After Corey and I landed in Arizona, we pitched a tent in the back yard of the massage school Corey planned on attending. We showered, naked, outside using the showers attached to the back of the school. We heard our stomachs grumble and realized we hadn't had a bite since we pulled off I 40 for some ice cream several hours before. So, we took the advice of the school founder, Joe Rongo, and headed up Mingus Mountain for a dinner in Jerome at the Haunted Hamburger. Three days in a tent later, I was packing up my very small carry-on in the back of a mini-bus to take the trip down to Phoenix. I flew home as planned and lived in Illinois, away from Corey for one month while he started his massage therapy training.
On October 2, 2007, I was driving a loaded down 1995 Buick LeSabre with my mother in the passenger seat. She and I took the same road trip to Arizona that Corey and I had traveled one month prior. I had asked her to accompany me on this venture so that I would have someone to talk to and share with the driving. I knew it would be a challenge, my mother and I have always had a butt-heads relationship, but we still loved each other enough to go on a road trip. So I took a chance.
It was outside of Oklahoma City on the second day of our trip that I shared with her my desire to start a family out in Arizona. As expected, she was not congratulatory or supportive initially. "I want to see my grand kids, Rachael!" was her reaction. To her, the idea of me wanting to start our family a thousand miles away was in some way a jab at her, personally. It wasn't about her, it was about me and my desires for what I wanted in my own family.
I had intentionally felt lead to start a family outside the peering eye of my family, including the in-laws. I wanted Corey and myself to begin our parenting with our own views, values and habits, not with people telling us what we should or shouldn't do. I knew that a physical separation was needed for me to feel secure with becoming a parent. It wasn't in any way a personal stab at my mother, or mother-in-law or anyone else. It had to do more with me feeling freer outside the confines of familial closeness.
After a few miles, my mom came around, (as usual, her first reaction is just that, a reaction, then she ponders and has a new perspective. It's her process and I understood that.) She said to me, "Well, when you do have your first child, I want to come out and help for a month or so. Do your laundry, cook for you, clean your house, that sort of thing...If that's okay with you and Corey." There it is, the moment of compassion and understanding. I agreed that I would indeed let her be my maid after having a baby, no contest there.
Our trip ended at our new residence a day and a half later. Corey and I set up shop sharing a home with a single, forty-something woman artist and her boyfriend. We lived in a separate part of the house with two rooms and a bathroom. We shared a kitchen and living space. Corey had found a job at the local bakery making bread early in the morning. He had also started his massage training and absolutely loved it. It turned out to be exactly what he had been searching for.
My mother left after a few days, taking the same bus and flight I had taken one month earlier, and Corey and I were finally left on our own in the desert. This time in my life became a beacon of light and total darkness at the same time. I found a job at Maurice's working in the store room, preparing new merchandise for the floor. It didn't provide enough hours, so I soon had to find another part-time job. I ended up working as a teacher's aid at a k-8 school in the next town over. I worked primarily with the Hispanic children who needed extra help. This job was my ray of light. I grew so close with the girls I worked with that they started coming in to see me at my cubby whenever they could. They would always ask me if I wanted to have kids, and I always told them, "yes, but not right now."
Meanwhile, Corey had found another, better paying job. Two, sometimes three days a week after he got out of massage class each day he would drive to Sedona to wait tables at a brand new Mexican Resturaunt. This was the beginning of my darkness. Corey would go to class all day, learning amazing new things about the human body, about touch, about communication, and most importantly, getting massaged everyday. Then, he would leave class and drive to Sedona where he worked until late, usually it was 10 before he came home. I spent all day away from him, and life became miserable. Had I left all of my family and friends behind in Illinois so that I could come out to Arizona and be ignored???
A sadness, almost depression sunk in. I tried to take action by getting yet another job as a waitress. I thought, "why spend all night after school waiting for Corey to get home? Why not make money in the meantime?" So I waited tables in Jerome two days a week. If I thought this would help me get more friends (because the closest thing I had to friends were the young sixth-graders I worked with), I was wrong. The women who worked at the bistro were all bitter man-hating femministas. Okay, not all of them, but most of the ones I worked with had negative relationships with men. One was getting divorced, one had given up on men, one had no desired to be with a man and one was in a perfectly good relationship with her own reflection. It did not help me feel more loving or more close to my husband, which is what I truly wanted. And I knew that a baby in our future would only complicate things more.
So, my desire for starting a family began to fade. There was so much we still needed to accomplish before making that leap. We needed to reconnect, not to mention we needed our own space, not roommates. We needed our own bed to sleep in, for heaven's sakes, not someone else's loaned bed. It was also during this dark time that our roommates started seeing a counselor for their own relationship problems. Living without Corey most days and seeing our roommates not getting along only fueled my feelings of loneliness and despair.
How would I ever recover? What would it take to get Corey to be able to spend time with me? How long should I endure this torture before speaking up? A thought occurred to me at one of my lowest points, "Why can't I go to massage school?" I shared this with Corey and the people at the massage school in late January, 2008. I wanted to know what Corey knew. I wanted to have friends and get massaged too. Why not?
And then, the light became brighter...
Corey came home from massage school one day in February with a message from Joe Rongo. "Joe told me to invite you to a pregnancy massage class this weekend," he said.
"But I'm not a massage therapist yet," I replied.
"I know, but Joe thinks you might benefit from it."
He will never fathom just how right he was.
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