Easy rider.

Jacob is home, with sunburned muscles from riding with a t-shirt on and no jacket. His cords are worn, frayed at the bottom and almost-holes in the back corner pockets. His hair is tousled, his eyes are wild and he stopped on the way and brought home some salad nicoise for dinner.

He came into the house with his riding boots still on, helmet tucked under one arm, put down the take-out and folded me into his arms tightly. He smelled like sweat and fresh air and dust. He grinned and his dimples came easily, a relaxed and relieved smile, just for me.

This is one time there is no question in my mind, no doubts that we're doing the right thing by leaving it all behind. Fixing it was killing us and so instead we need to let it go.

Not sure what the hell I'm going to write about now.

Hmm. Oh yeah, cake.

Sea change.

    Oil streaked daisies covered the living room wall
    He put water-colored roses in her hair
    He said, "Love, I love you, I want to give you mountains, the sunshine,
    the sunset too.
    I just want to give you everything as beautiful as you are to me."
    'Cause they were painters and they were painting themselves
    A lovely world.
    So they sat down and made a drawing of their love, an art to live by
    They painted every passion, every home, created every beautiful child.
    in the winter they were weavers of warmth,
    in summer they were carpenters of love.
    They thought blue prints were too sad so they made them yellow
So I sat down to write and for several minutes nothing came and I got up and walked away. I keep coming back. There's your metaphor. Tough post today.

Jacob and Sam are off on a day trip, a motorcycle ride to the lakes. A guy thing, probably so that Jacob can seek some guidance from a close confidant and maybe so that Sam can throttle some sense into Jacob at the same time. It was Sam's suggestion that I get a day off from Jacob without weight, without being provinces and days apart, just barely out of arms reach, but enough. For a day. I gave Sam my promise I would just hang out and work on hobbies and write a bit and eat some more of the pears he brought over. Some time alone because Sam trusts me.

Time alone I've barely had.

Time to think about why I'm completely helpless and dependent when Jacob is around and just about perfectly fine when he's not. To reflect on issues Claus runs in circles with. Pills, no pills, low, pills, no pills, low, pills and what the fuck are you doing, Bridget?

I feel like I'm on the power trip of the century and yet I'm not steering the boat. Every time I try to take control I can't seem to manage it and have to step down and let everyone else take over. I've proven I can't be trusted with my own wellness plan. I'm fed supplements and directed to eat like a child. I'm given easy directions to swallow pills and I don't just so I can have control over something. I'm driven to appointments and parked in chairs and asked to spill my guts to strangers and told when to go to bed and when to run and mostly I want to cry.

And why am I not trusted? Because I act like a child. Shhh, don't upset the princess. She'll break into pieces and then what will you have? Jacob lets me get away with it, for it simply reinforces his image of strength and power. Something he clings to when he feels helpless and lost. In the very same way I cling to my fragility as a way to maintain innocence from any real sort of responsibility.

There I said it. I can own it. I can eat those words and admit it because I want him to still be here when I wake up tomorrow for the rest of my life.

Every time we make huge progress in our selves and in our relationship we go through an adjustment period where things seem to fall apart briefly while we incorporate the new and good and find places for those things in amongst the dark and the baggage that's piled up to our ears and we usually wind up throwing out something we no longer need, some type of issue that just up and dies. It's good, but it's so hard. A brief suffocation. This time we were ready for it and that's the best progress ever in the history of the world.

It's very hard to gloss and here I am trying to peel my skin off while standing behind a curtain for modesty. I don't have other words to somehow keep counseling private and yet deal with it.

Jacob again threw a surprise iron on the fire that I thought was long gone and then he had the nerve to yell at me in that office that I should be the last one to be surprised and that was when I walked out yesterday.

His obsession with me.

It's worse, not better. I still can't wrap my brain around it, but I've always known about it, if that makes sense. He always was obsessed with me, and I used that, and I wrapped him around my finger so tightly and yet he still went off and did his own thing and he seemed to have such a good handle on it and then when we got together and got married I figured it was impossible to be obsessed with your own wife.

And I was wrong.

So very wrong.

He is positively weakened by it, by me. He has changed his life in extreme measures to be with me and even then he changed careers to look after me and to help me get better while he got worse, quietly. He's worried about the slippery slope all the way downhill tumbley-fall he's going to take when the day comes that he acts on the urges he has to control me.

Control me like Cole did.

Maybe there is something in the water here.

No, there's something in the Bridget and it ruins people.

I can't think about it, it's too overwhelming. He can't not think about it, it's all-consuming. I asked him if I was his God of the moment because I was angry and he swore at me. Sometimes I think he hates me for what I have done to him. He'll tell me out loud that he doesn't, without even hearing my question first and it's frustrating. I have power over him I've never known exactly how to work, and he has a weakness for me that somehow gives him strength.

And we've got an army of professionals, well-meaning friends and oblivious family who all think they know what will work for us and we're about to ditch all of them. Because we did better when we had less help. No one can agree and this is impossible.

Oddly, the less help I have always had, the fewer places to hide, the better I fared. Because I feed off the attention, and because life is easier without the reminder that I brought down the giant with a smile and he'll never be the same.

I'm eating crow today, for breakfast, lunch, dinner and possibly a bedtime snack. It's an all-day buffet and I'm stuffed but I'll keep eating it until he sees that I love him for him and I don't want all this other bullshit. I just want us to be left alone. He wants us to be left alone too but at the same time he's afraid of himself.

I don't think he has anything to worry about. He's proven himself a million times over and I trust him with my life, understandably because he's caught it in his hands already, like a reflex, like a precious gift that he's been given and I can't picture him ever doing different and so we talked at length over the past few days about deeper things, if you can believe we can get deeper than anyone has previously dug. We needed lights and miner's helmets. But we agreed on one thing.

A leap of faith, taken together.

By the end of the month everything will be gone, my precious Claus, the marriage counselling we've quit three times already, the perpetual prescriptions I ignore, the directions and exercises and advice and afterthoughts, the meddling, the experiments and the constant beat-down we've put ourselves through in the name of happily ever after, when happily ever after went and started without us. We've given it almost a year and so it's time to get moving.

All of it. Gone.

So we can just be.

Just be us. Jacob and Bridget. Pure and simple. Iron & Wine.

Dumb and Dumber. (Okay, I couldn't resist).

Hood ornament.

Ha, I just realized that title could give you the idea that I'm going to start talking about body mods again, I'm not. Believe it or don't, some things are sort of private. Last night Loch made a crack on the phone about wondering if I was merely Jacob's very own hood ornament because I always seem to be stuck to the front of him and he asked if nothing was sacred anymore.

You would think that would be a question Jacob would have regarding me writing about our sex life but in all honesty everything is sacred and some things are private while some are not and when I share things it's because I'm still marveling that sex can be like this in the first place. That it can be good, and hardcore and crazy and awesome and have everything I do want and I no longer have to withstand the parts I don't want. I apologize if I made anyone (Loch) uncomfortable but my entire adult life up until last year was spent not understanding that not everyone conducts their grown-up sex lives like Cole and I did, so forgive me if I'm like a kid in a candy store when it comes to getting used to this.

If you wanted today's barometer, I think you might be surprised to find we're all home today with a fridge full of juice and fruit and we're saddled with tornado colds and heat headaches and the kids are draped all over the living room in varying degrees of shorts and undershirts with juice and ice and a stack of DVDs to keep their brains from melting while I stick my whole face into a homemade English muffin that my new neighbor sent over upon hearing through our neighborhood grapevine that she lives next door to the minister and his wife, who isn't nearly as pulled together as she seems.

She came over and sheepishly offered to take the wine back (awkward), which was still sitting by the back door and in exchange she gave me a huge basket of fresh crumpety muffins and I'm just about in heaven here because last night she popped back over with real butter, because you know, sometimes there's a butter emergency.

We're going to be great friends.

Pair the muffins and butter with this homemade apple jelly and I've been reduced this morning to licking my lips, my fingers, the plate and even the keyboard here where a dollop may or may not have landed. Jacob looked at me a little while ago and told me he thinks his crushing out on me is over now and he laughed so hard. You would think he wouldn't tease but he loves to see me enjoy food like this.

I would say this muffin is better than cake, but then I'd be such a whore and a cheat, since I love cake beyond words.

Instead I'll say it's better than sex.

Serves him right.

No worries, nothing is better than sex with Jacob.

Mondays are special, it seems.

Unapologetically and probably unwelcome, a round of underwater porn.

Because I feel like sharing. Ha.

It was a different kind of hunger that woke Jacob after midnight last night. I was asleep in the guest room because our bed was full of dirt from his clothes and even though he was there I just couldn't. You wouldn't have believed how long I wrestled with not sleeping there but ultimately decided he had made too much of a mess for me to be comfortable.

He shook me awake gently, crouching on the floor by the bed. His hair was wet, his body stark magnificently naked. I remember mumbling something about being sorry for not sleeping with him but there's dirt everywhere and he laughed softly and said he was sorry for making such a wreck of the room but that he had changed the bed and had a shower and now there's a hot bath ready if I wanted to join him for a midnight soak.

God, it was so hard to wake up. He made it easier by kissing me full on the lips and then I can't resist anything. He slid his arms around me and pulled me to sitting and I rested my head on his shoulder while he whispered how good it would feel to slide into the hot water.

I nodded, so sleepily. It would mmmkay.

He took my hand and led me into the bathroom. There was a single candle lit on the table and a mountain of bubbles in the tub. I stepped in and sat down and he sat down across from me and laughed out loud when I put my head on the edge of the tub and closed my eyes again. He pulled me into his arms again and lifted me right into his lap, so my legs were on either side of his thighs. I put my arms around his neck and my head down on his shoulder and he stirred so powerfully I was instantly awake. I traced droplets down his arms and he smiled and leaned me so far back into the water I closed my eyes, expecting to go under, into the warmth and instead he pushed me out and then pulled me back until he was inside me, under the water, the warmth now accompanied by a heat of a different kind.

He began a slow and steady rhythm against me, holding me just at the surface of the water, his hands supporting my neck and shoulders and his other hand gripping my thigh so hard. He bent his head over and kissed my belly and then got on his knees and pushed me under, until only my head was clear of the surface and he kissed me until I went under with him and suddenly it was a drowning embrace and we were sharing one precious breath as I came so hard my ears popped and his hands tightened around me as he followed.

Because, my God, underwater sex is the very best kind.

He lifted me back out until I was sitting up once again and he held me until the water was cold, pressed to his chest so hard I felt his heart slow until his breathing was quiet. I felt the tension leaving him so slowly it was visceral. I clung to that, I always will.

I climbed off his legs and had to convince him to let me go. He followed me out of the water and he pulled the plug and then I shared my towel with him so that he would wrap us together for a moment. He dried my hair with one corner and then hung the towel up and led me, by the hand, into our bedroom which now looked clean and fresh and so inviting.

We climbed under the crisp sheet together and whatever hunger he had for me that woke him up came back with a vengeance. He wasn't ready for sleep, he hadn't wanted to let go, not yet, not ever. He tried the same position on land, and it was amazingly successful, with me hung out in his hand over the bed, levitating and vibrating all over the place as he tasted every inch of me and made me his so many times I'm sure if you watch carefully I'm walking a little funny today.

I bit him without meaning to, hung over his shoulder with his arm squeezing me so hard I was trying to breathe and I bit him and it was way harder than usual so maybe to retaliate and maybe to protect himself he took my head in his hand and pressed it into his chest hard, because it's too firm to bite into. He's glorious. All I could do was hold on to his neck while he went at me with every ounce of energy he had found in sleep and more. At one point I braced my feet against his arms and he yanked me right down underneath him and smiled at me and I smiled back and it was as if we could read each other's minds. Only instead of lifting me back up he turned me facedown and opted for his whispers while I tried not to make so much noise. He likes the noise, I just don't want the kids to wake up. He pressed his forehead into the dip between my shoulders and made noise anyway. He has no self-control anymore. He doesn't need it anymore.

It was hours before we were finally sated. Even though I don't think we'll ever have enough. Not of each other. It could never happen.

I fell asleep with my head on his Bridget tattoo, our fingers laced together, his breathing calm after a long while, his fingertips tracing my arm, my face. And then within that hour the alarm went off and we were forced to return to reality with an audible crash. Back to earth, back to routine.

Damn.

I need sleep tonight to prevent the inevitable crash of wits and happiness. I need a break from this day because I never wanted to crawl out of that night. I need his arms to keep me safe and his flesh to make me feel alive. I need to keep breathing his air that I had underwater that was dangerously profound for us.

Well, fuck it. I think what I need is a cup of coffee.

And a nap.

And possibly an ice pack.

Sleeping giant.

The fragility seems to be waning in his eyes as this afternoon Jacob taught me how to use most of the power tools in the house on our way to making a new fence, gates and steps. We spent all afternoon in the sun quietly going over the best ways to do certain things, while Ruth and Henry blew bubbles for the dog to eat and visited with friends in the neighborhood as they would come by to see what was happening. The truck and the bike stayed parked, the phone went unanswered and it was fun. So much fun. Especially after a typically busy Sunday morning.

I think this afternoon Jacob worked too hard. He came in and said he was headed for a short nap and I heard his boots hit the floor upstairs and never heard another sound. I cleaned up the tools, got the kids their baths, made a light supper for the three of us and then put the kids to bed, figuring he needed the sleep so they tiptoed in and kissed his cheek.

When I checked him a little while ago, he was still sleeping hard. Flat on his back with his hands flung hither and yon like Henry when he's sacked out. Filthy flannel shirt over filthy white t-shirt. Jeans covered with dirt and grease. Sawdust all over the place.

And the sweetest, most contented sleep-expression I have ever seen.

I doubt he'll be back up tonight. He's going to be one hungry giant tomorrow morning.

Maverick angels.

(It's Saturday and I'm somehow needing cheat notes for conversations that should have been harder but weren't. Idn't dat fullish, b'y as Jake would say, untranslated by me. Yes, isn't that foolish.)

Jacob's look when he came inside and found me holding Gabe as he slept blissfully spoke volumes I've never read before. He came over and looked down at Gabe and then back at me and asked if I was okay.

I nodded.

I've pretty much managed to avoid so much contact with Gabe (and other babies) up until now. I've stayed home on dedication days through the winter and politely declined to attend baptisms and birthdays. I've sent dozens of presents out with other people. Mostly the dedications, because seeing Jacob holding a baby might tear my heart into pieces.

It did. It totally did.

Gabe woke up shortly after Jake returned and when he did I passed him to Jacob to hold while I sorted through the bag for a new diaper and when I turned back to get Gabe the sight of Jacob holding him hurt a hell of a lot more than I thought it would. He knew it did and he quickly put Gabe on the blanket on the floor that I had spread out to change him on.

It was yet another lesson in learning to pretend things don't hurt for the presence of future adults who have nothing to do with your own bullshit. Such is life, maybe I have more tools than I realize. I swallowed that pain like it was just a bitter lemon and it was gone.

Happy dysfunction, as we pretended everything was just ducky for the remainder of our afternoon with Gabe and when his mom picked him up we gave him back with a weird mixture of complete relief and a fleeting hint of agonizing regret. Jacob closed the door and I fell into a chair, worn out.

When suddenly I realized I hadn't been pretending to have fun, I did have fun.

I'm proud of you.

For what? Not trying to slip in my agenda of converting the world to cloth diapers?

Well, maybe that, but mostly for not making Gabe aware that it was hard for you to spend time with him.

It always worked for you.

Oh, Bridge.

I'm sure he knew. Babies sense things.

So do grown men.

Oh, that smarts.

You're beautiful.

So are you, Jacob. (losing it now, of course)

I must be. I got the call this morning. I'm booked in for early September. (Vasectomy! Oog.)

Oh God. Are we ready for this?

Are you kidding? As miraculous as Gabriel was, as any child would be, it's nice when they go home, and it's nice in the evenings when the kids go to bed and I have you all to myself, selfish bastard that I am. I've spent the winter dedicating new lives to God and watching families grow and we're growing in a different way, we're growing roots. We're building our foundation and making our permanence and we don't need a third child to do that. We've got everything we need. I have the most amazing wife and my children, my girl and my boy and we're complete. I got past the want, princess. It was one of those idealistic romanticized fool's errands and it's passed now. It's been gone for a long time.

Not a regret?

I have no regrets. You?

So, so many, Jake.

Let 'em go, baby girl. It's a weight you weren't meant to carry. Let's close that chapter and start a new one.

Now you sound like me.

Yeah, except I don't have your ridiculous Nova Scotia accent.

Hey now, calm your jealousy.

I'm pretending you didn't just say that.

No volunteers.

I took the picture down, thank you for the kind words, but it's easier to keep going if I don't have to look myself in the eye.

It's raining again, welcome this time after a round of tornado warnings and forty-degree nights had us escaping last evening to the suburbs to the McNally-Robinson store with the treehouse inside, for iced coffees and fresh reading materials. Summer reading for a summer that will hopefully allow for that kind of rest.

I'm convinced it won't, though so perhaps we'll just do our reading here on the porch while we pretend everything is fine when it isn't.

Go ahead and roll your eyes, you never got an engraved invitation to be here. Hell, I didn't get one either. It's a party I threw without a lick of planning or forethought.

I'm an enigma. Consistently looking for a way out of this world without affecting anyone and yet I go out of my way to live my life as excruciatingly as I can so I can feel it to pieces. All of it, good and bad. I don't want to be medicated. After the first two weeks I began to chew up the pills in my mouth and when no one was paying attention I'd pick the bits out of the backs of my teeth and rinse them down the sink. I'm not medicated any more than you are and I was caught.

Masochist. Yes. Yes I am.

And so I'm sipping my petulant bitter coffee this morning, flying on caffeine and savoring the tiniest of failure-victories. That seems to be the only kind I can produce right now.

Until we hit on something that works, well, none of it is going to work. My work suffers when I take pills and if I can't work then I don't want to bother with the rest of it. And yes I know if I hit a low and go running off looking for trains to fling myself into or blowtorches to set myself alight there won't be any work left to produce anyway.

I had to give new examples so Jacob doesn't nail the upstairs windows shut. Christ, he's already taken all the knives away and I've been reduced to asking for him to slice cucumbers for me when we're making dinner which demoralizes me to no end.

I never said I had it all figured out.

The idea that I could leave without affecting anyone is completely ridiculous.

Besides. what would everyone do all day?

He follows me when I run.

Which makes the medication issues pale significantly. Because I'm allowed to betray everyone but no one is allowed to betray me. It's been done and it's my turn to fall apart and no one else gets my spotlight.

I left the office, with Claus and Jacob sitting there with smug Rob (marriage guy) after Jacob unloaded all the stuff he keeps inside that I knew but I really didn't know after all and I turned and told him not to move and I left and walked for about six blocks before I realized I was going to ruin my shoes and I didn't need to be soaking wet when I was just getting over a cold and I hailed my very first taxi and took myself home.

Because I may not be able to trust myself but I'll take my chances, the other options aren't looking very solid right now. Jacob isn't looking very solid right now. Life isn't looking very solid right now. But I am holding on.

For once.

Surprises.

Jacob's going to get a big surprise when he gets home, because we have a visitor.

One of my neighbors asked me if I could watch her eight-month-old son, Gabe. Gabe is a handsome little guy with blonde hair and blue eyes and a very easy-going disposition and he was handed to me about fifteen minutes after Jacob left for downtown, this time to get the papers he didn't actually get when he ambushed me with the accompanied serenade on Monday. So I'm not entirely sure who's babysitting who right now and I'm not entirely sure what look will play across Jacob's face when he gets home that I maybe might not want to see but for now it's awfully nice to sit here and watch Gabe sleep through lunch, one fist curled around his ear.

He smells like heaven.

I will never have another baby.

Perhaps I can arrange to borrow him more often. I haven't been this relaxed in years.

The well.

I have it.

It isn't a movie. It's a music video. Set to some loud, desperate power ballad, most likely in the pouring rain, an epic life or death struggle that ends well, if we're lucky.

That's my life. Fuck Christian's snowglobe or PJ's optimism and dogged reminders. Fuck Loch's midlife crisis. Fuck Jacob's faith and rejection of yestermorrow in favor of today. Fuck me already.

It's a four minute music video on a loop. Played over and over only the tape never wears out and no one ever gets tired because my god, listen to the emotion in the singer's voice, look at the fear and the love in his gorgeous eyes, watch the perfect girl that has his heart as she fleshes the song out visually so you know exactly how much he wants her and how she will always be his.

There is no reality here. I'm looking for the lights, the set, the script. I'd pay millions I don't even have to get a crack at that script to spoil my own ending.

And the stupid rain never stops.

The tears never stopped. I had another lovely multi-hour session with Claus and sometimes I really wonder when I'm going to stop crying. There's no end to the tears. They. just. keep. coming. and the music keeps playing in my head and we never have dry hair anymore or dry eyes, it's a metaphor. Maybe we should change the channel. I heard there's a comedy on the other one.

I hear we might see the sun this weekend. That would be nice because after a while, it isn't just snow that drives people mad. It's life. Life without tools to help you live it. Tools I can't seem to hold in my little hands long enough to learn how to use them.

But they gave me a film canister and I opened it up and words spilled out and this is what it said.

Exactly. Absolutely nothing.

    September sun glowing golden hair
    Now keep in mind son she was never there
    Octoberís rust bisecting black storm clouds
    Only the deaf hear my silent shouts

Please just collect them.

The abject comparisons. I can't take them anymore. Take with it the reciprocal altruism, if you would. I know what it means. I know that it's real and it's waiting for me and that's why I can't move.

Once upon a time in a rare and fleeting show of confidence I could bring Cole to a standstill with my contempt for his cataclysmic lack of demonstrative emotional skills.

He would cave, he would fall apart trying to make me talk to him when he crossed a verbal line. He was never sorry for his physical missteps but he watched his words. He hated my disparagement of myself. He hated when I shut him out, he would joke and chide and try to draw me out, almost as if he wanted me to forgive him on the spot or he'd die miserably.

Ironic. Both the emotional eruptions and his death even. It still reels me right out over a ledge.

I never gave him the silent treatment. I would just process whatever he said and just think about it. I go quiet. I learned a lifetime ago not to beat things to death verbally and now it's something I do every day. More comparisons in living with night and day, moon and sun, dark and now light. Jacob likes to put words on everything. He draws me back out agonizingly to talk even though sometimes we leave it. Cole would go insane leaving it. Jacob has more patience and more confidence in his relationship with me. Something he never had until Cole was gone. Cole was his shadow in love and his rival in life. It's as freeing for him as it is for me to be out from under that intense scrutiny.

Emerging as the winner in a close race is my one private, final question for Cole. One question I asked him constantly and never got an answer to, one bit of closure and peace of mind he took with him to the grave in a rare show of secrecy that leaves me devastated forever. Simply devastated.

He never once gave me an answer. Jacob, with his heart in my hands will run out of breath giving me answers, epic ones, silly ones. The moon will rise and our eyes will grow so heavy and he'll be slurring reasons as he falls into sleep but I know when he wakes up he'll have thought of more ways.

Life is day from night. Light years and lifetimes different from before. Beautiful. Loving, so loving and passionate and overwhelming compared to before and so why would I keep this particular question in my heart? Why did it become more important than maybe asking why he had to be so quietly cruel?

Maybe because he answered that one, with laughter and spite. Otherwise, whatever answers he knew, he kept to himself. Maybe because he didn't know why. Because I was there. Because I loved him enough for both of us, maybe he didn't understand how that worked. He always came back to me even when he hated me, when there were better girls, when he had more fun without me.

Somehow my love was enough to spread across many hearts. So one would remain in the dark and the other would grow toward the light, eventually becoming too tired to hang on anymore and dropping the other heart down down into the black spiral that wouldn't let go of him long enough to give him to me, or long enough to give me that answer. It was the only thing I ever wanted from him and it would have made all the difference in the world.