Connecting You to Your Tomorrow

A kind soul left an apple tree on my porch. The porch that is now my porch and not our porch. It needed a tree, I think. It needed something.

The girls and I pull up in front of the house the other day to see spring branches spilling over the porch banister, reaching down the unmown hill for us, welcoming us out of our battered old car.

“What is THAT?” I say. It is not every day one’s porch grows a tree whilst one is gone.

“A tree!” the girls shriek in awe. “A TREE GREW ON OUR PORCH!”

David opens the door. He explains that a local acquaintance and blog reader brought by a big apple tree branch she’d cut down. She’d put it in a jelly jar for me. The effect is pretty darn charming.

Sophie asks, “Can we plant it in the garden? And have apples?”

Hattie jumps up and down, cheering. “APPLES APPLES APPLES!”

David and I try to explain that this particular flora is more in the realm of Christmas trees. Once cut, well, just enjoy it while you can. No apples, just green.

We all admire the budding branch in its jelly jar, propped against the blue wooden post of the porch.

“I like it,” I say. “It’s very odd.”

“So do I,” says Sophie. “It’s weird.”

“We’re weird. It’s a good thing, weird,” I say.

David and Hattie head inside with the hungry dogs. Sophie and I remain on the porch with the apple branch.

“It’s like a Christmas tree for spring,” I say. “We could decorate it, with lights.”

She nods.

“Yeah,” agrees Sophie. “Let’s.”

Another plan. Small steps.

*****

Yesterday David closed on his new place.

At dinnertime, he asks the girls if they want to head over to see the place, to have a Subway sandwich picnic on the floor.

“Could I go too?” I ask.

He waits, unsure of me.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t completely dying of curiosity,” I say.

“Sure,” he acquiesces, after a pause. “I guess I can treat you to a Subway sandwich.” There is a wry smile.

The girls pack some toys to bring over to the new place—assorted houses and school buses and Polly Pockets that we tuck into the hatchback trunk with David’s art supplies.

We drive to Subway, passing a cable TV truck emblazoned with the tagline: CONNECTING YOU TO YOUR TOMORROW. I find a pen and write this on my hand. I write a lot of notes on my left hand these days.

Our sandwich artists are very accommodating. Cucumbers there? Nope, no cucumbers on that one, lots of black olives, no onions, strawberry milk, sorry, no, chocolate, what? Yes, chips instead of cookies. Kids! So unexpected!

“All together?” asks the cashier, finally.

“Yup,” I say. “All together.” I am shy, saying this.

David pulls out his wallet and pays, and we are on our way. Much more quiet than our usual “on our way”s. There have been so many of these. The phrase will mean something different now. For now, we ignore this.

He’s close by, in a big building, a condo unit as opposite aesthetically from our old house as our girls are opposites.

“Well,” he says, fishing out the new keys. “This is it.”

He lets us in to the main building. We each take a daughter by the hand and up the stairs to his unit. I am still breathing, and I note this with some mild interest. I do not expect to still be breathing at this point. Breathing is good, I think.

Then he opens the door. I stop breathing, recover, stop breathing, recover. Breathing and not breathing and recovering is also preferable to not breathing, so. Small steps.

“Wow,” I say. Talking is also preferable to not talking, I figure. Or it’s not. There is no way to know, in the moment.

The girls burst into the unit, which is big and airy and furniture-less. They swarm it like bees, seeming like far more than two little girls as they spread out, exploring.

“Wow,” I say again. So this is how it will be.

“I know,” says David.

The four of us spread out a tablecloth and set out our Subway picnic on the floor. We eat. We talk. We laugh. We are quiet. We ooh and we aah over all the cool stuff in Daddy’s new place. We drink our milk, we share our chips.

“Are you crying yet, Mommy?” asks Sophie. “You looked like you had your crying face about to start.”

“Not yet,” I say. “Probably soon.”

I am right on that. Soon.

I do not mean to present this as the happiest family picnic of all time. This is not that, but it is not the saddest family picnic of all time, either. I cry, I sniffle. David’s eyes turn red. Still, we pass Subway napkins back and forth, discuss the wood floors together, confer about his potential options for furniture placement. There have been worse days, somehow, still.

I know why and I don’t know why we are here. Our stories do not match up. This is the most difficult part. But to me there is the sense that this is supposed to be happening, that we are where we need to be. But there is also the sense that we have not yet begun to process the hundreds of tiny, stinging paper-cut griefs that will be part of our days for a long time to come. We are fearful, of course. We smell fear, mistrust, in the other, but we are doing our best to reach out to each other anyway. We were never cruel to each other, and the thought of starting now is appalling.

We do our best to explain the upcoming schedules to the girls, to say it will be difficult, and weird sometimes, but also pretty cool to have two neat places to call home.

“It’s a new chapter,” David says. “New chapter, same characters.”

I like this. “Exactly. The same characters,” I agree. “Now check out the bathroom. I don’t think you’re going to be complaining about taking baths together over here.”

The girls abandon chips and tear into the bathroom. I know what they are seeing. My reaction was similar.

“OH MY GOSH! OH! MY! GOSH! WE HIT THE JACKPOT!” they howl as they climb into the big big tub.

Back on the tablecloth, David and I smile wanly at each other.

“If I come over here to water your plants, I am totally taking a bath,” I say. “You can’t begrudge me that.”

He nods, smiles.

I like to think we are normalizing this, by sharing a meal here all together, by showing that all the characters are still accounted for. That it is okay to be excited in front of Mommy about the blue room where there will soon be bunkbeds. That it is okay to laugh at Sophie singing her homemade arias as she echoes her way through the maze of Daddy’s new walls. The Labrador Retriever who lives above the unit does not think Sophie’s impromptu arias are okay, not yet. He is making this clear, whining and barking through the ducts as if Chihuahua puppies are being tortured downstairs. The girls laugh harder, discuss befriending the Lab soon with biscuits and pats.

It’s not everyone’s way, but it works for us. So far. I have no idea if it will continue to work. But this week, this is as right as it gets, for this, for us in this. I am humbled daily by this experience—by the absence now of past sureties, of certainties, of boundaries. The tears come and go and come again all day long, for reasons beyond which I could begin to explain. There is too much to explain, too many stories, too many versions, too many layers, too much lost. Best to save our breath. For breathing.

We are flying blind now. I am leaning too forward into the wind, sticking my neck out, stupidly—gasping, panicked. David is leaning well back, averting his head to the side, to be sure he can breathe as needed—fearful, wary. But it’s the same wind blowing. I take some small comfort in that.

As we walk back to the car and note how pretty the skyline looks at dusk, Sophie takes my hand and David’s and swings between us. She crows, “Another sensational family moment!”

Again, I look down at her. I have to know.

“Wait, are you being serious?”

“Yes,” she says, simply. “Yes.”