My Undoing
[To read this memoir in order, go to the category My Left-Handed Wheelhouse here on the blog.]
So I need to back up here. Just a few months. It had been a rocky ’23 in many ways. Things kept breaking in such a systematic way there surely seemed to be some universal magic afoot. In the winter, it was my car. She’s a wonderful old girl, a 4Runner from the previous century back when they made a stick shift version. I put a new engine in her after my husband died. He’s the one who found her for me back in 2008 or something. She, like our year, is 23. She started turning herself off and then back on while I was driving. Understandably, this freaked me out. I had her towed the two miles to the mechanic and they began a lengthy investigation. Looking back to last January, it wasn’t a big deal when she broke. All my work was online, and I make it a high priority to hibernate in the winter anyway. My freezer and fridge and cupboards were packed with local food. The dogs and I were fine holing up. By spring the mechanic had the mystery solved, and it wasn’t that expensive either. So I started getting out a little, mostly to a dear group of women friends I meet up with in Tecumseh, a cute town about half hour west of here.
Around then I got the email from my boss in California. After years of ignoring those of us who had left the state and continued to work, they were cracking down. I either needed to move back or move on. The decision was easy for practical reasons but leaving a job after nearly 30 years brought on a tsunami of reflection. It was a big deal. I put in for retirement. I was now semi-retired.
The semester here in MI ended when April did, and I was nursing my ancient desktop through. I was also fighting this unsettled unhappiness in me. Fighting is an important word. I wasn’t working with it; I was fighting it. Why was I not happy? I had everything I wanted, pretty much. I love my house just as I have created it, a hippie funky Bohemian bungalow with recycled silk sari curtains and plenty of dog beds. Lots of original art in every room, all from my home state of Cali. I had just started falling in love with my land, so different than the land I was used to that it had taken some time. I had friends now, good neighbors, supportive and sweet colleagues, and loving family nearby. But every day I had to remind myself to be happy.
Where the dogs and I hang out most of the time. I love my house.
Was I lonely? Sure. This has been the first five years of my life that I’ve been single and not looking. I’ve always been in some phase of the circle of serial monogamy. “It must be so hard,” my friend Maryam said over breakfast at the Honduran Coney one morning last early spring, “to have lost your partner.” “It sucks!” I spit out. I surprised myself with my vehemence and was suddenly near tears. After that I felt the loneliness waning. Voicing it helped. I felt more at peace with being alone. More at peace, but still unhappy about something I couldn’t put my finger on.
I knew I needed to get my desktop computer in for an overhaul. It was way past due. I hadn’t really had the heart to find a new computer guy here in Ann Arbor. I’d used one company once for my laptop, but my desktop, my main machine, was a different story. It had been held together by the eccentric genius of my computer guy Mikail back in California. I’d even thought of shipping it to him so he could work on it. He’d worked so much magic on it that I didn’t think anyone else could. But then Mikail suddenly left us, transitioning in weeks. I thought about him so often then, and it was as if he willed me from beyond: Move on, Carolyn. Your old girl needs some help. The “Old Girl” had gotten so slow that I made tea while she booted up in the morning. I called the Ann Arbor guy to find out he’d fallen in love with a woman in the South Pacific and moved there. The new guy was Adam Bain. I brought him my computer. I didn’t get it back, functioning, for six weeks. Two weeks in, my back up lap top broke. Adam gave me a little iMac loaner, larger than a postage stamp but not by a lot. For the first time since I started writing and teaching on computers, both of mine were in the shop at once.
I fell apart. I couldn’t think, and amidst scattered thoughts of being grateful I wasn’t teaching, I wandered around the house and land like my own programming was haywire. I had no idea that my brain and my entire nervous system were so deeply tied to these machines. I spent the late spring breathing and doing movement exercises just so I wouldn’t be hauled off to a place with padded walls.I’d gone from vaguely unhappy to acutely distressed in a matter of eight weeks. During this time my rain garden was built, and this saved me. I had other land projects as well, and I took to circling the perimeter several times a day, racking up miles. Each day seemed like a week. I read a lot, and wrote some by hand, mostly bided my time until finally Adam showed up smiling and hooked up my old girl for me. She was reborn. She booted up before I could even think of my tea, and has worked like a new computer, just has he promised.
My favorite part of my circle walk: my woods.
Jesse had come for that Mother’s Day, mostly to get a cat named George. That’s another story. When he was here I asked him to help me put up my project boards in the hallway again. Now that I was semiretired I was going to get serious about writing again. I took some classes about the local writing market (before my computers left the property) and the four large pieces of posterboard were strewn with sticky notes about story ideas and contacts. I had one whole board for books I’d finished and almost finished, sticky notes for presses and agents. So, when my computer returned, I was ready to dive in. Now I could finally get things done and hopefully be happy!
I do love my project boards.
I thought I was making some progress. I started teaching my summer class, a research skills class. Then the vague unhappiness returned. I was stewing and I had no idea why. Months later, I was mentally back where I’d started.
And then snap!
Sitting in the urgent care exam room that afternoon, and lying awake in my bed that night, awkwardly situated with a splinted arm, I started to see it. My car broke and I didn’t get it. One computer broke, and then another. I still didn’t get it. So– my arm. Ahhh. Okay. Let’s stop here and figure out what I need to get, I told myself. You can do this.
