Divorce Epilogued.

Standing naked on the lawn, as the sprinkler cascades down, I have to say it's oddly liberating. Well not the naked part. And no not the sprinkler either. Really that part's just a Monday afternoon.

Ok, that's not true. It's not usual, but it's still not what's liberating either. What's liberating is that everything is the same as it was last week, and yet the sky is bluer and the coffee's stronger. It's really kind of cool. Ok, well the cool probably is a side-effect of the naked sprinkler thing. Here, let's take this inside.

See Last Friday MyUwife became MyEx. She wouldn't have let me dance under the sprinkler like that, and really nor would I have wanted to. My neighbors found that a happier time. But Friday I divorced, and now that it's done, it's my happy time.

There wasn't any fanfare, ceremony, or confetti, but an event happened. I want to say I had mixed feelings, but honestly I've had those for quite a while. Friday there was nothing mixed, shaken or stirred. I took my divorce straight up and neat. I was done. I felt like a graduate. I'd passed "divorcing" and graduated to "divorced." I moved my tassel from one side to the other. I'm a big kid now. It's ok, I was inside, and the neighbors didn't watch. They were still rinsing their eyes from the sprinkler fiasco.

I didn't expect anything, I mean really, nothing had changed, but it had. I was free. I don't mean from MyEx. I mean if we're honest I've been free there since she moved out, but divorce comes with weights and expectations. We have to act and do things in a special way. Walk within the lines etc. It's like participating in your first communion as a kid. All the ceremony, but no real pay off. Oh everybody else will tell you how important it is, but as a kid, it's really kind of a shrug moment.

I'm done. For months I drank the whine Kool-aid, and now it's wine. It's a miracle! It is also a graduation of sorts. Everybody clasped my hand, shook my back, and wished me a great future. Woo Hoo! Unlike any other graduation though, I'm in no great hurry to prove I can do something with my future. Oh, and I don't really have that fear of not knowing what I want. Oh, I really don't know, but I'm not afraid of the future, or the not knowing. It's like that time when you're 15 and the closet monster jumps out and says, "Boo!"

Now you've seen this trick since you were 4, it's the same thing. When you're 15 you ask him to close the door before he leaves, and roll over. If you're smart, you also ask him to not leave treasures in your shoes too. Closet monsters can be rude, but they're usually compliant. It's part of the closet code.

I talked with my dad about this a few months ago.

"Have you seen my closet monster?"

No, that was the wrong conversation. Sorry, this one started with him asking:

"What are you going to do?"

"Do? Nothing really."

"I was thinking about this," because this is what Dad's do; they think of all this stuff and work the angles kids might miss. "This is a perfect time for you. You can do anything. You don't have any real ties there."

"Well I have my mortgage," I remind him for the hundredth time.

"For now, but you'll be out from under that sooner than you think. No my son, anything that holds you down is very short term right now. So what do you want to do?"

"…"

He's right. I didn't really see it until Friday but Friday was like standing in a big room with lots of sheets draping over everything. When the divorce finalized all the sheets dropped, I found I'm in a huge mall. Shops and pleasures stretched out as far as the eye could see, and an illuminated directory stood before me. There's a red dot in the middle, "You are here," says the dot. No literally. My dot talks. It also bounces around like the seven-up thing. It makes it hard to tell where I really am, but it's cool. It's my dot. I don't have to split it. It likes that. It prefers whole-dot to semi-circle.

"So where do you want to go today," says Red. He points an arc to the lists, then bounces across the categorized headers of "wine," "women," and "song" like a sing along spot.

"I don't know."

"Well," bouncing back up to his blue lawn chair, center mall, he says, "Whenever you're ready. No rush."

That's me right now. No Geddy Lee, no Neal Peart, no Alex Lifeson. That's right: No Rush. Sorry. Just a little prog-rocker humor. My dot said I could do anything…wait now he's wincing and crossing off some of the shops…

It'll happen, I can't stop that. Every action I make will close some doors. That's fine. I'm not worried about that. I'll move when it's time. Right now I'm just enjoying the freedom. It's a worldwide Hokey Pokey. It doesn't matter if I put my right leg in or pull my right leg out. What matters is that I take time to shake it all about. My neighbors would prefer that I do that fully clothed next time I choose to do it on my front lawn.

Fine...