A decade later.

 

My inlaws moved last month. I was really struggling with this, because while my husband and I are separated, and have been for years, I truly see them as my family. When I met my husband and he brought me to visit them, they had just bought their house and he hadn’t even visited it before. We weren’t even a couple, though we certainly had flirted with the idea I suppose. It was surprise to me when he said we should take a nap and he snuggled up to me in that bed. So, the home symbolized everything I thought I was or believed in the last 20 years. Later, we would be married in the yard there, our chuppah finally falling over during hurricane Sandy. 

Over the years, my husband and I still maintained a sexual and romantic relationship despite his long term relationship with someone new. He is gay, and while my ovaries felt differently, now that I am in menopause, I am pretty clear that I prefer women. We raised a gaggle of children together, some from my previous marriage, and some from our relationship. I struggled with what later turned out to be a hormonal allergy to progesterone and a chronic health disorder, and he struggle with what can only be described as unbridled rage. I won’t go into the turmoil that ensued, but the last decade was disastrous for our kids and me. Financially, starting over, trying to claw my way to sustainability while watching his fortunes and ease grow has been painful and for years I wanted revenge, or togetherness, or a piece of the pie…. Or whatever I thought somehow I was due… without seeing that I should have been gone long ago. 

I think this year I finally began to understand anything I will have, I will have to build, even now that I am in my 50s and still raising teenagers. Any pain or scars that exist now with me or the children are our job to work through. Closure never comes, not even in the form of watching him make the same mistakes with someone else. And none of it negates the sense of love, safety, and connection I felt at his parents’ home, with them, and the love I feel for the life I helped build even if it has gone forward without me. 

So, a week before his parents’s move, our kids and I paid a visit. We got to meet my children’s newest cousin, and I got to feel part of the family still even without him there. They moved to a much smaller space, so we went through piles, taking what spoke to us and what we could fit in the car. Right before we left, I ran out to the back corner of the yard, were the post holes for the chuppah were just slightly discolored dirt, and I scooped some soil into a jar. 

I’ve since become clear that 2026 is the year this all ends, and we move to break the pieces of this lego tower of a life apart for real. I threw the jar on a shelf in my room and forgot about it… so much so that this last day over winter break I looked at it and thought… what the fuck is that? 

Then I remembered. 

And I paused. 

I wondered if I was trying to hold on or if I was letting go. 

And then I saw it… small and reaching towards that weak northern winter sun, pointed exactly where the sun crests the hill of my stupid little valley every day. A sprout. No, wait two… or maybe even three. Little clover sprouts. And the moss is greening up. And there is an onion grass sprout. What I thought were clumps of dirt or rocks are the acorns I now remember throwing in there. 

Whatever is next is coming regardless of my readiness. But it is green and stretching towards the sun, full of promise that things come and go, but life persists.

And, so do I.