Story #1

Story #1

Linda Wolff

The ice swirls awkward circles in the cocktail glass. I wait for the cool liquid to settle and then take a drink of my Tanqueray and tonic. Standing at the kitchen window, I look out to see the wind pushing the branches of the sumac tree into myriad directions, resembling what much of my life had been like over this last year. To be honest, my life has actually been like this for a long time. It's amazing the level of dysfunction one can get used to living every day, over the span of many decades. I can still hear the dry perfunctory voices of the divorce lawyers echo in my ears, a distant cacophony. Jim's red-angry tones return to my ears, sounding far more hot and immediate. Many of his veiled threats and enraged rebuttals still make me want to grab my middle and double over, that figurative fetal position is a reflection of the deep emotional coma I'd been in for so long.

"This divorce will be a financial nightmare for us both," and "You'll never make it on your own." Those and many other of his venom-laced phrases swirl in my head.

I lean against the counter and watch the finches and nuthatches fly helterskelter in the gusts of wind, struggling against the buffeting wind to reach the birdfeeder filled with small black sunflower seeds. My emotions know well the feelings of being tossed and batted about. I am grateful to be out of that emotionally and mentally dysfunctional relationship. I sigh a deep and heavy sigh, of relief, of past anguishes no longer gripping my life, a sigh of the losses in my life that are no longer able to hurt me.

It's been six months now. In spite of his parting shots, those last barbed sarcasms venting his rage and hurt, I think I really may be able to do just fine on my own. As I watch the birds and trees just outside my kitchen window, the wind dies down and the birds alight on the little metal posts of the feeder. Their tiny toes wrap around the little metal posts designed just for them to hang on to while they eat, posts that are just their size. Rather like my new home, I think. Although it was built in the early '60's, this house seems like it was designed just for my two boys and me. September's divorce settlement gave Jim the house in order to refinance it and pay off all our mutual bills. I got my 2 boys and child support. Consequently, October became a crazed scramble, spending hour after hour after work and long hours on weekends, trying to find a place for the three of us to live. After seeing pitiful house after pitiful house, I despaired that I'd ever find anything suitable. Suddenly I found this house. Seems now like fate, karma. A cozy little home but the yard needs lots of attention, and the insides need fixing up, patching up, with some renovating here and there. All are things I can tend to over time. Since summer's here, my first effort is the yard.

The ice clinks in my Tanqueray and tonic as I push away from the kitchen counter and walk out the front door, down the uneven concrete of the front walk to the four steps that take the walk down to the level of the sidewalk that winds around the neighborhood. I breathe deep the soft smell of a warm summer's day. A robin whistles and squawks from a branch overhead. I take a drink and sit on the top step. The texture of the rough concrete, like pine needles, pierces and jabs into my skin thru my khaki colored shorts. I don't mind. These are my steps; I've bought them on my own. My own house. My own freedom. The rough scraping sensation against my skin is somehow gratifying.

There's a four-foot wide stretch of dirt by the sidewalk starting at my left, extending a good twenty feet from the steps where I'm sitting, going out towards the furthest edge of the yard. It had been a hardscrabble dirt patch strewn with chunks of broken granite, misshapen golf-ball sized river rocks and the ugly redpink decorator rock everyone in the '70's used imbedded deep into the surface. Pieces of trash littered that little landscape. Weeds of an amazing variety had crept and etched into every dip and rise and hollow. Dandelions and bindweed had a stranglehold on the pitiful little clumps of grass that dared to grow in spits and burps across the dry tan colored earth. It was the first section of my new home that I worked on. I put my heart into changing that little piece of yard.

That once- scratched and dried waste of land now embraces a small rock garden. Orange and yellow tiger lilies and purple iris, red tulips and yellow daffodils now jut their soft green stalks up thru the ground. Marigold seeds have sprouted, and alyssum and tiny purple and gold violas and deep red dianthus toss out tiny patches of color. The sweet, heady aroma of the alyssum and the evening stock lace the air with their wonderful sweet fragrance. The dark emerald green of all the leaves bear lively witness to the changes. Gold and purple petunias splash their colors among the green stalks and marble granite colors of the rocks.

Standing at the sidewalk, I look up at the gnarled old tree before me. Its branches are covered in new growth, birds flit about, soft breezes push and tug the leaves and twigs. My heart warms. I suddenly realize that whatever joys and sorrows are headed my way, whatever my future may hold, as I stand here on my own property, at the edge of my own home, that I can be as resilient as the little clumps of grass, as determined as the flowers, as strong as the birds tossed by the winds. I, too, know that I can meet life head on, and that I can succeed.