Overnight somewhere in the dark my Kevlar dissolved into wet cardboard. And yet I didn't pick up the phone, not until I had taken the kids to school and then I only made one call, and that was to make an appointment to cut my hair. It's always so brassy and fried after a trip to the shore. It was perpetual golden straw when we lived back home.
I can't sustain myself for another week in this frame of mind. I have to fight my way through it and I'm still not good at the whole left-field lobs that smack right into me. No, I don't spring back when pressed on. I haven't for a long time.
Loch called late last night. He wanted to know what was really going on. As usual he's taken sides and believes that Jacob made a huge mistake leaving me for this long. He remembers well the business trip last year and that was what, three nights? Loch thinks if Jacob isn't going to be here then he should fly in and be here and I told him if he shows up on my doorstep any time between now and the 16th of May I will hurt him, that I need this time, that this is about me and not about my marriage and that everything is alright. He didn't believe me but I don't feel like reassuring anyone but Bridget today, and maybe the kids if they need it and so Loch is on his own, just like the rest of us. It's a leap of faith for Jacob to do what I've asked of him and there's no one better equipped to survive on faith alone.
The three of us are having a good time. We made dinner together last night and then watched a movie in our jammies, eating ice cream and reading spooky stories in my big bed before I took them to theirs. We slept with the windows open upstairs. I could hear the windchimes tinkling softly in the porch. The weather has turned beautiful here, at last.
And this morning the strangest thing happened.
I put my hearing aids in. It's quiet in the mornings here alone and I can ease back into using them. I get very tired and very frustrated wearing them but I'm trying. Okay, sometimes I try and sometimes I say fuck it.
But anyhow, I was upstairs this morning cleaning the windows and I realized there was a bee inside. He probably got trapped when I put the screens in. I'm deathly afraid of bees. Like fraidy-cat scared-silly afraid. Terrified of fuzzy buzzy critters. Wasps are worse but I knew this bee would be mad if he had been trapped in the house since Sunday evening. But I took a deep breath and went and put on rubber gloves, got a newspaper to roll up and came back to the room and closed the door so he couldn't escape. I took a deep breath and watched the bee climb up the glass on the window, as if he had no idea he was about to be beaten senseless. And the room was so cold, I had goosebumps.
If a bee ever made it inside in the past, Cole would trap it between a glass and a piece of cardboard and gently take it outside and then he would let it crawl up his hand out of the glass and sit with it for a while. He liked bees. He loved animals, and insects and spiders even. He said they looked innocent, all cute and colorful but they could sting, and hurt you and even kill you.
Huh. Sound like anyone we know?
He would give the bees names and they would always buzz around him, he never got stung. He was never scared. I figured if he could spend that much time befriending the damn things, then surely I could squash this one and prevent one of the kids from possibly being stung.
So I took another breath and stepped closer and I hauled off and whacked the paper at the bee. And I missed. The bee took off to the right and made a loop around the room. And then he came straight at my head and I freaked out. Well, I didn't freak out, I figured I was going to be stung so I closed my eyes and my mouth up tight and waited. After a few seconds I realized I couldn't feel anything so I opened my eyes and looked around. I ran my fingers gingerly through my hair. If you've ever had long hair and you're afraid of bees there's a good chance it stems from being a child and getting a bee caught in your hair and maybe that's why you're afraid of them to this day, don't you think?
I looked at the window, no bee. I listened carefully for the little motor sounds, nothing. And then I looked at the floor. There was my fuzzy nemesis, dead as a doornail on the floor at my feet.
Oog. I poked it a few times with the paper and then screamed just because as I scooped it onto the edge of the newspaper. I brought it downstairs and outside, all the way to the garage and then I shook the paper over the fence.
And then I realized Cole had killed the bee. It was the one fear he never teased me about. He respected it because of the incident when I was a kid and so he always dealt with bees, and he dealt with this one too. He's watching over me.
Therapy tomorrow. Thank goodness. Boy do I have a lot to talk about. My angels have switched sides.
