For many years we had a mug in the house my husband would not use. If I served coffee in it he’d pour it into something else.
There was nothing wrong with the mug. It wasn’t unattractive or chipped and it didn’t leak. It was a little blue mug with little white dots that he had purchased when he moved into his first apartment.
At last I asked him why he was shunning the poor mug.
“I don’t like drinking from an old life,” he said.
I knew instantly what he meant. That mug was featured in most of the breakfasts of our late twenties. It was a time when we were both unhappy in our jobs; when, many mornings, we sat at the breakfast table, catatonic with dread. Perhaps more coffee would perk us up, we thought, and into the blue mug it went.
But the coffee didn’t help. What helped was leaving our jobs.
There’s an old saying about how when you jump ship you shouldn’t look back. But I think this is doing a disservice to both the jump and the ship. My husband didn’t want to drink from the old mug because he didn’t want to be reminded of those old, unhappy mornings or that old, unhappy life. I feel differently. I like remembering how things used to be because it almost always makes me grateful for how things are now.
Last Sunday I was invited to speak at a Unity church in Blairsville, Ga. I was delighted to be asked, but I was also excited about the drive, which would take me down the beautiful, winding road beside the Ocoee River, through the Chattahoochee National Forest and into the Blue Ridge Mountains. Along the way, I would drive through Copperhill, and perhaps best of all, I would pass by Life Care Center of Copper Basin.
It was at that nursing home, 20 years ago, that I stood on the front porch and watched a hawk ride an invisible current of air. I no longer wanted to do mental health assessments, at nursing homes or anywhere else; my mind was telling my body this, repeatedly, in the universal language of panic attacks. What I really wanted to do was to pursue writing and pottery. A crazy idea, I knew, like stepping out onto an invisible current of air, and riding it to whatever heights and depths it might take me to. But not long after the hawk sighting, I did just that.
When I passed the turnoff to Life Care Center last Sunday, I pulled over and snapped a picture. The road was wet from rain, and the sun anointed it with a golden glow. The speaking engagement was made possible in part by the publication of my first book, so this photo would be my blue mug, a visual representation of my old life colliding with my new.
And just a few days ago, I had another old life-new life collision. My husband and I headed to LaGrange, Ga., for a show of friends’ work at the city’s museum. We drove U.S. 27 most of the way. This was the highway that defined me years before I met the little blue mug or its owner. It was the road I drove from Chickamauga every day to work in LaFayette and Summerville.
Driving it again after so many years, I remembered how the tiny houses exhaled smoke from their chimneys on chilly mornings, recalled racing home to see my dogs after long days at work, and how much I loved the ring of mountains encircling the valley.
I remembered how sad I was when they started widening the two-lane to make it four, and how stunned I was when the houses started to burn. I wrote about all of it in a book I first called “Highway 27,” then “A Better House” and finally “The Body Tourist.” The book is my blue mug, too.
I get my husband’s wish for the past to disappear. But I also know you can’t drink from a new life without drinking from the old.
Contact Dana Lise Shavin at danalise@juno.com. Her memoir, “The Body Tourist,” is available from Amazon.