Portillo's, Persephone, and Pomegranate Juice (Just skip this one, it's long and there is a lot of complaining)

I saw my mother a week ago Saturday. As visits with my mother go it was pretty good. Her only open criticism of me was that she hates my hair colour and style. She did spend a good bit of time bragging to me about how great her friend's daughter is doing which is her attempt at a parental parable to inform me that I am not. For an eight hour visit with her that was getting off pretty easy.

On the way home we stopped at Portillo's. He-weasel had just recently discovered that the Chicago legend had opened an outlet in Merino Valley, California. When we lived in Lake Bluff, Illinois, He-weasel liked to go there at least a couple of times a month. He would always get the Chicago dogs and I got the strawberry spinach salad. At first I was really excited to see a Portillo's in California. It was when I tried to order the strawberry spinach salad that things went wrong. I was told that they had it the first week they were open and that they got rid of it because it is an Illinois thing and that Californians didn't like it. I know that one shouldn't cry over not getting a strawberry and spinach salad but I did. I feel pretty sure that the guy taking my order was stunned by my level of disappointment, I know I was.

I have been feeling the "I want to go home" feeling in the worst way. Why, you so kindly ask? Well, it has been a year since I have last been in Chicago and it has been a year that we have been living in L.A. It is just a week away from the Fourth of July which makes me miss our home in Lake Bluff more than usual and it will soon be the one year anniversary since we lost Monsieur Inkey.

When driving on the freeway away from my mother my mind went to the day that we moved away from L.A. to Chicago. He-weasel had gone to Chicago two weeks before I did. I was left to deal with the movers. My last night in L.A. I spent with my mother. I remember the sense of glee I felt driving away from my mothers house to the airport; I was free. I was leaving L.A. and I never had to come back except for occasional visits.

Well, here we are. We are back. I feel like the Sisyphus of Southern California or perhaps I am more like the perpetual Persephone. I am in a hot Hades that I hate and I can't get out of and I seem stuck in a cycle. Perhaps, I drank the pomegranate juice and those six little sips damned me to a cycle as old as Greek mythology. I want to go home so badly only I don't know where that is. Home is not our place in Valencia. It is not our old house in Lake Bluff. It is not my mother's house. I feel as if I have phantom limb syndrome. I am aching for something I once had and no longer do.

Igor seems to think the reason I am feeling so crap this week, and I am, is that I spent too much time with my mother( eight hours is a long time to be with her) and that I had nothing there to ground me (my mother is not one for keeping food in her refrigerator and/or pantries; nurturing of self or others is not her strong suit) and that there was nothing to sustain me emotionally or even nutritionally, not even a strawberry spinach salad. He believes that when I am with my mother I take on her depression and her sense that everything is bad. Being with her I start to feel like I want to be swallowed up by the earth and just be done with it.

Usually after a visit with my mother I can't feel my heart for several days. Something about being with her makes me feel like I am not able to love or feel love. This time that didn't happen. Instead something unusual happened, for the last week I didn't look depressed. If you saw me you would have never thought I was the slightest bit blue( other than my new Jackie J Crew navy cardigan). I could get up and get dressed and I didn't moan at all about feeling sad. I worked,. I wrote. I took Lily for walks and easily did things I can't usually do when the black dog is visiting. But, underneath the persona of 'everything is alright' I was feeling like total crap. I think that until Friday I fooled He-weasel that I was happy. I told Igor that I could have even fooled him if I had wanted to.
He asked, "But, why would you want to?"
"I know. There is no point. But I could have,"I explained.
"Maybe for a session or two. No longer than that," Igor countered.
"I think I could have," I insisted.
"Don't give yourself too much credit," he joked.
We sat in silence as I imagined what I could have said to assure him that I was happy, happy, happy and as he imagined how he could have seen past my felicitous and false facade.

On my way to Igor's there was a car with an Illinois licence plate. I found myself filled with the desire to roll down my window and ask the driver what made him come here. Why would someone leave Chicago for Beverly Hills? I could not come up with an answer that made sense to me. When I drove down Rodeo it looked even more sterile and devoid of beauty than usual. I saw crowds of summer tourists taking photographs of stores.

"What are they thinking?", I asked Igor in a state of outrage. "They are on vacation and they chose to come here. These are just stores! What are they thinking?" I pleaded.

"They are hypnotised", Igor explained, "This is Beverly Hills. They are hypnotised by that."
Igor went into story telling mode, "You know the Star Tours that drives around showing the tourists the stars homes?"

"I do", I had seen the double decker bus filled with touri with their heads turned towards the heavens of the Hollywood sign just last week.

"Well, the other day when I was on my way home, in my car, the driver of a Star Tours bus asked me to roll down my window. I did. He asked me if I was an actor. I said no. He asked me if I was a director and I said no and that was when he drove away."

"That", I told Igor, "is the danger of being a beautiful person." I looked at Igor with fresh eyes and I could see how someone might think he is an actor. There is a distinguished air about him that makes John Forsythe look like a regular Joe.

"I should have told him that I was so as to keep them in their hypnosis." He laughed.

"Why are you here?" I laughed and yet I wondered what the real reason was. Even though he looks like an actor I know no one who seems less impressed by all that glitters.

"I come here because I get to see you." Igor offered.

"Poor you, " I laughed, as it seemed an inadequate reason to be in L.A, then quickly changed the subject.

"I just want to go home." I said, my voice filled with emotion and my fingers grabbed for two tissues.

"I am so tired of being in limbo. During the infertility treatment I had to deal with so much uncertainty. I am not a person who likes uncertainty. I hate the expression 'play it by ear' and 'let's wait and see'. I am tired of ambiguity and uncertainty. I just want to go home ." I said the last phrase like an overtired child.

I don't know what Igor said after that. I couldn't take in his words. He seemed to keep bringing it back to my mother and wondering what happened that my mother was the kind of negative and sinking feminine that could blind me to the good in my life. I interrupted him, " I just don't think I can force myself to get on the freeway. I can't do it. I can't make myself go back to Valencia. But, then where would I go?" I asked Igor half hoping he had an answer. He didn't.

In less than a week our lease is up and we are no closer to having a new home. Truth be told we quit looking. It was just too hard. Looking for a house wasn't just looking for a house it was looking for a life, a long term plan, a future and a commitment. Every time we looked I felt a new compassion for confirmed bachelors and how they must feel when on dates. Each house I have looked at has brought fear, terror and profound feelings of "I am just not that into you." Every viewing has been a one night stand that has brought me no closer to wanting to commit. I take the numbers, I show false interest, I make empty promises and then I never call. Realtors call me like a gal who has never read "The Rules".

We are in a state of denial and limbo. The denial is that if we don't talk to the leasing office we will not have to hear that our rent is going to go way up if we chose to stay month to month and /or that month to month is not an option and that we have to sign another lease. The limbo is that what we really want is for another position like He-weasel's to open up in another part of the country and we keep hoping and waiting to see if anything has opened up. As of today the only places where openings for his position are in Florida, Texas and New Jersey which is why we are still here. When I told Igor about the three states with openings he laughed, "So, there are places worse than here?"
"I wouldn't say worse."

I left the session unsure where to go. I couldn't go back to Valencia. So I went to the mall and tried to buy somethings to make myself feel better. I bought another Jackie cardigan and tank. I walked around J Crew for 30 minutes desperate to find something else to buy. I moved onto Bloomingdales and bought the Jo Malone Orange Blossom body cream. Neither purchase helped in the least and so I quit trying to buy my way into happiness. I managed to get on the freeway and head back to Valencia even as everything in me was telling me to go home, wherever that is.