Out composing. Which is better than de-composing. Ugh.

Yes, I'm going to sit at the piano all damn day working out the notes to this.

Guess who else bought a piano? Yes, my brother-in-law. He had a little spending-spree last week and he also bought a Lexus station wagon (sorry, luxury SUV). He does not have children nor does he play piano.

I'm amused.

All is well. See you tomorrow.

Sunday Snapshot.

With nothing better to do
No one to come home to
I woefully conclude
To take it out on you
I'm bored to the extreme
This world of foolish dreams
Disillusion
I am not who I seem to be

Cold city with a wind warning, which means my neighbors who haven't raked their leaves will be spared a good hard job and the fourteen bags of leaves removed from my yard now becomes a pointless endeavor altogether.

A job offer, formalized and presented in an ironclad deadlined format that surprised me to pieces and now I have to think. I'll explore it in great public detail later for the eventual delight of those who serve as my detractors. Something for you to look forward to.

Noticing itunes got stuck on Bad religion. Sometimes itunes IS a bad religion. I loved it in the beginning, then it drove me nuts and I went to using Windows Media Player, and now I'm back to itunes and I fell out of love with it again. I find myself using the stereo a lot instead but sometimes I'm in a mood and frankly, save for Dark Side of the Moon, all of my Floyd is digital.

Lochlan issues, again, something to be saved for later in the week to think about out loud thanks to the overwhelming need for continued self-preservation today.

One guy in jeans and a t-shirt and hoodie who hasn't shaved in days, making a vow to keep me warm and pointing out quite correctly that really, October is done, and November and December are going to just fly by and then boom! In January it will be a whole year since I fell in love with him. And wow, how many ups and downs we've had and how difficult things have been but we're still together, knock on wood.

Wow.

Which made me think I hardly ever mark the good things in terms of days. And it made me grateful for this guy in his stubblefied, dark-circled-eyed glory. It illustrated that maybe we both are stronger than was first thought.

It's a distinct possibility, in any case.

My snapshot is going to end with a boring lunch of hard-boiled eggs which I might eat sitting on top of the woodstove where the kettle usually goes. I am too cold to type anymore.

Rainy days indoors make everyone squirrely. Especially Bridget.

Father Time steals our days like a thief
There's no price that I haven't paid to get some relief
I've become the shell of a man
I can't begin to even understand
I've forgotten who I am
Come on and resurrect me

The morning is a blur of raindrops embarking on a slow race down the windowpane.

In one drop I had a thought that my velvet bag simply won't do in the rain and since it's supposed to snow later tonight I think it's time to find something waterproof. But I really don't feel like shopping much these days.

In another drop was Ben smiling at me when I stretched in bed this morning and remarked that I was sore all over. He began remembering out loud the fun we had after we turned out the lights last night. He's got the absolute perfect blend of gentle and harsh, that's for sure. We had a good laugh last night when he pointed out that his penis is the reason I married him, that he tried to show it to me from the first day I met him and if I had only looked at it I would have seen the glory that is Ben and I could have saved myself all kinds of heartbreak. The biggest laughs came after I used the opportunity to tease him and told him I saw it and meh, it was okay but nothing to get excited about. The look on his face was so priceless I howled with laughter and woke up the kids. Took me most of the remainder of last night to assure him that it's every inch (mom forgive me) as phenomenal as I always imagined it might be (God forgive me). They don't call him the Ladykiller for nothing. Let's give him a big raindrop. Because...wow.

In a tiny drop clinging to the glass is the thought that a year ago today I was sitting in the dark on a cold wooden floor rocking back and forth and shaking like a leaf.

There's a fast little frozen drop at the top on a mission to add to itself, the snowball effect of one person being held up by many. That one little flake is so vulnerable and yet a hard ball of ice packed and rounded can enact significant damage, and I am surrounded once again by people who love me. Overall the dynamics have changed little, we're still a haphazard family and we will get through all of this together, only slightly scathed and dented, losing only a few casualties but picking up reinforcements. An army...of flakes. Hmmm. Maybe I'll come back to that and fix it later. I'm making myself laugh.

And I can no longer see the backyard out the window because of all this rain and all I can think now is I really need to go purse shopping.

Or maybe I'm thinking about Ben's penis.

I'll never tell which it is. Let's just go with both.

Things I like today.

Humor me. Seriously.

• Big boots leaving mud and leaves tracked across the back porch and right through the kitchen.
  
• The last inch of honey in the jar at breakfast and it was all mine.
• Men who spontaneously open their arms for a hug when they see me.
• Eyes that crinkle when they smile.
• Breath that smells like coffee and cigarettes (bet I'm the only one who loves that).
  
• Threadbare quilts on beds. Being used, not being folded and left hidden in a closet.
• A big pot of chili bubbling on the stove.
• My minty big old truck, gosh, she runs rich.
  
• Henry's invented name for his stepfather: Ben-Dad (I don't have the heart to point out it sounds like band-aid). Ruth has started using it too.
  
• Five more jars of honey in the basement dry pantry.
• The suddenly in-full-bloom rosebush in the backyard. Snow is in the forecast.
  
• Spending most of the day on the couch mushed between Andrew and Ben, arranging words on my laptop while they ignored me in favor of watching CNN.
  
• Life. I like life. The hard parts, I guess eventually they'll pass and everything will even out and there will probably be more ups and downs but really they will be small potatoes compared to the last several years and I'll be ready for whatever happens next. I think I already am.
  

Blame the drugs. These ones are AWESOME.

One voice, louder than the rest.

Thanks to last night, today is almost okay. I didn't think it would be.

If you've done your math or read here for any length of time, you'll remember that it was a year ago tonight that Jacob told me he was leaving us. And he never came back. Well, he came back the next day and took almost everything he owned and went very very far away and spent many days straight praying, locked in a hotel room overseas and the night before his 37th birthday he jumped off the roof.

We're not going to talk about that. I can't. I am peanut brittle and I can't handle more than the odd random memory or offhand comment. I'm so not ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.

Instead I'm going to tell you about the freezing-fucking-cold motorcycle ride I had last night. Ben borrowed a bike from a procrastinating neighbor who hasn't put his bike up yet and warned me to go and add as many layers as I could. Even chaps. I never wear the chaps he got for me. Well, not outside anyway. He likes many layers of protection on a bike. Just in case.

I thought he was nuts. Figured we'd be out for a ten minute tear across the city and back and then we could light a fire.

Nope.

Ben drove for thirty minutes in the six-degree moonlight, until the city was a memory far behind us. And his wife was a Popsicle, clinging to his waist, head down, chattering teeth and all. He managed to extricate himself from me finally when he stopped the bike out by the fairgrounds. Across the road is an endless hay field, lit up with endless stars in a prairie sky that is so beautiful sometimes it makes living here almost bearable.

He put the kickstand down and took off his helmet and walked about a hundred yards into the field. Gloves and leather jacket making him almost invisible since he left the headlight on.

He walked back and opened his arms out wide, gesturing.

Is this the perspective you need?

I just shook my head. Defiant. Frozen. Still sitting on the bike. My knees were locked against it and my teeth were clamped together so they didn't chatter so badly.

He threw his arms back down to his sides and walked back to me and pulled me off the bike and half-carried/half-marched me out to where he had walked. He put one hand on the back of my head and one under my chin and forced my head up and then he let go of the back of my head and pointed up into the stars.

Where is he, Bridget?

In heaven.

Where are you, Bridget?

Down here. On earth.

Say it again.

Ben-

Say it again, princess.

I'm on earth.

He can't run your show anymore.

I know.

You know but you're letting him anyway.

I don't know what else to do, Benjamin.

What do I always say to you when things get hard?

Take your own advice, then.

This isn't about me. What do I say?

Just be, bee.

He walked back out into the field.

Just be, little bee. Just let him go. Let the sad parts go and the mad parts and all of it. Let it go. I don't know how to help you. I want to and I don't know how. I can help with as much as I can and it will never be enough until you get to a place where he doesn't exist in every breath you take in. He's not your air anymore, princess, you've been breathing without him now for a whole year and there's a lot of years left that he won't be in. I just want you to take a full breath because Jake is gone and he isn't coming back and we're going to make a life here!

Ben was done. He got it off his chest. Maybe not so smooth anymore. Not eloquent, not articulate, just plain straightforward Ben as only Ben can be.

Yelling.

And it made perfect sense.

So when my brain revolted and exploded all in the next moment I was surprised to see the regret on his face when I fell apart. I went down on my knees in the dirt and let go of my helmet. It rolled away from me but I didn't see it because he was running to me and pulling out his phone and I very slowly keeled right over and everything went black. Dramatic self-preservation to the finest degree.

I woke up in PJ's truck, Ben saying he was sorry. Holding me close to his chest like a baby. Heater blasting in my face.

My head knows when it has had enough and between that and the rolling vertical blackouts I have had from all my higher-dose medication lately I'm now getting the walking coma I wished for for this very difficult time. True to form, I'll keep writing, it just takes that much longer to get out what I want to say.

And I've talked to a lot of people about time recently. How time is marked for me in terms of before and after, pre- and post-, individually, in Cole-time, Jacob-time and Ben-time. How in the blink of an eye you pass a milestone like a year and in that blink everything changes, absolutely everything.

Adapt or die, princess.

It wasn't Ben's voice I heard when I went down.

It was Jacob's. And something tells me I'll never hear it again.

Your demons live for me, Bridget.

Yes, Jacob, I guess they do.

This one gets a song.

Click here then just click on the song and it will play for you. You know how much Bridget likes her music. Just listen to it. Then come back.

Ready? Then here we go.

A year ago today was the last day. The last good day in which I was still completely blind to the fact that Jacob's savior complex had eaten him whole and I was blissfully unaware that the next day would be the worst day of my life.

(You think you want to correct me here, but you don't, actually, sorry. You think you know me but I'm here to tell you that you were wrong on that count as well.)

My best memory of Jacob rests in when I can close my eyes and in my head is a day two summers ago when we went camping as a group, the airstream weekend up at the lake. Jacob had about four beers which is three too many for him and he climbed up onto the roof of the camper and had a guitar passed up and he stood up there tipsily as anything, singing that song, singing his fool heart out in the sun. A pale blue t-shirt that matched the color of the sky perfectly which meant it matched his eyes. Threadbare jeans on the verge of falling apart. Wearing his wedding ring and the big watch that I now keep in the drawer in the bedroom in a box under my stockings because there is no piece left of it that's bigger than a dime.

He did that when he was happy, you know. He sang.

Memories, they wash my mind
Like the frozen rain
I am numb here but I can't forget the pain
Death was yesterday
And somewhere I have never seen
So never mind tomorrow
Tomorrow's never been

Benjamin saves the day.

If you could only pick one place as your favorite place to be, where would it be, Bridge?

Into a hug, into your arms.

I'm serious.

So am I.

That was too easy.

Okay, next time I'll say the Taj Mahal.

I poured my heart out and it spread over the concrete in a black pool, thick like oil, slow moving and bubbling with a sickly, aching pain. I found a stick nearby and I drew patterns in that pool, shifting some of the blame, taking some of the heartache and shaping it into a boomerang and then I threw it but it never came back.

The clouds raced through the sky over my head like a nightmare in time-lapse photography and I ate some more words but I had to choke them down, they tasted awful. And so I stood, and into my apron I gathered my courage, my hope and my resolve and I took them, bundled up, inside to the fire where I shook them into the grates and watched them burn.

And then when the sky disappeared and the dark came in to quiet the world, pockmarked with tiny lights that other people pin hopes to, my heart found its way back, dragging the ache after it like dirty laundry that has been ignored for too long.

I'm doing all those things that everyone wants me to do.

I take my medicine, even though it makes my hand flutter and my head hurt. I go see my psychiatrist, even though I hate her guts and I believe she hates mine, I go for grief counseling even though it reopens the wounds day after day. I let the children talk to me about their sadness when so moved, even though I'd rather just forget it hurts them too, and I keep on going even though in the very back of my head, a once-loud, now quiet voice points out it would feel good to just go to sleep and not wake up.

I moved on and found that something I once fought against turned out to be something so wonderful and bittersweet and sorely needed.

I changed.

I did all of that and on Friday will I feel any different?

Right up there with fear of clowns.

Treachery,
Like I have never seen,
So never mind your sorrows
Your demons live for me

I'll give him credit for trying.

Caleb came over last night after dinner, with flowers, to prove his regret. I can't imagine what kind of thoughts went through his head when he rang the bell, the one inside the porch, and the front door opened into the hallway where Ben was in the middle of trying on his goalie gear for hockey this winter. He plays when he's home.

So Caleb opened the door and saw Ben standing there, a full ten inches taller than Caleb in his full gear and skates, saw the catching glove and blocking pads and helmet on and wordlessly passed the flowers across the threshold, choked out something about him being sorry, the flowers were for Bridget, and then he turned and left.

At least I think that's what happened, Ben has hardly stopped chuckling long enough to make the story decipherable. He swears he didn't mean to seem menacing. He says he didn't even have his neck guard on. And he didn't have his stick.

Somehow I don't think Caleb noticed those things. I wouldn't have either.

Milton never saw remorse like this.

I ripped a page out of one of the books of Paradise Lost, I think.

I went for an early afternoon walk with Caleb yesterday, down to the benches, his car waiting a whole three hundred yards away because his unspoken request that I comply with, equally unremarked upon is that I dress to the nines when I visit him, and so my black wool dress and long black coat and my black stiletto murder boots make for difficult walking of any distance. It's my funeral outfit for Cole. I wear it to grind that into Caleb. Jacob's memorial outfit was his ever beloved blue velvet that I will never wear again. Ever.

Caleb wanted to know how I was doing. Safe from the confines of my big brothers and incredibly passionate, immature and unruly new husband, safe from August and Joel's abilities to see through his motives so easily, safe from anything that could later used against him, he attacked verbally, from the side.

He didn't like my answers, he failed to accept my words as the truth as I know it. He figures the boys brainwash me in a different way. That they control and I obey and he refused to take my answers as my reality.

He moved here to be closer to the kids and I and I'm not sure I'm one hundred percent clear on his motives. I'm not naive as to what they are but at the same time I'm at a loss to understand how a man with Caleb's money and stature and position in a city he adores can just up and decide to 'retire' (if that's what anyone is really calling it), and leave that beloved city to come live in a place that sports one multi-star hotel and overall, little else that is of interest to him. Especially since said man has zillions of aeroplan miles that go to waste and he's rarely in one place for more than a handful of nights at a time, someone who can and does go absolutely everywhere without taking even the meagerest of a financial hit. Why here?

Please. It can't be my companionship. You can buy that kind of company. I'm sure he has. I bet it was taller and less belligerent, too.

And so I asked.

What difference does it really make to you if I'm okay?

Because I know what Friday is and I know you're not feeling strong enough to face it?

So what?

So, I'm here now.

And that should fix everything?

Maybe, if you let me help you here on your own terms, since you won't accept mine.

Your terms always seem to involve selling you my soul.

Would you stop with the devil remarks, please?

When you stop acting like the devil, sure.

Point noted.

So what's the real reason, Cale?

I think you're well aware, princess.

I want to hear it from you.

Why?

So there's no mistake.

Cole knew, once he went too far, that he'd never have a hand in taking care of you, looking out for you again so he asked me to make sure you were okay, to keep an eye on you, to look after whatever you needed, the kids too.

So you tried to kill me too. Hm. Makes sense.

We got carried away. May I finish?

What else?

I could make you happier.

We're not having a contest.

Sure we are.

Then let me put it to you another way. Want to make sure I have what I need? Then don't make this complicated. I need Ben. I need him straight and I need him here and I need to know no one is fucking with that. That's what I need to get through this.

He just stood there, peering at the clouds through a half-squint, trying to find words for his frustration, to smooth it like wrinkles in a blanket. He failed.

Bridget, I can't do that. No one can, except for Ben. And do you really want to pin all your hopes and dreams and happiness on someone with such a deplorable track record for keeping his promises? Someone who isn't strong?

Why not? Everyone else does that when it comes to me.

I'm not sure if he finally realized he's never going to be someone I trust past appearances or if he realized that the boys and I have come up with a brand new faith that is so imperfect it's more fantasy than spirituality but all of the light drained out of his eyes and he was left wordless and frozen to the ground.

I stopped walking and turned around to look back for him.

I see now why they feel the way they do.

Oh, why is that?

Because you're the strong one, and they're leaning on you, princess.

And they say I'm slow.

I turned around and continued walking up the gravel path and around the loop that would take me back to the car, jamming my hands in my pockets and hunching my shoulders forward, as if I was cold. It wasn't the cold though, it's the weight.

Caleb caught up to me just as the driver opened the door for me.

I don't get it. You're not strong enough for this. How is this even possible?

Haven't you ever been to church? You don't get to pick your path, it's chosen for you. You just have to walk it as steadily as you can, following God. Like me in these ridiculous boots on gravel, Cale. It gets easier.

It's not fair to you. We're supposed to hold you up.

I could barely hear him now. I wasn't even sure if he said it out loud but I snapped back anyway.

No one said life was fair. And the other way didn't fucking work so-

You're the angel-

DON'T YOU SAY THAT!

I balled my fists up and yelled in his face. His composure slipped and fell to the ground in a whisper.

I'm so sorry, Bridget. For everything.

Underneath I saw the tears. And he managed them quite formally, as he does with everything, letting his eyes fill while he got in the car beside me but looking the other way, out the window as we were driven back across the river to take me home, and I sat and stared at him without a single notion to allow him the dignity of some privacy, because he has allowed no dignity for me ever.

But for the first time, in twenty-three years of knowing Caleb, it's probably the first thing he has ever said to me that I trust is true.