Early Morning Thoughts

At midnight, the new puzzles show up online. I do the Microsoft games, the New York Times puzzles and the new jigsaws. I know, I have 24 hours to do them all, so there is no reason to stay up and do them as soon as they show up. I don’t have OCD, but sometimes I behave as if I do. I justify the puzzles as keeping my mind alert and well-exercised and also giving me a checkpoint to see how rapidly my brain is deteriorating. Anyway, that means it’s about 2:00 a.m. when I finally go to bed, and of course by then I’m wired so I read to calm down before I actually sleep.

Over the decades of my life, I’ve slept in many different beds. I spent a good deal of my youth sleeping on a mattress on the floor. During my second marriage I had a wonderful iron-framed king-sized bed. (Which meant that I had my bed all to myself, without acknowledging that there was someone else snoring beside me.) A few months ago, after packing up my rental house before moving back to Dallas, I started making a nest on the floor. I know, not normal for a woman in her seventies, but I thought it was great fun and felt very comforting. So now, although I have a real bed with real pillows, sheets, and covers, I still sleep in a nest on top of it.

The nest has various components, and I use whichever seem to work best at the time. A warm pastel comforter (a gift from my sister-in-law), a thin but insulating gray bedspread (a purchase when I was cold but very broke), a dark blue bath sheet, a soft warm dark blue Ugg blanket (a gift from my friend whose house I live in now), and a pale blue housecoat (another gift from the same friend). When building a nest, the colors don’t really matter. My friends seem to prefer girly pastel colors, but my personal preference is deep colors. Mix and match for tonight’s nest experience. I get comfortable and settle down with a book open on my phone. Tonight it’s a silly werewolf novel – a romance written for bored housewives. I don’t care for romance books, but I enjoy the shapeshifter stories for their world-building. I generally read to the end of a chapter without a cliffhanger and then go to sleep. I can usually fall asleep just by putting my head down on the pillow and closing my eyes. Yes, I know, most people can’t do that. Maybe I’m perpetually exhausted.

This particular night is August 12th. First day of the grouse shooting season in the UK, the day I married the Australian husband, and the birthday of a woman who used to work for me in Sydney. I had kept the news of my wedding secret from everyone except my closest friend at work.

* * *

Scene – IT management team meeting. Cathy is sitting next to me, and the date of August 12th is mentioned.

Cathy: [whispers] What’s happening on August 12th?

Me: [also whispers] Paula’s birthday.

Both: [try to look as if we aren’t giggling]

* * *

That marriage is far distant in the rear-view mirror now. We were in a stable relationship, but there was no reason to marry. We did it because we were moving to Canada, and it made the immigration process more straightforward. As I lie in my nest, I think about the relationship fondly. Not the marriage – I hate being married – but the relationship was beneficial to both of us, and we were well-suited to each other for a few years.

* * *

Scene – Geek Boy and I are in a restaurant in Sydney for lunch, and his ex-girlfriend walks in with a friend/colleague. There is nowhere for them to sit.

Ex: We’ll just sit with you until there’s a table free.

G.B.: [unhappily] Okay…

Me: Oh look, there’s a table freeing up over there.

Ex: [laughs awkwardly]

Me: Better get it while you can.

Ex: [moves angrily to other table]

G.B.: That was brilliant. The look on her face!!

* * *

Geek Boy taught me to deal with emotions (I was raised in England, so emotions were like a foreign language I never learned), and I guided him through the early stages of his IT career.

* * *

Scene – I’m on site in Rhode Island, so Geek Boy has come to stay for the weekend and we’re touring the historic houses in Newport.

G.B.: What are your plans for saving for your retirement?

Me: Don’t have any. You’ll still be working for fifteen years after I retire.

G.B.: [Silence]

* * *

Inevitably, thinking about that marriage leads me back to the other one. Fifty years ago. I really don’t understand that one. I seem to have emerged from the womb with a stamp on my forehead saying, “No relationships; no children; no settling down; no suburbs.” But at 25 I married a man my own age and forced myself to stay with him until my ice-cold manner toward him eventually made him give up.

* * *

Scene – Bill and I are at home. He’s preparing to go and do work on a client’s house. I’m preparing invoices for him during my time away from work.

Me: When can you go and finish the kitchen floor for the Watsons? I can’t bill them until you finish.

B.: It’ll take me more than an hour each way for a couple of hours’ work. It’s a waste of my time.

Me: But I can’t collect any money from them.

B.: I need to wait until I have time to spare.

* * *

Scene – I am telling my very conservative 60-year-old mother that Bill and I are getting divorced. I have been worried about how she will take the news.

Me: This marriage isn’t really working. Bill and I are going to get a divorce.

Mother: Hmmm. Well, I always thought he was a bit of a male chauvinist, didn’t you?

* * *

I told myself that I’d learned my lesson, and I’d never get married again. And I kept my promise to myself for fifteen years.

The decisions we make that impact our lives. I shudder as I think what would have happened if I had stayed in either of those marriages. All of the best things that happened to me happened when I was single. There is nothing that compares with the buzz of setting off by myself on a new adventure. Nothing as painful as passing up an opportunity because you have to consider someone else’s preferences. My first real relationship was classic, timeless. I fell deeply in love, but he was older than me, and he had already had his adventures. I hadn’t even started mine. I left without a backward glance. I still view it as my most successful relationship.

I pick up the book again, and my face twists in disgust. Our heroine is about to give up her freedom and independence to attach herself to a wolf pack. No, no, no. Wrong move! I close the app and look through the other open apps on my phone. I select another virtual jigsaw. It’s 4:00 a.m. My dog gets up, restless, and noses my hand for attention. I can’t do a jigsaw with a dog pushing my hands around.

* * *

Scene – I’m on a road trip with a friend. Telling her I want to leave corporate America behind, but don’t know what else I can do.

Me: I don’t have enough saved up to retire, but I can’t be an IT project manager when I’m seventy. That would be ridiculous.

Shirley: Well, what do you enjoy doing? What hobbies do you have?

Me: Never really been one for hobbies. I’m quite happy with just me and my dogs.

Shirley: What could you do with dogs? Breeding, training, vet work?

Me: I have tried training my dogs – not very successfully. I’d like to find out how to train properly. Maybe then I could do it for a living.

Shirley: That sounds like an idea. Do something you like and do it well instead of something you hate but do well.

Me: And I won’t be physically capable of running high-risk projects as I get older. I’m already working with technology I don’t know enough about. Whereas I could still be training dogs when I’m ninety.

* * *

Scene: I’m living alone on the beautiful Oregon coast. Not enough work training dogs, but I have to bring in money somehow.

Me: Remember that conversation with Shirley? What else do you enjoy doing?

Me’: I used to write stories and poems when I was a kid. I bet I can write short stories now.

Me: The heck with short stories. Mary Wesley was in her seventies when she first published an adult novel, and she wrote ten bestsellers.

* * *

The road goes on. I keep moving from place to place, from career to career. I settle down in my nest and sleep.