I refuse to dignify most of these emails. No, I'm not posting any pictures of naked me, forget it! My parents read here (I know, OH MY GOD). Sure I can write about sex but photographs are a whole different level of privacy to me. Maybe not to you, but to me. The day the minister's wife puts up her own naked pictures is the day the neighborhood revolts or worse, tilts and all the people slide out of their homes and off the edge of the horizon.
And, no I did not just admit the existence of said pictures. But this would be a great segue into a story about the year everyone decided they take Cole's life drawing course because he had a live! nude! model! Which, naturally was...me.
Pictures and drawings. Paintings too. Pick a medium, I think I have a work here in it.
Hmmm. Let's stop here and move along, shall we?
We're packed for the coast. It's the first time Jacob asked me to help him pack instead of him doing everything because I couldn't seem to move. Last time we went home I was put where ever I needed to be, clutching the box with Cole's ashes and feeling so so brittle. I didn't look up or around, I just went in a straight line. I drank too much. I fought with my family. I fought with Jacob. And I cried at the edge of the ocean.
Well, okay, I always do that now. She and I are too far apart, too often and it's so hard.
This time might be happier. No, it will be happier. Jake is taking me to meet the cottage he has transformed into my hideaway. He's taking us away so we don't have to be here during a difficult week. He's giving us all a break. Despite the risk of taking me anywhere, without medication, without Claus and Robert (whom I don't like, so I don't talk about him), without our circus safety net.
I packed my favorite sweater. Jacob frowned when he saw it, but it's a part of me. And maybe it's a 'thing' and I shouldn't be attached to things, but sometimes comfort is found in odd places. It's a sweater that used to be Cole's. A big nubby grey wool hoodie with braided ties and wooden buttons. It comes down to my knees. When I'm at the beach and it's cold it's what I wear. Jacob sees it as a attempt to hold on to something that's gone but it isn't like that. It's my sweater, it's been mine since I took it out of Cole's room when he was 18 and he said I could have it. I don't see Cole in it. I see Bridget, who is warm, and nothing more.
We're bickering, of course, over so many little things like that. We do this, before we travel, before big things. Jacob's anxiety is starting to cloud his demeanor, the fear of flying thing astounds me, coming from him. I can't fix it, and to see him with a ripple where his fabric is usually pulled strong and tight has always bothered me. He can't hypnotize himself. He can't talk himself out of this fear the way he can talk anyone else out of anything. And once we're in the air he will be fine.
My unbirthday is this week too. And I won't be here and I'm happy for that.
I just can't wait to see the cottage. Do I sound excited? No, Jacob told me I sound cautious. I know. I can't seem to exhale. The sun can't seem to come out and we can't seem to find our way past the bitter this morning. I should have run while it was early but instead we tried to take the extra hour to hold each other, awake but not awake, the beautiful in-between. No bitterness there but it crept in later.
I'm freezing. Pants might help that. Jacob's dress shirt from last night and a huge pair of wool socks and it's ten o'clock in the morning. Jacob ran the kids over to school while I started in on the laundry. I need some of it so I can finish packing the kids' bags but while it thumps through that temperamental dryer I find myself uncharacteristically impatient for something to keep my head busy.
Jacob and Sam are off doing some work this morning. Duncan is coming later as the official housesitter and yes, oh my God, if you are lucky, you'll even get an entry tomorrow because I'll be rattling around like a loose bolt waiting to go to the airport. I knew we should have booked an early morning flight because the waits are driving me nuts.
And maybe tomorrow I'll have something to say.
