The threads of life

While disparate, weave a coherent tapestry, whether we can discern its pattern or not

Photo by Juli Kosolapova on Unsplash

One of the best things a therapist ever said to me was, “You may feel you’re going in wildly different directions, but if you were in an airplane flying above your life, you would see that, despite the apparent detours, your path is actually marked by a clear direction.”

Before I got pregnant (by accident) with my first child, I was beset by confusion and unable to choose a path. I did all I could in fact to avoid making a choice. I couldn’t bear the anxiety of having possibilities close down. Of course, not choosing is a choice, and I let life buffet me about a good deal. I fell into jobs and men with little planning, wisdom, or foresight.

I began working in eighth grade, when I was 13. My first job was file clerk at Jo Murray Public Relations, where my mom worked. It was terrifically boring, and my attention wandered. We were all women. There was Trish, a woman of about 40 with dark hair and quizzical, deep-set eyes who was afraid of getting mugged in the MacArthur/Broadway Center below and then of course got mugged in exactly that location.

There was Jo herself, with straight brown hair, green eyes, pink lipstick, a Southern drawl, and an acidic expression on her face most of the time. And there was her heavy-metal-loving stepdaughter, rough of face, wild of hair, leather jacket-wearing, and obsessed with Thunderbird cars with the porthole windows, light blue.

Then there was my mom, famous at one time for her pretty legs. Also famous for being the youngest society editor in the nation in her halcyon days. Stanford graduate, staunch Democrat, first-generation Irish, and lifelong believer in the underdog. She used to say she’d never cross a picket line, and she’d burst into tears whenever Bobby Kennedy was mentioned.

She also drank like a mofo and one day came back from lunch barely able to stand. She collapsed in the office shortly after and was sent home and asked not to return, and that was the last job she ever had. I don’t remember if I left at the same time, but I’m sure I must have because I don’t remember being in the office without her there.

That was my first job. After that I worked up and down Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, California. It was down the hill from our home in Piedmont. I served frozen yogurt at Yogurt Delite, waited tables at Barney’s Burgers, where the manager would leer and pant in my face when I went upstairs for my paycheck. I was a candy girl (yes, that was my title) at Piedmont Cinema, where Rick, our manager, would play his sax on the stage after the last show, and where a literal mountain of bagged yellow popcorn teetered behind the screen.

That was also where Vietnam vet Dave, who suffered from bipolar disorder, worked. He was fantastically tall, like Lurch. One day, he came to work with a decidedly different look. His usher’s tie was fastened around his forehead, for starters. His hair was also standing straight up.

My boyfriend Steve, another usher, impish, funny, and sweet, 16 years old like me, annoyed Dave within moments of his arrival and was summarily pinned high upon the wall under Dave’s straight arm, under which he writhed helplessly. Dave was sent home after that. I don’t recall if he was permitted to return.

There was Old Uncle Gaylord’s, an iconic cafe of the 80s, owned by startling handsome, sexy, and swinging Sam who died of AIDS a few years later. Our manager (installed by Sam) was soft-spoken, piano-playing Jonathan, of the dark and curly ringlets. That’s where I met mesmerizing Katie who was 18 and already married. She lived in a big, red-shingle house not far away with her husband Damion and a girl named Barbie with whom she sometimes got together.

There was no rhyme or reason, but presumably all of these places, people, and experiences contributed to shaping who I am today. Working all through high school defined me. It allowed me to move out of my family home at 17, when our mom’s drinking and rage became too much. A year later, my sisters wound up living with me in the house I shared with a photographer and a belly dancer while awaiting placement in a foster home.

I bounced around. I drifted. I had experiences. I moved to San Luis Obispo to attend junior college, which I did halfheartedly. I waitressed at Hudson’s Bar and Grill, where a full-sized red convertible was positioned high up, seemingly crashing through the wall and where my manager, a dwarf, liked to opine on the quality of our legs. He hired beautiful girls, we were all girls, or at least we were called so. These women were like models, especially the lass with the Bo Derek braids. We were required to wear short blue short, red polo shirts emblazoned with the restaurant logo, and white tennies.

College wasn’t of much interest, but Rick, the pizza maker next door to Hudson’s, was. He and I would meet in the hallway adjoining our restaurants and make out. He was rough and virile and smelled of cigarettes. His stubble chafed me, and I liked it. He was tall, with tightly curled blonde hair, dark blue eyes, and a sexy bump in his nose. He’d been a brilliant debater in Kansas City once upon a time and was now an alcoholic throwing his life away making pizzas. I wasn’t doing much better.

Yesterday, which is more than 30 years after the times of which I speak, I weeded a couple of the pots on my front porch. They used to hold herbs. The first pot was still clearly dominated by thyme and only needed a little clearing. The second pot however seemed to be subsumed. Weeds of all stripes and kinds vied for position in the space. I began to pull them out, careful to get them by the roots, shaking the soil off as I went.

Suddenly, I caught an unmistakable whiff of delightful, distinctive tarragon, one of my favorite herbs, especially in eggs. I couldn’t see the tarragon, but the aroma told me it was there. When I’d cleared the entire tangle of weeds, I saw to my surprise and delight a whole colony of baby tarragon coming up from the roots of last year’s crop. I carefully watered them with water in which I’d dissolved a dropperful of fertilizer.

They make me so happy, these tarragon babies.

The threads of my life. I face them when I attempt to write. What to write about, I ask myself. Just write, I respond to myself. It doesn’t matter what you write. Just write. But, what about, I persist. How I really do love men? How well E.’s jeans looked on him in our class last week, how I could barely avoid looking directly at his crotch, how fun it was to want to do that, how fun it was to try not to stare, how fun it is to still love men. Do I write about that?

Or depression… naw, that’s no fun, and I write about it plenty, I’m afraid.

My old dog? She’s a dear, but that’s a bit boring, no?

Cooking… I could write about the dinner I made last night for my Persian friends, how I was proud of it, how I make an extra effort for this friend of mine and her husband because she is such a good cook. I want to pass muster, I want to impress her, and also to delight her, and also to thank her. I want to show my gratitude for the graciousness she’s shown me, for her steady love.

Or the job situation. I got a job. It’s not a very good one. It pays a little more than one-third what my last job paid, but it’s a check, it’s money coming in, and therefore, it’s a relief. Everyone knows it’s easier to get a job from the position of having one. It will staunch the outflow of cash and allow me to catch a breath. It will reduce the anxiety on that front.

My point is, there are so many things to write about. The question is, how do you bring them together into a cohesive whole, into a life that makes sense? The aunt who died, the cousin you miss, the sister you’ve blocked, the trauma of the past, the new therapist and the hope he brings.

My front garden, my California buckeye and how well she’s doing, how she’s quadrupled her size in just six months. How delightful is that? I focus on her when I’m discouraged about how painfully slowly the manzanita, coffeeberry, hawthorne, and desert olive are growing.

The good, the bad, and the ugly. Aging, retirement, missing one’s children.

Or… tango! The love and life-affirming joy of tango. Tango alone affords so many topics. The dance itself, the technicalities, the emotional roller coaster, the difficulty, the frustration, the milongas, the codigos (codes, of which there are many), the mystery, the culture, the dresses! The feelings. The embrace. The psychological and emotional components, the nakedness, the baring, the vulnerability.

The point is, it doesn’t matter what I write about. The topics are manifold, and they all contribute to a life lived. Whether well or not is for someone else to decide. For me, it’s just my life. The real estate venture with my son, my fear of money and attempts to conquer that, my scarcity mindset, striving to achieve abundance mentality, striving to embrace a gratitude practice. My yoga teacher. My walks about town. My travels. My first Michelada.

Tacos from Michoacan, and finding so many good ones right here in Oakland.

In other words, it’s all good. It’s all fodder, all grist for the mill, and whatever other cliches you can think of. They are all threads. Threads of a life. Beautiful, shimmering threads, light and dark, rough and smooth, woven together to create one single, totally unique, never to be repeated life.