Talentdmrripley

moneyisnotimportant:

“The more you knoooooooooooooow…”

You don’t give a crap about health insurance when you’re sitting pretty as a group member of a diamond plated, gold-level state insurance coverage plan. The rate is dirt-cheap; the coverage comprehensive. Health, vision, dental, pills, babies, office visits, low deductibles

Get a divorce, though, and that shit gets real.

You’re given the option to “continue coverage” by paying for COBRA. It stands for Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation. Blah blah blah.  When I think of COBRA I think of the deadly snake.  And just like out in the bush you don’t stand a chance against a cobra.  

Your wallet suffers a similar fate, killed dead by COBRA and left for scavengers to fight over the scraps.

Found this email waiting in my inbox this morning.  There’s nothing quite like having a friend engaged in your present.

C-

I’m sitting here, sipping coffee from my “Keep Calm and Carry On” mug and watching the sun make its way down the face of the adjacent house across the street.

What is it about light filtering through trees that never fails to stop me in my tracks?

I awoke thinking of newness today.

I think it’s pretty magical when another person can bring something fresh to the way you look at the world. By sharing parts of yourself, you illuminate parts of my own. It’s sort of beautiful. Hearing about these initial stages of working through logistics of sharing lives with your ex, I am reminded so much of my foray into becoming  a single mother. I am reminded of how devastated I was and how strong I thought I needed to be, all the fucking time. What I didn’t know is that I was already everything I needed to be.  It was all there. 

I hope, in some way, I can reflect back to you the light you effortlessly give to me.

For now, know that I see the light pushing through the trees…insisting on spreading its warmth. 

The Horseshoe Chestnut tree in my front yard is in full bloom with its odd, cone-like blossoms exploding in pink. 

And you might be rising to meet the day there.

Shine on today.

-S

Things are fine until they’re not. For gods sake don’t disrupt. Routines set like cheap glue. The pieces fit. They fit until they don’t. Deviations disrupt. Divorces disrupt. The cracks creep in. Cracks conspire. Pleasantville might crumble. Don’t disrupt.

Apparently the neighbors bore my divorce well. They’re not speaking to me either. Neither are they waving. The waving has altogether stopped, as though deliberate and planned in secret. For gods sake don’t wave.

Before, as neighbors, we were the masters of the waving. We loved waving, from our cars, yards, porches, from the ends of dog leashes, and living room windows. But especially from our cars. Easy waves those waves were.  

One diligent hand on the wheel, the other hand shot up, eager, to meet a neighbor’s offering like a high five between teammates, but with 50 feet of buffer between palms. Throw in head nods for extra credit; smiles for even more.

Happily we waved, glad to see each other we waved, after long days of herding cattle, teaching, healing, litigating, law enforcing, selling car parts, and/or mothering.  We well-wished the ones who left, and welcomed their return back home again with enthusiasm. On it went with the waves. Like clockwork, the waves. In waves, the waves. 

Until the waves stopped. No more waves. Just awkward offerings to empty spaces. Something died and sent the waves into hiding. Hands remain planted in front pockets like bodies buried among gravestones. Their hands don’t rise to meet my hands anymore. They mourn now. No more waves.

A death, you see. The demise of a marriage, you see. My own. And other deaths, the deaths of their relationships to her — a fellow neighbor — who left in a moving truck on a cold afternoon in December.

A death in Pleasantville, so it goes.