August 21, 2008

the darkness comes and the darkness goes

My father was promoted to Chief Master Sargeant and there was a party at the NCO club. We kids stayed home with a sitter. In the morning there were "congratulations" presents in the living room, including one from my father's students: a plaque with a medicine bottle (probably filched from the dispensary) glued to it. On the bottle was a prescription label with dosage instructions: "For Verbal Diarrhea: Take as Necessary."

I think I used to have a lot to say. Or more to say, anyway--or maybe I just didn't mind saying the same things over and over. Now I always wonder if talk too much. Do people come into my office and then wish they hadn't? Do they make a casual comment and then sink into discreet dismay when I pursue the subject? Am I that nice older woman with the unfortunate tendency to ramble? I have no idea. At work and on the way home there are people to talk to and then when I get home, there are mostly not. So maybe it's just that I am noisy in one venue and quiet in another.

My children talk to me when necessary, and when there's nobody else around. And sometimes not even then. Moo was at the front door this evening saying good-bye to his BFF.
"Come for a walk with me," I said. Looking out into the gloaming, I could see a bat dive-bombing mosquitos.
"No; I don't want to."
"Why should that stop you?"
Nevertheless it did stop him and that was that; he turned and went back downstairs to the twin joys of TV and Gears of War and I walked by myself in silence.

When I got home the evening sky was turning from apricot to plum and the late-summer insects began their conversation. As I sit writing this I can hear Moo downstairs on his headset talking to somebody. Else.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2007

i'm getting ready to let you go

On Valentine's Day evening I drove Up North to have dinner with The Husband. He sent me text messages on the way--"Hurry up," and "I'm waiting for you," and "I love you and I can't wait to see you." We had a drink at the bar and another at our table (a booth, so we could sit next to each other like any other couple in love) and, giddy from the sentiments of the day and The Husband's proximity and the vodka, I blurted out to him what I'd been thinking about for a few weeks: "Come home." In retrospect I suppose I should have kept my goddamn mouth shut, but in February I still had the tenacious optimism that I would prevail, the optimism that insisted things would work out the way I wanted them to--in direct contrast to how my gut insisted, just as forcefully, that they would not; the optimism that was oblivious to the fact of Miss Saigon and The Husband's other life.

"Okay," said The Husband back to me that night.

Well, so it's October now and my birthday in a week and a half. I live with Moo and Herself and three cats and a dog and a lizard, a turtle, and two birds. The Husband lives with Miss Saigon. He says "when I come home," not "if I come home," but that's as much of a commitment as he'll make and when he does say it I think to myself, "tomorrow never comes."

Eleven.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)