True Love Makes the Beloved Free

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I have thought long and hard about how to share this part of the Js' story. There really isn't a right way to go about it, but there are certainly many variations on the wrong way. I hope, dear and loving readers, that I'm not choosing the wrong way in choosing to share the news here.

Josh and I are parting ways. We have been separated, more or less legally, for going on two years now. We still share the townhouse, but since May I've been living in my parents' home. The boys travel between us, two days on, two days off, and every other weekend.

Whether this news comes as a sadness, a surprise, a relief, or some combination of the three, it has come to be my reality. At least we are no longer in limbo, wondering whether or not to use the terms husband and wife in the present tense.

I want to share some of Josh's own words here, since his voice needs to be heard as well as mine. I hope I have his permission to share them. The day after we met to discuss what to do with the house and how best to divide our time between the boys, he wrote me this:

Even though I'm indulging no hope or expectation, and very much looking at this as an ending, I know I will never write you off, nor close the door to you. It's not something I could do if I wanted to. I feel like the way I married you -- the ceremony and celebration entirely aside -- was the building of a gateway into me, just for you. A permanent one. That's the big gamble of true marriage, I think. You build a thing that can't be taken apart once it's been made, even if you need to be apart as people. So I just wanted to tell you this: that gate is always going to be yours if you need it. I hope that doesn't come across as a weight or a way of clinging a little. It's meant to be the opposite: freeing, because like thich says, true love makes the beloved free. It's an acknowledgment on my part of what is. I'm moving on, but I'd be lying if I pretended the gate was gone.

I get emotional just reading that, and if you know Josh or I well, you will know we will always love one another. We will always be the best of friends to one another. We will always put the needs of our boys above our own, and share the knee-bending amazement that only parents can in light of the sheer existence of the children we created together. What was between us will never be undone, a simple truth that grounds me and consoles me.

Feel free to message us, write us, call us, text us, drop by and offer us your love. But let it be said: from every ending there is a new beginning. As I said before, we are each growing our own way, and there is joy in what may come of that.

xoxox J

Never Blush To Dream

a lost love

slides into your bed again

there's no treason

though the blood stirs

when a stranger speaks his name

each lover keeps the home

he made within your mind

and has a key

to lie with you unbidden

so long as you are holding

gentle thoughts of him

2

never feel a guilt

to hear me

whisper still within the night

old loves lurk in eyes

that brighten

to the new enchanter's sight

i too must rise from warmth

to drift with other ghosts

from worldly view

yet i'll come into your bed

some night again

and dream myself alive in you

"Never blush to dream" by Earle Birney

Psyche Opening The Door Into Cupid's Garden 
John William Waterhouse

Devoted

Three cheers for fathers, great and small. They make your favourite, least healthy meals and let you eat with your elbows on the table. They read comic books to you and do all the right voices, including Captain Haddock's spit-heavy Scottish brogue ~ Blistering barnacles!

Three cheers for J, who does his duty as a daddy not because it is a duty, but because he is devoted. And E and M are lucky beyond their blue-bright eyes to have this very father. 

Poor, Shy Love

Some things are hard to say. 

Perhaps that needs to be rephrased: Some things are hard to say when they are true. It is actually quite easy to lie, despite what most people would have you believe. E knows this. It's hard for him to say he's sorry, but he'll do it. He'll do it with an eye roll and an exaggerated drawl that makes the apology sound more like a toy running on dying batteries: "Sooohhh-ooo-reeeeee!" 

True things can be easy to say, you might argue. Like when someone asks if you'd like some chocolate ice cream (and you happen to really love chocolate ice cream). It's easy to say, "Oh yes. Yes please." J has experimented with this by offering all manner of sweet frozen treats, and her boys always give her an honest answer.

But this isn't really about ice cream, or saying you're sorry when you're not. This is about saying what's hard to say, and in this instance it's easier for J to say it here, through the protective screen. You, dear readers, are easy to confide in. 

This post is about J and her dad, and what's hard to say for one person is better said by another, far more articulate and with CanLit cred to boot. In writing of her relationship with her father, Gabrielle Roy (google her if the name draws a blank) wrote, "The truth was that we were two of a kind, each living in fear of finding our poor, shy love for each other misunderstood." And so it is with J and her dad. 

She can say the words I love you when she's walking him into the nuclear medicine wing, fully aware that he'd rather she not make a fuss: it's just one test and then one surgery and maybe another after that; it's just the course of life when you're over 60 and never wore sunscreen and don't appear to fear anything, let alone cancer. She can say I'll see you after, fully aware that she is not 100% this is true, but it won't help to tell him that when she says those words she really means I'm scared this will be the last time I see you. 

What she really means is she's scared she'll go her whole life never really being sure he knows how much she loves him, this gentle, loyal, hardworking, dedicated man who was always somewhat at sea with such a sensitive child as J. 

Lost And Found

Through an unforeseen, inevitable series of events, J finds herself living in her parents' home once more. She is 35 years-old. This feels both backwards and strange. There is shame, discomfort. Regardless, she is here. She has come home.

There isn't really space for J in the old family home, so she offers to tackle the job of cleaning out her dad's old den, which hasn't been used -- let's be honest -- for more than storing recycling and seasonal decorations since J was a teenager. You do the math.

To restore the den to its former dignity is a formidable task and J does not undertake it lightly. She is inspired by The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which she has recently finished reading. Following the specific steps and recommendations of the author, organizational-sensei Marie Kondo, J enters the room and formally kneels in the only patch of floor space she can see. She closes her eyes and addresses the room in her mind. She thanks the space for having served her family for so many years and asks permission to tidy it so that it might have a new life. Then she begins. 

Project den: Day 1

According to the KonMari method, it's best to tidy by category. J begins with the most obvious item: books. J's father is an avid reader, an erstwhile encyclopedia salesman, and a reclusive bookworm. It doesn't take J long to fill 22 bags and boxes to their breaking point with paperbacks and hardcovers.

She quickly moves onto the next category: papers. And this is when she finds an envelope addressed to her former self.

The envelope contains a piece of lined looseleaf paper with the date pencilled in the corner: Sept. 30/79. What follows is the story of J's birth, written in her dad's surprisingly legible hand. Maybe this isn't such a miraculous find. J knows the story, right down to the dirty-brown details of the meconium cocktail in which she first bathed. What is miraculous, though -- or at the very least magically coincidental -- is that J's father wrote this story for her, addressed that envelope to her, and that J herself should be the one to find it. 

This is a life-changing magical find. J could easily have let the den and its contents rot for another 10 or 20 years, however many her dad has left on this earth. She may have found it while cleaning out his estate and sorting through his personal effects as part of some funereal preparation. But she didn't. She found it now, proof that the day she was born had some profound impact on this inscrutable man, her father. Proof that he loved her enough to record the story of her entry into this world. Proof that even at 35 she is the luckiest little girl. She can bask at least one day longer in the knowledge that her daddy loves her, always did, even if it got tricky to tell her so.