Acceptance

She has finally begun to see that she will not have a life even remotely resembling the one she once envisioned:

A worthwhile job.
An adorable house.
An adoring husband.
Two or four or six kids running amuck.
All starting with a husband at 22.

Of course, the husband at 22 never materialized, and she's ridiculously grateful that she's had the intervening years to find herself, discover her identity. She would have made a horrible wife at that age and would likely not make a good one right now, not yet anyway.

After a series of hopeful comments and interesting discussions, she paused to think about the life she now sees for herself.

For the first time, there is a blank slate.

This is at once depressing and a great relief. There is no particular life towards which she is aspring. Certainly, she wants to get married (and specifically, she wants to marry him) and have children (his), but there is no outline for how this will occur, no deadlines, no specific script that must play out in order for her to obtain happiness.

"Have you ever struggled with wanting to be successful and than realizing that being happy could be the same as being successful?" She asked him.

"Yes." He said.

And with that word, she remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place.

Glimpses of herself in a charming cafe in Boston, New York, heck, even Chicago or what about Rome, dot her imagination, but they don't drive her. She once craved a life in New York City, the Big Apple, Manhattan Island, where she could prove her mettle and make it once and for all. She once craved, as Michael Cunningham said, more of the same, a life exactly like the one she imagined her parents had at the start of their marriage. A tiny house with a big back yard, lots of love and frequent barbecues in that big backyard.

She never envisioned a quiet apartment with the wind howling outside, sitting alone on her couch at 26, pondering her future. But she is fast understanding that, though she held onto it for years past its expiration date (should, in fact, have come to terms with it perhaps as many as ten years ago, when she started college with no boyfriend to her name and no clue as to what she wanted other than a husband), the life she envisioned for herself is not the one worthy of her, not the one meant for her.

She finds it a great relief to pause and consider the life in the future and realize that a life unscripted is the only way to live.

This unscripted life could be less than what she planned, but it will also be more. It will lead her places she never foresaw and others she would have eschewed as impossible as little as a year ago. It will be better. It will be worse. It will be the same. It will be different.

But, most of all, it will be hers.

Twice

He sat with the Starbucks coffee cup between his legs, "Wow, that's hot."

In the passenger seat, she maneuvered a few things and freed up the second cup holder, "Here." She reached over and took his cup, setting it in the holder, "We don't want you to boil your boys," she smiled teasingly.

"Nope." He kept his eyes on the road. "Or we could just have all girls."

A strange, hopeful feeling filled her. It was the first true time he had openly suggested that they would have children together, that the children he would have in the future would also be hers.

"Well, in that case," she jokingly reached for the hot coffee.

"Seriously, geckos tend to have girls when the eggs are kept over 80 degrees or something."

The moment passed, and they started talking about the lore of babies born in the summer mostly being boys.

But there had been the moment. And for today, that was enough.

Did He Really Just Say That?

Sitting in the drive through, waiting for cheap Mexican takeout.

She said, "It's my money, I can do what I want with it."

He said, "Yeah, but I'm not going to be that guy. I'm not going to be that guy who has his girlfriend pay for everything. And I still owe you from the last time."

"No, you don't. That money is gone, spent, gone. I'm not trying to be your Sugar Mama. It's more fun for me if you're there with me, so it's my money being spent on my enjoyment."

"Look, you're right. It's your money, so you can do what you want with it. Until we share a bank account, I have nothing to say about how you spend your money. But my money is mine, and I can do what I want with it, and I am going to pay you back."

Wait a minute, did the man who has so carefully avoided all mention of a future together just say, "Until we share a bank account..."???

A Shift in the Breeze

It was just a slight change, barely perceptable to the human eye.

No one but her would notice it. She notices because she knows him better than he thinks.

But something is different.

He's different.

He is there with her now. He believes that he will be there for a while. He didn't know just a few weeks ago what he wanted, what he believed. But now, now he knows.

And she can tell.

Erasing it All

She has found that she takes him places she's gone before. She takes him where she went with that other one, the too eager one with the cartoon face. She has to replace that guy with him, fill in the memories, reclaim her favorite places.

The funny thing is that her ex doesn't factor into a lot of things, only when she practically forces herself to think about the past does he enter into the picture at all. He's not a real element in her life anymore, nor should he be. He was a learning experience that lasted two and a half months and ended a year and a half ago. No reason to keep him around.

But.

She wishes that he had just a bit of that belief in fate that the ex did. That he would tell her that he wants to marry her and be the father of her children. She wishes that he were just a little of a believer in the magic of it all.

And then she stops herself and realizes that the the realistic romantic is the best kind of all.

When she marries him, it won't be blindly. When he decides he's ready, it will mean more than a spur of the moment, gut instinct kind of a decision. It will be real and lasting.

And it won't just be a fairytale she made up.

In those moments, when she remembers why she loves him, she's okay with the fact that she has to be the one to believe in magic.