blogging

Linky Love: A Tale of Catch and Release


I was unfriended at Facebook about a month ago.

To be honest, I don’t remember adding the person to my friend list. I found her inclusion on my list a bit odd as she was someone from the widow board who basically disowned me during the little ruckus* I inadvertently caused last August.

Regardless, I checked in one morning and noted the loss of a friend and was puzzled. It took me a couple of scans through my friend’s list to figure out who was missing, so I guess that sums up how big a loss it really is. Rob thinks perhaps she left Facebook entirely and that it wasn’t simply a case of suddenly realizing she had added me as friend as a mistake.

And it could be.

Still, whether I care or not, being dumped off someone’s Facebook friend list, or their blogroll, without warning bothered me for reasons I was not able to put a full finger on and pin down.

Perhaps it goes back to high school. And here I must pause and wonder – yet again – why those god awful years cause such a life long hangover.

I was not popular, but a friend pointed out to me once after we were well into adulthood that this was only because I chose not to be. She insisted that I could have been a force to reckon with socially, had I been so inclined. It was flattering of her to say so, however I am doubtful.

I am an acquired taste and even people who have managed to learn me well enough to know me can still be amazed by the things I say, do or write.

Anyway, in high school I was not pretty. I did not belong to any organization, club or team that would arouse envy in others. I didn’t date, so there was no chance of anyone coveting my boyfriend. My family was dysfunctional, and well-known for it, so I am certain no one secretly wished to exchange lives with me either.

High school was something I endured and ultimately escaped. I think that is true for most people which always made me wonder, when I was a teacher, why there seemed to be such mystery surrounding the fact that teens seem to learn so little there. High school is like a minimally controlled Lord of the Flies environment. How can anything productive be expected to come out of it?

So my lack of popularity as a teen still stings me now and being cyber dumped dredges all that crap up. Whether it is Facebook or blogrolls or just post links. The motivation is probably nothing personal – but not knowing the motivation – one goes to all the dark deserted hallways of one’s inner high school and feels like the slighted fat girl all over again.

Worse, you feel stupid for caring. It’s not as if anyone on the other side of the screen really knows me, or I them for that matter. You read what they care to tell you and take a shot in the dark when you comment based on the accumulation of what amounts to random data.

But then I read a piece by my wise friend and fellow blogger, Marsha. She had a read a book detailing the friendship between an art dealer and a homeless man. She shared a bit of the story that summed up what I could not pin down:

Denver went on. “I just can’t figure it out. ‘Cause when colored folks go fishin, we really proud of what we catch, and we take it and show it off to everybody that’ll look. Then we eat what we catch…in other words, we use it to sustain us. So it really bothers me that white folks would go to all that trouble to catch a fish, then when they done caught it, just throw it back in the water.”

“So, Mr. Ron, it occurred to me: If you is fishin for a friend you just gon’ catch and release, then I ain’t got no desire to be your friend.”

“But if you is looking for a real friend, then I’ll be one. Forever.” (p107)**

I have been caught and released. But I am not a fish. I take it personally. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Some people are not meant to travel the entire journey but simply share roads – some major, some secondary and some will be the meandering little stretches of trail that give us time and opportunity to really connect.

When Will was sick I had a friend who thought she was doing her bit to support me by calling to check up on me every three months. Like clockwork. I had a much dearer friend who decided her church obligations on the Sunday morning before Will died were more important than coming to his hospice room and taking BabyDaughter so she wouldn’t have to witness the terrible struggle her father was in. Later she missed nearly all of his wake because one of her children had a volleyball game. Surprisingly I released the first person and kept the other. Mainly because I realized that the first was someone the circumstances that had linked us were no longer and our relationship road was now just a cul-de-sac we will stroll when we chance to meet up, circular and memory-based. The latter is like my sister – and we can’t choose our family – just forgive them for being as strong or weak as they are because for every instance they have let us down, so there is a matching one of our own failing.

As far as the blogosphere goes, in the future I think I will look more carefully at the circumstances and the level of acceptance before allowing myself to be “caught”. A true friend will accept me for who I am and forgive me for who I cannot be. And will let me know when our paths are diverging in a manner that is not intended to cause pain.

* I was unsympathetic “out loud” to widows who complained about non-widowed whiners when the widow in question whined pretty much about the exact same molehill things – not talking grief issues but just the everyday stuff that widowed think the un-so get too wrapped up in as if we didn’t before there were bigger fish catching fire around us. There is a lot of pot and kettle stuff on the board when it comes to the right to complain. I let myself get drawn in too often. My bad. Anyway, my comment was misconstrued, deliberately, by a woman there who never missed an opportunity to tell me I was horrid and shouldn’t be allowed to have an opinion about widowhood because I was such a lousy example of what a “good widow” is. Interestingly, I continue to have this problem. No one wants to ask you what you meant. People prefer to jump to conclusions and, in my case online, give the ultimate cyber-slap – unlinkage. My ever wise husband rolls his eyes at this point and reminds me that most of the people who have done this – never liked me anyway – but it is annoying when he gets linked and I don’t when he is even less sympathetic than I am. It’s also mean to unlink without acknowledgement of said fact, but it is meant that way. I always try to explain when I rearrange or drop links. Some people’s blogs don’t fit or deserve more privacy after all.

** From the novel “Same Kind of Different as Me: a modern-day slave, an international art dealer and the unlikely woman who bound them together” by Ton Hall and Denver Moore.

And Now for a LIVE Update…


I apologize dear readers but I haven’t been blogging in real time. The last two weeks were written days or even a week before you saw them. No excuses other than I am very busy. Mostly staining lumber for the deck that Rob is putting together as I sit here typing this and with the day to day of being the house’s wife and the husband’s gal and the child’s mother. Regardless of how much reno needs to be accomplished, everyone needs to eat and wear clean clothing.

So a rundown….

  1. As of Wednesday at roughly 10AM mountain time, BabyD and I achieved official permanent resident status in Canada. After nine months and much invasive paperwork, the final okay was a bit anti-climactic. I initialed a few things and signed my name a couple of time and that was it. I am now endowed with the same rights as any Canadian except my opinions of public policy don’t matter but as a former Democrat and a current registered Independent in the States – I am used to that.
  2. I am finished staining lumber after a week of doing not much else. I kick ass.
  3. BabyD is in skipping camp this week and to calm her fears a bit on the first day I hung out and jumped rope too. Learned some cool tricks. Suffered a high calf sprain for my trouble. I am old.
  4. The garden is going gangbusters and I have been harvesting yummy stuff the past two weeks which makes for a less shocking grocery bill but much more prep time in the kitchen.
  5. Weather is warm. Will be happier when fall sets in which this being August should be any day now.
  6. Picked out a couple of writing courses to take this year at the university in the city.
  7. Finally dug my desk out from clutter to ready for school’s start (and the return of my serenity and writing time).
Up on the agenda:
  1. Finishing my manuscript.
  2. Getting the outline set for my memoir.
  3. Doing a closet and drawer purge.
  4. School and cold weather preparation.
  5. Getting ready for Rob’s birthday.
  6. Signing up for fall yoga classes.
  7. Much more writing!!
Okay, now I will return you to my post-dated blogging for a bit.
Taa-taa.

Retiring to the Island


Thursday night last, Rob and I attended a retirement gathering for a friend of his from work. The gentleman and his wife are relocating to Vancouver Island, a place I have longed to visit but haven’t made it to yet. Perhaps this is because I fear that I won’t want to leave?

Rob’s friend and his wife are not a lot older than Rob and I. Not more than ten years. In certain respects though they are more his contemporaries than mine due to the adult children and grandchildren (no neither of the girls is in the “family” way but it is something we have braced for – Rob more than me as he has a real horror about it which is funny in someone who made his own mother a grandma at 41).

We talk a lot about the retirement. But in generalities. We have no idea where. Or what he will be doing (me being a writer seems decided). It’s not realistic to think we will do the traveling and hobby thing. Our generation will be the first to not retire that way. Not many retirees will have a high schooler and then university to factor in as we will, but there are more of us than one would think.

I watched more than I spoke at the gathering. Later Rob asked me if I had survived not knowing anyone and honestly I didn’t find it much of a trial. I have spent a year not really knowing anyone and before that I had spent about 3 years being a visible ghost. I am quite comfortable in my role as wall flora.

No one expected me to talk anyway. One woman gave me hard looks when she thought I wasn’t looking. Another dismissed me once she discovered I didn’t have a job and just talked to Rob. The host’s son and his wife were quite nice and of course Best Man was there.

Best Man was just that a year plus ago at our wedding. He is about the age of my late husband, a French-Canadian with a wicked sense of humor, he spent the night before our wedding fighting off the attention of Rob’s mother and ElderDaughter. Were it not too personal I would launch into the awkward tale of how Rob’s Best Man and his oldest daughter hooked up for a time, but enough has been said.

Fortunately, we still have Best Man in our life. Sometimes things don’t work out and yet they still do.

Best Man lamented that he is not the story-teller that his dad and younger brother were not being gifted with the gene necessary.

“I got the hamburger eating gene.”

He really does have the gene. Actually, both. And he went on to tell the tale of nearly rolling a golf cart off the side of a mountain while Rob and his brother-in-law watched to see which way he would tip before intervening.

As we were leaving the host couple reminded us that we are always welcome to visit them. Funny but we have more standing invitations awaiting us on Vancouver Island than anywhere else.

A sign perhaps.