So, it's been fifteen years since I married this guy. That seems at the same time, very reasonable and completely implausible. Time is a slippery beast, and I swear it feels like only a few days ago that we skipped down the stairs together at Duke Gardens. At the same time, they've been some very full years, and sometimes I can't believe it's only been fifteen years.
15 years ago--look at those cute kids!
We got married in the middle of May, at a ceremony we invited fewer than twenty people to. The day was overcast and intermittently rainy, which could have been bad news for an outdoor event involving a white dress, but we were lucky and the sun came right right when we needed it to, bathing us in gorgeous light and keeping our friends and family dry.
We've always been proof that timing is everything.
When I met Sweetman, I was already engaged to someone else. He says he had an unrequited crush on me in the intervening years, but I suspect him of flattery and revisionist memory. What we did have though, was an ongoing friendship, the kind where we always made a point of seeing one another whenever we were in the same town. Over those years, I married and had a child and he dated, but had never settled down.
Twelve years later, I got divorced, probably about four years later than I should have . . .we hadn't been right together in quite some time. I sent out that big group email like you do, letting anyone who might care know about the changes and where I would be living and all that *fun* (sarcasm) stuff. Sweetman was one of the friends I told.
As luck would have it, he was also free. Timing is everything.
I worried that I was going to ruin a friendship by jumping into a romance too soon. I didn't want my good friend to become my rebound guy. He worried that he was taking advantage of me in an emotionally fragile moment. In the end, it worked out, and we still worry about each other to this day, but now we have a little more power to do something about it.
So Happy Anniversary to me and Sweetman. We celebrated by taking a garden tour and having Thai for lunch, since our first official date included Thai food and flowers. I wore my Bride sneakers, the ones I commissioned for our wedding. He wore a pale blue Havana style shirt and a Panama hat, because he know I love how he looks in them.
So, there we are fifteen years into this marriage. If the next fifteen go as fast, I'll be back tomorrow to tell you how dapper he looks with that new walking stick.
One of the casualties of pandemic life at la casa Bryant has been date nights. As people who have never been married without children (I already had a daughter when I married Sweetman), date night has been essential to us from the get-go. We work to make sure we get some quality us-two time alongside work and family responsibilities, even when we can't afford anything fancy.
We have a teenager still at home, and while we do all try to give each other some space here during the pandemic, we've only been home without her about three nights in the past year (when she had a sleepover with her college-student-sister). It's not an option to send her on a sleepover, or even just to a friend's house for the afternoon like we're used to.
Most of our favorite dating options, such as movies, restaurants, and theater outings have either been unavailable, or have not be available in a way that we feel safe about utilizing. So, what's a couple to do?
Sweetman and I value our date time, and though we try to capture a bit of it at home by getting special takeout and watching movies at home, playing games together, and banishing the teenager to her room for a while so we can feel alone, it's not the same.
We're both bad at separating from the to-do lists and practicalities when we're at home, so it's hard for us to capture a sense of fun and romance without going somewhere.
Some months ago, though, we came up with the car date.
Basically, we pick something to go see, and a scenic route to get there, hop in the car and drive (leaving the teenager home with the dog to YouTube unfettered for a a few hours).
Along the way we talk, play songs for each other, hold hands over the gear shift and seek new experiences together.
While we have a destination, it's generally something we found on Atlas Obscura, involving driving by something or getting out and looking at an oddity, not something with tickets and timetables, so it's okay if we stop anywhere along the way just because we saw something interesting or if we fail to find the thing we were looking for.
If the weather is nice, we get some takeout and find a place to picnic. If it's too cold or rained too recently, we get some takeout at the end of things, and take it back home to enjoy.
This week's date took us on a lovely sunlit drive through muddy storm-bedraggled countryside to Shangri-La…the miniature stone village built by a retired farmer and available to admire and explore for free. It's adorable! A series of small buildings made of stone and brick, arranged in a tiny village. Toys strewn throughout add to the whimsy and crocus sprouts were just poking out their heads, so I intend to come back soon to see them in bloom.
We were both completely charmed by the project and the results. Along our drive we found a local cider producer we didn't know about and found out where exactly a nature area I'd heard about was located. So future small adventures are afoot!
How about you, people of the internet? How do you keep a little romance in your lives under current circumstances?
Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.
If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.
September 2 question - If you could choose one author, living or dead, to be your beta partner, who would it be and why?
I've been fascinated with Shirley Jackson's work since I first encountered her book We Have Always Lived in the Castlein my library when I was weird thirteen year old kid.
I've returned to her work over and over since then, revisiting her work once a decade or so--re-reading favorites and finding new pieces I've missed. Even though my own writing is not disturbing in the same vein as Shirley's, I feel a connection to her, as if she speaks something inarticulate from deep inside my own consciousness.
Recently, I watched the quasi-biopic of her, based on the novel by Susan Scarf Merrell, and that feeling of connection was only strengthened. (The book/movie isn't accurate in a biographical sense, BTW, but it evokes a feel that I believed).
Like Shirley, I am ill-suited to be a housewife, even though I love my husband, my home, and our children and sometimes revel in taking care of them--and sometimes wish they weren't there, so I could focus on my life of words. We'd have that push and pull in common.
I, too, have a creative bent, and though I look pretty darn normal on the outside, it's more than a little weird inside my brain. Sometimes my mundane life and the worlds within my mind don't mesh well.
It's probably why her horror works so well for me. We both see the weird in the seemingly ordinary.
Luckily, I'm living my adult years in a different era than she did--she died six years before I was born. The expectation that I would marry and devote my life to only the work of household and children still lingers in the corners of my experience with other misogynist mumbo-jumbo, but no one is terribly shocked to learn that I work full time, or that I write. Those limiting views of femininity and a woman's role in the world have lost cachet and are no longer the norm, at least not that in my peer group.
I don't face social censure for the kinds of things that I write either. Not like she did. I also have a better husband than she did (at least as far as you can judge someone else's husband from what you see from the outside of the relationship).
I don't know that Shirley would have liked my work. She might accuse me of being too light or fluffy. But I suspect that if I could thicken my skin enough to take her criticism, my work would be the better for it. She would call me on it when I try to pull back from hard emotional moments or take it too easy on characters I've grown attached to, even more than my real-life critique partners do (and they don't really pull any punches--especially not Rebecca).
Would Shirley want or respect my opinion on her work? Maybe? I do have a lot of practice, as a middle school teacher, giving constructive criticism kindly and with support and compassion interlaced. And my admiration is sincere. I would mean the praise I offered.
Given the chance, I'd sit on the veranda with her and talk about the life of words, even if I had to put up with her cigarette smoke to do it. I like to think we'd get each other.
I lean towards optimism in most circumstances, trusting that time and energy spent can improve most situations. At least I believe that nothing gets any better if you don't try something.
Looking at our leadership in my country right now, holding onto that optimism has been harder. But at least I'm in this with an intelligent and thoughtful partner, who has a very useful skillset for managing an isolationist life for a while.
And we're lucky, truly, on a lot of fronts. We're all still healthy. Both adults are able to work from home and are still being paid. The kiddo at home is introverted and digitally connected to her friends, so is handling social distancing pretty well for someone her age. The dog is old enough to appreciate a slow life.
So, looking to the sunny side: here are some plus sides to the pandemic at our house.
1. We're playing with our toys. Over the years, we've collected a lot of them: video games, board games, legos, musical instruments, books, craft supplies, DIY project tools, recipe books, etc. An embarrassment of riches really: more than we can realistically use.
But with extra time at home, we're digging into all these wonderful things and enjoying them. Go past us! For buying things even though we didn't have time for them? At least we're occupied now, without having to shop while we're money worried.
2. We're getting out in nature more. I'm a walker. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see that my feed is full of pictures of beauty I spot on my daily nature walks. It's my main stress relief.
Because I'm a teacher and my hours are early, even during the winter months, I can usually make it to a trail with a little daylight left to burn. But, my daughter is not so much a walker, and my husband isn't usually home in daylight, so it's usually just me and the pup.
But, without commutes to worry about and with the kiddo legit needing a stretch of the legs, we're able to get out into the woods together. It's a real joy to me to share this love with my people (and still the pupper).
3. Lots of family time. My husband and I have been feeling the rush of time whooshing past us in recent years, as our baby turns into a teenager and our older child becomes an adult.
We've struggled to arrange our days so that we get time together as a family, time for each of us with our daughters, time for just the two of us, etc. all while still holding down demanding day jobs and handling the business of the household.
It's been lovely to be right there for our daughter when she hits a bump in completing her school-from-home assignments, to help her problem solve or just be amazed by how well she does this on her own.
We're playing games and watching shows together. We're really in tune with how everyone is feeling and doing a good job balancing the needs of each of us.
I think we'll miss this part when the speed of life picks back up.
4. The house is getting cleaner and better organized. When it's time to "take a break" from our work from home situations, we're each handling household tasks: cleaning up messes that have been allowed to linger, changing out loads of laundry, running the dishwasher, re-organizing storage situations, sorting things, etc. It gets us moving and clears mental space as well by making our surroundings more pleasant.
It's lovely to slip these tasks into down moments of the work day, instead of struggling to do them *after* work when we're exhausted and wanting some relaxation and more playful togetherness.
We're even making progress on our giant attic project (building an entire new room up there for game storage). The supplies were mostly already purchased, and now we can repurpose that commuting time for mudding, sanding, and (hopefully soon) painting!
5. We're eating better. We're planner-aheaders, the sort of people who usually have a deep freeze full of meats and boxes and cans lining the shelves waiting for use. So, without panic shopping or hoarding, we've stayed pretty well supplied.
Since I'm not coming home from school emotionally and physically exhausted from managing 160 children across the day, our dinners have become more luxuriant affairs, rather than the "what can I make in 30 minutes that is palatable?" trick we'd mastered so well.
So, new recipes, and old favorites that "take too long" for a school night. Cooking together because we're all there. Dancing to music while the potato pancakes fry. I'm enjoying the prep time as much as the eating.
What's a plus side to isolation time for you and yours? Anything you'd like to hold onto when life returns to something more like normal? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.
My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.
For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.
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I is for Island (Tybee Island)
My now-husband and I had a trip to Tybee Island when he was my boyfriend.
I think that would have happened anyway, but it probably happened that particular weekend because Tybee Island is such a lovely and romantic place, even in February.
The beauty of the moment, down at the seaside at sunset (and, of course, his love for me), overcame him and he proposed right there. We were so happy we danced around in a circle jumping up and down for a while. It's probably a good thing no one else was there to see how silly we looked.
My publicly-shareable memories of that weekend include lots of walking on the beach, seeing Pelicans (my favorite bird!) and dolphins, the lighthouse, and some truly delicious seafood (which my husband sweetly tolerated; being a non-seafood eater himself).
Tybee is a quieter place than other tourist beach towns we've visited, which makes it perfect for us. We're really not noisy crowd sort of folk. We haven't yet been back, though not for lack of trying. Maybe the next anniversary.
It's almost Valentine's day, so romance is in the air. I'm trying to avoid the chocolate this year, so I'll focus on the love. My own love, in particular.
Love is a tricksy beast, hard to predict, fickle and cunning. When you're looking you can't seem to find her, and she sneaks up on you when you've given up. At least that's how she's treated me.
I'm constantly amazed at the coincidences and twists of fate that brought me where I am now, all the decisions that didn't seem that important at the time, but ended up changing the trajectory of my life.
One of these is Jimmy Buffett.
In the early 1990s, I went on a Honors trip. Basically, kids who were in the Honors Programs at various Kentucky universities all came together and travelled for a week, learning about the history and geography of our fine state. I'd been on one before and had a lovely time and jumped at the chance to go on another.
It was fun. We ate a lot, played pool in the rec rooms at different colleges, laughed, and talked and talked and talked. There was a boy there I made friends with. We connected over a book. We found out that his parents and my parents didn't live that far apart.
At the end of the trip, he invited me to go to a Jimmy Buffett concert with him. I was engaged to someone else, and we were both clear this was a "friends" thing, so I went. It was a wet and miserable night and I was pretty muddy by the end of it, but we had a great time.
It didn't seem like any big deal at the time. But that not-really-a-date laid the groundwork for our friendship to continue. Anytime I came into town to see my parents, I also saw this friend. We'd get coffee, see a movie, take a walk, and talk. Always we'd talk. He was so easy to talk to.
Fast forward twelve years, and we've both had our hearts broken by other people. I was divorced and moving back in with my parents to deal with the financial fallout. He was getting ready to go to grad school. For the first time in all those years of friendship, we were both single at the same time. And boom! There it was.
It's already been another decade since then. We're still happy. So, thanks, Jimmy. Laughing in the rain and singing about spongecake is, apparently, the start of something beautiful.
Gender and societal roles is an integral part of Going Through the Change, nowhere more obviously than in the marriage of Linda Alvarez.
Linda and her husband have been married for thirty years. They've raised three daughters together and seen all of them married. They have five grandchildren. Linda and David are a solid, devoted couple when the story begins. They've weathered many storms together.
Still, when Linda is unexpectedly transformed into a man, she's sure it means her marriage is over. She dreads having to tell her family, especially since the changes are so hard to explain. She knows that the truth is going to be hard to swallow. She worries that her daughters won't accept her as a man. She is especially worried about Carlitos, the grandson she is closest to.
But her grandson understands right away. She's his grandmother, regardless of how she looks on the outside.
“Abuelita?” said Carlitos, looking confused.
Linda knelt, putting her face near his and nodded silently. “Soy yo, Carlitos.” The room grew quiet again, all eyes focused on Carlitos and Linda.
Carlitos tilted his head as he always did when he was thinking deep thoughts. He was an old soul, Linda had always said. The boy laid one hand on each of Linda’s cheeks, looking very seriously into her eyes. “Abuelita, did you make my favorite cookies?”
“Of course, I did. Biscochitos y marranitos, también.”
He nodded. “And are you going to be a boy now?”
“Yes, Carlitos, I think I am.”
“But you are still my abuelita?”
“Soy tuyo, querido. I am yours. Siempre.”
As I continue to write Linda and David in the sequel and beyond, I know they'll continuing to show that love can truly be about the people we are inside. The rest is just surface details.
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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.
Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!
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I've got a crush on Linda Alvarez (Luckily for my husband, she's fictional). I'm in good company. More than one of the other characters has noticed her charms, too. Her name means beautiful, and she certainly is beautiful. Becoming a man didn't change that.
Besides being a beauty on the outside, Linda also possesses a heart of gold. She's a nurturer. That's her gift, and her curse. She cares a lot, maybe too much.
If all my characters are me, then Linda is the part of me that feels guilty anytime I take time for me that I could have given to someone I love. She's trying to balance her life, too. She loves her children and grandchildren, and, most of all, her husband. When she was transformed into a man, she was sure the life she had loved was about to end.
She was going to lose him. Her David. Her vida. This wasn’t just
aging, a little sag, or another skin problem. It had been hard enough to
talk to him about ordinary woman stuff. He was so old-fashioned. He
thought of periods and childbirth and hormones as mysterious things just
this side of magic. Things men were not meant to comprehend.
I hope my readers will love and admire Linda the way I do. She's the kind of woman I want to be, even when she's a man.
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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.
Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!
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Family, in one sense or another, is one of the most important aspects of human life. Whether we mean our parents, our children, our significant others, our pets, our friends, or something else entirely. Family was a vital part of writing Going Through the Change, both for me as the writer and for my characters.
For me, writing this novel represented a change in our family dynamic. If I was going to take myself seriously as a writer, I needed to finish things and submit things. That meant I needed a shift in home life. I needed my children to respect my writing time, and my husband and children to help balance home responsibilities to free me for some writing time. I definitely could not have written this book without the loving support of my family.
For my main characters, family was a major theme. Linda Alvarez was a forty-eight year old grandmother when her life took a super-heroic turn. Adjusting to the changes in her life was no small feat! Helen Braeburn's family had recently gone through changes of another sort--divorce and estrangement. So, she was vulnerable, without the support she might once have relied upon when her changes came. Patricia O'Neill had always been a lone wolf, but her best friend, Cindy Liu, was her sister under the skin. When Cindy betrayed her trust, it hurt to the core. Jessica Roark's children saw her fly, and it changed their world and hers.
Family shapes who we are. How the people closest to you react can change your life, for the better or the worse. Lucky for me, I've got a good one.
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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.
Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!
I married a nice Catholic boy a few years ago. As we approached our first holiday season together, I asked him how he felt about celebrating Chanukah. I'm not particularly religious, but I have always liked The Festival of Lights for its emphasis on family time. I was delighted when he said yes. So, for eight or so years now, we've been doing both Christmas and Chanukah.
Sometimes, it blends beautifully. Sometimes, it's like that old candy commercial : You got your Christmas in my Chanukah! You got your Chanukah in my Christmas! Will these two tastes really taste great together?
This year, like many families, we're trying to scale back our holiday spending. Eight nights of presents, and then Christmas, too, can get really expensive, so we decided to do it differently this year. Instead of making Chanukah about gifts, we planned a family activity for each night. I love it!
Here's a break down of our nights:
First Night: Dreidels and Gelt.
We're teaching the little one the prayers this year, so I got the joy of listening to my older daughter patiently walking her little sister through the words, syllable by syllable. Her sweet little warble alongside our more grown-up voices made me happily teary. She's growing up, that one! You can tell because she now cheers for anyone who gets Gimel!
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Second Night: Family collage!
We've done this before and I think I'd like to have us do it every year until the kids start to refuse. We grab all the magazines in the house and pull pictures of things that represent our family or one of the members of it, then make a family collage. This year, you'll see comics, heroes, chocolate, popcorn, coffee, legos, games, Star Wars, Twinings tea, and many other things we enjoy together. The best part was all the laughter and talking while we handed each other pictures to consider.
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Third Night: You-Tubing
We have a teenager in our house, so youtube is a service that sees a fair amount of use. We gave each person ten minutes or so to show things they like on youtube to the other family members, who promised to at least watch politely. :-) Here was my contribution:
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Fourth Night: Family Movie
Friday night is always tricky at our house. Mom and Dad are exhausted. The teenager wants social time with the boyfriend. The little one is full of happy energy. Whew! Movie night works for us all--popcorn on the couch in the dark with cuddles and giggles. Perfect.
Our selection was Sky High--superheroes that don't get too dark for smaller folk, but no annoying cartoon voices for us larger folk. The three larger folk had seen the film before, but it held up very well. It's a really charming flick!
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Fifth Night: Family Game
Saturday was challenging. It's always hard to celebrate Jewish holidays when you're not living in a
Jewish community--there are a lot of other demands on your time! The littlest one had her last holiday art class in the morning and her taekwondo studio was having a Christmas party in the evening, so we just changed the order of operations and did our activity first, then ended with candles and prayers. We also had the teenager's boyfriend over this afternoon. Luckily it was game night--um, afternoon.
We played a game called Flash Point. It's a co-op game (which means that the players are working together to defeat a scenario on the board, rather than competing with each other). We play firefighters, with different types of expertise, working together to rescue people and pets from a fire. I'm happy to report that we rescued all but one of one the fire victims.
Co-op games are my favorite type of games to play with my family. All of us really got into this scenario as well. We scrambled to make sure that kitten made it out there!
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Sixth Night: Bowling
This proved to be the expensive night. Bowling. But it was a good time :-) And I actually won, probably because the hubby succumbed to a migraine and had to stay home. But still, I beat a pair of pretty athletic teenagers, so that felt like something, and the little monkey was adorable rolling her six pound ball down the guide rails. We also learned that she shares my love of skeeball. Someday, when I'm rich and famous, we'll have a skeeball lane in our game room.
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Seventh Night: Baking
I love to bake. So does the little one. The older one not so much, but she does love arts and crafts.
(Papa was still down with the sickness, so didn't get to help with this one.) So, Ninja-bread men and a gingerbread house, it was--where baking is like arts and crafts because the icing is really just edible glue.
We won't be winning any posh awards for our efforts, but we did have a good time. It was a surprise when green hail fell on the plastic lawn of our gingerbread house kit, but we do get some strange weather here in North Carolina.
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Eighth Night: Gifts
The last night of Chanukah is always so beautiful. The youngest had learned some of the words (at least Barukh atah Adonai) and all of the tune. Since half our family was ill, we ate homemade chicken soup while we watched the eight candles glow and melt.
We gave each other gifts. The husband got Artisan Dice that I picked up for him at GenCon this summer. I got a shawl I had recently coveted and some Star of David jewelry. The eldest got steampunk style earrings. The youngest got a squishable Catbug, so fluffy she could die! She fell asleep on top of him and had to be resettled lest she wake up with a crick in her neck--he's that fluffy!
So, that was our Chanukah and it was a lovely one indeed. May your holidays be just as bright and full of love and laughter.
Recap--skip to the line if you already know what's happening. Today, the finale :-)
Part One: Gillian and her sons become snowbound at a hotel stop on the way to Grandma's for Christmas.
Part Two: Gillian is befriended by a set of grandparents, also stranded in holiday travel.
Part Three: Gillian and her boys go tubing with the Balfours.
Part Four: Gillian and her boys have breakfast with the Balfours. Mrs. Balfour and Gillian have a heart to heart about the state of her marriage.
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Gillian woke in the middle of the night. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, confused for a moment about where she was. She felt reassured when she saw her boys sleeping in the other bed in the room, then instantly sad again. Tomorrow was Christmas. She checked her phone for the time. Three o'clock. Make that today. Her boys were being brave and understanding about not having any gifts to open in the morning, but Gillian still took it to heart.
It compared poorly to all the other Christmases her boys had celebrated. Usually, Gillian was the one who hosted the parties. Their living room was transformed into a wash of twinkling lights and ribbons. She sent beautiful cupcakes for the teachers at school. She hadn't had the heart for it this year, nor the pocketbook. She wished now that she had stayed home and given the boys a smaller scale holiday. At least there would be gifts and a tree at their own house.
She and Phillip had always loved spoiling the boys together, each trying to make sure that their boys got to experience every joy the season had to offer. Ice skating. Caroling. Baking. Gingerbread houses. Handmade gifts. The season was true family time for them-all about bringing that spark of joy to their children's eyes any way they could.
Gillian knew she could still have done a lot of those things. They didn't all require money. But they did all require heart and hers had been broken.
She'd tried to call Phillip, just as she promised herself she would, but her three attempts had only gotten voicemail. She picked up her phone again to check now, but there were no missed calls or text messages.
Gillian stood and walked back to the window. She could see the tracks their afternoon sledding expedition had left all over the parking lot. There were gaps in the parking lot now. Travelers who were heading east had excavated their cars and continued their journeys, but the road westward had still been unsafe for travel at nightfall. They wouldn't arrive at her parents' house in time for Christmas morning now. Maybe Christmas night, if they were lucky.
Gillian leaned her forehead against the cool glass and watched the moonlight sparkle on the untouched snow on the other side of the road. She turned and looked at her boys sleeping. They both looked small and vulnerable in the king-sized bed. Even ten-year-old Steve's face, which had been looking all too adult, looked pudgy and toddler-ish squished against his pillow. Jack's arm was flung across his brother liked he'd fallen asleep tapping him on the shoulder, which he might well have done. Gillian resisted the desire to stroke their hair. Let sleeping angels rest, she reminded herself.
She shivered a little then, and decided she'd really like a cup of tea. She wrapped herself in a cardigan sweater over her pajamas, left a note for Steve just in case the boys woke, and locked them in the room and headed for the lobby. She didn't want to disturb the boys with her preparation sounds and Maxine had said she'd leave the hot water pot hooked up in case she and the boys needed to make a cup of noodles or something.
The lobby was dimly lit. Apparently the small hotel didn't leave the lights blazing all night. The little decorated tree was still lit, though and it looked pretty reflecting in the tile floor. Gillian crept into the kitchen area and flipped a lightswitch. She made herself a cup of lemon tea in one of the little tan paper cups the hotel provided.
When she turned to go back upstairs, she glanced over at the sofa area. There was someone there, lying on the couch. She looked nervously at the reception desk, debating ringing the bell and waking whoever was resting in the back room. She put her cup of tea down on the counter and circled a little nearer the sleeping person.
It was a man, a man who was a little too long to fit onto the couch fully. A man resting under a hotel blanket, which meant that the clerk must know he was there, but that he hadn't taken a room for some reason. A man who was wearing one red and one green sock on the feet that dangled off the end of the couch, just like Phillip always did on Christmas morning.
"Phillip?"
The man made a sleep-grumble sort of sound, and shifted on the couch, making the upholstery squeak.
"Phillip?" Her voice was louder this time.
He heard her. He bolted upright. "Gillian?" He stood up and rushed to her side, pulling her into a hug. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him back.
"What are you doing here?" she laughed.
"I couldn't stay away. I was going to meet you at your parents' house, but when I called, they told me where you were and I decided to meet you here."
"Why didn't you come upstairs?"
"I got here at two in the morning. I didn't want to wake you all up."
Gillian laughed again. "I just can't believe you're really here!"
He raised a hand to her face and rubbed at the tears that were falling there. "Ah, Gills. It's Christmas. I needed to be with my family. I needed to be with you."
They embraced for a long time after that, until both of them started to shiver a little from sock feet on tile floor.
"Come on," she said, pulling him by the hand. "Wait till the kids wake up and see what Santa brought us!"
Continuing my Christmas story. You can read the first three parts here:
Part One: In which Gillian and her sons get stranded on the way to visit Grandma for Christmas. Part Two: In which Gillian is befriended by other stranded travelers: Louise and Henry, grandparents. Part Three: In which Gillian accepts an offer for a four-wheeler ride to the diner with her sons.
The whole group stopped just inside the door of the diner to stomp as much of the snow off their boots as they could. The diner was packed and a woman wearing a blue apron over a pink dress called out that there was a table in the corner. She gestured at it with the coffeepot she was carrying, then hurried to the opposite corner to pour some of the warm contents for another customer.
They were still removing and stacking their snow gear when the waitress appeared with two hot chocolates and three coffees. "I can bring some juice or milk if you want, but I thought you'd want something warm first." She sat the tray on the table and distributed the mugs in front of everyone. Henry told her she was a genius and a gem and the woman smiled broadly. Within a minute or two, she had taken everyone's orders and run off again, towards the kitchen this time.
Gillian wrapped her hands around the mug. Despite her best gloves and the woolen blanket Henry had provided, she was chilled and the coffee felt wonderful. When she picked it up and sipped it, she found that it tasted wonderful, too. Jack already had a hot chocolate mustache, while Steve was rather noisily sipping his cocoa by the spoonful, stirring it between each dip.
"Thank you both so much! That was just what we needed, I think."
Louise smiled. "It does clear the head, moving fast in the cold air. It did us good, too." She gripped her husband's fingers and smiled at him and Gillian felt a twinge of something a lot like sadness at the show of love between them. She ruffled Jack's hair and his smile was a reminder of how much she still had to be grateful for.
The group took a leisurely breakfast, chatting and eating, and, for once, Gillian's boys didn't seem to grow restless. They used the paper and crayons the waitress bought them and played table games like dots and hangman or drew strange scenes together. Henry nodded at the boys. "Looks like you done right by these boys. Santa should be pretty kind to such good children." The boys beamed at the compliment, and Gillian ducked her head toward her coffee mug to hide the sudden tears that stung in the corners.
She and the boys weren't starving by any means, but neither was she going to be able to spoil them this year, not with the expense of maintaining two households to manage. Her husband's opportunity in New York had been a very good one. "Too good to pass up," he'd said. "The opportunity of a lifetime." And she had acquiesced. Seeking peace even when her heart begged her to argue, just as she always had.
When it was time to go back, Henry offered to take the boys for some extra spins around the hotel lot, "If it's okay with your mother." Gillian didn't stand a chance against the two sets of puppy eyes. She laughed and agreed, making Henry promise to come back as soon as he was tired and not let the boys keep out longer than he wanted.
Louise and Gillian waved off the boys, then went to the coffee bar in the hotel lobby. Maxine, the front desk clerk, was there talking with a man that turned out to be her husband and the manager of the hotel. Roads eastward were opening back up, but westward, another front had dumped another
blizzard on the roads between here and Gillian's parents' house. Gillian sighed at the news, stirring her coffee with the plastic stirrer and watching the brown liquid twirl around the top.
When she looked up again, Louise was watching her. "I think I might be about to stick my foot in it," she said, "but I have to ask. Where is the boys' father?"
"New York."
"But I thought you said you guys came from Chicago."
"We did. The boys and I still live in Chicago, but my husband has been in New York for a few months now. For business."
Louise frowned. "Aren't you and the boys his business?"
Gillian felt a defensive speech rising to her lips, but bit it back down. In her heart, she felt the same way and there was no reason to try to defend this separation to this woman right now. Instead, she just nodded.
"Do you still love him?" Louise asked.
"Yes, I still do. I'm just not sure he still loves me."
"Have you told him?" Gillian was confused and it must have shown on her face. Louise went on, "I mean, have you told him recently? It can easy to forget to say it, but we all need to hear it. Faith is easy to lose if no one is reminding you of your blessings."
Gillian made a silent promise to herself to call Phillip that night after the boys fell asleep, and this time to talk about her own feelings, instead of only about the boys.
Last Christmas, I started a Christmas story. I never finished it. I'm hoping to finish it this month.
Part 1: Gillian was traveling from Chicago to visit Grandma in Oklahoma City with her two sons, Steve (10) and Jack (6), when they got snowed in at their hotel in Kansas City.
Part 2: Gillian remembers better times and meets Henry and Louise Balfour, from Colorado, on the way to Tennessee to see their own grandchildren.
It felt good to laugh. Laughing loosened something in Gillian that she hadn't realized was tight. In the moment of the tension releasing, she could feel in her shoulders, neck and jaw how stiffly she'd been holding herself. Phillip had called her "my stress puppy" when she got herself tied up in knots like that. She missed having him rub the knots out of her neck with his thumbs. He told her she worried too much. After the emotional roller-coaster of his Halloween and Thanksgiving visits, though, she was realizing that she had plenty of reason to worry.
"I'd better get upstairs. I've got to figure out what to bundle the boys in to traverse the Arctic wasteland out there between us and the diner." She stood and held out her hand to Louise. "It was nice to meet you."
Louise shook her hand, but didn't relinquish the fingers right away afterwards. "Henry," she said, turning to give her husband a meaningful look. Louise looked at Henry, too, unable to fathom what his wife might be trying to hint at. Henry had no such trouble catching his cue and responding.
"I've got a four-wheeler and a sled. If you'll accept the offer, I'd love to give you and your children a ride."
Gillian froze for a moment. She thought it was a sweet offer, and it also scared the heck out of her. These people were strangers, and she and the boys were alone here. Four-wheeling and sledding were among those questionable sorts of activities that her mom friends back home would whisper about disapprovingly in the back of PTA meetings. They were also activities she remembered fondly from her own childhood--a safe kind of dangerous and exciting, if done right.
"I bet your boys would love it," Louise said, just a hint of Tennessee in the word love. Tennessee didn't sound that different than Oklahoma. It sounded a lot like home. "Don't you think they'd love it?"
Gillian had no doubt they would. In fact, just thinking about Steve and Jack red-faced and laughing made her shove her fears aside. After all, it was just her and the boys most of the time. There was no reason to think this was any more dangerous than any other day. The boys could use some fun, and she could use the help.
"Thank you so much!" she gushed. "When do you want us to be ready?"
They agreed to meet in half an hour and Gillian flew up the stairs, key card in hand to tell the boys.
Twenty minutes later, Gillian was standing in the lobby with two boys wearing all their snow gear over their pajamas and jeans. They were a comedy of growing patterns. Steve's jacket sleeves were too short and his skinny forearms hung out between the sleeve and the top of his puffy gloves. He'd grown that much since last winter and, since Grandma bought him a new coat that he'd receive for Christmas, Gillian hadn't replaced his jacket yet. Jack's snowsuit, which used to belong to his brother, was so long on him that Gillian had folded the legs up twice, making an extra thick layer on her son's lower legs. He had to stand with his legs spread wide because he couldn't rest his feet next to one another.
She stood the boys in front of the hotel lobby Christmas tree and took a picture with her phone to send to Grandma. Maxine, the hotel clerk, even came around and took another one for her so she could have one of the three of them. Gillian squeezed both boys and grinned for the camera. She had to admit that she was looking forward to the ride, too.
A moment or two later, Louise and Henry pulled up on their four-wheeler. Louise was so bundled up that she was only recognizable by her hair, but Gillian knew her voice and introduced her boys to the Mr. Henry and Ms. Louise. Her boys offered gracious thank yous and stood waiting to be invited to climb aboard, though both of them were eyeing the giant innertube sled with obvious excitement.
"So, you first, Miss Gillian." Henry stood next to the innertube and held out a hand which Gillian used to balance herself as she climbed in. She took a spot in the middle back, remembering that the innertube moved better if the heaviest person sat in back. Both boys climbed in quickly and Henry helped to tuck a thick woolen blanket around them. "You all hold on tight now!" Henry said, then hurried back to the four-wheeler and climbed on.
Henry climbed back on to the four-wheeler and his wife wrapped her arms around him. He revved the engine twice, and they were off. Gillian squealed and both her boys grinned at her as they grasped at the rubbery handles of the innertube and bounced agains the sides and each other. Mr. Henry took the long way around, driving around the hotel twice before heading across the lot to the diner. He circled the diner, too, before parking and Gillian and her boys laughed as they were flung to one side and then the other of the innertube. They were laughing so hard when they stopped that Gillian had tears in her eyes. She hadn't had that kind of fun in years.
As I always tell my students, No hablo deportes. (I don't speak sports). In general, my policy on sports is that if my daughters are not playing, I don't care.
My husband, however, does speak sports. He's not a die-hard, face-painting tail-gater, but he does enjoy a bit of football. Especially when his alma mater, UNC, plays.
So, when UNC had a teacher appreciation deal, I bought tickets to the game today vs. Virginia Tech for the Sweetman. I figured I would enjoy some nice fall weather, some people watching, and some junk food while he enjoyed the game.
So, we set off for the game. We looked for parking downtown, but, of course, couldn't find any. We'd waited until too near game time for that. We did find a lot of rich people. You can tell them by the type of baby gear they use, their shoes and their haircuts. Even when they are wearing basic UNC clothing, like any fan, they have the most expensive items from the shops. It also shows in the way they assume that their own comfort and ease is more important than the safety and wellbeing of others. (Sorry if the chip on my shoulder is showing). That was probably our first clue that we didn't belong there. Obviously, these events are for Socs, not Greasers like us.
If we had found parking, it would have cost us $20-$40 depending on which lot we let gouge us. Most of the time, when we go to Franklin Street for a little fun, we spend $4-6 on parking. We considered the park and ride, but then realized that even that would cost us $10, plus a lot of time in waiting for a ride back to our car, which adds to the babysitting costs.
Now, if I had not gotten a special deal, those tickets would have been $120. That's a cash outlay not that different than a night at the theater. I don't know about your family budget, but that's a chunk of change in ours. And, when I go to the theater, I get a place to park along with my ticket. If there's a charge, it's more like $5.
Everyone has their thing they hate to pay for, and one of ours is parking. Driving among all the rich people and calculating how much we were going to have to spend to park and eat, we were both getting a little grumpy. Sweetman was getting that tense look that had him hunching around the steering wheel. I was hoping he'd feel better when we finally got to the game.
But he surprised me by asking how I'd feel about giving up the money I'd spent on the tickets and doing something else instead.
So, instead, we went out to lunch at a place we'd been meaning to try (far enough away from campus that we could park there). Then, we went to NC Botanical Gardens, where we hadn't been in a long time. We sat and talked, admired beautiful plants. Then, we went to our favorite game shop and the game Sweetman had been stalking was in! Then we did a bit of practical shopping at Target, got a milkshake, and did the grocery shopping. That's what we call a married parents date. Way better than football. :-)
