I got married in a discount gown with a low back and my older male friend said, “I though you were a good girl” when he saw the photos. I thought I was, too. Everybody told us we were children. Which is true, though not strictly speaking. We could vote and go to war, but not drink or rent a car. I suppose that says something about what the powerful think of us, but that is not my point here. My point is that neither of us had fully formed prefrontal cortexes which one needs to make long term decisions. But the more ancient, rudimentary parts of our brains—the parts…
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Valentines
He brings them home after a long Valentine’s Day full of construction paper and sticky fingers. Like all days now – with three kids in our little house – his arrival is greeted with squealing children and his wife somewhere among the quotidian shouting out a hey, babe! I’m in the laundry area this evening, stuffing too many clothes into the washing machine and trying not to hope for a Valentine because you don’t want to ruin Valentine’s Day by hoping for a Valentine. He walks back, children trailing, with a big smile and these gorgeous peachy/pink/orange roses in one hand, a box of fruit-topped chocolate in the other. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he…
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9 Years In
We started this thing as kids. We were half-children guessing at adulthood. He had a paycheck and I had a diploma and together we were going to take the world – our chunk of it anyway. Everybody has their struggle story. Ours included being torn apart for a year and a quarter while we both grew up. We battled our demons and tried our best to connect breaking spirits over 7,000 miles and the “bad times” we vowed to stick through started there. So yeah, this hasn’t been easy. And within the first few years we questioned things. Our “honeymoon phase” ended abruptly with marching orders and by the end…
