Closure, Comfort Food and Breaking the Law

It's been a quiet couple of days...
Thursday was Knitting in Public - and it was a great night. We sat outside and I had a good long conversation with S. There was a lot of tension between us a hundred years ago that was never really resolved and I think that we were able to clear the air. It was nice. We agreed that our twenties basically sucked and that we were much better off now in our thirties. We're much more settled, much less selfish, calmer, gentler...

It is interesting because I had two big blows to my ego at the same time in my early twenties - S. and my in-laws. During that time I was surrounded by people who genuinely seemed to like me and I felt really secure about who I was and where I was going. Suddenly there were two distinct and separate sets of people who seemed to dislike every single thing about me and in my mind one reinforced the other. (During this time I was a new mom, a new wife, living in a new town. I had no friends, no job, and I was realizing quickly that my marriage was a great big joke - it was a bad bad bad bad time).

ANYWAY, the point is that in the last six months or so my ex-in-laws have gone out of their way to be nice to me and shun the new wife, and talking to S I realized that she was in the middle of her own crisis and I was a convenient target. In both situations it would have been someone else if it hadn't been me. It sucked and I had a lot of sleepless nights about it all, but none of it was about the ME of me. I was a place-filler, a paper target.

It doesn't make it go away, but it does make me feel a little more confident about my current relationships. I have worked really hard to get my sense of myself back, but trusting that the relationships I have aren't going to dissolve has been a sort of constant struggle. How long before this person realizes that I am not worth their time? How many times will they comfort me before they turn me away?

Closure is a very good thing, indeed. A conversation with someone from ten years ago will not change any of this overnight, but it does help me reinforce to myself that there is not something inherently wrong with me, that I do have some value. I don't know that we'll go on vacations together and sign notes "BFF" or anything... but her number is saved in my cell phone.

In other news...
I did finish the book for my discussion group. We had an absolutely breathtaking dinner - southern comfort food, hell yeah - and the discussion was interesting. A few members of our group do not like short stories, especially modern shorts that are more of a snapshot of a situation than a beginning-middle-end story. First of all, what's not to like about short stories? There is (or should be) an economy of language, much like there is in poetry. It's vital with every sentence to express the tone, and to assemble the images with precision. Beautiful. Second, who needs a beginning-middle-end story all the time? Everyday life has no concrete beginning-middle-end. We go around, do the things we do, interact and affect...

And the house... I don't know anything new. We close on Monday and because the banks are closed on Monday (stupid thieving Columbus... who the hell wants to celebrate him? Um, other than bankers...) the bank had to finish their part of it on Friday. Surely I would have heard something from them on Friday if there were problems right??

Oh, and I broke the law. Bean and I went by the new house on Thursday to drop off the shingle samples. She had still not seen the inside of the house so we walked around, peeking in windows. (The good news is that the blinds in the dining room are still up - they would have to be custom-ordered so I really hope they stay there). I happened to notice that the renter had left the key in the mailbox. Hmmmmmm. I considered the implications of entering a house that was not (yet) mine for, like, a half of a second and then we went inside. We made a speedy-quick tour of the house and then locked up and left. Dude, I am SO ready to paint.