Confession: this one is a threesome...

Confession: it is deep

I have a hole.

It is gaping

And aching

And deep and wide

And unfillable.



I tried to fill it with him,

But it wasn’t his hole to fill

And he had even fewer resources to offer

So I was angry and disappointed and hurt



And the hole got deeper

The edges more slippery than before.



I bridged it with work

And the kids

And hobbies and crafts

And the quiet mental reassurances we women tell ourselves about our emptinesses—

--we don’t call them lies, although they are—

and they are empty lies, too.



I stayed busy

I got bored

I made friends and filled my days with a whirlwind of activities:

I exercised, I gardened.

I baked and read and wrote and drove and cleaned

And continued the in and out and here and there of the typical lonely wife’s day

A day of children’s laughter and slightly melancholy friendships

A day of a simple, shared, quiet look of empathetic understanding

With a woman who also has a hole



We all do, you know.

We all do.



The nights I couldn’t do anything about

Except to stare into the darkness,

Listen to the whirrrr of the fan

The clang of the house

The somehow desolate sound of a helicopter passing over

And count the moments until dawn



Sometimes I forget about the hole

Sometimes I simply accept its existence

Sometimes I hate it

Sometimes I think it makes me stronger



Always I wish I could fill it.



But I don’t think it’s going away,

This hole of mine

I don’t know if it’s always been there and I just now noticed.
Or if it suddenly appeared,

A great sink hole in my psyche

As I grew up.



I do know that its origins don’t matter,

Only the eternity of its duration.



I have a hole.

It is gaping

And aching

And deep and wide

And unfillable



And it hurts.

Confession: I am A Woman who Waits

I am a woman who Waits.



I Wait through wars and shifts and training and long lonely nights.

I Wait for phone calls and texts and e-mails and conversations

     and for moments, for chances, for caresses, kisses and sighs.

I Wait alone and with the kids and with women

     and with the dry pages of a book and the cold chatter of late-night TV.

I Wait with anger and with patience and with pain and with solitude.

Sometimes, I Wait with peace.



I Wait…

like my mother and my grandmothers and all of the sisters and daughters throughout time

…for my men.



I Wait for my father. For I was born a girl and he was born a man and we cannot overcome that gap despite like and respect and familial love and worship and need.



I Wait for my other self, my love who is mine but not. I wait while he fights and loves and struggles and learns and screams and cries and I cannot often Wait with him because of distance and time and rules and…



I Wait for my love, my half with whom I share a home and children and the big triumphs and the small chores and the millions of little secrets born of Vows.

I Wait while he struggles and protects and grows.

I Wait through all the dinners with an empty chair and the weekends and the children’s questions and the stories and the bedtimes and the tears and the nights with the cold side of the bed.



I swore I would never Wait.



As a young woman, I vowed to Have.

     Eagerly, I grasped all shiny Possibility in my fists.

          Greedily, I clutched all Experience immediately to my breast.

                 Hungrily, I drank of all,

gulped and swallowed and consumed.



For I despised Women Who Wait.

I scoffed at their quiet patience, felt pity for their competent aloneness, imagined shame in their accepting smiles and yearning eyes.

I vowed I would never Wait.


But we women, we grow. And we learn. And some vows are broken by the desire and need and want to keep Vows. And our men Leave and fight and protect and earn and provide. And we Stay and feed the children and build the home and earn the money and drive the endless to-and-from and cook the dinners and listen to the days and pray and dream and…



Wait,



Wait,



Wait.

through the seconds.

the moments.

the days.

the nights.



We Wait for those who Go,

Our wise Grandmothers knew, there is pride in being able to Wait.



Because MY men who Go

They must have a soft place, a love, a reason to Return.

And so I Wait.

Confession: Sometimes, the hole is filled, the wait rewarded.

I am a mother, wife, teacher, student, daughter, friend, enemy, leader, follower, mentor, employee, small-town community member, sister, lover.



I soothe and cherish and care and love.



I organize and clean and tidy and do all the little things that need to be done.



I schedule. I accept, I decline.



I exercise and lounge and laugh and cry and talk and listen.



I embrace the loud and bask in the silence.



I have worked and sweated and pushed and persevered and reached that perfection that I first conceived…then defined…and…finally…achieved.



And no where in all of that is an ‘I’, a woman, a person, a ME.



And I chose this, created it, cultivated it. I take pride in it, revel in it, bask in the chaos and the scurry and the hard and the easy and the work and the fun.



But not some nights.



Some nights, I want to set aside the burden, like an over-stuffed backpack, just slide it off my shoulders, ease it onto the floor and walk away. Just for a moment.

For a moment feel the lightness of me.



This is the reason I so cherish when we love. Because, for that time, I am not a teacher, mother, daughter, sister. I am just a woman. The time is surreal, ethereal, removed. The endless loop of ‘needs’ and ‘shoulds’ and ‘must dos’ stops. The compartments that hold pick-ups and drop-offs and schedules and shopping lists and could-haves and coming-ups and laundry and chores and job worries and motherly concerns and wifely issues are not only closed, they do not exist in my head.



For that time, I simply am.

Thought is gone.

Identity is gone.

I can only touch, taste, stroke, feel.

Remember choosing him, him choosing me.

Make the choice again.

There is only the sensation of skin, of warm breath, of hard and soft and wet. There is only the sound of sighs and gasps and commands and cries. There is only ecstasy, and release, and anticipation and that giddy sense of yes and please and again.


And because of the pleasure, the intense, searing, repeating pleasure, there is a deep connection, a lightness of being.


The wait is rewarded.


The hole is filled.