Truth

There has never been a moment that didn't pass.   Just wait.

Inconceivable

There is an uncomfortable dichotomy in having been left by your husband.  On the one hand, you accept it.  More than that, you begin to agree that he is not for you, not a good fit or perhaps even not good enough.  Maybe he was never a good fit - or maybe he was (or could have been if he'd wanted to be), and the idea that he was not is merely an inevitable part of your progression, regardless of the previous reality.  The fact of his having left you makes that old reality a part of the past that is simply unknown and unknowable.

What you do know, however, is that his having left says something about him - and even if you can't quite figure out what that something is, you know it's something that alters everything else.  And even if he came to you, professed his love and asked for redemption, it wouldn't change what you now know, however elusive and ambiguous that knowledge is.  And (although you still love him, despite that confused and uncertain knowledge) you're not sure you'd want to change it, anyway.

On the other hand, it remains inconceivable.  Your husband left you.  Your husband.  Your best friend.  The loss is ineffable.

~~~

The alarm forces me from restless sleep.  It's five-thirty.  I lift Chase from the bed, follow the dogs downstairs, let them out, start the coffee.  The morning routine.  Wrapped in a winter coat, I sip coffee outside.  I look at the patio, the firepit, and remember laying the stones last April - me on bruised knees, the Professor with gloved hands, handing me the pavers, calculating which to put where, leveling the firepit.  We rented a 100lb compactor, heaved it from the car, wrestled it to the back yard and filled it with water.  It had a geyser of a leak.  We wrestled it back to the car and went back for an encore.

~~~

For two soft-handed intellectuals, the patio is a masterpiece.  It survived last winter - which is more than I can say for the Professor and me.  Kneeling on those stones, sweating in the Chicago spring (a feat in itself), I never imagined the patio would outlast our marriage.

Inconceivable.  But true nonetheless.

Red Light, Green Light

When I was six years old, my mom's youngest sister spent the summer with us in South Carolina.  Aunt J was 21, and she waited tables at a Chinese restaurant in town.  The front doors were a large red circle.  Red circle doors - those are the things you remember when you're six.

I can close my eyes and see the pjs I wore that summer - white with orange ribbing on the cuffs, a basket of peaches and "Just Peachy" on the shirt.  That summer Aunt J started calling me "Peaches" and it stuck.  I was just a kid, and so was she.

I remember riding in the car with Aunt J, telling her not to stop because I could make the light turn green.  Aunt J inched forward until the car nearly bucked and stalled, and I willed that light to turn green.  And when it did I shrieked in a peal of six year old laughter.  Despite knowing better, Aunt J laughed with me.  Time and again I willed those lights to turn green.  She never let me in on the secret that, of course, the light would always, eventually, turn green.  

Close to thirty years later Aunt J is my dear, beloved friend.  Her sisters and her children have my heart, and have been my haven.  And she still helps me make red lights turn green. 

It's impossible to know what will change someone in an unexpected and profound way.  But if you can be someone's round red doors or light that turns green at the very last, crucial moment - it just might stick.  

Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

Tomorrow I'll finish my sixth full week at my new law firm. It's hard to believe it's only been six weeks. It seems like I've been there forever, and I mean that in a good way.

After only six weeks, it's impossible to say whether this is my forever-job, but it's the right job for me right now. I've been working long hours (by my standards, anyway), but the partners I've been lucky enough to work with are genuine and decent. I haven't been yelled at for binding documents with a clip instead of a staple. (Yes, that happened to me.) I haven't been told I committed malpractice three times in the last five minutes. (It happened to someone I know.) I haven't told someone to stop screaming at me, and walked out of their office and back to mine, only to be followed while they yelled the whole way. (Yes, that really happened. And, yes, they told me I was unprofessional. I begged to differ. To put it nicely.)

Instead, I've gotten so much positive feedback that I'm literally glowing. I'm radioactive. And I know it probably doesn't mean much in the long run because, let's face it, I just haven't been there long enough to screw anything up yet. And I will screw something up - many somethings. But for right now, in this moment, this job is precisely what I needed.

In the last six weeks, I've been slightly altered. Just a nudge here and there. And, somehow, that changes everything.

I feel valuable and competent and appreciated. I feel relieved and vindicated - because in the last six weeks, I have learned that I can take care of myself. I have learned that I will not only be okay, but better than that. I have what it takes, come hell or high water.

When I was considering this job offer, I emailed my mom and told her that if I turned it down, my only reason was fear. Almost right away, my sister emailed me. She said she was thinking of my job offers, and she wanted to tell me that I shouldn't turn this one down just because I was afraid. Assuming Mom had forwarded my email, I called her. It turned out that she hadn't seen my email to Mom. She just felt it was something she needed to say.

Perhaps that isn't a good reason to accept a job, but it was mine nonetheless. Call it God, call it kismet, call it coincidence. It was what I needed to hear, and I'm so glad I did.

If this job doesn't work out, there will be another job. And if there isn't another job, I can work for myself. 

I'm not afraid anymore.

A Brief History Of The World

In the beginning, sadness choked out the living.  


Later, there was life in the midst of sadness.  


Now there's sadness in the midst of life.


I didn't write that.  I wish I had, because it's beautiful, and my true history, my past and my present.  It is painful poetry.


Last weekend, at a bridal shower for my sweet cousin-to-be, I sat at a table surrounded cousins, aunts and my grandmother's sister.  We celebrated the love that brought us all together, the new family being formed, the extension of our family.  We celebrated one another, and ourselves.  I was struck with awareness of the pain, the deaths, the illness, the loss that those women had experienced, that many are going through at this very moment.  And yet we reveled in the joy of one another, in the joy -- in the painful poetry -- of our lives.  

It Happens

The office was quiet today.  Too much work to do, but quiet nonetheless. I spent most of my day doing research on the computer.  After eight or nine hours spent staring at pixels, I looked up and outside, noticed how the sky and lake melted together in a gray haze.  And I realized that my husband left me.

I started crying.  

It happens.