Rainy Mondays are good days for the princess and her penchant for epic nonsensical ramblings in entries dipped in wax.
Rainy Mondays are good days for early-morning marriage therapy appointments and bright red raincoats and hot coffee.
And they are even good days for burying sparrows that fail to survive neighborhood cats and somehow make their way, gravely wounded, into the hearts of your family against hope of a happy ending.
(nometaphorsIseenometaphorshere)
I made it seem as though Jacob was so cool and collected when he returned on Friday. Back just when I was on the verge of a historic low with his impeccable timing and jaw-dropping gestures?
Huh?
Giant black holes left on purpose to suck all the details inside where they would go undetected for a million lifetimes. Or something. Some things are too damn private. Should I emasculate him as I have a few times over by telling you he got down on his knees and begged me to let him be a part of whatever it is that I seem to need? To not shut him out and turn him down and tune him out?
Or maybe you'd like to hear how he took one hand and cradled my head and the other hand wrapped right around my throat when he kissed me because that's how I like it. Right up just like that until I am on ballerina-toes and breathless.
No one wants to hear that, that's fucked up, Bridget.
But it isn't. Because he is Jacob.
Friday night when I went to bed I left my hair up in the braid that had spent the day unbraiding itself. You do that when it's long, it saves a lot of tangles. Jacob tucked his face into the spot right under my hairline, pressing his nose and his lips against the nape of my neck and locked his arms around me in spoons and he fell asleep so fast and so hard it was almost an audible hammer drop. He didn't stir for close to ten hours and when he woke up Saturday morning we had an uneasy time sorting out how he could come back without talking to me first, knowing I needed him but knowing I was tired of being weak and that I would never ask. So he did it on a whim and it was the right thing but what if it hadn't been?
He's talking a mile a goddamned minute and untangling the ribbon from my hair and I have shivers going up and down my spine and am growing angrier by the minute.
I didn't care, I'm no longer dealing in what-ifs. Life from now on is going to be black and white and as clear as glass. It has to be, we've lived too long perched on indecision like sparrows on the clothesline. Waiting. Waiting forever. For what?
Jacob was so passionate in his arguments. I could tell he had spent days talking it out loud to himself. I'm his wife, I don't answer to anyone but myself any longer. He isn't heavy-handed like Cole was, I have freedoms I have never known. Things you fail to notice when you grow up from 15 to 35 with the same dominance leaves you...child-like. Prone to following orders and not even knowing you have a mind of your own. I discovered I had an opinion, I have a fucking opinion and I started throwing it out like confetti.
I leveled power just because I could.
That isn't right, like so much else.
I never wanted to be without Jacob, I simply wanted to see what it felt like with no one around-Cole OR Jacob, just to see. And now I never want to see it again. I was done with that plan the moment he turned around at the gate and watched us walk down the terminal and I had turned back to look at him and our eyes met. We smiled but it wasn't a comforting smile, it was a grimace of pain on his face. Pain and regret. Mine was a mask of fear and doubt. And once apart we swapped emotions and carried baggage of a different sort to the collective homes we've spent so much time in without each other.
I managed to swallow both and figured it out and just when I did, he came back.
With new wedding rings. Smaller rings because my God, I can't seem to keep any weight on.
And new pride in me. The price of which is less confidence in himself, which isn't right. Give your angel wings, permission to fly and when she soars you watch her fly away and you realize you're alone.
Jacob says sometimes he's afraid he is here to help me tie my wings on and when I am confident enough I'll fly away and not come back and he'll know his purpose then and he's going to evade it until the day he dies.
Therapy this morning was all about trading places with trust. That time gave me the backbone I was seeking and that time made my husband weep with sorrow.
I do better when he's not here and we both are aware of it. Coping mechanisms honed through years of abandonment. And I don't want it. I prefer to lean on him, to give up that strength and breathe instead of holding my breath and never relaxing and just getting through the days as if life is one monumental chore or insurmountable task I simply have to survive.
Now, you tell me, where in the fuck are the happy mediums? Where's the peace already?
Never content to just be, we need to be better. Life is one ironic fuckup.
Every day as I work my way around the house on various chores and errands I find pens and pencils that someone has left. The mug on the desk where they belong is empty and so I bring them back and they migrate away again. If I'm distracted I use them to pin up my hair and mostly by the end of the day I'm walking around with six of them sticking out all over the place from a bun that's messy but still better than loose and in the way. Jacob will be on the phone and he'll reach over and pull one out, pulling the cap off with his teeth to write something down. Then he grins at me as if it's the silliest thing in the world to have those stuck there.
Sometimes he says that they grow out of my brain, that writers grow pens like artists visualize finished works. I tell him it's the opposite, that artists make lists of drawings they want to make or write their plans out instead of making a quick sketch and that writers see their stories in their heads and simply have to translate those images into words and it's so easy to do it in reverse everyone should be a writer. He laughs some more.
His writing is never his spoken word. He writes out all these reserved, sometimes stunted notes and then when he delivers the sermon or speech or talk it just rolls so lyrically and enigmatically from within, he has developed a manner of going back to rewrite things after giving them in front of me. Whether I am listening or not. He'll just walk around the house gesturing madly and talking and after a while you realize he's in the backyard sermonizing the city wildlife.
And burying dead birds. And most certainly lying when he comes back in and you ask if he's been crying and he says no.
Love liked me long ago
It had a way of making everyone the same
But now the angels must laugh and sigh
To hear me pleading with you
Needing this you this way
Oh why don't you want to be happy with me?
I'm afraid if you don't come around soon
I'll turn sadder than you ever were
And you'll learn loneliness is worse
You've got to try to stay mine all the way
The trading of roles is unwelcome. What happened to sharing, instead of everything resting with either Jacob or myself? What happened to getting better? What happened to finding the poetry in life but not as our coup de grace?
I believe all of it has been buried with that poor little sparrow.
What didn't get buried was the determination of one fair princess and the hope and faith of one of God's angels.
We will not fail.
I said it on the front steps as Jacob put the key in the lock and he stopped and turned around and nodded while the rain poured down over us, still too shaken to give me one of his characteristic verbal comforts that used to roll like marbles off his tongue. Once inside we threw our coats off and our arms around each other. It was a kiss-bombing mission. Kisses raining everywhere like bombs over an enemy city. Staving off life's onslaught with love, the only thing that's going to get us through this -faith, hope, experience and logic be-fucking-damned. Only then did physical comfort permit his spoken confirmation.
We will not fail, princess.
