Dealing with Disappointment

We’ve all got things we don’t handle well. Some of us figure out how either to avoid or to deal with those things so that we don’t hurt or inconvenience others.

I don’t deal well with disappointment.

In October 2017, Dan and I sold, gave away, and packed everything up to pursue an elusive new life we didn’t know where. We flew from King Salmon to Anchorage, bought a truck, and drove from Anchorage to Yuma to Charlotte. It has been an amazing and wonderful adventure.

We were eager to see Dan’s daughter and family in Charlotte, eager to see my son again in New York City after two years when he returned from Argentina, and eager to travel to Iceland, China, and walk the Camino de Santiago in the spring of 2018.

Iceland and China were recent opportunities that came about because of Dan’s friendship with the dynamic, friendly young man who runs a Chinese baseball league in Beijing. He’s been wanting Dan to see Beijing with him for years. He even sent him a t-shirt with that message in both Chinese and English. He proposed that we both come to Iceland, drive the vans for the team, and then return with them to Beijing. We could go straight to Europe to begin the Camino walk we’d planned from Paris to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Like anything though, there were complications. Our dog, Kiva. The two motorcycles Dan bought in the fall. The truck with our belongings. The need to start finding a supplemental income.

We were getting pressure to solidify our commitment to the Iceland and China trip. Time was running out. After a tense breakfast conversation, Dan let his friend in China know that we weren’t going to be able to do it.

Unfortunately, he was counting on us. The tickets for the Chinese baseball players had been purchased and they were nonrefundable. He needed the drivers because he had a recent sports injury that prevented him from driving. He said he’d ask his doctor the current status and perhaps he could drive, but he’d still need at least one of us to go.

It became clear that Dan and I were heading in separate directions, at least for half a year. And I didn’t like it. Not only would I have to be away from him, but he would be exploring the world while I would be settling down and figuring out how to make a living in a new place. Plus, we had planned to drive to New York City to meet my son in mid-January.

I didn’t sleep for a few nights wrestling the knots.

How in the world did we get ourselves into a situation where we had motorcycles strewn from hell to breakfast, a dog, a truck, a trip to see my son in New York City, the need to start having an income, and a Chinese baseball team in need of drivers in Iceland?

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

One morning, I woke with clarity. The first thing we needed to do was follow through for our Chinese friend. Two drivers were needed. I put a post on Facebook seeking someone interested in driving a Chinese baseball team in Iceland who would have all expenses covered except the plane ticket to and from. Possible candidates filled my mind and one of them quickly responded: a young teacher friend living in Ninilchik, Alaska. Perfect!

Next, where would I be and what would I be doing? I could take care of Kiva and the truck. My top place to live was Santa Fe, New Mexico. I could write about my great grandmother and find a job. It would mean that we’d need to drive back to Santa Fe, find a place, and start getting me set up.

We both planned to see my son on his return after two years in Argentina, but it just wasn’t feasible. In mid-January, I would fly from Albuquerque to New York City and spend the week with him. I found a hotel near his audition location. Meanwhile, Dan would stay with Kiva in Santa Fe.

I’d return and a few days later, he’d fly from Albuquerque to Iceland.

The only thing it didn’t solve was the motorcycles.

We spent those rainy days wrangling the plan out in Charlotte holed up in the house of one of Dan’s friends. I vacillated from disappointment to depression. I didn’t want Dan and I to go separate ways. It felt like I was fighting it screaming and kicking.

We decided we needed new places to explore in the midst of the stress, so we visited Charleston, Myrtle Beach, and some old friends from Fairbanks in Washington, North Carolina. It was good to have a break from the problem solving, but stress would still creep up. We decided to spend one day exploring Charleston separately so that we had a break from each other.

Dan plans to return to New Mexico once his travels are finished, but who knows where and how long they will lead. Meanwhile, I’ll be providing an anchor point, and I hope I’ll be providing some additional income, at least enough for rent, utilities, and food. We’re talking about finding a space for a studio and gallery to sell Dan’s photographs. It would be a good way to keep things moving forward for him. It will depend on whether or not we can find the affordable space.

Walking the Camino was a shared dream of ours for so long. Letting go of walking the Camino together is very difficult.

I’m disappointed.

But I don’t want to become bitter. I know that bitterness can easily consume a person. It helps no one. It brings no light, but only misery. It does no good.

It was perfect timing for a trip up the coast from Myrtle Beach to Washington, North Carolina to visit old friends from a very different time in old pipeline era Fairbanks, Alaska.

They were local celebrities back then. My first memory of her is bouncing into my high school choir room back in the late 1980s as Betty Boop. I was astounded by her energy and raw talent.

Little did I know, that many years later she would become my brother’s singing partner in their dynamic cabaret show “Paper Moon.” And many years after that collaboration, she would be my director in the play “The Diary of Anne Frank” at the Fairbanks Drama Association Riverfront Theatre.

Determined to get into that attic, I gave the audition my all and was rewarded with the opportunity to play Mrs. Frank, a woman fifteen years my senior. How to make her older without being too old was a challenge I enjoyed.

The best stage director I’ve worked with, she had an intense and clear vision of the play. Extremely visual, she could see how the stage needed to look and we relied on her to get us there.

I learned so much from her about commitment, vision, following through, and communicating honestly and directly.

Sixteen years since the production, I’m surprised that I’m learning from her again. This time, I’m learning about dealing with bitterness at a very important turning point in my life.

Devoted to the Fairbanks Drama Association, she and her husband moved away from the place where they were anchors in the artistic community because they did not want to continue stewing in bitterness when the theater company that they loved so much lost its original mission and changed direction in a way they could not accept.

They left Fairbanks to sail around the world. I remember it clearly. What a wonderful adventure, I thought!

Unfortunately, life circumstances didn’t enable the sailing adventures they had hoped to share. Family members needed their care and assistance. They could have left them to unknown caretakers, but they did not. They chose not to desert the people they loved.

In recent years, the woman who once energized the art scene of Fairbanks had been at the moment of death of two people and one beloved dog. The toll has been brutal and the recovery slow.

When we visited her, she spoke of the terrible bitterness that had taken root within her. Immediately, I thought “no, no, no.” There is nothing worth letting bitterness take root.

But then, I’ve not had three deaths in less than three years.

It made my own disappointments seem small, even petty.

I think the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge had trouble dealing with disappointment, too.

He was trapped in a lime tree bower. It doesn’t sound like such a bad place to be trapped, but he felt trapped because he was not ambulatory enough to go with his friends on greater adventures in places of more beauty.

The last lines of the poem have always stood out to give me hope when life becomes difficult:

“Henceforth I shall know
That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure;
No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
No waste so vacant, but may well employ
Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes
‘Tis well to be bereft of promis’d good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook
Beat its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
Had cross’d the mighty Orb’s dilated glory,
While thou stood’st gazing; or, when all was still,
Flew creeking o’er thy head, and had a charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.”
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”

And so, enjoy your travels, Dan, wherever they lead you.

Meanwhile, I will do my best not to let bitterness take root and keep my heart awake to love and beauty.

And I will strive to contemplate with joy the joys we cannot share.

And, my greatest fear, if the distance grows us apart and there is no more “us,” then I knew a beautiful love for eleven years and I will carry the memories of that love with me. Instead of being sad about what I don’t have, I will strive to be glad for what we did have.

No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.