Why Does Beth Need Drums?

O.K., here we go again – part II of my endless search for meaning in my own actions. AKA “why does a forty-something housewife from West Bloomfield buy a drum kit?” So, here’s what I think (now, anyway – see Creative Cross training for what I thought last week): going through a divorce is like growing up and finding out who you are all over again. So, I’m going to go through my second adolescence as a teenager with a garage band.

I asked my mom to get me the drum kit (oh yeah, we’ve got the whole shebang – too bad I don’t know how to play the drums, yet) for my birthday. Without missing a beat, she said “no, no drums”. Sheesh, you’d think I was going to play them at her house. That’s where getting divorced beats being a teenager. I’m a grown up. I have my own house, and I can do what I want in it. And that, I think, is the point.

When you’re married, even in a good marriage, you really can’t just do what you want. And that’s o.k. It’s called compromise, and it’s just plain necessary to avoid bloodshed. In a bad marriage, it’s hard to be who you are. I got to the point where I hardly even asked myself the questions. Who do I want to be? What do I want to do when I grow up (again)? Where do I want to live? How do I want to live? What do I want to do in my house? What do I want to eat? Where do I dream of traveling?

Well, it turns out that I want to be a writer, among other things, when I grow up, which I better had fast because I have big time responsibilities. What I like to eat is just about everything. I want to go to China and the Grand Canyon. And I want to have a house that is a place where the girls and I can be ourselves. Not the kind of ourselves where we leave the cap off the toothpaste and belch at the dinner table, but the kind of ourselves where there are no questions we cannot ask.

I need to show my kids how to ask themselves if they want to be President when they grow up. Or a soap opera star? A mom? A pastry chef? A drummer? A horse trainer? An Elvis impersonator? They need to ask. We all need to ask. If you can’t ask yourself what your dreams are, you have no chance of trying to live them, and no chance of finding out who you are. Like Bloody Mary says in South Pacific “You got to have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”

I stopped asking because I already knew that my marriage was going to keep me from exploring my own potential. I wasn’t an important person in this house, even to me. But now, I can be. I have to be. I have to show my kids how to try things, how to see which ones fit, how to enjoy the ones that don’t anyways, how to play to their strengths, how to rely on my strength. Because it’s all coming back now. The strength of the human imagination lies in dreams, the spirit flies in dreams. Having to pay the bills doesn’t kill that. Having to hide in the shadows of your own life to keep the peace does.

So, I’m dreaming. And I’m doing. And I’m trying the drums.

Rock on.