As Christmas drew closer, I found myself thinking about the date written beneath the yellow paper.<\/p>\n
December 24.<\/p>\n
It was an ordinary date to anyone who didn't know the reason behind it.<\/p>\n
For me, it had become a question I carried from one day to the next.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether Wendell had chosen it because of something that had happened in his life.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether it was connected to the photographs.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether it had anything to do with the paint or the ramp.<\/p>\n
I could make guesses all day and still know nothing.<\/p>\n
So I tried to put the questions aside when there was something else in front of me.<\/p>\n
I had errands to run.<\/p>\n
There were things to clean and things to put away.<\/p>\n
I had small decisions to make about the holiday.<\/p>\n
I did those things because they were part of my life, not because they could distract me forever.<\/p>\n
I had learned that keeping busy could help for a while.<\/p>\n
It could not answer a question that needed another person's voice.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I caught myself rehearsing what I would say to Wendell.<\/p>\n
I would tell him I didn't need everything explained at once.<\/p>\n
I would tell him that I understood people had private matters.<\/p>\n
I would tell him that I cared about him.<\/p>\n
Then I would tell him that caring did not mean I could live comfortably with a door that never opened.<\/p>\n
The words sounded reasonable in my mind.<\/p>\n
Out loud, I worried they might sound like an accusation.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to accuse him of anything.<\/p>\n
I wanted him to understand how the silence felt from my side.<\/p>\n
There was a difference.<\/p>\n
I knew what it was like to be afraid of losing someone.<\/p>\n
After Dwight died, I had carried that fear into places where it didn't belong.<\/p>\n
I had worried about small changes.<\/p>\n
I had read too much into ordinary silences.<\/p>\n
I had sometimes prepared myself for bad news when nothing bad was happening.<\/p>\n
Grief had made uncertainty feel dangerous.<\/p>\n
It had also taught me that I could survive things I once believed would break me.<\/p>\n
I was still here.<\/p>\n
I could love someone and still ask a difficult question.<\/p>\n
I could hear an answer I didn't expect and decide what to do next.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to protect myself by pretending not to care.<\/p>\n
That realization brought me a little peace.<\/p>\n
It didn't make the questions disappear.<\/p>\n
But it made them feel less like something I had to solve before I could breathe.<\/p>\n
When I saw Wendell again, I tried to meet him where he was.<\/p>\n
I didn't begin by asking about the photographs.<\/p>\n
I didn't mention the yellow paper as soon as we started talking.<\/p>\n
We spoke about ordinary things first.<\/p>\n
I listened to him.<\/p>\n
He listened to me.<\/p>\n
There was a comfort in that familiar exchange, and I let myself enjoy it without demanding that it answer every question.<\/p>\n
Still, I noticed how carefully I chose my words.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he was doing the same.<\/p>\n
There were moments when I thought he wanted to tell me something.<\/p>\n
Then the moment passed.<\/p>\n
I could not know whether I was reading him correctly.<\/p>\n
I only knew that both of us seemed aware of the conversation waiting between us.<\/p>\n
I had spent much of my life learning when to speak and when to wait.<\/p>\n
Marriage had taught me that silence could sometimes be gentle.<\/p>\n
It could give two people room to calm down.<\/p>\n
It could prevent a small disagreement from becoming a lasting wound.<\/p>\n
But silence could also become a habit.<\/p>\n
And once a habit settled in, it could be hard to recognize the moment when it stopped helping.<\/p>\n
That was what I feared most about the space between Wendell and me.<\/p>\n
I didn't want us to become two people who cared for each other but avoided the one subject that mattered.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to be grateful for every kind thing he did while quietly accepting that one part of his life would always remain closed to me.<\/p>\n
I had done enough of that kind of quiet bargaining with myself.<\/p>\n
I had told myself not to ask too much.<\/p>\n
I had told myself to be patient.<\/p>\n
I had told myself that the questions would answer themselves eventually.<\/p>\n
Maybe some questions did.<\/p>\n
This one needed a conversation.<\/p>\n
I thought about the way Wendell had looked at the paper.<\/p>\n
His face had changed before he spoke.<\/p>\n
He had looked at the photographs, then at the yellow paint, then at me.<\/p>\n
I remembered the softness in his voice when he said, \u201cOh, honey.\u201d<\/p>\n
There had been no anger in those words.<\/p>\n
There had been something else, something I couldn't name with confidence.<\/p>\n
I had seen embarrassment in people before.<\/p>\n
I had seen surprise.<\/p>\n
I had seen the fear that came when a carefully planned moment arrived too early.<\/p>\n
His expression could have meant any of those things.<\/p>\n
I refused to choose one simply because it suited the story I was telling myself.<\/p>\n
I wanted the truth, not a guess that felt comforting.<\/p>\n
That evening, I thought about what the words \u201cFor my Winnie\u201d had done to me.<\/p>\n
They had made me feel included.<\/p>\n
They had also reminded me that I was still waiting to understand how I fit into Wendell's life.<\/p>\n
The words were tender.<\/p>\n
The unanswered questions were real.<\/p>\n
Both could exist at once.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to reject the tenderness just because I needed an explanation.<\/p>\n
And I didn't need to ignore the questions just because the tenderness felt good.<\/p>\n
For a long time, I had treated hope as if it were something fragile that I had to guard from every possible disappointment.<\/p>\n
I was beginning to understand that hope could be more practical than that.<\/p>\n
It could mean giving someone a chance to tell the truth.<\/p>\n
It could mean listening without deciding the ending in advance.<\/p>\n
It could also mean knowing what I needed and saying it plainly.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be part of Wendell's life.<\/p>\n
Not just the part he found easy to share.<\/p>\n
Not just the conversations that took place when there was nothing difficult to discuss.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know him as he was.<\/p>\n
That included the things he was proud of.<\/p>\n
It included the things he found hard to explain.<\/p>\n
And it included whatever had made him write my name on that yellow sheet of paper.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what he had prepared for December 24.<\/p>\n
I didn't know whether the date was meant to be a beginning, a promise, or something I had not imagined.<\/p>\n
I could only wait for him to tell me.<\/p>\n
But waiting no longer meant pretending I had no questions.<\/p>\n
I had them.<\/p>\n
I was allowed to have them.<\/p>\n
And when the time came, I would ask.<\/p>\n
I hoped Wendell would understand that the question wasn't a demand for perfection.<\/p>\n
I wasn't asking him to make every part of his life beautiful before he let me see it.<\/p>\n
I was asking him to trust me enough to let me stand beside him.<\/p>\n
That was a much smaller request than the one I had feared making.<\/p>\n
It was also more important.<\/p>\n
I thought about the ramp in the garage and the buttercup-yellow paint.<\/p>\n
The color was bright enough to stay in my memory.<\/p>\n
I had noticed it because it seemed out of place among the tools and sawdust.<\/p>\n
Now I wondered whether I had been so busy looking for a hidden meaning that I had failed to notice the simple fact that Wendell had been working on something.<\/p>\n
I couldn't know what the work meant.<\/p>\n
But I could acknowledge that it was there.<\/p>\n
The same was true of the photographs.<\/p>\n
They had been visible.<\/p>\n
The paper had been visible.<\/p>\n
Whatever Wendell had intended, those things had existed before I walked into the garage.<\/p>\n
I didn't have to turn them into proof of anything.<\/p>\n
I only had to let them remind me that there was more to learn.<\/p>\n
When I thought of Christmas Eve, I tried to picture the kind of day I wanted.<\/p>\n
Not an elaborate celebration.<\/p>\n
Not a room filled with decorations or a surprise designed to make me forget every concern I had carried.<\/p>\n
I wanted an honest day.<\/p>\n
A day when I could ask a question and receive an answer.<\/p>\n
A day when I didn't have to pretend the locked door in our relationship was something I had never noticed.<\/p>\n
I wanted to feel welcome.<\/p>\n
That was all.<\/p>\n
And perhaps it was enough to begin with.<\/p>\n
As Christmas drew closer, I found myself thinking about the date written beneath the yellow paper. December 24. It was an ordinary date to anyone who didn't know the reason … <\/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-36520","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\/36520","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=36520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36540,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36520\/revisions\/36540"}],"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=36520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}