Tag Archives: memories

Throwback Thursday, Birthday Edition

Posted on by
Comment

An old photo and some memories to go with it.

I don’t have many photos of myself, mostly because I don’t see any need to. I know what I look like: I see that face in the mirror every morning. But I do have a few older photos to look back on and this is one of them.

Old Photo
These two photos of me stood on the ledge beside my wasband’s desk in our Arizona home. I took the helicopter frame when I packed, but left the rest.

I vaguely remember the day the larger photo was shot. It was at my car in a parking lot at the beach. It was just after sunset. My future wasband was the photographer.

Nissan Pulsar
Here I am with my old car and my dog Spot in front of the first house I owned with my future wasband. I figure this was shot in 1985.

My car in those days was a 1983 Nissan Pulsar. It was metallic blue and a definite upgrade from the 1970 VW Beetle it replaced. I loved that car until I realized how much it lacked in terms of performance and agility. I replaced it in 1986 with a 1987 Toyota MR-2 that I owned until just a few years ago.

The beach was likely Jones Beach on the west end of Long Island in New York. My future wasband and I met there back on July 10, 1983, an event I documented in a blog post I wrote after my marriage to him fell apart 29 years later. The parking lot was called West End 2.

The photo was shot at sunset. We went to Jones Beach West End 2 occasionally to watch the sun set — that’s how we’d met. Back in those days, I lived in Hempstead on Long Island and he lived in Flushing in Queens. Although I doubt this photo was shot the day we met, it was probably shot sometime that same summer.

I like this photo a lot. It’s quite a nice composition; my wasband could be a good photographer when he tried. This is one of the instances when he managed to nail composition and light; he usually focuses (no pun intended) on subject matter and neglects one or both of the other vital components of fine art photography. (I can’t tell you how tough it was to get him to go on photo outings during golden hour light.) But in this case, he took a great portrait of a much younger version of me.

Younger, yes. I was probably 22 in this photo. My birthday had been just 10 days before we met and this had to be within three months of that. It’s one of my favorite photos of myself.

I’ve been thinking lately about how much I’d like to create a modern version of this photo. My face with the same expression — if I can pull it off after so many years of life experiences that resulted in the cynicism I work hard to overcome nearly daily. The position of my head in the lower corner of the driver’s side window of my current little car, a 2003 Honda S2000. The reflection of the horizon, red from the light of a recently set sun.

Or maybe it would have to be in my truck, since my car doesn’t have a back window for the reflection.

I just need a friend with a good eye and a camera to meet with me and make it happen. Another project for another day.

I don’t actually have this photo in my possession. I found it face down near my wasband’s desk when I returned home from my summer job in September 2012. The locks had been changed on the house I’d shared with him for 15 years, but an $8 lock — yes, I found the receipt dated just the week before on the kitchen table — isn’t going to keep me out of my home. (Neither was his lie-studded attempt to use the court to keep me out. No, I didn’t “abandon” him. I went to my summer job, as I had the previous four summers in a row.)

I found it interesting that he’d kept the photo at all. Or the one of the two of us all dressed up, shot only a few years later at a friend’s wedding, which I mailed to his mother as a birthday gift. I was surprised that the desperate old whore he’d hooked up with, who was obviously calling the shots for his life and divorce battle, hadn’t destroyed them when she was in my home, sizing up my possessions for her own future use. (That didn’t work out the way they intended, either.)

I righted the two photos and snapped the picture you see above. Later, I packed the little helicopter frame — I honestly can’t remember if I took the Papillon picture with it; it’s still packed somewhere. But I know I left the car window portrait behind. I think I was hoping that it would jog his memory of the better days together so long ago, before greed and jealousy and anger and frustration had split us apart. Maybe it would snap him out of his delusional state of mind and make him think twice about what he was throwing away. And how much it was costing him to make an enemy of the only woman who truly cared about him.

Of course, none of that happened. I stayed in the house until May 2013, packing my things while I waited in vain for him to see reason and settle out of court. In the end, it went in front of a judge and he wound up paying me and his lawyers at least four times what he would have if he’d agreed to my generous settlement offer. And he could have kept the house! Stupidity? Greed? Bad advice? I think they were all part of his problem. Amazing how a person can change.

But by then I was started on my new life without him, moving forward for the first time in years without a sad sack old man holding me back. Building the home I wanted — without the endless delays and compromises and excuses I’d been dealing with for years — in a beautiful place among good friends. A place where I could build my business and have an active life with the variety and challenges I thrive on.

When I look back on this picture, I remember the good old days when we were young and idealistic and deeply in love. And then I remind myself that the man who took the photo is long gone — and I’m so much better off without the man he became.

The Joy of Journaling

Posted on by
2

The older I get, the more important it becomes.

Journaling Image
A blank book with lined pages makes an excellent journal.

I’ve been keeping a personal journal off and on for most of my life. In most cases, it was well-intentioned attempts to write daily — or at least regularly — in a blank book. These journals never lasted long and usually were misplaced. I found one of them when I was packing for my 2013 move and was somewhat shocked by entries that foreshadowed the end of my relationship years later.

Blogging as a Form of journaling

I kicked my journaling efforts up a notch when I began blogging in 2003; my blog — which you’re reading now — documents a lot of what was going on in my life as I wrote the entries.

It’s an excellent chronicle, for example, of what was going on during the various stages of my long, drawn out divorce (which is still dragging on but finally close to an end) and will form the basis of my book about it. It’s also a great resource for my evolution as a pilot, my work flying at the Grand Canyon, and the way I’ve tackled new hobbies and interests such as beekeeping and glass work.

Along the way, I wrote lots of opinion pieces about politics, religion, current events, and social issues. My blog’s 2300+ entries are a really good look at my past and what was going on in my mind over the past (so far) 13 years.

Back to Paper

Back in January 2014, I embraced a real paper-based journal again. I was house-sitting for a friend in Malaga, taking a break from the RV I’d been calling my home since I left my house in Arizona in May 2013. My journal, kept in the same kind of blank books I’d used years ago, contained daily entries of what I was doing and thinking. Every entry was limited to just one double-sided page, so I couldn’t go into much detail.

I soon realized that the only way I’d regularly write those journal entries was to make it part of my personal routine. And the only part of my personal routine that’s pretty much the same every single day is that first cup of coffee. So I’d write the entry for the previous day’s activities while I drank my coffee. In most cases, everything was fresh enough in my mind to get down the important information I wanted to document.

Although I didn’t do nearly as much traveling in 2014 as I’d done in 2012 and 2013, the journal book traveled around with me, going to California for frost season, back to Washington for cherry season, and on vacations with me to Lopez Island, Seattle, and Winthrop. I found that while my home was being built from May through July, I didn’t write a single journal entry — my blog has far more details on those days. But I picked it up again later in the season and started a brand new journal book in January 2015.

Then again, in the spring of 2015, when I made the move out of the RV and into my new home, the journal was left behind in the RV down in my cavernous garage. It wasn’t until the other day that I brought it up into my kitchen and set it down on the breakfast bar where I usually have my morning coffee. I made a feeble attempt to bring it up to date, then got back into the routine. I hope to keep journaling regularly.

Journaling as a Memory Tool

I was secretly thrilled to learn that Kirk, my “boyfriend” (pardon the quotes, but it’s such a silly word at our age), also keeps a journal.

It’s important to me that my significant other be literate. Kirk is not only able to read and write well, but he likes to read and write. You can’t imagine what a thrill it is for me to be able to discuss books and articles with the same person I share so much of my life with.

And having a journal means that he’s just as interested as I am in recording his activities to remember in the future. There’s a lot in common between us there and I’m very pleased about it.

As I get older and my memory starts to get iffy, I find journaling a valuable tool for simply remembering things. The entries, after all, form a good reminder of what was going on in my life each day. I can look back and remember things I’d forgotten, including events, emotions, and opinions.

As my life and relationships evolve, I can see how events from the past contributed to that evolution. I can learn from my own mistakes. I can see how what’s important in my life changes from day to day, week to week, and month to month. I can track my recovery from significant emotional events or financial setbacks and learn better about coping with similar issues in the future. I can see how my opinions evolve with input from others. I can see how my relationships with others grow and change.

In a way, when I skip a day of journaling, I feel as if I’ve lost that day. As time goes by, if nothing significant happened on that day, all memory of it is lost. In a way, that makes journaling so much more important.

It’s the little things that make life interesting — when memory of them is lost, part of your life is lost. Why not spend 20 minutes a day jotting down the things you want to remember? I think it’s worth it.

A Ghost in the Machine

Posted on by
2

Traces of a past best forgotten pop up in the most unexpected places.

This morning, I unpacked and installed my HP color laser printer. I’d been using a cheap Brother laser printer — the one I’d bought years ago for home when I moved my office to a condo in Wickenburg for a few years — since moving to Washington state two years ago. The Brother is very fast and reliable with perfectly fine print quality for the limited amount of printing I do. But I needed a color printer to print some satellite images for the pilots who will be working with me this summer and since the HP was packed in its box in my shop storage area, I figured I’d bring it up.

I honestly can’t remember where the printer was when I packed it. I’d had it in my office in Wickenburg for quite a while but in 2011, in a failed attempt to appease my husband (now wasband), I’d moved my office to the condo he was living in during the week in Phoenix. The idea was to spend more time with him, which he led me to believe he wanted.

But that move also came with a lifestyle that had me shuttling back and forth between Phoenix and Wickenburg every week — weekdays in Phoenix, weekends in Wickenburg. After spending the whole summer living in an RV every year, I wanted to be home. In one home. With my office in Phoenix, whenever I had a book project, I needed to be there. And I work weekends when I have to. So instead of spending most of my time in my comfortable Wickenburg home, I wound up spending most of my time in a dark, depressing, noisy, and privacy-free condo in Phoenix that I never even liked. Meanwhile, he kept going home on weekends, making we wonder, at times, why I’d moved at all.

Anyway, I don’t remember if I moved the printer down to that office. I might have. If I did, it was likely one of the possessions I had to beg him to let me have back when he and his mommy/girlfriend began their reign of harassment in the early days of divorce proceedings. In any case, I still had the original box — I kept all boxes in my hangar — and I packed it in its original foam. I’m pretty sure the Brother was in the condo — it was in the cabinet under the TV — and I can’t remember if I got it the day I came to retrieve my possessions or before that.

Honestly, the whole thing is a blur and that’s probably a good thing.

Today, I moved the Brother off my file cabinet — another possession I had to ask for — dusted the cabinet’s top off, and set the HP in its place. It uses the same cables, so I just hooked it up to power and USB. It immediately came to life with a Paper Jam error message.

I opened the printer’s big front door. The sheet of paper was clearly visible and easily removed. As I pulled it out, I wondered why I hadn’t removed it when the jam occurred. Then I looked at it and realized that I hadn’t printed it. My wasband had.

Email Jam
The ghost in my machine was a jammed email message printout.

It was an email message I’d written to him back in 2007. It had two attachments, one of which was a PDF of my flight plan. The message told him that I was flying from Page, AZ up Lake Powell and into Canyonlands National Park. I was apparently on a charter flight — probably a photo flight I did with a photographer trying to get images of certain landforms from the air for an advertising poster. I vaguely remember the early morning flight and the photographer holding a camera sitting on a Kenyon gyro. I could probably track down more details in my log book.

I know I’d used the printer after 2007. Heck, I’m not even sure if I owned the printer in 2007. That meant my wasband had printed a long-saved email message while I was gone, probably in the summer of 2012, when he hooked up with his girlfriend/mommy and his delusions went into full swing.

I have an idea why he might have printed this old email. In his deluded mind, he was convinced that he had helped me build my helicopter charter business. That’s how he justified going after half its assets in the divorce. He was unable to prove his case in court — most likely because it wasn’t true — but I assume that he was collecting email messages related to that business as part of his case.

Of course, the reason I sent him an email message with my flight plan that morning at 3:06 AM was because he was my husband and I thought he’d care about my route. At that point, before his delusions began, I think he really did. He might have even still loved me back then.

But mental illness does funny things to people. Once the love was gone and the greed-fed delusions took over, he saw everything even remotely related to my business as evidence of me using him without compensation. I’m sure his lawyer(s) got a stack of email messages from me to him that he thought could help his case in court.

Printed on my printer.

Finding this message jammed in my printer makes me even sadder for him than I already am. His illness, fed by bad advice by manipulative people he trusts, caused him to throw away so much — not the least of which was a friendship and a ton of money. I doubt anything remains of the good, honest man he once was.

I’ll throw this ghost into my recycle bin. Another reminder of a lost life swept away.