If It Isn't Exactly Love

Here's the thing about my mother.

She looks like your classic mom. She wears cardigans with birds on them and glasses. She has a plaid apron with moose on it. If she's sitting still, she's knitting.

She also has the habit of springing embarrassing or perceptive or just plain strange conversations or questions on you at the oddest moments.

Say, for example, it's a few days before Christmas. You'll be sitting in the living room, I don't know, updating your blog about how your extroverted family stresses you out. She'll be putzing with the decorations on the Christmas tree and she'll stop and say:

"Hey, Kel?"

"Yeah, Ma?"

"Have you read Fifty Shades of Grey?"

"Uhhhhh. No."

"Why do you think people do that . . . what is it called . . . You know. That weird stuff?"

"Bondage, Mom?"

"Yes! Why do people do that? Are they sick?"

After years of questions like this, my brothers and I have all developed our own coping mechanisms. Two of us will tell her she's being inappropriate and redirect the conversation. One of us will simply learn to close her laptop, get up, and walk away.

Once, over a college break, the two of us were sitting in the living room. She was knitting, I was reading. The boys were all out trap shooting or making sausage or doings something testosterone-y. I was enjoying the rare quiet in our house. Mom was making me a new scarf because Oh, it's so darn cold in Minnesota. I looked up from the novel I was reading and caught her eye.

"Hey, Kel?"

My wariness increased tenfold, instantly.

"Yeah, Ma?"

"You know your father and I have been married over 25 years, right?"

"Yes. I threw your 25th wedding anniversary party, Ma. I know."

"You know," She said, looking over her knitting at me. "Your father has changed an awful lot over that time."

Huh?

Even for her, this is unusual. My mother has never talked to me about her relationship with my father. Never. Not once in the twenty-one years I've been alive has she said "Your Dad is driving me crazy." Or "I love [whatever] about your father." We're Upper Midwestern. We don't write in dream journals. We don't see therapists. We don't talk about our feelings. We certainly do not discuss our long-term monogamous relationships with our children.

I get ready to leave. I love my folks, but I absolutely do not want to be the sounding board for whatever's coming next.

She sets her knitting down and I'm already getting out of my chair.

"You know. He's a completely different person than he used to be." She smiles. "And I love it. I get to fall in love with him all over again." She picks up her knitting and leaves me so stunned I have to sit back down.

***

"Were you planning on making a move?" I'm equal parts amused and irritated. "Because if not, I've still got to get work in the morning."

The guy next to me starts laughing. "You're so direct." He's staying over because the weather outside has taken a turn for the worst and it is legitimately dangerous to be out driving, even for the most stalwart Minnesotan. Things have been confusing between us for months now, and now despite the serendipitous confluence of cute girl, wine, Bon Iver on the radio, and snowstorm, instead of going for it, he's been inching closer to me for the past hour. 

Being a real Can-Do kind of a girl, I start to get progressively more direct. 

In an hour, he'll be asleep. I'll be restless.

***

Here's the thing about my father. 

He shows that he loves you by changing the oil in your car while you're still asleep on a Saturday morning. He will give you hubcaps for Christmas because he thinks it's funny and practical. 

He also loves my mother so much that it astounds me. 

To be perfectly clear, I adore my mom. I adore my whole family. Dad astounds me because I actually did not know it was possible to love someone the way he and my mom love one another. 

I can't remember a Valentine's Day, birthday, or anniversary where Dad didn't bring home flowers for her. He completely redoes her gardens for her every few years (this involves a staggering amount of work. My mother has lovely gardens). Years ago, when she started rock climbing he mounted a board for her in the basement so she could work on her upper body strength. He makes her soup when she's sick, breakfast on Mother's Day, takes her out to hear jazz on her birthday. He hates being away from her for more than a few days.

"So we'll be home over Thanksgiving."

My younger brother and I are discussing Thanksgiving plans. Normally, he and I spend Thanksgiving with our father, butchering deer (Full disclosure: I do very little of this.) and listening as Patrick Stewart narrates an imaginary documentary about dragons (Full disclosure: This actually happened last year and remains one of the best moment in my relationship with my younger brother). I'm a little taken aback, mainly because my Thanksgiving plans recently changed, and I was looking forward to spending the weekend in the woods.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, you know how Dad gets."

Last year he decided to spend an extra few days at deer camp. The entire three days I was there he said, on average six hundred times a day, "I miss your mom. I wish your mom was here." When she called, he raced for the phone like a teenage girl. 

"Hi honey, I love you."

***

"You can't stay."

I've barely taken my shoes off. "Excuse me?" He's finally told me where he lives and it's made me feel . . . better about our relationship.

He's in the kitchen opening the wine I've brought over. "I don't live here alone. You can't stay."

"I thought you said it was a one-bedroom." 

He looks at me and just lets my comment hang. 

It takes me awhile to understand what he means. I'm still young, afterall, and if this isn't exactly love I certainly didn't expect it to be this. When things do connect I walk though the house flicking on lights and peering into closets and medicine cabinets and dresser drawers. When I come back out I grab my wine glass, drain it, put my shoes back on, and walk out. As I'm opening the door he grabs my arm "This isn't a big deal." 

I leave. 

We'll see one another again.

***

Here's the thing about me. 

I like to be alone. I've always liked to be alone. As a kid, my Barbies had careers, fancy cars, swimming pools, tons of friends. You know what they never had? A Ken doll. They never had boyfriends or husbands. I played dress-up-as-priest-and-distribute-Communion, not dress-up-like-a-bride-and-pretend-to-get-married. As an adult, I like to stay in on Friday nights and read. I have solo dance parties to Prince in the kitchen. I am at my happiest when, after a few nights of seeing friends I come home to a clean, quiet house and spend the night doing exactly what I want to do. 

I also want to be with someone.

God, I do. I want it badly. And I hate it. I hate that my life right now isn't enough, that there seems to be something missing and that what's missing is a goddamn romantic relationship. I want to stop wanting it so badly. I'm tired of feeling like a supporting character in When Harry Met Sally.

I can't.

I can't. I don't know how. I want someone to take me out dancing to jazz on my birthday. I want to make Mimi soup for someone when he's sick. I want a chance to wear my couples Halloween costume idea with someone who will genuinely think it's awesome (A black hole and spaghettification! Come on. That's pretty great). I want to fall in love with someone again and again over the course of thirty years. I want someone to answer the phone:

"Hi honey, I love you."