By the time Wednesday rolled around, whatever good vibes I’d been feeling over the weekend had been smashed to smithereens. Every morning had been a battle to get the kids out the door and into the car before school started.
We ran out of milk in the middle of breakfast Monday morning and everything went downhill after that. I forgot Blake’s first soccer practice Monday night and he came home from school on Tuesday completely devastated because he was the only one of his friends not there. I hadn’t gotten along with Abby in days. She’d been unmanageable, disobedient and just difficult. Jace, well Jace was two. So he was always a challenge.
And Lucy had taken everything green from her room and lugged it down to the basement earlier this evening.
Her behavior hurt the most. I realized the purging of everything green was my fault. I hadn’t meant to scar her little life so drastically. I had been angry and upset and I had included my four-year-old daughter in something I should have been protecting her from.
But my partner was gone. The man that I was supposed to run to when I needed advice, encouragement and support. The man that was supposed to listen to me when I needed to talk, when I just needed to get words out of my chest. The man that was supposed to tug me against his chest and promise that everything would be okay. That I would be okay.
He was gone.
He’d left me.
And I didn’t know what to do now.
I made bad decisions. I yelled at my children more than I should. I forgot everything. And I couldn’t seem to help this family get back to center.
Before bed, I’d set the kids up with a movie on my bed and taken Lucy to her bedroom alone so we could chat. I sat her down on her bed with everything she’d taken down to the basement on the floor in front of us, and I’d explained why the color green disturbed me so much right now.
I told her that it reminded me of her daddy, and his gorgeous green eyes. I told her how much I loved his eyes and how much I loved him. I told her that when I saw that color, I couldn’t help but think of him and when I thought of him, I missed him. I told her how hard it was for me to miss him and that I wished he hadn’t left us.
I told her that I didn’t hate the color green after all, but that I loved it. I told her it was my most favorite color of all. I reminded her that her eyes were also green, just like her daddy’s and that I loved looking at them too. I promised her that green wouldn’t make me sad anymore, because it would help me remember how much I loved Daddy and how much he loved his family, how much he loved her.
We hugged each other for a very long time, while she told me how much she missed him too. We spent time together putting each item back in its place and picking up her room. She had needed alone time with her mother and I had needed to work through that with her.
By the time I tucked the kids into bed and kissed them all, Lucy felt better but I had never missed Grady more. I ached with my grief. I felt it in my bones. I couldn’t think from the weight of it.
Everything reminded me of him. Everything. The house. The furniture. My room. My bed. My kids. My own skin. I couldn’t escape this pain. And even though I didn’t want to, not really… I needed a break. I needed just a small reprieve from the endless pressure of it.
So I’d waited for the kids to fall asleep, then grabbed the baby monitor and made sure the front of the house was locked up. I slipped out the back patio door and breathed in the warm night.
Grady had built a fire pit in the back yard and set some Adirondack chairs around it. He and I had never spent much time back here alone, which was why I chose this place tonight. I needed to escape his memory for a little while and this was the only place I could think of without abandoning the kids completely.
With four kids, we had always been too exhausted after the chaos of bedtime to trek out here when they finally fell asleep. We’d spent our nights cuddled on the couch watching our favorite sitcoms. Or if he had work to do, I would read next to him while he tapped away at his laptop. We always meant to come out here, but it never happened.
I relaxed into the chair and stared out at the dark backyard. A floodlight had clicked on when I first came out here, but it didn’t offer light beyond the edge of our property. No houses stood behind us to bounce back any light. Beyond our fence sat a nature preserve of thin forest with gangly trees and the tiniest creek. The land grew wild for a few miles, keeping builders from purchasing the land and turning it into something habitable.
I had loved that about this neighborhood when we decided to build here, but now it felt lonely. I wanted activity to watch and fill my thoughts. I wanted to spy on my neighbors so I could occupy my head with assumptions about their lives and forget about my own.
The landscaping lights to Ben’s backyard clicked on and I heard his sliding glass door swish open before his tall figure appeared in the frame.
“Liz!” Ben’s voice boomed through the quiet night and my spiraling thoughts.
“Hi, Ben.” I cursed the floodlight for destroying any hopes of invisibility. He probably wanted to go for a swim, but now felt awkward about it. My yard was at a significant slope. The part closer to the house was higher than his and that gave me a great view into his backyard, even though there was a fence.
“I didn’t want to scare you again,” he grinned at me. “I thought I should give you some warning.”
“Thank you,” I tried to laugh. It fell flat.
“Want some company?”
I could honestly say that was the very last thing I expected him to say. But how to decline politely? I didn’t want company. I didn’t even know why he offered.
“I have wine!”
Well, that changed things. “Alright,” I conceded. “Bring the wine!”
He disappeared into the house and I had two minutes to severely regret my decision. I didn’t want to spend my peaceful evening sharing wine with my weird next door neighbor! I didn’t even want to spend tonight with myself.
I had come out here for escape. And now this…
This didn’t feel like escape.