Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 11 Comments

In the Cards

“Do you know how to play 52 pick up?”

This question is posed by my smirking step-brother who holds a deck of cards in his hands, circa 1983.

“No,” I say.

With thumb and forefinger he sends them shuffling through the air in random abandon, landing in a chaotic pile on the table.

“Get it? 52 pick up?”

Right.

If my life is a deck of cards, then perhaps 52 pick up is the game I’ve mastered. The airborne shuffle, that is, not necessarily the clean up.

As the Bohemian and I share a four-day reprieve of non-parenting days while Jeb’s away with his dad, I ponder how I’ve done it all out of order.

Honestly, I dreamt of the stereotypical, American life. I wanted marriage, a house, children. But I couldn’t be normal about it. I got engaged (diamond ring and all) when I was 16. Then didn’t really announce it (we’d wait to wed til after college anyway).

But I was on the path to normal. I’d get my degree, get a good paying job, marry the man I loved, and start a family. Seemed a simple formula for happy-ever-after.

Except my fiancé started an affair with the goth-girl at one of the chain bookstores in the Fresno mall (detailed account of this liberating break up in Crumbling Empires and Parked Cars). At 19, my engagement ended and my little ordered timeline was severely jumbled.

Once I left Fresno, I guess nothing really stayed inside the lines of predictable. I attended college for three years but left before getting my degree. I travelled by myself all over north america, working odd jobs and occasionally living out of my car. I longed for true love but questioned the precepts of monogamy.

By 29, I was in Hawaii living in a school bus, up on blocks, with a boyfriend who professed love but wasn’t sure about commitment. Though my closest friends were all married, I was the first to give birth. And nine months later, I had separated from the father of my child and forged into the realm of single motherhood.

By 39, many friends were at least a decade into their lives of married with children. I’d been piecing housing situations and jobs together. Though I’d been doing it in Hawaii, it was still hard as hell- building character, of course. I can’t help but look back and think that somehow, I was simply prepping myself for a future life with the Bohemian.

The announcement of my pending marriage, was often met with great support from friends coupled with undertones of wariness. Like when a dubious sigh meets the words “good luck.” Not sarcastic. More like hopeful skepticism. No one dared to actually express this blatantly, but I could tell that all-too often, ten plus years of matrimony can take its toll.

As I come to my 40th birthday, I’m a newlywed with a 9-year-old. We never had an official honeymoon, so we take the four days this week without a child to just be husband and wife. Niagara Falls is not in the equation. In fact, just about everything is business as usual.

So we work with what we’ve got. Sunset and an empty house. Why not leave the dishes and crawl under the covers before the sun goes down? Make jokes and stay up late on a weeknight? Have an ordinary kind of unconventional honeymoon?

I guess what has not yet been said here, is that for me, I don’t think ‘normal’ was in the cards. Try as I may to keep things ordered and straight, life has tossed my plans about in delightful whimsy. And if I look deeply, I can see that I wanted it this way. I never truly desired the status quo.

But for a long time, I was thinking that my less-than-typical life was a reflection that I was doing something wrong. That if I didn’t fit the mold it was because I was misshapen.

As I move into my fourth decade on planet earth, I’m so glad I did it all backwards. I let the cards fall where they may and found inspiration in the pile. It’s still a work in process, and I’ll probably spend a lifetime sorting through it.

It can be a fun game to play. Especially when you let go of straightening it out.

2013-06-11cards

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

The Offing

Friends bring home pictures from Sicily. Photos of verdant rock gardens with canopied courtyards – wisteria dangling in vines of lavender lusciousness. I want to sift in the scent of those roses and orange blossoms. Sit and stare at clouds.

But Jeb has long division and we’re tense in homework land at our kitchen table. The sun is setting outside our hot house. I don’t know what to cook for dinner. Empty boxes are stacked in the corner, because we’re moving soon. Tomorrow, the garage sale.

We volunteered to sell our neighbor’s things, too, and the Bohemian is sorting through their mix. In the piles, an old, plastic rice cooker and a porcelain harlequin mask, all covered in a film of time and dust and cat dander.

2013-05-17harlequin mask

By dark, Jeb and I have just barely made it through word problems. I’ll admit it. Afterwards, I poured myself a cocktail. Scrounged up ingredients from a house of non-drinkers. Found the hand-me down bottle of Tanqueray. Squeezed a lime, got some ice, and mixed in a squirt of organic agave syrup.

We join the Bohemian in the garage, where he mills about in dust bunnies and piles of knick-knacks, grasping a roll of masking tape and pricing everything so low, we might as well give it away. Which is what we want to do anyway.

“Just move it out, right? We don’t want to have to haul this…Three dollars, right Jess?”

He’s tagging a pretty nice bamboo chair. It’s not ours. Our neighbors don’t want it, and it has to get trucked to the second-hand store if it doesn’t sell.

“Yeah, okay. I guess that’s fine. Someone will be thrilled.”

How the value of things can change. That chair was once someone’s brand new purchase, brought home lovingly and placed in some special nook. Now it’s covered in animal hair beneath a dusty socket set and a book titled “Why Cats Paint.”

2013-05-17book sale

Even Jeb gets exhausted in the stuff. He’s sorted his books and board games until he’s tapped. “Mom, it’s a school night…”

This morning, I wake to my writing hour – 4am – for the first time in a week. It feels welcome but vacant.

I let myself pause on words and play with colored pencils instead, trying to conjure some semblance of creativity. An abstract design of black squares push down on flowing lines of soft greens and blues. This is my dichotomous world.

2013-05-17doodle

I guess it all exists. Right angles and curves. Darks and lights. Purchases and give-aways.

We breathe somewhere at the center of these intersections, and I’m constantly trying to reconcile a balance.

As of late, the practical dark lines have been weighing heavier.

Oh, but I long for Italy.

courtesy of Putneypics
courtesy of Putneypics
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Stay Play and Do-Overs

“Does he get the shock when he tries to come back?”

Jeb and I are standing on our friend’s flag-marked lawn discussing their new underground electric fence. They are trying to keep their young dog from running into neighboring yards, or worse, the road.

I’m explaining to nine-year old Jeb that I believe they first train the dog with a sound that signals if he goes beyond the flags. At a certain point in the process, a shock may be incorporated that zaps him if he tries to cross the line. It’s a jolt that’s enough to get his attention, but not enough to hurt. The hope is that he experiences it once or twice, remembers the consequences, and stays within his bounds forevermore.

One thing I’d not considered was the challenge of re-entry if he did cross the boundary lines. Would he get shocked again attempting to come back home?

I suggest Jeb ask our friends about this technicality, and though I overhear him do just that, I am just out of range enough to miss their answer.

Which is fine, as I’ve been simply enjoying his question.

Where many may be wondering about the pain inflicted on the escapee at the crossing, my son was focused on whether return was even possible once free.

Is there always a reprieve for our transgressions?

If we push the limits, is there a point of no return?

In life, I do have some shock-collar memories of a few times when there was no ‘do-over’.

As for the Pet Safe Stay and Play Invisible Fence System- I’ll have to find out about that one.

pet safe