The Windy City

My new best friend, Jose, came to fix the fence while I was away. Once again my world is self contained, protected. Theoretically.

Miss Jill, he calls me. Actually, Miss Yill. “Everything is all okay, Miss Yill,” was the message I picked up from him when I landed at Ohare the other day. If I had known everything could be okay for only two hundred fifty dollars, I would have arranged for Jose to mend my fence a lot sooner.

Last year at this time, I came home from a wonderful few days with my daughters to a world in which the shit started to hit the fan and wouldn’t stop. The era of the friendly separation officially ended, and acrimonious divorce proceedings began. Within weeks, my theory that the official, court-sanctioned break up of my marriage would be civilized, with attorneys acting only as liaisons as they expertly navigated the system for us while we went on with our lives, was blown to smithereens.

It’s been a year during which all my fences have been blown wide open; I’ve been battered at regular intervals by powerful storms, but the greatest bruising comes simply from the harsh winds of change. There are reminders everywhere, of the good, the bad, and the ugly, all of the haphazard pieces of my life which have become so comfortably familiar. It’s difficult to let go of any of it, and I find myself clinging sometimes to an irrational hope that the clocks will turn back and everything will simply go on, as it was. For better or for worse, just like we promised before God stepped aside and let the state take over. I think God needs to intervene at this end of things.

The mourning process that accompanies divorce moves at a snail’s pace. I suppose it’s difficult to achieve closure and acceptance when something can’t be pronounced clinically dead. The marriage and its trappings continue to breathe, and take on a life of their own that seems so much larger than the life you’ve suddenly been left to figure out. Even when you’ve chosen to finally pull the plug, it takes an excruciatingly long time to sever the connection. It’s as if somebody put crazy glue in the sockets.

Jose may have fixed the fences, but the new slats of wood are so different in color from the rest of the fence it looks as if he simply slapped on a bandaid. But really it's just a fresh scar, a scar that will fade over time and eventually become almost indistinguishable from the parts that were not broken. Almost, but not quite.

At any rate, Jose says everything’s okay. Maybe he’s right. Maybe the harsh winds will change direction, and the old wounds will begin to heal.