The closer Christmas came, the more I noticed the date in my mind.<\/p>\n
December 24.<\/p>\n
I had not marked it on my calendar.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to.<\/p>\n
It was already there, attached to the yellow paper and the photographs in Wendell's garage.<\/p>\n
I found myself thinking about the message while doing ordinary things.<\/p>\n
I thought about it while making coffee.<\/p>\n
I thought about it while folding laundry.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I remembered the look on Wendell's face when he saw me standing beneath the photographs.<\/p>\n
That expression had stayed with me.<\/p>\n
He had looked like somebody whose private thoughts had suddenly become visible.<\/p>\n
I understood that feeling.<\/p>\n
There were things I kept to myself because I wasn't ready to explain them.<\/p>\n
There were memories I could share easily and others I guarded even from people I loved.<\/p>\n
But I had never expected Wendell to know those boundaries without my telling him.<\/p>\n
I had tried to learn his without making him explain them.<\/p>\n
In doing so, I had allowed my own needs to disappear.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to do that anymore.<\/p>\n
I wanted to enjoy the anticipation of Christmas without turning it into another test of whether Wendell cared about me.<\/p>\n
I also wanted him to understand that the day mattered because he had made it matter.<\/p>\n
The date wasn't just a date now.<\/p>\n
It had become a promise neither of us had fully explained.<\/p>\n
I wondered what would happen if the day arrived and nothing changed.<\/p>\n
Would I feel foolish for hoping?<\/p>\n
Would I be angry with him?<\/p>\n
Would I find myself back where I had started, making excuses for a man who couldn't let me into his life?<\/p>\n
I didn't want to spend the weeks leading up to Christmas rehearsing disappointments that hadn't happened.<\/p>\n
So I tried to be present.<\/p>\n
When Wendell and I spoke, I listened to what he actually said.<\/p>\n
When he showed affection, I accepted it without demanding that it prove something about the future.<\/p>\n
When he made me laugh, I let myself enjoy it.<\/p>\n
That last part was harder than it sounds.<\/p>\n
After Dwight died, happiness sometimes felt like something I had to justify.<\/p>\n
I could enjoy a pleasant afternoon and still feel guilty when I returned home.<\/p>\n
I could laugh with Wendell and then wonder whether I had laughed too freely.<\/p>\n
It was as if grief had become a responsibility I was afraid to neglect.<\/p>\n
I knew that wasn't fair to myself.<\/p>\n
I knew it wasn't what love was supposed to require.<\/p>\n
Still, old habits are stubborn.<\/p>\n
One evening, I found myself looking at Dwight's photograph while thinking about the Christmas ahead.<\/p>\n
I remembered how he used to approach the holiday.<\/p>\n
He wasn't a man who needed everything to be perfect.<\/p>\n
He cared more about the people around the table than the food on it.<\/p>\n
If something went wrong, he usually found a way to make a joke.<\/p>\n
I missed that about him.<\/p>\n
I missed the ease of being with somebody who knew my history because he had lived through so much of it beside me.<\/p>\n
Wendell couldn't replace that.<\/p>\n
He wasn't supposed to.<\/p>\n
He had his own life, his own memories, and his own reasons for doing things the way he did.<\/p>\n
If I wanted a relationship with him, I had to allow it to become something different from the marriage I had lost.<\/p>\n
That realization brought sadness.<\/p>\n
It also brought relief.<\/p>\n
I didn't have to choose between remembering Dwight and caring about Wendell.<\/p>\n
I didn't have to make one man smaller to make room for the other.<\/p>\n
I could carry the past with me without demanding that the future resemble it.<\/p>\n
That was what I wanted to believe.<\/p>\n
And for the first time, I thought I might be able to live that way.<\/p>\n
When Wendell mentioned Christmas again, I told him I was looking forward to seeing him.<\/p>\n
I didn't hide behind a joke.<\/p>\n
I didn't pretend the day was unimportant.<\/p>\n
He looked pleased, though he seemed careful not to show too much.<\/p>\n
"I want it to be a good day," he said.<\/p>\n
"So do I."<\/p>\n
He hesitated.<\/p>\n
"I've been working on things."<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
"What kind of things?"<\/p>\n
He smiled a little.<\/p>\n
"The kind I should have told you about sooner."<\/p>\n
I felt a warmth spread through my chest.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a complete answer.<\/p>\n
But it was a different kind of answer from the ones I had received before.<\/p>\n
He was acknowledging the secrecy rather than pretending it had never happened.<\/p>\n
I appreciated that.<\/p>\n
I also understood that he was asking me to be patient a little longer.<\/p>\n
I considered telling him that I had already been patient for months.<\/p>\n
The words came close to my lips.<\/p>\n
Then I stopped.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to use the past as a weapon.<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell him what I needed now.<\/p>\n
"I can wait until Christmas," I said. "But I don't want to spend the day feeling like I'm still outside your life."<\/p>\n
His smile disappeared.<\/p>\n
He listened carefully.<\/p>\n
"I understand."<\/p>\n
I searched his face.<\/p>\n
"Do you?"<\/p>\n
"I think I do."<\/p>\n
That answer wasn't perfect.<\/p>\n
At least he hadn't pretended to understand everything.<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
"Then that's what matters to me."<\/p>\n
He took my hand.<\/p>\n
I let him hold it.<\/p>\n
I wasn't surrendering my judgment.<\/p>\n
I was allowing myself to hope.<\/p>\n
Those are not the same thing, although I had confused them before.<\/p>\n
After we parted that evening, I felt calmer.<\/p>\n
I had said what I needed to say.<\/p>\n
I had given Wendell a chance to respond.<\/p>\n
Now it was his turn to decide what he would do with that chance.<\/p>\n
I couldn't make the decision for him.<\/p>\n
And I couldn't protect myself from every possible disappointment.<\/p>\n
I had spent too much of my life trying to do that.<\/p>\n
If Christmas Eve turned out differently from what I imagined, I would deal with it when it came.<\/p>\n
If Wendell kept his word, I would let myself enjoy what he had prepared.<\/p>\n
For once, I wanted to meet the day as it was rather than as I feared it might be.<\/p>\n
I thought of the yellow paper again.<\/p>\n
For my Winnie.<\/p>\n
The words had been written in a plain hand on an ordinary sheet.<\/p>\n
They had not promised perfection.<\/p>\n
They had simply told me that I mattered to someone.<\/p>\n
I decided I could accept that much without demanding that it answer every question.<\/p>\n
Not yet.<\/p>\n
The closer Christmas came, the more I noticed the date in my mind. December 24. I had not marked it on my calendar. I didn't need to. It was already … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36536,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36516\/revisions\/36536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}