On Memorial Day 2007, I had written a long adieu to my ex. Let’s say that I had essentially not heard from him for over 16 months, and my spirit had suffered for it. I had begun to date casually again, and I had had a restorative rebound with someone who was, for the most part, a good person.
In the letter, I had written:
“I once could imagine being very happy with you in a car somewhere with quarreling kids in the back. I considered that a good test because I do want children … but only if they feel secure in their parents’ love for one another, and at that time I was so sure of what/how I felt that I could have compensated for you. But extending that, I’d never want my daughter to be subject to those last few years or ever regard her mother as a status quo placeholder or default/fallback option. Keeping that in mind has set an effective bound for acceptable behavior. You’d once said that it was hard to take someone seriously who wouldn’t take herself seriously… of course no one who took herself seriously would be with someone who didn’t. Anyway, both of us said and did any number of other hurtful things, and rehashing can feel inane. I’ve passed the point of banging around my frame to keep you in it. Anyone who should matter to me will make a point of staying in it.”
Driving (sitting still in a moving vehicle) precipitates a truly embodied knowledgememoryanticipation. So many of my memories with my ex- were related to being in a car together, and when things had been good, the comfort was palpable. The conversation when he had held my hand and told me that he couldn’t take me seriously? We had been sitting in his car, parked across the street from my house.
Ben’s car accident in July 2005 that ended his life and changed so many others? I’d been bound for NYC in a matter of weeks and instead found myself in Los Angeles a month later. I could not shake the idea of being in that car with him, the fear that he did not die instantly.
And my own revelation this summer, when I realized how strong I was? I had been driving by myself through a canyon outside of Moab, UT. It was a solo road trip, loosely planned, that had ended up going through many unanticipated states for which I had had no guide book. It was incredibly liberating and empowering to be heading into a future that seemed to bless me.
And when on Thanksgiving night, I had to excuse myself from the phone conversation with my ex in which he had told me of his mother (whom I had loved dearly) passing away unexpectedly the week before? He had said that he had sold his car, he was getting his mother’s, and he would be driving it back from Louisiana to California with his father over Christmas. Or maybe his girlfriend.
It was, to be fair, the second time he had mentioned her in the conversation. But this time knocked me speechless. I had paused. I didn’t know what to say. And then I said very simply, “I’m very sorry, E. I can’t talk any longer, and I have to get off the phone.”
Surely, before cars were invented, there must have been some other way, some other metaphor, that kinesthetically carried people’s imagined relationships into the future…?
I hate parking, incidentally, and if I am truly comfortable with the person, I will sing in the car.
