Oh life--it's bigger

Yesterday my daughter's father and his girlfriend spent the day with us. I'd be lying if I said these occasions are easy, but I realize that I've never--never--had an easy relationship with men. And so, at least, it's not unexpected, nor am I disarmed by it.

Last Christmas I worked part-time at a local bookstore; needed the health insurance for the kids. A woman came in and asked for my help choosing between two jazz compilations. I flipped them over and noticed that one came with the recommendation of Phil Schapp--a NY radio jazz guy who I respect and admire--and I mentioned that to this woman. "The man I'm buying this for is extremely picky," she told me, almost proudly. And in that flash I realized that I knew this man, and this woman: that she was the same woman who had called my house very, very late one night years before, when my friendship with her boyfriend (and my ex-) had seemed threatening. Apparently she didn't recognize me. I used to buy him jazz, too, but then he broke my heart, and it stayed broken for years because I was such an innocent then. I called him later that night and told him that I'd picked out his Christmas present. How strange is life.

Once I dated a a married man, and then met his wife at a party at my house, and learned that she was deaf, and watched as she thumbed through a book from my shelves and found a phone message her husband had left for me when I was out of town at a hotel. He'd used a name from a novel I liked, at least, and so the horror was mine alone. The shame, too, apparently.

Then there was Akhbar, in college. He wore my mascara sometimes for dramatic effect, he said, and he would tell me how more than anything he missed laying his head in his mother's lap and feeling her hand on his brow. A woman in the cafeteria said something he didn't like one day and he turned to her in his highest haughty and said, "In my country you'd be baling hay." I think he runs a men's clothing store in Riyadh now, and has a few kids. Boys, I hope.

I'm always a little amazed by long-term relationships. At base, I don't really believe humans are constructed for them, though I'm trying to keep that nugget from my kids in case it's just my own pathology. I was talking to my mother one day a few weeks ago, and I told her that--horrible as it is to say--when I thought my father was dying from his congestive heart failure, a small part of me knew that she would be reborn when she was free of him: his heaviness, his black moods. "I thought the same thing," she admitted. "I'd be free." Awkward silence, and then she backpeddled like crazy, and we've never mentioned the moment since.
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Maisie packed her belongings in a blanket to run away today--angry with me for sending her to her room after a particular sassy moment. Of course, I encouraged her to pack clean underwear and to avoid busy roads. She stormed out of here, and wandered back five minutes later in tears, and we made up, etc. And then she unfolded her pack to show me what she'd planned to take with her: a photo of the three of us, a Nutcracker statue ("so I'll have a decoration for Christmas"), two pairs of shoes, and the Valentine's Day card her Dad and his girlfriend sent her last year. No underwear. It interests me, the treasures she'd pull out of the burning house.