Getting to know a girl is exciting. Friendships are one thing, but a new romantic relationship takes things to a whole new level. I want to understand her, what makes her sad, what makes her happy, and do my best to ensure her life is full of the things that make her happy. I have to admit, though, a selfish part of me is a little thankful she doesn't just have a completely perfect and fully satisfied life. If she did, why would she need me? I know that sounds awful, but I want to have a purpose in her life, and I want to help her. If she doesn't need any help at all, how can I do that.
I don't want to sound like a monster, I'm just being honest. But even with all of this in the back of my mind, it was still devastating when, after suggesting that she could come meet my family over the summer, I asked her about hers. That was when I learned she was an only child of a single parent who was a single parent due to death, a death that happened on the day Christina was born. I can't even imagine my life without my mother or my younger sisters. If I had grown up with just my father raising me, I probably would have been a completely different person, harsher and more bitter and less open about my emotions. I'm realizing that my mothers emotional displays, as over the top as they often are, are what let me know it was okay to show and feel emotion. It's unhealthy to take things to the extreme of either of my parents, but a balance, somewhere between the two, is desirable. With that in mind, I wasn't ashamed to have cried a little when Christina told me her story. In fact, I'm kind-of proud that I was able to shed some tears for her. I think that connection, that empathy, is really important in a relationship.
Christina says that it doesn't really hurt anymore, that she's used to living life without a mother, and she's pretty much an adult herself now anyway, but I can't imagine that it never hurts at all. I'm sure it would still hurt me, even after all those years. I trust Christina; if she's comfortable enough telling me the story, I'm sure she's being honest about how its still affecting her or not affecting her, but if she ever does realize and admit that it's still painful, I won't be too surprised.
Well that's enough sadness and despair. To kick things over to a lighter note, I learned that Christina and I share a random interest in sign language! I took a sign language class last semester and she's been in the sign language club for a full year. Neither of us knows more than the alphabet and a few key phrases, but still, it's fun to share that common secret language. I think we drive Zach and Bridget a little nuts though, because when one of us goes over to the others dorm room, we like to use our sign language skills to have those secret conversations. We never say anything bad about Zach or Bridget, not really, just things like "Bridget party" if Bridget says something about her sorority and "random Zach" when Zach says or does or wants to do something random. I think by now at least Zach has figured it out and minds a little less. Bridget just rolls her eyes at us and doesn't say anything, though at first she used to respond by flipping me off, but then she'd smile and laugh, so I guess it was okay. Oh, by the way, Bridget and Christina are roommates. Turns out Bridget doesn't even actually live at the sorority house, though Zach certainly thought she did while they were dating. I guess he just never went up to her room, since she didn't actually have one there officially. Who know.
I also learned that Christina never had any pets while she was growing up. She suspects her father didn't want her to have to deal with something dying, but she claims she could have handled it. I think she wishes she had had a pet of some kind. She really likes Steve (my beta fish) and I told her she should get one for her dorm room, too. "Maybe after the summer," she said.
"Fish can be a little tricky to keep alive," I warned her, "but I'll help you out."
She seemed more than happy with that. She seems pretty excited to meet the animals on our farm, too. I've told her that we do eat some of the chickens, but she laughed and said she wouldn't expect us not to. "I'm not a vegetarian or anything," she said, "and it's not like death is a forbidden topic. I can handle it."
I blush a little and apologize, to which she tells me there's no need and starts asking about the barn cats I had mentioned: how many, what colors, do they have names. I enjoy telling her about them, and with my mom's love of animals, I think this will give her and Christina something to bond over, which is certainly a nice thought. I hear horror stories sometimes about girlfriends and moms not getting along. I know Zach's mom met Lizzy one time, and seemed plenty content with what she observed, though it wasn't for very long. I'm pretty sure Lizzy still refuses to let Zach ever meet her mother, even though her mother lives like four miles from campus. But oh well, that's something for the two of them to sort out.
But Christina, Christina is great. She wants me to meet her dad, she wants to meet my family, she takes an interest in my interests. She likes literature, which is great because I love to read, too. The sign language thing is fun. She is more musical than I am, but when I point that out she laughs and says, "Barely." She's fun and nice and smart and funny. Sometimes she seems to put herself down a little, and I think she's still pretty bummed about missing track season, but when we were talking about that in front of Bridget one time, Bridget just rolled her eyes and said, "Give it a rest! If you hadn't messed up your foot, you never would have met Brady."
Christina laughed and looked at Bridget and said, "Yeah, because my best friend who was dating his best friend never thought that make the two of us would hit it off."
"Yeah, whatever," Bridget said, "you just keep giving me crap for that." And she put in her headphones and at least pretended to be focused on whatever magazine she was reading.
Christina just looked over at me and smiled, and reached for my hand. "I am thankful we got together," she said. "I think this makes it worth having missed the track season." When she said that, I couldn't have been happier.
-----
Alyse wanted a family and she wanted it soon. She was so excited by the thought of bringing another life into the world, a life that was the merging of our two souls, as she described it. I was terrified at the thought, but I couldn't help but smile when I saw the joy in her eyes.
How soon we wanted to have children was the one point of contention in our otherwise happy marriage. I was in no major rush. Though I definitely did want to have a baby with this beautiful woman who was my wife, I just didn't quite feel ready yet. "No one ever feels ready," Alyse told me. "At least that's what all the books say."
"Do you feel ready?" I asked her.
"Yes," she said without hesitation.
"Counter point," I responded.
Alyse just laughed. She wanted a baby so bad, but she understood my hesitation, and she never pushed me, she just eventually won me over with her exuberance and love. Some might call it manipulation, but I know it was love. Alyse didn't have a manipulative bone in her body.
She was so excited when she found out she was pregnant. I felt that typical mix of terror and joy. Joyous thoughts of "I'm going to be a father with this woman!" mixed with the terror of, "Oh God, I'm going to have to be a father." My own father had never been horrible, but he had never been particularly great either. So who did I have to learn from? Alyse just told me that with my gentle spirit and my love, I had nothing to worry about, and I chose to make myself believe her.
And so we waited, with anxious anticipation. As the baby inside her grew day by day, we were just longing to hold our beautiful bundle of joy in our arms and become a complete family together.
-----
I really like Brady's girlfriend. I asked my husband what he thought of her and he just shrugged and grunted, but I think he liked her, too. She's certainly not a farm girl, but I think she appreciates our country life. She certainly liked the kittens and was mostly okay with the chickens, too. She complimented my cooking and said fresh eggs were delicious for breakfast. She even offered to go collect some eggs! I think she's a good match for Brady, and I know he'll be good to her, too.
-----
I've heard it said that no boy is ever good enough for a father's little girl, but if my girl has to start dating someone, this Brady guy seems pretty good. I just hope he's not playing her. I know some guys are like that. They act all tough and macho or they seem like they're real gentleman and they make a girl think she's attracted to them and then they cast her aside or they say or do horrible things to her. I know about those kind of guys all too well. Sometimes it seems like nice guys have no chance against guys like that, but then, every once in a while, a guy like me just happens to get lucky...
I really hope Brady's a guy like me. Not to sound boastful, but I consider myself one of the good guys. I think Christina's mother was happy when she was married to me, even though it did cost her her life. I hope this guy doesn't cost Christina her life. I'm talking in the figurative sense. Though I certainly hope he won't cost her her life in the literal sense, I figure that's pretty unlikely to happen. But anyway, my girl is strong. Even if he does turn out to be a jerk, she'll come through this, and I see no evidence so far of him being a jerk, so I'll choose to trust him as long as Christina does.
-----
For those last five or six weeks of the semester, after Lizzy and I got back together, I did everything I could to keep Christina and Lizzy apart. I wasn't worried about Lizzy coming into contact with Bridget. I was worried about Lizzy coming into contact with Christina. Even though she never mentioned the pageant again after that first night, I was sure she resented Christina for winning. If those two got together in the same room... well I didn't want to be there and I certainly didn't want to be responsible. And if Lizzy ever found out that Christina didn't even care that much about her victory, well I'm sure that would have made it any worse.
So for those final weeks of the semester, I frequently suggested Brady go over to Christina's instead of coming over here, made an effort to meet Lizzy in public more often, and made sure to tell Brady where I was going when I took Lizzy out in public so that he and Christina wouldn't accidentally find themselves in the same spot. At first, Brady tried to just laugh off my concerns as me being as crazy as Lizzy herself, but the more I kept with it, the more worried he seemed to get. I didn't mean to worry him, but if I worried him a little, it was worth it to keep Christina safe from Lizzy's wrath. I admit, I it probably seemed like I was being melodramatic and over cautious, attributes more often attributed to Brady than to me, but living with a dude like that for two years, you can't help but have him rub off on you a little, and better safe than sorry. If it was my own safety, I wouldn't be so worried, but I wanted to keep Brady and his girl free from torment.
Over the summer, I had a lot less control since Brady and I were hundreds of miles apart. Knowing that Lizzy and Christina were left alone in the same city made it in some ways a lot more difficult and nerve-wracking, but I got around it as best as I could by talking to Lizzy frequently and even inviting her out to stay with me and my family for a couple weeks, an offer she seemed happy to accept. And she still never once mentioned Christina or the beauty pageant. Not only that, but she hardly mentioned beauty pageants at all that whole summer, and only competed in one, which she handily won. I started to think maybe I had been worried for nothing. Maybe Lizzy wasn't as obsessive as I had thought she was.
And then we returned to school the next semester. Much to my surprise, Lizzy decided to enroll in school, though she chose a local community college rather than my school. She said she needed to get some sort of management certification to advance at work. She was afraid she wouldn't be able to spend as much time with me as before, but we would still make it work. She said all of that, but still she seemed to manage to find her way over to my dorm room five days during those first two weeks. Brady was there every time, and she was strangely polite to him, which made me a little nervous, and then on that fifth visit, she came out and asked him, "Hey Brady, are you still dating that girl? That one who won the beauty pageant? Was Christine her name?"
My heart jumped into my throat as I looked nervously at Brady. He returned my look of uncertainty, and then looked over at Lizzy to say. "Yeah. Her name's Christina. Why?"
Lizzy seemed to hesitate a little. I couldn't quite tell if she was acting or genuine but she said, "It's a shame I never see her around. She seemed like a sweet girl. We should go out on a double date sometime. I'd love to pick her brain about what she thought of the pageant and how she won."
"Oh boy," I thought and tried to flash a warning to Brady, but he was smart enough to handle himself and said, "I'll have to check with her to see when she's free. I know we'll all pretty busy..."
Lizzy shrugged, either missing or choosing to ignore that Brady was trying to get out of this. "Well if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out," she said. And then she looked at me and said in a rather serious tone with a bit of a glare in her eyes, "But I'd really like to get to know her better."
-----
When I told Christina about Lizzy's request to go on a double date, she smiled and said, "Yeah, that would be fun. I'm sure we can make that work."
I leaned in and said in a more hushed tone, "No, I don't think you understand, Christina. Lizzy is... well... she's a little unbalanced. Zach is dating her and even he thinks she's still jealous of you."
Christina laughed. "Jealous of me? She doesn't even know me."
"Jealous of your win at that beauty pageant."
Christina folded her hands and leaned in to match me. "The pageant last year?" she asked. Her eyebrows raised in surprise. "You're kidding, right?"
I shook my head. "I wish I was."
She leaned back and sighed as she put her hands behind her head. Then she surprised me by saying, "What's the worst she can do?"
My eyes grew wide and then I thought about that. What was the worst she could do? What was the worst I really expected Lizzy to do?
"It's not like she's going to strangle me in the middle of a public restaurant," Christina said. "And I can take a few harsh words. I'll know she doesn't really mean them."
"But that's the thing," I protested, "she probably will mean them."
Christina shrugged. "Well that's her problem then," she said.
I couldn't help but smile. I often had wished Christina would be more tough, more confident, and now she was, and just at the time when I was being a wimp. "You're right, it is," I agreed. Then I said, "You're full of surprises."
Christina smiled. "I'm just happy because I went to the doctor yesterday and my ankle is completely healed. I'm allowed to start training for track season again."
And so it was settled. Lizzy would get her double date after all. I knew Zach would be scared about it, but if Christina knew what she was up against and still wasn't afraid, why should we be. Christina was right. It was Lizzy's problem. And if Lizzy chose to be a bully, maybe someone sweet and kind like Christina was just what we needed to counter her.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment