Life as I See It

Dear Friends,

It’s been too many moons since I last posted.  It’s embarrassing, but that’s the truth.  Recently, a friend, Beth Wood Lahaie, whom many of you know, challenged me to begin writing a little every day.  She sent me an assignment: to write a very short story set in Seattle, with the themes of love and surprise.  And because she’s crazy, she told me I must include the words “fine needles.”  The following is my attempt; I hope you enjoy. (And thank you, Beth, for being my muse this time.)

“The Coffee Shop”

A blast of wind pulled the heavy door to the coffee shop out of her hand as she reached for it.  It was an especially cold, blustery night, even for the Pacific Northwest in February, and the sudden whoosh of wind twisted her scarf almost around her head as she stepped inside.  She untangled it as she glanced distractedly around the place.  The line was shorter than usual, and she sighed as she joined it.  She imagined all the usual customers who were in finer locales tonight for their Valentine’s meals on this, the high holy day for the world’s lovers.

She ordered her usual and moved toward her favorite table near the front window.  She liked that table because if she leaned over just enough, she could see the top of the Space Needle soaring over the neighboring buildings.  Even after living here for more than three decades, she always felt a childlike thrill at its shape, reminding her as it did of some spaceship from a science fiction movie on late night TV.  And she loved science fiction.  In science fiction, everything was possible.  Anything could happen.

Pushing at a dried glob of whipped cream on the table with one unpolished fingernail,  she awaited her hot chocolate.  She reached into her canvas bag for her book, then paused for a moment to study her fellow customers.   Here and there sat couples, hands held across the table, or arms entwined if they sat side by side.  The women, it seemed, were all dressed in reds and wines and pinks, the colors of love.  She couldn’t help but stifle a tiny smirk as she thought of her own funereal appearance tonight.  Her dark, heavy sweater, black leggings and black boots stood in somber contrast to the women around her.

“Mary?” The barista called her name and she rose to claim her venti hot chocolate with two shots of chocolate syrup.  As she did, her eyes fell on a man sitting alone at the far edge of the shop.  He wore a pleasant smile and the expectant look of one waiting on someone to arrive.   Before she could help herself she found that she was staring.   The eyes looked familiar.  The hairline caught her attention.  True, salt now generously flecked the brown hair, but there was no mistaking those eyes, even with the lines that care or laughter had cut beneath them.

She grasped her cup of chocolate, enjoying its heat beneath her fingers, and took two steps toward his table before stopping, uncertain.  Should she?  Would he?  He glanced up, and for a moment looked right through her, then his eyes widened slightly and his mouth turned up at the corners.  She felt a sensation like fine needles prickling the nape of her neck.

“Mary?”  The voice was deeper now, but still the same.  Against her will her eyes flew to his ring finger then shifted instantly to his gaze.   She struggled to maintain her neutral face.

“Bill,”  she said.  His chair scraped noisily as he stood to take her hand.  “How are you?” she asked, but all she could think about was the gold ring on his left hand.

“I’m good.  How are you?  Goodness, how long has it been?”  They stood there for one long awkward moment, smiling, still holding one another’s hand.  Finally, reclaiming her hand, she said, “What are you up to tonight?”  He smiled more broadly.

“Waiting for Jennifer.  You remember Jennifer, don’t you?”  In an instant her heart recoiled from that old stab of pain, and she felt the fool.

“Yes, yes, of course, Jennifer.”  A thousand thoughts rushed through her mind. How do I escape?  Think of something to say!  Stupid, she shouted silently, to think that he would…  At that moment the bell on the shop door tinkled, and Bill’s smile grew as he said, “Jennifer, over here, honey!”

She turned to see a twenty something blonde moving toward them.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” the young woman chirped, embracing Bill with enthusiasm.  Then she turned to look expectantly at this stranger before extending her hand to Mary with a beautiful smile.

“Hi,” she said, “I’m Jennifer.  I don’t know who you are, but I can’t wait to find out where my Dad’s been hiding you!”  She giggled and playfully punched Bill on the arm.  “You see,” she continued, “Mom’s been gone three years now, and I’ve been telling Dad it’s time.”  Bill smiled shyly at Mary.  After a moment of silence, he cleared his throat.

“Well,” he said, “I guess we should sit down and say a proper hello.”

From her new table she couldn’t see the Space Needle, but she didn’t need to.

As we walked through Costco last night on our maiden visit, Bill, Rebecca and I were in a light and breezy mood.  Having just bought our first membership, we found it an adventure to walk around and look at all the things we shouldn’t buy at all, much less in bulk.

Rebecca was in high spirits.  The day had been a TAKS testing day for her, and she had plenty of thirteen-year-old energy to burn off.  She reminded me so much of myself at that age, chattering happily, remarking about each product that caught her eye, relating funny things her teachers or peers had said that day at school. 

“There’s the kind we drink, Mom!” she chirped, pointing at a 24-pack of individual cans of V8 fruit juice.  Much to her delight, we put a pack in our cart so they could go in her school lunches.  She pointed out many other things she wanted us to buy as we made our way up and down the aisles, but it wasn’t the food that grabbed my attention–it was how often she called me Mom and reached out her hand to hold mine, or leaned in for a hug.

Later that night, as I lay in bed turning the events of the day over in my mind as we women tend to do, my thoughts couldn’t help but go back to the day two-and-a-half years ago when I first realized I was going to marry her daddy.  She was barely eleven then, a freckle-faced girl heading toward her teen years at a speed far too fast to satisfy her father. 

Throughout my courtship with Bill I had been sensitive to the fact that Rebecca was a little girl who had lost her mother to a terrible disease.  Yet she also needed a mother, and in the weeks leading up to our wedding day I wondered how it was going to work.  What would she call me?  Would she resent me for not being her real mom?  Would I feel like a real mother? Would I be able to love her like a real mother?  Big questions, with answers that didn’t come right away. 

As with so many things, our transformation into a family and into mother and daughter has been a journey of many small steps.  For Bill and me, it was easy.  We loved each other and had made a life commitment to one another before God and precious family and friends. And although I loved Rebecca already (an easy task, for she is so lovable!), there was still the “becoming” left to do, becoming mother and daughter.

The word “becoming” is a beautiful word. The Oxford American Desk Dictionary’s first definition is “begin to be.” Begin to be. What promise there is in those three words.  Just think! Every human on this planet started out as a few cells that “began to be.”  Every love we have felt for human or animal, every ability or skill we possess, every language we speak, every desire we harbor or accomplishment we achieve, was once just a “begin to be.”

As I consider how Rebecca and I are beginning to be mother and daughter, I think of Philippians 1:6, that reads, “…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”  Of course, Paul is speaking here to the Philippians about their growth in Christ, but the passage also speaks to me of the things God wants to accomplish in my life. 

Our Father promises in those words to finish whatever work He has started in us.  And since I am certain that my marrying Bill and “becoming” the mother of three children was God’s will for my life, I can rest in the confidence that God plans to finish the good work He started in all of our lives in the Hurlburt family.

So I’m happy to report that some of the questions I had before my marriage have answers now.  Yes, I feel like a real mother.  Yes, I love her like a real mother.  And yes, sometimes she even calls me Mom.

Perhaps it’s my gender or perhaps it’s my temperament, but it seems I am always and forever trying to figure things out.  Sometimes ideas burst on my brain like a sudden rainshower, surprising me with their freshness and unpredictableness.  Other times they come to me as a seed sprouts–a slow germinating of a thought until a tiny green shoot bursts through seeking the light.  It could be a snippet of a sermon from the radio, a lyric from a song, or a sentence from a conversation that bounces around in my head like a rubber ball on a racquetball court.

I think most of us women are like this, with a bit of something always working its way through our thought processes, waiting to be spat out as some of the roughly 25,000 words we speak each day. (Contrast that with the estimated 10,000 words men speak daily.)

Lately, one of the subjects I’ve been ruminating on is the differences between men and women.  You’re probably saying, “Well, that’s certainly not a new topic.”  And you’re right–it’s not.  No doubt Adam and Eve experienced moments when they stood in opposite ends of their luscious, perfect garden and asked God what in the world He was thinking.  But for me, a new wife in the middle part of her life, this trying to understand “us” is a never ending source of wonder.

Sure, as a single woman I spent many an hour trying to understand men.  I sat around with my girlfriends as we shared our experiences with and ignorance of men, dissecting their most casual remarks, seeking reasons for their failure to call after dates, and believing that we somehow could understand what went on between their hairy ears.  And we no doubt have all heard about various books purporting to explain the mystery surrounding the male vs. female mind, the most memorable being the whole women are from Venus, men are from Mars idea.

But now that I’m living it, now that I go to bed every night and wake up every morning with the Martian in my bed, I have a whole new respect for the subject.  Not just why are we so different, but how are we different?  What happens in my brain that doesn’t happen in his, or vice versa?  Are the differences structural, chemical, emotional, environmental? Were we born this way or made this way?

Part of the “answer” came to me about six months ago as I was reading an article in a magazine.  Men, the author theorized, are like waffles.  Every aspect of their lives is compartmentalized, with each little square in the waffle keeping its contents neatly contained.  Women, on the other hand, are like a plate of spaghetti.  Pull one strand of spaghetti, and the whole pile moves.  Everything is interconnected.  Everything matters to everything else. Everything is as important as everything else.

In order to illustrate how this spaghetti vs. waffle concept might play out, let’s consider how my husband is able to fall asleep at night before my moisturizer has dried. A few sweet words, a cuddle, then over he goes and in less time than I can fluff my pillow, he is snoring.  And taking the anecdotal evidence from that trustworthy zeitgeist, Facebook, I know that the same thing happens in marital beds all across this vast, sleepy nation.

So here’s my theory, bolstered by that other writer’s spaghetti vs. waffle concept. The waffle that is a man’s brain has a tidy little compartment labeled “sleep.” At the appropriate time (or perhaps not appropriate, depending on how much his wife still wanted to say before she lost him to his REM), a man’s brain says, “Time to open my sleep compartment.”  He opens it, he goes to sleep, he snores, he rests.  Meanwhile, his wife’s brain says, “I’m so tired, I really need to go to sleep.”  But before it can do that, another thought intrudes: “But before I sleep, I just want to think for a moment about the interaction I had with Sarah.” A brief pause here while her brain pulls the piece of Sarah spaghetti.  “Hmmm,” the woman thinks, “Why did Sarah give me that weird look at lunch?”  The “weird look” strand is attached to the “insecurity” spaghetti, so insecurity comes along for the ride.  And of course, in seconds the whole pile of spaghetti slides dangerously close to the edge of the plate and near the lap of the sleepy woman.  Now she is reconsidering any number of moments of weird looks and insecurity throughout her life.  Like that friend in ninth grade who was mean to her in the cafeteria ,and the year she tried out for the musical but didn’t make it, and so on.  These thoughts must be considered and corralled before she can sleep.  A man, according to this theory, can simply decide not to look at the “insecurity” compartment today, and he’s good to go. 

This is just one example of what having spaghetti instead of a waffle means to us women.  And although this example is a negative one, our spaghetti brains operate like this on all thoughts and experiences.  Perhaps this is why for many of us women, when we converse we touch on a number of smaller, seemingly disconnected subjects before we eventually get around to our main idea.  This can drive the men in our lives (and sometimes other women) crazy.  But it all makes sense to us because it’s all connected. 

So every day men and women deal with the onslaught of information, issues, personal interactions and so on in this very different way.  In closing, there is obviously far more that could be said on this subject; these are just the meandering thoughts of one woman learning how to know one man. If you have more ideas about the differences between men and woman, please do post a response.

While you’re thinking, I’ll be trying to figure something else out.  It’s a big world and there’s a lot to ponder.  But this, for today, is life as I see it.