Rox and Roll

That Reset Button

Recently, I returned home to NorCal from home in Vermont.  The states are almost as far away from each other as one can get in these United States and, though the politics are similar, the attitudes are about as distinct as the weather.  There's an ethos to mountain people that runs in my blood.  There's a collective conciousness in Vermont, a belief in the common good that imbues every social interaction I have there.  In Vermont, and throughout those mountains in which I grew up (a bit further south in Wild and Wonderful West Virginia), I feel a total absence of self-absorption, self-importance, self-aggrandizement, self-anything.  People just are, simply, but they are far from simple people.  They don't change the landscape of the tech world with the next next thing in the Cloud, but they can tell you which clouds are which and what it might mean for the weather, which will affect their crops, their snow, ski tourism, and, therefore, the economy.  Same endgame -- way, way different strategy.

I'm not saying that Silicon Valley is full of narcissistic assholes; though it has its share, it has a huge share of wonderful people, too.  I'm just saying that Vermont is absent any arrogance, and that is so refreshing and restorative to my spirit that I return to the Valley having truly "reset" each summer, prepared for the onslaught of self-everything. 

This year, though, that reset took a different turn, for, while away, I made a life-altering decision to end my relationship of 22 years, 15 of those spent married.  It is unlikely that I'll ever write about the reasons for this decision, for, ultimately, it is a private matter.  That said, I don't want to be the subject of gossip and rumour, so I'd rather declare it up front: I've filed for divorce from The Guv.  It is a decision made without hesitation or regret after seven months of marriage counseling that I entered with an open heart, trying to save our union.  I loved the Guv for 22 years and likely always will.  But some pretty awful things happened that irreparably broke our marriage, and I reached the day when I couldn't look myself in the eye anymore and stick in there, not for the kids, not out of fear, not for anything.  I finally decided that my "self" mattered a lot more than I thought it did.

My focus these days is on my kids, and, when they sleep, it's on me, trying to figure out who I'm going to be.  I've been someone's Better Half for over half my life -- since I was 16 years old -- and I'm not even sure I know who I am without my best friend at my side.  Sometimes I forget the depth of my pain, and then, in those dozen moments each day, I want to call him to ask a question, to share a story, just to hear his voice -- and I can't do that anymore.  I reach for him in the night, and the bed is empty and significantly colder.  It's like a habit that I have to break, and it's a pain worse than death.  I once read that when you love someone so much it hurts, the only way to stop it is to love yourself enough to stop the pain.  I'm working on that now, and I know that I'll get there on the wings of my children's smiles and on the backs of a host of Silicon Valley girlfriends who somehow always know just when I need them -- and on my own strength, which I am only now realizing I had in store.

There are a lot of negative things about divorce on which I could focus, but I'm going to remember my lifelong mantra: I choose to be happy.  Of our 22 years together, 21 (by my count) were outstanding.  I know what it's like to be richly loved and to give the same in return.  Good memories made cannot be taken away or revised, even in the worst of battles, and I cherish them all -- every love letter, every photograph, every recollection.  Two beautiful children came from our union, and they truly are the best of both of us.  And if I had it to do all over again, knowing even that it'd end this way, I'd sign right back up (well, save the worst of the past year).  I have few regrets about the life I've lived to date.  I walk away from my marriage knowing that I gave it my all, and that my all was enough even though it didn't work.  I walk away with a heart full of love for a family that exists in a different form now.  And I walk away knowing that I'm young enough to start over when I'm ready, and I will.

The Guv and The Soap

Oh, how I love my husband, the Guv.  I've loved him for over twenty years, through what was left of high school, college, various jobs, two kids, two guinea pigs, a dog, four homes, two apartments, one pizza oven, a not-quite-midlife crisis convertible, you get the drift.  Our life has ebbed and flowed and changed in amazing ways, and it seems like life together just gets better and better...

... except for one thing: travel.

It's not that I don't like traveling with the Guv, because I do, especially if it's without kids and the agita that comes with driving a gazillion hours with both of them in a too-small convertible on a family road trip because the Guv refuses to drive my much-more-comfortable-for-road-tripping minivan.

But that's another post.

The thing about traveling with the Guv is how he tries to Save the Earth through using the bare minimum in hotel products.  If I unwrap a soap in Hotel One, that soap is going to travel with us to Hotel Two, Hotel Three, and Hotel Umpteen until that soap is finished.  And he removes other ones before I can unwrap them, because I have to finish Soap One from Hotel One before I am allowed to unwrap Soap Two from Hotel Two.  Soap Two is "disappeared" before I even notice it's gone.  I cannot have Soap Two, because it's cheating on Soap One, which, if I don't finish it that very trip, will Kill the Earth.

Follow?

[As an aside, you know how Jack Nicholson unwraps about 300 Neutrogena soaps in "As Good As It Gets," uses them once, and throws them away?  Yeah, I'm thinking the Guv is not a Jack Nicholson fan.]

Says the Guv, "If hotel products aren't completely used, they are thrown out.  And throwing out even a mere sliver of remaining soap is unconscionable, unthinkable, unimaginable, ad un-eco-freako" -- or something like that.  And so, if you open the cabinet below our bathroom sinks, you will find approximately 5,942 unopened hotel soaps -- because The Guv also takes the wrapped ones, because he once heard that they even throw out unopened ones between visitors.  I am no longer allowed to buy him his old favorite Lever, which I really loved to smell on his freshly-washed skin.  He uses hotel soap, soap that will outlive, outplay, and outlast us all, because no human being could ever use that much soap. He says he'll use them for the gym... you know, the gym at his office that he uses maybe weekly after a super-early morning conference call, after which he comes home to shower... home, where he uses hotel soap, which means the saving-it-for-the-gym-thing isn't really working.  He says he's saving money.  He may be saving the earth and money, but, clearly, he is not saving my sanity, because the problem is that, with rare exception, I really don't like hotel soap.  I don't like the way it smells, I don't like its waxiness -- not even the good stuff -- and I don't like its littleness.  So, we're at an impasse: I'll buy my Lush body wash and Dove sensitive skin bar soap and use them both in one shower.  (Ouch! says the Earth.)

So, anyway, this vacation, I had a plan.  He recently brought home soap I actually like: EO.  I took three cakes of it, one for each hotel switch.  We could all use it and then leave it behind at the end, right?  RIGHT? 

No.  EOS1 (that would be EO Soap One) followed us from Hotel One to Hotel Two then back to Hotel One for Stay Three.  (I didn't follow that either, but the point is that the soap followed us.) 

I can be zen about this.  At least I used the soap I like.  And the Guv dried it and rewrapped it so carefully between stays that it wasn't gooey and gnarly.  And really, if he wants to take that on, I shouldn't object. 

What I will do, though, is go through the cabinets under our sinks and donate at least half of what's stacking up down there.  I'll have to open each soap to make sure that it's one that he hasn't used and saved for later, because that happens a lot.  He says it's his way of Saving the Earth.  I think he's trying to kill me. 

P.S. I'll resuscitate with Starbucks hotel-pack coffee, because we have dozens of those, too, because we're saving the earth, and coffee farming, and my coffee budget, one foil-pack at a time. 

P.P.S. Please don't think I'm being mean to the Guv.  He vets all of my posts, and, noting my anxiety about the soap following me, he actually suggested this one.  Isn't he a keeper?!