My October Paradox

This morning I stepped out of my apartment at 5:45 in the morning into the just-frozen October morning to see the glint of ice on my windshield greet me. And despite the irritation I felt knowing I would have to begin a life of scraping my window now that I no longer live at the cushy studio apartment with the heated garage, I couldn’t help but notice the clear air filling my lungs, the belt of Orion gleaming in the black sky above me. I breathed in and also cursed the harsh beauty around me pressing the rubber straight edge of my window scraper against the film of ice on the glass.

 

An October paradox.

 

By mid-morning the frost was gone and by late afternoon I was wearing my hoodie without a coat out for a walk. But now it is night and I suppose frost is here again, just outside my door.

 

I just finished watching The Wrestler and so I cannot escape the idea of loneliness, of tragic ex-heroes of the 80’s, of men who end up alone clinging to their armor even as they realize behind it they touch no one.

 

My uncle died this summer. His grown-up biological children and stepchildren showed up like vets who had gone through a civil war of sorts, a bloodbath of divorce and abandonment that left scars that still smart when the weather isn’t right. They mourned not their father, but the relationship, the treaty lines that sent them scattering in different directions around the country. They wanted him back, it back, that life before the war.

 

We all did.

 

My once-upon-a-time husband lost his father to a similar war. I don’t know where his scars are or how they are doing now, but I know they must have ached when he rolled over in bed next to me years ago. I was no Nightengale, had no skills to treat his wounds, but I knew they were there, hidden below the surface. I could hear it in the tears he didn’t cry at the funeral.

 

My ninth graders just finished reading of Mice and Men and on a test I asked them to explain which theme in the novel was most important. “I think loneliness was the most important idea in the novel,” wrote one student named Patrick, “in the fact that it affected everyone in the story. I can relate to this theme because I have been lonely most of my life.”

 

“I think everyone has moments when they feel lonely,” I wrote on his test, because- what else could I say?

 

Loneliness crouches over me right now from the ropes at a ring. On this frost-filled night it is the wrestler in lime green pants and I am afraid that Mickey Rourke is about to “Ram Jam” me right into the floor.

 

I think this wrestler must visit other apartments as well. On Saturday, I went out for dinner with a man who said to me, “Don’t get me wrong, I love living alone. But I’m ready to have a relationship—it’s boring being single, and lonely.”

 

“What are you doing for Christmas?” asked another male friend of my mine on the phone the other day. His mom had been asking him about his plans and I think he felt the wrestler breathing down his neck when she did.

 

And these conversations make me worry because even in the face of the frost, even under the shadow of the wrestler, a part of me hears these comments as requests, as needs, and I want to hang up the phone and say good night early. The worry is not about these men. They are not saying anything wrong. They are being honest, which I like. What worries me is my own reaction.

 

“You’re kind of hard to reach,” said a man I went to a movie with this summer. “It’s hard to explain but it’s like there’s a wall around you.”

 

Am I one of the tragic ex-heroes of the 80’s? Am I clinging desperately to my armor?

 

I go to the place in my memory of funerals. Of armored knights on platforms in front of the people who tried to love them.

 

I am thinking of my uncle again.

 

He lost the war with some of his children. He loved them but couldn’t find a way to share that love with them. But he didn’t die alone.

 

In the end he adopted a third ex-wife’s daughter as his own and provided for her and her son, his grandson. He still spoke with his ex-wife (who was his daughter’s age), and her parents (who were his age). He still joked around with the people in his new life. He still pulled out a gun to shoot at rabbits in his front yard in Sauk Rapids. (A story shared that soothed the battle wounds at the funeral.)

 

I may have walls around me some of the time but I do not push everyone out of my life. There are people in my life with whom I can be completely honest, completely myself. There are friends who stop by for dinner, who help me when I need it, who call me every night at 10:02 to discuss the occurrences of the day. There are family members who are not perfect but who are as imperfect as myself and willing to learn how to connect.

 

Love is everywhere. It is all around us. Sometimes we mess it up. Sometimes we find ourselves fighting against something simple, we find ourselves fighting our own civil wars, but love never leaves. It is the starlight bouncing off the frost on a cold October morning, a beauty so harsh we aren’t sure what to do with it.