This isn't me. It's Night Windows by Edward Hopper.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Life Management Skills

The one time I've been arrested I didn't see it coming. I was driving a barely mobile VW bug that an old boyfriend had lent me out of pity and got pulled over for the expired rejection sticker. (Driving decrepit vehicles passed on to me by others was a strong theme through my twenties, ending notably with a red 1976 AMC Hornet that sported a long white shoelace for tying shut the driver's side door.) The police officer took my information and ran it through, and when he returned to my car, surprised the hell out of me by asking me to step out as there was a warrant out for my arrest.

"What? There is?" I said. "How can that be? What for?"

He cuffed my hands behind my back, and it was a rather frightening feeling. "I don't know what for, all I know is that it's out of Barnstable County," he said, and it took only a second for realization to dawn.

"Ooooooh," I said. "Okay. I know what it is."

Whatever shabby car it was I owned in 1988 got impounded for being unregistered and uninsured as me and a few others were speeding it down the highway to the Cape. Friends of my boyfriend were renting a house in Cotuit and I was happy to let him and some others drive us all down there after we'd seen a show that night at the Channel. I didn't give my car's illegal status a thought, but after we'd been left at the side of the road somewhere around the Bourne Bridge at 2am, my car gone elsewhere on the back of a tow truck, it occured to me that the Law took it very, very seriously.

I did get my car out of hock the next day, but I never did go to court to get the other half of the business settled. I didn't know I had to. I never got a notice in the mail. I don't know what mailing address the Law had been given, but it was likely I was no longer living there, because I moved constantly in those days, and wasn't too up on change-of-address forms or keeping in touch with former roommates. I was always moving on, making a clean slate, leaving the trouble behind. That particular trouble found me, however...five years later, but there I was.

I was let go on my own recognizance, of course, and was obligated to appear at court in Barnstable the next morning at 9am, which was 88 miles from where I currently lived and the car I was driving was not actually safe enough to even leave the driveway. I had a problem.

I've had a lot of problems in my life.

Simple things do not come easy to me. I've had to learn, slowly and painfully, how to ask people to help me with stuff. For a long, long time, I could never ask people to help me with stuff. That impounded car on the Cape? while the car's paperwork was in my apartment in Boston, as was my checkbook? I hitchhiked home. Alone. It never occured to me to ask any other soul on this planet, including my boyfriend, to help me out with that. I waved his quizzical protests away with an air of self-sufficient confidence and walked to the highway the next morning and stuck my thumb out. The first ride was a hippie dude who gave me a string of brown and orange beads "for good luck", which I have to this day, in fact can see from where I type this, hanging on my wall. The second ride was a very friendly middle-aged man who let me off at the traffic circle, then asked, "Can I take a peek?", pointing at my shirt front. "No," I told him, knowing better than to be shocked, and he waved goodbye with a smile. The last ride was a seafood truck taking a load of shellfish up to Boston. He shook his head at me. "You know a girl hitchhiking alone is dangerous, right?", and drove me right to my door.

I solved problems that kind of way--the stupid, hard, occasionally dangerous way--for a long, long time.

Another thing I've had to learn about is how to create comfort. For years, I didn't have a proper winter coat. I had a $10 wool men's overcoat from the thrift shop, and it was so battered when I got it that holes popped out of it almost instantly, and it was lined with nothing but silk--no more protection from the weather than a freakishly long sports jacket--but I had that thing until it smelled too bad to wear anymore. Then I had a black cloth overcoat, which was even worse, because it wasn't warm even the slightest. My boots leaked so I wore bread bags on my feet, just like my mom had us do when we were little and went to go play in the snow. I had to be physically taken to L.L.Bean when I was 29 to get proper winter footwear.

I had one serrated steak knife that I used for all my kitchen knife needs, including slicing watermelon. I had yard sale dishes in colors nobody could tolerate, and told myself it was funky and punk-rock. I slept on a futon on the floor. None of my curtains matched, that is, when I had curtains. I cut my hair myself, or buzzed it with clippers, and I still feel a little out of place when I'm in a hair salon, being so rarely in one for such a long time.

I didn't know how to live. I didn't know how a happy, peaceful, well-lived life should look, even though I had examples all around me; I was at A, I saw people living happily over at B, and I didn't know how to get there.

We each, on our own, have to learn our own way...how to get there...but we can't do it without help.

I can't, anyway, and I get the feeling that it's purposely set up to be to be this way, it just took me a while to realize it.

I ended up renting a car to take the trip to the Barnstable County courthouse, and it took having to rent a car again a few months later to ask for an extension, but the fine was paid.

The last car I've owned was a 2002 Dodge Intrepid, and although the gas mileage wasn't impressive, it was the most fun driving I've ever had in a car of mine, and the kids loved how spacious the backseat was. Now I drive a company car, a 2010 Honda Accord, and yeah, I'd buy one, but truth? I'd love to get something more sporty.

My favorite winter jacket is a weathered brown leather lined with faux sheepskin, warm as toast, a Christmas gift two years ago. When I wear it I feel like the most attractive female in the room. I like that feeling. I didn't get it much in the past.

And yeah, yeah, okay, I"ll admit it...my winter boots are still the L.L.Bean ones I was forced to buy over 16 years ago. They leak. Last year I used bread bags, and you know? Instead of bumming me out, it made me smile. Things have changed a lot for me, inside and out.

This year I'm getting new boots. I promise.