Bridget's army.

Jacob got his proverbial tranquilizer gun and I've been shot in the ass with a dart and I've slept. Oh have I slept. And he has too, thanks to a network that stretches far beyond my wildest dreams. I really had no idea how strong and how many people deep it was until Tuesday when Bridget exploded and a few hours passed with what appeared to be several key scenes from The Exorcist being reenacted.

I won't go into much detail, suffice it to say it began with sliding down that wall and ended two hours later with Claus (housecall Claus!) charging into the bathroom with a needle full of sleep and the last thing I remember is Jacob was still holding me, whispering something but I never heard him, I was still screaming when the lights went out for this princess.

I was up briefly last night. Snuggling with the kids, getting reassurance that Jacob does not want a raincheck on this life after all. I ate and went back to sleep while people came and went and now Erin is here to help and keep the kids busy for a few days because Jacob is so tired and because we need help but we're stubborn. All this help means I stay home, you know. Embrace it, fragile miss B.

I met Dr. Important Joel, who aside from rhyming with Cole, is going to work with Claus to get a better handle on medicated-girl. I'm singing Nirvana songs and hearing talk of polar bears, or polar girls, or maybe it was something similar but today I'm not fighting anything anymore. I'm just going to go back to sleep.

When I get up Jacob promised he would play Dust in the Wind, so I can practice the violin solo. It's a much better song than Lithium. I just deleted that one anyway.

And hey, a year ago today Cole tried to kill me. Fucking fitting, isn't it?

The freefall.

I walked up to the gate, showed them my lifer bracelet (unlimited rides, you know) and was summarily locked into my seat. The man took my green flip-flops and put them in a pile by the entrance and I let my bare toes relish the light summer breeze. I failed to notice the mechanism had begun to move and I was going up slowly. I ascended without caring, too busy finding shapes in the clouds, chasing the high that had long since deserted me in favor of luckier prospects or perhaps brightest shores. A jolt and a metallic clang disrupted that daydream and when it was gone...

...it was gone forever.

And then all my hair stood on end as the switch was thrown and the platform I was strapped to took 3 seconds to drop three hundred feet. I threw up. I wished I could die. I pushed Jacob out of my way and recoiled in a massive attempt to disappear to prevent any more of that kind of hideous, destructive fear.

    Here it comes and there it goes
    Another day of getting up to fight
    In a world called catastrophe, my native tongue is blasphemy
    So it's the one I'll write
    And baby can you hear it?
    Don't it make you want to wake up and open your eyes?


I woke up this morning screaming and drenched in sweat, every nerve ending in my entire body on edge, every joint and muscle tense and we didn't get very far before it was clear that this wasn't even my normal. While Jacob was calling for help before he felt the gravity coming I was pulling things off shelves in the bathroom looking for razor blades that would never be found in my house anyway. Jacob uses an electric razor and I use wax because of this. I had an epiphany-knives-and went tearing down the stairs toward the kitchen just as Jacob realized that's where I was headed. He grabbed me just inside the kitchen door, pulling my shoulders to him so hard my head snapped back and banged on the door.

Leave it.

I can't do this.

I know you feel that way but you can. We made it, you just need to get better. Baby. please.

It's too hard. I'm so scared, Jake, I don't want to feel like this.

I know, baby, so am I. We can do this. The kids are depending on you, they need you. Bridget, I need you. I want you here, with me. I've never wanted anything different.

They'll be fine. Everyone will be fine. Better even.

None of us will be better without you. We'll die without you.
We won't bother with creative therapies anymore. This time they'll opt for the hospital. Told you I wasn't dumb.

The worst thing is he didn't trust his instincts, even when I warned him that I knew he wasn't listening to himself. His infallible intuition, his perfect logic that has a hand up from higher places that can be uncanny in its perfection. He failed to believe himself when too late he realized I lied.

I have no intentions of keeping any promises I made to be here forever. What's sick is how much comfort I got from knowing that and I know it's wrong and I want it to stop.

Jacob kissed the top of my head and took me into his arms and he backed into a corner and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, holding both of us. Me and him, because he needs comfort too and he's terrified and was shaking like a leaf and I'm sorry honey. He left me there while he went and got the kids off to school and then he got them out the door with the neighbors and he started making those goddamed phonecalls because he knows people and now they're all going to work together to save my life once more.

I may be gone for a while. I really have no idea what they have planned but I don't care as long as it works this time. It has to work. I just have to go and get better and hope he will someday forgive me.

Not well at all.

I can feel my eyeballs move when I look up to see if he is looking at me while I write about him. Not like I care, if he wants to watch he can. He's fascinated by my words, by how it comes out here, how things I have said to him in person, replete with the tears and batty eyelashes and biting the lip that can tear his heart from his chest but then he reads it here and it's a cold, flat diatribe that holds none of the same depth. A scary cold.

He is confused by that. Hey, we all are, you aren't special.

Well, you are, but maybe not when it comes to having all the answers, just most of them. I need those last final ones. I needed to know how it all turns out because when I go to sleep at night my hope starts to slide away and when I wake up it's such a fight every day to clamber back over to it and drag it closer only to repeat my actions. I'm exhausted. It wasn't there today anyways.

Bridget isn't well and she can only account for why about half the time. It's an easy pill to swallow when things are at rock bottom and we are struggling just to hold on to each other and everything else suddenly is deemed unimportant. What's so fucking hard is when things start going good, routine settles in, daily life blooms around us and yet nothing is different. He still doesn't know who he'll wake up with. He doesn't like this one facet, this bland anger with no cause, this uncaring, unemotional void that leaves me just...living but for nothing. And all day long I can not react or smile or cry even, there's just nothing but the anger, and a constant stream of chatter that runs through my skull telling me I shouldn't be here, I am not worth anything and no one would be the worse for wear if I vanished. That scares me too because it won't shut off.

Times like these I wish for medication. Really strong medication and a room with nothing sharp and nothing I can use for anything, a room with nothing to do and maybe even no one to talk to so that I don't make them feel bad because I don't feel like talking. I just feel like pouring myself into a corner right now and hanging on for dear life so that I might someday be allowed to enjoy it. I'm not dumb enough but I'm dumb enough and that's the promise I can give. Bridget's been suicidal for a long time but no one knows she still is. He doesn't really know. He doesn't get it.

If you ever wanted a realistic portrait of mental illness in this day and age maybe I would be it. A perfect study of debilitating chemical nonsense existing in a space where a Stepford wife would be expected. Just enough ability to get through the goddamned day, just enough conviction to push away those who tell me I can't do it while I prove that I can, and so they back off and take away their butterfly net they ran in with to catch me, and then I have to go looking for them with bloody hands and tears in my eyes asking for help because I might have really fucked up bad this time and I don't know why I keep fucking up but it just KEEPS HAPPENING.

He doesn't understand. And as much as he can be here just when I need him the most why do I feel he's always slightly out of reach? He isn't out of reach, he's taken care of me, he's taken care of everything, he's cleared off his timetable in one generous wide gesture to help me and he can't help me. Maybe that's the frustrating part, he can only do so much, and I can only do so much and it's going to ruin everything. I'm going to ruin everything. I didn't want to end up this way, playing a waiting game. And none of it feels like it used to. All of this used to be wrapped in fear. It was justified, ignored. I was on my own so much I didn't have a chance to notice that it would follow me even when things were good. Fear kept me going because I'm stubborn and somehow it always seemed like it was going to come down to Cole or me. And I 'm here but so is the fear again. And the pain and the hopeless nothingness.

We're not going to make it. And I wanted this so, so badly. I love Jacob like no one could have ever measured and I didn't want to ruin him. He's so sweet and kind and beautiful. He deserves so much better than this.

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.