i’ll get right on that

I had a crazy-awesome weekend.  Not awesome in the sense that I went to a fabulous party, or saw a great show, or volunteered at the SPCA (which would have all been really awesome things to do, and I should probably jot them down on a list somewhere), but awesome in the sense that I finally put my head down and got some things done.

We have been redecorating our family room for over 2 years now. I know; it’s pathetic, really. I love this room; it is half-way upstairs, over the garage, so most people don’t even know we have a family room until we show it to them. It’s like a secret. Except, ever since we bought this house, it’s been more like a dirty little secret. The room is hideous! The previous owner was evidently a Debbie Travis junkie; when we moved in, there were stencils and pastel faux finishes and wallpaper borders (I wish I was kidding) everywhere. We got rid of most of it, but for some reason, we never got around to the family room. We knew we’d do it someday, but since it was a room people rarely saw, it slipped to the bottom of the priority pile.

Over time, the ugly got worse. Old, unmatched furniture moved in. The green plastic mini-blinds came down long enough to put in new windows, but then went up again when we realized that we weren’t buying nice curtains any time soon. When the carpet started getting damaged by the computer chair, we threw down an old area rug that had been hanging out in storage. Add to that the unrelenting detritus of 2 primary-school-aged children and, well, you know.

A little over 2 years ago, I finally got fed up. After all, even if strangers rarely saw it, we spent a lot of time there, and didn’t we deserve a beautiful space? Gee was completely on-board, so we hired a decorator to help us out with the room. Apparently, after our first meeting and big promises, she completely forgot about us, and when we finally tracked her down and got her to bring us the plans, they were awful. We dutifully paid her the $1300 for her services (yes, you read that right), and then stewed in our own disgust for several more months, unwilling to move forward with her plan, yet afraid to abandon it and completely lose our investment.

So we lived like that, with a paint chip and a file folder full of furniture ideas sitting (among all the other crap) on our desk, and tile and stone samples leaning against the walls, for about 20 more months. Eventually, I realized we had to do something, and so I bought curtains. Lovely panel curtains that contained the colours we’d been talking about. It was my HGTV ‘jumping off point’, and it got us back on track…sort of.

While shopping for couches we met another designer, and in exchange for a promise to drop a huge wad of cash in her store, she went over our plans and refined them – that is to say, made them into a room we will actually enjoy. We excitedly ordered the furniture and… <crickets>…

The store called last week to tell us the furniture is ready to be delivered. The whole room. We still hadn’t arranged a painter, or electrician, or tile-setter. We’d basically done nothing since we put down the equivalent of Tee’s education fund as a deposit on the furniture.

Which brings me to this weekend. Faced with desperation we went to the building supply and picked out the stone for our fireplace. We stopped at the electrical store and chose the spot lights we’ll need to fill the 7 new holes in our ceiling. We called 3 painters for estimates and selected a painter who will start work tomorrow. We stripped the NASTY wallpaper border off the wall (my god it was easy…why did I wait 6 years to do that?), filled holes, sold all the old furniture.

And just for fun, we also squeezed in a long-overdue appointment with our financial advisor, as well as a drop-in to update our life insurance.

I’m telling you, it was crazy-awesome. I have writers cramp from crossing so many things off of my to-do list. I’m also wondering why I procrastinate so much. We knew we had to do all these things. We know that it will take just as long, and just as much effort to do them at the last minute as it might to do them right away. And yet still we wait. Why is that?

I’ve always been like that; I can screw around at work like nobody’s business, but give me a deadline and you will have what you need, and it will be pretty great, too. I send birthday presents out late all the time, even if they have been sitting on my dresser for weeks. When I finally send them, I wonder, ‘why didn’t I do that before?” My dad used to scream at my sisters and me for always leaving the car with just a little bit of gas, “If you’re going to drive around on a quarter of a tank, you might as well drive around on the TOP quarter!”.

I procrastinate. I know I’m not alone. It’s interesting really: why put something off if it is going to be done eventuallyanyway? Why not just do it and be done? It seems like a good idea; I think I’ll work on that.

(Right after I write this post, on Wednesday, about how productive I was 5 days ago…)

maybe this time

I’m back on the road.

It’s a long road, to be sure, and one that is mostly unfamiliar to me, but when I was getting dressed this morning I looked down and saw that my foot had moved itself across the white line, and I felt something go “Hmmm”, and here I am.

I travelled this road, very briefly, last March.  I made good time, got to a place where if I couldn’t yet see my destination, I could at least catch glimpses of the place from which I’d be able to catch glimpses of the watering hole at the end of the route.

I’ve been standing at the junction of the road for a long time, hating my body, knowing changes should be made, knowing what to do, but then so quickly forgetting again, like an amnesic drunk who, upon reawakening, was immediately offered a bottle of polish vodka.  The craving beats the commitment every time.

I was a skinny kid, then a thin woman, for most of my life.  And then I got older and met and loved a carnivore, had two babies, and got older still, and the thinness of me gave way to something…else.  Having never had to deal with weight issues before, I’m not particularly good at it.  The self-loathing about body image, though? At that I’m pretty awesome. 

Last year, something incredible happened.  For the first time, I was able to devote myself to change, and to actually enjoy it.  I was making a conscious choice, minute by hour by day, that the instant gratification of this chocolate or that beer or those french fries was not worth losing the gains I had already made.  Success bred success, and I felt stronger physically and mentally than I had in a long time.

Of course it didn’t last.  A visit from my sister – a hostess in her home or mine – made me abandon my conviction in favour of social acceptability.  Old habits that were supposed to last only until her plane took off had by then taken hold, and I allowed myself complacency, comfortable in the knowledge that if I had done it once, I could do it again.

Except I didn’t.

But this morning, just now, trying on old clothes and noticing the difference that only 3 days of moderate attention has made, I felt that feeling again.  I dug a little deeper in my closet and found the things that used to make me feel sexy and confident, and I realized that they have slipped their way back into the realm of possibility.  I felt what it feels like to be successful for nobody but yourself, and it felt like power.

And that’s when I looked down and saw my naked toes tickling the asphalt.

sometimes it’s hard to breathe

(I’m okay.  I wrote this post back on my bad weekend, but didn’t publish it.  But, since this is my place, and I’m trying to stay honest, and since there’s been a whole lot of crickets on this site lately, I decided I’d publish today).

 * * * * *

I’m tumbling down again.  I feel it happening but I can’t stop it…I don’t know if I even want to stop it.  I do know that I hate it when my children see me like this; I guess that’s something.

I’m overwhelmed.  I’m suffocating.  There is no quiet place in my mind, no sanctuary in my home.  My home is my problem.  Usually (I think I am learning) these breakdowns begin there (here).  Quite simply, I am being strangled by my surroundings. 

My father was a finder.  We would be driving down the highway at 80 kilometres an hour and something would catch his eye.  He’d screech to a halt, throw the car into reverse, and backtrack until he could get out and take a look at whatever treasure had found its way roadside.  The LP that introduced me to my first rock and roll music?  The Salmo-Creston highway.  The watch he wore to my wedding?  The Hope-Princeton.  My dad salvages everything, from loose screws on the street (which pose a risk for passing tires) to lost logs from a boom, drifting by the on the ocean in front of his house. 

My husband is a keeper.  He has sheets of loose-leaf paper with the names and statistics of every player in the 1992 NHL draft; he has his dad’s old 45 records, even though we’ve never owned a turntable.  He has trophies he won in pee-wee hockey, and medals from every fun-run he’s ever finished.  Yellowing newspapers with his own articles, and newspapers with once-important or interesting arts or sports or home and garden sections.   He keeps socks and underwear that are full of holes; he keeps an ever growing pile of clothes, neither clean nor dirty, on a chair beside the bed.  A pile of receipts and tags and scraps of once-important papers clutters the surface of his dresser.

My oldest daughter is a free spirit, whose artistic license looms large.  While I want to decorate her room with perfectly placed matching frames, she wants to hang up her own works of “art”:  hastily drawn scribbles or variations of her name scrawled across a recycled page.  While I want her to classify her treasures into matching, labelled boxes, stacked neatly on shelves, she opts to use old cereal boxes, each one containing a amalgamation of everything.  She plays gorgeously and independently, spreading herself out from room to room, a trail of makeshift toys and games in her wake.

I can’t live in this environment, and yet the alternative exhausts me.  Sometimes I just collapse and look around, and then collapse again, more profoundly.  I don’t know where to begin, and once begun, I’m not permitted to stop, because the moment I stop it all starts again, the muddle reproducing like germs in a Petri dish, breeding, growing, expanding…

I become a bad mother when this happens.  Not a bad mother in the Catherine-calls-herself-a-bad-mother-but-is-really-parental-awesomeness-personified but a really bad mother, who throws tantrums and cries and runs and hides.  Completely ineffective, utterly destructive.  At these times I feel thoroughly alone:  my children don’t understand; my husband doesn’t care.  I am blind with rage and frustration and total desolation, and I take myself somewhere to be alone for a moment so that I can muster up the will to come back into this realm.  But when I get to that alone place there is still more stuff and more work to do and no solace and nowhere further to run away.

This isn’t beige; this is black.  I know I’ll come out of it eventually, but just as surely, I know it will happen again.

the moment of truth

Gee will be home in the wee hours tonight.  Do I tell him that I just had one of the most miserable weekends of my life, and make him worry about my well-being and (unnecessarily) the well-being of his children the next time he has to, or wants to, go away?  Or do I pretend that everything went well, as is usually the case, and hope that neither of the girls lets slip that mommy pretty much lost her marbles on Saturday?

Do you tell your husband when you have a really bad time of it?  Or do you put on a brave face and pretend that everything is fine.  Fine dear, everything is fine.

…

(It’s really not as bad as this might make it sound…I just have a hard time forgiving myself.)

different scars, but scars nonetheless

Once, when Dee was about two and a half, I lost it all over her.  It escalated to the point where I was screaming at her so loud that Gee could hear me from outside.  I forget what it was about – I’m pretty sure it started as a silly argument over what I wanted her to wear or something – but whatever it was, it certainly didn’t merit my total loss of control, and my bullying and berating an innocent little person who, no matter how mature she was for her age, was still only a toddler.

Once my senses had returned and the enormous guilt had properly set in, I remember consoling myself by thinking that I would probably get away with it.  That as long as I never let loose such an emotional and manipulative outburst again, my poor baby would probably not be scarred by my one huge indiscretion.  In fact, I told myself, she probably wouldn’t even remember it.

Of course there have been more shameful incidents since that summer’s night, 4 1/2 years ago.   At what age, I wonder, does our free pass expire?  When I lost my mind tonight, my pendulum swinging between hopelessness and rage and back again to despair, how much damage was I imparting on my daughters?  If I were to stop it (just stop it!) tonight, and live the rest of my days as a Good Mother, could I undo the harm that has been done?  

Has harm been done?  I think so.  Dee, especially, is as sensitive as I ever was, and I am sure she will grow up with either memories or knowledge of a mother who sometimes couldn’t cope.  I wish that the other memories, the other reality of me as a caring, intelligent, involved and loving mother would tip the scales in my favour, but based on my own experience as the daughter of an occasionally overwhelmed woman, I can’t believe in that.  

There was quite a discussion over at Her Bad Mother the other day about spanking, whether it causes irreparable harm, or actually leads to better, more successful adults.  I commented that I don’t spank.  I don’t think it does any good, and I don’t see how it is ever right to hit a child.  But I cannot believe that spanking, in and of itself, can cause more emotional injury than some of the non-physical ways we deal with our children.  I won’t say discipline, because what I did tonight, and what I did all those summers ago, was not discipline.  It was taking out my frustrations on someone who should be able to expect more from me.

to sleep, perchance to dream

I have an aunt and uncle who always slept in separate bedrooms.  Growing up, we thought it was strange, but my parents explained it was because Auntie P liked to read in bed, and Uncle G wanted the lights out so he could sleep, and we accepted it as just a quirky fact of someone else’s life. 

Now I get it.  For reals.

Gee has developed a ridiculous snoring problem.  Ree-freaking-diculous.  And, in all honesty, I’m afraid it is going to erode my marriage into a tattered little morsel of what once was.  As it stands right now, the best I can hope for is a trip to the loony bin; the worst: homicide.

When I met my charming husband, he didn’t snore at all.  It was actually a quality that went on the “pro” side of the boyfriend score-sheet, especially since my own dad saws logs like a lumberjack, turning years of family vacations into torturous experiments in all kinds of ear-plugging paraphernalia.  I used to ask my mom how she could stand it, and she would tell me that she really didn’t mind, that it was comforting for her to hear him beside her.  Maybe that explains why my parents have such a happy marriage, all these years later.

Me?  Not so charitable.  Maybe if my beloved uttered the gentle noises of a bubbling brook or a gentle breeze, I would find it comforting, but there is nothing soothing about the snorting and wheezing that surges from the back of his throat all night long.

Like I said, when we met, Gee didn’t snore.  Then, once we had children and the sleepless nights that came with them, he would occasionally snore, if he was dead tired and lying on his back.  A gentle rub or quiet whisper was enough to get him to turn on his side, and the problem would disappear.

As the children got older, the sleep came (mercifully) back, which also meant the freedom the go out more often with the boys.  After a few beers, the snoring would start, but again, for the most part, he could roll over and make it go away.

A couple more years, a few more beers, and about 20 pounds…the snoring started to be more regular, but still controllable, most of the time.  Occasionally, if Gee was congested as well as tired, I’d find myself moving to the couch in the wee hours, opting for lumpy cushions and ill-fitting blankets over the constant reminders to roll onto his side.   In that crazy, sleepy state that overcomes us in the middle of the night, I would feel bad for waking him up to tell him he was keeping me up, at the same time as I was raging against him for doing something over which he had absolutely no control.

Then, for Christmas this year, I got something I really didn’t ask for:  a husband who snores immediately, constantly, and vociferously, whether he is on his side, his back or in the room next door.  He thinks he’s congested, and yet shows no symptoms of illness.  He thinks he is overtired from the holidays, and yet won’t go to bed before 1:00 am on any given night.  He thinks that a lingering ear infection might be troubling him, and yet he won’t go back to the doctor to get it drained.  Meanwhile I think I’m going to go out of my ever-loving mind. 

He’s been sleeping in the basement guest room for most of the week – not exactly conducive to marital bliss – and moving upstairs before I get up to go to work.  As much as I love (really, really love) the peace and quiet that this arrangement affords, it’s not ideal.  If the kids wake up in the night and for some reason I don’t hear them, he is too far away to help, and to be honest, neither of us is getting a full, uninterrupted night because of the 5 am trek up the stairs.  Don’t even get me started about our sexless life.

But mostly, something in me just feels it’s wrong.  I believe that married people – happily married people – should share a bed.  I believe that physical closeness helps to promote emotional closeness.  I believe that it is really cold in Ottawa in January, and I’d like to cuddle up against a warm body.  I’m also starting to believe that maybe he likes to sleep in the basement, so that I don’t nag him about what time he goes to bed.  

I want my husband back.  I want my sleep back.  Or maybe I just want a house with 4 bedrooms upstairs so I can turn into my Auntie P and be done with it.

crash

I was really happy about Christmas this year.  I made a point of decorating early and staying organized so that I would be able to sit back and enjoy it.  And I was doing a pretty good job of it too.  Christmas day was quiet and pleasant, with just the four of us to work on our own (lazy) schedule and pass the time the way we wanted.  The kids woke up late and we made our way into the living room and the giant pile of stuff that was waiting for all of us.  The children were fantastic; Tee got a little overwhelmed at one point, but it didn’t bother me too much; in a way I was glad that she would still be affected by the muchness of it all.

Eventually we dressed up in big boots and snow pants and toques and took Dee’s new GT racer to the park for some sliding, but the conditions weren’t great and we were content to head back home early to hot chocolate and another look at the presents and generally just hanging out until Gee braved the temperature in the back yard to grill some steaks for a happily untraditional Christmas feast.   All in all a great day.  Maybe a day that would have disappointed, if we didn’t know that the big family party was coming up on the 26th, but we did know, and so we could enjoy the occasion at hand.

The family party was fun.  Better than I expected, actually.  The normal regrets and eye-rolling moments, but all in all pretty successful.  The kids got more stuff, the adults got more stuffed, and by the time we got home and into bed, everyone was overfed, overtired, and generally just over-and-out.

Now I’m spent.  I am battling have a nasty, frustrating cold.  I’m done, just done.

Except I’m not. 

We still have 3 more major parties to go to or host before this holiday season officially comes to an end.   The trouble is, my interest in holiday parties crawled into bed with me on Boxing Day and never really got back out.  

Gee feels the same: tonight’s party with his step-dad’s family feels like an obligation, not a celebration, and inviting friends over tomorrow night to ring in the new year seemed like a great idea at the time, but now I’d be happy to curl up on my couch with my Snuggie and let the kids eat chips until the ball drops, or they pass out, whichever comes first.  Hell, I may still do that, company be damned. 

And then, on January 2, my brother-in-law is getting married.  It should be a time for joy and merriness, but instead it’s just something else we have to do, all wrapped up in wads and wads of really expensive wrapping.  Gee is the best man; Tee & Dee are flower girls, and I’m the personal shopper, valet, hairdresser and accountant for the whole gang.  It’s a lot.  It’s too much.

I keep telling myself that the calendar is playing a trick on me:  if all these events had occurred before December 25^th, we would have relished them.  But now, on the downslide of the holiday, it feels like we should be resting, hibernating, settling into our winter routine, not pulling on the nylon stockings and high heels for another night of excess, another morning of remorse.

However.  It is what it is.  I can either endure it, or make the most of it.  And since I know that in the dreary days ahead I will be glad to have good memories in store, I better drug myself up, dress myself up, and get going.

But January 3?  Really done. Really.

and now, christmas

The work is done.  The weeks and weeks of shopping and cooking and running and planning.  It starts in early November in preparation for Tee’s birthday, and continues right up until, well until today.

The last-minute things were picked up yesterday:  candy and nuts for stockings, a hostess gift for my soon-to-be-sister-in-law, something extra for Gee.  I stayed up until midnight last night wrapping and cooking and cleaning, knowing that I wouldn’t want to be doing it today.   I stopped into the grocery store on my way home, to pick up enough milk and fruit and vegetables to carry us through until the stores re-open.  And now I’m home.  Home, my favourite place in the world.

This morning, the kids came to work with me and hung out with my colleagues’ kids – about 40 of them in all.  The day was full of games and crafts and food and music, and ended with a visit from one of the many, many Santa’s they’ve seen this year (I may have a rant on that another time, but right now is not that time). 

Right now is for coasting.  Right now is for pouring a drink, and lighting the tree, and listening to my daughters sing and play, giddy in anticipation of what is to come.

One of my earliest memories is of going into our kitchen when I was about 3 years old, after all the presents were unwrapped and the mandarin oranges eaten, and confiding to my mother my enormous disappointment that Christmas was over.  That after waiting and dreaming for a whole year, the thing passed by in a rush of tissue paper and ribbon and a few shortbread cookies for breakfast.  I don’t remember her reply actually, but now I realize how immensely sad she must have been to know that for me Christmas was only about the presents.  I don’t remember her words, but whatever she said must have been the right thing, because as far as I can remember, ever since that day, I’ve never felt the same.  As far back as I can recall, I’ve understood that Christmas is really a season, albeit one that can involve a lot of work, and a fair amount of stress as well. 

But now, that is all behind.  Now it is about enjoying the moments (and a few rummy egg-nogs).  I’m so happy to have arrived at this place.

Merry Christmas to everyone.  Peace, love and joy to us all.

dreaming of greener christmases

In my dream, it is December 24th, the clock inching toward 4 pm.  I haven’t purchased a single gift.  I no longer live in Ottawa, but am suddenly back in my tiny home town; the little strip mall is completely closed, and the only store left open is Woolco.  Not even Walmart, Woolco (yes, in my dream it is 1984, but really it is this year, every year).  In my dream, I’m berating myself for leaving everything to the last minute; I’m searching the empty shelves for anything that might be right for my 13-year-old nephew, or my sister’s latest live-in boyfriend.  My dad!  What the hell can I get my Dad?  Panic sets in, and I’m not smart enough (in my dream) to recognize that my family would be far happier if I just came home and spent the afternoon with them, instead of driving myself crazy in the local discount store.

I know it’s a good Christmas if I don’t have the dream.

* * * * * *

Some of my best Christmases were, oddly, those before house and husband and children, when I was living alone in Victoria.  I revelled in the season, even if I didn’t do a whole lot of actual revelling.  No snow, no bouncing babies or sugarplum dreams, and yet I remember truly noticing the Christmas spirit, and being grateful, happy.  I remember shopping, cheerfully, and tsk-tsking those who seemed to be doing the whole thing begrudgingly.  If you hate it, I thought, don’t do it.  I’d go out of my way to help people, to smile, wish happy holidays, give up a parking spot or hold a door.  I did it with joy in my heart and a hope that I might be contagious.

Those years, I would decorate my little tree in my little apartment, placing every string of beads and every bauble in exactly the right place.  I would spend hours listening to carols or watching Jimmy Stewart while I painstakingly wrapped each gift in beautiful paper, added ribbons and bows and hand-made tags.  I would place the gifts under my tree in anticipation of the giving, a coincidental decoration, and they would shine.

It was years ago, but it stands out for me as the ideal to which I have aspired every year since. 

It’s been tough these last few years.  Working full-time; trying to keep the house clean, let alone decorated, trying to dig out from the truck-load of Christmas letters and projects and pictures that come home from school every day.  Getting to the school concerts, the daycare concerts, buying presents to come from this Santa, that Santa, or to give to this teacher, that daycare provider.  Juggling in-laws and outlaws and then ohmygod why is my kid sick today??!  It is all we can do to keep our heads above water, and if we remember to breathe while we’re doing it, we consider the year a success.  If the spirit is lacking or the tempers are flaring, we tend to give ourselves a break.

But this year?   This year, I think I found it.  This year, the kids are in it and loving it.   I got my shopping done early enough that now I can just wrap up a few details and try to enjoy myself, like I did so many years ago.  This year, we decorated.  We baked.  With the children.  This year, I’ve been reminding myself to slow down and I’m walking with eyes wide open, taking in as much of the season as I can.

It’s not a perfect replica of the days when I had all the time in the world to foster the spirit of the season, but it’s close, and it gives me great hope, and great pleasure, to know that it can only get better from here.

snow and a memory

I’m at work, and the snow is coming down, fierce and unrelenting, outside. He drifts again into my thoughts, as he does so often at times like this. A flicker of a memory, made romantic over time, of a 17-year-old me sitting in some random high-school class, looking out the window, worrying about my drive home. He offered to drive me, to drive my car for me, take me safely home and then somehow (how? walk?) get back to his house across town.

I said no. (I always said no; I still say no more often than yes.) I spent that afternoon worrying about the accumulation, the slippery roads, the stop signs on steep hills, and then when the bell rang and I’d collected my books, I drove myself, slowly, steadily, through the narrow streets to my house. I don’t remember the drive, actually, except that it was uneventful, lasting no more than 10 minutes. And yet, I remember that moment in class. I remember the offer, from the boy who wasn’t my boyfriend, wasn’t my crush. Wasn’t even really a friend – just someone who for some reason, offered to do something kind for me.

What would have happened if I had said yes?

Now, twenty-five years later, I can see things a little more clearly. Maybe that would have been the beginning of an unlikely friendship, maybe the beginning of something more. Back then, he was just a guy – not unpopular, but not popular either, and being popular used to be important. I don’t remember a girlfriend; he sort of floated on the periphery of all of that. He was tall, but not the lanky, gangly tall of most 18-year-olds. He was a big guy – a little too big to be comfortable in his own skin, at that age – and had soft curls framing his gentle face, and a wide grin, that like his body seemed a little to large. He wasn’t on anybody’s list. We all favoured the soccer players, or the hockey players, or skiers. He wasn’t any of those things; if he skied or played hockey or soccer, it was just for fun, just for himself, and it wouldn’t have registered on our radar.

I do know he was a good person. Sweet. Funny. I know he had a brother, a close family. I know that he was fair, and that he was always present, reliable. Kind. Kind enough to offer a ride to a scared, skinny girl in history class. I know I liked him, even though I never imagined myself with him.

What would have happened if I had only said yes?

He’s living overseas now, in Japan, maybe Korea. He has a beautiful Asian wife and a bouncing baby boy. That’s all I know, and I only know that from friends of friends who post on Facebook. He and I don’t keep in touch – we never did. We never had a reason to; beyond that one generous offer (and typical refusal), I don’t remember having very much to do with each other at all.

I see his life now, snapshots of his life, of his travels around Asia with his beautiful baby and smiling wife, and I realize again how silly we all were back in high school. This boy – man now – chose a different path, began choosing it even then, and yet nobody was willing to give him any credit for that. Originality is a defect when you are 18, despite the encouragement of our parents to be unique (the same encouragement I heap onto my own children now, even as I cringe, knowing I may be inflicting on them the pain of eccentricity).

What would have happened if I had said yes on that snowy afternoon, all those years ago?

I am not completely naive. I don’t expect that he and I would have built any kind of life together based on one 10-minute drive through the snow-covered streets of my childhood town. We likely wouldn’t have even become better friends afterwards, save for a few days of awkward glances and low-lashed hellos in the school corridors. That drive probably wouldn’t have changed anything in my life, and yet the memory floats back to me whenever a storm rages, all these years later.

The pleasure of my memory is the possibility of adventure that it holds. Maybe, in those ten minutes, I would have seen the man he has become, the man who has finally grown into his size and his loose, sloppy grin. The man who holds a round little buddha baby with such softness that it makes you wonder what whispers are spoken into that tiny brown ear at night. The man who wasn’t afraid to leave his home and country, seeking adventure and experience on the other side of the globe.

It’s not the man that I miss; I love my husband, and I don’t question our place together. Rather it is (as it always is, isn’t it?) what the man represents: turning your back on the commonplace, trying something new and scary, doing the unexpected, and learning that you do it well.

Saying yes.