Love is Love

“I love you,” I said softly as I hugged him goodbye again, kissed his cheek, not wanting to let go. “I love you too,” he responded.

We each got into our respective vehicles, and he drove away as I pulled up my GPS to guide me down the unfamiliar two and a half hour drive home. It was later than I had planned on leaving, and I still had a bit of packing to do for the work trip the next morning, but I had no regrets.

My music app came on, and the tears began to flow. 

I don’t remember when I first made the bargain with myself, but it’s been a few years. Shut it down, hold off, when you get in the car you can have your release on the drive home. Plenty of time to recover so that when you walk in the door, nobody will know you’ve been crying. It got me through years of not one, but two horrible marriages, especially in the times when I had no privacy, no space for myself. Times when I didn’t want to explain to anyone why I needed a good cry.

We met when I was nineteen and he was 21, though he could no longer remember. It didn’t mean to him what it meant to me, and that’s okay.

I was in my sophomore year of college, still trying not to process trauma from my freshman year. Sophomore year was the year I started hanging out with Amy, the year of wild escapism. And Amy was with me the night I met Geoff at the party. Perhaps that was a part of the crying fest, too. I don’t even remember how many years it has been since Amy died, her heart giving out.

I spotted Geoff across the room all those years ago, and we made eye contact. I was never a drinker, no liquid courage for me – I had to mask and put on a false sense of bravado. I asked Amy to dare me to go talk to him. Before she could, he walked up and started talking to me.

It was January, 1992, and it was pretty cold outside. As we talked, we took the conversation out to his car, sitting in the front seat. We may have kissed. Knowing me, we probably did. It’s funny the things I remember and the things that I don’t. I remember the names of the girls he talked about, I remember things he told me about himself. I don’t remember what I told him of myself.

After a while, Amy came out to the car with another acquaintance, and they sat in the back seat eating uncooked ramen noodles. There was quite a bit of laughing and joking, and we all sat up and watched the sunrise together.

We exchanged phone numbers. He lived in the same apartment complex as a friend of Amy’s, with whom she was deeply in love. 

Geoff would call me sometimes – usually when he was going down his list of people he thought he should call, and I teased him about it. I told him he didn’t have to call me unless he genuinely wanted to talk – I didn’t want to be a duty.

We got together and hung out a few times. There was some physical intimacy, but it was casual. We both had other people we were hung up on. But there was a glimmer. A thing that maybe could have been.

He graduated that semester and left to start his career in the navy. 

The last time I saw him was 32 years ago. In the day or two leading up to that final visit, I had had two instances of thinking of someone and having them show up or call right after thinking of them. I teased myself about “summoning” them, and told myself that if I could really summon people, Geoff would show up on my doorstep. 

The next evening, when I came home from the drudgery of my summer job, he was sitting there on the doorstep. He was driving from Jacksonville to Pensacola, and had stopped to visit on his way.

We sat up most of the night talking. We talked about everything and nothing. Music and cartoons, people we knew. He told me I was unique, and I told him that was a euphemism for weird.

The next morning before he left, he said he would call, but I knew he wouldn’t. I also knew what I had kept hidden from myself for those few months of our acquaintance… I loved him.

Love is a curious thing, and we can love in so many ways. I could never quite define how I loved Geoff, I just knew that I did. I knew that in that brief time that we knew each other, he had somehow touched who I was, somehow made me realize that I was still capable of love after trauma. Perhaps it was even because he was gone that it was finally safe for me to let myself realize I loved him.

Years passed. I wondered from time to time where he was, what he was doing, but in those days before social media, it was difficult to look up anyone with a common last name. I moved on with my life, just as he moved on with his, not knowing, right up until the year I decided to really start writing again.

In the process of writing a story that I needed to write, I opened some long closed doors. I also found myself researching the time and place in which I set my novel, to make sure that my memory of that time and place was as accurate as possible. In the process, I found Geoff again. And I couldn’t resist the urge to send him a friend request.

We started chatting off and on. He was on his second marriage, this time happily married. He had been injured in service and had forgotten some things from the time that we knew each other. He didn’t remember me, but still we talked.

He gave me some of the best advice anyone gave me while I was going through the first divorce. He was able to give me a different perspective on many things. We remained friends, occasionally sending each other funny memes and videos, but mostly just living our separate lives. I remarried, foolishly.

I went through some very dark times, and so did he. I was married to an addict. Geoff’s wife had cancer. We spoke a few times about the more serious stuff, but not often.

I worked up the courage to leave the very miserable life I was living.

Geoff’s wife passed away. 

I reached out now and then to check in on him.

He went through the motions of surviving. He is still going through the motions of surviving.

And we started sending each other more funny videos and memes. We started chatting as well. Still friends after 32 years.

It got to the point where we were sending memes and texting all day most days. 

And on Sunday, I had a short day at work, After a few messages back and forth, we decided to meet up in Saint Augustine.

The drive there was beautiful and exciting. I was not only embarking on an adventure, I was visiting a beautiful town I hadn’t visited in over forty years. And I was going to see Geoff again, in person. We had a couple of calls to coordinate parking and meeting up. The familiar yet forgotten voice, soft spoken and pleasant.

I pulled into the parking spot and let him know what level I was on in the garage. When he pulled up and got out of his truck, we hugged, and stared at each other’s faces. Different, older, but familiar to me. For a fleeting moment I wanted to kiss him, but resisted the urge, not wanting to make things awkward. 

We spent over three hours walking around, sitting down drinking tea, talking. Talking of so many things. Health. Various experiences in the years since we’d last met.

As we walked around, I fought the urge to take his hand. I let myself stare at his face, recalling and re-memorizing the details. His eyelashes. The shape of his face. The lines that weren’t there when we were nineteen and twenty one. The little space between his front teeth. Familiar things, new things.

And when I got back in the car and drove away, I let those tears come. I drove off into a beautiful sunset.

When my oldest son was about three years old, he and his younger sister loved playing with Thomas the Tank Engine trains. They would often watch the little animated videos that we bought to get some of the trains. And one day I bought the live action movie, and they watched it.

When we got to the end of the movie, my son started crying inconsolably. He didn’t want the movie to end.

I didn’t want Sunday to end. I don’t know if we will meet again. I don’t know if either of us has another 32 years left.

I don’t know how to define this love that I feel. And that is okay. Sometimes things don’t need to be defined, they just need to be felt and experienced.

As I drove home, the phone started pinging. Geoff sending more funny videos. 

Surviving… Thriving, even

It’s been a few years. What to say…

Publix didn’t give me enough hours. No matter how many departments I trained in, it was just too inconsistent. Guitar Center never amounted to more than a dozen hours a week.

I found a job in 2019 in a Sewing and Vacuum shop. It paid well, but had plenty of issues. During COVID it stayed open. I made money. I ate healthy. I exercised, got down to a healthier weight for a while. But the toxic home environment never got better. And the routines had to change when we screwed up and missed one of Adam’s Methadone Clinic callbacks. He had no car. I was driving him back and forth to the clinic before work every. single. day. (Layers to the story that I don’t want to even get into…)

I found a job at a funeral home/cemetery. I actually liked the job, but the bottom line/income was never what they promised. If I could have stuck it out indefinitely, I may have eventually made the big bucks, but then, maybe not. I couldn’t survive it long enough, because I was spiraling down a black hole of payday loans, pawn loans, and poverty.

One afternoon I had an interesting conversation with my older sister, in which I outlined in great detail what my best life would look like. What I would be doing each day. I realized two major things: 1. I would be waking up ALONE in the mornings – not with someone else, and 2. I would be pursuing creative endeavors all day. One of the big endeavors was photography.

Within a few months, I found a post and applied for a position as a photographer for a family owned company that does newborn photography in hospitals. I have been at the job for over a year now.

I left Adam last February. I moved in with my parents, like any self-respecting 50 year old… LOL. I LOVE living with them. Seriously. My mom is my best friend, and I help my dad with projects he could use help with.

I do a lot of driving, because I work in a few different hospitals that are anywhere from 25 miles to 100 miles from the house. I work my arse off. And I love every minute of it. Okay, maybe not the parts where I have to call tech support because something is malfunctioning with the computer or the internet or the database or the photo editing software, but definitely the part where I get to play with other people’s babies, set them in Fairy Circles, create art, and then give them back to their parents and go home to a house where the only “babies” are a Frenchton and a Shih tzu.

The photos below were taken on the floor of my bedroom, in a space that comprised about 3’x5′ total, if that. I used a dark green backdrop as a floor mat in some. Photographing dolls is in some ways easier, but in others more difficult, and definitely less rewarding, but I don’t post photos of other people’s babies on my personal sites, even when I have releases. 🙂

The Pauper’s Guide to Indoor Camping and other Adventures in Poverty

I haven’t posted in forever. Things are better. I’m waiting in line to get the magic ticket to get a tooth pulled that has been broken for at least three years.

I have power. I have running water. O went many months without those things. I have two or three jobs… I say two or three because job #3 is a seasonal photography job that is currently not in season. (Dance photography… It was amazing.)

I work in Produce at Publix now, or “the Lemon Zen Garden” as I prefer to call it. It’s part time.

I also teach voice at Guitar Center, also part time, and so, so, so much fun. I currently have about ten students.

I feel like so many things have come full circle. My original major in college was music, so I am actually doing one of the things I thought I would be doing back when I was in high school.

So… For the blog title…

Things I’ve learned in the past couple of years…

1. Most things really aren’t important.

2. You can get clean using a sink in a convenient store restroom, but a nice hot bath or shower is a luxury to be appreciated.

3. You can flush your toilet using a bucket of water poured directly into the tank, but this method is not going to keep your toilet as clean.

4. You can make a “hot water heater” for washing up using a metal bowl over several pillar candles of the same size.

5. Canned beef ravioli tastes better hot, and with hot sauce.

6. Kittens make excellent space heaters.

7. Nobody knows what you are going through if you don’t tell them. Unless you tell someone else who tells them.

8. Some people who run charities are horrible, and enjoy telling poor people that they are unworthy.

9. Nothing is more valuable in life than friends and family.

 

Updates

So, things are better, and not. I did manage to find a job, in the bakery of a local grocery store, and I love being on my feet all day, as opposed to on my behind. I also love that I am learning to decorate cakes.

Financially, we’re still struggling, and our well stopped working a few weeks ago, and the parts we’ve replaced have not fixed the problem.

Two steps forward, three back? Sigh. At least I enjoy work, and I’ve dropped about 15 pounds of excess weight from moving around all day.

If You Are Already Suffering From Depression, Don’t Read This Blog Post

Once upon a time I was a kid with dreams and potential. I was “gifted,” whatever that is supposed to mean. From seventh grade on I nearly always made all A’s, worked harder than most kids my age, never drank or smoked, went to church like a good little Episcopalian, sang in the choir and even formed a junior choir. I was going to be the principal trumpet player of the Chicago Symphony some day.

Then I went to college as a music major, and after going through a few typical college experiences, I realized I didn’t want to major in music. I wound up graduating with a 3.1 GPA and a B.A. in Russian language, and about $3,000 in credit card debt from a school related trip to St. Petersburg to study abroad, most of which I paid off within two years by working in a customer service call center dispatching repair technicians.

Then came one of my stupider decisions. Based on my aptitude on some tests, I decided to go to law school. Private law school, for which loans were necessary.

I did okay in law school. I struggled through the first two years, but started doing better while studying tax law. And I met someone I was drawn to – another law student who was studying corporate law.

I felt “called by God” to accept his proposal and marry him between our second and third years of law school, despite some very major differences in ideals.

We both wanted kids, but I wanted to wait and establish a career, while he wanted to pop out as many kids as God would gift him with. I caved and went along with his “trust God and don’t use birth control” plan, and by the time I graduated from Emory Law, I had made Dean’s List twice, “booked” the corporate practice seminar, had a callback interview with a major accounting firm, and was seven months pregnant with our first child, who was due right before the bar exam.

We took his dream job offer in New York, a high paid Wall Street attorney, and I gave birth (c-section, it nearly killed me), moved 1,000 miles with my newborn, and began studying for the New York Bar (I passed on my first try!) in February.

By the time I passed that exam, I was pregnant with my second child, and after a pregnancy that drained my already depleted physical strength, I gave birth to a beautiful little girl who had some medical issues.

I knew I had to prevent getting pregnant immediately. I stood him down on the birth control issue and started using a diaphragm, even though I HATED the thing.

He lost his wonderful job right around the time we had decided to go for Baby 3. He found another job without missing a payment. I had another little boy.

Throughout the years we were married, he brought in all the money, and I did pretty much everything else, allowing him to be a mostly absentee father. He worked 90+ hour work weeks, often sleeping on the floor of his office. Once or twice we talked about me going to work or him taking a less stressful job, but the conversation always went the road of “emasculation” and his need to be a banking lawyer, and who would care for these kids and he wanted MORE kids but I was denying him that, and I could get a job if I really wanted but it wasn’t necessary because most of my salary would have gone to child care and taxes, and he would automatically make sure ten percent before taxes of my income would be paid to the church we attended, a church we were donating over $20,000 a year to from the very first year, even though we struggled to pay two law loans and survive in an expensive state. By the time I decided I’d had enough, it was more like $30,000/year.

We bought a fixer upper, but there never seemed to be enough money to make repairs. Anything we managed to save wound up gone.

When my youngest child was almost two, my then husband was called up by the Individual Ready Reserve to serve in Iraq. He was offered the opportunity to resign his commission and stay home, but service to his country was more important to him than we were, so I got to play the good military wife and hold down the fort with three kids under the age of six. I was 1,000 + miles from my parents, siblings, and my support network consisted of one good friend I had made who was willing to babysit my kids on a moment’s notice. My then-husband did not even take his leave time, choosing to remain in Iraq for the entire tour, because what he was doing was too important for him to come home and visit us.

He came home at the end of his tour because I “made him” instead of letting him voluntarily extend. I made him come home because I was “incapable” of holding down the fort with three kids who missed their father, I was struggling with being a single parent with little support except the pay that allowed me to remain home with kids I loved dearly but could never entirely escape.

He came back, and he immediately began criticizing everything about my “inability” to hold down the fort. The house was dirty. I spent too much time online. I didn’t fuck him enough. I wasn’t willing to have more kids. I insulted his masculinity by being a layreader at church when I knew he was morally opposed to women “preaching” in church.

By the time the army called him up again (in less than two years) he was losing job #2, and I was a little glad to see him go.

I took the opportunity of his absence to get rid of things I wasn’t supposed to get rid of, like his collection of moldy ten year old phone books from a town he lived in two years before we met.

Understand this: while I had wanted to wait on having kids, I always wanted them. My kids were my whole world. I did all I could to spins magical childhood despite being married to someone who didn’t want his kids believing in Santa.

When he came back from the second deployment, he wanted to run for politics, but I “wouldn’t let him.” He spent more time going door to door volunteering for the RNC than he did looking for a job. But if I went looking for work (and while I had passed the bar, I had missed the opportunity to get some necessary referral letters and never been admitted to practice…) he would feel emasculated.

We blew through any savings and a HELOC he had me take out for him during the first deployment. I had already “wasted” about 40,000 of that 80,000 HELOC with “unnecessary” spendings to fix a roof with brittle shingles, vinyl siding, new windows to replace the broken windows, a front door that couldn’t be pushed open by anyone with an ounce of strength…

When he finally found another job, it was a contract job with the state department, in Afghanistan. I secretly hoped he would continue to skip all vacations and remain overseas. He disappointed me by coming home for weeks at a time every few months of that job.

I wrote a novel, it started a war. It started a dialogue that opened my eyes to the fact that I was miserable and that living for and through three kids wasn’t any healthier for me than it was for them. And by the time he came home for good, I knew I wanted a divorce.

I negotiated my way out of New York and moved to Florida. I played the game by his rules for about six months, even taking the kids to church from time to time (falling short of his requirement of every week) despite the fact that both boys were avowed atheists, my daughter was in a Wiccan phase, and I no longer had faith in much. I still had my little girl sense of justice, though. I still believed that as long as I played by a set of rules that others imposed on me, I would come out okay in the end. I believed that hard work was rewarded, too.

Then something else happened – I met someone who saw me. All of me. The person I was and the wild caged creature who wanted to come out but didn’t know how to unlock the gate.

By the time I filed for divorce, I had made a mess of things. I had gotten involved with my current husband, and I had been honest about that with my ex, who up to that point believed my “mid life crisis” would end and I would “come to my senses” and “return to my faith” and be “a good wife.”

Under the advise of one shady Florida lawyer, I retained a New York divorce attorney and filed in New York State. My ex dodged service and filed in Florida, and a long, expensive battle over jurisdiction ensued. Shady Florida lawyer wouldn’t represent me as soon as he realized his buddy was representing my ex. I had to retain another Florida lawyer, and I found a good human being.

My New York attorney was a good, honest woman whose sense of justice was as childish as my own, and she never believed that New York would end up tossing it to Florida. Not when all the marital assets were in New York and the duration of the marriage existed in New York.

Had it remained in New York, my years of sacrificing my own career would have allowed me to claim partial ownership of his license to practice. Financially, I would have been protected in ways Florida would not protect me.

Instead, I wound up settling just to bring an end to things and to keep my kids and not end up bankrupt. I gave up the house under the condition that I would no longer be responsible for the debt. I gave up any right spousal support even though my career was wrecked to follow his dreams. I couldn’t even pass the Florida Bar Exam. I accepted smaller child support payments under the agreement that he would assume the debts for the consolidated student loans. I had the kids for the school year, he got most of the summers and holidays and vacation times. I got the work, he got the carefree fun times.

At first he was good at paying child support. He was on legal job #3. Then he lost that job – which was my fault for making him litigate all that jurisdictional stuff.

My ex never held up the part of the agreement to get me removed from the credit cards he was still using. I didn’t push it because he would have had to reapply for credit. It might have cost him his ability to visit the kids, and the HELOC could have forced him to lose his house.

I gave him the better deal on tax exemptions – he got them all until each kid’s senior year, which I wanted so I could get them tuition waivers with my job.

By then I had remarried my current husband, who struggles with physical disabilities, and has had his own share of the world beating him down. My husband’s grandfather, grandmother, and mother had ALL died within the span of a few months, and my husband sold everything he could, including plasma from his own body, to help make ends meet. I was earning about ten percent of what my ex had made, as a police dispatcher at a community college. All efforts to find a better job had failed.

We moved into my husband’s mother’s house, though it was 50 miles away from my home, and though it was too small and we had too much stuff. I let my ex get away with not paying support for months because he was unemployed. As he stopped paying bills, MY credit crashed. John’s stuff even started showing up on Adam’s credit reports, even though he had never been a part of any of that debt, debt that was not even supposed to be on my credit.

The commute, the farming lifestyle, the fact that my attention was divided, and a number of things drove a wedge in my relationship with my daughter. I don’t want to go into details, but ultimately she moved back in with her father almost a year after the move “out to the country.” He younger brother made a choice to also move to New York when he visited his father and sister last summer. Only my oldest remains in Florida, a college freshman with dreams of his own, a straight A student who does everything by the book and believed hard work will pay off…

My ex was still paying the child support, and my daughter was angry about that, feeling that I didn’t deserve it. I never got into the discussion with her about the framing of the agreement that couched EVERYTHING in child support to make it more palatable to the ex, or how the reason payments were to continue in full until months after all three kids turned 18 was because we negotiated it that way and I gave up part of the child support payments, all sorts of marital assets, and any right to marital support to compensate for my decreased earning potential.

Then my ex lost Job #4. He still hasn’t found another. Then I lost my job last December.

I was relying on a tax refund that was supposed to come in today, but didn’t. I suspect it is because my ex defaulted in the student loans, and now I am in a very precarious position.

I am behind on my car loan. We are behind on property taxes. I am behind on the phone bill. We have an electrical bill we won’t be able to pay.

I am not a bad person. I have just made some really bad choices, mostly out of love.

Love. That magical word that is supposed to somehow fix the things that are broken, and make everything okay.

I am sitting at a lake, typing on my cellphone, occasionally seeing a coyote, and pondering where things like live and faith and doing what I thought at the time was the right thing have gotten me. Wondering when it will be my time again to have dreams and “make something of my life.” Maybe never, but quitting has never been an option.

The sun will be coming up in a few minutes, and I can see the outline of the lake in dim light as I wonder “what now? Where do I go now?”

Where do you go when you lose everything? How do I start over with less than nothing?

Life

When I wrote the book, many of the characters were loosely based on people I knew in real life, a million years ago.

The role of Sarah would have been played by my friend Amy.

I need to write the sequel that has been in my head. A sequel not about Emma and Robert, but about Emma and Sarah.

I’ve never been the popular person, I was always the kid picked last for the team in elementary school, (and for good reason! I SUCKED in P.E.!) but I’ve been fortunate to have some amazing female friends over the years. Kim – my best friend in elementary school – the kid who was quietly introverted back in the day, while I was overly talkative to mask the shyness… a cancer survivor who is absolutely amazing… Peggy, also pretty quiet in her way, my best friend in middle and high school, who dressed like a punk but is still one of the kindest people I know…

Amy was my first “boisterous” friend. I met her in my first year of college, but we didn’t start hanging out until our second year. We had Master Theory together, where we learned that some chords were just “marshmallow fluff.” We sang together often – anywhere and everywhere, from summer chorale, to driving around Tallahassee and the surrounding areas with the radio blasting, to karaoke at places like Dudley’s Pub, a hole-in-the-wall establishment on Tennessee Street that had good hot wings and let people under 21 in. (They didn’t sell us booze, but we didn’t try to buy booze, either. We were just there for the karaoke and the people-watching.)

Amy was a complex person. She carried a lot of pain, but laughed at everything in life. She had something of a dysfunctional family, her ex-boyfriend was scammed into Scientology, and she had a lot of physical issues, even then.

She was the sort of friend who would drop everything just to hang out and do nothing on a Friday night, just because. For a time, she filled my world. She also brought another friend into my life, Lee. Lee is the sort of person who is beautiful and bubbly inside and out.

And yes, I am referring to Amy in the past tense.

Earlier this fall, I received the news that she passed away. She’d already suffered from a stroke that left her unable to talk, and then the congestive heart failure.

I wish I had kept up with her better in the years after college. I wish I had kept up better with all of the friends I’ve had the fortune of knowing. I still chat with Kim, Peggy, Lee, and my friends Michelle and Rosie. I still love them.

I’ve been busy with school, with animals, with life. But I keep promising myself that I will write this sequel, that I will immortalize a little piece of Amy. I can’t possibly capture all that she was, I’m certainly not going to get into writing an autobiography or a biography, but if I can catch the essence of the girl who loved turtles, walked around singing Mozart Opera with bastardized lyrics, and smoked because she was on the “slow suicide plan,” the girl who tried to rush fraternities with me because we both had “big brass balls,” the girl with the masses of curly dyed red hair? Then all ten people who read the book will have a chance to know someone wonderful.

Maybe I should rename my blog “How to fail at Life”?

No, obviously I’m not failing at life if I am still alive, but I’m on a roll here, folks.

I haven’t blogged in quite a while – too busy between working, taking care of the animals that didn’t get eaten by predators, driving back and forth to work, driving kids (ahem, my oldest) places…

Now I am sitting in the Honda Dealership where funny noises overhead sound like something may just fall through the roof and crash on top of my head, but I’m thinking I’ll stay put so I can continue to charge my laptop, which is downloading a 5.8GB program for my OOP2 class and also because hey, if something falls on my head, I or my surviving family members may be set for a while, eh?

I am almost 45 years old. I work full time, I go to school half time, I have a bazillion hobbies I don’t keep up with, I wish I could write more than I do, and in the past week, I have killed not one but TWO cars – a 2015 KIA Soul (I had a little help) and a 2011 Honda Odyssey.

The KIA had 67k miles on it. The Oddyssey has 113,100 or so.

The KIA overheated while Adam was driving it, but I put quite a few of those miles on the car, so I claim my part in killing it. They want to sell us a new engine for about $4500, and somehow they have the mistaken idea that we have good enough credit to finance said engine replacement.

The Odyssey… where to begin. It needs a bunch of stuff, per the diagnostic codes, plus new brakes, plus SOMETHING is wrong with the transmission, but with the kind of mileage and the laundry list of what it needs, I’m better off trading it in. So here I sit, using the free wiFi to download my massive program while I wait to see what is going on.

I would say my luck is horrible, but I need to quit saying that. What I am going to say instead is that in 2011, when my ex and I bought the Odyssey, I knew I wanted out of the marriage. I was trying to push for a car rather than a minivan, because I wanted the better gas mileage and smaller payments of something like a Toyota Camry rather than a Honda Odyssey. I was talked into the minivan. So today, there is the very real possibility that I may be driving away in the mid-sized sedan I wanted six and a half years ago, rather than the minivan I was pressured into. With gas prices going up again, the reduction in gas spendings may offset whatever car payments I will have to make.

It’s just a machine, just a tool, but “Homer” served us well for six years. Even after the deer incident of 2015.

I’m trying to stay positive.

Shh… You’re in the Library!

My oldest son and I carpool back and forth to Gainesville for work and school. This has been the case since we moved out to the middle of nowhere and started our own personal Easter farm, filled with chicks and ducks and bunnies. It’s a long drive, and I’ve put way too many miles on the cars.

One problem with carpooling is that our schedules have not always been the same. For a while, the van was making the fifty mile trip seven days a week, because I was working Saturday through Wednesday but Matt still had to go to school on Thursdays and Fridays. Sometimes we took more than one car when our times were vastly different, but typically one of us would be stuck waiting for the other to finish with work, or school, or activities.

The carpooling is almost at an end. Matthew will be attending University of Florida and living on campus in the dorms, so I will strictly be driving to and from work, and not having many days of being in Gainesville for over twelve hour stretches.

The past few weeks, however, I’ve had to wait after work for hours at a time as Matt completes AP exams, English projects, concert rehearsals and lessons leading up to his last recital. I typically head to the library on campus. Today, we’re both waiting until it is time for him to go to the choral concert (the orchestra is playing… we get to repeat this some time next week for the actual orchestra rehearsal) and perform. So we headed to a branch of the Alachua County Public Library.

Now, Santa Fe College’s library has an actual Starbuck’s inside. So of course, there is a bit of extra traffic, people drinking beverages in designated areas… But one thing has struck me about both libraries – the amount of loud talking and background noise that have become commonplace. Sure, this library where I sit typing at the moment does have a “Quiet Reading Room,” which I am not inside, as I don’t want to annoy anyone with the click of my typing. But the people who work the desk are all talking in normal to loud voices. What ever happened to that quiet sanctity of the Library? When did it become an accepted practice to go ahead and bring screaming toddlers in and let them run around other than in the designated kid’s section?

I’m not complaining… exactly. It’s more that I want to point out that the world has changed in yet another way from the times when I was a kid. Then again, we all went outside to run rampant around the neighborhood with little to no adult supervision, and we could do so without our parents being arrested for child neglect.

The world has changed in so many ways.

Not Amused…

Adam and I have both avoided sharing anything about this on social media since the events of July 13, 2013 occurred, but given what happened this week, we’ve decided to break the silence and share.

In May of 2013, He and I each bought a fun pass to Busch Gardens (Tampa, Florida), as my ex had purchased passes for each of the kids. We went two or three times without any major incident.

Back information: Adam had some injuries. He had a bad disc in his neck, j no neuropathy in his left arm and hand, an injury in his right foot, and an old soccer injury in his left knee. At the time, he also had a handicap parking permit that he has not renewed, though he really DOES need it.w

When I first met him that year, while he had his limits, he was able to get around, and could even very occasionally run in short bursts (like to catch my dog when she got loose…) But on July 13, his knee was acting up, so when we went to Busch Gardens to celebrate my oldest child’s fourteenth birthday, he rented a wheelchair for the second or third time. The form he signed had promises on it that Busch Gardens would do all within their power to assist him during his stay in the park.

We had no problems until we rode the Congo River Rapids ride. It was Adam’s favorite ride prior to that visit, and one he had ridden before without issue.

We took the wheelchair entrance to the ride. We boarded, as did some people who seemed to be from a Scandinavian country who did not speak English, and two little kids who appeared to be under the age of five who were NOT accompanied by their parents. I don’t recall this part, but a flag was placed on the raft before we left the station. While that flag could have been for Adam, it could also have been for the kids. But Busch Gardens thinks this is important information, so I am including it in this account.

I remember thinking that if the boat flipped, I would probably feel compelled to rescue the kids who were riding without their parents, as I knew my kids could swim, but was not sure of them. I felt anxious about them riding unaccompanied.

Shortly after we rounded the first bend, the water jets were turned off. We later discovered this was because someone in a boat ahead of us had jumped off and swam for shore, climbing out and running off before they could catch him. Our boat slowly cruised the remainder of the ride, taking about twenty to thirty minutes. It was not fun.

When we finally reached the end of the river ride, the conveyor belt was already filled with boats. We were dragged by hook to the end of a metal pier. Adam kept saying he didn’t feel safe getting off there, that he hoped they didn’t expect him to get off there and climb the metal stairs. I assured him that it was unlikely  – they knew he had gotten on in a wheelchair – they shouldn’t make him climb a narrow set of stairs. I was thinking more about the stairs at that point. What actually happened took me by surprise.

I also remember feeling just a little queasy by then, and tired of being on the raft.

The foreigners disembarked. Someone came and assisted the little kids off as well. My three kids exited without incident. It was only Adam and I left on the boat. He was in front of me, and I was on the boat and saw what happened.

They had tied the round boat to the pier with a single rope. When Adam went to step off, the boat listed away from the dock. He lost his balance with the movement of the boat and landed hard on his right side. He lay there, looking like a dead fish.

I remember them giving my daughter a hard time about bringing Adam his cane. I remember it took some time for him to get up. The employees did ask if he wanted to see someone. He was in shock, embarrassed, and said he just wanted to get out of there. He slowly made his way up the stairs and back into the wheelchair, said he wanted to get out of there and smoke a cigarette to calm down. He was still in shock.

By the time we reached the smoking area (a few hundred feet from the ride, behind a gift shop) his right leg had started to swell. I went into the gift store and asked for someone to come help him at that point.

Adam insisted I take the two older kids to ride a roller coaster. I shouldn’t have, but did. William didn’t want to go on the ride – he stayed with Adam.

When I came back, they had bandaged his ankle, but Adam said some young guy from risk management had refused his request to send him to the hospital. According to Adam, the “kid” had said that nobody saw it, nothing had happened, and that if we had our own insurance, Adam could go on his own dime. I took Adam back to the front of the ride and got the name (Susie) of one of the attendants who witnessed the accident.

Adam tried to call risk management (they had given him a card) as we slowly made our way out of the park. We did let the kids go on one more ride, as Adam was trying to make the call, hoping to hear from someone, trying to decide whether to go to the ER for the increasing pain. He was not insured at that time.

We drove back to Gainesville before Adam went to the ER. They did some X-rays, found that he had not broken any bones in his leg, but had some soft tissue damage.

It was a week before he returned, still in pain, having difficulty urinating, unable to stand for any length of time, with pain in his back as well. When he went that following week for the pain, he was admitted to Shands. They initially admitted him because his heart rate and blood pressure were elevated, but they also performed tests and discovered that he had a slipped disc in his back, and he was diagnosed with an inguinal hernia.

Busch Gardens would not return any phone calls, so Adam contacted an attorney and filed suit.

In addition to the pain, he suffered ongoing psychological issues, but because he was impoverished, he was charged little for them.

Over the course of the last three and a half years, we have all gone to depositions that were repeatedly called off and rescheduled at the last minute, causing me to waste time off from my job. The court ordered mediation that was supposed to occur last December was called off at the last minute (all on their end.) This dragged on for almost four years.

The mediation was rescheduled for Monday the 24th. We had some transportation issues making it to Tampa, and by the time I was able to get Adam there, it was the very end.

Busch Gardens offered $5,000. Because he “missed” the mediation, we are responsible for the full costs for the mediator, our attorney, their travel, everything. They further stated that if he did NOT accept their $5,000 settlement (before costs), they would counter sue (for filing a frivolous suit?) and take us to court for all of their costs.

Nobody asked if Adam had ongoing medical costs, and we made the mistake of not offering that information because we weren’t asked, but he does.

Florida DOES limit damages.

But his actual damages are greater than $5,000, and he will be suffering from this accident for the rest of his life. His hernia was one of the factors that prevented him from being able to assist his mother, who died unexpectedly when Adam couldn’t make the drive out to her house in December 2015 because he was having trouble getting out of bed and moving around.

Why am I sharing all of this? Because we do not believe Busch Gardens acted in good faith in any of this. Because we do not appreciate the fact that they are using bullying tactics to attempt to force a settlement. Because none of this is just or right. They claim that the red flag they put on the boat meant they did all they could to keep him safe. Excuse me – was it a magic flag? Because nobody offered to take us up the ramp to where the boat was secure. Nobody offered to help him off the boat. Nobody would even bring him his cane, and they fought my daughter when she did.

Yes, he should have insisted on medical care before he left that ramp. But he was in shock. And this should not have happened.

Yes, he had a bad knee before the incident. His OTHER knee. And Busch Gardens knew he had a handicap before they made him get off an unsecured boat at a location where passengers are not typically asked to disembark.

I watched #Blackfish AFTER the accident, or I probably would never have gone to Busch Gardens that day, as they are owned and operated by Sea World. Sea World has a history of blatant disregard for its employees and guests.

Why am I writing this? Because I want people to know. I want them to share this. I want Sea World and Busch Gardens to stop getting away with this sort of behavior. I don’t want what happened to Adam to happen to someone else. We thought the law suit would help. Now we realize, it won’t. Maybe, just maybe, my words will. It’s all I have.

Fiction Friday – Lost and Found Part 16

 

 

I’ve abandoned Rob, Janeen, Jake, Susie and Hector far too long. Time to return to their long lost story…

The story begins HERE and you can find links to each part HERE.

We now return to the story you’ve long since stopped caring about, if you ever cared in the first place.

Warning: Not suitable for kids.

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It was all going according to plan. Rob was growing obsessed with Susie, Janeen was aware of the situation and had started plotting, but couldn’t seem to focus on a strategy. She hadn’t expected Susie to be the less emotional part of the equation. Jake had chosen well.

Women like Janeen thought they knew everything. They thought they understood human nature. And they thought they walked on water. Even now, Janeen believed she could snap her fingers and have Rob chasing her tail again. She had always over estimated her abilities in bed.

And Rob? Rob was just weak. He had always been weak. He hadn’t deserved Becky. But Becky had been the sort of girl who loved too deeply and gave too much. Nurturing, like Susie, but without the emotional filter Susie had.

Becky had been vulnerable after the loss of their parents. She had trusted the wrong people, too.

Jake’s sister and his best friend had gotten together when his sister turned nineteen and went off to college for the first time. Jake should have seen it coming, should have noticed the way Becky followed them around over the years. He had assumed it was just a little sister thing, or something she would grow out of. But then she had grown into a beautiful young woman, and Rob had noticed.

Their mother had started growing ill, and Rob was there, the shoulder for Becky to cry on, as well as Jake’s long time friend. Jake was too caught up in his own world to see, right up until Rob proposed. Their mother had been thrilled, focusing on wedding planning even as she was growing weaker and dying.

Then Becky brought Janeen home one weekend on a visit from college.

Jake had been taken in at first. That blue-black hair. Her porcelain skin. That snarky, sometimes cruel sense of humor that struck a chord with him… And that ambition. There had been something more there, a steel core under what appeared to be vulnerability. It was enchanting.

Jake couldn’t pinpoint when Rob had started falling for Janeen. He had seemed just as attentive to Becky as ever, right up to the day that he walked out on her. And Janeen? She had never said anything. Sure, she might have found more excuses to stop putting out, but she had never cut him off completely. She seemed to be dropping hints about wanting him to propose. Apparently being engaged to Becky didn’t stop Rob from beating Jake to the punch.