54-Ego! I Grew an Ego!
Underwhelmed by the support and love that non-poured from my family, I concentrated on getting my single act together. Not as hard as for some, I suppose, since, as a musician’s wife, I’d lived as a single-married woman for decades. Also, as much as Tom had been cremated and boxed, he was still in the house.
I’m not talking about his extensive stuff. Everybody leaves their drippings behind for others to clean up, and my husband was a hoarder, a trait passed down—along with skewed brain chemistry—from his paternal grandmother. He had, among other treasures, notebooks and pads and files and folders and loose-leaf binders of writings and self-addressed letters, journal scribbles and diatribes.
I gathered and shredded them all, unread. Then I gathered and shredded all my corresponding notebooks, pads, and scooby-dooby-doos, and shredded them, too. Unreviewed. If’n my mother had written her personal thoughts down and I’d been at hand when she passed, I’d have done the same for her. Some might think it’s my ghostwriter perspective, but that’s specious reasoning. Private confessions deserve the right to remain private.
As financially dumbasfuck as it was, I bought myself some gifts: 1) A new car, paid in full, in my name alone. For the first time. 2) Debt settlement—not just mine and Tom’s, but as much of Daughter’s, T’s, N’s, and D&D’s as I could cover. We all had to start new lives? Well, I wanted clean (or at least well-rinsed) slates all around. 3) One final me-and-Daughter random outing. One last trip where we gassed up, hit the freeway, and drove aimlessly, singing to and against each other, laughing, drinking in the scenery. We’d never non-returned within a few hours, but this time we headed for Santa Monica and passed it, then headed for someplace else up the #5 freeway and passed it, too, and just kept going. I had a handful’s worth of life insurance left in my bank account and four decades of being practical and pragmatic and self-sacrificing to shake off. We blew through the miles, sang through our repertoires, and let my new bright orange Element know what it felt like to take to the open road. We stopped and ate wherever. When we hit San Franscisco in the after-dark rain, I missed the early-version GPS’s “Turn right at the next corner” enough times that it gave up, we gave up, and we spent the night in some too-expensive Oakland hotel.
We headed to Reno—or was it Tahoe? Baby would remember; I don’t. We were footloose, long past any mother-daughter inhibitions, and I, for one, was having a blast. No plans. No demands. No having to take care of, no having to cater to, no everyone-else-comes first. Daughter discovered that if she sat at a slot machine with a cigarette, Tom’s mother would come sit on her shoulder and she’d win time after time. I discovered I could lose on any kind of game, hardly news. We bought dumb trinkets, knacks, and a few knicks to take home, but mostly we just had fun.
The best week of my life, hands down, before, since, ever. Thank you, Baby.
Yeah, yeah, I know—I should have invested some of that insurance payout. Planned ahead. Thought about the future. Set myself on a responsible financial course. Made sure I’d never have to struggle again.
Uh… have you met me? Have you read the last fifty-three babbles of my life? What about everything-I-am would make anyone think I would do that?
I was still ghosting books, after all, and I was still teaching. In fact, I’d had to jury-rig a three-hour class session from whatever motel we were staying at that Wednesday night. It’s not like I stopped working. I never stopped working.
I still haven’t stopped working.
But I came back with a renewed sense of… what’s it called?... Hope? Faith I could handle whatever came along? That I’d rise to the occasion, take care of whatever needed doing, and figure out how to keep the roof over all our heads, one way or another?
Some might label it self-esteem, but I promise, that term non-rang true in my psyche. In Bros*, Billy Eichner’s character says, “Confidence is knowing you are the only person left you can count on.”
Maybe that’s what I had. Confidence. Determination. Above all else, diligence.
Which was a good thing because my inability to see the next corner to turn right on, per GPS instructions, was just the harbinger of what was to come. By the time I took my final airplane trip to Chicago for my fortieth high-school reunion in deep Autumn 2011, my lifelong urge to sit down had morphed into a lean-or-leave imperative. My feet swelled in the roomiest shoes; my legs kept sending cease-and-desist orders up my spinal column. Taking my Element on their own twosome road trip, Daughter and T met me in the windy city to spend a few delightful days with Tom’s adorable aunt, who had, unbelievably, never eaten Gulliver’s pizza, the best pan-pies known to mankind. After introducing T to the El, the subway (it’s the same line; at one point the track goes underground), and Chi town’s Museum of Science and Industry, the three of us journeyed back to SoCal together.
We stopped a couple hundred miles out-of-the-way to meet my favorite novelist/client/friend and then take the incredible journey down—over—the Mississippi before turning west for home. Last stop: Houston, where I got to meet T’s parents, see the cubby hole they used to live in, and experience the ramifications of deep-south Bible belt firsthand.
I don’t think anyone ever flew across Texas as fast as I did without getting a single speeding ticket. And I don’t think my kids believed me when I Cassandra-announced this would be my last road trip, period.
But it was my last road trip. Period.
Back at work, I settled into, well, work, beginning the laboriously painful mother-daughter rip of not wanting the same thing after fighting to open a formal company. I was, forever and always, looking for a partner; she was, at least at the time, coming into the benefits and consequences of being severely gifted; making for a less-than-terrific working relationship. I’d raised my rates and was making better, albeit not-yet-male-equivalent, income, but I was also still supporting all six people in the house.
“Six? Wasn’t it just five at that point?” No, of course not. Just like one cat came in to replace the last, D&D’s partner BFP landed on our doorstep to fill out our roster, having been politely asked to go fuck himself but do it somewhere else by his mother’s father, with whom they’d both been living until BFP exhibited too many of grandpa’s traits and got uninvited to remain.
Could he stay for just a few days/weeks/the rest of his life? What was I going to say, no?
Again, have you met me?
We brought him in, gave him wet food, dry kibble, water and a pillow to curl up on, namely D&D’s bed. For those still keeping a tally, we were back to six bipedal creatures, but I think we were down to only four or five quadrupedal ones. Not sure. I lose count. Doesn’t matter. My mother did not approve. My father, bless his heart, did. Our ends still didn’t meet at the end of every month, but I was a past master at playing bill checkers. The roof leaked now and then in heavy rains, but it was still over everyone’s head.
And I was stronger. In charge. With a vision. I’d turned pretty much full boy, despite continually backsliding into girl quandaries for the most dumbasfuck reasons. To usurp the TikTok “I don’t know who needs to hear this but…” meme: Studiously ignoring pain doth not eradicate said discomfort. Refusing to use a cane in no way and at no point eliminates its necessity. And—pay attention, please, this one is important—actively disregarding increased enervation after increased cardia exercise, constitutes a non-effective way to promote stamina or reverse breath shortness. Just sayin’. This has been a public service announcement. We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
On the other hand, if one’s hallway is narrow enough and furniture positioned close enough, one can make it around their house without such impediments being noticed. One must simply indulge in a bit more lying. Hiding. And denying. Oh, listen! They’re playing my song!
By the time I manned up (or girled down, depending on the perspective) and borrowed a substantial sum from cousin J to cover my dumbasfuck miscalculation, I was split-end deep in producing the world’s first international ghostwriting conference, so called because folks came in from around the globe to attend. Originally conceived by Daughter as a gathering of my students, it had grown to be another flag planting, this one to establish my creds on broad scale while simultaneously launching Ghostwriting Professional Designation Program at California State University, Long Beach as the only academically certified ghostwriter course of study in the world.
It was a tremendous undertaking for a nonentity like me, a tremendous debt to shoulder personally, and a tremendous success in every possible way except monetarily. Our team—the six of us + the grad who’d meet me every term to work out schedule and tuition over brunch + a handful of grads + a slew of “You don’t know me, but” folk willing to participate + a couple-three ghostwriter celebrities—put on one hellova weekend show. Almost everybody loved it. Those who didn’t lied that that they did, the best any performer can ask for. Our fantabulous Saturday night keynote speaker impressed the hell out of my parents, who I’d invited so I could publicly thank them for all their support over the years.
Oh, shut up. I’m telling a story here. They were supportive. Always had been. I stood up and said so in front of an audience gathered from three of the four world corners.
When it was over… when my friend who had stood by walked me up and down the dais stairs as I got increasingly unsteady from Friday night to Sunday brunch… I’d established my name, my reputation, my training class, and a brand new something I’d never experienced before: Ego. I’d grown an ego. A sense of self-worth—almost of self-esteem. Mind blowing. Stupefying. Galvanizing!
No, the event had non-made enough money to pay off Cousin J, but that was okay, because with all that enthusiasm and goodwill and good-god-I’m-not-a-piece-of-trashness, I was able to set and keep up with a perfectly reasonable payment schedule. And if’n all had gone according to plan, I woulda.
Need I actually admit that it—and I—didn’t?
* Bros, Billy Eichner and Nicholas Stoller, Universal Pictures, 2022.