Salon.com > Beverly Willett

Four days of silence

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

“A retreat is a good idea,” my meditation teacher, trained in the U.K. by a Tibetan monk, said when I consulted him about my persistent urge to get away. “And I recommend a silent one.”

My husband had left me for another woman. I was juggling two kids, in and out of divorce court, and felt my lid about to blow. As luck would have it, I’d just turned 50, too. Even I knew I needed time for introspection, but why the extra burden of keeping silent, I wanted to ask, but didn’t. And why couldn’t I blow off a little steam, listen to music and converse over dinner with other people at the retreat? Life was hard enough. And my teacher knew I wasn’t the silent type.

I spend the bulk of my workday in front of a computer, but at heart I’m a social animal. Though shy as a young girl, once I reached adulthood I became a confirmed extrovert, joining a long line of female talkers on my mother’s side of the family who could easily hold the thread of one story at bay while carrying on the next.

The anniversary I spent alone

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 21:00:00 +0000

Silver wedding anniversaries were a big to-do in the small town where I grew up. Practically every marriage I knew made it that far. And even gossip about couples grabbing the gold centered on whether they’d live that long, not if they’d still be together when the time came. In short, the vocabulary of my Southern upbringing most definitely did not include the D-word.

Yet there I was standing in the kitchen one morning at 51, smack dab in the middle of a divorce, when the impending date of my 25th reared its big, ugly, gargantuan head, nearly boinging itself right off the calendar at me. Up until then, I hadn’t given any thought as to how I was going to celebrate. A few years before, I’d have keeled over on the spot if you’d told me I might be marking the milestone alone while my husband ate dinner with his fiancée.

Once reality sank in, there was no calming my anxiety. Even my regular meditation practice failed me. Or rather I failed at it. I was certain I’d be dragging myself around all day with a long face, vulnerable to spontaneous bouts of blubbering. So I immediately made a midday salon appointment. Wash that man right out of my hair, so to speak. It was a start, but only; in my mind a big day required something equally big to mark it.

When moms break up

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 18:01:00 +0000

Laura and I first met when our daughters ended up in school together. After becoming a stay-at-home mom, most of the new friendships I developed came by way of my children. And so building a friendship with Laura, like other moms who had come before, seemed like the natural way to go. As the girls' friendship blossomed, so did ours. We talked constantly on the phone, catching up on school gossip and comparing notes on our emerging teens.

It was my husband's affair and subsequent departure, however, that ultimately deepened our bond. Laura and I became inseparable, and she was a staunch, self-appointed defender of my suffering. Then one day, nearly as quickly as she'd charged into my life, Laura left.

Up until then, Laura had called nearly every day to check up on me, often showing up at my front door to say "you need to eat a good meal" before dragging me out to lunch. Losing weight and sliding back into my skinny jeans was about the only positive byproduct of those early days, but Laura wouldn't take no for an answer. She deemed it her personal duty to fatten me up again and make sure I got my daily dose of carbs.

After the divorce: My daughters, the strangers

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 01:20:00 +0000

I sit in the dining room, alone, in the dark, weeding through my youngest daughter Ella's outgrown clothing. I wonder where she wore this orange top, and with which bottom? The brown corduroy fringed skirt? The embroidered jeans? I unfold each piece, then hold it, arms outstretched against the small stream of light filtering in through the picture window, refold and move on to the next item. With growing children, sorting through clothes is a regular task. This time, though, it feels as if I'm performing some forbidden act, best done in secret. Better done before my daughter returns home tomorrow. She's away for the weekend visiting her father. Ella isn't her real name, by the way, but the one I'm using here.

After my husband left, the children toted their clothing back and forth when they visited him, constantly packing and unpacking. I remember watching them as they sat beside their suitcases in the vestibule on Friday nights. Looking like little foster children about to be shuttled off to the next family willing to take them in. Until I could no longer stand it and suggested my husband buy the kids clothes to leave at his place.