About Forestry Supplies, GOP Surveys, Pink Hard Hats & my Friend Kim’s Birthday

Often I receive mail that makes no sense to me.  A magazine about bass fishing for my eldest son, who has not shared this address in years & as far as I know, has no interest in fishing for bass.  “Wired” magazine made more sense for my techno guru son.  “GQ” made about as much sense as bass fishing.

The most difficult for my Liberal bent have been the  missives from the Republican party.  Including a survey during this election from the RNC. 

Years ago, a much loved & admired young friend not only sent me a two year subscription to the National Review, but filled out paperwork in my name & donated to the Republican National Committee.

Little did my young friend know that William F. Buckley was a secret pleasure of mine, for the pure joy of his command of the English language & its nuances.  The RNC less so.

After months of phone calls & a myriad of requests to both the Fort Bend County Republican Party & the RNC, I thought I was finally removed from their mailing lists.

Until the survey.

But that is not what sparked this particular post.  It was today’s inexplicable catalogue from Forestry Supplies Spring Sales & New Products Specials.  Addressed to me.

I tried to decipher what I could have done to prompt Forestry Supplies to send me their spring catalog.  I have no need for increment borers, aerosol boundary paint, dibble bars, log grabbers, duckbill earth anchors or chain & bar oil.

The “rite in the rain” mechanical pencils appealed to me, but it has been decades since I felt the compulsion to write in the rain.  While outdoors, that is.

Then I turned the page of the catalog & spotted the hard hats – orange, yellow, royal blue, navy blue & white.

And I remembered the pink hard hat & slip on steel toed boots stored in a tote upstairs.

Both of which I wore in shipyards & walking through rigs under refurbishment.

Which, I realize, after writing over 300 words, is what led me think about Kim & her birthday.

I first met Kim as the CFO of a rig management company my employers, the owners of the rig being refurbished, hired to manage the refurbishment.  I was the assistant controller & Kim represented our most important contractor.  

Our positions & our companies’ interests often set us at odds against one another.   I represented the source of the project funding & too often Kim had to represent an opposing interest.

But she always handled each situation with grace & discretion & well thought analysis.  

My superiors were often outrageously demanding & too often encouraged me to follow their lead.  There were too many times when I went to Kim & demanded that she produce something that I knew she could not possibly guarantee.

To Kim’s credit, she never lost her poise or composure or her center of gravity.

  

And most often, delivered.

More importantly, & this is the center of this post, Kim & I became adversarial friends.  

And over the time of the doomed project, friends.  

Kim listened & gave me feedback I could not obtain from my own supervisor, who was consumed by building her dream $450,000 house.  Or her next vacation or plans for her family’s next holiday.  Or pictures of her children from the last holiday.

Kim came to see me when I was in the hospital (although I was still asleep) & left a lovely, thoughtful gift.  Kim sent flowers to my brother’s memorial service – casa blanca lilies with bear grass, my favorite.

We shared many lunches & many hours of talking things out.

The doomed project that brought us together ended up in bankruptcy & distanced us as law suits & court orders dominated my landscape.

But I found Kim on Facebook & I have been following her & her beautiful family for years.  When I first met Kim, she had two very young children, Ivan & Laila.  

Ivan is growing into the same handsome man as his father.  Laila is destined to be a beauty. Their two little sisters will no doubt become beauties like their Madre & sister.

I do not always like the woman I was during those pink hard hat & slip on steel toed shoes period.  I try to let her be, to forgive her, to let it go.

But I do like are the remnants I was able to salvage from that doomed project.  From that life.

Kim is more than a remnant.  She is a treasure I managed to reclaim.

Happy Birthday, Kim.  With love, Jaki Jean.

Sometimes looking to the past does not bring resolution . . .

When I was not quite twenty, I got married.  To a man who was, like me, a virgin, a Democrat, a lover of ballet & the theatre & old black & white movies.  He also loved to grow mushrooms & gardening & camping (I did not share his affection for camping.)  

And he had a hairy chest.

I have always been a sucker for a hairy chest.

He was a graduate of the University of Texas (a finance major) who believed that UT gave one a liberal education, Texas A&M gave one a conservative education & the University of Houston was an amazing happy median between the two.

Our courtship & engagement were all too brief, & ill advised.  Even then, there were warning signs that would have caused an older & more experienced Jaki Jean to flee for self protection.

His mother, who was, in her way, an amazing survivor of a difficult childhood, called me “Peggy” – his ex-girlfriend’s name.  For a long time.  I feared she would call me Peggy at the wedding.  His parents were older – married older, waiting seven years for their first son & seven more for my husband.  They were already retired, their lives revolving around golf & bridge & Sunday brunch at the Country Club & their granddaughter. 

And for my mother-in-law, around her youngest son.

The warning signs that the too young to get married Jaki Jean did not decipher began to manifest themselves.  I choose not to relate the details – I believe my ex-husband has children & I think the details would hurt them if they ran across this post.

For me, those details made our marriage unsustainable.  So I called my friend Susie Morley, who was living in Austin & she handed the phone to Elizabeth Bacon, her friend & co-worker, who told me she would call her lawyer mother Mary Bacon to assist me in getting a low cost, uncontested divorce.

Mary Bacon, who later became a judge, handled my divorce for $250.00. 

Yesterday, frustrated by the elections & Brussels & all the terrorist attacks the media does not report, I ran across an old journal from my five year marriage.

Every Christmas, my husband would give me a Kahlil Gibran journal, blank pages with quotes from Gibran.  I picked one up out of a box & did not recognize the young Jaki Jean who wrote about a man she loved.  Planning a meal with candles.

So, I goggled my ex. 

He died recently at 65. 

He was four years older & would be 66 at the end of June (he was born a few minutes after  midnight on June 30, but his mother insisted the doctor backdate the birth certificate so that she could have a June baby.)

At first I did not know how I should feel about his death.

But 65 is too young to die. 

The failure of our marriage molded my relationships for the next few decades.  As my friend & lover Philippe once remarked:  “Your need to be free is inherent in your being.”

Philippe may have been on target – but I think my need was molded by the unsustainable problems in my marriage.  I was never again willing to take that leap. 

And there were offers.

Of course, as Kristofferson wrote for Janis Joplin:  “Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose / Nothin', don't mean nothin' hon' if it ain't free.”

It is difficult for me to mourn for him – in the sense that I mourned over the years for the man I thought I married..  I mourn for anyone who dies so young.  I mourn for his children & his family & friends.  I mourn for the young Jaki Jean who would have been devastated.

I find no resolution, experienced no closure.  Just incredible sadness.