Storm Troopers Coming out of the Woods

My sister met a man who dresses up as a Storm Trooper for birthday parties in a Kroger parking lot.  Yup, just like that.  Just like that the highlight of a toddler's birthday went from cake in the shape of a hammer to a group of adult men, who might work for a local insurance company or maybe at a tech lab, but in their free time: they run out of the woods dressed as storm troopers.  She told me she's debating about hiring Darth Vader for an extra fifty bucks.  I asked if there were any Ewoks.  Sadly, there are not.  And no, none of these men will reenact any of the battle scenes.  Not even as you might hope, Darth Vader verses Obi-Wan Kenobi.

And really, I cannot stop thinking about how these men will drive, not in costume but perhaps all four in a Honda Civic, up to my sister's new home, nestled in hills and woods outside of Nashville, to "gear up" and hide until they are given a cue to descend upon the backyard of birthday goers and well, do their storm trooper thing.  Which personally is unclear.  All I know is I am so enamored by these men because personally, for the last year, all I want to do is hide in some costume.

You see when you get a divorce there is a list, a long list of things, you cannot google.  You cannot google all the things that keep you wanting to hide, but you can google hiring Storm Troopers for a toddler birthday party.  You can google pretty much anything these days and the odd thing is while you are typing in your request such as how to move on..You might get how to move on Sims 3, which I really have no idea what Sims 1 let alond 3.  But you don't really care because as soon as you type in any words in regards to divorce, depression, forgiveness, living in the same town as your ex, etc. you realize you might as well, move on.

And so you do for while.  You move on, you wear your own storm trooper costume of sorts, very well-organized outfits, you make sure you have a good hair cut, you eat breakfast, do daily sit-ups, borrow weights from a friend and you even try dating because well you've moved on.  But while you are on your first date, the lovely-handsome man across the table asks you for a piece of paper to deposit his gum.  You look in your purse which is the purse you haven't used since the court date and all you have for paper is the receipt you paid for your lawyer.  And to which you say, here why don't you use this?  Extending your shaky hand with the paper, he puts his gum out and you fold the paper and put it back in your purse.  Because really, you've moved on.

There are countless ways you've moved on such as falling in love with the quiet of your immaculate apartment.  While you dust a closet of your new "home" which you fondly refer to as junior dorm, you find a small magnet once used for poetry and it is a simple word, me.  You cannot ignore the irony and again you look at the now very clean closet and think, not really that bad of a place to hide.  But you cannot.  You have a job.  A good job where you teach people how to cook, where people feel so at ease with you that they ask you questions in front of other people listening and knives in their hands, Emily Walter, you've changed your name, did you get married? But you tell them no, I got divorced with such confidence and ease to ensure no one, especially the person who asked the question, feels awkward.  Because remember, you've moved on.

Despite your amazing ability to look good everyday, your apartment to look like an Anthropologie catalog, your dedication to eating well and having friends over for dinner parties and your painful choice to break up with that incredibly handsome and kind man who spat out his gum and who you broke up with because you needed to "deal" with yourself.  You tell yourself you're really doing all the "right things".  But remember you cannot google this.  You cannot google what is right or wrong or the fact that you have metaphorically and now literally dusted yourself up.  And what is harder, you've dusted up the idea of yourself in the quiet, clean and morally right parts of you in a dust bin you took while storming out of your once home.  At the moment, you cannot storm anything.  Now, you are falling apart.  Really you cannot move.  There's no on or off switch to falling apart really.  And again, don't even try to google it.

Sure, you've memorized all the five stages of grief, you can google that, but no where and no one can tell you how to sit with grief.  Sure, you've read almost every Buddhist book the lovely woman who washes dishes at work has given you on loss.  You've read When Things Fall Apart given to you by the loving and kind woman who has an organic orchard and has been divorced, twice.  People who understand give you so much.  But you have to sit with it.  Just you.  And this is what no one tells you.  This is the part of loss that you cannot get out of nor hide from or costume yourself no matter how badly you want to make it look like something else.  Even if you want to refer to yourself as a divorcee because it sounds French.  You and only you get to sit with loss until you start to write a new story.

And so, middleWest which I started years ago as a way to get back into writing regularly, to share recipes and poems and insights is back on Wednesdays (in the middle of the week seems logical, right?) It is still about the idea of being in the middle of your life as a means to explore your dreams you still want to reach.  I am just well, writing from a different angle than before.  

And of course a(n old) poem, I couldn't resist:

Placing Her

There's no mirror in the sea.  I google 
my name to see if I exist and surf
the waterless cities like Cash and Hoople
to find eighteen version of myself.
I live in New Jersey and scream Wagner
at trains.  Sometimes rooster brag
in my fourth floor walk up.
The best version of myself teaches preschoolers
to bend forks after nap time.  I believe this
reduces crime.  I want to call myself, ask,
do you believe in the myth of Emily Walter?
Forget about the nightmares of Katherine Hepburn.
Forget about your mother as Katherine Hepburn
alone in her underwear.  I am more than 
glass and less than the sea.  I don't look like
either of them in a dress.