1. Friday was an awesome day and it left Debbie and me tired. We took it easy through the morning, but, in the early afternoon, we struck out into the world again.
You might remember that a week ago Brook Adams' surf band, El Borko ¡Surf! played at Friendly Garden. Today, El Borko ¡Surf! played at Saturday Market. Upon arrival, I immediately thought back to when I first moved to Eugene in 1979 and Saturday Market was, I think, across the street from where it is now and how deeply and with what satisfaction I felt like I'd really moved to a city very different from Spokane, a place where I was going to be really happy. Back in those early days of going to Saturday Market, most of my memories have to do with eating new foods. Until then, I'd never eaten tempura or seasoned tofu wrapped in a tortilla with sprouts; I'd never drunk expresso coffee, been to a burrito stand, enjoyed a rice bowl, or eaten Middle Eastern food.
Today that all came back to me as I stood about twenty feet from the performance stage, smelled the aromas of all the food booths, watched people dance in front of the stage, and saw a familiar face or two of people I've never met but who dance week after week after week. I saw that Frog is still selling joke books. Lots of tie-dyed clothing is available along with cards, face painting, hand made jewelry, pottery, and many other home made products in the many booths erected in market area.
Memory lane was fun, but El Borko ¡Surf! was even more fun. I love the band's energy, mirth, drive, variety, and joy, as well as their commitment to both the music and having a fun time. If I lived in Eugene and if such a thing existed, I'd be an El Borko head, a ¡Surf! head, a Brooks head -- whatever you want to call it.
2. From the Saturday Market, after picking up an accordion to borrow from Chico, Debbie and I met with Jay and Sherri Siedmon at Oakshire Brewing. Jay, Sherri, Debbie, and I used to meet up or see each other at 16 Tons (and other places). Jay, Sherri, and Debbie first got acquainted in the early 1990s when Debbie led songs with theirs and other children at Temple Beth Israel and about ten years ago they got reacquainted through craft beer and wine and I got to join in.
We had a lively time today talking about all kinds of things ranging from our kids to concerns about the environment to what it's like to live in Kellogg to some good old days in Chicago. I'm also very happy to report that upon going to the counter to order beer, I saw that Oakshire had on their ESB (Extra Special Bitter) on tap, a once popular craft beer that has suffered in the face of IPA popularity. I love these maltier, milder beers, beers like porters, red ales, and ESBs and I jumped at the opportunity to enjoy a freshly brewed ESB. My beer was awesome -- and, as often happens with ESB, this beer transported me back to traveling in England in 1979 and drinking ESBs from one end of England to the other.
3. So, back in 1981, the Eugene ice cream shop, Prince Pucklers had several Eugene locations, including a shop on Franklin Boulevard near where Market of Choice and Hiron's are now. I bring this up because back then my first wife and I lived near there, at 19th and Moss, and one evening she suggested we walk down on a mild and cloudless October evening and enjoy some ice cream.
I ordered a dish of Bittersweet Nugget and we settled in at a table. In the midst of some ice cream small talk, she told me she didn't think she wanted to be married to me any longer. At the time, as I remember, the suggestion that we separate seemed hypothetical, but, as it turned out, it wasn't. Two months later we separated and within a year our marriage of five years was over.
I remembered this life changing moment today because after I ate a dinner of miso soup, pork gyozas, and a bowl of red curry udon noodles at Izakaya Meiji Company, I decided to motor from the Whiteaker neighborhood to 19th and Agate in South Eugene and have a dish of Bittersweet Nugget ice cream at Prince Pucklers.
As I entered the shop and as I ordered my ice cream, I wasn't really thinking about that evening when, from my point of view, the union between my first wife and me began its dissolution.
But that conversation came back to me as I walked west on 19th and headed south on Agate toward where the Camry was parked.
For several years, starting in the fall of 1981, I was devastated by that separation and divorce. I can remember bawling; I remember the bitterness; I remember the disorientation, the bursts of anger, how lost I was.
But, tonight, I had no access to those feelings. That all happened forty-one years ago. With the much more dispassionate perspective of being sixty-eight years old and looking back at my twenty-seven/eight year old self, I not only have lost the feelings that persisted for years after our breakup, I also have come to accept it as inevitable, as the right thing to have happened.
Being free of the anger, bitterness, and outrage I felt for so long has been a source of great vitality. Hanging on to all that hurt, hoarding it really, for so many years stilted me. Free of it, I'm much more energetically alive.
I purchased the dish of ice cream because I thought it would taste and feel good after eating a curried soup. I also hadn't eaten Prince Puckler's ice cream for a long, long time.
I didn't expect to have the fall of 1981 rush forward into my 2022 life. I'm glad 1981 came back. It's a relief to be able to experience that time of suffering and despair with a clear mind, a mind free of resentment and of feeling robbed.
It's a relief to know that at some point in the last ten or twenty or more years, I accepted not only the end of our marriage but accepted responsibility for my contributions to its demise.
It's invigorating.
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