Jinkies.

In regards to the bee situation from earlier this week, and how spooky it was, would you like to hear something even spookier?

I picked up PJ and we manhandled him out to the truck and I brought him here so he could rest, since he lives with his mom and his mom runs a home daycare so it's not a great place to find quiet at this time of day. I left him snoozing in the guest room with icepacks and painkillers and came out to make dinner for the kids and I and instead of Green Day I decided to listen to the rest of Sam's Iron & Wine CD since it goes back to him in the morning.

I have played it two times when I clued in to a phrase, let alone the rest of the song, which gives me chills. It's called Passing Afternoon.

    There are times that walk from you like some passing afternoon
    Summer warmed the open window of her honeymoon
    And she chose a yard to burn but the ground remembers her
    Wooden spoons, her children stir her Bougainvillea blooms

    There are things that drift away like our endless, numbered days
    Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made
    And she's chosen to believe in the hymns her mother sings
    Sunday pulls its children from their piles of fallen leaves

    There are sailing ships that pass all our bodies in the grass
    Springtime calls her children 'till she let's them go at last
    And she's chosen where to be, though she's lost her wedding ring
    Somewhere near her misplaced jar of Bougainvillea seeds

    There are things we can't recall, blind as night that finds us all
    Winter tucks her children in, her fragile china dolls
    But my hands remember hers, rolling 'round the shaded ferns
    Naked arms, her secrets still like songs I'd never learned

    There are names across the sea, only now I do believe
    Sometimes, with the windows closed, she'll sit and think of me
    But she'll mend his tattered clothes and they'll kiss as if they know
    A baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone

I do believe God is in, and he's taking notes.

Green days.

 If you go down in the streets today,
    baby, you better open your eyes.
    Folk down there really don't care,
    really don't care which way the pressure lies,
    so I've decided what I'm gonna do now.

    So I'm packing my bags for the Misty Mountains
    where the spirits go now,
    over the hills where the spirits fly.
    I really don't know.
I have some quiet time before this afternoon, which is going to be a delicate balance of timing, between taking Ruth back to school after lunch and then taking Henry with me to run errands while PJ undergoes removal of his wisdom teeth. He's done a lot for me, so I'm going to pick him up when he's finished and he can come back here and sack out and then I'll make him some homemade chicken soup with rice for dinner and to take home.

These boys are big babies. When I had my wisdom teeth out I was 23 and I left the dentist chair and headed straight to the mall for a Chinese food lunch and an afternoon of shopping. PJ will sleep for four hours and then whine for eleven.

It's okay though, he's my friend and this is one of his weaknesses. Lord knows, he is here through most of mine. I'm going to torture him with Jeff Buckley on 45 rpm and just about every other cover of Led Zeppelin I can dig up, including Coalesce. Haha.

We have to be back here by 3:30 for Ruth, and then tomorrow is even crazier. It's helping, but to some extent I got very good at going through the motions in pain so the ache from missing Jacob hasn't lessened or been taken away, it's just here in the background mimicking grief. And I'm freaked out by that.

And Led Zeppelin reminds me of Cole, and that's not helping. Maybe I'll pull out the Green Day CD because that reminds me of nothing, no one, zip. I think Green Day is the one band in the world that evokes nothing more in me than the occasional tap of my hand on some surface. Weird.

Simple words, soaking wet.

I've been writing here for just under three years now, and have a years worth of archives available. The rest was removed. Everything from before I left Cole was taken off, though several months are still available on the internet archives, but believe me it's not exciting, mostly a sham. A pretty picture painted over an eyesore. Hence it's immediate removal the day I took Jacob up on his offer and I made a promise to write for myself. Whatever I wanted to say, whatever I thought about, whatever I felt like I needed to get out.

Honesty is a hard road. Even with wax to make it shine. It was easier to write about shoveling snow or that fall that tore my rotator cuff shortly after we moved into this house that wasn't a fall at all. It was easier to lie and say life was perfect than to admit that it was so far from perfect I was living a nightmare of violent rages followed by the sweetest, gentlest charm and regret. Oh how I loved Cole.

But he's dead.

And there are still stories I keep from you and I can't figure out why. Sometimes to spare your hurt or your sympathy, sometimes to spare me your derision. Above all, I want to be liked just like everyone else does but at the same time I know people have come to expect the open book and then when they get it they lash out or hand out judgment and I'm left wondering again, if I write for myself or if maybe I write for you.

I guess time will tell. So if you find yourself responding strongly to a post or deciding the two minutes you spend here each day with me leaves you ashamed, then note that you've been warned.

And with that, I'll get to today's entry, in which my jealous lover steals my husband's wedding ring. Or rather, Jacob gave it willingly. What a fool.

My head is full this morning with the lilting, wonderfully quiet and melodic sounds of Iron & Wine. I asked Sam if he would leave me one of his CDs for today and I will bring it to the church tomorrow and he left me with Our Endless Numbered Days and a big smile. If we can find a common ground through music then that would be terrific. We've been a little slow to warm up to each other, one of the reasons I sprang a last-minute dinner invitation on them with the plea included that having a group over for a quick barbecue will help ease the difficult after-dinner hours for me. He and his wife Lisabeth came in and kissed my cheeks and hugged the kids and rolled up their sleeves to start pulling a meal together. Then the crotch-rocket gang arrived, because the warm weather means it's motorcycle season. More on that another day. Everyone was gone by 8:30 and my kitchen was spotless.

The most popular story of the night would have been the previously unspoken issue of where my wedding ring was. I lost my ring on the last Friday we were at the cottage. Which is one of the reasons no one believed me that everything was okay when I came back alone, and not wearing my ring.

I had said fuck it that day and went for a swim out to see the rickety boat and I think the water was twelve degrees. I swam out until I got the scary feelings of being out far enough to wonder what might be underneath me and then I turned to come back to shallower water instead of continuing and when my toes touched sand and rock again I took off, swimming parallel to the shore instead of coming out of the water. Jacob came down to the shore and waved. I waved back and kept going. I figured he wanted to argue just a little more, since we had argued that morning. Then he waved with both arms so I stopped to tread water and try to see what he wanted, expecting him to pantomime eating or something. I didn't bring my hearing aids so him yelling would be wasted effort.

Instead he came into the water. With his jeans and shirt and shoes still on. Fully dressed. He walked out until he reached me, up to his shoulders in the water and he locked his fingers into mine and smiled with his worried smile. He told me my lips were blue and we should go in. I brought our hands up together to touch my lips and...

My wedding ring was gone. I take the pearl off every night and when I do anything but stand still but I never take off the band. Ever. Not for surgery, not for gardening, and certainly not for swimming. But even with all the tape wrapped around it to keep it from slipping off, it was an accident waiting to happen, because I still refused to leave it with the jeweler to have it made smaller and so I guess this was a lesson for me.

I flipped the fuck out. Jacob watched me freak out without letting go and when I stopped babbling and blubbering and I quieted down to ragged breathing he winked at me and kissed my forehead and then he took off his ring and he threw it.

He threw it.

As far as he could.

Which was actually a lot further than I expected but we lost sight of it halfway out.

And then he turned and put his arms around me and by this time his lips were blue too and he was shaking ever so slightly and a wave broke over us and he sputtered and he yelled over the pounding surf.

Bridget, let it go! I don't need a ring to tell me we're married! You're my flesh and blood now! That's all that matters!

What followed was the sweetest, coldest kiss in our entire history.

He led me out of the water and we went back into the cottage to find some warmth and the kids looked at Jacob really funny because his clothes were stuck to him and he said that I looked like I was having such a nice swim he decided to have one too, and then our eyes met over the children's heads and he grinned until his dimples pulled his smile as wide as it could go and I was instantly warm.

So so warm.

When he gets back we'll have the rings replaced. They were insured, it will just take time, like everything else. Which I have all kinds of. I have nothing but time.

And I still don't know why he was originally trying to get my attention but I don't think it matters anymore.

Stay high (not that kind).

    autophobia (psychology): Abnormal fear of one's self or of being alone.


I miss Jacob. I miss his arms. I miss his hands. I miss him singing so loudly. He sings loud. I miss his bottomless dimples and his almost-wavy blonde hair, I miss the beginnings of the fifth beard this year. I miss his confidence. I miss his dry no-nonsense deductions. I miss his eloquence in prayer. If he isn't around, I don't pray. Not because I'm being rebellious but because I want it to sound good and it never does. Jacob says I can empty out the verbal equivalent of my mental junk drawer into God's hands and He will sort through it and besides, He knows what I need before I think of turning to Him.

Again, kind of like someone else I know.

Who hopefully is on his way back as we speak. Hopefully to fill me back up again because I'm running on empty. Not happy or sad, only wistful, watchful and worn.

I invited everyone for dinner tonight because I needed noise. There's four motorcycles and three cars in my driveway and Lisabeth is making potato salad and I snuck upstairs to get a hairpin for Ruth to pin back her hair for dinner and I'm that good with multitasking (says she who cannot walk while breathing) that you get a post. Hurrah.

Hide and go sleep.

Come and get your sweet Bridgetine fix, so says Padraig the wonder hobbit.

    I don't mind where you come from
    As long as you come to me
    I don't like illusions I can't see
    them clearly

    I don't care no I wouldn't dare
    To fix the twist in you
    You've shown me eventually
    What you'll do

    I don't mind
    I don't care
    As long as you're here

    Go ahead tell me you'll leave again
    You'll just come back running
    Holding your scarred heart in hand
    It's all the same
    And I'll take you for who you are
    If you take me for everything
    Do it all over again
    It's all the same

The cottage is beautiful. It really is.

It was within sight of Cole's burial location. So that the kids can look out and know their father is there. And around the point is the most peaceful, beautiful sand beach. The cottage itself was warm and tight and cozy but airy too. Ripply-glass windows and new screens, the board floors were white and cool and clean, and he bought wrought-iron bedframes and vintage quilts for the beds, and over each bed was painted the owner's single initial. He stocked it with blue robin's egg pottery dishes and pure white towels. In the evenings we'd light some candles and he'd start a fire in the woodstove and the kids would fall asleep before they had time to close their eyes. And we would cuddle together and talk and look out at the blinking of the buoys that mark the entrance to the bay and the odd boat that would glide silently past.

It even came with a matching sailboat. a gorgeous little wooden number that I wouldn't trust past the end of my nose, but she's anchored there anyway, a good challenging swim out for me. Her name is Baby Blue Eyes and she looks as if she might have once been a barn.

I got a slight sunburn, pink around the edges again from the sun. Jacob was instantly pink. We never locked the door there, we never stopped a conversation in the middle in favor of sleep or love. We made love all night every night and tried to cram in our sleep in the early mornings. I woke up to the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen. I lived in the screen porch. I traced the holes on the tin cupboard doors and I found all kinds of nooks and crannies where wonderful things were stored, like little pieces of seaglass and candles that smelled like lilacs. Sand dollars found on the beach outside the front door.

Our time there unforgettable and regrettable too. I'd like to go back, today even. Now.

Yes. This is a breather for me. I'll be doing everything myself, including self-comfort. I miss my Jacob.

He called this morning to wake me up, telling me about the farm and how beautiful it was and he wished we were there. He asked how Henry's sore throat is and how I was doing. He said he could tell by my voice that I wasn't breathing deeply and then he counted and asked me to take a very deep breath.

I cried.

His voice sounded choked. He was trying not to cry, still. We don't want this distance as much as we need it. There's no clarity in suffocation, no peace in turmoil. No end in sight to some of the difficulties we face and so we force a new start. It's something I was advised to do when I left Cole, everyone told me I went from a snail's pace to flat out run and I didn't stop and take time for Bridget. So busy making sure everyone was okay with everything. Too busy to look in the mirror, or I would have seen the scenery rushing vertically past me as I fell down the rabbit hole. I bet I would have screamed.

I'm doing everything wrong. I had no time alone just to think and to be with me. I don't even know who I am, I'm never alone, I've never made my own decisions, I've chased love and affection around since I was fourteen. I'm pretty sure maturity-wise, I stopped right there. It's no wonder men love me, I make them feel like they're a thousand feet tall and impervious to damage. They can feel strong and be in charge and I'll do anything they want, willingly. The price for this is my own identity. I wanted to be Jacob's girl so bad that I failed to notice that his girl wasn't whole anymore. And now I go looking for parts of myself and am terrified that they aren't there. Where the hell am I?

I asked him to hurry home and he said he would do his very best. He asked me what I slept in and I replied his shirt that he left hanging on the hook on the back of the door because it smelled like him and that when he came home I might give it back but not until then. He stopped talking and waited, and I could hear him struggling. He asked if Ruth had her book out to read and if I could wait and let him help her finish it. Then he stopped again.

Jake?

I'm here baby.

What are we doing?

We're getting the truck, sweetheart. And maybe saving a few bucks by doing it the hard way.

Is that it?

That's it. I love you.

I love you too. So much.

I know. It gets me through the night.

You sound like a country singer.

I could have been, I bet.

No, I like you this way. You're my Jacob.

I am that, princess.

Once again we're not acknowledging what's going on. We're just doing what feels necessary. So that we remember what it feels like to want to be together after a year of breathing each other's airspace. After a year long touchfest and hundreds of nights of finally being together we somehow lost direction and got stuck making up for lost time. Everything else pales, oxygen, bloodflow and emotions take a backseat to one overwhelming desire.

He will be back in a week and we'll have tasted it and remembered why we're here in the first place.

Backwards into a wall of fire, as the song goes.

I have so far spent the majority of my time alone fighting to figure out how I felt. I didn't open the curtains, we didn't go outside Monday, I called the kids in sick for school and then I unplugged the house phone. I put my cellphone to voice mail pickup and then I could just call Jacob back when he called me. Yesterday was better. I opened up the whole house, the weird thing with the bee made me feel good, and the rest of the day got even better when Duncan and PJ arrived with steaks and corn and offered to make dinner if they could make it on the barbecue and then later on I lay in the hammock on the front porch after the kids were in bed and I doodled in my sketchbook and everything I did was a cartoon and it made me laugh. I may frame a series of them for the cottage kitchen. They would look great there.

I hope we can go back to the cottage in a few months. Maybe fly up in July. August will be wacky here, Jacob will be gearing up to teach and university starts September 7th but he begins several weeks before that. And Sam has asked him to be a guest speaker for several dates through the fall. Ruth turns eight, Henry will turn six and we'll have our first wedding anniversary and Jacob has hinted that the hot air balloon ride might become an annual celebration, which sort of made me shit my pants. I hate heights!

In any event, I love the cottage. I love the location that he picked. He could have found something bigger or newer or easier (the well is on the verge of some disaster, I know it) or in a less windy place but it had to be where it is. So we could have Cole too.

And I really wasn't planning to share that until it came out when my fingers hit the keyboard. Or this either.

One of the very best things about the cottage, and the porch in particular, was Bridget's chair. A beautiful old wooden rocking chair painted a soft sage green in the porch with apple blossoms painted on the arms and on the top of the backrest, framing a letter B.

Cole made that chair and painted it too. It used to be in my kitchen here at the house but it got broken the night that Cole hurt me, not in the actual attack but afterwards, when Jacob went after Cole and they fell into it. I asked Jacob just to take it away and I never asked about it after that, I just assumed it was taken to the landfill in one of his many loads as we've renovated. It was in pieces. He sent it to his dad, who made new crossbars and repaired it to perfection, and then his mom repainted it exactly as it was before. I rocked both the kids in that chair and I missed it. And now when I sit in it I can see the exact place where Cole rests. And Jacob didn't get mad or upset or feel strange, he encouraged me to sit when I need to, to take the time to remember good times and allow myself to miss Cole if I want.

Jacob isn't a saint. It's very easy to be generous when you know someone isn't coming back. And his impatience with me isn't about Cole's memories as much as it is his desperation at wanting me to feel happy and not feel afraid. He just wants to take away my pain. How can you fault him for that? I can't. He is human. I'm human. We're a mess but sometimes we're so well adjusted it's incredible.

I just know that I have a place now. A place that's all mine, that I can think about and go to and have, and even when I can't be there, just knowing it's waiting gives me such a measure of calm. Someday we'll go there and never come back and that is a promise I have wished for my entire life. We just have the next fifteen years or so to get through first and then we can go.

We can do that. That, well, that's child's play.

And rest assured, my dance card appears to be filled until at least Monday, as therapy, yoga, massages, my runs and then some favors cashed in as PJ needs a driver for his wisdom-teeth extractions tomorrow and Sam has asked if I can work at the church on Friday since Mother's Day services are Sunday and he needs some extra hands. No worries, I'm still going to the brunch on Sunday, if it is as sweet as it was last year it will be fun, the argument concerning Jacob missing Mother's Day was a short one. Jacob told me every day is Mother's day in our house and we will do something special on the third Sunday in May instead and avoid the crowds. Which is mostly how I wanted to approach the day as it was. I don't need a fuss just because the calendar says a fuss needs to be made. Which is how the unbirthday came about but that whole unbirthday concept has now been summarily unpacked, disassembled and reduced to a distant memory since Jacob decided that Bridget's birthday was about to become the Most Hardcore Romantic Birthday Celebration Ever Celebrated In The History Of Bridgetdom. Geez. Maybe I should have pouted just a little more, he would have arranged some sort of hat trick, if you want to count the epic Valentine's week I already had this year.

I know, shut up, Bridget.

Did I mention we argue a lot? Does that help? Would you hate me less?

You know you love me. Or maybe it's one of those unhealthy dirty wonderful addictions like caffeine, nicotine, or Benzedrine. Who knows, really? I'm just happy you're here. It makes me feel a little less like Bridget talks to herself so she must be crazy. And anything that makes me feel better gets two thumbs up. And no, that wasn't perverted.

But I could make it perverted. I can make anything perverted.

When the quiet blankets the din.

So home definitely is where the heart is.

The kids are asleep, pets are sacked out around the house, even the fish have settled toward the bottom in a group as if they are waiting for Tunick to come and take their photograph. The house is quiet again.

I talked to Jacob and just about everyone else. I see how it is now, most of Bridget's army has deserted in favor of a newer, more majestic general: Jacob. Somehow he managed to coordinate a schedule full of favors cast and favors netted so that I would be busy enough without becoming exhausted, people will be around and I will be around people just enough over the next week to make the time go fast, to keep my head occupied while my heart keeps aching for him. It's the best thing they could have done. Now I have a lot to look forward to, I'll be out and about a bit, we'll have a little company and there's even some work involved, thanks to Sam.

Then I hang up and the calls slow to a trickle and they end with Jacob's deep, soft voice reassuring me of his love, and of faith in everything turning out okay. His soothing low baritone that makes all my senses wriggle with a little thrill, his volume that ratchets back to nothing when he's on the verge of tears.

Hell, we don't even need to discuss anything other than our progress back toward each other, a steady, perilous and determined journey in a straight line with blinders on.

Every time he calls he tells me the only thing he wants is us in his arms. Me and the kids, as if we are appendages that have been sewn on to him and then painfully ripped away. We feel the same way about him, even the kids were in tears when they said goodnight to him and asked how many sleeps were left. He told them and then stopped and I finally took the phone back and told him just to hurry. That it was a mistake and it's not right.

Even though it is and I've discovered a lot and I've got the time and space to figure out who the fuck Bridget is and what she wants. Dead dangerous angels and distractions aside, every other last drop of water under the Bridget notwithstanding, one thing is clear.

I really really love him.

This is so hard.

Goodnight.

Good for something.

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.

Bridget-places.

 The sweetest flower that blows, I give you as we part. For you it is a rose - for me it is my heart. -Frederick Peterson

That would be the best message ever to find on the card of some red beauties just delivered into my arms, wouldn't you agree? I should open the curtains in order to get a nicer view, maybe. Jacob makes it very hard for me to wallow, I'll have you know.

Champagne puddles, musical trucks and five thousand miles.

I made no plans to write today but here I am, exhausted and not thinking rationally so in advance I'll apologize for being sick with a cold now from the airplane and not painting as pretty a picture as I would have liked to. But! The big but here is that I am so goddamned strong, you'll all be proud. Or totally confused. Hopefully proud at how tough little Bridget is holding up right now. Tiny fists pumping the air, I will cheer myself the hell on because I'm Kevlar, baby. Five feet tall and bulletproof. Waterproof, fireproof and indestructible.

Shhh, let's just go with it for now, while it works. Please?

The unbirthday was a resounding failure. Instead I was ambushed with Romance.

I know, surprise, surprise. Keep in mind he promised to do nothing, and instead he did everything. I was floored. I thought we had done it all. Full-spectrum romance of Jacob's caliber comes in so many hues and shades we'll never exhaust these rainbows, of that I am finally sure.

Jacob snagged his sister to come and stay with the kids under the guise of taking me out for dinner, in town in a cozy high-end restaurant. He was funny, we ordered Bellinis and cajun chicken dishes and made idle chit chat and I was so happy to have a special dinner for my birthday after expecting a non-fuss.

After dinner he took my hand and led me down along the waterfront. Okay, a walk, it's twilight, it's a beautiful rainy evening. He led me straight to the nicest hotel/spa in town and I'm thinking, oh, a manicure! Because my hands are wrecked and miserable from the winter and how lovely maybe ...and why are we checking in?

Okay, this might explain the travel case he had slung over his shoulder on our walk that I assumed contained some surprise, but I wasn't sure what. I've learned not to guess when it comes to Jacob. Brilliantly oblivious, even.

Our room was beautiful. He had me close my eyes and sit down for a few minutes. I heard water. He came back in five minutes and led me into the bathroom where he had drawn a bath for us, replete with rose petals in the water and candles he had smuggled in. He got in first and then I did and he washed my back and snuggled with me. When the water finally cooled we reluctantly got out. He wrapped me in one of those giant white fluffy robes just in time for us to hear a knock on our door. Strawberries and champagne. So decadent. We fed each other and then he toasted me, a happy birthday, of which many have passed mostly with little to no fanfare, and things would be different from now on.

It was very good champagne.

Are you sick yet?

Next would be the porn part. Please use your imagination, I'm too tired to go through it. But I do have some lovely almost-bruises from being repeatedly pulled to the edge of the bed by my ankles and Jacob is now plotting to raise our bed higher because he really liked being able to stand. He is incorrigible, and I love it.

Snort.

After round three (or maybe it was four?) he went and fetched something from his coat pocket and brought it over. A tiny box tied with a ribbon. He said that he's been looking for this for a while, since when he met me I wore a floating heart pendant that Cole had later replaced with a diamond heart and I spoke a few times of missing the floating heart, which had gotten lost on a camping trip. He even made sure the chain was shorter so as to not interfere with my diamond sliding pendant. It's beautiful.

I'm a little fuzzy on details after this point. Possibly we finished the champagne in and around the remainder of the entire night wide awake with our senses on fire. He took me to places I've never seen before, and I cannot wait to go back. Storybook lovemaking with no difficult moments.

It was a first for us.

The early morning brought a blisteringly hot shower and room-service breakfast in which we fought over the croissants and enjoyed coffee and a morning view of the sunrise over the water. We were checked out by nine and back at the cottage by ten only to find the kids had enjoyed a fun sleepover of their own, not missing us as much as I would have expected. Jacob had planned this night months ago and they knew of it and kept some complex secrets. They did very well. Henry and Ruth had presents for me to open. And then it took just about every reserve I have left to make it through the last twenty-four hours, they have been so difficult in comparison to Saturday night's ease and decadence.

Jacob didn't come back with us on the plane.

Right now as I write there are five thousand miles in between us.

He went to Newfoundland because his dad finished the truck. Do you remember Jacob's ancient Suburban? He had it shipped home to Newfie to store in the barn when we bought the Ram and instead his father rebuilt it and had it repainted and it's finally ready for Jacob to drive again. And so he is going to spend a few days with his folks and then drive the Subruban home, halfway across the country. One of those moments where you take the leap and hope everything turns out okay. We're getting very good at this.

Let's just do it. We'll be okay and when I come back we'll be better, princess.

Yes, there would have been easier ways to do it, but as soon as he gets back we're shipping the Ram to his parents as a gift. They haven't had a new vehicle in decades and so Jacob is going to surprise them. And not only do we save the extra few thousand dollars it would have taken to ship the Suburban out on top of all that, it's a break for Jacob and I. A little space where before there existed no breathing room at all.

Only barely agreed upon, honestly. This is the last thing I wanted.

So here's my peptalk:

Jacob and I have a long and lovely history of suffocating each other with our intensity, right? And the goosebumps just rose up on my arms but a week or so is a good reminder of who we are as individuals, we need to bring ourselves, our true character, our unique personalities to this marriage instead of our collective history. We're trying to stay on firm ground so that we make it. Honestly no one wanted a time-out, we prefer the endless inability to inhale deeply enough to expand our ribs, the shallow breathless existence that left us lightheaded and slightly spinny.

Who wouldn't?

We left each other on very good and difficult terms at the airport, both of us headed for different gates for different flights. Jacob wasn't afraid to fly alone, he has faith in his independence, it puts him in a good frame with which to think and function. I wasn't afraid to fly alone with the kids because we had no choice and I always do better without options. It was long, openly melancholy afternoon as we wound our way back to the flat city covered with dust, and I flew into Christian's arms for the sake of familiar ground after calling him to see if he could come and get us. Over and over I wondered how I find myself in this position, returning to a city I've never been on good terms with and yet feeling as if it is a relief to be 'home' if this is what home is, to the kids. It never will be for me. My heart is scattered across the country like broken glass.

No one believed me that Jacob and I parted on good terms, few of my friends believing he is even planning to come back. I'm sure all of them have now called him looking for reassurance, which he will offer freely. He'll be back on the 15th and they'll trust him when they see him. Christian and PJ have offered to pitch in with a little babysitting so that I can attend my sessions and they both offered to come and stay if it would help, but I think I am going to just take the time to breathe and not be crowded with well-meant affection. Expanding my ribs to see if I can find levelheadedness once again. I never had a hell of lot of common sense to begin with but what I had was just about water-tight. I've sprung holes I have to patch. I have work to do. I have a girl to heal. I have to re-establish Bridget the waterproof princess.

I can do it. I want Jacob to return to the Bridget he loves, and not the brittle one. Life should resume without the halo of frailty, without the incredible instability we're honed to a fine point. It has to. It's time.

I miss him so much it hurts. I'm not even sure I can do this. There's an overwhelming urge to call him and ask him to just fly home as quick as he possibly can. Because I have his heart here, on a chain around my neck for safekeeping and I'd like the rest of him back so I can cradle him in my arms and not feel like this.

I'm going to shut the hell up now.

Thank you for the sweet emails wishing me a good trip and a happy unbirthday. We did have a really wonderful time. I'll tell you more about it tomorrow.

Still with the Piglet nonsense and another entry for you to tear apart.

Wow, some of you aren't having a good start to the week either. And as much as I really appreciate honesty and as open a dialogue as I can maintain with everyone who emails, and I try to respond quickly, I don't feel like you're reading the words. You're picking and choosing how you're going to feel and then you skim. Skimming won't work here. So instead of seventeen emails telling me my posting wasn't up to your standards or I sound totally out of it please go back and read the parts where I tell you I haven't slept in four days, I just flew 4000 miles with two small kids and I've caught a cold, without even pointing out how I feel about Jacob not being here.

So, yeah, maybe I am out of it.

Maybe you are too. We're all rusty from a spring weekend in which we had expectations. I had one of the best and one of the most difficult weekends of my entire life and I can't do it justice today because of everything else. I have never been felled by so much pure-hearted love in all my days. I've had romance. Never on this scale. Never the desperate movie kind and Jacob keeps on breaking all the rules and I hope he keeps it up forever. I can't convey what it feels like to me to hear the things he whispers, to kiss him, to put my nose in the wonderful place where I can feel him breath on my face, to see the way his face lights up when I smile. The thorough, slightly harsh, wonderfully energetic and loving way he ruins my reputation as a lady, the things he says, out loud and out of the bluest blue that make my knees knock together.

I told you before, there's no new-love starry-eyed newlywed phase in progress here, it's simply what life with Jacob is like. It's what we do to each other. He called me an hour ago and said not being able to hold my hand or see my eyes was killing him.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Jake.

If my heart grew any fonder it would explode, princess.

No, I want you back in one piece.

Then I need to get on a plane. Because I miss you guys so much it's like physical pain that won't stop.

Then pretend you're on an exotic getaway.

That never felt any different, you know.

Then how did you stand it?

I wrote you letters.

What?

I wrote to you. I told you everything I did, and everything I felt. Then I would burn them and start over.

You are an endless surprise, preacher boy.

So are you, piglet. I never expected to feel this way about anyone save for God.

So I'm in good company?

The very best. Are you okay?

No, I wish you were here.

Not what I asked.

I'm okay.

Do you promise me you're really okay?

Yes. I promise. Just hurry home.

I will. Sleep well, beautiful. I'm on my way back to you.
Nope, I give up, I think. I can't make you see how this feels. I'll never be able to.