My father chewed me out about the phone bill. My brother said he wouldn’t like to have to pay for someone else’s $9 long distance call either. After that I tried calling my ex collect, but his mother wouldn’t accept the charges. Clearly I had to let him go, but it was difficult. I wanted him. Could he promise to treat me nicely? Could he treat our daughter nicely even when she got a little older and started getting into mischief? Was I to raise her as a single mom? Were our differences indeed irreconcilable? 

My parents had paid for the setting and casting of my broken finger. My mother had seen the bruises on my buttocks. They had taken me and 7-month-old Sheila in, even paying for the airfare across the country from Cleveland, Ohio to San Diego, California, had given me cab fare from Wooster to Cleveland and had picked us up in San Diego. A valuable guitar had been left behind, a gift from my mother, a Congo drum also, another gift from my mother. Would my finger heal enough to play the guitar or the drum again someday?

A big deal was made of the expensive long distance phone call, the other things all but overlooked. Eight dollars and 57 cents was a lot of money in 1973. Now, in 2022, I still reflexively hang up quickly, even though I love talking to my children and grandchildren, and my cellphone has unlimited voice, text and data!

I’m old. I have teeth missing. My voice is funny when I don’t wear my partial and a different kind of funny when I do. I don’t hear well. I’m embarrassed trying to guess what someone said and  respond inappropriately. I can hear okay with the phone speaker on, but I miss a lot if I try to hear the regular way. I really don’t like talking on the phone and would do almost anything to avoid it. I don’t know why I don’t like it. I’d rather be with someone. I don’t write a lot of letters either, or even emails, or even texts. I just want to blog.

I may or may not publish this. It’s just a way of exploring my mind.

I forgot about the exhaust. I sat too long idling in the car while my friends outside were getting my exhaust. I should have moved on. It wasn’t that far for him to walk.

Got a “no” again for my offer of woodwinds, guitar and vocal music for the Farmers’ market. Jim got $150 for his presentation for Indigenous People’s Day with the Unitarians. We went to more Indigenous People’s Day at the Wild Animal Park the following day. I’m learning to appreciate the ethnic songs of those indigenous to this place. I hadn’t been to the Wild Animal Park since I had small children. Uncle Mel met us and bought us lunch. That was nice. I didn’t get too polluted from the fish taco. Think the intermittent fasting helps. 

Today, I don’t know about the burning ritual. I don’t know that I have anything appropriate to wear. I should probably shop for clothes more often. It’s just that the tiny closets in this one room travel trailer are crowded. Glad to have this though!

Yesterday, after writing the above, we went to see the Julian Shelter Valley property again. The realtor let us inside the double wide parked on the property (unpermitted). On the way back I wanted to take San Felipe Rd. (the route that both the realtor and Google Maps recommended). Jim did not. He started scolding me for recommending that route and for allowing my maps program to direct him that way, distracting him from the route he had determined to go. He scolded and scolded. He kept it up for 30 minutes or more. He would stop for a while and then start in again. When I tried to speak he would interrupt at loud volume. I would calmly repeat the same phrase over and over until I was at last able to finish my thought without my words being obscured by his. I’m learning how to deal with this behavior. Too often in the past things have descended into a yelling match. I don’t like being interrupted when he has had the floor for so long that he is repeating what he already said, and I try to say a few words in my defense after being repeatedly scolded and blamed. 

We discussed it just now. He said he was trying to explain to me why he wanted to go through Julian but I kept bickering with him. I said that as soon as he turned left instead of right I knew I had lost the argument about which route we would take. I said I was a little disappointed, but I yielded cheerfully. I didn’t like being scolded and blamed repeatedly during about a 30 minute volley of words during which my participation in any discussion did not seem welcome. I did not want to go a different way just to hurt him. I wanted to go a different way because I am a curious person and I wanted to experience the other route. All I wanted, after I realized we weren’t going to go the way I had wanted to go, was respect as a human being, and an acknowledgement that I am a good person, even though I wanted to take a different route than he did.

There were a couple times, during this more recent discussion in our bedroom, when I got up and paced the floor feeling rage for having been muzzled effectively by a barrage of loud speech shutting off the words I was trying to express. I confessed my rage and begged to be allowed to talk. He actually was silent while I spoke for a while. Wonders never cease!

Part of my growth on this was realizing that the poor decision I made the other day, when I left the car idling while dosing our friends with exhaust, was because I was petrified that I would upset him if I drove on to the coach without him. The rules one must follow in order to avoid upsetting him are so many that it is difficult to remember and abide by them all. I do try, or did, until recently, when I realized that I must detach from my need that he not be upset, because the decision I made, about whether to let the car idle in the middle of the road or drive on to the coach, would have been more rational without my fear of upsetting him. That’s why I left the GPS on even though there was a danger that he would be upset by it. I wanted to leave it on because I was curious about the route it was recommending. So I made a decision that was not egg-walking around his susceptibility to becoming upset. He did get upset and scolded me for a long time. But I never actually got upset like usually happens. I think that what happens with me sometimes is that being scolded puts me in a memory of trauma and then I become reactionary. My father used to scold me while hitting me or right before he started hitting me. The father of my first (now adult) child used to beat me severely while scolding me. The father of my remaining three (adult) children used to hurt me while scolding me. He would make it  appear accidental, like the time he hit a shelf above where I was sitting while working on making a bamboo flute, and knocked a lamp down on me, which cut into my face as it broke, and then my forehead required stitches.

I’m aware of this “button” that I have involving scolding, where I can be put into a memory of trauma and become reactionary. He accused me of nagging, although I don’t see how defending myself while being scolded constitutes nagging. If I just accept whatever negative label that he wants to put on me then that’s not nagging I suppose, so disagreeing with the label, and saying so, is nagging according to him. However, I don’t think it’s healthy for me to agree that I am a hateful back-stabber. I am a loving person who, God help me, is curious! I have become a screaming mess, in the recent past, from him scolding me and interrupting anything and everything I say in my defense. I’m working on this and I’m getting better.

He’s a good man. We just have a few things to work out together. We’re making progress. We’re both making progress. I had a father who hit me way too much, then I had terrible relationships and marriages, but each was a little better than the one before. Getting hit by a falling lamp  40 years ago with my second ex-husband was a little better than having a Congo drum hurled at me by my first ex-husband 50 years ago. My current marriage is the longest in duration, and I don’t want out, even during times like the one I discussed here, living without him is unthinkable. We have a very deep bond of love, and it gets better every day. He has trauma too. He was shut up in hospitals while very small. This may contribute to his fear of getting lost. He very much prefers a familiar route to “going exploring”. He has never hit me, although I hit him once recently after he interrupted me for the umteenth time. Then I was really sorry.