Last Friday I had lunch with Debbie. It was the first time we had talked or seen each other at length in many years, and it was delightful.
We talked about our divorces: hers is now done, but it took a few years to get there and she emphasized that sometimes it was just a question of putting one foot in front of the other and trusting it would all turn out. She added that it was emotionally very difficult -- partly because she was grieving the loss of her marriage, and partly because she was doing a ruthless self-assessment of what she had contributed to the break-up. It sounded like a lot of work, and made me wonder in the back of my mind how I can feel so unruffled by the whole thing in comparison. Am I just that much more callous a person? (My current theory is that I've already done a lot of that churning and gnashing of teeth in this very blog, and so have gotten a lot of it out of my system.)
Debbie asked when I am planning to move out, reminding me that a lot of things won't change until I do. Of course she is absolutely right -- you've told me the same thing -- and of course I have stalled on that point. So the next day I took a good bit of time to try to figure out a budget for moving out: what would I have to send Wife as interim support so she didn't give up on the mortgage, and could I live on what was left? Saturday I thought I had it all worked out; then Sunday I realized I had left out a big chunk and I have some more thinking to do. But back to the lunch.
We talked about our children. I gave her thumbnail sketches of the two boys (and she confirmed that she had, indeed, moved on to a new job before either one was born). She told me that her daughter (whom I remember as a cute little girl) is now in graduate school.
And we talked about life after divorce. She said she has been starting to think about what her future relationships might look like, and specifically that she has come to realize there is no need for them to look anything like a marriage. (Gosh, ya think?) I seconded this: sure, maybe when you are raising kids they need the stability provided by a normal marriage. But afterwards? I encouraged her that there is no reason not to cultivate a relationship purely around what it truly has to offer, and not around what you think it ought to be.
In some ways I felt that the conversation carried a gentle subtext, "Don't let your fantasies run away with you. Sure, Hosea, it's great to see you again and all that; but we haven't been part of each other's lives in well over a decade, and don't forget that." But in other ways I'm not so sure. When the conversation flagged, I just sat and looked at her -- partly to see what she would do. What she did was to sit comfortably and look straight back at me, eyes to eyes. And smile.
Towards the end of the lunch, she mentioned that she has applied to a program which means she'll be moving out of town no later than summer, to the big city a couple of hours from here. Gosh, I said, we just now bump into each other again and you're moving? What a pity that we didn't have this lunch a couple of years ago. No, she said, I was in a lot more tumult a couple of years ago when I was right in the teeth of the divorce. I wouldn't have been ready for a lunch like this then.
And as we left the restaurant she gave me a card. She had written out a message one of her friends had written for her early in her own divorce, words that she said hadn't meant a lot to her then but that she had grown into. I read it as I walked back to my car.
It is his time, when the sun begins to shine more brightly and the stars twinkle more often, in the middle of his years.
When he allows himself to see his own desires and feed upon what nurtures him best.
It is his time, to grow and change that suits his soul, that suits his mind, that suits his body.
When he finally acknowledges that the past is done, and the future is of his own design, and he takes gentle care in nurturing his own self in ways that suit just him.
I think we are going to do this again in a while.
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