Conflicts of Psychic Interests

It’s been more than a month since I took a break here, so it’s time to check in. But, I’m still of several minds re: what to write.

The Conflict

Do I provide cheery stories from when I had Finn—and several friends—visit for almost three weeks: loved ones surrounding me back to back, stellar summer weather, fun activities showing off my new town? I have plenty of very cute pics and a few cool stories for such a post (matching hobbit tattoos!). Or, do I dig in deeper, exploring what my new therapist tells me I should be getting messy with: all the losses I’ve experienced since I retired? (I’m guessing she picked that timestamp because it’s when the average person goes through big changes. Little does she know what a shit show of losses I have in store for her.)

My decision of what to blog about comes down to what might entertain you the most. YES, I know I could do this writing for me, and, partly, I do! On the flipside, I agree there’s a certain polish you put on writing for others that’s lacking with private writing, but, practice with polish is also not the reason for this blog. The reason should be to entertain readers, either through spiffy writing skills, or extraordinary or informative topics, or deep, personal insights that lead the reader to their own insights … something along the continuum of why people read good writing. (I expect there’s a well-researched list they teach at MFA schools.)

But, writing well is difficult. When I used to edit and people asked why I didn’t write, I proclaimed that I didn’t want to have to work hard enough to write well. I still feel that way.

It was only when I was on the road that writing came easily, because I had fascinating topics at my fingertips. New location each week, new campers to make fun of, new personal realizations to dissect. Now that the realizations are sincerely unpleasant (grief is a fat example), I don’t want to dig in to them publicly, anymore, Or, if I do go to that trouble of making the writing meaningful for others, I’m gonna want to get paid for it, by God.

So, gone are the days of posts every other day, that’s for sure. You’re probably relieved.

The Avoidance

Now that I’ve taken a break, I find I do have a small handful of topics I can blog about that touch on both the light and the dark, the topical and the hairy, I hope in entertaining ways. I’ll give those a try.

Indoors or Out?

Tracy and I knew each other for a fairly short time before we hit the road: technically we met five years before, but a hell of a lot happened during those five years that kept us very busy. And, of course, life on the road together was weird. Now that we’re setting up house together, we have a lot to learn that never came up while we were living our previously extremely circumspect lifestyle.

Just a few days ago, I learned something about Tracy, suddenly, as I was setting up for lunch outside for the first time in good weather in this new house.

I have our camping furniture under the pussywillow in the yard (an eating and lounging setting a lot like inside our camping tent) and was putting out our Costa Rica batik tablecloth and cloth napkins and forks and drinks, as I always do at the end of Tracy’s lunch-cooking. But, this time, he poked his head out the back door between stirs and shouted, “Let’s eat inside.”

What? Why? What can you possibly be talking about?

I grilled him (the talking kind) mightily over lunch, indoors, and it turns out he doesn’t really like to be outside. He said he spent all day long outside while we were traveling because the scenery was so good, but now that the scenery is basically our shed and our truck and the back of our house, he’d rather enjoy the comfort of upholstered chairs and air conditioning and all that goes with civilized, indoors living.

Let me repeat,

What? Why? What can you possibly be talking about?

I had no idea. I have always preferred the outside, from when I was a kid running through the woods, to my first year in college seeing how long I could go without shoes (until the first snow, turns out), to when I worked a desk job but set up a folding chair for myself and my laptop behind our office building, to when I chose to marry a dude who, I’d thought, was planning a retirement living outside because that’s what he likes, too. Turns out, I was wrong.

This is not divorce-worthy material, but I do feel lonely out there, in my new fancy robe drinking tea in the mornings and reading The New York Times, later doing a workout on the lip of the concrete pad that shows under the shed, then musing about the lives of the fish in the pond as I sit in the shade in the afternoons, in the evenings reading or just lounging with Banjo. (She needs someone out there with her because she still has to be tied; finishing the fence is Tracy’s current job that was interrupted by visitors and a week-long massive allergy attack.)

This was truly a mother-fucking-mind-bending realization, one that Tracy blew off. He knows that, in this regard, he’s a regular dude and I’m a weirdo, and that’s simply that.

We’ve begun a compromise wherein Tracy enjoys sitting on the front porch with his late-afternoon espresso each day, so I’ll bring Banjo inside and I’ll sit out front with him. I like watching people walk by with their ice creams, anyway; I like to guess their chosen flavors by the people’s looks. I do this to myself, since Tracy already thinks I’m Gladys Kravitz, enough.

So, he’s an indoor-loving, grumpy, old guy stuck in Wisconsin, made that way in part by his weirdo, outdoor-loving younger wife who’s sitting out back in her lavish robe occasionally teary with guilt and loneliness. At least, I’m not drinking a martini, right? (Methadone is drug enough for me, thank you.)

Which leads me into that subject territory I don’t enjoy: us getting off the road. Why, how we did it, what it means to Tracy and what it means to me, an ornery etcetera.

Heading Up or Down?

Fresh off the road while we were looking at houses to buy (while we were still in the Airstream in that campground outside of Madison), Tracy would drop in conversation, first to our real estate agent and then to the builders we interviewed for the renovation, tidbits about his house in Bethesda, Maryland. He dropped that topic in often.

At first I thought, well, that makes sense, seeing as how he did a great job buying that house in an up-and-coming neighborhood, so it proved to be not only an awesome house but a fabulous investment. Then, I thought, well, talking about it makes sense because he oversaw the renovation of the entire upstairs, similar to what we’re going to do downstairs in this house, with walls torn down and rooms added. Then, I ran out of reasons why he kept bringing it up and would glare at him, because really, no one here knows the town of Bethesda, Maryland, so why the heck continue to mention it all the danged time?

Just recently, the why dawned on me. Tracy worked all his life with retirement in mind. He picked his major in college because he thought it would get him a good job, and he got his PhD later because he knew he could rise in the federal government ranks with it. He didn’t waffle around like I did, trying one career then another, having a baby then getting whatever job I could get later that I found advertised in the paper (yes, actual paper).

This is worth repeating: Tracy worked all his life with retirement in mind, and not the vague idea of retirement, but the specific goal of traveling the country with his Airstream, hiking and kayaking and always seeing new places, always on the move. He planned to die on the road. Had he not met me, who was amendable to the idea, he would have gone on the road alone (albeit in a smaller Airstream).

In his mind (as in the minds of most white-collar Americans older than the current generation, is my guess) you aim to retire from the workforce in a better place, socio-economically, than where you entered the workforce. To Tracy, the Airstream plan was a better place. When forced to ditch that and buy another house, he expected it to be a better house than the one in Bethesda. Which, this one is not.

So, when he wanted an upstairs bathroom with a walk-in shower, with beautiful tile walls and a heated floor, that’s because it would be at least as good as he had before. Same with a bazillion aspects he kept bringing up with the agent and then the builder, “My house in Bethesda had ….” He must feel like he’s slipped backwards in the standard American male ascent up the ladder of life.

I mean, he does have me now, but I’m not sure of my value in that hierarchy, seeing as how it’s not my value system.

Edited to add: A couple of days after writing this, when my weekly email went out, Tracy and I were reading the news in bed, and he piped up, “You wrote in your blog again!” It was exactly then that I realized that both stories in this post are about him. I’m always careful not to write anything personal that he’d not want out there about him, even though he doesn’t read this. Come on, I’m not an inconsiderate idiot. Still, the idea that this entire post is about his psyche, not mine, didn’t occur to me until that moment, and I kinda panicked. No wonder I felt it was easy to write about how we’re thinking and feeling. It’s really about how he’s thinking and feeling, not me. D’oh.

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Li, if you’re reading this, thank you for the email and for thinking about me fondly. I sure think about you the exact same way! I can’t respond, though. My reply to the email you sent me came back to me with the following message:

The Destination MTA: "[Li, I deleted your IP address for privacy]" reported the following reason for not accepting your message: "450 4.7.1 <osnlsmtp01-03.prod.phx3.secureserver.net>: Helo command rejected: Host not found\r\n"

Try me again with another email address, please!