Achey-Breaky Tractor of Tears

At Uptown Blanco’s Sunday brunch in July, I was walking back from the buffet with my omelet, and our waitress Bonnie asked, “Are you shrinking?”

“Yes, I am,” I beamed.  “I’ve lost over 200 pounds.”

“No!”

“Yep.  My husband and some off of me, too.”  (My family loves that joke.  I surely didn’t invent it, but I have made good use of it, beginning at my birthday brunch one week after the Divorce announcement.  On that day, I sighed contentedly over my last Mimosas, and said, “Marriage is fattening.  I’ve already lost 175 pounds.”)

She laughed.  “Well it all looks good on you!” 

Everyone comments on how good I look, how happy I look.  I do look happy.  I am happier.  I like my life better these days.  I like the energy and sheer joyfulness of being sober.  I like being able to get things done.   (If you feel a “but” coming on, you may know me well.)

With all the rain this spring, the wildflowers and weeds are rampant. Wildflowers are the heart and soul of my favorite form of gardening, and I made good use of them in my yard this year.  Weeds are wildflowers where Mom doesn’t want them.  I’ve been working on round three of field shredding, and the beggar lice plants are already four feet high in the lower eastern pasture.  Before I could get back to it, I had to finish the coastal field.  In the process of shredding the coastal field, I developed an aversion to the tractor.

It wasn’t the heat or the dust that had me looking for any little spit of water from the sky as an excuse not to shred.  “Oh, darn; it’s raining.  Can’t shred.”  I mean, granted it’s hot as heck out there, and after three hours of being coated with dust, I resemble a golem, a very itchy golem in dire need of a shower, but that wasn’t the aversion.  It was more of an emotional nature.
When I work on the tractor, I wear noise-cancelling ear buds attached to my i-Pod Nano and listen to books.  Otherwise, the sheer boredom would pretty much guarantee that Mom would have to hire someone else to shred, and I would lose the little income I actually have to spend on frivolities like paint for the porch, food, birthday presents and, well, books to listen to on the tractor. 

The other day, I’d only been out there for an hour when my book ended.  Without the enchantment of a narrative pumped directly into my brain, I was left alone with my own thoughts.
And the first thought was, “I don’t remember marrying an asshole.”

Relatively harmless thought, eh?  I could easily take that in a humorous direction.  Yep.  I don’t remember saying, “Hey, this guy’s a jerk; I think I’ll marry him.”  Wahaha.

But no!  I guess I’ve had it too easy lately, wrapped up in the sheer joy of being unchained, free from daily degradation and hang-overs.  I got hit instead with a wallop of melancholy at thought number two. “I remember marrying a kind, thoughtful, funny guy who seemed to give a shit about me.”  Within seconds, my face was covered in muddy rivulets as I went from feeling like I’d won the lotto to realizing that this was Divorce, that the man I’d thought was my best friend wasn’t a friend at all, that my heart has been blown to smithereens.  Ouch.

Okay, so I didn’t marry an asshole, but by golly I’m divorcing one, thank God.  I came to terms with these thoughts and was able to reclaim my emotional equilibrium within a few hours.  It took two days to recover from the swelling of all that eye-leaking.  I am too old to cry without severe poofing of the eyelids.

The next time I went out on the tractor, I was well-armed with seven hours of book and a back-up.  Fat lot of good it did me.  I kept having to rewind the book as my own thoughts pirated my brain.  Within moments, I was bowed down by the weight of the loss and crying again.  The loss of my babies, the loss of my sobriety, the loss of my spiritual life, the loss of my teaching career, the loss of ten years of my life.  By the time I made it to the shower that day, I had renamed the John Deere my “Achy-Breaky Tractor of Tears.”

It was with intense trepidation that I returned to the pasture the next day.  Most of the beggar lice was down, but I had a good six hours of shredding left.  The swollen folds of skin around my eyes still resembled bruised bloodhound eyes.  I didn’t think I could take another round of tractor therapy, so I was hoping that Alice Hoffman would have my undivided attention.  For the most part, she did. 

That part of my attention that wandered was caught up in the daily glories of living on a ranch.  The weather was a little cooler (Texas summer cold front: high in the mid nineties), a little less humid.  Yummy whipped cumulous clouds floated across a vivid blue sky.  I was able to avoid most of the dust as a cool breeze wafted across the river and up the slope to my side.  Dragonflies flew beside the tractor, and purple martins swooped around me feasting on grasshoppers.  A fox bounded out of the weeds in front of me to escape in the abundant greenery lining the banks of the tank.

Thank God for a day of reprieve from the grief.  I want so much to be able to just build a bridge and get over this, to not have to go through it.  I know better, I really do.  So thank God, also, for that Achy-Breaky Tractor of Tears.  At least I’m not breaking down in the middle of the bank or grocery store.