Missing You, Missing More…

He’s on a lake in New Hampshire with family and friends. I’m at the ocean on Fire Island, alone. One week: different settings, different lifestyles, different means of happiness. 

For over forty years my husband Jim has spent the fifth week of July at a family camp run by the Boston YMCA. I’ve been his camp buddy since the first year we met and learned to love camp, maybe a pinch less than he did. I brought my daughter there with her family, and now my kids and grandkids are as enmeshed in the camp life and web of relationships as Jim’s family is.

I blogged ecstatically about last year’s camp experience, singing praises of our time together. I was aware change may be coming. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote:

Getting sick and needing antibiotics is now part of my reality. I will follow medical advice, as I did last year, and hold off making any return decision for now. But if I did sing my last auld lang syne to Sandy in the fifth week of summer, 2016… Wow, was that a wonderful week I had.

This year I couldn’t go. I may have sung my last Auld Lang Syne.  My lungs became infected after camp last year – again. I began coughing heavily and feeling flu-ish. I saw a pulmonologist who in winter of this year diagnosed me with MAC, a tree-and-bud cell pattern in my lungs that reacts to bacteria, mold and other goodies that fill my lungs with mucus. Yes, it’s unpleasant, not fatal, and the cure is being on three antibiotics for one year. I do not want to do this treatment. So I stayed home where I can breathe ocean air and hopefully keep my lungs clear. 

I miss Jim; I miss seeing Michael, Camila, Danielle, Jack and all the grandkids enjoying themselves and deepening their friendships; I miss the campers, the friendliest, warmest people I’ve ever met. I miss the camp and the crafts shack where I made collages alongside my creative friends and son-in-law.

Most of all, I miss feeling healthy enough to go where I want to go and do what I want to do. But I am not a high–risk taker. My health matters. I accept the vulnerability of my sextysomething age, and I’d rather dance at another party than make this camp week my last stand. 

Boo-hoo.😂

Camp ends on Saturday. Then I’ll miss my week-long freedom. 

What has curtailed you? Have you changed or ended a long-loved activity? Why?

The Ex-Files v. Passing the Trash

There is a term for covering up an employee’s dangerous, harmful behavior and not reporting it, even when criminal, to authorities. It’s called Passing the Trash; a fitting description of the common practice of one company getting rid of its problem by passing it off to another, silently and purposely. The Catholic Church did it by relocating sexual predator-priests. Top-notch private schools did it with teachers and coaches who sexually preyed on students by offering them positive job referrals to help them get hired elsewhere.

There is also a term for those in personal relationships who cover up dangerous, harmful behavior of their loved ones. It is called enabling. Parents do it often; so do spouses; ex-spouses, too. Who knows better the moral and emotional challenges of a person than the other persons who lived with them? The consequence of enabling is serious: Not holding an offender accountable only increases the chances that someone else will get hurt in the same way.

I always thought there should be a repository for information about people we know intimately who we really believe should not be “passed on.” I’m not talking about incompatibility or minor transgressions. No one in human form is perfect. I’m not including having affairs, unless the person is a serial womanizer or man-izer, as the case may be, or attracted, say, to minors.  I am thinking of domestic violence, child abuse, non-support and the like that speak to the danger and harm the offender causes to those closest to him or her. I am also thinking of clinical narcissism and some other emotional disorders that prevent one partner from supporting the well-being of another. Addiction falls under this definition as does the inability to tell the truth or hold a job.

After my own divorce, when I began seriously dating, I wished there was something online I would call The Ex-Files. In this admitted fantasy, singles could visit this site to find out if the new lover who swept me off my feet was really able to stand up on his own feet. I met so many attractive liars in my single life that I wanted to know from their past girlfriends and/or wives what the truth was. One guy kept telling me about the “next deal” that he was closing, so often and so unconvincingly, that I worried that he just couldn’t earn a living. His ex-wife, who held a very good job, would know!

Of course I have heard of the bitterness of the scorned, but in my continuing fantasy, sometimes within that animosity (and I’d not allow people to post until they were separated at least one year, just to let some of that fire and brimstone fade back to a simmer) there is a seed of truth that needs telling. Why should kind, humane men and women who want to form a healthy, happy relationship not know that they are dealing with seriously damaged minds and souls? The Ex-Files would hold that most important information.

Bill Cosby’s rape trial starts today. This appears to be a glaring case of a beloved entertainer getting away for years with multiple sexual assaults against drugged women. If there were an Ex-File with his name on it, the anguish and shame so many women claim to have experienced might have been avoided.

And then there is politics. What if Pat Nixon, to select just one wife, could have told us that Richard Nixon was a raging paranoid? What if Ivana Trump or Marla Maples could speak out? In a real sense this past presidential election allowed for ‘passing the trash.’ Trump is an admitted groper of female genitalia, a businessman with a history of bankruptcies and charges of fraudulent behavior against him, a man with zero experience in government or public leadership. His brashness and celebrity “You’re fired!’ persona helped get him elected. Many of his supporters love a tweeting president who speaks out with his middle finger in the air. Many other people are certain he is erratic and dangerous. For those who are not fans of his past or his present, what if creating The Ex-Files could have helped stop him in his tracks?

As I said, I have this fantasy. Never say never and I’ll keep working on the Ex-Files.

What do you think might help stop “passing the trash” in our social and political lives?