Pipe Cleaners

Today, I hugged my therapist goodbye.

Eight months of 50 minute sessions in her office with the scruffy green couch and mammoth space heater that resembles a robot. Early on, I’d sit rigid and serious, recounting my story, giving my grief voice. I only cried once or twice. The Kleenex box was always in the same place. On the right side of the coffee table next to a smattering of twisted pipe cleaners in fluorescent tones that inexplicably changed shape every week –sometimes in hearts, spirals, or squares. I often wondered who played with them. If it was part of some child’s play therapy or perhaps for adult patients who needed something to fiddle with while recounting the most vulnerable details of their lives. One visit last September, they had been molded into a set of stick figures, all holding hands: a family of neon orange, yellow, pink, and green. The next week, they were crooked lines again.

After a few months, our time together diminished from once a week to once or twice a month as our topics expanded past the divorce to work anxieties, family relationships to uncertainties about dating again. Our sessions always concluded the same way. After I had zipped my coat and placed the check on the table, she’d inevitably smile and firmly shake my hand by the door, “You’re doing great.”

I consistently left feeling a little bit lighter, a touch more confident than when I had stepped in. And I always felt compelled to race home and write. Sometimes, I’d scribble notes on receipts from my coat pocket while delayed at a stoplight, anxious that I’d forget her catch phrases or morsels of wisdom by the time I pulled into my driveway. One afternoon, I even wrote, “Your pain has purpose!” with eyeliner on the back of my Southwest Frequent Flyer card out of a desperate lack of paper. Once home, I’d whip out my hardcover journal and douse the page with scrawled ink, emitting thoughts and emotions like sweating pores.

This afternoon, I mentioned to her how fitting it was that I had just run out of paper. I had written on its final page the week prior. It is a rare occurrence to suck so much life out of a notebook and this one had stood by me, steadfast, as I penned and jotted. Sometimes resting on my knees. Sometimes retrieved in the middle of the night. Sometimes absorbing my teardrops in its binding.

I had glanced back earlier this week at the first entry dated in August, a month after I returned from Arizona:

I went downtown yesterday to attend the Northwestern Continuing Ed Session on Creative Writing. Fascinating to know what is out there, but maybe not for me yet. I took the “el” home, watching the neighborhoods, trees, headlights, and abandoned tricycles whiz past me below. I spotted a cozy apartment on Oak Park Ave through its slits in the shades. Twin Chinese lanterns cast a butterscotch hue on a beige couch and burgundy throw pillows. The television flickered in the background and two figures reclined, their arms around each other in shadowed comfort.

I had owned the same lamps in my home in Tucson. My home. I could locate the light switches in the dark. I knew where to find my keys or a water glass when I returned, parched after errands at the market. I had memorized the precise sliding factor of my cotton socks on the tile. I recognized the chirping of quails at dawn and exactly where he was in his morning routine by the noises he made from our bathroom vanity – if he was rushed or had time to eat muselix while I complacently sipped my tea.

It is not as if I do not know the house I grew up in or could potentially get to know a new one, but it was mine and I liked it. I wasn’t asking for a replacement. He was gambling it away while I was sleeping upstairs. I know I am enormously lucky to have parents who welcomed me back and took me in. But, this is where I did my fifth grade math homework and the driveway I learned to reverse in. At this moment, there isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be, but I suppose there was just something about those lamps that made me sad.

This morning, I talked Mom into driving up to the lake house, despite the 90% chance of thunderstorms. I knew I had no memories of him here. He never came. It evolved into a glorious afternoon and we strolled the beach at sunset, savoring the cool lapping of water and the reds and browns and grays of the lake stones. I started collecting sea glass in my pocket.

I watched the sea gulls congregate on the sandy slopes and take off in synchronized flight when I neared and then marveled as they circled back once I had past. There could have easily been a thousand of them.

Tonight, I am curled up in bed, having discovered my muse. I feel recognized. Writing to Save your Life by Michele Weldon. Her words slice through me with a poignancy I have never gleaned from any other book. It is as if she is sitting perched on the edge of my mattress, granting me permission, fueling me forward, aware that I have a story to tell.

I was only on page 4 when I reached for this journal.
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Afterwards, I flipped through 250 crinkled, dog-eared pages of black and blue cursive, scanning a paragraph here and there, reminiscing about the waning of summer, my endless evening walks, laughing again, the coming of autumn, another birthday, new friends, exploring the city, the falling of leaves, spontaneous vacations, Hyatt co-workers, holidays, a first kiss, a budding romance. Eventually, I reached the finale, my entry from last Wednesday.

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Haven’t written for a few weeks, but I have an excuse and a scapegoat. I have been busy falling in love. It seems entirely appropriate that this will be my last entry in a book that has buoyed me through a journey of transition and growth.

Journal, I want you to know that I am genuinely happy. Elated, inspired and optimistic to the degree that anyone feeling like crap may just want to strangle all that obnoxious positive energy right out of me. But, I don’t care. I have met someone amazing.

He is gentle, but strong. Thoughtful and witty. He buys flowers, yet rocks out on the guitar. He remembers how I take my tea. He uses adorable, salt-of-the-earth, Iowa expressions like “Holy Smokes”, but can still drop the F-bomb for emphasis when recounting a story. He is willing to drive 45 minutes after working a 10-hour shift, standing up, to meet me for pancakes. He looks great in a tux. He knows my birthday. He listens. He appreciates a well-poured Guinness draft. He repairs his own doorbell and shovels the snow so his landlord doesn’t have to be bothered. His brother is his best friend. He can name every player on the Cub’s starting line-up – probably from the last five years. He tells me he misses me. He savors the chunky bits in Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and eats around the marshmallows in his cereal to save them for the end. He owns a vintage Price is Right t-shirt that smells like pine. He recycles and turns the thermostat down – often too low. He can talk wrestling with my dad. He is the only other person I know who has multiple cans of black olives in his cabinet. He sends postcards to his nieces and nephews. He recites nostalgic commercials from his childhood – verbatim. He is starting to finish my sentences.


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Today, instead of a handshake, I hugged my therapist goodbye and stepped out into the March wind. The sun was blinding white and although the air was cold, I thought I sniffed the first fragrances of spring daffodils. “Keep writing,” she exclaimed from the doorway. “You’re doing great.” I glanced back and nodded. I would go home as I always did and write, but first I needed to stop at Border’s to buy a new home for my words.

When I got to my car, I paused and looked back at the building that had become a familiar sanctuary to me this year. I grinned and put my head down. I only wish I had remembered to ask her about the pipe cleaners.