What a Long, Strange Trip it’s Been
Truckin
Little girls dream of Barbie and GI Joe driving off into the sunset in his truck.
So much more fun than Ken.
This little girl squeezes their heads together so they kiss, just like on TV when the movie actor tilts his head to the left and the beautiful movie star tilts her head to the right, wondering why noses were made if kisses were invented by G*d.
That was me.
Young, feisty and in love with GI Joe.
I loved his scar. It meant he was a fighter and he’ll protect me forever or until the new Barbie moves in during Christmas.
I only speak for myself here. Little girls want to be protected and swept off their feet. (Thanks, Disney).
I met many wonderful young men throughout my life and I thought I was to be swept off my feet a few times, dressed in white and wayfarers.
One, in a speed boat with his cigarette hanging out of his mouth, another in a bright red truck, with a crossbow and scars to prove my safety and another who was not unlike a siren himself playing the sax in the woods with me.
It will be the Knight in Shining Armor, and as it turned out, he was a USDA Beefy Scotsman from Goshen. He swept me off my feet with a Lexus LS400, not to mention, the cruise ship for our engagement.
28 years of some damn good excellent living. (One must count the courtship and wild rides in the streets of NYC with barely a shirt on).
One apartment, a coconut tree in the Cook Islands, two houses, four cars, two cats and a Shiba.
Not to mention the true loves of our lives.
The two young healthy men who are our blood, our sons forever. With a few cars and a motorcycle, themselves.
And so, the problem you ask?
Why are we here now at the precipice of new lives for all four of us?
Why couldn’t our Love keep it going? We love each other now as we did in 1997. But time takes a toll on the depth of marriage, the complexities of personalities changing, growing and needing a life separately. Love actually doesn’t have much to do with it.
The pain does.
It is time for me to walk into the thunderstorms, get my feet dirty and sing with the birds.
It is his time to walk in freedom again and see that there is so much more than fear. Take those steps needed to complete a life of calmness and peace.
That is how the house went up for sale.
With much chagrin, we crawled through the talks with broken glass in our souls. We contemplated the worst scenario and the best. We wanted our sons to find their own home base while knowing that they now have not one but two home bases with open arms. He will be the gentleman farmer and, I hope, a fisherman again, and I will begin my true life of writing. The deep fleshy words that continue to bleed out from every orifice and all I have is one band aid.
It has been a long road. A long strange road. We were young and in pain from the start. His muscles were no match to the heaviest of my baggage I dragged into our life. He tried his best to heal me, and I tried to hold him up as he held me.
Like a Picasso painting, nowhere to start or finish.
Let me run with it. Let me toss the words up, high into the atmosphere and catch every letter to write you a story.
Let him be free to sail, garden and become fruitful in his life and soul again.
Ripple
…Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go, no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone…
Songwriters: Robert Hunter / Jerome Garcia
Truckin
…Lately It Occurs To Me
What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been…
Songwriters: Robert Hunter / Jerome Garcia
