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For fifteen years, I held onto a tangled mess of extremely fine gold chain with two pendants dangling from them.  Knots upon knots upon… well… tangles…  Tonight, I sat down and extracted one from the other, only to discover three chains in the mess.  Where is the third pendant?  Was there ever one?  Does it matter?

Every few years or so, I would come upon this tangle of gold and think, “I really should try to untangle this mess.”  Of course, such a task is daunting to say the very least.  Surely, it would’ve been easier to simply pull out my wire cutters, destory the chains and buy new ones.   When have you ever known me to choose the easy way out of a problem?  So, I spent hours untangling.  As I did, I felt as if I were untangling my whole life from the time I received the first pendant to now.  Both pendants were gifts from my parents when I was a Lady In Waiting for the Krewe of Carollton, two years in a row.  I guess I was 11 or 12 the first year.

As I was untangling, I wondered why I had never approached the task with so much determination before.  It soon became clear that the needle nose pliers and bent nose pliers I was now using were far better tools than I ever had in the past to which to approach this task.  Funny how I feel like in so many ways I’ve got tools I never had before with which to approach examining my life.  I sat untangling this mind-numbing tedium with the fierce determination supplied only by years of need to accomplish such a simple and small goal.

 I remembered the feel of the air through the window on winter nights in the apartment I conceived Z.  The heat supplied by the gas heater even on low was so much as to induce a sweat even in cold-natured little me.  The bed against the window supplied me with just the right amount of relief.  Einstein would crawl out onto the ledge during the night and watch the street below. 

I remember the play-pen bedroom I ran away from.  The vertical bars of the wallpaper keeping me trapped like a child.  And the freedom of the glitter on the ceiling of my dormroom.  Laying in the orange light watching all the colors drift me into another world.  A world so much safer, so much lighter.

I remember walking on the levee… As I untangled my mess, the levee became time-trancencing.  It was then; it is now.  I could see me walking along it on a summer afternoon, sneaking behind it on a winter night, strolling along it just a month or so ago.  The river, in it’s cycles, is never changing, but constantly different - never forgiving.  It was not meant to forgive, it was meant to flow, to keep moving.  That is what we do, we keep moving.  Only, I can forgive me.  I can learn from my past and grow.  I can untangle my own knots and seperate my Comedy and Tragedy from my Blue Topaz.  My Carnival from my Life.

The only thing that remains is… an empty chain.  What I fill it with is my choice…

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Most of the lights are out, the wash is on the rinse cycle, Z’s “sleepy music” is playing and I’m spent for the day.  I’m finally taking some quiet time to sit and reflect upon what my life has become in these last few weeks and what changes I’m making as we head back into another school year.  Am I ready for this?  Do I really have a choice?  It seems like everything is so different from when Z started last year.

 Last week, KT “forced” me to go tour a fitness center with her so she could decide if she wanted to join.  It was my third time there trying to tell myself I really need to do it, but I never could quite justify the expense.  But, as KT pointed out, “It’s such a small investment, when you think about the rewards for your health.”  Being there with her forced me to commit to it.  So, now that I’m paying for it, I darn well better put it to good use!  I even signed Z up for their youth fitness program.  Of course, it’s terribly inconvenient for an after-school workout, since Z’s school is close to home and the gym is close to work, and they’re seperated by about 20 minutes of driving.  I’m sure we’ll find a way to make sure we get our money’s worth.

As if joining a gym weren’t going to take enough of my non-existant free time, I went and did the dumbest thing I could’ve done at this particular junction in my life - I went on a date.  Oh, but if this had been one of those like all the others for the last 4 years, I would’ve been OK.  Personally, I’ve been rather astounded by some of the very clever ways I’ve managed to avoid a relationship… My greatest by far was, “If you move to the other side of the ocean, I would find you far more attractive.”  And then, I drop my guard, decide for a bit that I just want to go off and enjoy an evening down here without having to “import” a man and before I know it, I’m out on my levee with him.

During my senior year of high school, my mom, dad and brother moved our spacious 4 bedroom house into an itty-bitty 3 bedroom apartment.  I returned that summer to live with the extra refrigerator and my mom’s computer in my room.  I would wake up in the mornings to her on the computer and be disturbed in the middle of the night by my brother raiding the fridge.  For three months, I lived there with no car, no license, no job.  I’m not entirely sure how much I drank or smoked, suffice to say it wasn’t particularly good for me.  My few comforts were painting out on the balcony (my two favorites from that summer now hang in my bedroom, some of you might’ve seen them in my living room in Dallas) and strolling out on the levee listening to Concrete Blonde.  I would go and walk or just sit, sometimes listening to the music, singing along, sometimes listening the crickets.  That was my place to be free for a bit.  Just me.  Alone.  Quiet.  At peace. Without the chemicals.

 We were driving along with no destination, and there was the apartment entrance and I just said, “Turn Left!”  That was it, suddenly, I was back to one of the loneliest times of my life, but it was so different.  He was there and everything was just OK.  I could remember all the pain, only now I didn’t need to distance myself from it or numb myself to it, but just know that it’s all OK. 

This is what I came back to do.  To face it and move on.

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