Widowed: The Blog

The “moving” in Moving On


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I have been thinking, well more than that really, about moving to be with my boyfriend.

He lives in Canada and I had planned to spend the summer with him anyway, but he would like me to just come up with my daughter and stay. It is an idea with many things going for it. Primary is that I love him and want to be with him, but there are secondary benefits as well. It would force me to get serious about what I want to do career-wise. He tells me he is okay with taking care of me and my daughter, so I don’t necessarily need to have a job lined up before I come up. I don’t know how I feel about that.

Perplexed really.

I have worked near continuously since I was 15 years old. Even though I know women who do the stay at home thing, I never really imagined myself doing that. I could write. There is a writing program at the university in Edmonton. I could take a class. Work on my writing. That novel I know is in me. K would be in school half days and I would have time. Staying at home, I don’t know. He asked me, what I think, was an important question last night.

Am I changing just to please him?

I have talked about learning to cook. We were talking about doing laundry which led to the inevitable ironing that I basically choose to ignore. Would I cook if it weren’t for him? Iron? I don’t enjoy cooking now but there was a time when, even though I wouldn’t have called it fun, I did it. For my daughter’s sake more than anything, I know I need to start doing it again. And I do iron when I need to. I just don’t see the need very often and I doubt much that would change (and truthfully, I have never been able to iron dress shirts properly. Memories of my mother’s pursed lips as she inspected my attempts are not buried too deeply in my mind).

There is a lot that needs to be done before I can go and live with him though. I wonder if we are being realistic about the time table. I felt more confident, too, before I told an old friend the other night about what I was planning. She rained pretty heavily on the parade. Some of her concern was unwarranted and based on the fact that I have delibrately kept some people out the the inner loop of my life in the past 6 months, but she made a few points.

It would be easier to do this I think were it not for the scary times of the last few years. They have made me crave safety more than I have in the past. I am still a little fragile though getting better. And then there is my daughter. There is this tremendous sense of responsibility and need to protect her from…..well….everything, and I know it is not realistic. I can’t make life perfect and risk free for her, and I know her well enough to know that what is most important for her is that I be in a place where I am happy. Her happiness mainly derives from mine right now.

There is still a lot to think about, plan and do.

Snow Days


Parking lot at Pentagon City, Arlington, Virgi...

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When I was a kid snow days were a welcome reprieve in my tedious reality. I was not much of an enthusiast for school. I didn’t like the structure it imposed on my time. I was only interested in about half of what I supposedly needed to learn in order to survive in the great wide world.

I remember telling my father after my first whole day of school in the first grade that “it was okay but I didn’t think I would be going back.” I don’t remember if he laughed about that, but I am sure he did.

School is not exactly the first instance of life being scheduled for you, but it is probably the first outside interference in a person’s life that has to be adjusted to somehow. I adjusted in typical passive-aggressive style by simply retreating into an endless stream of books and scribbling furiously in the spiral notebooks that I never seemed to be without. I always looked industrious. It’s hard to take a child to task for reading and writing in most instances.

It’s funny how habits like those will stick with you. I employ this same tricks today to a lesser extent in an ever more futitle attempt to keep myself from questioning my committment to my job too closely or too often.

So, the overnight blizzard has blessed me with a snow day today. a welcome escape from my job. Teaching. Irony abounds. But it’s not like when I was ten and the only thing I was concerned with on such a morning was getting outside to sled and build snow forts. My disoragnized life glares at me from mulitple cluttered surfaces and housework silently accuses me of sloth. The only thing that calls to me from the great outdoors is a shovel and an impassable driveway.

Passive-agression loses its appeal when you are you own victim.

I think I am Falling in Love


Love for Arts

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I sent an email to my gentleman this morning. He told me last night that he had “fallen” for me and this morning I told him I felt that same way.

Why do I just want to cry now?

It’s nearly noon and I am still in my pajamas. I still love Will but I love R too. And it isn’t as if they conflict or even overlap. They don’t even run parallel. But, they do exist in the same space. I don’t even know what to compare this too. It is so outside of any reference frame I have.

People on the board have compared it to the love you have for your children. Different for each one but just as intense and special. But isn’t quite the same. You expect to have enough love for all your kids, you never expect to meet someone so amazingly wonderful that you would risk losing them forever….again. I have said that I don’t know if I could sit by a man’s side and watch him die, but I wouldn’t want R to be with anyone but me when that day comes. And between now and that far away day, I want to spend every minute I am allowed just being with him.