The other day I woke up and realized for the first time that
Peter loves me. Sure, over the course of our nearly 30 years together, I’ve
seen it. When he made me a cake for my birthday, when he holds a branch instead
of paying attention to his bird dog Vicky while hunting, when he tells me he
loved what I had just written. But have I believed it? I don’t know.
The short but resounding “idea” “voice in my head” “feeling
in my soul” I felt the other day was overwhelming really. “Peter loves you.” it said, showed, made
me feel. It instilled a genuine belief that Peter would never leave me. It
radiated the idea, the wonder of how much Peter actually loved me. Me for me.
How I know he would be lonely without me? That he won’t have the same outlook
on the world and wouldn’t have the same impetus to do things if I were not there
to share in it with him.
When the kids were younger, toddlers, they gave us
everything. No, not that, more like their boogers, empty juice boxes, showed us
things as if it didn’t exist unless they shared it with us. “Look mommy, a
dog.” “Look mommy, Aunt Carol’s here.” “Shit, mommy! Right? Shit?” Macallan asked me as she tried to confirm the correct useage of the curse word. They hadn’t
known life without us, because without their knowing it, we gave them life, afterall.
Did they fear that they wouldn’t exist without us, like
oxygen? Did they think because I never left their side, that when I was gone,
life as they knew it would disappear, thus the crying? Did they think, this is
my trusty, soft, little-blanket? Was I the disgustingly dirty, stained thing Macallan gripped tightly to her face, unable to fall asleep unless she had it? I think I was that for them. Am I that for him?
It would be stifling if I didn’t feel the same way - that I
enjoy his compay; that I need to tell him about things that happened when we
are not together; that I can’t sleep unless I am touching him.
He said, I better die within minutes of you because why
would I want to go on without you? Or as I believe he really put it, “It would
suck without you. “
There was a time early on in our marriage when I wondered
why he went away so often. Hunting, fishing, and he couldn’t tell me when he
would be back. ‘Do I wait for dinner for you on Sunday?’ He couldn’t tell me. I
was still in the deepest of my abandonment phases. It would take us nearly 25
years together to realize, he went to do those things because he enjoyed them.
He didn’t do them to get away from me. Big difference. (Straight out of “Out
of Africa, that whole scene, something we wouldn’t realize was an issue with us
until years of therapy. It was like a punch in the stomach when I saw it on the
big screen with Robert Redford as Peter and Meryl Streep as me! This was not a
concept only we suffered through. Oh what a relief! Not!)
When I was three, my mom and dad left for the States to start a
life for all of us. Several weeks later, when the house was prepared, my
grandfather was supposed to bring us to them. My brother, sister and I were only going
to be apart from our mom and dad for a few weeks. But the weeks went by and still no plane ride to be with our parents. Months disappeared and we were still in the Philippines. Finally, my
brother had gotten severely hurt, did our grandfather finally realize he
couldn’t care for us and ensure our safety properly, or did my mom’s threat of
returning to get us herself warrant our actually boarding that plane? It would
be a year before we were reunited with our parents. A year where they missed
out on key developmental progress and impacted profound emotional scarring.
Just about every day, I text my daughter good morning and good night. Ok, over the
past two years that she’s been in college, we’ve missed a handful of days, but
even after she took her first trip abroad without us, we have only gone a day or
so without a word from each other. 1.) I want to make sure she’s still alive.
2.) I miss her company. I think I feel the way our kids did when they were younger. Is it worth noticing/experiencing without them to share it with?
Well, that’s what love is. Not just between a husband and
wife, but with your kids or anyone, really. God, we went the weekend without
our recently adopted elderly rescued dog, Clark, and several times I found myself
saying, ‘Clark would have loved this hotel, this walk, this other dog.’ ‘See,
we could have brought him! ‘
I wasted so much time questioning Peter’s love for me when I
could have just been basking in it. Instead of the fights asking for
reassurance, I could have enjoyed that stroll through Paris on our honeymoon,
that last day together in Turkey when we were living apart, and the three years in Botswana.
Since yesterday, I must say I still get fleeting glimpses of
his wandering eye, his flirtation with coworkers, his condescending tone, but
they are what they are. I know he loves me. And that’s for real, and for me.
The insecurities that result in the other actions, that’s
all about him. Those are his failings, his self-inflicted punishments, his need
to reassure himself about himself. That has little to do with me.
What he gives me far outweighs those cracks in his armor. As
my knight, a dream we shared during our honeymoon,
Peter was hurt and I was there to help him.
Well, just as in every other aspect of my life, my helping
helps and heals me, too. The sooner I realize that, the better.
How we live our life are choices we make. We get to decide whether we live a life of
abandon or a life of abandonment.
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