Today is February 4, 2017.
It’s 3:17 p.m. in Seattle.
I just woke up because it’s raining. (But, of course it is!)
Weather permitting, I slept all through the morning and deep into the afternoon.
What else is there for me to do, really, in the perpetual grey and acidic drizzle of the Pacific Northwest besides change my nail color for the seventh time this week and cry and scramble eggs?
I woke up and rolled over and barked at Tim.
Barked that I’m not making enough money at work. That I’m bored and cold and tired from too much sleep. Barked, “Why aren’t you making the coffee?”
Bark. Bark. Bark.
None of it’s his fault, of course.
That it’s raining. Or that table 12 tipped me 8% on a $220 tab last night. Or that my copy of Oliver Twist isn’t a page turner that transports me out and away from Seattle for the day, or even the lunch hour.
But he got up and made the coffee and while he waited for the water to boil, I waited in bed crying frothy, bubbly grey tears into my matching grey sheets.
I cry all the time these days, it seems. About anything. About everything.
When my dear friend Brian posted a video on my Facebook the other day about a happy one-year-old cat named Pooh who lives in Bulgaria and who has bionic legs, I cried.
During a mindless marathon watching of Say Yes To The Dress on Sunday I sobbed when one New Jersey bride found her dream Pnina Tornai ball gown dress and came in under budget.
Last Friday I treated myself to a pedicure and when the silky hot stones glided under the arches of my feet and massaged my oily calves with warmness, I couldn’t help but weep.
Actually, I’m crying right now.
What’s wrong?
I don’t know. And also I do know.
What’s wrong is that last month we went to Tucson.
And it was beautiful.
So fucking beautiful.
In gardens guarded by short, white stucco walls pulpy spheres of tangy citrus dropped and dripped from narrow branches.
Lemon.
Lime.
Grapefruit.
Orange.
Out West, it was long shadows and bright sun and hot asphalt paving wide roads.
The pet shop was pink.
The dry cleaner yellow.
And flat, flat, flat. Flatness punctuated by the height of magnificent Saguaro cactus who’s aged arms gestured humanly in sadness or in exclamation and desert palms swaying in balmy winds.
It was hushed blushed sounds of roadrunner feet and rattlesnake slithers and scorpion stings. Bat wings and coyote paws and bull antlers and horse shoes. It was owl howls and prickly pear lollipops and vibrating heat and panting, parched earth.
In the kitchen, grassy cilantro and crunchy onions. Rice milk and crispy pork skin chicharrones sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Peppery radishes, pink and bulbous, to be sliced thin, dressed with squeezes of lime and dusted with coarse salt.
Sunset called for nights jewelry. Milky Way crowns that rested on the heads of distant tall peaks and Little Dipper pendants that dangled like charms from the necklines of far off mountains.
Wrapped in translucent sunshine I felt so poetic and light and glowing. My ponytail of hair glossier, my teeth whiter, my smile wider.
And then we had to come home.
To grey sheets and grey skies and grey, grey, grey.
After we got back from Tucson I cried for two straight days.
Cried because home is this place and not that magic vacation place of swimming pools and succulents.
You know, all the time I worry that Tim is taking my streaky sobs personally. (Because wouldn’t you? And wouldn’t I?)
But my hysterical tears and dramatic chokes have nothing to do with him.
In fact, he’s done nothing but his damnedest to make this place a pleasure.
He’s always taking me on woodsy hikes to foamy waterfalls.
On drives across scenic Washington highways populated by deer and bald eagles and noble firs.
To every park in the city with a view and to all the restaurants on my list.
On ferries to Pudget Sound islands and to independent art galleries in Pioneer Square.
What else in this world could Tim even possibly do to try and make me happy?
He loves me so wonderfully and wholly.
Last week we went hiking up Mailbox Peak and I was on my period. The bleeding was heavy and I predictably started hiccuping sobs on the way down the trail when clots of sticky blood started to seep through my underwear and streak down my legs soaking my leggings and staining my thighs.
Are you ok?
I’m so, so sorry, babe.
We’re almost to the end, babe.
Thanks for being a trooper, Kate.
We dove into the car and he drove with such urgency to the nearest gas station with a bathroom. He hugged the windy mountain road curves with tight speed and accelerated when the lanes were painted with straight lines.
At the North Bend Warriors Quick Stop gas station he asked if he could come in and help clean up my bloody legs. Was there anything he could do for me while I was in the bathroom bathing myself in lukewarm sink water? Should he buy some tampons?
“Im fine!” I barked.
Another time, months ago, he did buy me tampons. It was the middle of the night and I had started my period and he got up out of bed and into the car and drove down to Safeway where he bought a package of super-jumbo-plus scented Playtex gentle glides and even though they were a little too big, God bless him.
Next week, on Valentine’s Day, he’s taking me to Leavenworth where he booked us a one night stay and a couples massage at a romantic mountain lodge that serves fresh smoked troll king salmon and assorted sliced Mt. Townsend cheeses for breakfast.
In April we’ll be boarding a flight to Chicago, that he paid for, where, surely, our itinerary will be built around all the things that I want to see and eat and do and explore.
He shows up.
For lunches with my friends.
For holiday celebrations with my family.
For rides home from the light rail station.
Last summer he put a copy of Center Stage on hold at the Columbia City library and then watched the whole thing with me. When I insisted that we watch the ending dance sequence twice, he suffered through it. Tomorrow he’s picking up a copy of Mandy Moore’s finest film, Chasing Liberty, and he’ll tolerate that movie for two hours with me, too.
He drives me up and down the city of Seattle. He buys the twenty dollar bags of coffee grounds from Empire Coffee twice a month and let’s me choose all the groceries at Trader Joe’s.
Tim likes my face without makeup lets me record episodes of Four Weddings by the hundreds on our DVR.
And yet, frequent, sad cries fall from my eyes.
And it’s not at all because of Tim.
It’s here.
This place.
This cold, grey Seattle place.
Where I only weigh 108 pounds and still feel heavy. Where my hair hurts.
I want to leave so desperately.
No.
I need to leave so desperately.
When we got home from Tucson and went on a pouty, tear-streaked walk to the lake Tim said to me, “Listen! I’m sorry you hate Seattle with the fire of a thousand suns! But, you know what? Let’s leave!”
He always tells me what I want to hear.
I want to go to Santa Barbara.
So we will.
We’ll move there in September.
And I cannot wait.
What’s more, though, is that I hope that he cannot wait, either.
And here’s what I need him to know.
It’s not just that I want to leave Seattle because of the miserable weather and the uninspired Ikea-esque shape of the houses and skyline and the garbage littering the all of streets.
I need clear sky.
And brightness.
And family.
And I want him to come with me.
No.
I need him to come with me.
Because I love him so, so much.
And I want him to live in all the different places of world like I have.
I want him to look back at the end of his life and say, “Oh, yes. We lived there one summer and then in fall we moved on to the next place.”
I want to go to Santa Barbara because he looks so good in the sun.
Because I want us to have a house that’s ours.
Because he’s got an adventurers soul and a travelers mind and he blossoms in new.
Because I don’t want his happiness to be attached to a place that isn’t allowing him to succeed.
And, selfishly, because Tim, I really believe, is my soulmate and I need him to survive happily and healthily in this world.
There’s parts of him that I actually can’t do without. And I don’t just mean his kind heart.
I have come to need the vibrating buzz of his beard razor from the bathroom on Tuesdays at mid-morning and his trail of half sipped water glasses around the house.
I will never be able to go without kissing the triangle of soft skin that sits on his high cheek bones and below his deep eyes, soft like lambs ears, before I leave the house and after he wakes up in the morning.
I love so much this creamy part of the middle joint of his thumb finger. And also his ears that are the perfect size for me to cup in my hands. I need daily to thumb his earlobes that are pink and bendy and peach fuzzy.
I need him because he eats everything I cook.
Seconds.
And thirds.
Uses his finger to lick the plate.
And I think that, maybe, he needs me, too.
Or I hope that he does.
Because, for him, I roast chicken breasts with lemon and rosemary and capers and red pepper flakes. I wrap asparagus in prosciutto and bake it off. I whisk together lemon-Dijon dressings and roast mini purple potatoes with truffle oil and crumbled Gorgonzola. Because there’s always Trader Joe’s hummus in the fridge.
And maybe he needs me because I hide Nerds Ropes and Milky Way chocolate bars in my purse when we go to the movie theater and then I hold on to his thumb finger during the film. Or maybe he needs me because I throw Lars on his lap when he’s watching The Young Pope and before we fall asleep at night I tell him that one day we’ll drive to Marfa, Texas and White Sands National Park in New Mexico and along the coast from New Orleans, Louisiana to Naples, Florida.
I want to give him the whole world. Literally. And all the things in it.
I want to give him Austin and Ho Ch Minh and Zurich and Charleston.
I want to give him Christmases in California where he’s spoiled with flannel button-ups and Swell water bottles and white ceramic plates for our kitchen collection that are wrapped up with holographic paper and tied up with festive ribbons.
Ceramic pots with holes drilled in the bottoms for his cactus plant collection and fuzzy white blankets for the couch that he curls up with for Seahawks games and HBO series.
Can’t I want all the best things, all in one place?
For Tim and sun and city and swimming and tacos and hikes.
I need him to trust that I want this move for us and not just me.
That I’ll be more lovable when I’m not from suffering a Vitamin D deficiency.
So wholly I want to give him a version of me that isn’t plagued with sadness and dreams of more.
A contented Kate.
And, I swear, when we move I’ll quit crying and barking and sleeping in sorrow.
I’ll quit begging him for more and more and more.
I’ll come back and visit his family in Kirkland whenever he wants.
I promise I will.
I love him so, so much.
But this itch I feel to leave, it’s for real.
So Tim, baby, let’s go.
Let’s love each other forever, and in everywhere.
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