THE HOLIDAY STORY OF THE HAMMER THE NAILS...
AND THE LAUNDRY

This is one of those stories that I almost wish I wasn't in. Almost.

Okay, after being separated from my first husband for five years with no divorce the need came about to be married again. The story is kind of dramatic, but in a brief few words it can be summed up like this: Hippie, bisexual, rock and roll, a smattering of drugs, a really bad attitude and a custody battle with my mother for my daughter. None of the things mentioned made me a great mother, but neither did they make me an unfit one. However, for the sake of brevity, my mother would have turned me into the female version of Jack the Ripper if it meant getting custody of my daughter from me and messing with my life just one more time.

Now, I had been supporting my child, loving her, supervising her appropriately and doing all of the motherly things that were necessary, but, I had not bowed to my mother's idea of being the perfect daughter. I got sick, had to have surgery, made the mistake of my life, which meant asking my mother to care for my daughter while I recovered. Whoa, baby. The psychological aspects of that have been totally reviewed and on some sick level, I suppose I was still seeking her approval.

Anyway, the deed was done. Upon release from the hospital, I get home to find she has filed for permanent custody, had been granted temporary custody and I was up the proverbial creek.

How was I going to fix this. Well, let's see. What was the dumbest thing I could do? You got it. I found someone I was certain would normalize me in the eyes of the law and so I married him. Oops. Now, he wasn't a bad guy. But, marrying for the wrong reason, in fact marrying for the right reason...both can get you in a hell of a lot of trouble. Long story short. He wasn't normal enough. I hadn't suffered enough. And, I ended up childless and married. I did get visitation and all of the hell that goes with that type of an arrangement. But, to say it was less than perfect, is the epitome of understatement.

Eventually, custody was returned to me, and, I was still married. He had a propensity towards passive aggressive behavior, sloth and a down and out ability to remain unemployed. The passive aggressive behavior began to drive me crazy. The sloth drove me up a wall. And the inability to find gainful employment became the last straw.

I started to plan my move. Not being one to rush into things anymore, I was busy getting my eggs in a row when my own passive aggressive behavior began to emerge. Shit, I never realized how much fun it could be.

The one thing that had always pushed me over the edge was the inability of this man to find the laundry basket with his dirty underwear. So, as they started to pile up on his side of the bed, I took out my handy hammer and some carpeting tacks, and tacked
them to the floor. Ha ha, I thought, wait until he tries to pick those up. Well, he didn't try and pick them up. They lay there and the pile grew. Here comes the hammer, some nails this time, and tap, tap, tap, the second layer were firmly put in place. Then the third, fourth, and by the fifth, I was on my way out the door. I figured that he was just being more passive than I and wasn't going to say anything to me about it.

Wrong. About three weeks after I left, the phone rings, and there he is, "What the hell is the idea of nailing my underwear to the floor?" I blew snot. It had taken the man over six weeks to realize that I had nailed his dirty clothes to floor. It was great. I was actually glad that I wasn't there when he discovered it. It was much better to just hang up the phone and go on with my life.

The moral of this story, if there is a moral, is that sometimes things you think are being done for all of the right reasons can turn out just as badly as if you had done something else for all of the right reasons. I regained custody of my daughter when my mother died. Overnight, I became all the things that I hadn't been when she was alive. It was the beginning of true growing up for me. To learn that my self righteousness was no different than hers. That things will take care of themselves in the strangest of ways, without our stupid attempts at manipulation. And, that when it comes to laundry, run if you see me with a hammer in my hands.

I am grateful during this period of Thanksgiving that I can look back on all of this without rancor and hate. It was the best gift I ever gave myself. Well, that and the last piece of pecan pie that I finished as I wrote this.