Fragile Heart
Ah Feathers, SoClose, Annie, Ella, everyone, I screwed up again. I did not sign up in time for the writing class. I was worried about the old moola. I was waiting for this Friday’s payday, which was just a bit too late. As it happens, youngest daughter, our Bolshevik, the one who has been trouble finding her way, has asked to go to cosmetology school. She found the school, asked me to go with her for the tour, which was last night. Well, Bob’s your uncle, I applied for a tuition loan right there and then and to my surprise was accepted. So, dd3, in 10 months, will graduate with a license and an accreditization of some sort to be a beautician. She will learn to cut and color and highlight hair and perm it and do it up and she will learn facials and and nail care and waxing. The main emphasis is on the hair part, though, and they have a policy to find their students jobs at the end. Their “products” that they work with are Redken and Mac. There was an immediate $150 registration fee, then another $240 due on Monday. There went Mama’s writing class! Am I a martyr? Heck no. Do I feel like one? No again.
I am searching for a blog site for beginning writers. I am searching also, for a teacher. I think - no - I feeeeel an idea for a book. It’s been there for a long time. I suspect I could only have that one idea in me. On the other hand, I have strong, strong opinions on everything. Please, did any of you ever read Marianna Frederickson’s “Hannah’s Daughters”? I was so moved by this book. My idea, my story is so similar. I don’t want to rewrite her book, I don’t want to do it better, I just want to record the story that I know. I want to acknowledge to the world the marvellous women that I have known. I have not practiced the real craft of writing for many years, and this is why I need a course. I need to learn the steps.
Meanwhile, the lifestyle changes have been, well, evolving!
I am NOT in the weight loss groove that I was in a few weeks back. Groove it was. I do know (intimately, my dears) how to get it back, but I’ve been doing nothing about it.
I told you that I “lost” my sister, well, that’s how it feels. And my 2nd oldest friend of 27 years emailed me that she felt she could no longer be friends with me. The two losses happened on the same day. I thought I was handling both with such equanimity. My sister I will always love, no matter what, I’m just effing mad at her right now. My old friend…well, that’s an odd situation. We’ve been physically miles and miles apart for so many years, and I know our lives are so different. Despite this, she has been a constant in my life, someone I have always believed to be a soulmate, and a touchstone, and I thought maybe I had been the same for her. The one friend you never need to explain yourself to. I never agreed with her politics in the beginning of our friendship - she was, at 19, a recent refugee of sorts from a war - the war of Zimbabwe’s independence and was bitter. Over the years she seems to have mellowed in her opinion towards Africans, but it has always been the stance of a white African. It’s just there. Have you ever read Doris Lessing or Alexandra Fuller? If you are interested in such things, do. Both of them explain this attitude, this position, so truthfully and without guile. Nadine Gorimer is perhaps the classical music to Fuller’s pop. But Fuller writes to the majority; she’s accessible to everyone, whereas, I feel Nadine Gordimer (and J.M. Coetzee, too), despite some content or plot, recognizable to us all, writes to a more exalted group. Anyway, forget white African guilt….since we could never really meet on any real ground when it came to politics, we glossed? (not sure if that’s the appropriate word, maybe avoided is better) over it all. I told you she told me, bluntly, simply, we can no longer be friends. Ouch, that.
On Friday, I was told that my friend at work, J., the Orthodox Jewish man, the obscenely highly paid consultant that noone actually liked except me and two guys from India, had been let go. He’s probably the smartest person I’ve ever met. We’ve fought for ten years, he’s made me so mad I’ve entertained thoughts of sabotaging his PC at work (unplug it a little, so it won’t start easily….dribble water into the monitor). I’ve loathed him. He made me cry not so long ago. He’s caused me to second and third guess myself so many times, and it’s not fair. Sometimes the ideas I’ve had he’s claimed don’t make sense, and then presented them to our team! Shmuck. Bastard. Yet, I’ll miss him like nobody I’ve ever missed before! What am I ever going to do without a truly TRULY educated and smart person to listen to, ask questions of, argue with, learn from? The only other person I can think of that I’ve ever known who is as smart as this person is my dad, except my dad was a shmuck, and drank himself to death before I could get up the skill to argue properly with him.
So, I find myself in the embarassing position of TEARING UP at odd moments, like some big, effing GIRL! Thinking of my friend not being there for me to fight with anymore just undoes me. I wonder if he even likes or respects me at all? I have never ever never been a crier before. It embarrasesses me no end. I’ve just turned 47, my periods are still as regular as clockwork; am I in peri-menopause? Are these embarrassing moments of tears related to that? I’ve joked about it before in this blog, but the tears thing is new. I wake up in the night drenched, but that’s been happening since my 30’s, so I’m kinda confused.
Oh well, no writers blog, no class, no sister, no friends.
Daughters and husband are well. Mother is okay. My mom was happy from the outings, but a little bit full of small physical complaints, which she describes so well. She even does media presentations (hand gestures) to describes the various aspects of what’s happening to her. At times…TMI. Dogs…okay. Shelby had two really seriously bad seizures this past week after weeks/months of none. There’s another heartbreak for you.
Oh Rubyjean - my heart ached to read this today. You are going through so much right now. I’m so sorry for all of it.
You are an incredible woman and a loving soul. To lose such a dear friend because of political reasons is more heartbreaking than illness. I can only hope that she will come around at some point. I too have lost my oldest friend for differences in beliefs. But I know that like you - my heart is forgiving and at some point, I will try again to contact her. My heart is soft towards her and I will always trust that deep down inside she will know this. I understand your loss.
Life is short and such losses take a toll on a battered heart after a while.
But your capacity to love and forgive will always overcome these emotional setbacks. Sometimes it just takes a little time.
I’m convinced that your friend at work respected you and admired your wit. After all, he was so compelled by your ideas that he presented them as his own to the group. He obviously valued your skills. I am sad that you have lost someone who gave you ‘fire’ for various reasons. You’re awesome to miss him - you do realize that right?!
Stay strong Rubyjean. Write your heart out and that novel sounds like an absolutely wonderful idea. You can channel that emotion into your writing. Perhaps you can write it in it’s rough draft form while waiting to take a class. Let it flow onto the page…
Hugs and kisses
hey ruby- Sorry to hear of your sadness- I’m happy to hear your daughter is going to expand her knowledge- and you get free haircuts for life- and manicures and pedicures- dont let her forget it! lol. I have 2 books on writing I picked up on ebay- they are more creative writing- but I love them dearly. One is called- Writing and Being, by G.Lynn Nelson, and the second is Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. They may be completely opposite from where you are looking to write, but I thought I’d mention them.
Thinking of you. Hope you feel better soon!
Oh man, somedays it feels like it will never end, doesn’t it? But it will, and you have a great foundation to stand on to weather the storms. Sending hugs your way.
Aw Ruby, I’m really feeling your loss of your friend with you. I had a buddy I’d been besties with since 1969. Lost her friendship a couple of years ago. It was cruel. Thing is, she never got over her husband walking out. Now, she no longer loved this guy and always claimed that she was glad he’d gone, but 18 years after he’d left (and they’d been together 13 years, no children and she’d had 3 serious boyfriends since he’d gone) she was still talking about him like it was yesterday.
I was so over it. I was so mad at her letting him hurt her all that time. Time and again I’d told her that every time she thought about him, it was just him winning again. I went and googled him and found out his life and when she brought him up one last time I told her, basically, that he was over her and she has never spoken to me again, except an email telling me she was no longer my friend.
That was what hurt me. That My best buddy for 35 years was more interested in hating her ex than in being my friend.
I’m disappointed that you didn’t make the writing class, but it’s so great when our kids get a passion for something and it sounds like your daughter has picked a terrific course.
Stephen King’s book “On Writing” is a really great book. And don’t worry that your story might be similar to some other book that’s out there. There are no totally “new” stories in the world, it’s all about the people, the characters we bring to light.
ACH!!!! I’m trying finally, to get caught up only to find out that I can’t reach back on your blog to read what I’ve missed! Am I being stupid, or did something change, or am I just not seeing the right button???
Anyway…….I think am stunned by your leaving us; it will take me a bit to get used to no Ruby jean here.
Glad for J.; yeah, you did what any of us would have; and what a great choice for her, she can go anywhere with that and so many aspects she can specialize in if she gets tired of one or the other.
I am SOOO sorry about all the recent losses in your life. A lot of my friends and I don’t agree on basic issues but to get so extreme that you close out people just cause they don’t agree cookie-cutter like with every thought in your head is just plain wrong!!! It’s THEIR loss!!!!
I am sure the guy at work valued you!!!! Isn’t imitation flattery, or something?
Well, here I am, lurking about, and just got to reading this post of yours, Ruby-my-dear-Jean. Change is a difficult thing for sure. No matter how unhappy we are with the status quo, changing it is oftentimes too much of a challenge to even try. Then there are those changes that we DON’T really want in our lives - changes that happen around us and even sometimes to us, without any input from us. When one reaches my advanced years, I think we have experienced sufficient change to finally be at peace with whatever happens. No - not family tragedies; those still have the power to hurt deeply - and not the illness or death of loved friends, either. But, people thinking differently than we do - and coming to dislike us for our beliefs; well, that’s a common theme throughout the history of humanity, you know? And people at work moving on - well that goes on regularly, too. I actually find myself identifying with your thoughts and feelings because at your age, I think I was feeling that way, too - that changes were less than happy occurrences. And I AM sorry about your silly friend who seems to believe she can only be friends with people who agree with her (How boring!) and your sister, who lives in her own painful world and can’t see past its borders to the needs of anyone else. But you, Ruby-my-dear-Jean, are so much better than that! Within you there is real character, real strength, and real personhood, I suppose is the best term to describe it - and that will keep you on the right track for all the years to come. (And if you don’t send me a link once you start your new blog, I shall surely rise up in protest!)
Much love,
Z