Driftwood Chapter 1

Driftwood

Authored by Beth Mitchum

List Price: $15.95

6" x 9" (15.24 x 22.86 cm) 

Black & White on Cream paper

194 pages

ISBN-13: 978-1438294940

ISBN-10: 1438294948

BISAC: Fiction / Lesbian

A chance encounter on the beach launches Rita on a journey of introspection and self-exploration. Realizing that there is something missing in her life and in her marriage of convenience, Rita begins to ask honest questions about herself, her husband, and her life choices. Beth, a woman who is quite accustomed to looking past the surface, challenges Rita to look beyond the status quo to find out what it is that she truly wants from life. When she does, Rita is startled to find that very little of what she formerly called her “life” reflects her own desires. She discovers that she has been sleepwalking through her life for years. When Rita awakens suddenly in the midst of her illusory world, she finds that she is virtually a stranger there.

Rita’s transformation leads her to places she never expected to go, towards a love and a life she never thought she’d find. Her journey has inspired readers to take their own journeys towards their true selves. You hold a book in your hand that will leave you changed in some way. Embrace transformation and allow the journey to take you where it will. Caterpillars don’t try to change into butterflies; it just happens on its own accord when the right time arrives. While our journeys may be different, we all follow the same types of paths to get to where we need to be—to find our way back to our core being and our life’s purpose. 

Driftwood is a book about transformation. It tells the story of Rita Capri, a woman who feels compelled to set sail into uncharted waters in the midst of her own stormy sea of a life. Leaving a dissatisfying marriage of convenience was only the beginning of her life's journey into more authentic and honest living. She woke up from her life of sleepwalking to find that she had the power to choose how she lived, who she loved, and what she could do to build her own life in a new way. This is a story about one woman, but it offers a glimpse into how each of us can and does make our own decisions about how we live, even if that choice involves acquiescence to societal and cultural expectations rather than choices based on our own dreams and desires.

Driftwood

Chapter 1

I knew from the moment I spotted her on the beach that my life would never be the same. I don’t know what it was exactly that drew my attention to her. Yet I knew instinctively that she was it—the catalyst. I was forever changed before the first “hello.”

I had just finished washing dishes in my cottage on the Oregon coast. It was September, and my husband and I were taking the first vacation he had managed to steal away from his interminable caseload. Paul was a successful lawyer. I was his wife. I had been begging him all year to take me to the beach for a change of scenery. Out of self-preservation, he finally arranged it. He had tried initially to convince me to go by myself, but I refused. I wanted my husband by my side. I didn’t want to travel alone, like a woman who didn’t have a man who cared for her. It wasn’t long, however, until I began wishing I had left him behind.

It was on the second evening of our vacation that I found myself walking alone on the beach. The summer crowds had dwindled away, so I was able to amble along without running into more than a dozen people. I assumed they were mostly local residents and perhaps a few visitors taking advantage of the off-season to spend a peaceful week at Cannon Beach.

As I walked on the loose sand, my gaze took in the waves crashing against the dark rocks that lay scattered along the shore. Huge rocks that reminded me of giant toys left behind by titanic gods of another world. Their size amazed me. Their geologic history intrigued me. As I surveyed the scene, it was hard to tell which was the stronger of the two elements. I knew that water had the ability to wear away the hard, solid surface. Yet as the powerful waves slammed into the rocks, they were instantly transformed into mere saline droplets. Watching this interplay of water and rock, I felt as though the rocks were my heart and the waves my emotions. Feeling a slight chill in these thoughts, I pulled my windbreaker close around me as I walked in the direction of Haystack Rock, the largest remnant of volcanic expulsions found at this particular point along the shore.

I came upon her at a particularly isolated section of the beach. She was sitting atop one of the many logs that had washed up on the shore. She herself looked nearly as weathered and battered as the wood upon which she was perched. Her long indigo hair was flipping wildly in the ocean breeze, snaking around the acoustic guitar cradled in her arms. She was wearing a navy blue T-shirt and a pair of faded and tattered blue jeans. Her feet were bare, although I noticed an incongruently new pair of blue Birkenstock sandals next to where she was seated.

It was her silhouette that first caught my attention. She was playing her guitar and singing passionately to the waves, though I could hear nothing above the sound of the roaring wind and crashing waves. Desiring to hear her voice, I ventured closer, hoping she wouldn’t stop her performance before I could get near enough to hear her singing. I approached from the rear, for I had the distinct impression that she wouldn’t appreciate having an audience.

When I got within hearing range, I was delighted to find that her voice was rich and mellow, like a vintage red wine, smooth and silky, and just a tad sweet. I inhaled the melodic bouquet, swishing the sounds around in my head. Her guitar sounded full and sensuous, its tones creating resonance with the emotions in my heart. By the time she finished her song, I was almost close enough to reach out and touch her, but I didn’t. Instead I waited breathlessly for the music to begin again. When it did, I eased myself into a sitting position on a nearby log.

I had seated myself slightly to the right of her. Hopefully far enough behind her that she wouldn’t notice me, yet close enough to watch her marvelously talented hands. She was playing an intricate tune on her guitar, her trained fingers finding just the right spots on the neck of her instrument. Her right hand deftly picking out the melody in a way that made me feel as though she were making love to her guitar, rather than merely playing it. I strained to understand the words that were falling from her lips.

Things have changed; I’ve lost my way.

The skies I used to see have faded into gray.

Day by day, I’ve fallen back.

Memories of my yesteryear have thrown me off the track.

Looking ahead to the morning sun.

Trying to stop myself from being on the run.

Life is not as I wanted it to be.

I’ve become someone who is not really me.

Choices are simple, as long as they’re not mine.

Answers are easy, but changing takes up time.

I can never face tomorrow from the standpoint of today.

Goals I want to reach are a million miles away.

Letting go of the days gone by.

Praying that the veil will fall from my eyes.

I’m going to find that road again.

It may take time and just a little bit of pain.

Choices are simple, as long as they’re not mine.

Answers are easy, but changing takes up time.

I can never face tomorrow from the standpoint of today.

Goals I want to reach, they seem a million miles away.

She followed a passionate repetition of the chorus with more instrumentation then turned her head to look at me. She gave me a polite and somewhat shy smile. Her eyes were guarded, as though she were unsure what to do next. I half expected her to get up and walk away, but she didn’t. Instead she turned her gaze upon the ocean while she sat there hugging her guitar. Then she turned back towards me. “You live around here?”

Her speaking voice was nearly as rich and hypnotic as her singing voice. After having been silent for so long, I managed to whisper hoarsely, “I, no, I don’t. I mean…“ As my voice warmed to the task of communicating, I managed to continue in a normal tone, “Well, actually I do own a house here, but I don’t get to come very often.”

She started to smile, but instead knitted her brows and said, “Where do you normally live?”

“Portland. My husband and I are on vacation.” 

From the moment the words escaped my lips, I knew I had said something that displeased her. I searched my mind trying to figure out what it was that had painted such a disappointed look on her face. Was it that I was on vacation? Was it that I was from Portland? What was she thinking?

All she said was, “Oh, I see.” Then she turned away from me to look out towards the horizon again, as though she had ended the conversation and was letting me know that I was free to go at any time.

“Do you?” I asked quietly, half to myself, not expecting her to hear my words.

She looked back at me with a puzzled expression. “I’m sorry. Do I what?”

I stood up to leave, but decided to repeat the question, since she had asked. I looked into her eyes. “Do you see?”

She gave her head a brief shake. “I think you lost me there.” She looked at me with curiosity, as though I were a quaint little circus sideshow few people would pay to see.

I turned my gaze towards the ocean, trying to avoid her bemused look. “I told you I was from Portland, and that my husband and I were vacationing here. Then you said, ‘Oh, I see,’ as though you had concluded something about me from that information. I just wondered what it was you had decided about me.”

She shrugged then raised one hand in bewilderment. “I think I was just trying to be polite. I don’t go in for small talk much. You’ll have to excuse me.”

I laughed at the look of discomfort on her face. “I’m sorry. I’m behaving rather oddly, aren’t I? I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I was just curious about what you meant by ‘Oh, I see.’ Call me vain, if you will, but I wanted to know what it was you were envisioning. Were you really learning something about me? Were you finding hidden meaning in my words? Never mind. I don’t have the foggiest idea what’s come over me. I’m not usually like this.”

“Not a problem.” She got up and slipped her sandals on, as though she were about to leave.

“Don’t go!”

She frowned at me and cocked her head to one side. “Are you all right? Do you need help? I mean do you need someone to talk to or something?”

“No! I mean, yes, I’m all right. No, I don’t need anyone to talk to.” I paused and took stock of the thoughts and emotions that were violently colliding inside me. “Well, yes, perhaps I do need someone to talk to. Do you have a minute? I could buy you a latte, if you’d like.”

She smiled at me and shook her head. “I’ll pass on the latte. I’d be up all night if I drank one now.”

“Okay, so how about some frozen yogurt?”

She laughed. “Okay, frozen yogurt it is.” Using the strap that was attached to it, she slung her guitar onto her back and gestured for me to lead the way.

I leaped up, brushed the sand from my knit slacks, and headed up the beach towards town. I waited for her to catch up with me, so we could walk side by side. “I suppose you think I’m completely insane by now. I’m not usually like this. I didn’t think I needed to talk to anyone. Then suddenly I realized that was exactly what I needed.”

“And who better to talk to than a stranger playing her guitar on the beach, right?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it in that way. Am I being weird? It’s just that I saw you out there on the log, and I felt compelled to get close enough to hear you. I knew you must have a magnificent alto voice.”

She smiled at me and shook her head again. “I’m a contralto. Sorry if I disappointed you.”

“What disappointment? You do have a magnificent voice! It sounds even better than I expected.”

“Thanks.”

“Have you been playing long?”

“About twenty years now.”

“Heavens! How old are you?”

“Thirty-three, I think.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t pay much attention to time. What year is this? 1997, right?”

I nodded, so she continued. “Then yes, I’m thirty-three, and I’ve been playing and singing for twenty years now.”

“Gracious. No wonder you’re so good at it. I can’t imagine doing anything for twenty years.”

“Not even being married?” Her nonchalant glance was like a blow to the side of my brain. 

I stopped walking and looked at her intently. “What an odd question.”

She stopped walking too, stuffed one hand in the pocket of her jeans, and looked down at the sand, as though trying to avoid my gaze. “Sorry. I say odd things sometimes.”

I looked down at her feet. She was lazily etching an arc in the sand with her right foot. It looked to me like a smile, a mocking smile. “I don’t know that I can imagine being married for twenty years, now that you mention it.”

Her gaze returned to my face. “How long have you been married?”

“Fifteen years this past June.”

She smiled somewhat ruefully at me. “Then you’d better start figuring out what you’d rather be doing because you’re running out of time.”

I shook my head and stared at her even more intently. “You’re making my head hurt.”

She laughed a bit. “Sorry. I’ve been known to do that to people at times.”

“Make their heads hurt?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. I don’t try to do it. It just sort of happens. I listen to what people say and try to hear the meaning behind their words before I respond. Somehow that comes out in a way that makes people uncomfortable. It isn’t a conscious thing. I don’t think I could do it if I were consciously trying. I just state what I perceive to be the obvious. Only it usually isn’t all that obvious to anyone else.”

I turned and looked back at the ocean. “But you’re right. I never voiced it to myself or anyone else, but I can’t imagine being married to Paul for twenty years. Yet it has almost happened without my being aware of it.”

She shrugged. “Time gets away from us all.”

“Yes,” I said sadly, “I suppose it does.”

We started walking again towards the ice cream shop. I couldn’t put the thought out of my head that I had been married for over fifteen years. The worst part was that I really didn’t like the idea of being married to Paul for that long. It wasn’t that the reality of it was so bad. We got along well enough. Too well really. We seldom fought, which I sometimes viewed as being an indication that we had a good relationship. In my rare moments of dissatisfaction, however, I knew that we seldom fought because we seldom saw each other. He was always at work. I was always making the social rounds, playing the part of the politically correct wife, who was saving the world through her volunteer work. Most of the time, Paul and I were little more than roommates.

“Are you married?” I asked abruptly.

She laughed and shook her head, her eyes dancing with mischief. “Oh no. They don’t let my kind marry, and I wouldn’t marry if they did.”

“What do you mean, ‘your kind?’”

“Lesbians.” She let the word roll off her tongue for dramatic effect. “We’re not allowed to marry in a legal sense. Sure, we can have some sort of religious ceremony if we know a sympathetic pastor, but we haven’t yet been given the privilege of legal matrimony. That’s one of the ‘special rights’ political conservatives are paranoid about granting to us. They’re afraid we’ll poison society with our perverted love.” She rolled her eyes in derision then looked at me from the side to see how I was taking this information.

“I see.”

She laughed. “That’s fair enough. I’ve just given you my first self-revelatory remark, and you gave me the same response I gave you. The summing up of an entire life, filled with complications and intricacies, into a single stereotype—lesbian radical. If we’re going to sit down and have a heart to heart talk, then I should confess that I was probably writing you off as a yuppie heterosexist woman who lives to please men. An unfair judgment, no doubt, but it’s really difficult when you first meet someone. Humans seem to have a terrible need to categorize everything. You say one thing to me about who you are, and I automatically stick you in the yuppie het woman slot and dismiss you as uninteresting.”

“Your honesty is rather unnerving. Are you always this candid, or did my blithering introduction set the pace for the rest of this conversation?”

“I’m usually this honest, though I have to admit that your initial response to my cursory dismissal immediately removed you from the ‘uninteresting’ category.”

“So how do I get out of the heterosexist category? I consider myself heterosexual, but not heterosexist. I do have some gay friends back in Portland.”

She smiled and looked me boldly in the eyes. “Let me kiss you right here in public.”

“What?”

She bent over laughing, trying hard to keep her guitar strap from slipping off her shoulder. “That was a joke. I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist.”

I tried to act as though this woman weren’t making me feel terribly uncomfortable. “You know, you don’t really look like a lesbian radical.”

“No? What does one look like then?”

“Most of the ones I’ve known have really short haircuts and multiple body piercings.”

“Yeah, well, me too, but I’m not really a radical. That was just the label I figured you would stick on me. I’m just a lesbian who likes to stay separate from everyone, not just men. I personally don’t care right now that gays can’t get married because I wouldn’t want to lie to my lover or myself. Mind you, I don’t think it’s fair that I don’t have the right to marry a person of my choosing, whatever the gender, but I don’t think marriage is the right choice for my life. I don’t feel that it would be honest for me to take vows of ‘until death do us part.’ How can I know whether I will love the same person twenty years from now? I don’t even know where I’ll be two months from now. I may be backpacking across Europe or kayaking along the Alaskan coast. How can I say to a lover ‘I’ll stay beside you forever and always?’”

“But couldn’t you do those things with your lover?”

“I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t ever have a lover, or that I don’t ever have a traveling companion. It’s just that it isn’t usually the same person year after year. Relationships bottom out, and I’m ready to move on or they tire of traveling. There’s too much to see in this world to get stuck in one place, working nine to five, day in and day out, just to make house payments.”

“How do you live? What do you use for money?”

“I sleep in the camper on my truck.”

I felt my eyebrows rise up on my face. “You mean you’re homeless?”

“Now don’t look at me like that. And don’t even think about making me into an object of pity. I’m not homeless. I just don’t own a stationary home.”

“A drifter.”

Her blue eyes turned to slate as she looked at me. “Yeah, okay, I’m a drifter. That’s something you do by choice. Homeless people aren’t generally homeless by choice. I work for a while in one town—doing odd jobs, waiting tables, or playing gigs, if I’m lucky. Then I move on to another place I’ve always wanted to see.”

“Like where?”

“Anywhere I haven’t been.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Isn’t what dangerous?”

“Living in your truck.”

“Not any more than living in your house. I usually stop in a state park or private campground. Then I stay a few days, weeks, or several months, depending on whether I like the place. I’m safe enough. I’m not sleeping on the streets.”

“What about bathing?”

“Campgrounds usually have showers.”

“Oh. Well, what about food?”

“What do you mean?”

“How do you eat?”

“With two hands, the same way I make love.”

The look she gave me startled me. It was both seductive and innocently playful. I stopped walking again and turned to face her. “Are you trying to offend me?”

“Why? Are you offended because I said that?” Her expression changed quickly to one of guarded passivity.

“No, it’s just that, it seemed like— Oh never mind.” We started walking again then stopped at the street corner to wait for a line of cars to pass. When the traffic was clear, we continued up the street.

“If you want to know how I cook, I told you. I have a pick-up truck with a camper. It has a bed and a stove in it. I even have a little television. Why is it that when elderly people do this, they call it retirement? But when I do it, it’s called drifting.”

“Because when they do it they’ve already lived their life, and now it’s over, and, and... that doesn’t make any sense to me either. Don’t look at me that way! I’m perfectly aware that what I just said was utterly ridiculous.”

She looked at me with an enigmatic smile. I had no idea what she was thinking at the time, but I would have emptied my bank account to find out what it was. I opened the door to the ice cream shop and walked in. My blue-jean clad companion followed me inside, still smiling that maddening smile of hers.