WARNING: before settling down into this & successive posts - which might take all day, given I gotta vote & meet with contractor this morning - grab your tea & biscuits and get cozy. Verbosity forthcoming; processing is much simpler than usual for some reason - but still LOTS.
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B took off yesterday afternoon, to make it back in time to pick up D at college in NC and take her back home to SC to vote (her first election; that state's rules) and the worst of the wind storm around - allegorical and meteorological - is starting to die down.
It was well after midnight when he pulled in last Tuesday. Then, after 12 hrs on the road - the last 6 after dark when it's hard for him to see - it took a couple hours to unwind enough to try to sleep. I had kept the sheherd's pie warm for him - but he couldn't eat at that point. So "fortified" coffee was substituted instead. I know better than drinking coffee any time other than in the morning... but by then, my nerves were shot too. It was almost noon before we started getting motivated the next morning.
This was the first time he's been here without the kids in the house. So when he was sufficiently awake, he started unloading while I futzed in the kitchen, to feed him. Then, I went out to help him finish up. Once he starts a task - he'll stick with it - no drink, no food until it's done - and that could be 3 am. So I kinda have to put my foot down, bribe him, and otherwise get his attention off the task enough to realize he has other needs. This is not a bad thing, per se; it just needs moderation for his own good.
I realized that "arrival day" that life with this man is going to be a constant adventure. LOLOL. He calls it needing adult supervision... but it's clear we can decide what needs doing and he doesn't need or want me around to do it. (Sometimes the two sets of hands is safer or easier or faster.) This lets me use the "divide & conquer" strategy that works so well on a farm. I wasn't that successful at getting Hol to see how it worked. Took longer. B just knows that system works real well.
Communication, privacy, time-outs/downtime vs togetherness... all that just naturally is a good fit between us. We are the same way as far as organization and habits. Because one of his eardrums is punctured (product of his work)... he is hard of hearing. That's kind of frustrating; plus he talks to me when I'm doing/listening to something else - so I don't hear him all the time either. But he isn't resistant to hearing aids. I spent too much time close to those big Marshall amplifiers back in the day but my problem is just focus. LOL.
We were watching some tv after dinner, and he just came right out with - "if you want to, we could adopt another kid". I was a tad STUNNED; coming out of the blue like that... my intuition tells me it's something he's given a lot of thought to and is drawn to and then waited to see whether that felt right, when he was with me.
So I told him as much of the truth as I knew right then - the thought had crossed my mind but I didn't know how I felt about it. I'd spent my 20s as a mom, and with Hol boomeranging several times - was still kinda looking forward to being footloose at this age. I can definitely see us parenting together; again that's just something that's naturallly there between us even though my experience is that my ideas on parenting aren't exactly compatible with many men's ideas. So, I told him I couldn't decide that on the spot and needed to think about it.
Explained how Hol and I have talked about it for a long time; not just since the miscarriages. And how sensitive that topic was for her. I can just imagine her reaction to an announcement like that! Even though I know she'd do her best to be happy for us, it would be a constant thorn in her side. My lips are sealed on that topic (with her) until I have sorted out his/my feelings on this. I'm picking up an inkling of an impression that he thinks women are always looking for the next little one to raise - and his nurturing side, goes there too. I want to untangle this some more and won't "decide" anything until he's been here awhile. It would make more sense, to perhaps educate Hol on the process and help her through her own decisions. But we'll see. That idea would take a major adjustment on my part; my previous planning.
So, he's used to shouldering massive responsibilities after raising his own adopted daughter as a single father in this society. (Lots of horror stories with the system in that experience. Tupp could relate.) Now that she's beginning her own life - he's facing the same kind of empty nest issues moms do. The "needing to be needed" is painted large there, I think. Plus he's a very active personality; prefers to constantly be engaged in something all-consuming.
----------flash forward to yesterday; leave taking -----------
He was getting awake after a rough night with his back pain, and intent on finishing one more job around here when he said he had something weird to ask me. I was already doing my organizational flitting around; tidying up. So, I stopped in mid-flight and said, "what's that babe?" He asked if I still wanted to do this. I had to sit down.
Halloween night, we'd built a fire pit blaze... and both of us relinquished some important aspects of our past that we'd been identifying with, clinging to for definition. And lots of truth spilled out - both the stories and the emotions. I didn't want him to leave so soon. The connection between us is that strong - but we're still just beginning to learn to adapt to each other and having someone like the other in our lives again. So there are strong feelings there.
He wasn't looking at me, so I put my hands on his face and made him look at me and said yes. The tears started to roll. The depth and kind of betrayals and abandonment he's suffered make what I've been through look like a cakewalk. The details about that came out after that, later in the day. He wasn't looking for a relationship when he came here to fix up my jeeps a year ago; after 20 years his life seemed all sorted out to be some solitary journey. But he's been strong enough to walk out of his own darkness toward the light and get physicallly more healthy over that time too.
Hol is already looking for a version of the "gory details" of what our visit consisted of... and she's bewildered by how mum I am. I haven't come up with a "reader's digest version" yet for public consumption and I don't know how much he's willing to be open about with anyone but me. So I don't feel at liberty to blab much about it.
Suffice it to say, that we both stripped all the ego-narratives away from our images (to the best of our ability right now) and showed each other exactly who we were hoping that we wouldn't be rejected. And we're both unbelievably shocked and immensely grateful that we found the opposite of rejection.
