TheBanyanTree: Surreal Moment #762

[Monique Colver]

Sorry, I've had to start numbering the darn things just to keep track of
them. It's much more efficient than the old, "Hey, remember that time . . .
" method, which mostly just caused confusion all around.

Last week I celebrated a birthday. It was rather an important birthday as it
signified I am now, officially, older than dirt. I find this quite
surprising as I don't feel older than dirt, but since I'm not sure how that
should feel, perhaps it does and I just don't know it. 50 is the new 40, or
something. I never do understand these things. Pink is the new black? It
still looks pink to me. 50 still looks like 50, though my husband's mentor
last week assumed I was in my 30's. He thought me quite accomplished for
someone so young. Then again, he's around 80, and I suppose most people look
much younger to him, so I won't let that go to my head.

Oops, too late. Already did.

Back to surreal moment #762. So there I was, on my birthday, in my office.
This birthday made me positively giddy for some reason. Perhaps it's because
when I was 17 I never expected to live past 18, assuming that I would be
suddenly struck dead once high school graduation was over, and in the
intervening years it has come to my attention that, look at this! I'm still
here! and perhaps it has begun to sink in that I will indeed survive to
adulthood, which I expect to have happen in the distant future. (Adulthood,
that is.) Anyway, so giddy was I and so happy that I set about thanking
people for things. My mother, for one. I sent her an email thanking her for
having me. I hear pregnancy and childbirth are quite unpleasant, and even if
we had trouble getting along after that for the next 50 years, she did do
that for me. I thanked my significant siblings (as opposed to my
insignificant siblings, who I mostly ignore) for being such wonderful
people, and told them how happy I was to have them a part of my life, even
if I do keep my distance now and then. (I didn't mention the keeping distant
part.) I meant to call my dad to thank him for his part in my being, since
my mother could not have done it without him, but I didn't quite get around
to it. Yet. That, and it would confuse the heck out of him, especially since
his objective in having children was to have people to look after him in his
old age, and I haven't been living up to my part of the bargain.

Anyway, it was a great birthday all around, just by virtue of being a
birthday.

I was in my office working, my office being an upstairs bedroom in my house.
Since my boss was away for the day I was running interference, communicating
with staff by various methods including phone, IM, email, and the same with
any clients who needed help and or information and or updates. This is what
I do most every day, when I'm not solving complex issues in the accounting
field or power napping, which is made so much easier by the fact that my bed
is just down the hallway.

My ex-husband had IM'd me -- we do that frequently throughout our days. I
check up on him, and he checks up on me. He's doing rather well these days,
for someone in his condition (aren't you Stew?) and I'm so pleased about
that. My cell phone rang as we were chatting, and when I looked at the
caller ID I had to look twice, for it said the name of ex-husband #1,
someone I do not keep in touch with on a regular basis. His number was in my
caller ID because he'd called almost two years before to tell me he'd
received a package addressed to me. This had been extremely odd since he was
living in his mother's house, since she had died, and I had just moved from
one apartment to another, and the package, instead of coming forward to find
me, went back in time and space to land in Ohio, at a house I had never
lived at. He was going to forward the package to me, but of course he never
had, since follow through had always been a problem for him. Still, I had to
admire the effort.

I picked up the phone. He'd called to tell me happy birthday and to, well,
just check in. Just the fact of his calling was surreal enough, and I
mentioned it to Stew as I talked to number #2. I can do that. Multitask. I
often carry on simultaneous IM conversations, especially since the two team
members on Team 1 have a tendency to both IM me at the same time with
different problems.

As I was on the phone with husband #1 and on IM with husband #2, husband #3
walked in to my office with a birthday card for me. There they were, all in
one room, virtually, at the same time. It's not at all uncommon to have two
in the same room at the same time, since Stew is our good friend and not
just another ex-husband. (He could never be just another ex-husband.) But
for all three? I thought my synapses would melt. I'm rather embarrassed
about the entire three husband thing, though I have decided it stops here,
and I shall never attempt to outdo my mother, who's on number 4. But it's an
embarrassment. I let current husband know I was on the phone with first
husband, the trial version, the one who taught me all the things I didn't
want in a spouse. First husband is the only ex-husband of mine that current
husband would like to punch, if he were to punch anyone, but that will never
be a problem since we shall never see him. He just wanted to check in, and
so we chatted for awhile. He wasn't drunk, which was nice, and he'd just
gotten off work, which indicates he's managed to pull together some
semblance of being a responsible citizen. He's an x-ray tech, or an ER tech,
something of that sort -- he realized, once he tired of doing nothing for a
living, that he was bored, so he made use of himself. Et cetera. We talked
about families, his being rather uncommunicative with each other, his three
siblings having all taken issue with each other, his older brother, Steve,
the always obnoxious one, still being obnoxious. (He works for the city in
the small Ohio city he lives in, and when he was pulled over for a DUI,
which was not his first, since I remember him having one many years ago when
I knew him, he tried to pull the "I'm somebody, and I have friends in high
places" card, and it backfired on him and got him in a considerable amount
of hot water, so much so that he's no longer employed by the city. Yes, I do
love good gossip.

Anyway, it ended on a positive note, the expected, "good to hear from you,
keep in touch," and afterwards I realized that while I may be embarrassed
about the fact that I have had such a plethora of husbands, I have
absolutely no regrets. I have no feelings of "I wish I would have . . . "
None of that. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be right now because of all
the things in my past that got me here, and here is a very good place. The
surreal parts just enhance it. It may have been messy and inconvenient at
times, but that's life, right? Without both ups and downs, how can we
appreciate the ups?

No regrets. Not such a bad life, if you ask me.


-- 
Monique Colver