The Wedding Dress Love note was a lie

I came home yesterday after a wonderful weekend with my daughter and found Ben had left this note on my desk. It kind of sums it all up.We are happiest when we are together. Since my trip to see Cassie was to be there when she choose a wedding dress, it was a time of reflection for me as well. And since Ben and I were in pretty much constant communication, it made me miss him more.

Through the magic of face time, Ben got to visit with Cassie and Mark along with me. But there were a few glitches. I was at a restaurant with them, in constant chat with Ben and sending him "you should be here" photos of his favorite foods, when he decided to face time me. I'd been enjoying a bit of libation and when suddenly challenged with etiquette of video chat in a restaurant - I lost it. The ring was loud, his voice was loud and all very public. Instead of adjusting my phone's volume, I literally threw the phone into my purse. 

Cassie is an amazing, beautiful young woman. At 27 she is a lawyer and working with her finance at his father's firm near NYC. She passed the bars in both New Jersey and New York on the first try. She developed an eye for good design by growing up with Ben and I. It's no surprise that she has taken control of every aspect of what will be an beautiful wedding with amazing attention to detail, design and organization. It's four months after the proposal and a year before the wedding and Cassie already has secured the perfect location, caterer, rabbi and she's chosen a string quartet that masterfully composes modern songs into a classic presentation. I've heard them and they are amazing. The song she's chosen for the bride's entrance is perfect...classical, elegant and with just the right amount of Disney Princess.

She showed me photo after photo of details she's gathered on Pinterest. It helps that I am a designer, but I could see how it will all come together. It will be stunning.

The bridal gallery was more than a bit intimidating - row after row of designer wedding gowns with prices that started at $3,000. There were 4 stations where brides to be were trying on gowns before huge framed mirrors with friends and mom's watching, smiling, commenting. When it was her turn, Cassie calmly showed a few photos and gave her price range and dress concept to the sales woman who then gathered dresses and took Cassie to try each on. There is a saying that when the bride finds the right dress, she will cry. I did not realize the same would hold true for the bride's mother. It only took 2 dresses. The second one had every single detail Cassie had specified and seeing her in it took everyone's breath away, including all the other brides to be and the entire sales staff.  The dress was exactly her size and looked like it was designed for every curve of her body. Think Jessica Rabbit. Not only will she be beautiful, but she will be the sexiest woman at her wedding. But the final touch, the thing that brought she and I to tears was the veil. As it was clipped to the back of her hair there was a sense of what all this was about. She was marrying the man she loves and who loves her.

When the sales woman suggested wearing her mother's veil, Cas and I burst out laughing. "Tell her about your wedding to Ben, Mom" I explained that Ben and I and everyone at the wedding wore tie dyed shirts we made ourselves, that Cas and her brother stood up with us, and that we improvised our wedding on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. While the woman was struggling with how to respond, Cassie said "it was awesome."

Whether its a $50,000 wedding or a $500 wedding, when you marry the love of your life - it's awesome.

Best Friends

We've been unbelievably busy for last 2 months, and it's been a wonderful mix of design and photography. And every new client has been so wonderful. With some we don't want the interaction to stop.

It's amazing to look back and realize Ben and I have been a successful working team for a long long time.We balance each other out, each able to insert our own style of creativity to whatever we do. For many clients, I think it is that we work together. We are seen as "adorable." I think in actuality is it Ben that is adorable. He is completely adorable, funny, sweet and captivating.

I keep writing about us, but I'm so in that space right now that I can't help it. We are not just partners in work and marriage, but we are each other's best friend. In some ways, its the friend part that's the glue that holds us together. 

So maybe its the work, or the attention, or the easy way we are together... but it feels like now is the best part. I keep feeling his wedding ring as we hold hands and it fills me with ... everything, all at once. 

Time passes love grows

Lately I've taken to wearing this necklace by Thomas Mann. It was given to me years ago my my husband. The charms read: Time passes love lives. Time passes love waits. Time passes love stays. Time passes love grows.

It's like we've started all over again. <3>

3/6/2016

And we've ended.

Time passed and he has passed me by.

There are no more words

The love note

 

I looked up from the desk in his office to see this love note I wrote for him. I had tucked it into this year's Valentine. It means the world to me that he saved it and even more that it's displayed on a shelf for the world to see. 

He tells me almost every day that he will be with me forever, but I don't need a note. I'm right here. He's right here. We are here, together.

An average day

He dances in and out of the room and back in again. He's so happy it's infectious.

I love the smell of him as he wraps me up in his arms. I love the feel of his heart beating against my chest and the tug on my lower lip as he pulls back from a kiss. I know and love every bit of him.

But most of all, I love that he loves me.

The scars on our hearts

I wrote this post a year ago, give or take. I took it down because I'd been blind and believed I was crazy. Most of those months seemed so normal, filled with the same number of "I love you more than anythings" kisses and bedtime snuggling watching  bad TV.  But there were weeks in his basement recording music with his friends and my son. I was not included, but  I wanted to give him time of his own. At first I ignored that voice in my heart. I wanted so much for there to be nothing to find, I did not think I could bear another gash across my heart. When that pain came with all the rush of missing time and misdirection I went completely info the deepest manic depressive state I've ever had, The light of my world turned off and I was left in the dark,And still I believed I was responsible and it was my crazy that put me there.That it was something that was my fault. Amplified by a horrible thing I'd done 16 years ago. It was a pain that left me empty and ready to just stop living. Thank you my sister listing to me and for not taking me to a hospital psych eval. Thank you to my mother in law for talking me down off the emotional ledge. Thank you for the tears and the flowers, and the passwords, and the posters and notes, and the begging - but mostly thank you for showing me I had not been crazy, and that you promise to forever be there for me and be the person I need you to be. You say never, ever again. You say I know that. You say that I know you love me more than anything.

It's the same time time frame as last year. Its truly gone. Our life is back normal, filled with the same number of "I love you more than anythings" kisses and bedtime snuggling watching  bad TV.  I'm ok, perhaps a bit more medicated But there are triggers he doesn't see. I am not the same woman that I once was but not because of the scar. It's the life that I chose.

Symbols

I don't know what to say except "it's complicated."

I ordered this heart today. My husband knew I wanted a Thomas Mann heart for my 60th birthday. The day should not be upsetting, but it is because I am afraid my feelings about always being young at HEART might be overshadowed by the feeling of being old. It does not make it easier that my husband is 22 years younger and fabulously bizarre and unique. I love him now as much as I did when I met him 19 years ago online in "The White Rose Inn" - a chat room on AOL where people role played through words in a game called the "Vampire Masquerade." I started as a cat who roamed the Inn watching and interacting remotely through inner monologue, commenting playfully on the people in the inn.

That is where I first "saw" my husband. He was bizarre and funny and completely captivating. Nym was his character's name. He had other characters he also played as did most of the people sitting at their computers, connecting with the world through a new and addicting way. You could be anyone or anything you wanted to be. As character, they interacted with other characters and their "environment." As a cat, I saw that characters and the people playing them were engaging emotionally. There were in battle, banded together as "families," and as couples. They fell in and out of love. There was passion and fear. As in life, your character could "die" and you could no longer be that person you were so invested in. With a roll of the dice your fate was determined. Nym was as the center of that. While he was funny and the darling of everyone around him, he was also powerful enough that if you had to go head to head with him, your character would die.

I wanted to be loved. To be in love. To be happier than my world beyond AOL. It was wrong. It was cheating, but I abandoned the cat and became Tink. As Tink, I was able to have feelings. Real feelings. I fell in love with Nym. He fell in love with me. What should have been pretend wasn't. I still love him the same way I did then. Completely with fierce intensity. The characters, Nym and Tink, said they had "no gaps" no space between them. And when I met him in the real world, it was obvious to us, to everyone - that we were meant to be together. Both our lives turned upside down, but we were together. Against all odds, we are likely one of the only couples that met in that world, in love, still in love, married, together...

There have been moments in time where we were torn apart. HEARTS were broken and put back together. We both remember those painful times in a heartbeat. Sometimes we let those feelings out, a weapon, hurtful, not meaning to pull us apart. We hurt each other with those words. Regretting them the moment they are said. Hoping the turmoil they cause will pass quickly, moving past and back to being as we have always been since the moment we met. We are supposed to be together and nothing feels better - more intense and wonderful.

Yes, it's complicated.

The heart, this heart, like all hearts before it represent both sides. It represents the sad times and the happy ones. I have them tattooed on me, but they are written on our beating hearts as well. I am sorry. I am always sorry for the scars I left on his heart. I know, even as a new scar is scratched next to the others that it will heal. They always do. I know he never means to hurt me and I never mean to hurt him. No matter what - we always come back to the point we started at - closing the gap till there is no gap.

This heart, though it fills me with a mix of happy and sad will heal. In time the heart always heals, so I am choosing to heal it now. I have less time than I did at the start. Less time to dwell on petty pain, a moment there, a moment unmeant. I choose to see only the love in the heart.

All any of us have is now. With a roll of the dice, we could be removed from this world and cast into another, be it dark or light. I want to pass with no regrets, no anger, nothing unfinished or unsaid. I hope for light, where there can be no gaps always and forever.

It does not have to be complicated.

I love you Ben. I will always love you. More than anything.

times like this

If I could move my house, like dorothy's in a tornado, I would have it spin into the air and land somewhere in California, near Halfmoon bay. Once the dust had cleared I would look out from my sun room to a sweeping view of the hills to the beach to the pounding surf where I've spent so many hours picking up sea glass.

I would cruise down the coast to walk the pier in Santa Cruz where we were married and ride the Cyclone over and over until I was so dizzy I would stumble down the boardwalk laughing. A sea gull would hover, it's wings spread wide to catch the wind in a balancing act. Not moving forward or backward - still - time passing without change, until a tasty morsel brings it streaking down with a shriek. I would treat myself to a tart carmel apple with nuts on the bottom. I would remember. I was 17 and my little sister and I ran into the surf there with our Dad. He did his best to teach us to body surf in the cold water. He told us of beaches in New York and Virgina. He bought us unlimited rides and we rode the ups and downs and ins and outs till we could not bear another revolution. I would remember. The smells of the steaming pots of crab and shrimp - mixed with the scent of the sea - and the barks of the huge sea lions resting on the boards under the pier. I would remember the walks in the sand and the fried squid I slipped into your hand as we walked away from the patio of the cafe. You screamed, just a bit, and pretended to be mad, but really you were thinking of a way to get me back.

I would hike though the hills and redwoods and ride my bike along familiar roads, drifting with the sense of home and permanence. I would stop at Alice's or Goat Rock or Skyline or the water temple off the road closed off for only bikes. I would insist we visit Flioli and tell the story I've told so many times that "Heaven can Wait" was shot there.

I would cruise into Niles Canyon on my way to visit my son in Davis - stopping first in Niles to look for collectibles in the stores that claim Charlie Chaplin as their own. Coffee. Yellow hills. A sense of place and time. The bigger picture of "home."

I would shop at Whole Foods and Trader Joes and eat sushi and burritos and drink wine and laugh with friends. So many friends - all so different - all loving and open. I could call anyone and get the same welcome. Their homes, their lives open to me - whenever - where ever. Stanford - walking the dish - riding through the quad - remembering. My kids on skates, weaving in and out of pillars. Chalk on my hands - buildering the arch in the same way we went bouldering. The smells of eucalyptus near the mausoleums. The burrs that caught in my bike tires and caused a flat near the shopping center. The paths. The pasts.

I would walk through the Zoo and buy plastic animals in the gift shop. I would spend hours lost on the trails through Golden Gate park. I would remember. The concerts we stumbled upon. Skating through the trails. Skates on Haight. Tea in the Japanese tea garden. The koi. I would remember playing disc golf and the desire to stop each time I drove through the park from one end of the city to the other. Twin peaks. Castro. Mission. I would remember the Musee du Mechanique. The bread, the bay, the sellers lined up with cheap beads and leather. The chowder.

I would remember. Everything. Everyone. I would remember why I called it home. Why I said I never wanted to leave. I would remember why I did.

It is logical, why we moved. I would not give up this house, this perfect home. I would not give up your family or the millions of new memories we've yet to make here. But my heart's home will forever be 2400 miles away.

I can smell the sea.



4/22/17

Update:
http://fiveminutememories.blogspot.com/2017/04/into-garden-of-earthly-delights.html