For Bigger and Smaller

"You were my best friend."

The touch of melodrama was coming from me this time.

Brenda came over for a bit this afternoon. She was headed home from work... Tualatin to Molalla... 30 miles.

It was really just to spend a little time with the boys. I reminded them they were going to put the Christmas decorations away... and so the three of them did it together.

I paid bills, continued doing the laundry.

We are getting better at this... I was going to say separation, in the sense that our family has been pulled apart... but "separation" is also a quasi legal term that is not even close to how this family has been pulled apart.

The boys loved the time with her. They miss her... especially Jeremiah, who still mentions each night, when I put him to bed, that Mom and Rocky are gone.

I took the opportunity to run a couple of quick errands.

She and I have grown up together. I met her when I was 24. She was just 18.

Boy, we had no clue. Of course we thought we did. But, as we all know, no one knows more about everything than a young adult.

Sickness and in great health. Rich enough to pay our bills, and poor enough to not. Joys of pregnancies and adoptions, and the grief of tubal ligations, handicapped children, and infant death.

Before we moved to Canby we used to get up early before work each morning, to have breakfast and coffee and watch Little House on the Prairie.

We longed for such simple times which tested simple virtues.

Brenda and I had a lot of problems. There were problems of anger, and resentment, and money, and a I suppose in the last few years... a hidden motto of Semper Infidelis.

That was a touch bitter, wasn't it?

At any rate... Little by little Brenda and I are learning to relate to each other in a new way. Not the way we slowly learned to relate to each other.

She said goodbye to the boys... and I walked her out.

"You know... there seems so much that could be said..." I told her.

Her eyes were locked on mine.

We know each other. I knew about this affair long before I proved it. I know what she is thinking by the way she holds her head, where she puts her hands, the smallest of shifts in her face.

"There's no point to any of it though..."

She said nothing. All the previous meetings we have had since the divorce, she has done nearly all the talking.

"There isn't any point in telling you what we should have done or what went wrong.

"And I know that anything I could tell you about yourself or myself wouldn't matter because you either you already know it, or you wouldn't believe it, or, most importantly, it isn't my place anymore.

"But... something that has really changed in my life is... well...

"You were my best friend."

And that covered it. In that moment I told her that I was still paying for this. That I am changing... that I don't need her help... but... I told her in that simple statement that I have lost a wife, a lover, and someone I had walked a very, very long way with. I had told her I missed adult conversation, and sharing the small details as much as the large... and I felt betrayed.