As Christmas drew closer, I found myself paying more attention to the way Wendell spoke about the future.<\/p>\n
He didn't make grand promises.<\/p>\n
He didn't tell me that everything would be perfect.<\/p>\n
Instead, he spoke about small things he hoped we might do together.<\/p>\n
He asked what I liked to eat.<\/p>\n
He asked whether I preferred a quiet evening or something more lively.<\/p>\n
He listened when I told him I wasn't sure how I would feel on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n
I appreciated that.<\/p>\n
I didn't want him to assume that he knew what would make me happy simply because he cared about me.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to ask.<\/p>\n
I wanted us to learn each other as we were, not as we imagined the other person should be.<\/p>\n
That was something I had learned through marriage.<\/p>\n
Love did not make two people identical.<\/p>\n
It gave them a reason to keep trying to understand their differences.<\/p>\n
Dwight and I had not always agreed.<\/p>\n
We had misunderstood each other sometimes.<\/p>\n
We had said things we wished we could take back.<\/p>\n
But we had built a life by learning how to return to the conversation after the difficult moments passed.<\/p>\n
I had never thought much about that while he was alive.<\/p>\n
I had taken the ordinary work of a marriage for granted.<\/p>\n
Now I understood how much it had mattered.<\/p>\n
With Wendell, I was starting again.<\/p>\n
I couldn't expect him to know everything Dwight had known.<\/p>\n
I couldn't expect our relationship to follow the same patterns.<\/p>\n
And I couldn't assume that because Wendell struggled with one part of intimacy, he would struggle with every part.<\/p>\n
I needed to give him the chance to show me who he was.<\/p>\n
At the same time, I needed to be honest about what I required.<\/p>\n
I was learning that those two things could exist together.<\/p>\n
I could be patient without being silent.<\/p>\n
I could be understanding without excusing everything.<\/p>\n
I could care for Wendell without pretending that his decisions had never hurt me.<\/p>\n
The thought made me feel steadier.<\/p>\n
For the first time, I wasn't waiting for Christmas Eve to decide whether my relationship was worth keeping.<\/p>\n
I was paying attention to what happened between us before the day arrived.<\/p>\n
That mattered more than I had realized.<\/p>\n
If Wendell was learning to trust me, I wanted to recognize it.<\/p>\n
If he was avoiding the conversation again, I wanted to recognize that too.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to let one special day erase the months that had come before it.<\/p>\n
Nor did I want the months that had come before it to prevent me from enjoying something good.<\/p>\n
I wanted to see the whole picture.<\/p>\n
That was harder than choosing one simple explanation.<\/p>\n
But it was more honest.<\/p>\n
One evening, I found myself thinking about the photographs again.<\/p>\n
I remembered the way Wendell had looked at them before he looked at the yellow paper.<\/p>\n
It had been a quick movement.<\/p>\n
Still, I remembered it.<\/p>\n
The photographs had clearly mattered to him.<\/p>\n
I wondered what he saw when he looked at them.<\/p>\n
Did they remind him of something he had hoped to do?<\/p>\n
Did they make him think about the future?<\/p>\n
Did he look at them and imagine me standing there, asking questions he wasn't ready to answer?<\/p>\n
I couldn't know.<\/p>\n
I was careful not to turn those questions into facts.<\/p>\n
That had become important to me.<\/p>\n
For months, I had filled Wendell's silence with my own fears.<\/p>\n
Now I was trying to leave space for his actual words.<\/p>\n
I wanted to hear them.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to trust me enough to speak plainly.<\/p>\n
And I wanted to be the kind of person who could listen without deciding what the answer meant before he finished giving it.<\/p>\n
I didn't always succeed.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I caught myself building a theory around a passing expression.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I wanted to ask another question before the first one had been answered.<\/p>\n
But I was learning to stop.<\/p>\n
I could wait a little longer without pretending the question had disappeared.<\/p>\n
I could let uncertainty exist without allowing it to take over everything else.<\/p>\n
It was not a comfortable lesson.<\/p>\n
It was a useful one.<\/p>\n
I thought about the yellow paper and the two pieces of blue tape.<\/p>\n
They were ordinary things.<\/p>\n
Nothing expensive.<\/p>\n
Nothing that would impress a stranger.<\/p>\n
Yet the message they held had moved me more than I could explain.<\/p>\n
For my Winnie.<\/p>\n
I had spent so long wondering whether I mattered enough to be included in Wendell's private life.<\/p>\n
Now I knew that, at least in some way, he had been thinking about me when I wasn't there.<\/p>\n
That knowledge brought comfort.<\/p>\n
It also brought responsibility.<\/p>\n
I needed to tell him what his gesture had meant to me.<\/p>\n
Not because he deserved praise for making me feel better after months of uncertainty.<\/p>\n
Because the truth mattered on both sides.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to know that the message had touched me.<\/p>\n
I also wanted him to know that I still needed honesty.<\/p>\n
I could appreciate his intentions without pretending his methods had been perfect.<\/p>\n
That seemed like a fair thing to ask of a relationship.<\/p>\n
I had spent too many years believing that love meant being easy to please.<\/p>\n
I had tried to be agreeable.<\/p>\n
I had tried not to ask for too much.<\/p>\n
I had tried to make my needs small enough that nobody would feel burdened by them.<\/p>\n
But a person could be easy to please and still be deeply unhappy.<\/p>\n
I had learned that after Dwight died, when I discovered how much of my daily life had depended on having someone beside me.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to repeat that mistake with Wendell.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be kind.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be patient.<\/p>\n
I also wanted to be honest enough to say when something hurt.<\/p>\n
If he was going to be part of my life, he needed to know the woman I actually was.<\/p>\n
Not just the woman who smiled and changed the subject.<\/p>\n
Not just the woman who accepted every explanation.<\/p>\n
The woman who had questions.<\/p>\n
The woman who missed her husband.<\/p>\n
The woman who wanted companionship but did not want to disappear inside another person's plans.<\/p>\n
I was learning to accept that version of myself.<\/p>\n
It took longer than I expected.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I still felt guilty for wanting things.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I wondered whether I was asking for too much by expecting Wendell to explain why he had kept his home from me.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered that I had not asked him to be perfect.<\/p>\n
I had asked him to let me know him.<\/p>\n
That was not an unreasonable request.<\/p>\n
It was the foundation of the relationship I wanted.<\/p>\n
As Christmas Eve approached, I felt the old loneliness return in small waves.<\/p>\n
I knew the day might bring memories I couldn't control.<\/p>\n
I knew I might miss Dwight more than I expected.<\/p>\n
I also knew that I didn't have to spend the day proving that I was happy.<\/p>\n
If I felt sad, I could say so.<\/p>\n
If I wanted to laugh, I could laugh.<\/p>\n
If I needed a quiet moment, I could take one.<\/p>\n
I hoped Wendell would understand.<\/p>\n
I believed he was trying to.<\/p>\n
That belief was not certainty.<\/p>\n
It was a choice based on what I had seen and heard.<\/p>\n
I could make that choice without giving up my right to change my mind if the truth turned out differently.<\/p>\n
For now, I was willing to move forward.<\/p>\n
I wanted to see what Wendell had been preparing.<\/p>\n
I wanted to understand why he had written those words.<\/p>\n
And I wanted to discover whether the man who had kept me outside his home could learn to welcome me inside his life.<\/p>\n
The yellow paper had given me a reason to hope.<\/p>\n
It had not given me every answer.<\/p>\n
I was beginning to understand that the answers would have to come from us, through the difficult conversations neither of us could avoid forever.<\/p>\n
I hoped we were ready for them.<\/p>\n
As Christmas drew closer, I found myself paying more attention to the way Wendell spoke about the future. He didn't make grand promises. He didn't tell me that everything would … <\/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-36518","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\/36518","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=36518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36538,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36518\/revisions\/36538"}],"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=36518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}