Love happens at all ages and the silliness and lightheartedness that comes with it are enjoyable to watch. My friend was no exception. She looked beautiful and confident, had the inner glow only love can give. She added lipstick to her morning routine, she went clothes shopping. She wore the ring I had given her for Christmas, and finally, she showed off the necklace she had bought for herself many Christmases ago.
Friendship! How do you even begin to describe what it means and how it feels? It’s like trying to explain the weather. The heat of the sun, the softness of the rain, clouds moving in the sky, the silence before a storm, the smell of snow -we all experience it differently. My husband frowns when he sees snowflakes, and I get a dreamy smile on my face.
The Holiday Season is a time of reflection. Like a silent movie, the memories of the past and the faces of people I have loved, play in my head. I was sitting outside on the screened-in porch. I could hear them talk, I could hear them laugh. I had called the dogs and had stepped outside for a minute. I wanted to be alone. Christmas evening is special to me and 2009 was no exception. To this day I insist that MY CHRISTMAS is celebrated on the evening of December 24th, the Austrian way.
For the first time in my life, I felt anxiety. At times I felt unsteady, a little bit off-balance, especially in the mornings. One night, when I woke up and turned around, the room started spinning. It scared me. For a couple of seconds, it felt like my eyes were rotating as well. What was happening to me?
“Maybe God is punishing us,” my husband said and once again I envied him a bit.
Twenty years earlier I had followed him in the bedroom a few minutes after he had just gone to bed. I had an idea and needed to tell him right away. I opened our bedroom door and shared the result of my brainstorm with him. I didn’t get an answer. I whispered his name, wanted to make sure he was still awake. Again, no answer. He completely ignored me, or he had fallen asleep in under two minutes. Then, right when I tried to close the door quietly, willing to wait until the next morning to share whatever I had thought couldn’t wait, I heard him say. “I was praying.”
I sat in the living room, and when I looked outside, I saw all the dogs run down the gravel road. Our three big dogs were in the lead, our little dog and her mom, my friends’ wiener dog, were right behind them. Somehow they had gotten out and they run as fast as they could. I didn’t even ask permission, grabbed my friend’s car keys, went outside, jumped in the car, and followed them.
My husband had taken a serious beating. His business, his pride, and his joy for so many years, no longer existed. We owed money, we had lost our home, we soon would lose the car, and he could no longer provide for us. I knew what it did to him, maybe that’s the reason why I could be so strong back then but it didn’t last. One morning I got up, and I could not find the energy to go to the bathroom. What day was it? My friend was still at home. Was it Saturday or already Sunday?
December 2009 would be the last time the three of us would have a good time together. Everything would change on New Year’s Eve. For the moment my life was still in order, as much as a life that just fell apart can be in order, to begin with. With the loss of responsibilities, there comes a feeling of freedom I did not expect.
Our truck was parked in the mud, hidden behind the kitchen building on private property, so a repo driver looking for it could not easily spot it. Would they even find us? Did the truck have a GPS tracker we didn’t know about? Technically, it wasn’t our vehicle anymore, by then it had fallen back to the bank because we had been unable to make the monthly payment we had agreed on. A contract on a piece of paper, isn’t it like a promise?
Husband and wife who had been separated see each other again, and they fall into each other’s arms. They exchange a passionate kiss, they hug and hold on to each other, then they walk into the sunset, holding hands, happy to be reunited again. That’s how it would be in the movies or in books. The perfect scenario of a married couple still being in love after so many years.