Category — life goes on

My backyard is split into thirds by a steep little hill. It’s not suitable for the riding mower or a push mower. Anyone who has ever attempted to weed-wack it has been rewarded with angry yellowjackets. My landscaper asked me what I wanted done with it.

“It needs to be burned, and when that’s done, I’m pulling the ivy that’s taking over my screened-in porch out of the front bed and giving it a place to do what ivy does- go wild and choke everything else out.”

He shook his head.

“I can’t do that. I mean, I could, but I won’t. Something could go wrong, and I don’t want to be responsible for burning your house down.”

He didn’t know it, but he was the third man in as many weeks to deliver such a message. Metaphorically, anyway.

I choose to see the refusals- all of them- as an overture of respect. There’s a certain amount of trust involved in setting fires; if someone doesn’t trust themselves or the fire or their fellow fire-setters, the kind and responsible thing to do is bow out before the match is lit. There is honor in admitting that you’re not willing to take responsibility.

My therapist once asked me why the ambivalence of others towards me provoked my legendary impatience and irritation.

“Well, what’s so difficult about it? Either you like me enough to see what happens, or you don’t. What is there to ponder on?”

He giggled softly (yes, he’s quite feminine and quite married, and it is these two things that allow him to patch up my weak spots without my falling in love with him).

“You don’t think that someone might need time to decide whether or not to take on an involvement with you?”

My irritation turned towards him and his smug humor.

“You make deciding to dating me sound like deciding to enter a religion. Seriously, am I that damn difficult?”

Now he openly roared with laughter, and this made me so angry I could feel my cheeks reddening.

“Dating you is an entirely worthy pursuit, sure, but not one to be taken lightly. You are a formidable woman, and your ignorance of it is amusing as it is surprising. You are just too much for some men, who might prefer a wife happy to fetch their slippers and keep a cold beer in their hand. You are willing to do that, I know, but the price they pay for the privilege might be outside of their emotional and intellectual capacities.”

I couldn’t be angry with him anymore, because I know exactly what he means.

On Friday, I read this:

“I have had many, many great teachers in my life. A super abundance. No one and nothing comes close to the woman who is now asleep in the bedroom. My marriage has become the guru, the salvation, the muse, the crack through which the divine shines through.”

Really, as far as dating and marriage and family go, I’m not very interested in anything less than that ideal as the objective. I’ve seen the misery of love that falls short of it, and I’d rather be alone.

I’ll wait for the guy who asks me to get him a beer while he hooks up the hose, and strikes the match with a twinkle in his eye.

Who chooses a scenic highway with a top speed limit of forty-five miles an hour over the interstate? This girl. I drove the Blue Ridge Parkway to Lynchburg, Virginia this weekend. I could have taken I-40 or I-26 to I-81 and made it in four hours, but I didn’t.

The Parkway is one of my favorite places in the world. So simple, so beautiful- in a world of double-tandem semi-trucks and seventy miles per hour speed limits, the Parkway is a haven, a refuge. My parents don’t call me their “little ridge-runner” for no reason.

I regretted my route once; when I found myself behind a car with Iowa plates on a steep decent with more than a few descending decreasing radius curves- a fancy engineering term for a bitch of a curve. A descending radius curve is where the road changes elevation in the curve- you’re not just turning, you’re also going downhill. A decreasing radius curve is where the turn gets harder as you go through it.  So, of course, a declining decreasing radius curve is one that combines a drop in elevation with a tightening of the curve once you’re in it.

What makes these curves so treacherous? The grade of the decent causes your car to accelerate, which makes you want to hit your brakes to slow back down, but that makes it almost impossible to steer into the apex of the curve. You pick up speed when it is the last thing you need.

After you’ve driven in the mountains for awhile, you get the hang of these nasty little curves. You learn to start into them slower than you would a level turn. The car sets itself a line as you start the curve and pick up speed, and your job is to interfere as little as possible with that natural line, steering only as much as necessary, and only braking very lightly just before the apex if absolutely necessary.

People from Iowa are perhaps not familiar with this technique. So they fight the line. They ride their brakes or hit their brakes hard in the apex, which makes steering much harder. I feel for them- they’re scared, they’re getting a lesson in vehicle physics that isn’t had in Iowa, they are white-knuckled and full of fear. (Not to mention that they’re melting their brake pads and running the risk of losing braking power altogether). It’s frustrating and irritating for me to ride behind them; they ruin my line when they fight their own, but I’m irritated while they are scared for their lives.

I wish I could tell them not to fight the line. To slow down a little more coming in, if they’re nervous, but once the curve starts, take your foot off the pedals and just steer. Fighting the line is actually more dangerous.

I’ve been stressed, scared, frustrated, angry and unsure of myself. The life I dream of is on the horizon, and the life I once cherished is ending slowly but surely, like the passing of mileposts. I cannot see what the road looks like from where I’m at to where I’m surely headed, and that element of uncertainty is what makes me crazy. I drive myself crazy trying to plan and plot and scheme and prepare for every possible outcome or pitfall or obstacle, drafting plans A through ZZ in a attempt to find some security in life-changing situations that are well beyond my control.

I’ve been fighting the line. I’ve been braking and freaking out and over-steering like a flatlander. I’m making things much, much harder than they have to be, and more dangerous too, in the sense that my health and emotional stability have suffered, are suffering, and that means that I’m not bringing my best self to anything I’m involved in.

Time to take my foot off the brake, loosen my grip on the wheel and trust the road.

“Feel the wind
And set yourself the bolder course
Keep your heart
As open as a shrine
You’ll sail the perfect line..”

-bob seger “in your time”