Pity party, table for one

It’s funny how you can be crusin’ along, having a great day and then suddenly, in the course of two short hours have the brakes unexpectedly slammed on, causing you to screech to a halt. 

I took the N-Man to his preschool’s Halloween party and was, out of the over one hundred families there, the only single parent.  Despite my efforts to talk to the parents of the other kids in his class, kids that he loves to play with and talk about, everywhere I turned I was greeted with suspicion and stand offish attitudes.  The same parents would then quickly turn to other parents they didn’t know, families  like them, make an introduction, more than willing to cozy up.  Never mind the single, pariah freak standing over there. 

I’m just generally over society’s attitude that you are only half a person if you are single and, in order to be a whole, respectable, included part of the world, you better couple up.  Been there. Done that.  Not my cup of tea.  How does that make me broken?    And seriously, ma’am.  I do not want to steal your husband so there’s no need to stare down you nose at me and step so obviously between me and him as I’m talking to him about our children and steer him elsewhere.  (And no,  just in case you assume I must have the big, scary gay because I’m a woman, a mom, and enjoy being single, I don’t want to steal you away from your husband.)  I’m. just. over it.  I ushered the N-Man half heartedly and as quickly as possible through the sea of perfect, shiny, happy, coupled families then got the hell out of there.

I then came home and  found out that a group of folks with whom I regularly get together had planned yet another outing similar to the ones I would have attended with them in the past, one  for Halloween, and I had not been invited.  Innocuous?  Probably.  Something worth really being upset about?   Absolutely not.  After all, it’s seriously not all about me.   But at the moment, it was just salt in a wound.   

I’m presently sitting at watching the N-Man bounce gleefully from wall to wall, waiting for the high from three frosted cookies, two cup cakes, a package of M&Ms, and one lollipop to wear off so I stand even the slightest chance of successfully putting him to bed, and then I’m headed to the bath tub, glass of wine in hand, to give in.   True to form, I’ll give myself exactly one hour to wallow.  Then I’ll pull it  together, remind myself that I am strong and don’t need anyone but me to be happy and that I AM happy, and convince myself yet again that I am actually better off alone because, after all when you’re guarded and alone no one can get to you and you don’t end up crying on the sofa at 8:30 pm on a Friday night.   

Or do you?

Tara’s Lady of the Mountain

In July of 1994 I walked in to a quite unremarkable house on the far west side of Albuquerque and came face to face with the love of my life, the being with whom I have have maintained my closest, longest, not related by blood relationship.  Paisley would eventually be her name after much ado and months of debate.  (Her registered name, oddly enough, rolled off the tip of my tounge immediately:  Tara’s Lady of the Mountain.)  She was, on that hot, dry summer day, only seven days old, a mere potato that I could hold on the palm of  one hand.  Her eyes were still closed but she knew me.  She knew me from the very first moment and I knew her.  I paid my deposit and, for six weeks following, made the  80 minute round trip drive from my home on the opposite side of the city, every day, to spend time with my new soul mate, bonding, laughing at clumsy puppy bravado, smiling.  She finally came home and we’ve never looked back.

I recall those first months of her in my life so vividly.  The time she put her nose in a freshly poured glass, of ice cold, bubbling soda.  She spent the next 15 minutes running in circles, attacking those damn bubbles for their offensive assualt on her face.  Her first frou-frou coat, a red vinyl, fleece lined, waterproof cover that looked somewhat like the tacky toaster covers of the 1970’s.  Watching her unleash hell on a friend’s dinner with full determination and ferocity as we sat on the floor of an unfurnished, just out of college apartment eating an early Thanksgiving meal.  The image of her laying, spread eagle, in the middle of the overflowing plate while she gluttonously lapped up her pillow of mashed potatoes and gravy is forever etched in my mind.  I did warn him he needed to look out for the puppy.  I was right.

She saw me through three boyfriends, a three year hiatus from real life during law school, a four year relationship that broke my heart in the end, my courtship, engagement, and marriage to X, my pregnancy and the birth of the N-Man, the downfall of my vows, separation, and divorce and finally back to me.    She traveled with me from New Mexico to Texas, back to New Mexico, to Montana, and finally to Colorado.   She saved my life once.  She was the epitome of little-old-lady-wearing-floppy-hats-and-planting-tomatoes-in-the-South grace.  Her every move, gesture, look told me, with no uncertainty, that she was the reincarnation of  an old and wise, Eastern lama who knew more than I could ever comprehend.  Certainly, she was smarter than me.  She was, in a nutshell, the lone, up close, intimate witness of my entire adult life.

Today, almost fifteen years later,  I walked into a quite unremarkable strip mall store front on the far East side of the Denver metro area  and presented the vet with her frail,  failing body, a shell of the friend that I have known and loved.  Her eyes long since clouded into darkness by cataracts.  Her hearing no longer selective, just simply gone.  Her always petite but athletic and muscular, nine and a half pound frame withered to a mere 6.9 pounds.  I handed her over then went home to wait.  I watched the seconds click past, one by one, at an alarmingly grave tempo.

This story doesn’t end the way you probably thought it would.  Not today.  I broke down at the vet’s office when I went back for the test results.  Not because of what it showed, but because of what it didn’t.  No answers clearly pointing me in any specific direction.  Just more wondering.  She was treated with the shotgun approach for now: pain medication, IV fluids, and antibiotics.  Sent home to wait.  As I type, she is curled up next to me in her snuggle sack, blankly staring out at a world that, like the day we met, she cannot see.  I wonder if  she still knows me the way I know her.  I hope she at least senses I’m here with her.  I pray that come tomorrow, the blood work results will provide answers the chest X-rays failed to.  I need to know exactly how much borrowed time I have left with this exquisite little creature who has dedicated her entire existence to my happiness and comfort.  I just… I just need to know.