CuppaGemma

When context is shared, conversations can operate on entirely different plane. There is no need for back story or metaphor to somehow embody all that you have been through.

Instead there is the shared silent smile because everyone in the room has already been there, done that and there is no mystery nor need to explain the stadium the rules what it was like to play out each inning of marriage dissolution. It’s like a whole season, not just the world series, and yes that went to the full seven games. This is different than explaining the how, what and why of sumo.

Years get reduced to short sentences.

Because the need to walk up and down all the banisters of past and hurt is not there. In mixed company there is the grace of understanding that something on a very integral level did not work or became broken and for whatever mix of events hit the irreconcilable mark. Okay, so what.

The compassion that comes from mixed context is everyone is eager to hear and support what it is you would like to do NEXT, not all that mired you before.

Life takes steps forward, and yes you slung out a long game and are hot and sweaty but now you can focus on what happens that the season is done. Talking through minutiae becomes something you smile at- Think Louie De Palma from Taxi or Cliff Claven from Cheers. You can make brief composites to give a sense of old moments, but the crux is always who have you become, and tell us today, tell us tomorrow.

It takes a while for that to happen though, and initially moods flare like team spirit and there is an almost competition like atmosphere to who will walk away proud and unscathed.

Except with divorce there is no ticker tape parade.

There is legal haranguing over who ought to share what and how. Petty grumbles over dishes or albums perhaps, but ultimately it’s a cleaving.

This part is done, cut it out and away, these parts have to stay in some sort of mixed yet respectable context.

I vividly remember walking up from Shibuya station and crossing the hodokyo (foot bridge over the street) in the morning after the Red Sox beat the Yankees. I hadn’t watched the game, couldn’t name the players but took more than a small deal of satisfaction that the Yankees who were supposed to win did not and the underdog came out ahead.

The walk to the station was pay about forty dollars for a Sox cap to wear to open mic that evening and then pass along to my dear friend Tom who is a genuine fan and could revel in the win for reasons entirely different. We laughed and talked too late passing the hat, like a talking stick back and forth between us. The conversation spooled to the lives we were living instead.

You can talk through the stages of anger, of children’s tears and confusion. Memories cease to hurt and instead become details.  Among mothers I’ve laughed, because we all know we have children to raise and care for and grousing for hours on end about old days is like reading to many tabloid magazines- there is no substance to it. It is a poor model. The boys need us to show them things remain together and safe, people can choose not to be unkind to each other.

It’s letting go of the past the same way you donate old dresses or let bad hairstyles get reshaped. You grow out of it.