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September 4, 2002 - The Good Life
It is good, it's good, it's so good, all of it - I can't even tell you how good. But I'll try.
I'm sitting here in Toby's office. He had to run up to Boston (poor thing!) to tie up a loose end or two. His office is on the back part of the house. The south-facing part. The kitchen faces south, too. Our bedroom and our living room face north; my office and the dining room have windows to the west. The water lies to the east of us, the whole of the country to our west. Two years I spent in that other city, that other house, and I can't even tell you which way the street in front of it ran. I drive everywhere, now. I get behind the wheel of the car with my old fearlessness and strike out for wherever, sure of the sun and my own head to guide me. The phone rings here. We have two friends - my sister and Toby's former coworker Annie. On Monday night they both came over for dinner. I guess for most people this would hardly bear mentioning, but for us it is like a miracle. We went out to dinner Saturday night, and the restaurant was fifteen minutes away, not forty-five, and we found a parking space nearby. Another miracle.
Our street - which runs from east to west - is wide and green and lined with trees and huge Victorian houses with wraparound porches. We are near a library and a pastry shop and a small cafe - I just walked home from the library, in fact. I'm on the third floor looking out the window and the trees in the backyard go up even higher than I am. Before we moved in, worry about the kitchen literally kept me up nights. But I planned my assault meticulously and now that the dust has settled I am happier with it than any other kitchen in the world. The pure joy of having a gas stove once again! and the dishwasher hasn't even made its maiden voyage yet. The deck is amazing, even though it's not quite finished. The trellis still needs to be put on over the top, and we hesitate to set up too much outdoor furniture because we want to stay out of the workmen's way. But we walk out there countless times every day, just to experience it. And the pets! Ruby and Lucifer both - I can hardly persuade them to come back inside. Ruby's birthday was yesterday - she's five - and for her present I got her a little round braided rug and put it out on the deck for her and she'd sun herself on it all day if I let her. The bathroom is pink. Very, very pink, the sort of bubblegum pink that really can't be helped. I offset it as best I could with white and pale pink towels, a gauzy white shower curtain lightly sprinkled with pale pink ribbon roses, and raspberry-sherbet rugs for the floor. It's pink, it's beautiful, it may be my favorite room in the house.
I waited to write for awhile because the move was so bad. I said - and Toby didn't exactly disagree with me - that the week that we moved was the worst week of our marriage. There's a danger in being part of a relationship that's good most of the time: when the bad days come along, you find that you're not equipped to deal with them. We've gotten into the habit of "taking turns" being upset - when one of us is in a bad mood, the other will help him (or her) out of it, at least temporarily, with a joke or a touch or a smile. But that week found us both in full panic mode, and for the first time in almost five years of marriage we were unable to help each other. It was terrifying, while it lasted. All that matters now, though, is that we're here, and we got our security deposit back in full, and this new life is turning out to be even better than our wildest dreams. |
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