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— for Lane, with thanks
So, old friend, tell me something, now that you've written to me out of the
blue. Yes, tell me something, anything, it doesn't matter what, it's been so
long since we stayed up all night and there's so much I don't know. Start us
off, and I'll tell you something in return, something good I hope, something
interesting and personal, something you'll care about, something I care
about, too.
I could tell you how I met my husband, back in Charleston, summer of '91? He
was a Navy boy, a submariner, and I was taking some classes at the college,
baking bread for a coffee shop every morning and playing on the beach all
afternoon. Those were the days, some of my favorite memories, both us young
and pretty and soinlove, together every night, dancing at the Treehouse
until all hours and me afraid to close my eyes.
I could tell you how we moved to Portland the following year, engineering
school for my husband, more miscellaneous classes for me, no more Navy,
plenty of mac-n-cheese, a music scene we hit just right. Those are some good
memories, too, Mount Hood in the distance, snow-capped and stunning, rivers
and roses and seventeen kinds of rain. I could tell you how we moved to
Lincoln a little later, four years in Nebraska, I think, maybe five,
farmland and football and wide-open skies, an engineering degree for my
husband and a job at the women's clinic for me, a job I loved as much as
hated — politics and protesters and the most dedicated women I've ever
known.
I could tell you how we came here after that, to Raleigh, and I gave up on
school and we bought a house and fostered a greyhound who broke my heart and
my husband brought a kitten home from the shelter and I stopped crying about
a dog who wasn't really ours. I could tell you how in all those years I'd
sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and not know why and not be
able to sleep again for days. I could tell you how something changed for me
in 2001, except that I couldn't because I don't know what it was. I only
know that's the year I started writing again, and the year I buckled down
and finished my degree, and the year my husband and I finally married. And,
oh! I could tell you about our wedding day, clear and warm and the skies so
blue, perfect, just the two of us and our minister and the ladies who work
at the sanctuary on weekday mornings, vows and snapshots and phone calls to
our families after, a week in St. Croix and slices of our wedding cake
wrapped up tight in the freezer.
I could tell you I sleep fine these days, and that would be tidy but it
wouldn't really be true. I don't regret it, though, not any of it, and
that's what I think about when I can't sleep these days, because when I wake
up, I almost always wake up happy, and really, that's the thing.
So that's what I'll tell you, in my own way, in bits and pieces, stories
unfolding in letters, slowly, making up for the years we've missed between.
But for now I'll wait, old friend, and hope I've said enough, because I
missed you even if I didn't realize, and I don't want to lose you quite so
soon. I suppose there might be a story there, too, but I don't think it's
one I want to tell you, not this time, not right away, not again.
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