Ai yai yai. What did I used to do with my time?
I remember having so many periods of lonely and bored, or maybe not booorrred persay because I was busy trying to learn guitar, to paint, to sing, hustling for side money, swiping left, swiping right, organizing my playlists and writing. Music and writing, music and writing…always music, always writing.
Maybe manic is more appropriate than bored. I mean, I was definitely watching shows and movies too, but I only had cable and no PVR or streaming platforms, so was pretty limited to my computer, my DVDs (what are we, cavemen) and my commercial-laden movies on TV. Or I suppose could find myself stuck on a Say Yes to the Dress Friday night marathon, perhaps Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, maybe a even good late-night episode of Cold Case. Some infomercials. You know, the good old days.
But where did that time go? I stopped trying the guitar when we moved. It sits in the basement like a trendy and long-forgotten friend, much to the disdain of my husband. I barely get to play my piano (ah ha, piano you say, where was that back in the day). In storage. The movers never showed and the loft wouldn’t budge, so in storage she stayed. I don’t write all that often anymore and certainly never ever post. Sometimes I wistfully think about it, but well, LIFE. I do still do a lot of side hustling part-time work, but after hours, on my couch, on my own.
I check the monitor about 5x a night to ensure my little devil angel is sleeping. I make laundry lengthed to-do lists, I spray stained and stinky clothes. I guess I still get lost in my brain, and think, overthink, doubt and dream. I slowly putter away at vacuuming, painting a toddler clubhouse, fixing interior windows and trim and fantasize about the body I no longer have. Sometimes I research new face creams and eye patches, the best ways to get scale out of toilets, how much botox is too much botox, why my hair is thinning, what makes people decide to write books. You know, the important stuff.
I think about the gym I used to go to (oh yes that too), and how I should be downstairs on the elliptical. I obsess about the money I don’t have to take care of my skin, my nails, my hair, my non-existent yoga studio membership and focus on wheeling and dealing the best painting prices on that shed we’ve been debating for 4 years. And from the hours of 5-9 pm every night I am wife and mother. And only a wife and a mother. Maybe a cat mom too.
So who am I? That’s now hard to say. I’m not as cool as I was, but that being said, I was never all that cool.
I am overweight and middle-aged. I am somebody who still loves music and writing, editing and rereading, thinking about ghosts and witches, Halloween and Christmas, photos and meaning, old stories and new trivia, but knowing that day-in and day-out we are all little cogs. I yearn for deep tissue massages, I look up antique trunks, I read two chapters of a book and judge the author, I shop Amazon incessantly (a terrible malady of the pandemic) and feel grateful, though in a slightly sad way that I finally got myself those stronger glasses, am watching my trans fats before it’s too late and fit in a somewhat normal size of jean again. Sometimes, just sometimes I dress normal. Sometimes, just sometimes I wear mascara.
Though as I write this I squint because it’s oh so late and my glasses are oh so far out of reach. Drat.
When I think back to all the avenues I tried a decade ago – I felt lonely and lost, but busy and bored at the same time. I envy that lady. In many ways she had things so good, she just didn’t know it yet. She had freedom, she had art, she had possibility, she had the unknown. Scary as that might be. But what she didn’t have was certainty or control. I guess she still doesn’t, but that fear of moving into my parents basement, never experiencing motherhood and wondering whether I can afford the good cheese are no longer things. Now I just know I should eat no cheese. All cheese is good cheese, but no cheese is the best cheese for me too. Oh, the torment. Those things that scared me don’t scare me anymore. But of course new things do.
And when we go back ten years before that, well that girl spent Sundays hungover, wore a lot of crop tops, spent a lot of time on her hair and makeup and now I envy her. Fleeting as that time may have been, I still envy her. She was so unsure, sadly hopeful while at the same time feeling completely cursed. She was trying to meet a good guy while flirting with the not-so-good ones, playing sports, networking at the gym, trying to meet new friends, babysitting her nephews, struggling financially, grasping at her career, but still finding the funds to go out weekly and rocking the hair and body that any 40 year old would envy – namely me. I am that 40 year old. I look back at my old photos and think, damn, I can’t believe I thought I was fat. Maybe her food wasn’t so good, and her brand of beer quite poor, her main priorities limited and her fun exaggerated. But I envy her too in a desperate-not-so-desperate kind of way.
And ten years from now me will look back on this me and probably envy her as well. She is only just starting mommy & me dance class and researching swimming lessons. She has time and freedom to watch movies and binge watch Netflix at night. She still has the ability to try to look good and dance a little throughout her daily chores. She is looking forward to their first family all-inclusive and secretly, not-so-secretly is pumped to go back to Disneyworld. In many ways she’s a much less interesting person, but deep down, in the back of her memory, in the corner of her mind, all those things she used to do….maybe they are coming back around the corner. Maybe she can still be intriguing and stable. Maybe she can be fun AND secure. Maybe babysitters instead of babysitting and European adventures can still be around the turn, maybe new dance or barre classes aren’t that far out of reach. Maybe, just maybe her toddler will let her play the piano again in the future. It’s hers. Right now everything belongs to the little havoc-wreaking hellion darling, but someday again, someday soon, it may belong to her again, to she, to ME. Mine. It’s mine.
Repeat. It’s mine.
So we envy our old selves and shun the new. But if you could go back and relive your fears and re-feel your pain, I guess no decade, age, relationship or decision is without doldrums or a case of the scaries. No time is perfect, no life is spent always doing the right thing. My mom is 70 and just held her first koala. And most likely last, but maybe there is still adventure to be had. Or maybe that tiny dollhouse-sized butcher block with matching bread knife I have sitting in my Amazon cart will make me happy. Let’s be honest. Dollhouses are for the moms.
For about 5 years now I drum up this song whenever the monotony of life and the known, the unknown, the inevitable and the irreversible gets to me. Lucy Jordan, you go girl. We all deserve a little naked and free.
The morning sun touched lightly on
the eyes of Lucy Jordon
in her white suburban bedroom
in her white suburban town
she lay there beneath the covers
dreaming of a thousand lovers
until the world turned to orange
and the room went spinning round
At the age of 37 she realized
she’d never ride through Paris
in a sports car, with the warm wind in her hair
…and she let the phone keep ringing
as she sat there softly singing
pretty nursery rhymes she’d memorized
in her daddy’s easy chair
Her husband, he was off to work
and the kids were off to school
and there were oh, so many ways
for her to spend the day
she could clean the house for hours
or rearrange the flowers
or run naked down the shady street
screaming all the way
The evening sun touched lightly on
the eyes of Lucy Jordon
on the rooftop where she’d climbed
when all the laughter grew too loud
and she bowed and curtsey-ed to the man
who reached and offered her his hand
and led her down to the long white car
that waited past the crowd
The Ginga Ninja
The Ginger Girl Chronicles 