Moving In

Five days in our new place now. No furniture yet; will rent a truck and empty storage next week. Three bedrooms, two baths. Not huge but big enough for now. Carson City, Nevada is where we will call home for at least the next year. It is my hope that my daughter and her family stay here, in Carson City, while the kids attend school. These kids have been uprooted enough.
Today we got library cards and stocked up on books to read while the weather is still rather cool. Tomorrow we shop for some needed household items and go for haircuts. Then perhaps a drive up to Tahoe.

Today

It has been a month now since I returned from West Virginia. I miss my son and his family. I miss the smell of the sweet baby. I miss taking Mags, a beautiful 3year old Golden Retriever, out for her snowy romps. It has been raining off and on here since I returned. It is that time of year where winter is transitioning into spring. The days are warm enough to go without a coat but the early mornings still call for an extra blanket.

I am not sleeping well. I go into read about 10:00 pm then say my prayers before I doze off. But, I am awake again by 2:00 am and watch the clock turn till it is a decent time to get up and start coffee. I then sit quietly in a chair and read waiting for the rest of the house to wake up. I sleep on the floor in a room with my three oldest grandsons who also sleep on the floor. My back aches and I have a constant crick in my neck. It isn’t ideal by any means but there is a roof over our heads and a lock on the door. I am grateful for this right now.

Mike is in Marin still, living in the RV on someone’s land. He calls when he knows my check has come. Then when he gets his he stops calling. The ties are loose and almost severed and soon we won’t talk at all. My daughter and her husband drove to Tahoe to pick up my cat and to look for a place to live. The man that Mike left Kohl with said he got out soon after Mike left him and he didn’t bother looking for him because he didn’t think anyone would come for him. When I talked to Mike about it he was unconcerned. Koln is three and one-half years old and my cat and I love him and he is gone. So now I grieve for not only all I have lost materially in the past few years but for my cat as well. He was under our protection and to Mike he was expendable. Not to me.

We may be moving into a place in Carson City, Nevada toward the end of this month. I so hope everything works in our favor and we will have our own place again. I am tired. I don’t know how much more I can manage. My mind is clouded. My emotions at the surface. I am tired. I have tried to get an appointment with a doctor for some new meds, antidepressants, but am still waiting for a call back.

juggling act

Co-dependents define themselves in terms of their relationships. “Family secrets. Guilt. Shame. Repressed anger. Low self-esteem. Compromising your own values to avoid another person's rejection or anger. Those are just a few red flags of codependence (Jeanie Davis, Goodhouskeeping.com/health).” I have lived in, through, and around co-dependent relationships for as long as I can remember. It takes so much energy, so much thought.

I am tired today. I am in Madison, West Virginia today visiting my son and his family. I am flying back to San Francisco tomorrow where a bevy of issues will confront me as soon as I land. My daughter, whom I love immensely, is pregnant with her seventh child. That’s right, I said seventh. How do I respond? It is not just her precarious health but their even more precarious financial situation. We are, after all, technically homeless. Then there is Mike. He called two days ago to tell me that the RV’s differential went out and he is stuck in Marin. Marin, where he didn’t need to be in the first place. So, what is it really? Is it the differential or is he coming down off a drug weekend or is it a bit of both? He called this morning. He wants to sell the RV before he has to spend more money; he is tired of the lifestyle. I don’t blame him for that I am too. It was much more fun in the beginning. Now it just means more loss. Financially, mentally, and emotionally. It is just another way of being homeless.

My son wants me to stay, to miss my flight on purpose. I don’t know what it is I want. Not today. But that isn’t altogether true. I want a place to call home. I want a place to put my books on a shelf, to cook my own food, to watch a Law & Order marathon and not feel guilty, to have my cat and my dog, and to plant a garden. I want to know that my children and their families are healthy, happy, and safe. I want the same for myself. And for Mike. I don’t know if I want to be with Mike as a couple but I do care about him.

I have looked at houses here around Charleston, West Virginia. I have even found several that I wouldn’t mind living in and that could actually be affordable for me. I will take the list with me and keep an eye on them and on my credit. And once I figure out the mess in California maybe I will be back. I have a bed here if I want it. I just don’t know how it would be for my son and his family. Having me here for a visit is one thing but having me stay on until I find a place of my own is another. I wouldn’t be visiting, but I wouldn’t be living here either.

Life is up in the air. My life is floating around me, a juggling act that I must learn to control rather than have it control me.

Snow

Today is a snow day for the children in Madison, West Virginia, and the neighboring cities and towns. There is an inch or possibly two on the ground outside. The calls announcing a snow day began soon after the first flakes began to fall last evening. Incredible. Having raised children in south Lake Tahoe, California where a snow day is called only if there were blizzard conditions during the night and there is at least a foot of snow still on the roads after the plows have gone through this Madison snow day is rather humorous. My son tells me that the snow will turn to ice in the bitter cold that accompanies it and then more snow will fall and that too will turn to ice. This causes many accidents. My humor dissolved remembering that last year my son was driving after a snowfall here and was in an accident. He didn’t anticipate the layer of ice that lay beneath the innocent looking layer of snow.

Madison, West Virginia is a small city of 2,500-3,000 people. For such a small town it has an impressive court house. That is where my son and his wife were married a year ago yesterday. Last night we went to dinner at the Peking Chinese restaurant in town, though really I think it was in Danville, the next town over. A small restaurant, we were one of two tables being served. The food was good, not excellent, but good and the company better. After dinner we left the restaurant, where outside it had started to rain, a rain that would turn into snow by the time we got back to the house. Outside the restaurant a border collie was wandering frantically around looking for his people. A young dog, with a collar, looking lost and confused, he was skittish around the few people who tried to reach him to read his tag and find him a way home. He reminded me of all the people out there in the cold weather, lost and confused, looking for a place to call home for the night.

What is it with people who revisit their childhood every time they feel left out or they get their feathers ruffled? Why does a 45-year-old man persist in arguing with three and four year olds? Or expect that the way that he was raised to be the final word in child rearing simply because it is the way he was raised when in fact he is always whining about the harsh way in which his mother raised him? He was made to salute, to tow the line, to be seen and not heard, and when he acted out the consequence was corporal punishment. Resentment and jealously fuel him in this regard. And frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn for his attitude, his behavior, in this matter.

Yes, Mike is back. He came back to the Bay last week from Tahoe. I am not sure how I feel about it at all. I don’t want to be in a “relationship” with him at this moment but I do care about him and wish him well. He does not have a family to go to; his mother is an unrelentingly cruel and uncaring bitch, and his father, the polar opposite of his mother, lives in the northern most part of Idaho and the weather makes the roads inhospitable for RV driving. Mike used to be such a patient and controlled man. Somewhere inside he still might be. But at the moment he is not. He is impatient, intolerant, irritable, angry, and bitter. I used to like being around him, he had a calming effect on me. But now I can only take so much then I want him to take a time out, sit in a corner, practice silence, and think about his actions. He doesn’t do this of course and so I am left with the desire for him to just go. There is too much anxiety, tension, stress, and worry in this group already without adding his stuff to the mix. But, he came to help drive the kids to school and pick them up in the afternoons while I am gone and if he can manage to do that and keep his head about him then he is welcome to stay. He loves the kids, would do anything for them, and has and does, and he saves his bad behavior for me, so hopefully all will go well in my absence.

I leave this post now with a hope and a prayer in my heart.

Leavin' on a jet plane

On Thursday, January 13, 2011, I am leaving for Madison, West Virginia to visit my son and his family and to welcome the birth of my new granddaughter. The baby, Noelle Olivia, is due January 26. The weather in Madison is frightful, cold, dry, harsh. Today the temperature is expected to reach 26 degrees. Since all of my winter clothes and boots are still in storage in Sacramento, I needed to find a few warm pieces of clothing to take with me and hoped that I could find a coat and a pair of boots. Toward this end, I went shopping at Ross, Macy's, and the thrift store. I found some jeans, a blouse, and a sweater-shawl at Ross; boots, a sweater, and slacks at Macy's; and a pair of slacks-with the tag still on-at the thrift store. I wasn't having much luck with a jacket until we spied a garage sale yesterday afternoon and found a down jacket, Jones New York, and talked the fellow down to $3. I could use a pair of gloves and possibly a hat but can do without them if I have to. I am ready to go.

2011

My wish on this New Year's day is to find a place to call home. Being homeless is hard, it is a constant struggle, emotionally, psychologically, and physically. As long as I was with Mike in the RV I felt safe, traveling from place to place, living in the moment. But then he relapsed and I was no longer safe and I we parted ways. Now, I am here with my daughter, her husband, and their six kids, sleeping on the floor of a friends house, trying in vain to be positive, checking rental lists everyday hoping to find something we can afford. As hard as I find it for myself it is so much harder for my daughter and her family. Her husband goes to work everyday hoping to make enough to pay for his transportation and to be able to put some away. The weather has made work harder to schedule but he keeps trying and taking whatever he can schedule. We drive the kids to school each morning and pick them up each afternoon because there is no school bus service in this district. I am flying to West Virginia in eleven days to visit my son and his family and to welcome the birth of his first child. I worry about when I am away from my daughter. I don't have a lot to offer her financially but I do try to support her and love her in any way I can. I pray every night that something happens to turn this around. 2010 was a year of struggles and I pray that in 2011 we can find a way to put those struggles behind us.