It's Monday and I'm traveling home. Wait, shouldn't I be in the office? Well, the reason I was traveling in the first place was for work, so technically I suppose that I can consider today a travel day and still be on duty as long as I check my email during layovers. And planning my trip this way gave me a full weekend with Debbie: Friday afternoon to Monday morning.
It was delightful, like a sabbath from my normal life. It wasn't exactly restful, though. Debbie wanted to put in her garden this weekend, so on Saturday I went with her to the garden store to buy three cubic feet of dirt, plus one-and-a-half cubic feet of compost; also some plants that she was missing. There is some deep irony at work here: Debbie, Marie, and my mother are all seriously into gardening, and I cannot for the life of me see the attraction. Sunday after church we dug up her existing beds, put in all the new dirt, and settled into planting and watering.
Wait, Sunday? What happened to the rest of Saturday, or did the shopping really take that long? No, we had her daughter and family over for lunch and a visit in the afternoon: "and family" means the daughter's husband and one-year-old baby. Also they have a new dog, since their old dog died a few days ago and they went right out to the shelter to get a new one. The new dog seems to have anxiety issues whenever they leave (and a huge urge to run away), so of course they brought her along. I tried to be nice even though I'm really not a dog person under the best of circumstances; also this one seriously freaked out on seeing me. Maybe I looked or smelled like a previous owner? Someone who beat her, perhaps? No way to know, because she doesn't talk; but I spent the afternoon trying hard to move slowly and non-threateningly.
Actually I spent most of the afternoon playing with the baby. I'm not sure how much I have to discuss with Daughter and her husband — that is, I like them (especially her husband) but they have a lot going on and what can I really contribute? — but I'm a sucker for babies. So he and I crawled around the living room a few times, pulled books off the bookshelf, and generally made noises to each other for several hours. The best part was that when he got smelly I could pass him back to his parents to let them change his diaper.
Daughter and her family left after supper. Debbie and I decided to go see a movie, but the nearest theater was half an hour away and her Internet was out. So we couldn't check ahead what was showing, but just drove out on a lark. We got there exactly in time for a showing of "
Rocketman," which was the only one that interested us. Couldn't have asked for better.
Sunday morning we went to church after breakfast, meeting up with Daughter & Family again. After the service was the church's annual meeting, which Debbie, her daughter, and her son-in-law all planned to attend. So I spent 90 minutes or so with their baby again, and on the whole it was time pleasantly spent.
After that, Debbie and I went back to her place and did the gardening I described above. But we worked for only a couple of hours, because Daughter & Family had invited us to their place for dinner. So we showered and drove to their place.
The whole visit was somehow sad. Afterwards Debbie said that the family seemed anxious and discouraged. Certainly I felt a kind of anxiety the whole time I was there, as if there were something contagious in the air. And they have plenty to be stressed about. Their baby is healthy, and developing well and on schedule; but a baby in the house always adds stress. My recollection from when my own boys were little is that the stress can be mitigated only somewhat by a fixed clockworklike schedule, to which any guests (even well-known friends and family, to say nothing of semi-strangers like Grandmother's recent ex-boyfriend) are an interruption.
They have money worries. Daughter is a new professor at some little college in a town that makes Sticksville look cosmopolitan. Son-in-law was going to be a professor, but never finished his Ph.D., so now he is offering summer school classes in the department and looking for work in the "real world." Unemployment is supposed to be at record lows, but he's not finding it. So their household income is ... I don't know a number, but low enough for them to worry.
Then there is the new dog, whom they have owned less than a week (if I heard them right), who seems to have major anxiety issues, and who shat on the living room floor while we were there. (Thank God it was on the hardwood and not the carpet.) Son-in-law took her outside very deliberately while Daughter cleaned up the mess; then he explained in a soft, low voice that he hadn't beaten or punished her.
For whatever it is worth, I have no idea what he did do, much less what one is supposed to do in a case like that. But I think I recognize the tone of voice. It sounded like the tone I heard from myself, back in the days when both boys were very young, back when we still owned a house and our own dog (plus a parrot, God help us!), back when Wife had recently left work on disability and was at home spending money crazily online, back when my job was closing and it took me almost two years to find another — back when I controlled myself very carefully and responded very deliberately every time Fate kicked me in the ribs yet again, because ... well hell, why not? Fate had whipped and cowed me; what was there to gain by screaming or rebellion? And besides where would I even have started?
Sorry, I've suddenly made this all about me, which it shouldn't be. But I think I recognize Son-in-law's tone and his whole demeanor. And I wish there were something I could do to help. Can I even tell him it gets better? It got better for me, but only through ways I couldn't have imagined at the time. And it took years. He's a young guy, and there is plenty of time for him to take a totally different path to some totally different and unforeseeable end.
After dinner Debbie and I came home, finished the last bit of gardening and watering, and had banana splits for dessert. Then I showered, packed, and went to bed. She stayed up to call her mother, and then talked to her sister for a while ... partly about their mother ("Does it sound to you like Mom's been drinking again?") and partly about Daughter's new dog ("You've had a lot of dogs, so WTF?") This morning we had breakfast, in and around Debbie calling her daughter ("Sis says dogs with that much anxiety rarely get better, so think about whether you are really prepared to deal with all this in the long term.") and fielding urgent calls from her work. We packed our respective cars, and then hugged goodbye in her driveway: a long and tender hug with a couple of light kisses. "Hosea, I'm so glad you came." "Debbie, I always love seeing you." And we drove away; she to work, and I to the airport.
In
my post on Friday I made a flippant remark about our reading Walt Whitman together, suggesting that there might still be a sexual dynamic at work between us, but I don't really believe it. Or rather, I think it will always be there at
some level, as a kind of fuel for the relationship. But I no longer think we have to work at it to keep the relationship non-romantic and non-sexual. That's just how it is. In some ways I'm a little wistful about it. If this were a thing that Debbie and Marie could both accept gladly I'd be happy if we were still on terms of intermittent fuckability. But at this point it's less that I want genital ecstasy than that I'd like to be allowed to hold hands when we walk alongside each other; I'd like to be allowed to drape an arm around her waist when we stand next to each other; I'd like to be allowed to kiss her seriously, not with a quick peck on the lips but slowly and deeply inside her mouth. I haven't asked after any of these liberties, of course; and I understand that even these trigger strong, deep emotions. I'm still wistful.
Oh well. Sabbath's over. Time to come back to the world.
I still think I will always love her.