This Life

It’s dim, the Christmas tree in the living room is casting colors into the shadows. The side of his face is lit up soft hues of green and red. At our feet my imitation fireplace weakly tries to add romance. It’s not quite a crackling fire but it’s cozy and we’re curled up in each other’s arms. 

It’s getting harder and harder to leave, to be apart. He whispers a question, and for a moment I think he’s teasing me. He’ll grow tired of me quickly, I’m less impressive when viewed daily and a rough day takes it’s toll on me. When I come home with the euthanasia’s of the day tangled in my hair like so many little birds, pecking and squawking and refusing to let go. When angry words from clients are etched and glowing in my skin after carrying them around all day. What then?

Where would I go when things aren’t perfect? What if they are imperfect for too long? What if I stop belonging and have traded security for... for what? Every time my thought train gets here, it derails. This has been different from the first moment of our first date. Is it even possible that we might come to an impasse? 

I know that Matt and I can work anything out, and that we could remain friends even if the marriage dissolved. I wouldn’t be thrown out, I wouldn’t be left in the cold no matter how things changed because we aren’t those people. Neither of us would be pushed out like that. Can I say the same of T? Sure, I believe he’d give me the same consideration if I asked him today, but what if life threw a monkey wrench? 

My cousin and her husband were poly. Happy in long standing relationships, everything changed one night when he was in a near fatal motorcycle accident and lost most of his mental faculties. Their world evaporated overnight. Their significant others packed up in the middle of the night and told to leave. The party was over. He was no longer able to sustain his own life, and my cousin went from his wife to his caregiver. 

What happens when life happens? I know I can survive anything, I’m strong. But I want to have faith that the hands I hold, the partners will jump with me and not let go when things get hard. Because they will get hard. I’ve had so much taken from me, heaped on me, so many blindsides and mornings when I’ve woken up into some alternate reality and never got back to where I was. What do I do then? 

There’s a small voice telling me to trust, to listen. That time and again they’ve proven they’re not the kind to abandon. Each day the fears grow weaker, quieter, with each conflict resolution they dull and fade. Time then. Time is all that is needed. Time to see, time to feel. Time to build up that kind of trust that the good days will help power through bad ones. That this future goal is for the long haul.

But oh, oh I could do it today. I could lose myself and tumble into this so easily. It feels right. It feels good. I’ve always been my biggest proponent for healing, forcing myself to look at things that are uncomfortable, but this relationship has been one of the biggest catalysts of healing I’ve ever encountered. That is no small thing. I am leveling up with every experience, and I can feel that in my soul.

***

Giving Thanks

I’m ten. My family is hosting the big Thanksgiving dinner and I’m in an itchy sweater emblazoned with cats with my hair pulled up into a high ponytail with a giant bow in it. My sister is my twin today and we’re dancing around the giant carved oak dinner table. Mom is laughing at us because we can’t decide which cousin we’re most excited to see. I’ve helped set the table, running my fingers over the fancy silver utensils we use for holidays, and see the wine goblet I’ll get to use. It’ll hold pop, but it feels fancy. Later I’ll pretend I’m drunk and so grown up.

The crunch of the gravel under tires heralds the first family members arrival. I’m all anxious energy holding Jen’s hand and hopping up and down. They’re here! They’re here! Mom comes to the door and suddenly like a switch we hide behind her skirts, shy as morning flowers, peering up at uncles and aunts laden with gifts and food. And then our cousins appear behind their legs and shyness is forgotten. We bolt outside to run around the yard all energy and revelry with our kin, laughing and playing tag. 

It isn’t long and the house is full. Uncle Clarence and Uncle Steve have  the game on the tv, all the aunts are in the kitchen cooking with wine glasses. I’m in charge of my cousins and keeping anyone under the age of 16 entertained. My older siblings are still in their rooms, too cool to come down until dinner time. The rest of my uncles are with my dad in the barn, ogling the GTO he’s restoring under the tarp, beers in hand. Some of my older girl cousins brought boyfriends and they’re out there too trying to impress dads. 

There are 32 cousins on my dad’s side alone, and 12 on my mom’s. They’re all here. The yard is full of kids playing in every age range. My older brother Chris comes down and starts a snowball fight. There’s a fort in the thicket beside the house. A thousand things to do and play and We Are Legion. Before too long the men in the barn wander into the house and not long after the dinner bell rings on the back porch. All of our heads snap to the back door and like a stampede we race inside. Wet gloves and scarves are peeled off and placed on heating vents, boots are knocked off and dry clothes are given out to replace those too wet to stay on. 

I sit at the middle kid’s table. The adults have the giant carved oak table, the older kids congregate at a square card table. The middle kids on the circle card table. The little kids at the small table and chairs set my grandmother brought over for small bodies. We talk about school and movies and how fucking cool the Sega Genesis looks and do we think we’ll get one? If we do, we’ll have a sleep over and play it over Christmas break. The talk is non stop. The noise is unbelievable. 

Looking back as an adult, I don’t know why we didn’t build a Great Hall. We could have fulled it with long benches and tables like Hogwarts and had no trouble using it frequently. We imagines ourselves as Lannisters before we knew what Lannisters were. That was the sheer size and scale. 

After everyone had eaten themselves half to death, we’d break out the Atari and Unlce Clarence would bring some dj equipment and we’d have dancing and video games and the adults would play Euchre in teams. I would eventually wander upstairs with my closest cousins, sit on my bedroom floor and talk about boys and fashion and crushes. We’d braid hair and tell jokes and stories and plan elaborate futures. Inevitably we’d wind up curling up on the floor where we sat and take brief naps until an adult crept upstairs and whispered about pie. 

By evening the adults were tired and the children overwhelmed. They’d leave in the dark and the headlights played over the walls as they departed. At the end my parents would hug us and tell us we had done well hosting, and we’d crawl into bed exhausted. This was my life every year starting with Thanksgiving and ending on New Years Day. These huge dinners on every holiday.

And then they stopped just after my first marriage. Uncles and Aunts divorced, fell out, people stopped trying. By the time my husband came around my core family still got together. He still talks about how much my sisters and their daughters looked identical. The last big get together was the Great Cookie Fiasco of ‘08. No one organized it so we all showed up with cookies. That was the last time.

Since then my Thanksgivings have been just Matt and I. Quiet, subdued. They’re happy, don’t get me wrong. I have lovely memories of just the two of us. But I have missed that big, bustling, noisy holiday. We tried a couple of times to recreate it. Work friends, some family. It was better but still fell short of that massive memory. I took ten years just to get to that little bit and then we moved again. 

When I sat to my table last year with Matt and signed the cloth, just us, I made my peace as best I could that this would be it. We might get his parents down in the future but the past really was in the past and gone forever from my reach. 

And then it wasn’t. 

This year we drove down after I got out of work and stayed the night in the B’s house. Hanahome. I brought my tradition of the Macy’s parade, the Rockettes and mimosas. Matt brought his sticky buns. (Side story: My grandmother was in NYC for a Rockettes audition when my grandfather found her and showed her his new uniform. He had joined the Navy. So she went out and signed up to the Navy W.A.V.E.S. That day. They met at Penn station that night and he agreed to marry her if she would just go home. Of course the contracts were already signed so they had to serve. The next day my grandmother was onboard his ship saying goodbye when it left dock with her on it. She yelled that she was still on board and so the U.S. Navy returned the ship to dock to let her off to the hooting and hollering of my grandfather’s shipmates. He earned the nickname Casanova for that.)

The mimosas tasted good, and the parade was fun to watch. I felt like I used to. Excited, anxious in a good way, ready. At one point during dinner we were all sitting around the table as best as we could and I smiled to myself. This was the closest I had come to reaching what I had given up. And it had taken no effort. No pushing, no trying, it was just here. Just like everything in our relationship it was like scattered gems on the ground here for the taking to be held and treasured.

I was so full of love and food and memories that I felt like I was glowing. I even crawled up to take a brief nap before pie and woke up with a small smile. Later we played games and enjoyed friends, and at the end of the night T sat in a chair while I sprawled on the bed and reminisced. I feel like he could see me, who I was, who I am now. I wanted to show him everything. I want to place it all on a silver platter and hand it to him to say “Here, this is me. Take me as I am, all these pieces, because you have let me into this life.” 

For Thanksgiving, I got to come home.