A few weeks before, I'd mentioned to Nick the great progress my little girl is making in her swimming lessons. During the conversation he'd commented offhandedly, “Can you believe some people don’t know how to swim?”
I hesitated.
I grew up on a land locked farm in Boonieville, where the only concentrations of H20 is found in low lying areas that trap run off. These murky muddy sloughs don’t even qualify as ponds; they’re more like mud puddles on crack. There is a fresh water lake in the town nearby but my busy farming parents didn’t have time to take my siblings and me there often during our redneck upbringing. Besides, when we did go that place was so foul we always ended up with “the itch” after splashing around in it for an afternoon. (If you’ve never experienced “the itch” you really haven’t lived. Let me tell ya.)
As a result.
I can’t swim.
Well, I can dog paddle. Okay, that’s a generous description. What I do is more like wild flailing of the limbs. It can’t be categorized as swimming. It’s just desperate anti-drowning motion, really.
And now here I am just a few weeks out from that conversation about swimming. Sitting at my desk, a sobbing wreck of myself reading this email from Nick.
Drowning.
In disbelief.
Of course, I write back.
But my thoughts are not well thought out thoughts. My words not well chosen words. Because come on, I am bawling, an activity rarely synonymous with dignity.
“I trusted you. I jumped. I jumped right into this lake of insanity because it felt so safe with you. But now, you are swimming back to shore without me. Knowing full well. That I can’t even swim.”
I punch the words out on my keyboard.
Flailing away. Trying to stay afloat.
But Nick doesn’t come to my rescue. His big strong arms do not pull me to the surface. Or throw me a life preserver.
And in his absence.
I sink.
For he doesn’t reply.
Not then.
Not ever.
For the next five days the silence is deafening. The only noise my own stifled sobs. Muzzled by the fact that I don’t have the luxury to be sad when I want to be sad; I have two kids who need me, whose world depends on my stability.
So I smile. Mute my emotions.
And carry on.
But every time I am alone. In the shower. Driving my car. In my bed.
I cry.
And while I do. I wait. For a call. A text. An email. For some sign that I didn’t just imagine the last six weeks of my life.
I miss him so much. Doesn’t he miss me? Isn’t he feeling this enormous empty hole?
Every time I hear a Harley on my street I run to my window like a dismal shadow of my strong self.
It isn’t him.
It’s never him.
But through it all I am hardly alone. In fact, I am flooded with love.
Because every day they text. Every day they call. Every day they email.
Are you okay? How are you doing today? Would you like to have lunch?
They are my saviors. My angels. My calvary.
My friends.
They circle the wagons of their hearts around mine. Take me out for a “break up dinner.” Naomi christens the gathering with a poem describing what she thinks of Nick’s impromptu departure. And you can only imagine the word she chooses to rhyme with his name.
We drink wine. I cry. They cry too. We drink to mystifying men. To confusion. To heartbreak. To the past. And to the future. To us and how weak we are as individuals, but how strong we are together.
But even with support stronger than a granite girdle.
I end up doing what we girls often do when boys leave us wandering around lost and confused.
I cave.
And collapse like an unstable mine shaft under the weight of this suffocating ambiguity.
I text him.
I think we should talk in person.
I justify that craving a conversation with him is warranted. If it’s going to end I just want to see him. I just want to hear his voice.
I don’t care if its weak.
I just want to know.
What happened?
He replies. My heartbeat suspends.
As I read.
I think a talk is long overdue.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Chapter Eighteen: Is John Mayer Right? Should We Say What We Need to Say?
I wait all morning for a response from Nick.
Nothing.
Not a text. Not a phone call. Not a smoke signal.
I throw myself into work, a welcome distraction.
At lunch time I cave and call Naomi.
She’s a teacher so I have but a sliver of time to get a hold of her during the work day, although I reserve those interruptions for emergency best friend situations only. Subsequently she picks up immediately and demands, “Who died?”
I condense the sequence of events as fast I can. What Nick said. What I said. What I did.
What I wrote.
“Holy. Holy. Crap.” The extra holy emphasizing her profound shock. You see, Naomi has long since fallen for Nick too, her stamp of approval solidified weeks ago as she watched Nick personify prince charming in every fairy tale we were ever brainwashed to believe as little girls. “What the freaking hell. I can not believe this,” her voice is hushed as I can tell she is leaving her classroom and exiting to the hallway where she can be a candid real person not a pretend perfect teacher, “Why the shift? What happened? And really? You wrote that? Oh my gawd, I can’t believe you said that, are you sure?”
“Yes, no, maybe . . .”I falter, “Ahhh, I don’t know. I guess, yes. Yes. Of course. I can’t do that, Naomi. I can’t audition. That’s crap, it’s not fair.”
“But, what if he chooses to end it?”
I let her question hang momentarily in the invisible air waves where our cell phones have transformed our voices into data. The truth is I find that possibility unfathomable. Maybe I am naïve’. Maybe I am arrogant. Who knows, but I just feel that what Nick and I have is different. Of course it started quickly but that doesn’t negate its authenticity. Does it? I don’t see what I wrote as a door for an ending he is going to walk out of. I see it as my laying down a patchwork quilt of honesty, a foundation of truth where we can build a relationship of compromise and trust. “That is not going to happen,” I firmly predict.
But maybe I say that not because I really believe it. Maybe I say it because I can’t imagine the alternative.
And then. Out of the corner of my eye I see it.
Nick’s name in my inbox, black, bold and bright on my computer screen.
“Oh my god, he wrote back. I gotta go, I gotta go,” I stammer.
“Okay, deep breath, I am sure it’s fine. He loves you, Audra. I know he does. He’s not going anywhere, that guy is a gem,” she assures me.
I hang up.
And read Nick’s email.
He confesses my words took him off guard. But then again, he says, after he let it sink in, not really. I’m a strong woman. Why would I respond any differently?
He spends two paragraphs telling me how wonderful I am.
And then.
I read words like razors.
“But I respect your decision to move on.”
My decision?
I didn’t read that right. I read it again.
And again.
And.
Again.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
The screen goes blurry. I can’t see. I can’t breathe. My nose burns and my throat is choking on the tears that are erupting from everywhere inside of me.
And just like that.
Everything that was us dissolves, melting like a sandcastle in the waves. The past, the present, and the future all collapse into one another like dominos made of dust.
Nick is not choosing “keep things the same.” He is choosing something else.
He is choosing.
Over.
Nothing.
Not a text. Not a phone call. Not a smoke signal.
I throw myself into work, a welcome distraction.
At lunch time I cave and call Naomi.
She’s a teacher so I have but a sliver of time to get a hold of her during the work day, although I reserve those interruptions for emergency best friend situations only. Subsequently she picks up immediately and demands, “Who died?”
I condense the sequence of events as fast I can. What Nick said. What I said. What I did.
What I wrote.
“Holy. Holy. Crap.” The extra holy emphasizing her profound shock. You see, Naomi has long since fallen for Nick too, her stamp of approval solidified weeks ago as she watched Nick personify prince charming in every fairy tale we were ever brainwashed to believe as little girls. “What the freaking hell. I can not believe this,” her voice is hushed as I can tell she is leaving her classroom and exiting to the hallway where she can be a candid real person not a pretend perfect teacher, “Why the shift? What happened? And really? You wrote that? Oh my gawd, I can’t believe you said that, are you sure?”
“Yes, no, maybe . . .”I falter, “Ahhh, I don’t know. I guess, yes. Yes. Of course. I can’t do that, Naomi. I can’t audition. That’s crap, it’s not fair.”
“But, what if he chooses to end it?”
I let her question hang momentarily in the invisible air waves where our cell phones have transformed our voices into data. The truth is I find that possibility unfathomable. Maybe I am naïve’. Maybe I am arrogant. Who knows, but I just feel that what Nick and I have is different. Of course it started quickly but that doesn’t negate its authenticity. Does it? I don’t see what I wrote as a door for an ending he is going to walk out of. I see it as my laying down a patchwork quilt of honesty, a foundation of truth where we can build a relationship of compromise and trust. “That is not going to happen,” I firmly predict.
But maybe I say that not because I really believe it. Maybe I say it because I can’t imagine the alternative.
And then. Out of the corner of my eye I see it.
Nick’s name in my inbox, black, bold and bright on my computer screen.
“Oh my god, he wrote back. I gotta go, I gotta go,” I stammer.
“Okay, deep breath, I am sure it’s fine. He loves you, Audra. I know he does. He’s not going anywhere, that guy is a gem,” she assures me.
I hang up.
And read Nick’s email.
He confesses my words took him off guard. But then again, he says, after he let it sink in, not really. I’m a strong woman. Why would I respond any differently?
He spends two paragraphs telling me how wonderful I am.
And then.
I read words like razors.
“But I respect your decision to move on.”
My decision?
I didn’t read that right. I read it again.
And again.
And.
Again.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
The screen goes blurry. I can’t see. I can’t breathe. My nose burns and my throat is choking on the tears that are erupting from everywhere inside of me.
And just like that.
Everything that was us dissolves, melting like a sandcastle in the waves. The past, the present, and the future all collapse into one another like dominos made of dust.
Nick is not choosing “keep things the same.” He is choosing something else.
He is choosing.
Over.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Chapter Seventeen; Midnight Madness
And now. We have the conversation we both knew was coming.
Nick outlines all his reasons for feeling hesitant. All the while he underscores how perfect I am, and that it’s not me.
It’s him. He says.
It’s him.
And even though hearing this bitter truth is more than mildly unpleasant, I just listen. He needs to step back. He started too fast. It’s just too much. Can we just slow down?
I ask for a definition of slow down.
He doesn’t really have one.
Mmmm, hmmm.
I say.
And then reluctantly I tell him yes. I can do that. I can slow down.
Of course I can. I would do anything for Nick. For my charming prince on a Harley who makes me laugh, tells me stories, and makes me feel so safe. Who misses his grandpa, whose adventures inspire me, who wants what I want. My heroic guy with the blue eyes and the smile that stole my sanity.
He is amazing. And wonderful.
Of course I will slow down.
Of course.
When we hang up, I go to bed, roll onto my side and pull a thick blanket of ambiguity up to my chin, my head cushioned on a pillow of doubt.
Sleep is elusive. A hazy haunted future keeps me awake.
Scenarios of what this new phase is going to look like twist around on the dance floor of my imagination. Every time I try to go to sleep, a picture of what Nick has asked of me slips onto that shiny surface, twirling and taunting me with what is to come.
And I feel sick.
Can I do that? Can I halt this? Am I capable of transforming forceful forward momentum into suspended slow motion?
Perhaps.
But.
I falter. The truth trips my optimism. It’s a crack in a perfect compassionate plan so wide that I lose my balance momentarily. When I struggle to regain my compose I look back at that crack. It’s more like a crater.
And see it for the reality that it is.
I don’t want to slow down. I don’t want to go in reverse. It feels unnatural.
There’s no pause button in life, is there?
That’s why I can’t sleep. Because the truth is:
I said I can do it.
But I can’t.
My internal admission releases the anger I’d hidden beneath understanding. I let it wash over me in a torrid of realizations all beginning with one word: Why? Why come into my life with such force and sincerity if it is unsustainable? Why establish such intense momentum only to suspend it? Why ask me to go with you on this senseless journey if you didn’t feel it with every molecule of your being?
I don’t understand.
I just don’t understand.
I lay in my slumber less existence for what seems like centuries. But I don’t cry. I just lay there collapsed in a bed of confusion blanketed with questions.
Finally, at 1:00am. The writer in me does the only things she knows how to do when life twists into knots.
Untie it.
With words.
I write Nick a two page email that I have no intention of sending. I simply need to rip these thoughts and feelings out of me and lay them out where I can see them.
Outlining with meticulous compassion how I am so desperately trying to understand him and respect his position but that it is tearing me into shreds projecting what he is asking of me. The irrational accelerated pace he established, and I agreed to, is the backdrop of our story. And I am not sure how else to be.
With him.
I explain my fear of what may happen. I will quickly transform from independent confident woman into insecure needy girl.
Trying to win a part I thought I’d already landed
I can’t do that. Well, I can.
But I won’t.
I will not be that girl.
“Why didn’t he text me today? Is he going to call me tonight? What does this mean? What does that mean?”
I will not do that.
Don’t ask me to do that. Don’t pull me along in this game where you are making up all the rules.
I have a say. And I am digging in my heels. That stubborn kid inside of me is saying no.
No.
I hate ultimatums but I feel that this is so terribly unfair. For crying in the beer, I can’t slide down a two story fire station pole. I certainly will not board a roller coaster, one that is threatening to careen of the tracks if I don’t smile politely all the while it does.
And then I just say it. I write the words that were keeping me up, the words that kept boiling away the water of uncertainty until only the grains of truth were left, bare and exposed.
Either we continue as is and just see where it goes . . . or . . .
. . . we call it off.
Same.
Or over.
You choose.
I tell him.
You choose.
I reread the words on the screen over and over. I print them out. I read them again ten more times at least. And each time I do I am more affirmed that yes, this is it. This letter is my thoughts. This letter is my feelings.
This letter.
Is truth.
I wasn’t going to send this when I’d sat down at my keyboard in my sweatpants and ponytail in the middle of the night. Nothing yells “crazy” louder than a post midnight email.
But I know that the dawn is not going to alter one syllable.
So at 2:30AM I quit hitting a wall. And instead hit the button that will prompt the answer I need.
Send.
***********************************
Dating Land will be hitting the airwaves tonight, Wednesday, October 21st, at 9:00pm on KFGO, the Mighty 790.(I know, this chapters says Thursday, October 22nd but I postdated the post . . . I love Back to the Future but I really don't own a Delorean or Flux Capacitor!)
If you'd like to listen online, the link is in the sidebar.
Thank you for reading . . . I don't think the story of Nick and I is all that different from many other people's experiences, but the universality of the human condition is what unites us all. Love, even when it's fleeting, makes the world go round . . . at least that's what I hear. Please stay tuned and check back next week for an announcement, I am considering publishing three chapters next week. This part of the story has been hard for me to relive and I honestly am having a hard time writing it. I just want to move on . . . yet I want to honor the experience as well, for I feel very strongly that even difficult things can be made positive if we let them. God can take even the saddest experience and make it into something wonderful. I want this blog to be that something wonderful. This experience was a profound one for me and I am humbled you are letting me share it with you.
God bless . . .
Audra
Nick outlines all his reasons for feeling hesitant. All the while he underscores how perfect I am, and that it’s not me.
It’s him. He says.
It’s him.
And even though hearing this bitter truth is more than mildly unpleasant, I just listen. He needs to step back. He started too fast. It’s just too much. Can we just slow down?
I ask for a definition of slow down.
He doesn’t really have one.
Mmmm, hmmm.
I say.
And then reluctantly I tell him yes. I can do that. I can slow down.
Of course I can. I would do anything for Nick. For my charming prince on a Harley who makes me laugh, tells me stories, and makes me feel so safe. Who misses his grandpa, whose adventures inspire me, who wants what I want. My heroic guy with the blue eyes and the smile that stole my sanity.
He is amazing. And wonderful.
Of course I will slow down.
Of course.
When we hang up, I go to bed, roll onto my side and pull a thick blanket of ambiguity up to my chin, my head cushioned on a pillow of doubt.
Sleep is elusive. A hazy haunted future keeps me awake.
Scenarios of what this new phase is going to look like twist around on the dance floor of my imagination. Every time I try to go to sleep, a picture of what Nick has asked of me slips onto that shiny surface, twirling and taunting me with what is to come.
And I feel sick.
Can I do that? Can I halt this? Am I capable of transforming forceful forward momentum into suspended slow motion?
Perhaps.
But.
I falter. The truth trips my optimism. It’s a crack in a perfect compassionate plan so wide that I lose my balance momentarily. When I struggle to regain my compose I look back at that crack. It’s more like a crater.
And see it for the reality that it is.
I don’t want to slow down. I don’t want to go in reverse. It feels unnatural.
There’s no pause button in life, is there?
That’s why I can’t sleep. Because the truth is:
I said I can do it.
But I can’t.
My internal admission releases the anger I’d hidden beneath understanding. I let it wash over me in a torrid of realizations all beginning with one word: Why? Why come into my life with such force and sincerity if it is unsustainable? Why establish such intense momentum only to suspend it? Why ask me to go with you on this senseless journey if you didn’t feel it with every molecule of your being?
I don’t understand.
I just don’t understand.
I lay in my slumber less existence for what seems like centuries. But I don’t cry. I just lay there collapsed in a bed of confusion blanketed with questions.
Finally, at 1:00am. The writer in me does the only things she knows how to do when life twists into knots.
Untie it.
With words.
I write Nick a two page email that I have no intention of sending. I simply need to rip these thoughts and feelings out of me and lay them out where I can see them.
Outlining with meticulous compassion how I am so desperately trying to understand him and respect his position but that it is tearing me into shreds projecting what he is asking of me. The irrational accelerated pace he established, and I agreed to, is the backdrop of our story. And I am not sure how else to be.
With him.
I explain my fear of what may happen. I will quickly transform from independent confident woman into insecure needy girl.
Trying to win a part I thought I’d already landed
I can’t do that. Well, I can.
But I won’t.
I will not be that girl.
“Why didn’t he text me today? Is he going to call me tonight? What does this mean? What does that mean?”
I will not do that.
Don’t ask me to do that. Don’t pull me along in this game where you are making up all the rules.
I have a say. And I am digging in my heels. That stubborn kid inside of me is saying no.
No.
I hate ultimatums but I feel that this is so terribly unfair. For crying in the beer, I can’t slide down a two story fire station pole. I certainly will not board a roller coaster, one that is threatening to careen of the tracks if I don’t smile politely all the while it does.
And then I just say it. I write the words that were keeping me up, the words that kept boiling away the water of uncertainty until only the grains of truth were left, bare and exposed.
Either we continue as is and just see where it goes . . . or . . .
. . . we call it off.
Same.
Or over.
You choose.
I tell him.
You choose.
I reread the words on the screen over and over. I print them out. I read them again ten more times at least. And each time I do I am more affirmed that yes, this is it. This letter is my thoughts. This letter is my feelings.
This letter.
Is truth.
I wasn’t going to send this when I’d sat down at my keyboard in my sweatpants and ponytail in the middle of the night. Nothing yells “crazy” louder than a post midnight email.
But I know that the dawn is not going to alter one syllable.
So at 2:30AM I quit hitting a wall. And instead hit the button that will prompt the answer I need.
Send.
***********************************
Dating Land will be hitting the airwaves tonight, Wednesday, October 21st, at 9:00pm on KFGO, the Mighty 790.(I know, this chapters says Thursday, October 22nd but I postdated the post . . . I love Back to the Future but I really don't own a Delorean or Flux Capacitor!)
If you'd like to listen online, the link is in the sidebar.
Thank you for reading . . . I don't think the story of Nick and I is all that different from many other people's experiences, but the universality of the human condition is what unites us all. Love, even when it's fleeting, makes the world go round . . . at least that's what I hear. Please stay tuned and check back next week for an announcement, I am considering publishing three chapters next week. This part of the story has been hard for me to relive and I honestly am having a hard time writing it. I just want to move on . . . yet I want to honor the experience as well, for I feel very strongly that even difficult things can be made positive if we let them. God can take even the saddest experience and make it into something wonderful. I want this blog to be that something wonderful. This experience was a profound one for me and I am humbled you are letting me share it with you.
God bless . . .
Audra
Monday, October 19, 2009
Chapter Sixteen; Dazed and Confused
In like a lion, out like a lamb.
And I’m not talking about the month of March.
The beginning of a relationship typically possesses untamed forward momentum propelled by the exciting possibilities of infinite what if’s.
Ironically, the endings of relationships are often fueled by the resulting anxiety of those same what if’s.
What if I stay in this forever?
What if it’s amazing?
What if?
It’s not.
What if holds both the power to ignite potential.
And extinguish it.
And so, when Nick’s text messages taper from gushing flood to dripping trickle.
I tell myself he’s just busy.
When I don’t have my children for an entire evening and he leaves hours before he should because he needs to go home and get things done.
I tell myself he’s just being responsible.
And although Nick’s whirlwind arrival was illogical, the senselessness of it all was so fun that I simply didn’t care. Now, I’m confused by the mysterious ambiguity. And strongly dislike how it is turning me from independent confident woman into insecure needy girl.
I don’t like it.
Not at all.
As the week wears on his communication seems more obligatory than spontaneous and genuine. He dutifully checks in. But that’s it. I feel like I’m on some girlfriend “to do” list, with “call Audra” falling somewhere between “dust living room” and “buy more Splenda.”
But all I do is continue to ignore the massive elephant now taking up residence in the middle of my mind, skillfully evading the monstrosity even though it’s growing so large that if I don’t acknowledge it soon it is going to take over my skull.
Denial thy name is Dumbo.
You see, if there’s anything I know something about. It is about endings. After all. I’m divorced. I’m 37. And I’ve been single for going on three years.
If I’m an expert on anything. I am an expert on leaving.
On how it feels to be the one to leave.
And how it feels to be the one left behind.
If you are the one contemplating leaving, you take hesitant measured steps toward the door as you try to secretly figure out if you really want to walk out said door.
When you are the one being left, you don’t want the person you love getting anywhere near that door. You make up excuses about why he or she is moving in the direction of the door. You tell yourself you are imagining things. You tell yourself you are even imagining that there is a door.
Endings start as silent secrets that no one wants to acknowledge.
After a week of this crap I finally cave. And call Nick on the proverbial “what the hell is going on” carpet when he calls me from the station to say goodnight.
“Hey, just wanted to check in before I hit the hay,” he methodically and dutifully says. I feel like patting him on the head and scratching him behind the ears like an obedient puppy while cheerfully exclaiming, “Good boy! That’s a good boy! You call your girlfriend just as you should, do you wanna treat? Does my good boy want a treat?”
I know.
I sound like a bitch but the truth is his lack of sincerity is absolutely killing me.
He’s working tonight but that doesn’t usually infringe on our ability to chat. Except for lately. “I can’t talk long,” he says, “I want to get to bed early. Looks like a lightning storm tonight so the alarms will be going crazy so I’m going to bed.”
He is ridiculously brief. I’ve had longer conversations with someone who’s dialed the wrong number.
“Wait a second,” I punctuate, sabotaging his escape plan, “I have a question.”
He sighs.
He knows what’s coming.
I take a deep breath. And murmur the question that I really don't want to know the answer to,“Why did I talk to you more when you were in Colorado than I do now?”
He sighs again.
And for the next twenty minutes, I finally hear the truth. The momentum and intensity that Nick established, the very train that he bought the tickets for and asked me to board when he stretched out his hand, grinned at me with that smile that lights up his whole face, and pulled me onto this journey with its infinite promises of joyful possibilities, is making an unscheduled stop.
At the station.
Of uncertainty.
And I’m not talking about the month of March.
The beginning of a relationship typically possesses untamed forward momentum propelled by the exciting possibilities of infinite what if’s.
Ironically, the endings of relationships are often fueled by the resulting anxiety of those same what if’s.
What if I stay in this forever?
What if it’s amazing?
What if?
It’s not.
What if holds both the power to ignite potential.
And extinguish it.
And so, when Nick’s text messages taper from gushing flood to dripping trickle.
I tell myself he’s just busy.
When I don’t have my children for an entire evening and he leaves hours before he should because he needs to go home and get things done.
I tell myself he’s just being responsible.
And although Nick’s whirlwind arrival was illogical, the senselessness of it all was so fun that I simply didn’t care. Now, I’m confused by the mysterious ambiguity. And strongly dislike how it is turning me from independent confident woman into insecure needy girl.
I don’t like it.
Not at all.
As the week wears on his communication seems more obligatory than spontaneous and genuine. He dutifully checks in. But that’s it. I feel like I’m on some girlfriend “to do” list, with “call Audra” falling somewhere between “dust living room” and “buy more Splenda.”
But all I do is continue to ignore the massive elephant now taking up residence in the middle of my mind, skillfully evading the monstrosity even though it’s growing so large that if I don’t acknowledge it soon it is going to take over my skull.
Denial thy name is Dumbo.
You see, if there’s anything I know something about. It is about endings. After all. I’m divorced. I’m 37. And I’ve been single for going on three years.
If I’m an expert on anything. I am an expert on leaving.
On how it feels to be the one to leave.
And how it feels to be the one left behind.
If you are the one contemplating leaving, you take hesitant measured steps toward the door as you try to secretly figure out if you really want to walk out said door.
When you are the one being left, you don’t want the person you love getting anywhere near that door. You make up excuses about why he or she is moving in the direction of the door. You tell yourself you are imagining things. You tell yourself you are even imagining that there is a door.
Endings start as silent secrets that no one wants to acknowledge.
After a week of this crap I finally cave. And call Nick on the proverbial “what the hell is going on” carpet when he calls me from the station to say goodnight.
“Hey, just wanted to check in before I hit the hay,” he methodically and dutifully says. I feel like patting him on the head and scratching him behind the ears like an obedient puppy while cheerfully exclaiming, “Good boy! That’s a good boy! You call your girlfriend just as you should, do you wanna treat? Does my good boy want a treat?”
I know.
I sound like a bitch but the truth is his lack of sincerity is absolutely killing me.
He’s working tonight but that doesn’t usually infringe on our ability to chat. Except for lately. “I can’t talk long,” he says, “I want to get to bed early. Looks like a lightning storm tonight so the alarms will be going crazy so I’m going to bed.”
He is ridiculously brief. I’ve had longer conversations with someone who’s dialed the wrong number.
“Wait a second,” I punctuate, sabotaging his escape plan, “I have a question.”
He sighs.
He knows what’s coming.
I take a deep breath. And murmur the question that I really don't want to know the answer to,“Why did I talk to you more when you were in Colorado than I do now?”
He sighs again.
And for the next twenty minutes, I finally hear the truth. The momentum and intensity that Nick established, the very train that he bought the tickets for and asked me to board when he stretched out his hand, grinned at me with that smile that lights up his whole face, and pulled me onto this journey with its infinite promises of joyful possibilities, is making an unscheduled stop.
At the station.
Of uncertainty.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Chapter Fifteen; Drew Barrymore and Dream Sequences
Nick, my “official” BF, decides to cut his vacation short by two days. Proclaiming via text that he can’t stand to be away from me for one more second.
And so he does just that.
Fourteen marathon hours on a Harley back home. In one day.
Just to see me.
And as for our highly anticipated reunion? Let’s just say I am pretty certain it may have rivaled Nick’s grandfather’s return to his bride after serving for three years during World War II.
And so it begins. The cloudy hazy clarity of the relationship I wasn’t planning on having. With the man I was not so enthusiastic about going on a blind date with just four short weeks before.
From unexpected.
To entwined.
And let me tell ya, the next two weeks puts the sap crap romance on the Hallmark channel to a sobbing shame. Here, let me illustrate. Pick the cheesiest love song you can think of. Actually, I recommend Colbie Caillet’s Falling for You. Its lyrics materialized on the air waves the same month that our story began. In fact, pull the track up on iTunes right now. I’ll wait. La, la, la, la, la. Got it? Okay, good. Now, play the following scenes in your mind to said sappy soundtrack:
“And . . . Action!”
Nick effortlessly whisking me over his broad shoulders and carting me down the steps of his modest home because if I am going to date a fire man, I need to be fire man carried!
Hurtling on his Harley through parks and forgotten corners of this town like two adventurers without a map or destiny, my blonde hair leaving a comet-like trail behind us. ("Cut!” Director’s note: Drew Barrymore is playing me in this flick. Well? If this is like a movie then I’m in charge of casting and what girl doesn’t want to be Drew Barrymore? Well, except for that one time her free-spirited nature contributed to her marrying Tom Green the weirdo. Minus that momentary madness/drug problem/loss of sanity, all girls want to be Drew. As for Nick, he’s probably a hybrid of Mathew McConaughey and Jude Law with a dash of Bruce Willis.)
“Places everyone . . . Action!”
Reclining in lawn chairs around a fire pit one summer evening with his neighbors, Nick holds my hand and strokes my wrist with his thumb, gazing at me with a look that says, “I can’t believe you’re mine.” (As for the neighbors in attendance, the wives note my attentive man and shoot glares so sharp at their distracted husbands huddled in testosterone-infused conversations about sports and beer that I think I can hear the night air being ripped and stabbed.)
Nick kisses my wrist.
I melt like an Al Gore glacier.
“Cut! That’s a wrap, folks. Nice job, nice job.”
Fade out Colbie Callait . . .
The days blur together in a kaleidoscope of similar scenes. And all the while I keep waiting for everything to go dark. Thinking one day I will wake up groggy and croaking out a request for water. Someone will put a plastic cup to my lips and I will hear my mother weep, “She’s waking up! Get the doctor!” And all of “this with Nick” will not have been real but a drug induced coma.
People will tell me I was in a terrible car accident last month. I’ve been asleep all this time. But thank God I’m alive.
Yes. Thank God. I’m alive.
And alone.
Only this time it will be worse than ever. Because I’ll probably be permanently scarred and missing limps from said car accident and destined to search for future dates on DisfiguredSingles.com. Eternally hoping someday my one-armed no-legged prince will find me and wheel the appendage-challenged nub of my former self off into the sunset on his scooter chair.
But that doesn’t happen.
I am not sleeping. I am as awake as awake can be.
And my life is as real as real can get.
One afternoon Nick asks, “Didn’t you always wonder what everyone meant when they told us, ‘Someday you’ll meet the love of your life and you’ll just know.’’ Didn’t that bug you? What the hell is that supposed to mean, you’ll just “know” anyway?”
“So?” I prod.
“So now I know what they were talking about,” his confession cementing his presence in my life.
For two weeks I live like this. This sigh inducing surreal reality. It’s different from anything I’ve ever experienced. In fact, “different” is the only word I can come up with to adequately describe what is happening. And it has to be different since me, queen of nerdy wordy who uses a keyboard as a paintbrush, can barely find the words to articulate it.
But alas.
Life ain’t a fairy tale, folks.
Let’s revisit Colbie Cailet once again . . .
Only this time, the song is being played on a record. Not an iPod, cd, tape, or even an 8-track. A good old 12-inch black vinyl vintage record.
Close your eyes. Hear the music. But this time, just as the song crescendos the needle skips and scratches the ebony surface, grinding the melody to a screeching noisy silence.
Good bye romantic cinema sequences.
Good bye dream-like whispers of devotion.
Good bye my charming prince.
Hello reality.
And so he does just that.
Fourteen marathon hours on a Harley back home. In one day.
Just to see me.
And as for our highly anticipated reunion? Let’s just say I am pretty certain it may have rivaled Nick’s grandfather’s return to his bride after serving for three years during World War II.
And so it begins. The cloudy hazy clarity of the relationship I wasn’t planning on having. With the man I was not so enthusiastic about going on a blind date with just four short weeks before.
From unexpected.
To entwined.
And let me tell ya, the next two weeks puts the sap crap romance on the Hallmark channel to a sobbing shame. Here, let me illustrate. Pick the cheesiest love song you can think of. Actually, I recommend Colbie Caillet’s Falling for You. Its lyrics materialized on the air waves the same month that our story began. In fact, pull the track up on iTunes right now. I’ll wait. La, la, la, la, la. Got it? Okay, good. Now, play the following scenes in your mind to said sappy soundtrack:
“And . . . Action!”
Nick effortlessly whisking me over his broad shoulders and carting me down the steps of his modest home because if I am going to date a fire man, I need to be fire man carried!
Hurtling on his Harley through parks and forgotten corners of this town like two adventurers without a map or destiny, my blonde hair leaving a comet-like trail behind us. ("Cut!” Director’s note: Drew Barrymore is playing me in this flick. Well? If this is like a movie then I’m in charge of casting and what girl doesn’t want to be Drew Barrymore? Well, except for that one time her free-spirited nature contributed to her marrying Tom Green the weirdo. Minus that momentary madness/drug problem/loss of sanity, all girls want to be Drew. As for Nick, he’s probably a hybrid of Mathew McConaughey and Jude Law with a dash of Bruce Willis.)
“Places everyone . . . Action!”
Reclining in lawn chairs around a fire pit one summer evening with his neighbors, Nick holds my hand and strokes my wrist with his thumb, gazing at me with a look that says, “I can’t believe you’re mine.” (As for the neighbors in attendance, the wives note my attentive man and shoot glares so sharp at their distracted husbands huddled in testosterone-infused conversations about sports and beer that I think I can hear the night air being ripped and stabbed.)
Nick kisses my wrist.
I melt like an Al Gore glacier.
“Cut! That’s a wrap, folks. Nice job, nice job.”
Fade out Colbie Callait . . .
The days blur together in a kaleidoscope of similar scenes. And all the while I keep waiting for everything to go dark. Thinking one day I will wake up groggy and croaking out a request for water. Someone will put a plastic cup to my lips and I will hear my mother weep, “She’s waking up! Get the doctor!” And all of “this with Nick” will not have been real but a drug induced coma.
People will tell me I was in a terrible car accident last month. I’ve been asleep all this time. But thank God I’m alive.
Yes. Thank God. I’m alive.
And alone.
Only this time it will be worse than ever. Because I’ll probably be permanently scarred and missing limps from said car accident and destined to search for future dates on DisfiguredSingles.com. Eternally hoping someday my one-armed no-legged prince will find me and wheel the appendage-challenged nub of my former self off into the sunset on his scooter chair.
But that doesn’t happen.
I am not sleeping. I am as awake as awake can be.
And my life is as real as real can get.
One afternoon Nick asks, “Didn’t you always wonder what everyone meant when they told us, ‘Someday you’ll meet the love of your life and you’ll just know.’’ Didn’t that bug you? What the hell is that supposed to mean, you’ll just “know” anyway?”
“So?” I prod.
“So now I know what they were talking about,” his confession cementing his presence in my life.
For two weeks I live like this. This sigh inducing surreal reality. It’s different from anything I’ve ever experienced. In fact, “different” is the only word I can come up with to adequately describe what is happening. And it has to be different since me, queen of nerdy wordy who uses a keyboard as a paintbrush, can barely find the words to articulate it.
But alas.
Life ain’t a fairy tale, folks.
Let’s revisit Colbie Cailet once again . . .
Only this time, the song is being played on a record. Not an iPod, cd, tape, or even an 8-track. A good old 12-inch black vinyl vintage record.
Close your eyes. Hear the music. But this time, just as the song crescendos the needle skips and scratches the ebony surface, grinding the melody to a screeching noisy silence.
Good bye romantic cinema sequences.
Good bye dream-like whispers of devotion.
Good bye my charming prince.
Hello reality.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Chapter Fourteen; Words in the Darkness
The week Nick is in Colorado he texts and calls me so often that it hardly feels like he is gone.
His virtual presence seeps into to every hour, minute, and second of my life like warm honey spilled onto a sunny breakfast table, crawling along sweet and sticky and filling in the cracks and crevices that I never before detected on the surface of my life.
“You have new picture mail,” the words say.
Over and over.
Hiking a mountain. Playing with his best friend’s dog. Rafting down a river.
He sends it all to me. Sharing every escapade and exclaiming all along. He wishes I were there.
Next year. You have to come.
He says.
I will.
I say.
I will.
Every night he calls with the synopsis of his adventures. And we talk long into the night.
Each night.
Nick’s voice is next to me in my bed. Deep and solid. I anchor myself to it and fold arms and elbows around extra down pillows unconsciously filling in the physical space where he is not.
I love the happiness that escapes his explanations, the unmistakable elation that he doesn’t even try to hide as he tells me about how much fun he is having. How much he’s missed his best friend, and how excited he is to see him again.
And every night. He misses me. He can’t wait to see me. And he asks me. Is this really happening? Do we both really feel like this?
Feel like what? I want to excavate. But I don’t.
But just a few days before he is supposed to come home, after a week of incessant and constant connection, his voice reaches over the miles and asks me a question.
Can we make it official?
Official?
I repeat.
I want you to be my girlfriend, Audra. Why not? I don’t want to date anyone else.
Just you.
He emphasizes.
Just me.
I laugh. And negotiate.
Only if I get to wear your letterman’s jacket.
And then add.
Plus you realize, this means you’re taking me to prom.
Deal.
He says. And I hear his voice smile.
And then.
It happens.
The very emotion I have imprisoned behind bricks and bars called rational and reasonable is staring me in the soul.
Nick is saying it. He is saying the words that I have been so afraid to whisper inwardly to myself.
To me.
He is saying them.
To me.
And in the darkness of my bedroom. The fortress within me disintegrates.
I tuck my knees to my chin and curl my body into a ball of disbelief.
As I weep.
With joy.
His virtual presence seeps into to every hour, minute, and second of my life like warm honey spilled onto a sunny breakfast table, crawling along sweet and sticky and filling in the cracks and crevices that I never before detected on the surface of my life.
“You have new picture mail,” the words say.
Over and over.
Hiking a mountain. Playing with his best friend’s dog. Rafting down a river.
He sends it all to me. Sharing every escapade and exclaiming all along. He wishes I were there.
Next year. You have to come.
He says.
I will.
I say.
I will.
Every night he calls with the synopsis of his adventures. And we talk long into the night.
Each night.
Nick’s voice is next to me in my bed. Deep and solid. I anchor myself to it and fold arms and elbows around extra down pillows unconsciously filling in the physical space where he is not.
I love the happiness that escapes his explanations, the unmistakable elation that he doesn’t even try to hide as he tells me about how much fun he is having. How much he’s missed his best friend, and how excited he is to see him again.
And every night. He misses me. He can’t wait to see me. And he asks me. Is this really happening? Do we both really feel like this?
Feel like what? I want to excavate. But I don’t.
But just a few days before he is supposed to come home, after a week of incessant and constant connection, his voice reaches over the miles and asks me a question.
Can we make it official?
Official?
I repeat.
I want you to be my girlfriend, Audra. Why not? I don’t want to date anyone else.
Just you.
He emphasizes.
Just me.
I laugh. And negotiate.
Only if I get to wear your letterman’s jacket.
And then add.
Plus you realize, this means you’re taking me to prom.
Deal.
He says. And I hear his voice smile.
And then.
It happens.
The very emotion I have imprisoned behind bricks and bars called rational and reasonable is staring me in the soul.
Nick is saying it. He is saying the words that I have been so afraid to whisper inwardly to myself.
To me.
He is saying them.
To me.
And in the darkness of my bedroom. The fortress within me disintegrates.
I tuck my knees to my chin and curl my body into a ball of disbelief.
As I weep.
With joy.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Chapter Thirteen; I'm Not Telling
I keep my feelings to myself.
Deny them when Naomi starts excavating me with more precision than an archeologist on a dig for an elusive fossil. Tell myself I am just a little infatuated. Stuff my feelings in a hypothetical sock and bury them deep under the mattress of my soul.
In other words even though I know I have fallen in love with Nick I will never admit it. Chinese water torture couldn’t drag this amore’ admission out of me.
I’ve really only felt this way once about one other guy I’ve dated since my divorce. And I dated him for six months and never once considered dropping the “L” bomb on his hockey hair head.
That’s crazy talk.
And two weeks in?
Yeah. That’s putting myself on the straight jacket highway to a padded wall existence. And I’d much rather keep this insanity to my insane, yet safe, self.
“You know, I think you’re in love with him, Audra. I really do.” I am at lunch with my friend Ava and heat seeking emotional missal that she is; she calls my bluff with grace and diplomacy.
I reach across my chicken and cranberry salad, grab my chilly glass of iced diet coke and gulp down two huge swallows before innocently lifting my eyebrows and inquiring, “What makes you say that?”
If Audrey Hepburn had a clone, it would be Ava. She personifies elegance. She teaches the gifted and talented and her passion for her work glows like a halo around her only adding to her regal demeanor. She is as articulate as she insightful, as kind as she is perceptive.
Which basically? Makes me crap my pants.
She’s on to me.
She laughs at my question and repeats it in playful mockery, “What makes me say that? My goodness, you talk about Nick all the time. And your reasons for doing so are full of integrity. You like his soul, you admire his life choices, and you respect him immensely. Call me crazy but that sounds like love to me,” she teasingly yet seriously assesses as she nibbles on her pasta.
I take a gigantic bite of my salad and just say, “Hmmm,” in a pathetic effort to buy some time before being forced to give up the gig.
You see, if anyone can assert that love could be possible this early on in the heart palpitation phase, it is Ava. Her life is a storybook that even Nicholas Sparks would swoon over. Her marriage could possibly have inspired Taylor Swift to sing, “You be the prince and I’ll be the princess.” Her husband, Jim, proposed one month after their meeting. And six brief months later they were married.
And the outcome of that 100 yard dash to the altar? Yep. You got it. Twenty years of happily ever after this summer. And I am not exaggerating on the happily. Their longevity is not a story of toleration and duty but one of genuine love. Trust me, being around them is gag inducing. Two people could not have been a better match had they been born Siamese twins.
So if anyone can look at me across the table and brand my sanity sane, it is Ava. The whirlwind Cinderella herself.
But I just eat more salad.
And plead the fifth with an exaggerated eye roll.
I may have finally let someone into my heart, but I am not going to have a commemorative stamp made up, declare a national holiday or do any tweeting on Twitter. Let alone escalate this to a lunch date confession. Even to Ava.
At least not just yet.
But as for Nick?
He has other ideas.
Because just a few short hours later I am staring at my blackberry screen reading a text message that articulate the very emotion that I have locked securely behind a façade of logical and rational thought processes.
It looks like the truth won’t stay imprisoned for long.
Nick has found the key.
Deny them when Naomi starts excavating me with more precision than an archeologist on a dig for an elusive fossil. Tell myself I am just a little infatuated. Stuff my feelings in a hypothetical sock and bury them deep under the mattress of my soul.
In other words even though I know I have fallen in love with Nick I will never admit it. Chinese water torture couldn’t drag this amore’ admission out of me.
I’ve really only felt this way once about one other guy I’ve dated since my divorce. And I dated him for six months and never once considered dropping the “L” bomb on his hockey hair head.
That’s crazy talk.
And two weeks in?
Yeah. That’s putting myself on the straight jacket highway to a padded wall existence. And I’d much rather keep this insanity to my insane, yet safe, self.
“You know, I think you’re in love with him, Audra. I really do.” I am at lunch with my friend Ava and heat seeking emotional missal that she is; she calls my bluff with grace and diplomacy.
I reach across my chicken and cranberry salad, grab my chilly glass of iced diet coke and gulp down two huge swallows before innocently lifting my eyebrows and inquiring, “What makes you say that?”
If Audrey Hepburn had a clone, it would be Ava. She personifies elegance. She teaches the gifted and talented and her passion for her work glows like a halo around her only adding to her regal demeanor. She is as articulate as she insightful, as kind as she is perceptive.
Which basically? Makes me crap my pants.
She’s on to me.
She laughs at my question and repeats it in playful mockery, “What makes me say that? My goodness, you talk about Nick all the time. And your reasons for doing so are full of integrity. You like his soul, you admire his life choices, and you respect him immensely. Call me crazy but that sounds like love to me,” she teasingly yet seriously assesses as she nibbles on her pasta.
I take a gigantic bite of my salad and just say, “Hmmm,” in a pathetic effort to buy some time before being forced to give up the gig.
You see, if anyone can assert that love could be possible this early on in the heart palpitation phase, it is Ava. Her life is a storybook that even Nicholas Sparks would swoon over. Her marriage could possibly have inspired Taylor Swift to sing, “You be the prince and I’ll be the princess.” Her husband, Jim, proposed one month after their meeting. And six brief months later they were married.
And the outcome of that 100 yard dash to the altar? Yep. You got it. Twenty years of happily ever after this summer. And I am not exaggerating on the happily. Their longevity is not a story of toleration and duty but one of genuine love. Trust me, being around them is gag inducing. Two people could not have been a better match had they been born Siamese twins.
So if anyone can look at me across the table and brand my sanity sane, it is Ava. The whirlwind Cinderella herself.
But I just eat more salad.
And plead the fifth with an exaggerated eye roll.
I may have finally let someone into my heart, but I am not going to have a commemorative stamp made up, declare a national holiday or do any tweeting on Twitter. Let alone escalate this to a lunch date confession. Even to Ava.
At least not just yet.
But as for Nick?
He has other ideas.
Because just a few short hours later I am staring at my blackberry screen reading a text message that articulate the very emotion that I have locked securely behind a façade of logical and rational thought processes.
It looks like the truth won’t stay imprisoned for long.
Nick has found the key.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Chapter Twelve: The Colorado Goodbye
I sit in the darkness of the summer night on my brick steps. And tuck my knees up to my chin.
And I wait.
Nick is leaving tomorrow for a week-long motorcycle trip to Colorado to visit his best friend who moved away last year. The summer night is as calm and content as child’s sigh as I shift my weight around on the hard surface in anticipation of our goodbye. My daughters are in the house sleeping and Nick is wrapping up his shift at ten so he can embark on his journey with the sunrise.
He’s sneaking in a quick goodbye to me before he goes.
As a dutiful Catholic, I’ve bought him a St. Christopher’s medal. Even though he’s gone on several trips like this, that motorcycle shenanigans still worries me.
I figure a little saintly intervention can’t hurt.
Just a few minutes after ten his truck is pulling up to my house and I stand up and smile widely. His dark form is soon sauntering to my steps and wrapping me in his arms.
“Hey,” he whispers and kisses me.
“Hey back,” I say.
We’ve only been dating two weeks and now he’s going to be gone for one. If I were to stand on the outside of my life and observe this timeline were it anyone else’s, I would surely gaffaw and do my best impression of barfing with the ridiculousness of thinking anyone could say or feel the words, “I will miss you,” after such a short time together.
It makes no sense to me. Yet it seems like the most logical emotion I have ever had.
But it is not me who articulates the insanity. Nick’s eyes lock with mine as he smiles and says, “Crazy as this sounds, you have no idea how much I am going to miss you.”
I bite my bottom lip and dive into the lunacy with him, throwing my arms around his neck and laughing as I reflect the words back like a giant mirror.
“I am going to miss you too,” I wholeheartedly admit and then add for emphasis, “So much!”
He clasps me harder and I tell him, “I have something for you before you go.”
Peeling myself from beneath his embrace I reach into my sweatshirt pocket and take out the medal, “To keep you safe,” I say with a smile.
And there in the darkness, with only the light from my blackberry, we sit down next to each other on my front steps and I read the prayer to him.
Grant me, O Lord, a steady hand and watchful eye. That no one shall be hurt as I pass by. You gave life, I pray no act of mine may take away or mar that gift of thine. Shelter those, dear Lord, who bear my company, from the evils of fire and all calamity. Teach me, to care for others need; Nor miss through love of undue speed The beauty of the world; that thus I may with joy and courtesy go on my way. St. Christopher, holy patron of travelers, protect me and lead me safely to my destiny. Amen.
I finish the prayer and he hugs me, thanking me so sweetly as he fastens the medal around his neck, “I promise to wear it the entire time. But more than that, I promise to come back to you. Safe.”
I remind him then of the story he told me about his grandparents and how they’d been separated for three years during World War II. I playfully assert that we can certainly last a week if they made it through that.
“Ah, yes, yes they did,” Nick purrs in my ear, hugs me harder and projects, “But if I ever had to go to war, let me tell you something.” I lift my gaze to his as he emphatically professes, “I’d move to Canada before I’d ever leave you.”
And at that moment.
In the darkness.
I feel so wanted. So protected. So simultaneously crazy and sane. And deep down inside of me, in this place where my soul has harbored this faint flicker of a dream for as long as I can remember, I start to feel as if maybe that misty hope is moving from wistful reverie to un-yielding certainty.
And I allow the thought to slip into my consciousness.
As I fall into the one place I’d always believed was real but never known.
In love.
And I wait.
Nick is leaving tomorrow for a week-long motorcycle trip to Colorado to visit his best friend who moved away last year. The summer night is as calm and content as child’s sigh as I shift my weight around on the hard surface in anticipation of our goodbye. My daughters are in the house sleeping and Nick is wrapping up his shift at ten so he can embark on his journey with the sunrise.
He’s sneaking in a quick goodbye to me before he goes.
As a dutiful Catholic, I’ve bought him a St. Christopher’s medal. Even though he’s gone on several trips like this, that motorcycle shenanigans still worries me.
I figure a little saintly intervention can’t hurt.
Just a few minutes after ten his truck is pulling up to my house and I stand up and smile widely. His dark form is soon sauntering to my steps and wrapping me in his arms.
“Hey,” he whispers and kisses me.
“Hey back,” I say.
We’ve only been dating two weeks and now he’s going to be gone for one. If I were to stand on the outside of my life and observe this timeline were it anyone else’s, I would surely gaffaw and do my best impression of barfing with the ridiculousness of thinking anyone could say or feel the words, “I will miss you,” after such a short time together.
It makes no sense to me. Yet it seems like the most logical emotion I have ever had.
But it is not me who articulates the insanity. Nick’s eyes lock with mine as he smiles and says, “Crazy as this sounds, you have no idea how much I am going to miss you.”
I bite my bottom lip and dive into the lunacy with him, throwing my arms around his neck and laughing as I reflect the words back like a giant mirror.
“I am going to miss you too,” I wholeheartedly admit and then add for emphasis, “So much!”
He clasps me harder and I tell him, “I have something for you before you go.”
Peeling myself from beneath his embrace I reach into my sweatshirt pocket and take out the medal, “To keep you safe,” I say with a smile.
And there in the darkness, with only the light from my blackberry, we sit down next to each other on my front steps and I read the prayer to him.
Grant me, O Lord, a steady hand and watchful eye. That no one shall be hurt as I pass by. You gave life, I pray no act of mine may take away or mar that gift of thine. Shelter those, dear Lord, who bear my company, from the evils of fire and all calamity. Teach me, to care for others need; Nor miss through love of undue speed The beauty of the world; that thus I may with joy and courtesy go on my way. St. Christopher, holy patron of travelers, protect me and lead me safely to my destiny. Amen.
I finish the prayer and he hugs me, thanking me so sweetly as he fastens the medal around his neck, “I promise to wear it the entire time. But more than that, I promise to come back to you. Safe.”
I remind him then of the story he told me about his grandparents and how they’d been separated for three years during World War II. I playfully assert that we can certainly last a week if they made it through that.
“Ah, yes, yes they did,” Nick purrs in my ear, hugs me harder and projects, “But if I ever had to go to war, let me tell you something.” I lift my gaze to his as he emphatically professes, “I’d move to Canada before I’d ever leave you.”
And at that moment.
In the darkness.
I feel so wanted. So protected. So simultaneously crazy and sane. And deep down inside of me, in this place where my soul has harbored this faint flicker of a dream for as long as I can remember, I start to feel as if maybe that misty hope is moving from wistful reverie to un-yielding certainty.
And I allow the thought to slip into my consciousness.
As I fall into the one place I’d always believed was real but never known.
In love.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Chapter Eleven; Pole Dancing
You know your life has reached the cheese ball love story level when even dirty underwear has a romantic twist to it.
You see, I experienced a domestic debacle of the appliance variety when my clothes dryer decided to fizzle out. My love life may be on fire but the heating component of my dryer? Not so much.
But it is Nick, my knight in shining pickup truck, who rescues me from my ever growing pile of laundry (and rapidly decreasing supply of fresh panties) when he insists he not only accompany me to Best Buy to buy a new one but also haul it to my house in his truck. And install it for me.
I feel like the luckiest damsel in domestic distress ever.
And of course, manly man that he is, he does all of the above and more. For while we are in my basement and I am watching him do the “hooking up the dryer thing” (which involves electrical crap that I am not even remotely touching) he warns me to clean out the lint trap regularly because “I go to a dryer fire at least once a week in this town.”
I pinky swear promise. And sit atop my washing machine watching the muscles in his back ebb and flow beneath his t-shirt while he puts the back panel back onto my dryer and maneuvers it into place.
(I really want to be that t-shirt.)
But you know what the best damn part of this adventure was?
We make out in my basement for at least 15 minutes when he is done. (And I secretly pray that my washing machine goes to laundry heaven next week.)
And then Nick suggests, “Hey, do you want a tour of the fire station? I have to return this dolly anyway that I borrowed to haul your dryer.”
“Absolutely!” my inner 3rd grader enthusiastically replies.
Two minutes later, I am sitting beside Nick in his truck and he is singing aloud to a very lame song and I am laughing away. What a goober. (I love it.)
As we pull up to the station he announces, “Looks like they just went on a call, we got the place to ourselves!” as he lets me into the garage on the first floor where the fire trucks normally are.
Holy crap. They DO slide down poles!
I bound around as if I am on a school field trip and ask, “Can I see your fireman garb?”
Nick chuckles, “Hell yeah.” He leads me into a room off the garage where the firefighter gear is lined up and coyly reveals, “And you’re going to do more than just see it. You’re gonna wear it.”
“What? Oh come on!” I giggle and feign objection, but really, I think this is so freaking cool.
Nick shows me how the boots are all lined up with the pants so they can dress quickly when the alarm sounds. I step into them as he instructs. He lifts up the suspenders and hooks them on my shoulders, but not before commenting, “Damn, I do love your legs.”
Being around him is like getting a compliment overdose. I love your eyes. I love your lips. I love your smile. I am constantly showered with attention I have never before known. I don’t really know what to do with it. So I just breathe it in. And love it.
Who wouldn’t? Someone in a coma maybe. And I am feeling more alive than ever before.
“I feel like a clown!” I say in half firefighter attire.
“You look,” Mr. compliment strikes again, “pretty damn adorable.”
Next I get to put on the coat and it feels like lead, “How much does this stuff weigh? Is it made of granite?”
“That’s nothing,” he warns, “try the helmut.”
He then puts what feels like a rock on my head.
“Good gawd!” I exclaim, “How can you battle infernos wearing this much heavy shit?”
“All the gears weighs about 80 pounds when it’s all on.”
I am instantly impressed. I have a whole new respect for men who go to work and have to wear this suit of armor WHILE scaling down the sides of buildings and saving old women from smoke inhalation.
Nick shows me the rest of the station, we even swipe some pie in the kitchen. Hmmm . . . apple. Num.
When he shows me the business office he announces, “And this is the computer I was sitting at when I asked you to be my Facebook friend,” and then confesses, “my hand was shaking when I hit “send” let me tell you.”
I just smile. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more honest.
He takes me through every nook and cranny of that place, shows me the plaques on the wall of the former firefighters over the past 100 years and the stars next to the names of the firefighters who have died during our town’s history. There are only 5, but still, I shudder.
This is a job where people can die. And have.
He reads my mind, “I am going to be fine,” he whispers and kisses the top of my head, “don’t worry.”
I do inquire about his “best” adventure on the job and his face lights up, “Well,” he coyly says, “I have delivered a baby once in a blizzard, on Christmas.”
Did he just say baby? Did he just say blizzard?
Did he just say Christmas?
I sink into my chair.
This. I gotta hear.
Nick tells me all about it. The person who had called 911 didn’t speak English so Nick and colleague were uncertain as to what exactly they would find when they arrived at this call. All the dispatcher could decipher was something about a baby and stairs.
Expecting to perhaps find an injured child when they arrived, they instead found a crowd of people gathered in an apartment foyer at the bottom of a stairwell. They parted when Nick arrived. And then he saw the girl.
She was pregnant. And in labor.
A quick assessment revealed the grave reality of the situation. She was crowning.
“Looks like we’re having a baby tonight,” he’d told his colleague, who was stunned and speechless. They’d been trained for this but never actually had to do it.
“Go. Get me the delivery kit,” Nick remembers barking.
And that winter night.
In the middle of a blizzard.
In an apartment stairwell.
Nick helps a scared young girl give birth to a son.
Talk about a Christmas story.
“It’s definitely one of my best moments in this job,” Nick softly says, his eyes shining as he continues, “in fact, the experience moved me so much, that if I ever do marry someday and have children, I want to deliver my own child.”
It is all I can do at that moment not to raise my hand.
And volunteer my own uterus.
“Oh, they’re back,” Nick announces as we hear the enormous garage doors opening below us, “Now you can slide down the pole with me and say hi!”
I laugh internally and think to myself how I’ll get to tell Naomi later that I was offered the chance to slide down Nick’s pole sooner that she thought.
But in reality, I balk, “No way! I am not really doing that!”
“What? Oh come on, I’ve slid down this thing with a hot piece of pizza in one hand, you can do it!”
I know. I am a loser. I am terrified of heights to the point where an unfamiliar flight of stairs can cause me anxiety. So I can’t even bring myself to try.
I rode the Harley. I am drawing the line at the two story scary pole.
Nick just laughs at me.
And we take the stairs.
He tries to persuade me to just pose by the pole for a quick picture before the firefighters get out of their trucks. Oh fine. So I do, but then as one of the doors swings open I shriek and run away in embarrassment.
Nick is doubling over with laughter, “Nice one! This picture is a blur! I’m sending to you anyway you dork!”
“Audra’s First Fire Pole Dance” is the caption he gives the picture that he sends from his blackberry to mine, which is literally, nothing but blurry motion.
Which is a fitting visual for this story so far.
Because things are moving so fast and feel so unreal, that at moments I am not sure if I can even get clear picture of what is going on with this guy who burst into my life so swiftly and with so much intensity.
But just a few days later, things become clearer.
Even though I simply can not believe.
The words Nick tells me.
You see, I experienced a domestic debacle of the appliance variety when my clothes dryer decided to fizzle out. My love life may be on fire but the heating component of my dryer? Not so much.
But it is Nick, my knight in shining pickup truck, who rescues me from my ever growing pile of laundry (and rapidly decreasing supply of fresh panties) when he insists he not only accompany me to Best Buy to buy a new one but also haul it to my house in his truck. And install it for me.
I feel like the luckiest damsel in domestic distress ever.
And of course, manly man that he is, he does all of the above and more. For while we are in my basement and I am watching him do the “hooking up the dryer thing” (which involves electrical crap that I am not even remotely touching) he warns me to clean out the lint trap regularly because “I go to a dryer fire at least once a week in this town.”
I pinky swear promise. And sit atop my washing machine watching the muscles in his back ebb and flow beneath his t-shirt while he puts the back panel back onto my dryer and maneuvers it into place.
(I really want to be that t-shirt.)
But you know what the best damn part of this adventure was?
We make out in my basement for at least 15 minutes when he is done. (And I secretly pray that my washing machine goes to laundry heaven next week.)
And then Nick suggests, “Hey, do you want a tour of the fire station? I have to return this dolly anyway that I borrowed to haul your dryer.”
“Absolutely!” my inner 3rd grader enthusiastically replies.
Two minutes later, I am sitting beside Nick in his truck and he is singing aloud to a very lame song and I am laughing away. What a goober. (I love it.)
As we pull up to the station he announces, “Looks like they just went on a call, we got the place to ourselves!” as he lets me into the garage on the first floor where the fire trucks normally are.
Holy crap. They DO slide down poles!
I bound around as if I am on a school field trip and ask, “Can I see your fireman garb?”
Nick chuckles, “Hell yeah.” He leads me into a room off the garage where the firefighter gear is lined up and coyly reveals, “And you’re going to do more than just see it. You’re gonna wear it.”
“What? Oh come on!” I giggle and feign objection, but really, I think this is so freaking cool.
Nick shows me how the boots are all lined up with the pants so they can dress quickly when the alarm sounds. I step into them as he instructs. He lifts up the suspenders and hooks them on my shoulders, but not before commenting, “Damn, I do love your legs.”
Being around him is like getting a compliment overdose. I love your eyes. I love your lips. I love your smile. I am constantly showered with attention I have never before known. I don’t really know what to do with it. So I just breathe it in. And love it.
Who wouldn’t? Someone in a coma maybe. And I am feeling more alive than ever before.
“I feel like a clown!” I say in half firefighter attire.
“You look,” Mr. compliment strikes again, “pretty damn adorable.”
Next I get to put on the coat and it feels like lead, “How much does this stuff weigh? Is it made of granite?”
“That’s nothing,” he warns, “try the helmut.”
He then puts what feels like a rock on my head.
“Good gawd!” I exclaim, “How can you battle infernos wearing this much heavy shit?”
“All the gears weighs about 80 pounds when it’s all on.”
I am instantly impressed. I have a whole new respect for men who go to work and have to wear this suit of armor WHILE scaling down the sides of buildings and saving old women from smoke inhalation.
Nick shows me the rest of the station, we even swipe some pie in the kitchen. Hmmm . . . apple. Num.
When he shows me the business office he announces, “And this is the computer I was sitting at when I asked you to be my Facebook friend,” and then confesses, “my hand was shaking when I hit “send” let me tell you.”
I just smile. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more honest.
He takes me through every nook and cranny of that place, shows me the plaques on the wall of the former firefighters over the past 100 years and the stars next to the names of the firefighters who have died during our town’s history. There are only 5, but still, I shudder.
This is a job where people can die. And have.
He reads my mind, “I am going to be fine,” he whispers and kisses the top of my head, “don’t worry.”
I do inquire about his “best” adventure on the job and his face lights up, “Well,” he coyly says, “I have delivered a baby once in a blizzard, on Christmas.”
Did he just say baby? Did he just say blizzard?
Did he just say Christmas?
I sink into my chair.
This. I gotta hear.
Nick tells me all about it. The person who had called 911 didn’t speak English so Nick and colleague were uncertain as to what exactly they would find when they arrived at this call. All the dispatcher could decipher was something about a baby and stairs.
Expecting to perhaps find an injured child when they arrived, they instead found a crowd of people gathered in an apartment foyer at the bottom of a stairwell. They parted when Nick arrived. And then he saw the girl.
She was pregnant. And in labor.
A quick assessment revealed the grave reality of the situation. She was crowning.
“Looks like we’re having a baby tonight,” he’d told his colleague, who was stunned and speechless. They’d been trained for this but never actually had to do it.
“Go. Get me the delivery kit,” Nick remembers barking.
And that winter night.
In the middle of a blizzard.
In an apartment stairwell.
Nick helps a scared young girl give birth to a son.
Talk about a Christmas story.
“It’s definitely one of my best moments in this job,” Nick softly says, his eyes shining as he continues, “in fact, the experience moved me so much, that if I ever do marry someday and have children, I want to deliver my own child.”
It is all I can do at that moment not to raise my hand.
And volunteer my own uterus.
“Oh, they’re back,” Nick announces as we hear the enormous garage doors opening below us, “Now you can slide down the pole with me and say hi!”
I laugh internally and think to myself how I’ll get to tell Naomi later that I was offered the chance to slide down Nick’s pole sooner that she thought.
But in reality, I balk, “No way! I am not really doing that!”
“What? Oh come on, I’ve slid down this thing with a hot piece of pizza in one hand, you can do it!”
I know. I am a loser. I am terrified of heights to the point where an unfamiliar flight of stairs can cause me anxiety. So I can’t even bring myself to try.
I rode the Harley. I am drawing the line at the two story scary pole.
Nick just laughs at me.
And we take the stairs.
He tries to persuade me to just pose by the pole for a quick picture before the firefighters get out of their trucks. Oh fine. So I do, but then as one of the doors swings open I shriek and run away in embarrassment.
Nick is doubling over with laughter, “Nice one! This picture is a blur! I’m sending to you anyway you dork!”
“Audra’s First Fire Pole Dance” is the caption he gives the picture that he sends from his blackberry to mine, which is literally, nothing but blurry motion.
Which is a fitting visual for this story so far.
Because things are moving so fast and feel so unreal, that at moments I am not sure if I can even get clear picture of what is going on with this guy who burst into my life so swiftly and with so much intensity.
But just a few days later, things become clearer.
Even though I simply can not believe.
The words Nick tells me.
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