Choices and Decisions

It's all well and good to think you understand yourself well enough to know what you want in your life—for the next week or month or year. But when you're meeting someone new and trying to sort everything out, trying to sift everything you're learning and say, "this works; this has got to go", it's damned hard. It's scary.

Each time I headed toward marriage I thought I knew the man and thought we would have a good long life together. I certainly didn't go into any of those marriages thinking "I'm in this for five years" or "I think I'll try this for a while." I went into it wholeheartedly and without reserve. (And maybe that's what everyone does. Maybe my point is moot.)

We each have our "hot buttons", our red flags, the characteristics or traits or practices that, for us, are absolute dealbreakers. But we have lots of other — lesser — traits and characteristics that cause us to stop and say, "Hmmm. Can I live with that?" And, simultaneously, what is there about me that is going to cause my potential partner to say, "Unh uh."

The Biker and I had one of those hour-long getting-to-know-you chats last night. Another challenge to getting to know, yet again, someone new is all the life stories that come along with a new person. You want to know what happened in this person's life to make him who and how he is today. You wanna know if he likes his mama. (If he doesn't, run, don't walk, away.) You want to know about his children and their marriages and his past wives/lovers and his past jobs. You want to know what he sees for his future and how that meshes with what you see for you future.

My family is very important to me. My mother and brothers and I are not close and I've always wanted a close family. My sons and their families are that. I didn't have grandparents. I adore my grandchildren and want them to have a grandparent they can run to to say, "make me a new blankie; buy me a new toy; watch me draw; listen to me sing." All children should have a grandparent who thinks they hung the moon.

I'm looking for a job to be able to be nearer my children. In the past week I've applied to jobs in Delaware Water Gap, PA, Washington, DC, and Pittsburgh, PA. Last night the Biker said, "I will never again live anyplace cold." Hmmm. That's a major disconnect.

Another lifestyle that's an enormous red flag for me is alcohol consumption. John was a maintenance alcoholic. He was never falling-down-drunk. But in all the years I knew him, until the last several months when the cancer was so horrible, I never saw him go through a day without drinking. A lot.

When he would walk in the door from the Pentagon at night, he'd put down his briefcase, go to the cupboard for a "rocks" glass, add some ice, and then fill it with vodka. Then his evening would begin. Not until that glass was in his hand could his evening begin. He'd sip on that while cooking dinner. Then he'd have a glass or two of wine with dinner. Then he'd have another vodka or a scotch after dinner, and keep sipping until he fell asleep around 9:00. Any weekend he wasn't on the golf course, he would start his day with a Bloody Mary. Then there would be beers with lunch and through the afternoon, then on to the vodka/wine/scotch routine in the evening. Anytime we went on a trip, he had to have a six pack of beer on the floor in the backseat. Every so often he'd reach back and grab one, deftly wrapping a vinyl sheet around it so it looked like a Coke can to anyone passing us on the highway. He was jovial and loving and enormous fun so long as he was lubricated. When he couldn't have the alcohol he wanted, he was not nearly so fun to be around.

I knew this about him when we split up the first time. When we got back together, I looked at his life and looked at my life and determined it would not be my problem. I wasn't going to monitor his consumption or say anything about it to him, as I knew that was fruitless. I was going to enjoy our time together and just live life.

Candidly, I would use it to my advantage at times. If there was something I needed to tell him but was hesitant about, I would wait until about 8:59 in the evening to tell him. I knew he'd never remember it, but I could truthfully say, "Oh, don't you remember? I told you that last Thursday."

In fact, the first time he asked me to move in with him it must have been about 8:59 at night. When I finally decided to accept his 'proposal', he didn't remember having asked.

So you can understand that alcohol consumption is a big deal with me. I rarely drink more than one glass of wine in an evening, except during board meetings for Tucson Chamber Artists. We seem to have constant-flowing wine for those meetings, and have great fun. But I hate the feeling of not being in control of my senses, and limit my alcoholic intake at all times because of that. The other factor is my headaches. I get enough headaches (daily, thank you) without any assist from a bottle of alcohol. So I just don't.

My lifelong friend Gail, who was also raised Seventh-day Adventist, said to me once that we might have a slightly higher-than-normal sensitivity to alcohol use or abuse, based upon our teetotaler upbringing. However, she made that statement to me before her now-ex-husband began having problems with alcohol and drugs. I wonder if she holds the same position today.

So what's my point? The Biker said to me last night that sometimes he has beer for breakfast. And gongs start clanging in my ears.

If a 57-year-old (just to pick a random number) woman who is lonely and sad and hates her life alone in the desert finds a perfectly nice, or imperfect but still nice, man, how many red flags must she carry around in her quiver before it's too full and she realizes this man ain't gonna be it?