Lauren's new project, and a note from the "king of starting over"

Lauren has come up with a terrific idea: Project Help Us Help Ourselves (working title), a collaborative blogosphere effort to provide a clearing house for information about how to cope with money, scarce resources, and bureaucracy.  Lauren will be hosting blog carnivals to gather together various tips and suggestions.

I read Lauren's proposal, and felt, well, stuck.  Though I could certainly use more money, I've been blessed with a certain degree of comfort and security.  I haven't had to cope without health insurance, I haven't fought an expensive custody battle, I haven't had to worry about the same sort of things my peers have had to worry about.   I thought about just linking to Lauren's post and urging more experienced readers to send in detailed, clear tips on how to negotiate this complex and difficult world.  And then I started to rack my brain for what practical things I "know." 

As someone who has spent his entire life in academia (every fall since 1970, when I started nursery school at the "Humpty-Dumpty House" in Santa Barbara, age three, I have been either a student or a teacher in some sort of educational institution),  I've never held a full-time job other than college instructor.  I know how to prepare a good lecture.  I know how to evaluate written work quickly.  I know how to pretend to pay attention in department meetings.

What else do I know that's useful? I know how to train for and run marathons.  I know how to start a weight-lifting program.  I could probably teach an introductory Pilates mat class, or a spinning class.  I know how to pick the right pair of running shoes.  Important skills for survival?  Uh, no.

What can I do that's truly useful?  I can't change my own oil.  I hate doing any kind of carpentry or assembling.  The old WASP joke:

How many WASPs does it take to change a lightbulb?

Two.  One to mix martinis and the other to call the electrician.

Yeah, that's close to home.  I can do the light bulb, actually, but I've been calling repair people and handy people for virtually everything most of my life.  My body may be lean and toned, but the few muscles I have, sadly, rarely get put to practical use.

So now a post designed to link to another post about economic survival has turned into a musing on my own profound incompetence -- an incompetence rooted in privilege. (And should I even mention I didn't know how to pump my own gas until I was... oh, forget it.).  I'm risking infuriating my few remaining readers.

But in addition to knowing how to give a lecture, and knowing how to finish a hard marathon, I know something else far more useful: I know how to start over.  Three times I've been divorced.  Three times, I've moved out of a home I shared with a spouse and into a tiny, cramped apartment.  Three times, I've bought (or rented) furniture.  Three times, I've raced to Crate and Barrel or Target to buy another set of dishes, another set of pots and pans, another set of sheets.  (In general, my exes all kept the housewares.)  Three times, I've loaded all of my possessions into a car or a truck and driven away to begin again. 

Three times, I've left a marriage with major credit card debt.  Three times, I paid it back down.  Obviously, the debts got exponentially bigger each time.

The amount of stuff that I left with after my third divorce in 2002 was considerably more than after my first one a decade earlier.  By the third divorce, I could actually pay movers to come and take my things away, something that had not been possible the first two times.   Three times, I've said goodbye to beloved pets (I had dogs with all of my ex-wives, and they always kept 'em), and tearfully driven away to start a new life.  Trust me, it got harder each time.

I learned that a microwave, a coffee maker, and a fridge are really all you need.  (I've bought three post-divorce microwaves and two nice Kenmore refrigerators).   On my own post-divorce, months would pass and I would never touch a stove.  Lean Cuisines can be bought in bulk at Costco -- word to the wise.  After my second divorce, I lived on Rosarita refried beans, Uncle Ben's rice, Pace Picante sauce, Knudsen sour cream, and corn tortillas.  (What one friend called "the vile concoction.")  I figure each divorce was good for some significant weight loss.

But the real lesson, of course, was that I could survive.  If there's any virtue at all in telling this story, it's that I have learned that you can begin again -- and again -- and again.  My cousin calls me the "king of starting over", and after so many years of new beginnings, upheaval, heartache, and separations, I know with every fiber of my being that it is possible to love again, trust again, begin again.  It is possible to both learn from previous mistakes and learn to take healthy risks one more time.  It is possible to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars; lose out on a vision of a happy future; kiss the Labrador goodbye for the last time as she licks away your tears;  spend those first few awful nights in a dingy little over-priced studio; and, after all of that agony, be willing to try again.

Lord willing, I will never, ever, ever get divorced from she who is my wife today.  I know so much more about how to be a good and present husband than I did in my first three marriages, and I have married a woman with whom I am spiritually and emotionally and physically profoundly compatible. That's an unmerited blessing on one level, of course, but it's also something I earned as a consequence of being willing to learn from my mistakes, being willing to start over, being willing to trust again.  Too many folks I know get burned (or burn themselves) a time or three and they give up.  Call it stupidity or call it faith or a mixture of the two, but I have a relentless optimism born less of my nature than of my experience.   I know that broken hearts heal and that new dishes can be bought over and over again.  I know that dollar for dollar, it's hard to beat Sears brand appliances.  I know that having a coffee maker, even a cheap one, is vital for the first morning after you move into your new bachelor quarters.  And I know that no matter what, the hurt and pain of any given moment will pass more quickly than I dare hope, and that love and joy and promise can come again and again and again.

This I know.

Comments

[ilyka]

I'm risking infuriating my few remaining readers.

Nah, you're just being honest. If you hadn't laid your cards on the table up front it'd have been "Oh Hugo, what would you know about poverty."

Besides, I think your point about beans/rice/tortillas being a good cheap foundation of meals is right on. Certainly better for you than a steady diet of ramen noodles and stolen sausage patties from the fast-food restaurant you work at, not that I would know an-y-thing about that.

[Oriscus]

Amen, Hugo.

But *Damn, man, - our first divorces were about the same time; you've manged to fit two more in the same period? Okay. We each learn our lessons differently.

Now, something useful you could contribute might be an ethical way of prevailing in a tenure fight. Hell, I wilted in the face of a resentful work-study. (That job is still my "dream job", though it's long gone. Work-study was hispanic female, I am anglo male, she was self-righteous, I was and am liberal, and therefore ready to privelege her righteousness above my own. The job was a university staff gig in my field, and I'm a liquor-store clerk ever since.

Beans/rice/tortillas is normal food, right?

(Try adding a drop of olive oil to your salted water for cooking rice - yum, it's a textural thing. Don't know if y'all can get purple hull peas in California, but they're the best-tasting of the "black-eye pea" family.
Hope you never need to know any of this again, Hugo.)

[Kathy McCarty]

What a great post Hugo! It made me feel glad and hopeful and good that you realized that you DO know something PROFOUNDLY useful.

Seriously, great post!

[jan]

I applaud you being able to start over 3 x. DO you think it would have been easy for a woman to start over 3x?

[Pat]

Wonderful post, Hugo. 'Course in your case splitting up and starting over was probably "easier" since your marriages were relatively brief and there were no children involved....think of how much more difficult it must be for the person who's been married for years and years and who has kids... no wonder so many people stay in unhappy relationships: starting over must seem like an overwhelmingly difficult prospect.

[Hugo]

Pat, agreed. And Jan, I don't know many folks my age divorced three times. I have female friends who have two strikes, however, and they certainly have experienced more judgment than I have. Usual reactions I get range from "you stupid man" to "you rascal." Harsher things get said to women all the time, I suspect.

[erica]

i heart this post, hugo.

[G]

"Harsher things get said to women all the time, I suspect."

Ya think so?

I think most people are more wrapped up in their own lives. If I spent the time to contemplate it, I'd probably pretty much think the same thing about a man or a woman who had a string of divorces.

[amy]

Hugo, you don't need to be able to regrout your bathtub or fix a leaky pipe to contribute something to others. As you noted you have your own experiences in life and certainly in physical health and well-being to draw on. And if everyone knew how to do all the stuff around their homes and never called anyone to come fix or remodel anything, people like my dad would be out of work. As far as worse things being said to women who divorce, I heartily agree with you there. People treated my aunt terribly when she separated from my uncle and filed for divorce. Women came up to her in church and scolded her, telling her that marriages take work and she shouldn't give up so easily. They were idiots to think it was easy for her to divorce the man she'd been married to for over a decade and had four children with. It didn't help much for her to know that if they knew what he'd done to precipitate it they'd shut their mouths. Meanwhile, he was pitied because he moved out of the house into an apartment and his three oldest kids wanted nothing to do with him for a long, long time, and still have less than warm feelings about him now, about eight years later.

[catty]

^^ I don't know the situation of your aunt's divorce, but comments like ones from G make me want to stick a boot up his ass. Women actually on the average fare far worse post-divorce than men, it's still a ststistical fact- yet people keep insinuating that women somehow make out like bandits. some do, but it's the exception, not the rule.

Besides, if she has full custody of 4 kids, it makes more sense for her to stay in a larger place than a now-single man.

[lola]

A great post; you have learned what many have not.

Life is not about WHAT you have, but who you have in your life.

AND----I agree 100% with your comments in Feministe about projecting political anger at children of politicians. Thank you for that.

[Hugo]

G, you're banned.

[Nomen Nescio]

how could anybody old enough to drive not know how to pump their own gas?

apologies if that came across condescending; i was trying for utterly flabbergasted. it just seems so much easier an operation, on balance, than (say) staying on the road at highway speeds is, that... well, i just don't get it.

then again, i wasn't raised in the U.S. either. in my native country, if anybody'd tried to bag my groceries for me at the store, i would have been deeply offended and likely assumed i was being robbed. i'm still not used to it, after eight years here.

and i've even been told there are people here -- of driving age -- who don't know how to change a tire on their cars, either. cripes, i did that as a teenager, and if anybody ever bothered to tell me how i've completely forgotten -- it's just not something difficult enough that one should need be instructed in it, in my humble opinion. am i just strange?

[amy]

So Hugo, that's why I still stop by, but seldom comment anymore. And though I certainly could, I will refrain from responding.

[Ji Hyang Sunim]

Thank you for your post-- your resilience is evident, and inspiring.

[wolfa]

People in NJ -- where all stations are full serve -- often do not know how to pump their own gas.

[Hugo]

G, all of your posts will be deleted even if you change your IP.

[SamChevre]

Hugo,

It's your blog--run it as you like--but I'd like to know what was so offensive about G's comment (as I like commenting here occasionally.) My guess, based on my own observation, would have agreed with his--that men are blamed for divorce at least as much as women.

[Lynn Gazis-Sax]

It looks to me as if Hugo deleted the last couple of comments that G made before Hugo banned him. There was at least one that sounded worse than the one that's still left (which remaining comment is, indeed, as SamChevre said, not particularly offensive).

[Lynn Gazis-Sax]

FWIW, I think men are blamed as much for divorce as women are, but that women are blamed more than men for having many partners. I'm not sure how that falls out when both a man and a woman have multiple divorces in their past.

[beste]

Hugo

I also wouldn't mind knowing why G got banned.

[Hugo]

He violated my rules against personal attacks, and those comments have been deleted, shortly after they were posted in most cases.

I am not obliged to leave them up so that others can weigh in on whether the banning was justified.

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