Linden

 

I was both surprised and tickled to find the condo on Linden for sale. It seemed to have a mini version of those things I loved about my house on Monterey. There was a large pond, or lake, with the condos built up around it like some kind of Swiss village. It was a two story with a balcony off the bedroom looking down at pine trees and the lake. There was a jacuzzi bath tub that was even better than our house, because it was exactly the right size for me and I could fill it up every day if I wanted to.

Downstairs there was a good sized kitchen with a dining area next to it, facing the lake. And the living room had a wood burning fireplace, a smoky mirrored wall opposite two tall windows that flanked the fireplace and a step up to the foyer. The foyer led to an open staircase with a skylight and there was a small sheltered porch directly in front of the door to my garage. It was spacious and private with two bedrooms, a large walk in closet and two large extra closets upstairs. There were two baths with the lower one having a washer and dryer instead of a tub.

The condo fee was only $60 a month, but the monthly fees in the beginning were pretty steep for me. I was working at State Farm, still part of a dream group, and had a new best friend who lived at Ironwood, which wasn't too far away. I put a garage door opener on my garage and stored my bike in there. This condo was right off the Constitution Trail so I rode daily, usually out into the country and back, but sometimes all the way across town to the grocery store, or through downtown Normal.

I joined a divorce support group that taught me a lot about what to do and not do as a recently divorced person and enjoyed this group so much that I continued to go to it for some time. The first winter was hard. I had not worked at a full time job for a long time and I had pneumonia three different times that year. We had a snowfall with so much drifting that my second story windows were halfway blocked and going from my porch to my garage was like going through a hallway of snow taller than my head. And I bought a computer!

My friends from India, who I had known since our boys were playing first year soccer together kind of took me under their wing. She offered me help with weight watchers and he put together my first computer, then showed me how to use it. Soon I added internet to my life and got my first email address so I could communicate with my friend Carol in California. Carol had grown up with my ex. Her dad was the priest at the Episcopal church by his house, but she had kept in touch with me throughout all the years of our marriage. First we used snail mail. Now we emailed and through these emails I learned to navigate the internet.

Carol was a counselor and knowing my ex as well as she did, had a lot of information for me. I actually flew out to California to see her twice and while I was there I got to visit one of My Thots subscribers, Suzanne. Suzanne was a fantastic musician, singing and playing guitar and I will never forget the first day I met her. She played and sang for me in a little garden house on a hill behind her house. Then we cut up apples from her yard to make applesauce and picked blueberries to sweeten it. She had rescued dogs and turtles and it was a magical afternoon. One of her turtles followed me up to the porch at the end of the day and I was enchanted. Carol was the person who recommended books on Narcissism and helped me to understand my crazy marriage. These vacations were the first time I learned to travel on the BART and explore San Francisco and the places near by on my own. When my son, Jim, went out there with me to buy his classical guitar we spent hours at the shop while he played them then picked a different ethnic restaurant for lunch everyday. One day we walked across town, through the park to see a school he was interested in. We ended up off the trail and came across of pond filled with turtles. There were so many turtles sunning there that they were stacked up one on top of another and as we came in they all tumbled into the water. 

I only had one scary experience during these trips and that was the night I rode the BART to hear Latif Bolat perform in Berkley. I got on a bus going the wrong direction and thought the bus driver was throwing me off because I was asking her questions. It turned out she was merely pointing me towards a bus that would take me back the way I needed to go. I went to that concert, met Latif and his wife and walked back through Berkley late at night all by myself to catch a bus to the BART and then walk back to Carol's house. It was quite a night.

Jim got really sick that year. He had tonsillitis and the doctor said they had to come out. We decided he would stay with me during this time and all might have been okay except for the weekend before surgery. He must have gotten into some poison ivy while camping out. It wasn't really noticeable, but the nurse did see it just before they put him out. He just had a patch on his wrist that they decided to put a bandage over and ignore. Unfortunately during his early recovery he must have scratched it and spread it over large parts of his body. The medicine they gave him for pain for his tonsils helped some, but the itching was intense. He spent nearly ten days at my apartment suffering. I gave him my big king size bed so Jenny could stay with him and help him while I was at work. We made jello and soup and did whatever we could but he was miserable.

My first email was with Juno and later AOL. Carol sent me emails by someone who wrote as Eman8tions. I loved reading them and thought it was really just her pen name at the time. I also began talking to people through messaging and enjoyed the anonymous flirting and discussing of so many things. Once in a blue moon I actually went out for coffee or a drink with some of these people; like I did with the guy who loved Hildegard Von Bingen. We met in the lobby of his hotel, both of us carrying our Rumi by Coleman Barks books to recognize each other. None of these meetings amounted to anything, but I loved hearing, "You've got mail!"

One day I did not get an Eman8tion and I was so disappointed that I decided to write back. That was the beginning of My Thots and a new relationship that has lasted to this day. He turned out not to be my friend Carol, but instead a man who was based in St. Louis and a former symphony conductor.

Then I met Pan. Pan and I started out on instant messaging, pretending we were Wendy and Peter having adventures in Neverland. We were two night owls who just had fun connecting online until one night he asked to meet me at Denny's for coffee. Imagine my shock when I walked into Denny's after midnight and met a six foot three, blonde haired, blue eyed, twenty two year old! He didn't seem put off and we talked for hours. Then we went to Miller Park to watch the sun rise. As we walked under the trees he would spontaneously twirl me around like we were dancing, or hold my hand and just start running. It was magical and so sweet. When he said goodbye, as we ran for our cars he raised his hand and called out, "Remember! Second star to the right and straight on to morning." Pan and I saw each other for several months, but his mother's name was the same as mine. She was also my age and he was so much younger, I began to feel a little awkward. Then Eman8tions, who I had started writing to, and actually met, acted jealous and I decided to end it. Pan cried. I was sad too.

Eman8tions was a man seven years older than me who wrote meditations and poetry and played Native American flute. He was hobnobbing around the country visiting the subscribers to his thoughts and finally ended up back in St.Louis living with one of his best friends, a woman and her husband. He was her maid of honor at her wedding. The first time I drove to St.Louis we went to a kite festival at Forest Park. The second time was mother's day and I took my two adult son's with me to meet him at the Butterfly House in Chesterfield. He had another woman with him and I ended up taking us all out for Chinese food after he finished performing. I was already hooked, but so were a lot of other women. Including the woman he was with that day. That was the beginning of a long relationship where I learned things and did things I never expected to be part of. Wherever he performed there would be women madly in love with this sparkling eyed, modern day guru who spoke with such heartfelt words. He also filled in for some religious places when their ministers were out of town and I often went with him. He spoke to the Science of Mind people in Milwaukee and quite often at the local Unitarian church. He officiated at a Wiccan wedding and several other places. We explored different philosophies like the Vedanta Society and a sweat lodge. He made Native American drums and I helped, then we sold them at pow wows or just to people who wanted them. I had birthed my own drum many years ago on a small farm outside Blue Mound, Illinois. That was a very ritualistic and meaningful experience, but working with him was also meaningful in a different way. 

One time we were invited to a psychic fair in Atlanta and drove all the way down there to put on his concert and attend their fancy masked costume ball, but the person in charge evidently did not do enough advertising and they lost money on it. They still paid us with a big check, which promptly bounced when we tried to deposit it. We never did get our money for that, but I did get to meet his mother on the way home. And we also stopped at Bobby's house in North Carolina on that same trip home. We arrived around midnight, put on our costumes for the masked ball and knocked on his door. When Bobby opened it he was greeted by a very large bumble bee complete with antennae and gossamer wings and an angel with real feathered wings! 

We were very active politically, going door to door to make sure people got out to vote and even giving rides to the polls. I remember we ate breakfast with Dennis Kucinich and I used my first mobile phone to make calls from his headquarters. We sat on the floor for hours going through our lists.

When he was on the road and I was alone I would build a fire in my fireplace and burn incense and practice meditating. I even made a doll that looked just like him to sit across from me. It wore a tiny navy blue jogging suit, real tennis shoes and had a brown yarn ponytail. Typical of me it was all or nothing. LOL

In the meantime I still had my dream group. I have always been a very prolific dreamer and I remember some of my dreams as if they were actual experiences. My dreams are so real it is as if I have two lives. I've always wondered if that is a throw back to my Ojibwa great great grandmother. My friend, Tom, was still a big part of my life too. Both in dream group and with my son, Bobby. Being on my own for the first time, I was clueless about things like taxes and ended up having to pay $3000 that first year. I didn't have it, but Tom loaned me the money and I paid him back little by little.

I had my piano, but I wanted to learn to play the flute, so I bought a flute and took lessons. At first I couldn't get a sound out of it! I was used to the oboe or saxophone and blowing over the flute took me a while to learn. Eman8tions was the person who finally taught me how to do that.  At the end of the year I actually played in a recital, but I didn't tell anyone about it. I was so nervous. I'd never played a recital anywhere, so just doing it was enough for me. My teacher accompanied me on one piece and a Russian conductor/pianist accompanied me on another. It was a success and I felt pretty proud. In fact I was kind of sorry I hadn't invited anyone to hear me, but there were a lot of other people there. Mostly parents whose children were learning to play instruments for the first time.

Christmas that year the boys played their guitars, I played my flute and Jim's future wife played the piano while Eman8tions sang carol's.  It was a dream come true for me to have everyone together like that.

The next year on Christmas I moved the big round dining table into the living room by the fire and put the tree up in there. It felt very old fashioned and cozy. Everyone was there, Eman8tions, my boys, Becky and my three tiny granddaughters, Brooke, Tiffany, and Alicia and we opened presents. The following day I cooked a big traditional Christmas dinner for all of us and we waited. We waited and waited, but Becky never showed up. I didn't see or hear from her again for months. It wasn't the first time this kind of thing had happened, but it was still a disappointment.

Eman8tions helped me get Jim ready for the Honors program in Austria. Being a musician who had done some traveling Eman8tions helped him pack his classical guitar so it could withstand the trip, Bobby went off to work at Camp Arrowhead Boy's Camp in North Carolina for another year as a camp counselor. I heard Becky was staying at the Mission with the girls and I went over there to see if I could talk to her. It turned out the door was already locked. It was past opening, but as I turned to walk back to my car someone assaulted me, knocked me to the ground and raspy, alcohol tainted breath breathed down on my ear. I don't know what would have happened, but right at the moment a carload of rowdy teenage boys came zooming through the lot, screaming and yelling and whoever was on top of me ran off. Nothing really happened but I was traumatized. I never went back.

My job at State Farm was great when I was assigned to work with some of the career level women in our department. I got to travel and help run seminars for our top agents and do all sorts of wonderful things, but the woman who ran our department was horrible. She would go through our trash and check out any floppy disks to see if they were really useless and she did not train anyone. If you couldn't get trained yourself you would be out of luck. 

She had been told I could do anything and for some reason she just didn't like me. I've never had that problem before or since, but it made my life miserable. She bounced me from one person to another so I was always working for somebody different.  I had several people ask for me back, but she always had excuses for why that couldn't happen. Then she decided to have us all take the Myers Briggs test. Afterwards she called me in and said, "You are a square peg in a round hole and you better just get over it!"  I started looking for a new job. 

She wouldn't let anyone transfer out of her department, so I looked outside of State Farm and stumbled on Novak Flowers on Main St. I had no idea what a job there would be like. I imagined just waltzing in and arranging flowers in vases. I got the job! However I learned their flower arrangers had degrees in some kind of horticulture or design. One even had a masters degree! I worked in the front showroom answering the phone and helping customers. They said there were no benefits and I would start at the minimum wage for six months, but a couple months later they gave me a big increase and when my State Farm Cobra insurance expired, they paid half my health insurance on a private policy! It was a family business and such a great place to work. I loved it there. I learned how to take orders for funerals and weddings and just general flowers. I learned to use the computer to do long distance flowers and in my spare time I plucked the roses and fluffed the carnations! I felt like one of the family. I never learned to make bows though! It became a standing joke that I would wear out my practice ribbon before I ever got a presentable bow, but I knew how to snip the ends of stalks and wrap them in wire for simple vases. I knew how to add a bit of filler and I helped people identify the potted plants in the greenhouse. It was a very fulfilling job. By the time I moved on I knew the name of almost all the plants and flowers.

During this time I got a call that my father had died. My brother's friend, a nurses assistant, had been feeding him breakfast and he simply died right then. No pain. No suffering, but unexpected. He was just a few months short of his 73 rd. birthday, I had asked him what he wanted for Christmas and he said all he wanted was to be with my mother. He died December 26, 2000 and in some ways I was happy for him. He was a man who had started college at barely sixteen and been called one of the most intelligent men the Superintendent of Public Education had ever met when I was a child. The nursing home had nothing to help him stay mentally active or happy and he had no will power left. Eman8tions and Jim played at his funeral and I gave a speech about his life. It was the best I could do. To me he was the greatest man I've ever known.

The condo elected a new board and they decided the snow needed to be scraped off the roof tops that winter. We'd never done this in Illinois and it was a bad idea. They destroyed big parts of the roof, dropped snow down on my deck crushing my furniture and left some apartments with big leaks in their ceilings. Mine was fine but everyone's condo fees went up way over a hundred dollars. My mortgage was reevaluated and went down.

Eman8tions and I were seeing each other regularly by then. My first attempts at using my own charge cards had left me with two large accounts. I wanted to pay them off and I wanted to move closer to him so I wouldn't have to drive so far when he didn't come to my house. I began house hunting in Taylorville, Illinois where my siblings lived. Life was much less expensive there.

I finally rented a small house a block from my brother's ex-wife and on moving day I rented a big moving van and drove it to my condo. Then two of Jim's friends came to help me since he now lived in Seattle. My sister also came, bringing her new boyfriend who turned out to be more of a hindrance than anything. He insisted he knew how to pack everything into the truck and turned what should have been a couple of hours into almost a whole day. It was frustrating because I was paying the boys and they were doing their best in spite of him. Eman8tions helped too, but he had to leave early to get back to St.Louis. My sister's boyfriend drove the van to Taylorville.