Cool pool

The seventh circle of hell for a single mom is surely the neighborhood pool in suburbia, especially in single-family-home suburbia where I live. I mean, how many posses of thickened yet glowing couples avec enfants lugging red coolers filled with grapes, meat for the barbecue, and Capri Suns can one take?  I know I'm totally guilty of being similar (well, hopefully not too thickened) and they generally seem nice-- not Stepfordy or anything.  It's just that in life, as in government and politics, one's circumstances dictate one's options, positions, and choices. I'm lonely, a bit out of place and off balance, and I feel half-empty at times.  These people here are water-logged and full, dense with routines and plans and shared expectations. I feel transparent, easily breakable, so pale as to be barely there, clinging on to life with bony arms, ragged fingernails, and a plaintive voice.  They're smooth and glistening with suntan oil, healthily ruddy in the sun. The women hold their well-fed babies across their softening midsections and sling towels across their hips. The men stand authoritatively by the barbecue and wear long pastel-colored swim shorts.  Mostly they're not that attractive, but then they don't have to be.  I stand on the outside looking in.

The pool itself is lovely. During adult swim I stroke laps while my 5-year old and her friend follow me on the side.  I remember where I was at this time last year.  Less angst?  Maybe just different angst.  I know I'm lucky, I'm blessed.  It's wonderful to look at the sky, clouds, and trees.  The water is cool and the swimming pleasantly burns my arms and gets my heart going.  But still...but still...I have sadness in my heart.  I tell myself I'm more than just my sadness.  I tell myself it's good to feel it, rather than trying to numb it or ignore it or berate it, which was how it went in my childhood.  I feel incomplete, but doesn't everyone?  I ask myself why I have to feel this way, instead of how "everyone else" feels.  In other words, I berate myself a bit.  I feel restless, feeling like I should be dating or I'll never meet someone.  I know that's wrong, but still.  When general swim starts up again, I play basketball with my son and older daughter.  It's a good thing to be doing...It's satisfying and blessedly distracting to make a basket. I play with my younger daughter in the shallow area and try to talk with one of the dads.  His 5-year old son does pre-swim team because his wife can somehow make the non-working-mom-friendly hours.  Sucks not to have a partner, right?  I know I need to get my act in gear to arrange swimming lessons for my own 5-year old. 

And I'm frequently checking my phone.  Not that CG (from yesterday's post) is going to text me then.  He said he would call later.  We'll see if that happens...  But I compulsively check it for something, anything, as the couples and children and parties swirl around me.  I decide to reach out...asking the mother of my daughter's friend about her kids, complimenting an older woman about how she uses a plastic dish drain to organize knives, forks, and plates.  Still, I feel like something is missing.  It's missing in me, and it always has been.  And it's not a matter of finding something to fill it, I think, but of viewing it differently, and filling parts of it myself, and realizing that this sadness and heartspace and unsettledness are good things.  They can move me to a new place, set up me on the road to something new and undreamed of.  They can provide a motivation for gratitude.  If I'm enough how I am, and the universe will take care of me, and everything happens as it's supposed to happen, then why be scared?  As one FB friend said tonight, you can only judge yourself on your own contributions to a relationship.  He also said see yourself for your best, yet imperfect, and look for the same in others. And another friend said, be grateful for the good things and remain curious about the good things the future has to offer.  I love it.  It's like having faith.

So, the universe has provided well for me tonight, even if the pool was kind of awkward and painful in my mind.  I had two nice FB conversations (one with a neighbor I hadn't seen in 30 years and one with a friend who is the wife of an ex-boyfriend), as well as a nice google chat with Fling Guy.  As for CG, it's been pointed out to me that the relationship is essentially on hold.  When I think about him it's about the past or the future, not about the present because there hasn't been much in the present.  I'm trying to be grateful that there's someone I like, while detaching myself from any outcome.  Now you all know I've never been that good at detachment...but all of this wisdom I'm hearing can certainly help.

And tomorrow it's off to my 25th college reunion...the big one, especially at the place I attended.  If I don't post tomorrow, just think of me tripping daintily (I hope) along the brick sidewalks of Cambridge.

Peace (in a non-hippy way...just peace), 11:48 pm, May 31