Frailty of a different sort.

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.

Mother's Day.

As my kids get older I'm constantly overwhelmed by their grasp of time, their mastery of new or unusual situations. They do self-checks, and let us know if they are too cold or too hot, hungry or full, too tired or still full of energy to keep going, and ready for a cuddle or full-up.

Once those basic needs are fulfilled they are off and running in the adventures, smiling from ear to ear and wearing themselves to smithereens while being kind to each other. They have been my littlest troopers in a long year that saw more unwritten tears cried over them than any other tears I have shed, more heartache suffered for anticipatory difficulties that sometimes never even came to pass, but I worried anyway.

In advance, just in case. As mothers do.

They watch the calendar now. They can tell time and mark days right alongside me and this morning when I came out of the bedroom in my robe, with plans to let Jacob sleep in for a few precious minutes before church because he is exhausted from worry and travel and Bridget, the kids came and put their arms around me even before they fought for the first turn to the bathroom for that all-urgent emergency first-morning pee, and they told me Happy Mother's Day!
And then while they were busy high-fiving each other for having remembered without a prompt for the first time ever, I stole the bathroom for myself.

Happy Mother's Day to all moms out there, reading or in spirit. Have a wonderful day.

He's home!

Prepare your smiling muscles.

Sam was a madman when I arrived at the church office this morning. He was still laboring over announcements, the sanctuary hadn't been cleaned yet and he said there was such a long list of preparations he doubted everything would be finished in time for services Sunday.

Thankfully crisis management in an office setting is something I used to be very good at. I had a look at the list and crossed off everything I could look after. I forwarded the church phone to the answering service to take the pressure off and then got busy booking the cleaning service Jacob used to use occasionally when he ran out of hours and I called the leader of the women's group to see if they could downsize lunch to a tea. I told Sam to go lock himself in his office and finish preparing his notes and he looked at me with such gratitude I'm hoping maybe someday he might approve of me, at least in theory. It could happen.

The fourth thing on my list this morning was to pick up his guest speaker at the airport at 10:30, Alex M. I popped in and clarified the name with Sam so I could make a sign. Sam said Milne distractedly and so I closed the door and went back to the desk. My sign said Alex Milne and when I went to the airport I stood in arrivals holding the sign and reading a book to multitask. Everyone who comes down the stairs would have to pass me so I didn't have to study faces. When fifteen minutes had passed and the passengers had thinned out considerably, all of the baggage was gone and still no Mr. Milne I decided to have him paged before calling Sam to confirm the flight number.

Paging Mr. Milne to arrival gate C, Alex Milne please, your party is waiting at gate C.

I was at such a good point in my reading that I opened the book again while I waited to see if Mr. Milne would make an appearance or if I was going to stress Sam further by having to tell him his guest hadn't arrived. I was three sentences in when I heard a familiar voice.

Hallo, piglet with her nose in a book.
And there he was.

Jacob, grinning from ear to ear.
Oh for the love of-

Because of course, Alan Alexander Milne is the author of the Winnie the Pooh books. And it never even crossed my mind that they might be playing a trick on me. I didn't connect the name at all.

I jumped into his arms. He felt for my hearing aids and then whisper-asked if I really thought he would not be here for Mother's Day? He frowned and told me he's going to have to step things up in the romance department because I should have come to expect his sweeping gestures and he's obviously not doing his job right. I just laughed and ignored all that because who cares?

Myjacobishomeandnothingelsematters.

In the truck on the way home I started to call Sam to tell him I was on the way back but Jacob had already called him while he waited out the passengers at the airport. Sam didn't need me anymore, since I had gotten everything under control and he would see us Sunday morning in church and he was happy to help.

Piglet, I'm afraid I've spent an awful lot of money lately.

The truck?

It's coming on the train midnextweek.

That's wonderful. Why are you back so soon? I thought I was going to have to get through five more days without you. I'm so happy you're here.
Look, everyone was calling me around the clock just to let me know how well you were doing, and how great you've been to them and it seemed easier to come back than to keep being woken up by the phone ringing. I wanted to be here with you. I love you.When you said we made a mistake, I knew I had to come, and so after we got off the phone I called the airport and booked the first flight I could get. It wasn't cheap on short notice.

That's okay. We can eat beans.

He laughed so loud my ears rang and his dimples spilled right out the truck window and all over the highway.

Hell, yes we can. We can eat beans, princess.
He smiled and wove his fingers into my hair.

My God, you look so beautiful. We're never doing that again.

No, we definitely aren't. I nodded and then I fell apart.

So, so happy he is home.

Up with the chickadees and a coveted phone call.

PJ stayed in the guestroom downstairs last night. I couldn't rouse him and certainly can't carry him and so I just let him sleep and seeing as how he's in his thirties I didn't call his mother, I'm sure she realized he would just sleep and sleep. Right now he's drinking coffee in the kitchen like a real man and only wincing while he blows on it to cool it way down and I was grateful knowing he was here last night. Jacob was grateful PJ lived through his extraction because we've been hearing about it for months. They don't give each other an inch because they love each other like brothers.

Plus Padraig being here enables me to go for my run now, and then I can come home, then he'll head home and I can grab a quick shower and take the kids to school before heading to the church for nine. It's almost across from the school so the day will go fairly smoothly, I hope. Mother's Day holds a long Sunday for our church, with a brunch picnic. It's an all-day event.

I packed my tote with a new book in case there is downtime, and a pear in case I get hungry, plus my sweater because the basement is usually cold. I hope today will be busy and crazy and full because my ache for Jacob has become a pervasive pang of misery and anguish and Tuesday inches closer at the speed of a tectonic plate.

Optimists? I have no idea how you keep it up.

TGIF. And four more sleeps.

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.