What do you want to let go? What do you need to let go? What should you let go?
Take a look at these lyrics to the song, “Let It Go,” from the movie, Frozen.
It’s funny how some distance
Makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me
Can’t get to me at all
It’s time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me,
I’m free!
Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You’ll never see me cry
Here I stand
And here I’ll stay
Let the storm rage on
Your turn. What do you need to do to let go? What will happen if you just . . . let . . . go?
Click here for the full lyrics to “Let it Go.” Music and lyrics composed by the husband-and-wife songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez.
Kathy Myers
Letting Go
We got a Go-Pro for Christmas; one of those tiny video cameras you strap on and film yourself surfing the big ones, or bungie jumping off a bridge. I can’t wait!
…Just kidding of course. My idea of extreme sports is channel surfing Netflix to find rerun episodes of Poirot. And if you ever find my body in a harness strapped to a bungee cord, it’s a homicide.
A better use of such a camera will be to create a digital record for my son, documenting the sentimental value of all our treasured possessions.
When I shuffle off this mortal coil, (my husbands preferred mode of extinction is to be “run over by a beer wagon”) we want our sonny boy to treasure our accumulation of junk just as much as we do.
He must know that the pile of rocks in our yard are from the house where I was born. Can’t get rid of those. The single mismatched tea cup and saucer was a gift from a grateful patient seventeen years ago. Very sweet. And I will have to spend a great deal of time documenting the value of every piece of lumber in my husband’s shop (“Throw that out? Are you crazy! That’s African mahogany!). Children need to be taught that things have value (even if they don’t have a USB port) and that it’s damn hard to let some things go.
When I shared with my son my plan to document our treasures for the inevitable disposition of our estate, he said; “Don’t worry mom, I have dumpster rentals on my contact list.”
What a precious darling. Just for that I won’t show him where we buried the gold.
mcullen Post author
Love your humor. It’s a day-brightener! Oh, maybe that’s the glint of the pot of gold!
IWasHere
Driving, on my way home, I held it together for one more phone call. I called Lulu. She told me about her day and I told her about mine. She was happy. She had a good day. She had a fight with Sadie, her buddy at school, but they apologized and made up before the day was over. We ended the conversation with the usual, “Don’t let the Frostbite bite” and “I love you big” and “I love you even bigger.” I kept driving for another minute after a muffled “goodbye,” because she and her dad were at Roosters for dinner.
I think about the day. It was over. I did it. I did it well! Yes, from the stage lighting to the Corinthian pillars on stage, it was quite a site and quite an event. Yes, I outdid even myself with this one.
Then I thought about what Robin said to me as she bid me farewell in the hotel foyer, waiting for the valet to bring my car around. She was telling me about her son Adam, who said he knew me. She was telling him about the event she was working on, last night at the dinner table. She mentioned my name, to which his immediate response was, “You can’t be talking about My Ida.” “No, Adam,” she responded, “You do not know EVERYBODY in Louisville!” She continues to tell me how he smugly replied, “Her name is Ida. She is from South Africa, pretty eyes and a force to be reckoned with?”. “Yes!” she exclaimed, “That’s the one!” I remember that I liked Adam. We studied Graphic Design together, and have not seen or spoken to each other in more than three years.
Driving in my car and recalling the conversation, I am pondering this one sentence. “A force to be reckoned with.” Am I really that, I wonder. I think about it a little longer and concede. If you asked the team I worked with on this event, (snapshots of the last two days of very long hours, replaying in my mind), if they thought the same, then yes, I concede, I guess I am a force to be reckoned with. I knew what I wanted the end result to look like and yes, I bulldozed my way to making it so, by herding a bunch of ambitious, silver-spoon-in-mouth rookies into cooperating and getting it done. And I got it done.
I realize my offramp is coming up and indicate to take the turn. Is that such a bad thing? Being a ‘force to be reckoned with?” It sounds like it should be. I immediately feel the need to apologize for being so. Why am I so? My mom crosses my mind. It’s her. And in that instant, I know she would be so proud of me today. She would have said something like, “Of course it was a success. Why wouldn’t it be?”
I pass the grocery store and consider stopping off to get wood for a fire. I don’t have my girl tonight. A fire, a glass of wine and quiet time by myself to reflect, always feels like a self-indulgence to me. I realize I am crying. I decide not to stop for the wood and continue on home. It’s been a trying four months. Today is January 8th and I don’t even know when 2015 kicked in.
I pull into my garage and the tears won’t stop. I am now in a full blown ugly cry. I sit in the car for a while hoping to get a grip, but realize I do not want to. I’ve been holding it together and pushing myself to get through ‘just one more day’ for four fucking months!
Sitting in my car for, I’m not sure for how long, I gave myself permission to lose it.
And I did.
I cried.
Hard.
I finally come up for air, and I stop.
I flip down the mirror to my vizor. My face. My pretty eyes. They were sad. Looking at the acne on my forehead, my nose, my cheeks, my chin, I cry quietly again. My eyes are still pretty. Not so much the size, shape or color but what I see in them. I see the determination that others see. I see the strength. I see my mom.
It almost feels good to see the visible scars of the last four months on my face. It means that, yes, it happened.
It happened. Every day of the last four months happened and it was not all in my head. I breathe.I exhale. It is done and I made it.
I turn the ignition off, throw my cigarettes in my purse and get out. Lugging my rolling briefcase, containing two computers and tons of papers, (collated over the last few weeks of planning) my overnight bag, my purse and the flowers I took from the event, I slowly, achingly, make my way to the front door. I am exhausted!
I see the garbage can out front. I am happy that I had the presence of mind to put that out yesterday morning in my rush to leave for the hotel. It was garbage day today. Fuckit. I’ll get the bin in the morning. There’s a package on the front porch. It must be those “Easy Bags” I ordered online (through one of those side bar ads on Facebook) a week ago when I was taking a smoke break at one in the morning from a three-hour-non-stop editing session on the opening video for this event. Something I will regret getting the moment I unpack it, I’m sure.
On the warmer side of my front door finally, I kick off my shoes, search for a vase and make my flowers happy again. Ah, there are three big logs left and I start a fire. I need a drink. Fuck, I am out of wine. My eye catches the bottle of champagne I bought a few weeks ago, when I was out Christmas shopping for the kids with Danny. We were going to have that on New Year’s Eve, after he gave me the first kiss of the year. Yeah, that didn’t happen.
Instead, I stayed up waiting for the clock to strike midnight, wanting nothing more than sleep, hoping to speak to my sister back in South Africa when the clock welcomed the States to 2015. I ended up in front of the fire with a computer and some mindless shit on TV and missing the entire fucking thing by five minutes! I never got to have the champagne. Again, I think, FUCKIT! If now is not the time to celebrate something, nothing in 2015 will be worth popping that cork for. And so, I do, and I let it all go.
mcullen Post author
Powerful writing, IWasHere. I especially like, ” I am now in a full blown ugly cry” and “slowly, achingly, make my way to the front door.” Keep writing. You have the bones of a good story here.