Today is the one-year anniversary of starting this blog--meant to be a travelogue for my west coast road trip of 2013. I love writing this random journal about whatever shows up along the road of my life.
I'm thinking today of anniversaries, partly because today (September 16th) would have been my parents' 69th anniversary. Even though they didn't make it all the way to this anniversary together, I always wonder on this date what it must have been like on the day the Navy man and the college girl eloped.
Occasionally, when I think about it, I still lift a glass on my own wedding anniversary (June 9th)--but it's a glass of iced tea.
My once-upon-a-time husband cringed at my bad manners when I took another sip of tea after finishing a meal and standing up in a restaurant. It violated his code of etiquette. "To you,!" I sometimes say, taking a few more sips. "And to freedom from arbitrary rules!"
When we all woke up on September 11, 2001, we had no idea that that ordinary Tuesday would change the whole world's life, but that date is engraved in our collective memory forever, an anniversary of tragedy.
For me, sometimes a certain day feels colored with meaning--though I can't say why. Maybe the weather or the way light filters through trees reminds me of something that happened on a day in the past very much like this day.
Last night I dreamed about a man who was part of my life for five years--between my 50th and 55th birthdays. In the dream, two friends and I visited him in Minneapolis. His eight-year-old daughter came to the door to greet us and told us that her mother was out of town.
In the dream, I said, "I love you, Bob!" and he said the same words to me. Then he served steak cooked on the grill and we sat on his deck overlooking the city--he, his child, my two friends, and me.
After we broke up (in real life) he met another Texas woman, married her, and is living in San Antonio now. He has no daughter. We are both happy doing our separate things; we aren't in love with each other; and we rarely even bump into each other.
But I have only sweet memories of him.
He gave me a diamond ring one Valentine's Day. We rode bicycles around Lake Harriet in Minneapolis and the Mission Trail here. We traveled together--to France, to Georgia, to Cape Cod, to New York, to Mexico.
Once, we drove to International Falls at the Canadian border. Dressed in super-warm snow clothes he'd bought for me, I spun all around the frozen lake on his sister's snowmobile. As a former biker, it came naturally. "It's just like riding a motorcycle!" I yelled as I impressed him with my easy gleeful moves on ice.
Last night's dream lingered all day. Dream-code is rarely what it appears to be at first glance. It could be:"You've been fooling yourself saying you don't want a man in your life; you do!"
It could be: "You have a cold and you wish you had somebody to make you soup and take care of you." (He did that so well.)
It could even be just a silly narrative woven out of random scraps from yesterday or the day before.
Writing this, however, I remembered that thirteen years ago, just a few days after 9/11, he called to say he wanted to move from Minneapolis to San Antonio and start our life together. Life is short; enough of this long-distance thing.
I was ambivalent. I loved our monthly visits back and forth, our trips, and our plans for more trips. I liked driving in snow and exploring the Twin Cities. But in between, I loved my freedom and solitude.
When I saw his U-Haul trailer pulling into my driveway a few weeks later, my heart melted in a way: he drove all this way to be with me! But where would we put his guns and man-stuff? And did I really want to trade my freedom for the security of marriage?
I want to write here "I have no regrets"--for choosing freedom over a partnered life with a very nice man.
But deep down, deeper down than daylight, maybe there are a few small slivers of regret? None of us is consistently any one thing, down to the bone of the heart and mind. In dreams, other parts sneak up out of wherever we buried them, and they say and do the most unpredictable things.
Today is the anniversary of a man saying, "I want to live with you, all the time, every day."
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