Good for something.

Overnight somewhere in the dark my Kevlar dissolved into wet cardboard. And yet I didn't pick up the phone, not until I had taken the kids to school and then I only made one call, and that was to make an appointment to cut my hair. It's always so brassy and fried after a trip to the shore. It was perpetual golden straw when we lived back home.

I can't sustain myself for another week in this frame of mind. I have to fight my way through it and I'm still not good at the whole left-field lobs that smack right into me. No, I don't spring back when pressed on. I haven't for a long time.

Loch called late last night. He wanted to know what was really going on. As usual he's taken sides and believes that Jacob made a huge mistake leaving me for this long. He remembers well the business trip last year and that was what, three nights? Loch thinks if Jacob isn't going to be here then he should fly in and be here and I told him if he shows up on my doorstep any time between now and the 16th of May I will hurt him, that I need this time, that this is about me and not about my marriage and that everything is alright. He didn't believe me but I don't feel like reassuring anyone but Bridget today, and maybe the kids if they need it and so Loch is on his own, just like the rest of us. It's a leap of faith for Jacob to do what I've asked of him and there's no one better equipped to survive on faith alone.

The three of us are having a good time. We made dinner together last night and then watched a movie in our jammies, eating ice cream and reading spooky stories in my big bed before I took them to theirs. We slept with the windows open upstairs. I could hear the windchimes tinkling softly in the porch. The weather has turned beautiful here, at last.

And this morning the strangest thing happened.

I put my hearing aids in. It's quiet in the mornings here alone and I can ease back into using them. I get very tired and very frustrated wearing them but I'm trying. Okay, sometimes I try and sometimes I say fuck it.

But anyhow, I was upstairs this morning cleaning the windows and I realized there was a bee inside. He probably got trapped when I put the screens in. I'm deathly afraid of bees. Like fraidy-cat scared-silly afraid. Terrified of fuzzy buzzy critters. Wasps are worse but I knew this bee would be mad if he had been trapped in the house since Sunday evening. But I took a deep breath and went and put on rubber gloves, got a newspaper to roll up and came back to the room and closed the door so he couldn't escape. I took a deep breath and watched the bee climb up the glass on the window, as if he had no idea he was about to be beaten senseless. And the room was so cold, I had goosebumps.

If a bee ever made it inside in the past, Cole would trap it between a glass and a piece of cardboard and gently take it outside and then he would let it crawl up his hand out of the glass and sit with it for a while. He liked bees. He loved animals, and insects and spiders even. He said they looked innocent, all cute and colorful but they could sting, and hurt you and even kill you.

Huh. Sound like anyone we know?

He would give the bees names and they would always buzz around him, he never got stung. He was never scared. I figured if he could spend that much time befriending the damn things, then surely I could squash this one and prevent one of the kids from possibly being stung.

So I took another breath and stepped closer and I hauled off and whacked the paper at the bee. And I missed. The bee took off to the right and made a loop around the room. And then he came straight at my head and I freaked out. Well, I didn't freak out, I figured I was going to be stung so I closed my eyes and my mouth up tight and waited. After a few seconds I realized I couldn't feel anything so I opened my eyes and looked around. I ran my fingers gingerly through my hair. If you've ever had long hair and you're afraid of bees there's a good chance it stems from being a child and getting a bee caught in your hair and maybe that's why you're afraid of them to this day, don't you think?

I looked at the window, no bee. I listened carefully for the little motor sounds, nothing. And then I looked at the floor. There was my fuzzy nemesis, dead as a doornail on the floor at my feet.

Oog. I poked it a few times with the paper and then screamed just because as I scooped it onto the edge of the newspaper. I brought it downstairs and outside, all the way to the garage and then I shook the paper over the fence.

And then I realized Cole had killed the bee. It was the one fear he never teased me about. He respected it because of the incident when I was a kid and so he always dealt with bees, and he dealt with this one too. He's watching over me.

Therapy tomorrow. Thank goodness. Boy do I have a lot to talk about. My angels have switched sides.

Bridget-places.

 The sweetest flower that blows, I give you as we part. For you it is a rose - for me it is my heart. -Frederick Peterson

That would be the best message ever to find on the card of some red beauties just delivered into my arms, wouldn't you agree? I should open the curtains in order to get a nicer view, maybe. Jacob makes it very hard for me to wallow, I'll have you know.

Champagne puddles, musical trucks and five thousand miles.

I made no plans to write today but here I am, exhausted and not thinking rationally so in advance I'll apologize for being sick with a cold now from the airplane and not painting as pretty a picture as I would have liked to. But! The big but here is that I am so goddamned strong, you'll all be proud. Or totally confused. Hopefully proud at how tough little Bridget is holding up right now. Tiny fists pumping the air, I will cheer myself the hell on because I'm Kevlar, baby. Five feet tall and bulletproof. Waterproof, fireproof and indestructible.

Shhh, let's just go with it for now, while it works. Please?

The unbirthday was a resounding failure. Instead I was ambushed with Romance.

I know, surprise, surprise. Keep in mind he promised to do nothing, and instead he did everything. I was floored. I thought we had done it all. Full-spectrum romance of Jacob's caliber comes in so many hues and shades we'll never exhaust these rainbows, of that I am finally sure.

Jacob snagged his sister to come and stay with the kids under the guise of taking me out for dinner, in town in a cozy high-end restaurant. He was funny, we ordered Bellinis and cajun chicken dishes and made idle chit chat and I was so happy to have a special dinner for my birthday after expecting a non-fuss.

After dinner he took my hand and led me down along the waterfront. Okay, a walk, it's twilight, it's a beautiful rainy evening. He led me straight to the nicest hotel/spa in town and I'm thinking, oh, a manicure! Because my hands are wrecked and miserable from the winter and how lovely maybe ...and why are we checking in?

Okay, this might explain the travel case he had slung over his shoulder on our walk that I assumed contained some surprise, but I wasn't sure what. I've learned not to guess when it comes to Jacob. Brilliantly oblivious, even.

Our room was beautiful. He had me close my eyes and sit down for a few minutes. I heard water. He came back in five minutes and led me into the bathroom where he had drawn a bath for us, replete with rose petals in the water and candles he had smuggled in. He got in first and then I did and he washed my back and snuggled with me. When the water finally cooled we reluctantly got out. He wrapped me in one of those giant white fluffy robes just in time for us to hear a knock on our door. Strawberries and champagne. So decadent. We fed each other and then he toasted me, a happy birthday, of which many have passed mostly with little to no fanfare, and things would be different from now on.

It was very good champagne.

Are you sick yet?

Next would be the porn part. Please use your imagination, I'm too tired to go through it. But I do have some lovely almost-bruises from being repeatedly pulled to the edge of the bed by my ankles and Jacob is now plotting to raise our bed higher because he really liked being able to stand. He is incorrigible, and I love it.

Snort.

After round three (or maybe it was four?) he went and fetched something from his coat pocket and brought it over. A tiny box tied with a ribbon. He said that he's been looking for this for a while, since when he met me I wore a floating heart pendant that Cole had later replaced with a diamond heart and I spoke a few times of missing the floating heart, which had gotten lost on a camping trip. He even made sure the chain was shorter so as to not interfere with my diamond sliding pendant. It's beautiful.

I'm a little fuzzy on details after this point. Possibly we finished the champagne in and around the remainder of the entire night wide awake with our senses on fire. He took me to places I've never seen before, and I cannot wait to go back. Storybook lovemaking with no difficult moments.

It was a first for us.

The early morning brought a blisteringly hot shower and room-service breakfast in which we fought over the croissants and enjoyed coffee and a morning view of the sunrise over the water. We were checked out by nine and back at the cottage by ten only to find the kids had enjoyed a fun sleepover of their own, not missing us as much as I would have expected. Jacob had planned this night months ago and they knew of it and kept some complex secrets. They did very well. Henry and Ruth had presents for me to open. And then it took just about every reserve I have left to make it through the last twenty-four hours, they have been so difficult in comparison to Saturday night's ease and decadence.

Jacob didn't come back with us on the plane.

Right now as I write there are five thousand miles in between us.

He went to Newfoundland because his dad finished the truck. Do you remember Jacob's ancient Suburban? He had it shipped home to Newfie to store in the barn when we bought the Ram and instead his father rebuilt it and had it repainted and it's finally ready for Jacob to drive again. And so he is going to spend a few days with his folks and then drive the Subruban home, halfway across the country. One of those moments where you take the leap and hope everything turns out okay. We're getting very good at this.

Let's just do it. We'll be okay and when I come back we'll be better, princess.

Yes, there would have been easier ways to do it, but as soon as he gets back we're shipping the Ram to his parents as a gift. They haven't had a new vehicle in decades and so Jacob is going to surprise them. And not only do we save the extra few thousand dollars it would have taken to ship the Suburban out on top of all that, it's a break for Jacob and I. A little space where before there existed no breathing room at all.

Only barely agreed upon, honestly. This is the last thing I wanted.

So here's my peptalk:

Jacob and I have a long and lovely history of suffocating each other with our intensity, right? And the goosebumps just rose up on my arms but a week or so is a good reminder of who we are as individuals, we need to bring ourselves, our true character, our unique personalities to this marriage instead of our collective history. We're trying to stay on firm ground so that we make it. Honestly no one wanted a time-out, we prefer the endless inability to inhale deeply enough to expand our ribs, the shallow breathless existence that left us lightheaded and slightly spinny.

Who wouldn't?

We left each other on very good and difficult terms at the airport, both of us headed for different gates for different flights. Jacob wasn't afraid to fly alone, he has faith in his independence, it puts him in a good frame with which to think and function. I wasn't afraid to fly alone with the kids because we had no choice and I always do better without options. It was long, openly melancholy afternoon as we wound our way back to the flat city covered with dust, and I flew into Christian's arms for the sake of familiar ground after calling him to see if he could come and get us. Over and over I wondered how I find myself in this position, returning to a city I've never been on good terms with and yet feeling as if it is a relief to be 'home' if this is what home is, to the kids. It never will be for me. My heart is scattered across the country like broken glass.

No one believed me that Jacob and I parted on good terms, few of my friends believing he is even planning to come back. I'm sure all of them have now called him looking for reassurance, which he will offer freely. He'll be back on the 15th and they'll trust him when they see him. Christian and PJ have offered to pitch in with a little babysitting so that I can attend my sessions and they both offered to come and stay if it would help, but I think I am going to just take the time to breathe and not be crowded with well-meant affection. Expanding my ribs to see if I can find levelheadedness once again. I never had a hell of lot of common sense to begin with but what I had was just about water-tight. I've sprung holes I have to patch. I have work to do. I have a girl to heal. I have to re-establish Bridget the waterproof princess.

I can do it. I want Jacob to return to the Bridget he loves, and not the brittle one. Life should resume without the halo of frailty, without the incredible instability we're honed to a fine point. It has to. It's time.

I miss him so much it hurts. I'm not even sure I can do this. There's an overwhelming urge to call him and ask him to just fly home as quick as he possibly can. Because I have his heart here, on a chain around my neck for safekeeping and I'd like the rest of him back so I can cradle him in my arms and not feel like this.

I'm going to shut the hell up now.

Thank you for the sweet emails wishing me a good trip and a happy unbirthday. We did have a really wonderful time. I'll tell you more about it tomorrow.

Still with the Piglet nonsense and another entry for you to tear apart.

Wow, some of you aren't having a good start to the week either. And as much as I really appreciate honesty and as open a dialogue as I can maintain with everyone who emails, and I try to respond quickly, I don't feel like you're reading the words. You're picking and choosing how you're going to feel and then you skim. Skimming won't work here. So instead of seventeen emails telling me my posting wasn't up to your standards or I sound totally out of it please go back and read the parts where I tell you I haven't slept in four days, I just flew 4000 miles with two small kids and I've caught a cold, without even pointing out how I feel about Jacob not being here.

So, yeah, maybe I am out of it.

Maybe you are too. We're all rusty from a spring weekend in which we had expectations. I had one of the best and one of the most difficult weekends of my entire life and I can't do it justice today because of everything else. I have never been felled by so much pure-hearted love in all my days. I've had romance. Never on this scale. Never the desperate movie kind and Jacob keeps on breaking all the rules and I hope he keeps it up forever. I can't convey what it feels like to me to hear the things he whispers, to kiss him, to put my nose in the wonderful place where I can feel him breath on my face, to see the way his face lights up when I smile. The thorough, slightly harsh, wonderfully energetic and loving way he ruins my reputation as a lady, the things he says, out loud and out of the bluest blue that make my knees knock together.

I told you before, there's no new-love starry-eyed newlywed phase in progress here, it's simply what life with Jacob is like. It's what we do to each other. He called me an hour ago and said not being able to hold my hand or see my eyes was killing him.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Jake.

If my heart grew any fonder it would explode, princess.

No, I want you back in one piece.

Then I need to get on a plane. Because I miss you guys so much it's like physical pain that won't stop.

Then pretend you're on an exotic getaway.

That never felt any different, you know.

Then how did you stand it?

I wrote you letters.

What?

I wrote to you. I told you everything I did, and everything I felt. Then I would burn them and start over.

You are an endless surprise, preacher boy.

So are you, piglet. I never expected to feel this way about anyone save for God.

So I'm in good company?

The very best. Are you okay?

No, I wish you were here.

Not what I asked.

I'm okay.

Do you promise me you're really okay?

Yes. I promise. Just hurry home.

I will. Sleep well, beautiful. I'm on my way back to you.
Nope, I give up, I think. I can't make you see how this feels. I'll never be able to.

Prince of tides.

    Good morning.
    Don't cop out.

This will be your last post until Tuesday.

I will miss you, more than you know. But right now I have to be home. Home on my turf, Bridget's territory, resplendent with histories and dead husbands buried in my ocean backyard and the sun glinting on the waves. While I have the strength to have a goddamned opinion. When I come back I might be less strung out. Hopefully not this angry. Buzzy-bumblebee angry.

Here's hoping.

My waves. My ocean. That one you all love but it belongs to the saltwater princess. Me. I've got your bitter right here.

After I wrote last night I went and pulled out that stupid sweater and I put it on and then I went to sleep. With the sweater. With Cole. And as fucked up as that might sound it's a pretty accurate picture of how unbelievably fucked up I feel.

    Are you crazy to want this
    Even for a while?
    We're making this shit up
    The reasons for being are easy to pay
    You can't remember the others
    They just kind of went away

And I didn't ask Jacob if we could go home for a break. I told him I was going and I told him I was taking the kids and that I didn't want to be here anymore and I asked him if he would come too, formally, as if I was looking for distance from us and I put us back into separate places in my head because otherwise I get swallowed alive.

He asked if I wanted him there. I do, and I told him we could go to the cottage he bought for me for Christmas and maybe it'll give us a chance to talk quietly while the kids look for shells in that bitch of a wind that never ceases but takes your pain with it and maybe we can come to some sort of a truce while we're there. Without counselors and without God looking over my goddamned shoulder and without Jacob being right all the time and friends with opinions and bills and phonecalls and laundry and all this goddamned nonsense. And I'm doing it on my terms, because the hearing aids aren't coming either.

I know, it's all going to be waiting when we come back.

Maybe I just won't come back.

    we're done lying for a living
    the strange days have come and you're gone
    either dead or dying
    either dead or trying to go
In my perfect world, I have a watch with no hands. Time doesn't move. The sun gives me no indications, the moon lights up on command and I have every precious moment that I might need or want. The seasons would be invited, daylight could be stored, and warmth could be conjured whilst cold is soundly rejected and Bridget could sit in her favorite spot at the edge of her world, and maybe, just maybe...

Not fall off.

One of those times when the lyrics fit you like a fucking glove.

    Just hear me out
    If it's not perfect I'll perfect it till my heart explodes
    I highly doubt
    I can make it through another of your episodes
    Lashing out
    One of the petty moves you pull before you lose control
    You wear me out
    But it's all right now

He's singing it with a bitter tongue while he restrings his guitar and I find myself afraid to go in the room in case he's in a bad mood. For Christ's sake it's Jake.

Whoever said Bridget could be fixed with time and love had no idea what we're up against.

Oh, right. That was Jake, too.

Raise your hand if you know I'm really getting kind of worried about how this trip is going to go.

One more sleep.

I refuse to dignify most of these emails. No, I'm not posting any pictures of naked me, forget it! My parents read here (I know, OH MY GOD). Sure I can write about sex but photographs are a whole different level of privacy to me. Maybe not to you, but to me. The day the minister's wife puts up her own naked pictures is the day the neighborhood revolts or worse, tilts and all the people slide out of their homes and off the edge of the horizon.

And, no I did not just admit the existence of said pictures. But this would be a great segue into a story about the year everyone decided they take Cole's life drawing course because he had a live! nude! model! Which, naturally was...me.

Pictures and drawings. Paintings too. Pick a medium, I think I have a work here in it.

Hmmm. Let's stop here and move along, shall we?

We're packed for the coast. It's the first time Jacob asked me to help him pack instead of him doing everything because I couldn't seem to move. Last time we went home I was put where ever I needed to be, clutching the box with Cole's ashes and feeling so so brittle. I didn't look up or around, I just went in a straight line. I drank too much. I fought with my family. I fought with Jacob. And I cried at the edge of the ocean.

Well, okay, I always do that now. She and I are too far apart, too often and it's so hard.

This time might be happier. No, it will be happier. Jake is taking me to meet the cottage he has transformed into my hideaway. He's taking us away so we don't have to be here during a difficult week. He's giving us all a break. Despite the risk of taking me anywhere, without medication, without Claus and Robert (whom I don't like, so I don't talk about him), without our circus safety net.

I packed my favorite sweater. Jacob frowned when he saw it, but it's a part of me. And maybe it's a 'thing' and I shouldn't be attached to things, but sometimes comfort is found in odd places. It's a sweater that used to be Cole's. A big nubby grey wool hoodie with braided ties and wooden buttons. It comes down to my knees. When I'm at the beach and it's cold it's what I wear. Jacob sees it as a attempt to hold on to something that's gone but it isn't like that. It's my sweater, it's been mine since I took it out of Cole's room when he was 18 and he said I could have it. I don't see Cole in it. I see Bridget, who is warm, and nothing more.

We're bickering, of course, over so many little things like that. We do this, before we travel, before big things. Jacob's anxiety is starting to cloud his demeanor, the fear of flying thing astounds me, coming from him. I can't fix it, and to see him with a ripple where his fabric is usually pulled strong and tight has always bothered me. He can't hypnotize himself. He can't talk himself out of this fear the way he can talk anyone else out of anything. And once we're in the air he will be fine.

My unbirthday is this week too. And I won't be here and I'm happy for that.

I just can't wait to see the cottage. Do I sound excited? No, Jacob told me I sound cautious. I know. I can't seem to exhale. The sun can't seem to come out and we can't seem to find our way past the bitter this morning. I should have run while it was early but instead we tried to take the extra hour to hold each other, awake but not awake, the beautiful in-between. No bitterness there but it crept in later.

I'm freezing. Pants might help that. Jacob's dress shirt from last night and a huge pair of wool socks and it's ten o'clock in the morning. Jacob ran the kids over to school while I started in on the laundry. I need some of it so I can finish packing the kids' bags but while it thumps through that temperamental dryer I find myself uncharacteristically impatient for something to keep my head busy.

Jacob and Sam are off doing some work this morning. Duncan is coming later as the official housesitter and yes, oh my God, if you are lucky, you'll even get an entry tomorrow because I'll be rattling around like a loose bolt waiting to go to the airport. I knew we should have booked an early morning flight because the waits are driving me nuts.

And maybe tomorrow I'll have something to say.

No, I'm serious, there are no naked pictures. No one believes me.

Because I am, as usual, completely untrustworthy.

Snort.

And again for the latecomers.

Bridget isn't on the web, guys. People regularly send me email with links to Flickr pictures labelled Bridget and Jake wondering if it's us (it isn't, most likely) or ask if I have Myspace or Facebook or other things I know little about. I did spend a couple of months flirting with Myspace but ultimately Loch took it down for me, I don't feel like I need more than this. Though if Blogger gets dodgy again, then I might reconsider a move to Wordpress or something.

But this website is definitely not me. I hope it's a line of cruise ships or fishing tackle supply and not some girl with the same nickname because well, just wow. But I have no right to be offended or upset because I didn't go and buy the domain.

But just so you know, saltwaterprincess.com isn't Bridget.

It's probably someone looking for payback in which case you'll soon see naked pictures of me there. Plus I'm offended by 'saltwater' being two words for some odd reason.

Oh, I'm kidding. No one's blackmailing me.

Of course, the day is young.

And notice I failed to deny the existence of naked pictures.

Oh dear lord.

(I'm still kidding, by the way. You have no faith in me at all, do you, internet?)

Performance tranquility.

There's something really romantic and positively magical about running uphill in the pouring rain while your husband stands at the top and yells at you repeatedly to get your shoulders down, already. Christ.

Jacob is a perfectionist in the few sports he does enjoy. He's really loving running again. I'm less of a technical, more of a cathartic runner. Sometimes I care nothing for form, keeping track or training, I just run until I've left my worries behind. This is why I run each day, because I can't get away from them.

Halfway up the hill I dropped my hands to my knees and stopped dead and yelled for him to fuck off. And he laughed and told me to hurry up. What a sweetheart.

I keep telling him I'm going to take him out and lose him one of these days and he tells me I have to be able to pass him in order to do that. We trash-talk to each other so much when we run you'd think we were bitter rivals instead of husband and wife.

Then we come home and share a hot shower and forget we were ever exasperated. Because...eh, hot showers when you've come home soaked to the bone and freezing cold are the best things ever.

Today's blessing is a well-anchored towel rack. But I'm not telling you why.

Snort.