Talk Thursday: It Was The Best of Times… It Was The Worst Of Times

If you haven’t noticed how really fast time flies, well then you are either pretty young, or live perpetually “in the moment.” I’m over half way through my life, if my life line runs true to form, and parts of me think that is far too long, and the other parts think "Crap!" it’s not near long enough. Thank heavens I believe in reincarnation.

It was like yesterday the first time I said, “I remember about twenty years ago, when…” What I don’t remember is “the what” I was remembering about at the time; what I do remember was stopping in my tracks, mid sentence, and laughing out loud at the moment. Now I remember back over twenty one years ago (at least two decades since the first time I said “I remember about twenty years ago…”) I long knew there was something a matter in my marriage, I didn’t know the what. I didn’t know it wasn’t repairable, because it apparently had never been right in the first place, to become broken in the second.

All I knew was that I had been happy and in love, sadly he was neither and he told me so one Sunday afternoon. It had to have been bad; he interrupted a 49’ners game to tell me so and then left. I don’t remember where Psam was; I just know she wasn’t at home. I left the potato salad on the counter and walked west to the dune and sat down and cried.

For days, about three, I cried. And then he came back and told me, and I quote, “I think I made a mistake.”

“Yeah, you did, live with it.” If I was so devastated, and I was he’d just ruined my mine and Psam’s lives, why did I say that back to him? Because I knew that I could remain married to him but wonder forever more when he was going to walk out on me again. I could have dealt with an affair. There are myriad reasons for an affair. But for not loving a person, there is only one.

He was nice enough to deed over the house so Psam and I weren’t out on the street. I think it was a guilt move, but I’ll take it. In her early teens at the break-up, Psam was going through the changes and challenges of life that only a teenage girl can endure…along with her mom. But even more so she was there for me.

In the years between 2-X and Ducky, Psam and I we grew, endured, and triumphed. I worked three jobs, and she got her first. A friend of mine lent us her time-share in Reno and we made a week of it. I taught her to drive; she actually learned. I’d get a boyfriend and she’d beat his ass at chess (oh, crap the temper tantrum he threw.) She discovered boys that she didn’t want to beat up and her fingernails (she’d change the color every day – no lie); I’d find another boyfriend (yes, I was that crappy a mother.)

While I love my husband and life now, I could easily go back and relive those years when it was just Psam and I, maybe without the boyfriends. Because really, while for most it would have been the worst of times…remember there was a heart rending divorce in there, the truth of it all… it was the best of times.

Sith,
Cele