Touch and go.

I was more afraid the day would start as yesterday's had, with bitterness toward the end of the time together without routines and schedules and appointments. With frustration that we failed to achieve all the imaginary tasks we had dreamed up as the holidays stretched out before us, a blank canvas upon which we would draw our masterpiece of a break.

It didn't.

Instead it started when I was ambushed as I walked into the bedroom to wake Ben up this morning, since I had been up for hours already. He came around from behind the door, already dressed in his plaid flannel pajama bottoms and his glasses and he pressed me against the wall and closed the door so that we would not be interrupted.

He slid me up the wall and held me there while he pushed down his pants and then we were melted into one person again, with one of his hands around my hips, and the other on my head, around my throat, his lips against my temple and my arms locked around his back. We didn't make a sound. Not a word. I almost bit through my tongue as my chin jutted sharply against his shoulder and then he came away from me, the cold replacing his heat and I was lowered gently back to the floor. He smiled, grabbed a t-shirt to throw on and asked if there was still coffee.

I nodded.

He walked back across the room and kissed my hair and put his arms around me again. We both hate the end of holidays and the long stretch of winter ahead without a break until Easter dawns over our lives and the snow funnels into rivers of gritty water that will pool into the storm drains and spring will be here at last. We just have to get there first. Get through this first.

With a morning like we've had, it shouldn't be difficult.

Backpedal for just a moment.

Eek. The rare lyrical romantic overlap. I dread those but sometimes they just can't be helped.

I would fly to the moon and back if you'll be
If you'll be my baby
I've got a ticket for a world where we belong
So would you be my baby?

I didn't really plan to write about the flight on Wednesday night but I somehow got bullied into sharing it by the guys, who are keen to not have me censoring myself now over the good things, in favor of those things that are not good. I don't often allow them to dictate what I permit myself to share in my journal but at the same time, there have been many times that I have been swept out of harm's way by taking their advice.

So I'll leave it up in spite of the fact that I'll get hate mail because people don't believe Ben could be that romantic and despite the fact that Ben was always incredibly ashamed of the fact that he had to stop flying before he was ever off the ground. It's one of the few things that ever bothered him so deeply that he forbade me to talk about it, let alone write about it.

That has changed. I'm very proud of him, and at no time did anyone ever take him for a failure because he's crawled back from some pretty insurmountable odds to wind up here. We could all take a lesson from that. Me especially.

He's not going to be the great romance of your life, Bridget.

No, he isn't, Benjamin. You are.

Day 2.

Here on the ground
I cannot hear a sound
Just a strong and steady rain
Getting louder as you sing

The coffee gods have aligned. Beans, Grind and Maker all coordinated to give me the perfect cup of liquid black today and I'm savoring it to the point where I'm ignoring the basket of clean laundry on the kitchen floor and the kids languishing with their own breakfasts in front of retro cartoons. I can hear Tweety Bird lisping and the music building to a crescendo. Ben is sitting in the den, door open, responding to emails or looking at signed reissue guitars on Ebay and this is the perfect lazy Friday morning.

Perfect.

Suddenly I'm very unsure of that word to describe my life. Today it does. Right this moment it does. We're plotting a trip to the hardware store and the post office. We're going to drive around and listen to music. We'll stop for some dinner somewhere and then come home and sack out for some movies.

I got a t-shirt for Christmas (Thank you Christian) that says It's okay, Pluto. I'm not a planet either. Ben got one that says The awesome meter never lies. They make me laugh and it's interfering with the random and persistent thoughts that less than four months from now, the spring showers will begin and the pavement will have that glorious hot tar-smell that only comes from a true, cleansing rain and I will be back to my little camisoles and embroidered skirts, feet bare and hair longer again, tangled down my back, instead of this ridiculous get up of tights/woolies/jeans/thermal top/t-shirt/sweater/socks times two.

Yes.

Not such a hard winter after all. At least not today.

Night Rating.

One of the things I didn't know was involved in the reissue of Ben 3.0, new and improved, was finishing the magnificent achievement of becoming a...

...a...

HOLY SHIT.

Pilot.

What was that song? Oh yes. She's waiting for the right kind of pilot to come and he...well, he's here.

I got a lovely New Year's celebration last night. From thousands of feet in the air. Reverse fireworks, looking DOWN. Ben finally recertified and flying the plane. At night, which is IN THE DARK, which is a whole other ballgame than Ben being in control any other time.

It was terrifying.

I will never live it down.

But secretly it was so fun I would like to do it again.

I need to buy some Depends first. Since this princess is a little 'fraidy cat and can't handle Piper planes that bump and dip and shudder and freak her out. And as much as everyone is embarking on this magnificent, multi-year effort to make her love the sky as much as she loves the sea? She's incredibly slow to warm up.

But you knew that already.

Makes for a very good start to 2009, though.

I'm taking my cherry tart and my blackbird hairpins with me.

Goodbye 2008.

Seriously.

I will not miss you.

It was just another year of getting through firsts and finding things out and trying to sew my head on straight and stand steadily in my razor-sharp heels and hold hands without hiding behind people and gaze at the moon without blinking and not rip people's faces off because I grew so bratty and tired of their hollow platitudes.

Oh but there were some good things too. I got a lot of tattoos and retired a whole set of piercings or five. I cut my hair up to my chin, which was something I was wanting to do forever. I fell in love with Benjamin, which has to be the most ironic and wonderful event of the year and my kids both progressed to star readers in their classes and are learning to swim and be amazing people.

I went off my meds and stopped therapy and started grief counseling and learned not to cringe when the guitars wail too loudly or the sun seems too bright. I learned that I can control my brother-in-law quite nicely and that the high heels every day no matter what give me that birds eye view I have coveted so dearly my whole life but I was still oddly saving the high heels for dresses only.

I stopped pretending. Abruptly. Finally.

I know things now. Things I did not know before. And I found a shocking thrill in brutal honesty that can bring grown men to instant tears but why lie for comfort when you can just open the doors and let the damned TRUTH in and then deal with what everyone knows but ignores as futile self-comfort?

Seriously.

So maybe this wasn't the beautiful, melodramatic end post to a difficult year that you came for. Maybe the words weren't poetic enough and the sentiments heartfelt enough. Maybe I should have written earlier or later, or never at all. Maybe I should have lied but my resolution is to find a little reality in my own existence, a little more honesty, a lot less fluff.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a dessert here that I need to claim before someone else eats it. And I have to get ready, because I've been told to pack an overnight bag and put on my nicest party frock.

Goodbye 2008, and Happy New Year to all.

The price of petulance.

Lately my obsessions include Battlestar Galactica, snowboarding in the living room and eating candy apples until I think I might throw up. Also there in the mix somewhere my head entertains thoughts of what my heart will look like someday when the medical examiner cracks open the cage and takes a peek.

I am guessing it will be black with criss-crossed stitches with a thick red cord to hold the three largest pieces together. The rest of the shards will be in a jumbled pile at the bottom somewhere, resting on my pelvic bones, falling out as I am moved on the cold stainless steel table.

When he slices into the largest piece he'll remark with surprise at the new growth inside, something unexpected with the advanced decay on the outside.

Yes, I am feeling morbid today. Thank you. How are you?

Offers are pouring in for New Year's eve festivities but I don't know what I feel like today. I don't know what I want or how I want to ring in 2009 because I have ceased to care so much. It's another day. Another night. Another year and really I'm growing less sentimental as they pass. Less romantic and less hopeful and less convinced that life is like the movies and that disappoints me this morning.

My coffee isn't as good as I would like it to be.

The internet is rife with total assholes and I don't know why I give you my words some days. Because THEY might read them and they don't deserve to know. They don't deserve to have their curiosity sated and they don't deserve to exist in my presence and so POOF! I'll wave my wand and just pretend my kingdom is what I wrote it to be.

Complete with a pale blue castle, blackened, broken hearts, a line of knights keeping out my enemies and this empty coffee cup.

The box that Ben built.

For Christmas this year, as we talked about, I was given all of the items I had discussed in a piece of writing that was a hasty, truthful drive-by entry that Ben took too immediately. He pointed out it was all me. Perfectly me. He actually came to me to compliment me on it a day or two after reading it. I filed his compliments away as his probable relief that I wasn't lamenting the state of my sorry life. He filed away the list of things I mentioned as Future Christmas. I never had a clue.

But it wasn't that he went and collected the things on the list, it was what he did with them.

He made a box. A big wooden box I cannot lift. It's filled with sand, golden coins and beaded necklaces. Shells. The mermaid statue is nestled in beside the tiara and the message in a glass bottle, complete with a tiny paper umbrella. The more I dig through the sand, the more treasures I find.

He painted the outside of the box in my favorite shade of sage green, weathering the corners and edges so it looks ancient. He carved my name into it. He affixed smooth river stones, more shells and black roses made of fabric to the outside. Driftwood handles. Sea glass.

It's so awesome. Every time I open it I feel like the most loved person on the face of the earth. Did I tell you I wore that tiara all day long on Christmas day?

Did I tell you Ben smiled all day long on Christmas day?

I love my box. Today I'm going to find a permanent place for it. It's like a whole lapful of beach, a secret getaway, an escape made by someone who loves me. You really have no idea what this means to me.

And so I'm going to stop trying to describe it and go look in it again.

Initials with no names.

The snake behind me hisses
What my damage could have been.
My blood before me begs me
Open up my heart again.

I was reminded yesterday of about how well I'm doing.

For all of my functional insanity there are voices that follow me that live in my head and whenever I stop to look at something or someone or even just to take a deep endless breath they close in with their screaming.

Is that doing well?

I miss Jacob. Especially during the holidays. I miss him barging through the door on snowy mornings with his paper bag holding the precious breakfast bagels, shaking snow out of his beard, eyes crinkled up in a grin when he would see me. I miss his hands. Always busy. Always gesturing wildly, whittling some useless piece of wood or writing a sermon or working on an essay for some obscure publication or just to file away. I miss the way he held me and the way he was always touching my face or my ears. I miss his quick harmless temper and his coffee. I miss his many-layered faith and his ignorance of bigger problems and I miss his innocent love for me. I miss finding shoes wherever he would stop and remove them because he hated shoes that badly.

I miss his hair. No one has hair like that. Even the kids' hair has darkened considerably since they grew from little kids into elementary-aged kids. That impossible white blonde that made people stare. My hair color, though no one stares anymore, since I carry the black cloud so obviously above my head most people look away instead of finding something about me to admire.

I miss the unintelligible accent that would explode in a torrent of slang from the east coast that I grew to understand perfectly. I miss that golden passion. He was pure good. I miss the frailty of his strength in the end, when he faltered and we wound up on a raft together in the sea of nowhere. I miss his confidence, even when I had no idea it had vanished. I would be fixed. Soon. He was sure of it. He failed and I didn't know and ignorance is always irrevocable bliss.

I miss his stand against everyone else. His defense of our position, the naive place from which we waged the war against the past, present and future back when it was cut so clear you could have stamped copies for public consumption.

I miss him. Everything about him.

But he wasn't good for me. And I know that his actions prevented me from getting better, and his decisions made me worse. I made myself worse and we foundered and took on water and as Jacob and Bridget, we sank to the bottom and all was lost.

It's gone, all of it.

I know that. I just have to figure out how to make it stop coming out of the dark and hitting me across the head like it does now. Blindsiding me with the force of a baseball bat.

There's only so many times you can sustain that kind of damage before it becomes permanent.

Tomorrow I'm going to tell you about the box. It'll be fun. Better than this.

Tongue firmly in cheek here.

As an addendum to the previous post, since you think your darkest of voyeuristic desires can be satisfied over the freaking internet, I'll just make it easy for you.

Ben's profession? He's a door-to-door salesman. Tattoo machines.

Our last name is Doe. I'm planning on changing my name to Jane. Simply to be famous.

I didn't think you would believe any of that. Now stop asking. Thank you.

I'm with the band.

The man who never sings sure does a lot of it these days. And I promised myself I wouldn't make a fuss about that Stone Temple Pilots cover they did just before the encore and so I won't, even though it burned something awful.

And I feel, so much depends on the weather
So is it raining in your bedroom?
And I see, that these are the eyes of disarray
Would you even care?

And I feel it
And she feels it

I find in places like that I tend to crawl up inside my head, my face a mask of unapproachable cool, and I never stop moving. Last night I was given license to go roam around while I waited for the show to start, the wry thoughts in my head that this would be a far cry from Christmas eve.

Christmas eve was beautiful. A lone blue spotlight that Ben stepped under and then his voice and his voice only filled my head, only I had to listen so hard at first. I had heard him practicing all month long but he was saving the best for last. He changed the lyrics back to the traditional, and then he belted out the final chorus with a power that staggered me and I have heard all the notes he can hit. Unlike others, he'll keep going. Higher. Louder. More powerful. You can tell how effectively he hit the note by how far away he is from the microphone when he finishes it and takes a breath. It's one of the most beautiful moments I have ever witnessed, and that's just about the sentiment of every other attendee who was fortunate enough to be there that night.

Sam summed it up nicely. I knew he could sing, I didn't think he could sing like THAT.

Last night we wound up in a smoky club to hear Ben help out a friend who had a guitar gig at a spot and lost his singer at the last moment. They traded off lines and it sounded pretty good, though it wasn't my style or Ben's, but that's okay. Friends with guitar skills are good to have, and friends who force people to step into the spotlight when they get to that place where they've been out of it so long (and church doesn't count) they'd rather not go under it again? Even better.

So with smoke in my eyes and house music thumping through my ears I wandered around, sipping a ginger ale and not smirking at some of the outfits on people who were only just born when I was finishing high school and I'm sure they were looking at me wondering who brought their mother but then they were admiring as they checked out my ink but it was still slightly dark and so my crows feet were mercifully hard to notice and the white streaks in my hair fully obscured by the spastic lighting and I didn't really feel my age until we got home and I realized I was so tired I thought I might cry.

I would pick the church singing any day, after last night.

I think Ben would too.

Oh drat. Could you help me put up these signs, please? I do believe I have lost my cool. If you find it, there is a reward.