unpopular area in Portland, were sold for over half-a-million dollars and its tenants replaced with hipsters.   Mostly, the scrappy creative rebel, with tattered clothes and a whiff of last night’s bed, marijuana, and incense, along with his cousin, the more kick-ass homeless version who walked around town with a cuss word or two for life on his lips, were being replaced with “fine” people who smelled of European perfumes, drove Mercedes and BMW’s, told everyone what to do and how to do it, and acted as if  their demons were prettier and more well-behaved than anyone else’s.

My friends who rented on my block were being pushed out by vicious property management companies who sent out threatening letters either accusing them of breaking the washing machine, warning them not to barbecue anymore, or demanding that they no longer put their shoes outside their front doors.  I overhead some Mainers who rented apartments like me talk about how the increase in the property value pushed them below the poverty line, like me. Others tried to see the light in the ambitious darkness of change by saying these new people brought jobs and opportunity to the small city, even though it pushed out the local businesses like vintage stores and mom and pop stores replaced with national chains or boutique shops.  Still others were moving out to more undiscovered parts of Maine.

Gentrification was soul-crushing and ugly; it was also a sign of the times--of Trumpism, injustice, and an imbalance of money and power: it felt as if someone had shoveled the real people in town into a pail and replaced them with a “new and improved” brand—the rich, mean, White, and unsmiling know-it-all version.

I resented the new people and feared for nature around Portland, the way they cut trees and flowers to make room for more parking and to “clean” things up.  Their sense of entitlement and confidence blinded them to their own exhausting cog of a part in the system:  They hadn’t come to Portland as mark of their own unique journeys of self-discovery, but only when they were directed by others trying to fit in and make sense of life as if it was a group effort, and only when their contrived actions were measured against a whole lot of other rich, White people like them.

The truth was I came from the new peoples' world of rules, distrust, arrogance, blind ambition, insecurities, fear, and non-stop expectations. When I moved to Portland six years ago, I resented its lack of vanity.  Then the silence of Maine found me and shut out distractions to let me heal, figure it out, and become my own brand of being; blind allegiance to the dictates of my culture, class, gender, race had never before allowed such a discovery. Only the wild, and quiet nature of Portland, Maine, the way it used to be, led me on my own way.

I know now what killed the Biblical Eden, and it wasn’t temptation--that’s always been around; it was the mental clattering, confusion, and noise that followed original sin, all done in co-hoots by the well-intended with no clarity of mind, body, spirit or any inclination or idea about how to return to silence and its original state of freedom after has been committed.

At first, I resented silence, the way Mainers worshipped it and talked about it as if it lived alongside them, but now I know that silence was and is the only way. I also know that will move out of Maine by next summer. New adventures await out West.

*In F1 Racing, the Driver’s Engineer Calls Out “Box Box Box” to let the driver know it’s time to make a much-needed pit stop.