Corina and the Cougars

Ahhhhhhh the 80s.  A decade that for some was the highlight of their lives......for me was filled with a sense of complete and total confusion.  The fashion.......ummm I am not covering my body with a million crosses, a la Madonna.  The music.....give me some real bass and a genuine organ please!!

However in the 80's I became a mother and got married.  Yes.  In that order.  I attempted to keep the house in a pristine condition.  I tried to care about my husband's shirts being perfect.  I was a stranger in a strange land.  I remember it well.

When the ten year anniversary of being together with my daughter's father was coming up, I remember a deep dread...an urging... a restlessness that was going off.  I had to DO something.  I had to leave.  There was no more talking about it, no more hiding from it, no more waiting for it to all turn out better.  When I realized that I couldn't stand to hear my husband breathing next to me in bed at night, it was time to GO.

I moved back to my roots, San Jose, California.  I moved in with my then best friend Patty.  I was sick to my stomach most of the time.  I was free, I was separated, I was scared.  I focused on my then very young daughter.  Together we would figure it out.  Looking back it was more like the blind leading the blind....but that didn't stop me.

I had my cosmetologist's license and decided I hated doing women's hair.  I don't want a picture of someone who has 1. perfect hair and 2. professional stylists to make their hair look like that in the picture.  So I did nails and I loved it.  I could talk and make women's nails look amazing.  To say I had a knack for those two things was putting it mildly. 

My ex hadn't given me the only thing I asked for when leaving.......our '68 Chevy Suburban, affectionately called THE BEAST.  So I looked for a salon that was reasonably close to where I lived.  I soon found a job in an upscale nail salon at Bernal and Santa Teresa Blvd.  My life was moving forward.

The owner was a woman named Corina.  She was in her very early 40s.  She was hispanic, curvy, beautiful and insecure as the day is full of light.  She didn't have any training in cosmetology or in people but she talked her very rich husband into investing in this shop so she could indulge her little fantasy of a mini boutique in the front and nail stations within the salon itself.  She had amazing taste in the decor.  No really!  Green emerald marble graced the entrance.  The walls a soft pink.  The chairs deep and luxurious.  It was a lovely salon.  A few problems though. 

Whenever Corina arrived she pulled a lot of focus.  She expected to be fawned over by other women.  She expected to put on her little show of designer name dropping and shallow banter.  She expected other women to be as driven by material possessions as herself.

This job allowed me for the first time to understand that all women are connected in ways that we're not with men.  Up until this time a lot of my friends were men and before that boys.  I liked how the male species acted, how they were good company, how I could make friends and not worry about how to precede with anything as messy and emotional entanglement.  As long as my male friends were treated like my brothers, I got to enjoy friendships that were wonderous and plentiful.  This all changed when my livelihood was estrogen driven. 

What would I talk to women about?  I was touching strangers.....I wouldn't sit in silence for 45 minutes.  So I did what I always resort to.  I was myself.  I broke the ice right away.  What I learned was that I attracted a very special, ecclectic, group of women to me.  The not only became my loyal customers....but my sisters.  Childbirth, heartbreak, tough luck, Yeah I understood these beings.  It forever has changed how I deal with women.

I remember it was my birthday.  I was turning 29 and my boss, Corina insisted on taking me out to celebrate.  She had a girlfriend who we would now call a Cougar.  She was an established artist and connesiuer of younger men.  She came along for the 'fun'.  These women were way further along the female story than I was.  Both had been marred and re-married.  They had both made sure they married UP the second time.  Only to find themselves hornier and more medicated than in their youth. 

They took me to a singles club after dinner.  The music was mostly from the pop 60's and early 70's.  And the men?  Well they all looked like someone's ex-husband who stopped caring and stopped living.  To me these people all smelled of desperation and really bad cocaine.  I wanted out of their in the worse way.  I wasn't even 30 yet and I was really popular.  Hungry doesn't even begin to describe the actions of the men that came over to hit on me.  I finally begged Corina and her friend to drop me off at my familiar haunt to play pool and flirt with someone within my own species.

I remember Corina telling me a story about her youth growing up in the Barrio.  When she met her current husband, Len, she told him she didn't know how to cook and refused to clean.  So he got a housekeeper and a cook.  She was bored while he was out taking care of business.  She had a membership to the gym but instead of going, she would complain about her rapidly thickening thighs.  She dressed well and expected everyone to take notice of her and her red mercedes.  Remember my truck, The Beast?  She asked me not to park in front of the shop, it didn't look good for business. 

While I had close, meaningful interactions with my clients......I would hear Corina and her very affluent friends complain about their lives.  While I was scraping my way into my new life, I would hear them talk about the trips, the jewels, the medications that did NOTHING to appease their appetites or their souls.  One by one, these women lost their husbands to women that would make a home, that would cook a meal, that would bare their not perfect breasts and that actually needed that man in their life.  Corina's husband fell in love with a woman named Guadelupe who cooked and cleaned.  Cornina lost everything, the house, the business, and yes, the red mercedes.

I don't think it had to do with anything other than these women, even when handed everything on a platinum platter knew when to be satisfied, when to be happy, when to be content with what was right before them.  It was a lesson that I internalized.  What I was seeing wasn't about men that wanted a woman to know her place.  They wanted and craved women who knew who they were and could contribute something more than just a credit card bill at the end of the month.  Some of those women had every whim and desire handed to them :  Nose too big? Breasts too small?  Never traveled?  Never had expensive clothing touch your skin?  All of it and more was taken care of and yet, still a deep, aching hole existed within these women.

I am now the age that Corina and her Cougar friend were then.  I haven't met a man that would indulge me like that.  In fact I haven't met anyone at all.  I haven't forgotten the lessons of Corina and her gaggle of sycophantic friends.  I haven't forgotten that when a person in a relationship is actually prosperous that he or she needs to be nurtured too.  That when a gift comes into your life don't be so empty that you can't enjoy it, thrive in it, and build more happiness.  Thank you to those pre-Cougars.

The continued search for bliss and other perilous journeys

Libra Horoscope for week of September 17, 2009




"The soft-minded person always fears change," said one of my favorite transformers, Martin Luther King Jr. "For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea." The corollary to King's pronouncement is that changes are less likely to be painful if you're not afraid of them. According to my astrological analysis, Libra, none of that stuff will be an issue for you in the coming weeks. As you slip into a phase of riotous growth, I expect you will have abundant access to previously dormant reserves of courage and tough-mindedness.



So something occured to me the other day.  I stood outside of myself and thought about the subjects that I have been writing about and or sharing for a while now.  I had a few things I wanted to throw out there.  I am not always consumed with the pain of the past, I am not always worried about the future, and I often laugh at the most ridiculous things, including myself.
 
I am thankful for all the Laura's that have existed before me for without all of her, I could not be here in this moment.  It is a blessing to be given strange and unusual experiences to not only survive but to then have the insight to process and perhaps help another soul on its journey.
 
In my youth I was perpetually a Pollyanna for I really believed there was a happy ending, that good overcomes evil, and that love witll find a way.  I still hold this to be true I am just now more clear headed(sober) than ever before in my life and am growing up again, still, and perpetually. 
 
I took the stance of observer very often in situations.  I didn't have to DO it to learn it, but later on, doing it provided experiences that nothing else could touch.  Lately over and over I say to myself, now what?  what's next?  am I lost or just in a holding pattern?  how do I trust that everything is as it should be?
 
For those of you that know me well, everything has always revolved around a song.  Music was my teacher, my sanctuary, my friend, and my church.  My spirit has benefited from the stories, and melodies that I have had the benefit to experience.  I think my son wouldn't exist today if , all those years ago I hadn't come upon his father listening to Bob Dylan in the garage full blast.  I always gleamed from the smallest connections the deepest attempts of relationships.  Whether it was a friend, a relative, or a lover, I would get in there, try my best and then take my wounds and move on.
 
I hope, I desire, I want to experience Life from a more healed place.  Both externally and internally.  I want this coming year to be about the bliss again, the beauty of it all, and yes my core belief in the rightness of most of LIfe.
 
Wish me luck please......."Keep me searching for a heart of gold, and I'm getting old".

I am officially resigned as a daughter

Libra Horoscope for week of September 10, 2009




"My first demand is that you weed out the wishy-washy wishes and lukewarm longings that keep you distracted from your burning desires. My second demand is that you refuse to think that anyone else knows better than you what dreams will keep your life energy humming with maximum efficiency and beauty. Now please repeat the following assertions about 20 times: "I know exactly what I want. I know exactly what I don't want. I know exactly what I kind of want but I won't waste my time on it any more because it sidetracks me from working on what I really really want."  From Free Will Astrology

When I was 13 I faced some pretty hard decisions.  In looking back to that time in my life, I realize in a lot of ways how much easier it was to be clear in what I wanted.  I wanted to be free from the extremes of my mother's existance.  Well I got what I wished for.  I left her home, her moods, her twists and turns of the truth.  I left abuse and neglect.  I left what little security I knew.  I left someone that didn't trust me, didn't know me, and didn't know how to put me first before her.

I was very clear on what I needed from her from then on.  Then I became a mother.  Very often I parented in direct opposition of what I had not been given.  I was very clear about appropriate boundaries, about putting my children first, and about trying to make the best decisions with less than desirable amounts of information.  I often operated from a place of pitch black.  I had no real relationships, whether partnerships or parenting to model from.  In many ways this out of the box thinking served me and I hope my children. 

After living in foster care, in a group home, with relatives I learned a few lessons very clearly.  It was always, and still is, important to really mean what I said.  Children know otherwise even when they don't know what something is called.  It permeates our psyche.  And if the adults in your world are full of shit, then that vast darkness of lies and deceptions looms like a behemoth in your home.

So we fast forward to a few weeks ago.  I received a package in the mail from a lawyer.  My mother had been put in an assisted living facility.  They were appointing her a temporary guardian.  She didn't pass the mental status exam.  She couldn't manipulate anyone into believing she could or should continue to live on her own. 

In my hands I had a certified documentation of her physical and mental status'.  For a moment it felt like a burden had been lifted off of me.  Someone else would finally know it wasn't my fault when I was 13 and left her home.  And the irony hit me full on.  I still cared more about her and being right than about what happened to me.  NO one blamed me for her neglect.  But that old tape of caretaking for her fragile self still reared its ugly head.

I felt lots of swirling conflicting emotions:  How could she be all alone at the end of her life, how could I not find a way to go and 'rescue' her, how could she have allowed her life to come to such a staggering desolate place?  It goes on and on within me.

And then the clarity comes singing through.  She is an adult.  This is the very clear result of her life lived on her terms and by her decisions.  When I was a child, helpless with no one to help me but me........she didn't base anything on what was best for me.  She chose to think of it as me betraying her.  She lost her slave, her housekeeper, her shopper.  Did she ever really feel the loss of losing her daughter?

My son said to me, very clearly, "She isn't your mommy!  Stop waiting for one"  And then when he saw the raw pain and shock on my face he softly added, "You are my mommy, and Samantha's mommy, and Ethan's Nana".  You chose to do the best you could and never turn your back on us.

Today is the hearing to determine the rights of my mother's guardianship.  I will not be present.  I will not be appointed guardian.  I will not be subjected to more manipulation by her.  She is in better hands by those more qualified to deal with her and her issues than I am.  I relinquish my rights as her daughter in my clarity unlike all those years ago when she gave up her parental rights for me.