Everything has changed, but nothing has changed.
The "Everything" that has changed is that he's gone. It's a huge absence in the house. The barbeque grill that he used on a near daily basis has been left to rust out on the lanai. The sound of the garage door opening at 430 in the afternoon has gone silent. There is no anticipation of his arrival home. There is no one to talk to in the morning about my day.
When I'd be coming home from work in the morning I used to get excited when I'd see the light in my bathroom on as I drove down the road toward my house. It meant that he was awake and in the shower and that I'd have his attention to excitedly recap my night to him. I laugh to myself thinking about how I essentially cornered him and forced him to listen. He never cared about my job or what I did. He'd say, "It's all cop talk!" and just nod his head probably not even paying attention to a word I was saying and instead thinking about his next "fishing trip" to see her. But, it's the little things I miss. It's the little things that are hard to adjust to and hard to not notice that they're not there.
However, I have tried to maintain as much normalcy for the sake of the Marble's as I possibly can. Bedtime is still 830 sharp. Only now they sleep in each others rooms or in my bed or we pull Yellow Marble's mattress from her bunk and plop it down on the floor of my room and all four of us fall asleep watching Good Luck Charlie. Laundry still gets folded, separated into piles and laid out on the floor in the living room. Only difference is none of his stuff is coming through the wash. I still don't make dinner and if I do it's chicken or spaghetti. All the family pictures are still on display in the house, except our wedding picture which was hanging up in my room and facing my bed so I stared at it every night torturing myself as I tried to fall asleep. I took the picture down and put it in the closet. It was my favorite picture. It was the picture that captured how happy were were the day we got married. Funny how those words we promised to each other meant something for 12 years yet in a few months they could go from having meaning to meaning absolutely nothing.
I still maintain an impeccably clean house and stress out when things are out of place. I still have my areas that I allow to get messy and sometimes I let dust collect on the tables longer than I would have in the past. I still spend my evenings on the lanai. Just sitting there pondering what will come of all this and how I am going to deal with what lies in front of me. I still get the Marble's to and from school every single day. They know they can count on me to get them there on time and be there early to pick them up. Nothing there has changed. I still pack Blue Marble's lunch all the time because I know exactly how she likes her sandwich right down to the way it's cut and placed in the Ziploc bag.
I am trying to keep things how they were before he left in an attempt to create stability for the Marble's. I want them to endure. I want them to one day look back at this time in their lives and see that I was the glue that was holding it all together. Even though inside I am shattered into a million pieces, I want them to know that all the things I am doing... I am doing for them. And, I hope that these choices and decisions and mistakes and fights and outbursts and crying and laughing and everything that's all smooched up that is going on right now will play out in their heads in years to come and they will come to me with a simple "Thank you" and I will know that all this pain and shit that I have been wading in didn't change them from being the wonderful girls I want them to grow up to be.
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