"The Gift"
There are reasons we’re moving, even though this mountains house feels like home to me. The lush preservation land-without-neighbors behind and the unobstructed view of green everywhere reminds me of my little girl window in my little girl house. I’d lay in bed, my feet resting up wooden walls, and spend afternoons staring at leaved branches for clarity. There were possibilities in those greens that mesmerized me. And when we began dating I saw it again, felt it again, and I knew I was returning to myself after a long journey away.
Our new house will have the ocean and not the mountains, and the children are very excited. The small town where we eat dinner will be so close we’ll bike to the pizza place and walk to the market. The road with thirteen turns, strewn with debris after every storm, will no longer be in our way home. Our unpolluted view of our own private Matterhorn will no longer be ours--the way the moon lights it up, the way the clouds wrap it like a chemise. The constant drizzle and the thunder and lightening when it pours, the deafening of streams turning into rivers, will all be someone else’s.
Instead, waves roaring will lull us to sleep and there will be sand everywhere. The sea will rust everything that’s not plastic or stainless, and our skin will ruddy from salt. We will build castles and make angels. We will be hugged by the endless blue, and our back yard will be the whole horizon.
This sounds trite, but this is the happiest I’ve ever been. Nothing yet has gone horribly wrong in my life, yet I am wary of celebrating too soon. Deals fall through, promises are broken, and intentions are often fumbled--it’s human nature to fall short, to mis-deliver and over-extend. But today, for the first time in the eight months since I met the man I’ve always dreamed of, I am allowing myself a little unadulterated joy.
There’s a diamond ring and babies and a new house in my future, and only a slight chance of passing tears, mostly the children’s, and mostly for normal children things.
Today I had lunch with an old friend. “Everyone is dying,” she said. “Everyone knows someone who is dying right now.” Her face is spotted with acne, her breath is sour. And since I’ve known her forever, I know that when she said “you’re not having a glass,” I know she really meant, “I’m dying for a drink, even though it’s noon and I have to go back to work.”
Her heart is broken. This time last year, she thought she had found the love of her life, even though her ex was clearly toxic, abusive, and manic. “This is the opposite of what I imagined. This is the farthest thing from what I hoped.”
And for the briefest moment I wanted to temper my joy, to put it away for her sake so she wouldn’t feel so alone. Because we choose the families we keep. She is my sister, who listened and questioned and kicked my ass, even when it wasn’t necessary. But when it came to pocketing my happy, I couldn’t.
Because every Christmas since my father died, I’ve been thinking that same thing about death, and finally I feel something other than disgust when carols play, when lights wink and glow, when I visit the mall and leave laden with parcels. There is no ex-husband in my ear bemoaning religion and commercialism. No wine-filled nights with women like my friend, complaining about sexless marriages or abusive lovers.
Instead, there are stockings dangling and sugar plums twirling, there are lists scrawled by a Santa-hatted girl. There is a small boy who has studied each present under the tree and a man who sings “Jingle Bells” like Frank Sinatra. Which is why I’m a little sad to leave this house filled with so many good memories. And why I’m a little scared to think of next year and all that might change or disappear--will I wake next Christmas morning to less than a lump of coal?
Putting my fear away, I think of what my friend said and how it means we should cherish the moments we’re given. Because we only get one life. We only get one chance to be present to each perfect moment. And we don’t have that house by the beach or the diamond ring or the baby. We don’t have anything, my lover and I, except his two perfectly imperfect children and this house with this magical view that always reminds me of when I was a little girl whose daddy was still alive. It’s helped me to know again that my world is replete with possibilities.
