It’s Just a Story

“Honey,” you start, “you know it takes six months to get a medical license in California.”

I didn’t know that.  And you know I didn’t know that, but the way you said it made the question sound more like a sentence, the dulled exasperation in your voice placing a period where the question mark should be.

Seconds earlier, I had been on the computer seeing if you’d be allowed to practice in the U.K. when you’re finally done with residency.  Days earlier, I had been on Google seeing what it would cost for me to participate in a language immersion program somewhere at least 6 hours by plane away.

I’ve been ready to crawl out of my skin for some time, imagining I could forcefully peel away my own outer layer for no particular reason other than I wanted to.  It’s stifling in here.

Tonight you sounded less amused by my rambling speech about living abroad or moving overseas or getting the fuck out of town.  Tonight I could hear the frustration come up to the roof of your mouth, something you’re usually so good at masking.  I hear you silently wondering about me, why I half-form these erratic dreams, why I want to drag you along with me when that’s obviously not what you want, why it’s so hard for me just to be here and with you when it’s not hard at all for you to be here and with me.

Months, and years, from now you’ll have learned from experience that I get this way sometimes.  You’ll have watched as I protest my life, offering you sentences that sound to you like pots and pans clanging — a conversational tantrum from someone, in terms of decades, is traversing the terrible twos.  You’ll have seen me calm back down after a few weeks of not getting what I want, my eventual realization that tantrums aren’t currency evinced in my demeanor.  I’ll stop clanging my words.   I’ll forget my outlandish ideas and we’ll cuddle up to watch movies at night and in the afternoons, sit on fountains in the park.  It’ll be nice.  You’ll write the words “just a phase” in your journal and move on.  I’ll make you and Ray dinner and we’ll talk about how great air conditioning is during these hot, humid summers.

When it starts again, you’ll can’t believe that I’d be doing this again — didn’t we already go over this?  When the pots and pans come out once more, you’ll discover you’re less patient than you were the first time. Or the first first time.  The past incidents indicate to you a nature not to be taken seriously.  Like the last time, it’ll blow over.  You’ll come to this conclusion as you stop trying to reason with me all together.

And weeks after, you’ll find you were right.  I’ll be cheerily chirping about new restaurants I want to try, as we walk hand in hand toward the subway station, no mention of selling off all our things and diving into places where we don’t know anyone or anything.  You’ll find the relief in this latest storm passing to be less satisfying than the last time.  You’ll write “over” in your journal, subconsciously hoping to cast a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I’ll come up to you and whisper in your ear and we’ll go to bed with the ease and comfort of several years between us.

But it’ll come up again.  It’ll come up after we’ve moved back to California, after the wedding, after the cars and the house and the yard and the kids and the music lessons and gym memberships and the tests and the financial aid packages and the empty nest.  It’ll come up over and over, so regularly, that it’ll be years before you realize you’ve stopped writing about it, you’ve stopped writing anything at all about me.  You’ll wonder if all this time, I had been trying to tell you something.

And that thought will make you look out our window, into the yard, at me hunched over inspecting something in my small suburban garden, my sun hat and floral sleeves the visual reminder of our cumulative years.

I’ll see you looking out at me and I’ll wave a crumpled spotted glove, and squint and smile.  You’ll raise your eyebrows, like you started doing when firstborn began talking, and smile and wave as I turn back around to do my work.

It’s then that you’ll see the periodic presence of the pots and pans wasn’t about phases or tantrums.  It’s because sacrifice is hard, and those instruments were all I had to tell my story.