A Good Good-Bye

Mac spent the summer as lead horse-wrangler at a ranch in Colorado. 

"I'm glad she's gone." I told myself. "I am happy she left."

This is how I rationalized not having her home during the summer. Our 21-year-old daughter had found herself a job in Colorado as a horse wrangler. She would be home for only three days the entire summer, the rest taken up by a summer job out West, then her usual gig at the Dutchess County Fair as an animal handler for friends in the Fish and Game pavilion. 

But I said, good. I was OK with it. 

After all, she is a senior this upcoming year. Over the course of her college career, she's spent less and less time at home. Spring break that freshman year in Costa Rica. Last year she spent eight weeks at her school's biological field station, required coursework for Environmental Conservation Biology majors. She learned to identify every tree in NYS, the intricate life cycles of mosses, and theorized about how temperature effects snapping turtle eggs. She was in her element. How do you begrudge her that?

I don't. I am happy for her. She most definitely makes the most of her life and the opportunities that arise. When I comment on her perhaps overdoing it, her answer is that she takes after me. OK. I'll give her that.

So, while I am happy for her (if I say it often enough, will it be true? hahaha!) I'm not saying I don't miss her. Don't get me started on the fact that 18 years is not enough time to spend with your kids, especially those of them we really like.

No. I miss her terribly. 

We enjoy each other's company. We finish each other's sentences. We text and like each other's posts on FB and Instagram even when we're sitting in the same room!

For nearly two years, she texted me good morning and good night with only a missed text if she had no cell coverage like at Cranberry Lake. After that, the cycle was broken. She now only texts on occasion. Not nearly as regularly and I was OK with that too.

While she was in Colorado, we PM'd each other much more frequently. Nearly every day, actually. She shared this new life she was living with me. She PM'd me when she got to ride a new horse. When she learned to drive a horse-drawn wagon. When she got tips. That she got food poisoning in Denver and had to keep pulling off the rode to throw up on her three-hour drive back to the ranch. That she was lonely. That she loved Steamboat Springs. And asked if she took this job again after she graduated from school, a full time job where she was paid well and they provided her housing, would that count as having a job upon graduating? "Hell yeah!" I wrote her!

And that's when it struck me.

For the first time in my life, someone left me and it was OK. I wasn't abandoned. She did not abandon me. She was still there for me. And (how many parents can say this?) I know she relied on me being there for her too. She sought me out. Without obligations, she came to me. She wanted me. On that long drive while she was sick to her stomach, she wanted her mommy.

When I had my kids, I felt that. That feeling of being whole, feeling wanted, feeling needed and vice-versa. As they grew up, I wondered how much they really liked me, you know, verses needed their mommy. But, I never really wondered because it was evident in the fact that both kids would plop themselves down on my bed when they got home from school and tell me about their day. It was obvious when Macallan would hang out with her boyfriend on the couch in the living while we all watched TV. It was apparent when my son and his friends would keep me company in the kitchen, sitting on the floor, in my way, as I made them snacks, made dinner or some dessert. "Can I help you with anything, Mrs. Durkin?" one of Markham's friends is known to ask just about every time he comes over. But you still wonder when the bottom will fall out and they go months without seeing you or calling.

I think about how little time I spent with my parents growing up. And how much they must have worried when I went off to college. And they should have worried. God knows I did plenty to make them scared for me...I have no idea how I survived the '80's!

And here I am. With a high school senior and senior in college to show for it.

The Big Aha!
And this summer, when Macallan was 3,000 miles away, I realized something significant. I felt something I had never felt before. Even though she was gone, she never truly left me.

Sounds so simple right? But coming from a place of abandonment, I have never felt that before. Because, unlike with Peter, for most of our life together, I felt like whenever he would go fishing or hunting, he was going because he didn't want to be with me. I thought he did it to get away from me. But I've slowly realized, that's not the case. For Peter, fishing is a very important outlet, something he had to do, like with me and writing. If he didn't do it, he would explode. I didn't get that until recently. I didn't know.

Can you imagine, I'm 50+ years old, Peter and I will celebrate our 30th Wedding Anniversary next month, and it's only starting to sinking in? Maybe one day, on our 50th Wedding Anniversary, maybe then, I'll believe he won't leave me, but for now, the verdict is still out...

But with Macallan this summer, it was clear. It was like a loud resounding bell. She may be away, which is something I think I better get used to, but she loves me and will always love me. I'm her mom, after all and I'd like to think I've earned that. But I also can't tell you how profoundly I felt that love when I realized how much I meant to her.

I believe abandonment issues are the core of my being. A personality trait for me. A quirky accent. A swagger. A signature smirk that makes me, me.

But this summer, with Macallan's help, this abandoned daughter came full circle. With the unwavering conviction of my own daughter's love, I came that much closer to ridding myself of this burden, this abandonment albatross.

I truly never thought I'd be saying this, but I really am so glad she left. It certainly was a good, good-bye.

Legacy of Jim Harrison

Fly-Fishing is a passion, the wilderness is his home. 

I didn't know him. I had never met him. Peter recommended him to me when we were first married. I think Peter is his biggest fan.

This morning, I got a text from Peter. Jim Harrison died. And throughout the day we mourned as the news sunk in.


I wasn't really sure why a stranger's death affected me so greatly. Throughout the years, I'd have to say, Jim Harrison's writing was always a favorite of Peter's. Come birthday or Christmas, Peter was happy, and quite honestly, expected Harrison's latest book as one of his presents. 


We were tickled that he appeared on Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" because this amazing writer who shared Peter's love for the outdoors, for hunting and fishing and was a rare guy's guy, also, like Peter, loved to cook. "There will be no more like him." is what Anthony Bourdain said after learning of his passing. He called Harrison a friend, but the episode was an awkward one where Bourdain, a somewhat cocky, certainly self-confident chef turned TV personality, was humbled in the old man's presence. Rightly so. Unfortunately, Harrison came off as odd and gruff. What, you couldn't find a clip where he said something clever or you got a decent shot of him? I guess not. 


Hey, but he can't write like that and not be cool, am I right? A true man's man, he rebuked being called macho. According to Harrison, he was born that way. A writer's writer, he died while penning a poem, pen still in hand. Harrison had published more than 35 books of poetry, essays, a cookbook, novels and novellas, plus wine reviews, articles and essays. But he had to be best known for adapting several of his books into screenplays, although none translated on-screen as powerfully as they did as written word. Even he would agree to that. The Obituaries written about him credit "Legends of the Fall" with making Brad Pitt. He was so chummy with Jack Nicholson that Jack, apparently gave him $15,000 so that Harrison could finish the book. 'No more like him indeed.' There are few men with his talent for verbiage, his passion for the wilds and his brutally honest, achingly insightful view of flawed, haunted men, and the women who love them...and no one who lived, drank, nor ate so well.


One of his friends attributes his death to perhaps Harrison missing his wife of 55 years who had died in the Fall. While the news articles spoke of his death, none had given a cause, yet all stated his wife's death several months ago as an important fact in Harrison's life's story.


I love that. Particularly since his characters never seemed to be able to keep their wives. As a result, Peter and I thought he must be like his characters, divorced, alone, bitter, and abusive to himself and those around him. Seems not to be the case.

Peter wondering what the hell he was doing married to me
as he looked out at the vineyards at Chateauneuf du Pape


What struck me as I read the obituaries and found articles written by him, as well as, those written about him, were the many similarities, no, not between him and Hemingway, or him and Faulkner, but him and Peter and me. On our honeymoon, Peter and I had one hell of a blow-out, drag-out fight at the vineyards of the Pope. I have long forgotten what it was about, but I remember the gorgeous setting and even through my rage and tears, I managed to take a poignant photo of Peter thinking about our long life ahead, red wine in hand. We tell this story minus the bit about our fighting because the vineyards were closed, it was late October. We disembarked from a train from Paris and wandered around this quaint village until we found a small bar that happened to be open. There were only a few other people, all locals, sitting indoors. Because we were in the middle of a fight that I would not let go, we sat ourselves in the back patio overlooking the vines and in the distance the mound where the Pope's castle had been. The bartender had to open a trap door and go into the cellar to fetch the wine. With each pitcher we finished, he'd have to disappear for a few minutes in order to draw from the cask. The wine, something we didn't drink much of at the time, was amazing. We've been hooked on Chateau Neuf du Pape ever since. Afterward, we would notice it in books and movies, including the mention of this particular wine in Jim Harrison's obits. (His review of wines for a wine merchant )

Our beloved English Setter, Oz

Jim Harrison was a man Peter would have loved to have met, had a drink with while listening and sharing hunting and fishing stories. Harrison's love of the outdoors, need to be surrounded by nature, and his insights on the fragility of the male ego resonates with Peter. Always the dreamer, Peter thought of an idea for a TV show where he would travel the world fly fishing and hunting with men like Jim Harrison. Now that would have made a great show!


 I pointed out to Peter that Harrison had a beloved English Setter. Peter said he knew he was a bird hunter, of course he had a Setter. But he didn't just have hunting dogs, another commonality, the man who wrote, "Wolf" that he later adapted into a screenplay starring Jack Nicholson (don't bother, it's awful) would most certainly not just own dogs, but be really into them. In one interview he did for Outside magazinehttp://www.outsideonline.com/1893296/last-lion, he said how he was content killing off rattle snakes one by one as they intruded on his life. But after a snake bit his English Setter, it was war. I waged a war of sorts against the guy who killed our English Setter as well. I know the feeling. Gotta love a guy who says, "Every day of the year, the first thing I do after breakfast is take the dogs for a walk. They absolutely depend on it. But it’s also what’s best for me.” Our pets are distractions for me and yet, I can't really go a day without them.


He and I were compared to Hemingway. As a college senior majoring in English Lit., I was flattered, Jim Harrison was not. Peter, who is better read than I am, admired the understanding of nature's draw that writers like Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, and Peter Mathiessen brought to their pieces. You knew they understood fly fishing, hunting, and their connection to nature. All the rest of us were lucky that they were able to express their wilderness experiences in words. As Harrison put it, he knew his place, knew with his writing that he could preserve and share this intimate knowledge. He had a niche and he took his calling very seriously.


Several obits quote him as saying that “My characters aren’t from the urban dream-coasts,” he told the Paris Review in 1986. “A man is not a foreman on a dam project because he wants to be macho. That’s his job, a job he’s evolved into." I often think that about Peter. All the things he does and does well, he's evolved to do. 

 And that's how Jim Harrison would have told it. Many writers, men and women, grew up reading male wordsmiths, mainly because they are the ones published most often. I tend to think that most male writers can't write as women. But after reading Harrison's "Dalva" and "The Woman Lit By Fireflies" I see that isn't true. 


Accompanying Peter, I get to natural wonders few ever get see.

I aspire to capture my genre as effortlessly, willingly, and with such intrinsic insight that you are catapulted into the world I've created. I want to be a writer so adept that I can share every aspect with you. After exploring how profoundly sad I feel at the loss of this exquisite writer, I understand that I too have a calling. I am lucky enough to have a glimpse into the world of this type of man and I'm charged with the task of sharing him with you. 


If I wondered what I should write, what my expertise is, it is that I've evolved to do this. Over the course of my seemingly many past lives, as a bushman, as a medieval servant, a gypsy and a Victorian woman, I'm convinced my place today is here behind this computer, conveying exploits of a man with a rare and precious gift. I am here to document a life well-lived, not that of Jim Harrison, of course, but of a man like him. Like his character in "Woman Lit by Fireflies" I'm certain that is what sets my soul on fire and will set my writing free. 


We lost a writer of exception, a man of the wilderness, a gourmand, a wine enthusiast, and a devoted husband, father, grandfather and I'm sure a most loyal friend. RIP Jim Harrison. May your words, spirit, and passion for the outdoors live on in your many fans, like Peter and me, who admire you.