Keep Your Eyes Forward

This weekend J and I were able to escape to the mountains for a few days.  We needed it.  He needed it to get his mind off work, I needed it to get some alone time with him.  Shocking to say, as we have no children that I would complain about needing his undivided attention.  But the truth is, during the week we get into a rut and routine just like everyone else.  At night, at home, he still has duties to fulfill and chores to attend to.  Yesterday he had to get up at 4am to go in early, so that he and the HR manager could meet with some third shift employees before they went home.  He was able to come home early- for him that meant 6pm- and we had a nice walk in the neighborhood so we could chat.  Tonight is one more night alone for me- he won't be home until 10pm or later, due to yet another meeting offsite.  He said this should be the last one for this year- he and his boss try to visit the many outlying offices twice a year, to reach out and make face to face contact with employees they wouldn't otherwise ever see.  They may not be under the same roof, but these are still employees that J is over and responsible for.  This meeting and dinner is almost two hours south, so it'll be a late one, and even though he gets a break for a few months, I know they will start up again next year.  This morning he was sitting on the edge of the bed, quiet.  I jokingly asked him if he was meditating.  He said he was trying to think of a good reason for calling out of work.  He was being honest, but wasn't really contemplating it.  In the 16 years with the company, he's never called out sick once.  Ever.  Not to say he doesn't have colds or the flu or headaches and backaches.  He just takes his responsibilities extremely serious.  But we have a week-long vacation coming up, the holidays, and then a super long weekend in December where J will use up his last vacation days.  We've got more alone time on the near horizon, so I'm not fretting about his work schedule right now.

It was cold up in the mountains this past weekend, freezing, refreshing, spirit-mending.  22 degrees and bright blue skies.  I was getting all sorts of crazy stares as I wasn't wearing any kind of coat or sweater.  Every time we stopped to take photos of snow or icicles, J stayed in the truck with the heat on, he gets cold easily.  I love it, I stayed out there until my hands and cheeks were numb.  Back in town this week, it's in the 60's.  Yesterday I was out running errands in a short-sleeve T, and I saw others bundled up in wool coats and scarves.  Yes, seriously.  I suppose I was the one this time giving them the "what are they thinking??" look.  I rarely wear a coat in the winter in the daytime, no matter what the temp is.  The only time I ever bundle up is when the wind is strong and biting, or if it's evening and I know I'll be out in it for awhile.  Winter is too brief down here.  We've gone two years without any snow now.  I wait for it like an excited little kid every year, J dreads and curses it because of how it disrupts work- employees calling out, his drivers having accidents, our customers closing up.  Of course, where I grew up on the beach, there was no winter.  I think they are still having 80's right now in my hometown.  I don't miss that at all. I wish J and I lived in a place that had truly serious snowfall. My dream life is a self-sufficient log home in the mountains, where we could stock up on all our essentials and plenty of firewood, and snuggle in for the winter.  But only as a retirement option, only if neither of us had to leave and get on the roads.  J and I are old-fashioned, we still like to read real books and magazines, play board games and cards.  I could see us getting snowed in somewhere and relaxing.  It probably won't ever happen, J abhors cold weather (and sitting still), so I don't ever see us moving much farther north than we already are.  And we're on the 33rd parallel, not north by any stretch of the imagination.

I am a bit nostalgic this week for some reason, still.  I think it's the approaching holidays.  When Halloween rolls around, I start thinking about childhood and my hometown, friends and old memories.  When I was a little kid, I can remember that one day every year, coming home from school and my mom would be hanging the Halloween decorations.  She had a big paper scarecrow she would put on the front door, with posable arms and legs, we would move him around every day to a new position.  In the windows she would hang these little dancing witches and monsters, made from cardboard and string and tissue paper.  I don't know how to describe them, I don't think they make them anymore and I can't find them online.  Even though it would be warm outside, she would open the windows to make them blow around in the breeze. We usually made a ghost by draping a white sheet over the lamppost in the front yard.  After Halloween came the paper and cardboard turkeys and pumpkins and pilgrims all over the house, and her wooden carved bowls shaped like acorns which she would fill with all sorts of whole nuts in their shells.  I loved picking out all the hazelnuts and cracking them open, they were always my favorites. Then it was a short jump to Christmas, and our spindly little tree with handmade ornaments from construction paper and glitter, and the fake cardboard fireplace with glowing orange and yellow lights to mimic the flames.  Our tree had the big old-timey bulbs, the ones that got super hot to the touch and made noises that sounded like crickets chirping as they blinked off and on.  My little sister and I would just sit by the tree every single night once it went up.  I can remember how we would take off pieces of tinsel and hold it stretched out across our thumbs and blow on it, making whistling sounds that were annoying, but my parents never once told us to stop. So for three months our house stayed decorated in some fashion.  I try to do the same here at my house, but my decorations are shiny and new and don't give me that sense of joy and wonder like the ones from my childhood.  Unless you grew up in the 1960's, you probably don't remember decorations that were made from assorted papers, and not plastic.  I miss those times.  Now Halloween is dinner out with J so we (he) can avoid all the kiddies, I spend Thanksgiving with my in-laws, and at Christmas my parents come to our house every year.  I haven't returned "home" for the holidays in many years. And it wouldn't be the same, even if I did.

Maybe I'm also a bit nostalgic because on Facebook this week, I saw some friends of mine celebrating the birth of their first grandchild.  True, plenty of my friends have grandkids already.  But, this was my old boyfriend, the one I dated on and off and on again from 8th grade all the way until I settled down with my first husband in my early 20's.  He went off to college, but would reconnect with me whenever he was back home.  Even when I was with W, I used to dream about this guy all the time, and in my dreams he always showed up to rescue me from my crappy marriage.  This is the boy I always thought I would marry one day.  Red hair, an easy smile.  He's a well-respected doctor now, still in our hometown.  He's the reason I got on FB a few years ago, I desperately wanted to see what he looks like now.  And he looks the same, completely the same, completely handsome.  My dad sees him every once in awhile around town.  He eventually married another girl we went to school with.  She was divorced and had two small children by then.  They never had kids of their own, although they've been married for so long, these girls are very much his.  So the oldest daughter just had a baby.  I saw the photos of my old boyfriend, sitting at the hospital waiting with his wife, then photos of them holding the baby.  I can't describe how I felt seeing those photos, not jealous because his wife was my friend once too, but it was a weird unexpected feeling, and I don't know that I could even put words to it. It's odd, my hometown is bigger than where I live currently, but was small enough that plenty of my high school friends just stayed there and married each other and started raising the next generation.  Life was good when we were all kids, riding our bikes to the beach, going to football games on Friday night, meeting for pizza and video games at the mall.  I had a damn fun childhood.

So maybe I'm just thinking about the old me, the first half of my life me, the one who existed before W got into my head.  I wonder what my life would have been like, had I not met him.  The week W and I were moving into our new apartment, the old high school boyfriend and I went out to dinner to talk.  He wanted to reconcile- we were off and hadn't been "on" for awhile.  It was over 12 years of back and forth with him, but it was done now, I knew.  He tried to woo me, he spent hours trying to convince me to give him another chance, but I was already with W.  But I think about it now, knowing what I do about how the relationship with W turned out.  What if I had stayed in my hometown, what if I had given the old high school flame another chance.  I think about all it means, how it turned out for me, having left my hometown. A strained relationship with my mother, a nonexistent one with my sister.  Missing out on my nephews growing up.  People who were best friends with me thirty or twenty years ago, but wouldn't recognize me if they saw me walking down the street today.  I don't actually miss living my old life, it was wonderful but also as awkward and unfulfilling back then as it is now.  But I just wonder sometimes.  Who would I be now, instead of the person I am at this moment?  Or would it have mattered where I lived or who I was married to, if I had kids or not, a career?  Does any of that really define me now?  Would I be happy or still struggling with depression?  I would like to think that no matter what I would still be the same person, I would still like the same books and music, I would still have the same favorite color and favorite movie, I would still have the same dreams for myself, the same sense of humor.  I would like to think that my very core, my soul, would not be unduly influenced by the people and places that surround me. Even so, it doesn't stop the what if's of life that pop up, or the pangs of yearning for the old days.

Of course, leaving my old life and my hometown was the only way J would be able to come into my world.  And I know nothing could be better than that.  If J was my destiny, then all the choices I made- good and bad- were the right ones.

MISS GEE