Love and Vehicle: 34 Things I Learned in My 34th Year

I learned love is not the only thing. You can’t be without it. It makes the vehicle go, but you do need a vehicle.

I learned I was not loved where I gave love, wanted love with such dogmatic fervor that I denied and disfigured my life and spirit daily to fit into its sorry shadow. I learned what it is to be place-filler, one as good as another, warm body in the bed that happens to have the right parts. For the first time, I learned these things consenting. 

I learned the most desperate loneliness is born of dismissive company. I learned a new depth of wanting. I learned even the sorry shadow of love can be disfigured by addiction.

I learned poverty. 

I learned that having a need to pawn the opal ring my grandmother bought for me when I was still a baby and she was dying of cancer is one of the few things that make me cry. I learned another of the few things that make me cry is coming home after going to a food bank for the first time, hauling in bags of generosity—ground venison from an abundant hunt, three Ziplocs full of chopped, homegrown red bell peppers, sweet potatoes, sweet rolls and tiny, prepackaged bowls of cereal meant for my young stepson to eat before school—then going to the mailbox after and hauling in piles of packages containing silvers and antique pornographic postcards and almanacs and unnecessary opiates that the addict I once loved used the grocery money to buy. 

I learned what it feels like to go hungry so a young one you love, to whose care and protection you are devoted, doesn’t have to.

I learned this is the love in the vehicle.

I learned “Stone Soup” is a true story. Loving neighbors, combining pantries, can somehow make a feast for seven when, by themselves, they might have only been able to feed one or two. And the feast of loving neighbors is mighty—salad from vegetables grown illicitly behind the duplex, chicken, Thai style fried rice and chocolate cake. Full bowls. Full bellies. Full hearts. 

I learned what it felt like—finally, finally, finally—to hug my stepson, stroke his lustrous hair and tell him openly that I love him, with the bones of me, I love him. I learned this the day I had to let him go.

I learned a true friend is one who, after not having seen you in fifteen years, will walk into the squalor into which you’ve been cast, look at you, see that you look like shit, see that everything good and brilliant in you is near to death, see and know intuitively this must have been going on for years even before the squalor and lack, and not utter a single word of reproach, but simply grab your suitcases, your animals, your hand, then drive for days across the wasteland with life-lifting, smart-ass humor and without complaint, to get you safe, to take you home.

I learned this is the love driving the vehicle.

I learned there are uglier places than the California desert where I was raised. Oklahoma is a fine example. I relearned the pleasures of swimming in an outdoor pool in February.

I learned the peculiar joy of going out to play with adult friends who knew me before puberty. I learned that inventing “white trash mimosa” is within the bounds of my creativity—swig of orange juice, swig of beer mixed surreptitiously in the mouth so as not to further offend an overly judgmental waitress at the coffee shop we have all been going to since we were children. I learned that going with girlfriends to get our eyebrows ripped out of our heads is much more pleasant when we’re all half in the bag at the time. “Ooh, God,” belly laugh, unfortunate jerk of the head, “that hurts more than it tickles!”

I learned from the California State University educational system that my knowledge of calculus does not qualify me to do algebra. I learned that if anyone needs three days a week of a class in “personal and social adjustment,” it is probably me.

I learned my humor again.

I learned how to take care of an ailing parent who is retreating to childhood in many ways. I learned I’m a hard-ass when it comes to encouraging and implementing necessary physical therapies. I learned, bad eyeballs or not, I am capable of restoring somewhat the house where I grew up—installing a garage door opener, fixing a garbage disposal, tweaking an air conditioner, rebuilding a bed frame that was apparently built the first time by a crack addict.

I learned these hands that can rebuild crack-bed are still capable of making poetry.

I learned this is the love fueling the vehicle.

I learned what addiction can do even to the shadow of a childhood hero. I learned predators are capable of having done a good thing once. I learned “honoring a benefaction” does not entail making myself sexual or emotional prey.

I learned to take gracefully a solid dressing down about the spelling of “ellipsis” and the nature of my own courage.

I began to learn my own courage.

I learned beginning courage is the love and it is also the vehicle.

-M.