The Thing About Time

Something happened to me on the way to summer: my heart stopped feeling so alone. And I've been meaning to tell you.

Being single is hard. Make no mistake. The world is set up for twos and at every turn you can find a slap on the face without even looking for it when you are newly one, but, (and this is where I can't decide if I'm at an advantage realizing this or not) being married is also hard. Teeth shatteringly hard. I know it full well. And, if pressed, if pushed to the wall with a gun to my head, I don't know if I could honestly say one was easier than the other, or more suited to me, or more likely to carve me beautiful. I just don't know, though I guess the point was never to find the easier. What I do know is what I have known for years: that single or not isn't the point. Whether I am in love and loved, or not and not there is goodness for the finding. My head knows it, could argue it till it falls off my shoulders, but my heart, that silly old girl, has a mind of her own. Not that I blame her, and she's done me fine in the past, but she follows as well as a cat on a leash, which is to say, not at all.

But back when I was smack dab in the middle of suddenly being without a husband and India was nine months old and not sleeping through the night and we were living with my parents', the smallest things, like going to a nephew's soccer game and winding my way through the devoted families, made me want to vomit. It was hard, and sometimes still is hard, not to feel constantly on the cusp, the fringe, the edge of life -- the one you're missing out on because you are single, unmarried, uncoupled, uneven. So, things like this would happen, and my brain would have a chat with my heart, and we would get it together, and then I would have to take India to the doctor's alone, or plan a holiday alone or hell, crawl into bed one more night alone, and I would strain and pull and try not to take that easy out by imagining that my life would be so much better if I were not alone but then, of course, eventually throw my hands up at it and fall flat on my face in the middle of it. Poor, silly heart.

But lately, things have changed, and I am cautiously hopeful. Maybe, in the language of my dad, I've been granted a special grace for a time; maybe, God knows I've got my hands full balancing school and mothering and a new city in a new country and so has lifted that off; or maybe, my slow and doe-eyed heart is listening more than she pretends to because, other huge life change induced fears aside, she's doing just fine on her own, imagines she will always do fine - come what may, alone or not, which, of course, she tells me in her smiling and secretive way, she always knew she would.