Arriving home, I headed to the bedroom where I knew Anthony would be. He was in an all too familiar position: sitting on the edge of our bed, game controller in hand. When I came into view, uncharacteristically, he paused his game. I kissed him with those same lips.
“Well? How did it go? Did you have a good time?” he asked, with urgency.
“Yeah. It was amazing….” I said with a huge smile on my face.
“Well………what did you do?”
“Everything….” I said, tantalizing myself, just as much as Anthony, still beaming involuntarily.
“Everything???” he confirmed, an octave higher. His expression conveyed some degree of disbelief, in my estimation, which surprised me. “What’s ‘everything’?”
Shyness suddenly overcame me. I was willing to share my experience but felt somehow unable to now, paralyzed at the idea of relating it so straightforwardly. And that’s what he seemed to want in this moment: the facts.
Leetl bounced around on the bed, her iPad fully occupying her attention. I placed my hand on the top of her head to say hello, as a place-marker for later. She probably wouldn’t understand any of the “adult conversation” her parents were having…but maybe she would, and that didn’t seem worth the risk.
“I will tell you everything in a bit. I do need to hop in the shower first.”
“Ok,” he said, unpausing his game and going back to it, seeming somewhat perturbed by the lack of clear information. Nevertheless, I continued to the bathroom.
As I showered for the second time that day, I wondered how to share my newfound world of enchantment with Anthony. As my husband, he was entitled to all of the juicy details he wanted, and yet, to minimize my experience with Sammy to the bare mechanics would be to omit the essence of our interaction…to crassify it…to desanctify it. On the other hand, he didn’t seem to have an interest in the spiritual-emotional aspect of our connection (or anyone’s connection), so what was the point of trying to serve up any of that deliciousness? How could his attention span sustain it?
Cleansed, dried, and dressed, I re-entered our world. It looked the same to me as before my time with Sammy. And, to a large extent, nothing external had changed. It’s just that now I was tapped into pure romantic delight; it was waiting for me. I had a more direct line to what had been inspiring me lately. My muse had been a theory and now she had a name. She captivated my attention. She increased my appreciation for the mystery of life. And yet, I was not mistaking her as my reason for living, intoxicating though she was….
I can see how that would happen, though. In fact, if Leetl hadn’t come into my life before I’d met Sammy, things might have been different. I might have thought that Sammy was the answer to my life’s purpose/meaning/direction, because of how strongly I felt. I’d experienced some of that, strangely, with Leetl. You fall in love in a similar way with your kids. It can be a slippery slope…falling in love, putting the object of affection front and center in your life, getting rid of everything that isn’t them-focused, and continuing like that until when, forever?
It’s fun and magical; falling in love opens you up to unconditional love for a conditional period of time. Falling in love with your child is sometimes fun and magical, it is also quite often a shit show. It’s hard. Like catching an evolutionary virus that you can’t recover from. They vomit on you, they keep you awake at night, they publicly punch you in the face for setting a limit…and all the more avidly you will proclaim your unconditional love for them. It makes no sense: it’s idiotic. And you’re so smitten with them that someone can even accuse you of being an idiot for your kids, and you’ll do your best Goofy laugh [ah-hyuck!] and shamelessly admit to it.
I’m not judging. Because when you find out that Love (big love) exists for real–without qualifiers–how could you not be absurdly giddy about it? You’ve found God, for real this time. Actually, you’ve found it within yourself but you don’t notice that part. You don’t realize that you’re making yourself giddy because inside of you is the unconditional love that was inspired right out of you. So instead you just keep worshipping your kid (who is probably–let’s face it–spectacularly average) and keep looking for God everywhere else.
All of this is to say that while I was in total bliss falling in love with Sammy, I was under no delusion that she was meant to be my life’s purpose…that I needed to leave my old life behind and start a new one with her. Things didn’t have to look blissful every moment to experience the bliss of being in love; Leetl taught me that. She was messy; we were messy; life was messy. Rather, Sammy was in the Current that swept me up…she was a permutation of Love that was particularly awe-inspiring to me…and I understood that staying in this Current, whether or not Sammy was there, was the most important thing for me to do. Ever.
Life was life – plain and simple – on the outside. My “life” on this day looked like any other weekday that Anthony had off work. In fact, it looked a lot like a Sunday. Easy. Everyone sort of doing their own thing around the house. Leetl needed lots of attention, and Anthony had been on duty for the hours that I was gone, so it was my turn. Besides having only fragmented moments where connection might have been possible, the conversation didn’t seem one appropriate in the presence of a three-almost-four-year-old, however, so it wasn’t until the eveningtime, lying in bed, that we had time for a full debriefing.
I told Anthony (in detail, but not in great detail) what had “happened.” He had wanted bite-sized pieces that he could chew up and swallow, and I was spoon-feeding them to him, one by one. And then, we were all out of bites.
Feeling the weight of what was at stake in this phase of my personal expansion, I was grateful for a marriage that seemed to be able to hold it. I laid my head on Anthony’s chest, as we curled up together. It felt good to come back together as one, after such an adventurous day…one that might otherwise have been destabilizing and could have lead to further distance. I rubbed Anthony’s chest; he caressed my arm. One thing led to another, as they often did, and we fell into the familiar rhythm, making some of the most passionate love in our marriage.
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