If there was ever a week that checked every box of emotions, the most recent one would have been it. Highs, lows, disappointment, and the finale on Saturday a car that decided to join me in the lane I was driving in and then get mad at me for not getting out of his way.
Midweek I met a friend for happy hour. I should have cancelled but I’d already cancelled once so I met her at a packed restaurant where everything felt like too much. I told her how my week started by seeing Beyonce with my kids on Sunday night only to get a text before the concert started that made me want to go home and cry. She listened and we drank wine until I had to cut our visit short because I told another friend I would take a breathwork class with her. I didn’t want to go to that either but she has been my hairdresser and dear friend for nearly twenty years. This spring she got a virus which led to a diagnosis of Guillian Barre Syndrome and has been unable to feel her hands or feet since. There went her career, her confidence, and her stability until her nerves repair themselves which could take 1-2 years. We have told each other the most intimate details of our lives, so when Amy told me she thought a Breathwork class might be good for me I listened even though I didn’t have a clue what it was about.
We met at the yoga studio she is working at now because her friend who owns it needed someone to work the front desk and Amy is able to use a computer. She was so happy I actually showed up for the class as did her son who I have heard about for years. The three of us settled on mats in the front row which I immediately disliked because it makes me think I’m going to be called upon to answer a question to something I should know but don’t because instead of paying attention I was taking a trip to LaLaLand. We would stay on the floor throughout with a blanket on, a lavender-scented eye mask to completely darken the room, and listening to the rhythm of our own breathing.
In a very quiet and soothing voice, the instructor set the mood by saying, “Relax your forehead, your eyes, your jaw,” and I was concentrating way too hard on all of that until a “Relax your ears,” and I was like now you’re just making shit up because there’s no such thing as relaxing your ears. Then I checked myself into LaLaLand and imagined a bunch of witchy healers with dreadlocks in their gypsy robes reeking of patchouli sitting around a campfire saying, “I know you guys!!! What if we say to relax your back molars,” and everybody laughs hysterically, writes it in their notebooks with an owl feather dipped in ink, and passes a joint and a jug of Gallo wine around the circle.
I stayed on the floor not relaxing as we went through different kinds of breaths until I decided I needed to refocus because I’m pretty certain I barely breathe all day. I’m upright and functioning but that’s more due to coffee, a handful of Hot Tamales, and a lot of sighing which I’m told is not the same as breathing. The instructor had a voice like butter and I listened and took deep breaths in and swooshed them out over and over, convinced that I am an utter failure at breathing. This went on for nearly an hour, my chest moving up and down, near constant trivial chatter inside my own head, and me wondering if it would be rude to take my eye mask off, sit up, and look at the clock because I’m feeling trapped by the sound of my own breath.
She walks us to the end of our class, our breathing slows down, it is back to a steady in and out, the room is quiet, and she tells us to place our hand on our heart. We say sweet nothings to it which feels awkward, and then she says, “As your hand is on your heart, make a vow that as the days go by you will not forget to be more tender with it,” and I take those words in and turn them over and over.
I will be more tender with you.
I willl be more tender with you.
I will be more tender with you until I want to sob because I am more tender towards my dead husband’s heart than my own, the one that has survived the unimagineable, the one that clings to hope, the one that kept a broken family intact, the one still very much alive, beating, and trying to breathe .
I rarely and only vaguely have written about my dating life for a multitude of reasons. My experience has been that if I so much as breathe the word dating, everyone feels the need to weigh in and tell me they would neverever ever date anyone if their husband died, or suggest a fling with a twenty year old, or to shake their head in disgust and say, “You’re not on one of those dating apps are you?” I have learned to button all of that up nice and tight because the less people know the less they can tell me how to manage this part of my life which for the record is very confusing.
Because I was raised with three older brothers and then lived day-in-day-out with Mark for 35 years, men have always been a big part of my daily life. When Mark died nearly all of those friends of his that we both knew slowly left, and while I love the many supportive women in my life, I miss the perspective of a guy. Mark was often a sounding board when I was wringing my hands over something, and when I’d ask him what I should do he’d say, “You just need to napalm that bridge and move on.” It was blunt but he was always in motion and had no time for inconsequential things in his life that were fixable by walking away.
Without the Mark guardrail in my life and being out of practice for four decades, I’m like a newborn LadyBaby when it comes to dating. I’m out in the world flailing on my own (which should be illegal) and wondering if I’m seeing what’s really there or what I hope is there. Is this guy attractive or have I lowered my standards? Is he funny funny or obnoxious funny? Is he one of those guys who thinks he knows everything or is amused and curious about life? I don’t even know anymore, and because I have over analyzed every single thing since Mark’s death, my current style is to jump in the deep end with my concrete shoes which is how I found myself happily agreeing to a Sunday afternoon lunch date. Prior to this meet up, I had many back and forths with this potential suitor via texting and talking. He was a landscaper which I swooned over. We could go to the garden center together!! He probably gets a discount!!He could fix the spot in my backyard where the grass died!!I bet he has a truck! He used to be a cook. A cook?? He could make dinner every night!! He lived on a farm. A farm?? I make my own granola and salad dressing like an old fashioned Midwestern pioneer lady!!! However, in one of our conversations he said something that caused my Brain Elf to wake from his nap, hook a red flag to the pole, and hand-over-hand start raising it, and I was like WILL YOU SIT BACK DOWN?? That’s not a RED flag you dope. That’s a CIRCUS flag which means fun fun fun. Why I bet he even has a pet monkey that rides a bicycle.
McDreamy lived forty minutes away and I offered to meet him in the town where he lived because I needed a little highway drive to think about how charming I was going to be. It was brutally hot that day and the sun was blazing in the driver’s side window. I realized that I had forgotten to put sunscreen on my neck so I popped the collar on my shirt to shield my delicate, Irish skin and my charm time got sidelined while I fretted over having to have another mole removed. What if that happened and I had another Frankenstein scar on my neck? Would it scare McDreamy away or would we be married by then and he would hold me captive on his farm until the public was ready to see me?
I got to the restaurant, did a quick gaze, and didn’t see him. I went to the hostess desk and said I was looking for someone and she immediately said, “Are you Kathleen?” McDreamy had told the hostess I was coming in and might ask his whereabouts. Oh my gosh!Farmers are so considerate!! She took me to his table which was in another room, I sat down, and we chatted over beer as he had ordered a couple of samplers. A few minutes later he said to me, “Do you mind if I fix your collar? It’s sticking up.” I must have given him some kind of look (the kind where my daughter says, “Mom, your face”) because he then said, “Or you can leave it up.” I explained that I had recently had a mole removed that left a big scar and yada, yada, yada about the sunscreen and flipped my collar back down.
After more of the getting to know you chatting and more beer tasting he said, “I love your hair. It’s very sexy,” and Brain Elf got up off of his recliner and snapped that red flag so hard I flinched. I laughed and said, “Oh my hair. People have lots of things to say about my hair.” And then he said, “I can’t wait to lay next to you and run my fingers through it.”
I gagged on my beer and it wasn’t a delicate *cough cough* lady gag, but the kind that had me bent under the table because it felt like it was going to come shooting out my nose. “Are you okay,” he asked and I was like FUCK NO I’M NOT OKAY!! I’VE KNOWN YOU TWENTY MINUTES. WHY WOULD YOU SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT??? Later when I told a friend about it, after we discussed at length what would make a grown man pull out the kind of line a seventeen year old might say because he’d heard it in a movie once, she said, “Did he actually look at your hair? Like really look at it? Because it’s not exactly the kind that anyone could run their fingers through.” Which is true because I once had a fly get stuck in my hair and when I couldn’t unknot an exit ramp for it to get off I said, “Welp, I hope you’re happy now because this is where you live.” Then I had to wait for Mark to get home and fish it out which couldn’t come fast enough because that frantic fly buzzing made me think I was having a stroke.
McDreamy was just getting started. He told me how he acquired his farm (an inheritance when his mother died) and that she left him pretty financially secure. Then he asked, “How about you? You get some life insurance when your husband died?” By this time Brain Elf was screaming ABORT ABORT ABORT but I was like CALM DOWN I’VE GOT THIS. I slowly pulled the knife out of my heart, slammed the rest of my drink down, and asked why his last relationship ended. He said it was mostly due to sex. Ohhh for the love of god. He liked it and wanted it and his partner didn’t. My first inclination was to say, “That you ever got any sex is a goddamn miracle,” but I didn’t cuz what do I know about any of his baggage except I was a solid for Team Ex. “Those things can happen in long-term relationships,” I said. He helped himself to some fries off my plate and asked, “How about you and your husband? Were you still doing it at the end?” Small question. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF FOREPLAY? Maybe you should start with the conversational kind and work your way from there. I leaned across the table and said, “My husband and I were very passionate people. We fought hard and we loved hard. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.” His eyes got big and he said, “I want you to come see my farm as soon as we’re done.” I told him it was way too hot to be traipsing around a farm. “Oh not the farm but my house,” he said, “it’s air conditioned.”
So hopeful. So not going to happen. Ever.
We left the restaurant. I said I was going to check out the bookstore and he told me it had moved and offered to show me where it was now located. We walked inside and it had that wonderful bookstore smell, and I thought SO HELP ME, dude, if you say one word while we’re here and ruin this bookstore for me I will strangle you. We wandered in different directions. I bought two books. We left and he walked me back to my car. “I have the exact same car,” he said, and every man I don’t want to date drives a Honda Fit. He then asked me if I could drive him to where his car was parked. This was not some bustling city with a bunch of parking garages. This was a small college town so I knew he couldn’t be that far away.
I drove him hmmmm……half a block where he told me how much he couldn’t wait to see me again. Then he moved in for a kiss and I backed up so far that I’m pretty sure the door handle of my car is permanently indented in my back. He got out. Did a hi-ho cheerio wave. I smiled like I do when my doctor tells me it’s time for another colonoscopy.
That night I talked to my daughter and told her how bad this date was, how it shot to #1 on the Bad Date Chart. Then I told her one of the books I bought was about a group of nuns who get sent to live at a halfway house for recovering addicts. “It’s research,” I said, “because after today I’ve decided that I’m going to be a nun.” Maggie said, “Oh my god, Mom, you would make the worst nun,” which is mostly true. I drop ef bombs on the regular, I like trashy tv, I only serve people if I get some kind of discount in return, and they’d have to take my lipstick from my cold, dead hands. But like a lot of places that are hard up for help, I’m thinking the nuns have drastically lowered their standards and somebody like me doesn’t look so bad now. As we were ending our conversation Maggie said, “Well, Mom, you put yourself out there and that counts for a lot.” “While I appreciate that,” I said, “and there are many times I deserve an atta girl, this is not one of those times.”
The next day I had therapy where I told my therapist every offensive thing he said. I said I was going to text him and school him on appropriate first date protocol BECAUSE I WOULD BE DOING A PUBLIC SERVICE FOR EVERY UNATTACHED WOMAN OUT THERE. As my therapist tends to do, she said slow your roll there, girl, you don’t want to have this converation with him. I didn’t want to hear this. I wanted someone to have my back while I smashed the partiarchy one man at a time. Two different things, she said, and I KNEW THAT but I was on my high horse and she wasn’t hitching hers to my wagon which pissed me off.
That afternoon I begrudgingly took her advice, texted McDreamy, and said that I thought I was ready for dating but it turns out I’m just a sad, old, widow lady destined to be alone forever and that I wished him well. He texted back, “Okay.” Okay??? What do you mean okay? That’s it? You’re not going to plead your case or tell me how disappointed you are to know I wouldn’t be your Farmer Wife? What about the granola and salad dressing? Let me tell YOU something, Farmer in the Dell, I am worth far more than some generic, lame okay. Brain Elf, who’d had enough of my shenanigans, turned off the football game, set his beer down, wearily got up from his Man Cave, pointed his finger at me, and said STAY.
LadyBaby got put in the Dating Detention Center until she lawyers up. Send stationary, stamps, and ciggies. I think I’m going to be here awhile.
