Oh

So.

It's not just me.

You're here, too?

I'm not the only one.

Looking for answers.

Searching for truth.

Am I supposed to believe this isn't all about me?

That's new.

Give me a moment to get used to that.

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.

Real Romance

"When did you know you loved me?" A beautiful, blonde woman in a carefully designed pink tanktop and perfectly fitting ivory colored pajama pants asks the man beside her.

"From the moment I saw you." The man, with a muscular build, wearing nothing but some old cargo shorts and a smile, says, staring into her bright blue eyes.

"Oh, puhlease!!" She scoffs at the television, tossing the remote against the pillows as she turnes off the late-night movie. She rolls her eyes and gets up off the couch.

"What?" He says, looking up briefly as she saunters over to the fridge to grab a cold bottle of water.

"This show is freakin' lame."

"Huh? What are you talking about?" His glance briefly wanders in her direction and then quickly returns to the computer screen.

"It wast just completely unrealistic, completely dull and just not at all what I would want in a relationsh..." She stops talking as she realizes he's once again engrossed in his game.

He looks up again, a sheepish grin on his face, "A relationsh?"

"Oh, now you're paying attention?" She feels a tiny bit of annoyance creep into her voice, though she's trying to control it. She doesn't care if he's playing his game, as she's told him a hundred times, what she cares about is just getting to be in the same room together.

"I'm like a cat." She'd told him.

"Huh?"

"I don't have to be pet all the time like a dog, but I just like knowing I'm in the same room as the people I care about, even doing my own thing. From time to time, you can wander over and pet my head, and I'll be happy."

He'd smiled his big open grin and hugged her.

Back in the present she looks at him, watches him decide whether she's really upset with him or just mildly irritated. Settling on the later, he says, "You don't want things to be fake in a relationship? If I had told you I loved you when I first saw you, you wouldn't have wanted that?"

"I've had that. I've dated a man who insisted he fell in in love with me the first time he saw me. I don't buy it."

"You don't want all of that romantic stuff?"

"You know I don't." She tucks her hair behind her ears, closes the door of the fridge and walks over to him. She gently kisses the top if his head, "I want you."

"Oohhh, so are you saying I'm not romantic?" He grins that lopsided smile that always gets to her.

"You're not going to get to me, Mister. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that I don't like all of that fake nonsense. I like reality. I like honesty." She strides back over to the couch, sets her water bottle on the coffee table and reaches for her book, "So, go back to your video game." She says this without a trace of irritation in her voice, and she feels a shiver of pride in herself.

"Okay." He turns his attention back to his computer screen, sighs, shuts the laptop and walks over to the couch. "Move your feet."

She lifts her feet to allow him to sit down, and rests them back on his legs once he is seated. "Please would be nice."

"Move your feet, please. I want to make out with you now."

"I'm reading." She drops her gaze and stares at him, a half smile tilting her lips flirtatiously, or so she hopes.

"Yeah, but this is reality. And I know you'd rather make out with me than read." He looks her right in her eyes, and her stomach gives a little jump.

"It's a really good book," but the book in question is already sliding out of her hands onto the floor (she barely had time to replace the bookmark).

And she gives into the romance of the moment, realizes that if this is as much romance as she gets, then she's not going to waste any time.

Caught

No more can she trace "I" heart "u" on his back as he falls asleep.

He caught her the other night. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." She calms her fingers, resting them lightly on his shoulder.

"I thought you were like having seizures or something. You're all twitchy."

"No, I'm fine." She couldn't even think of a good reason for her rapidly moving fingers. She just stopped and wiggled her feet for good measure, just to show she was getting the "twitchy" out of her system.

"Okay. Good night." He hadn't even opened his eyes. Neither had she.

"Good night, baby." She sighed softly and tried to sleep.

Now how would she tell him that she loves him without telling him that she loves him?

Distance

I am my father's daughter. There are moments when a certain flick of my wrist or tilt of my hip will remind everyone that I am my mother's daughter as well. But I am my father's daughter.

My father will be angry for days and even weeks before he will let anyone know what is wrong. He will mope. He will furrow his brow. He will set his jaw. He will not speak.

I am my father's daughter.

People think they know him. They call him by a nickname, when in reality, he hates when anyone shortens his name. They think he's "such a nice guy," in much the same way everyone thinks I'm "such a nice girl." I had too many "stay sweet" comments to count in my high school yearbooks, yet anyone who really knows me would probably not use "sweet" to describe me if they only had one word to use.

I am my father's daughter.

My father loves my mother with all of the passion in his heart. He loved her stupidly and wrongly. He was rude and sarcastic and thought that would work. He dated other women, not making her jealous, just biding his time until she saw fit to love him in return. He hid his affection behind a shield of anger.

I am my father's daughter.

I am in love now, for the first real time in my life. All the other times I may have loved, but I do not think that I was in love. I love with all the passion in my heart, but I will not say it. I will bide my time, making passive aggressive comments until he should see fit to say he loves me in return.

I am my father's daughter.

My father will remember key facts about certain people and nothing about others, even if he's been told 100 times.

I will stare right through some people, never remembering why I am supposed to know them, while there are some faces that I can recognize and identify from a mile away, and not because I want to, not because I like the people that go with the faces, just because.

I am my father's daughter.

My father will make seemingly snap decisions that, in fact, he's been mulling over for hours, days, months, whatever fits.

I thought about moving out of my parents' house for at least two and a half of the three years I lived at home, most seriously in the 10 months before I finally moved. Yet, my decision to actually do it came over the course of about four days. Those close to me were not pleased by the seeming alacrity of this decision.

I am my father's daughter.

Both father and daughter show our emotions in our behaviors yet keep our thoughts private. It's obvious that *something* has affected us, but we won't tell you what, not unless you fight for it. If you want into our world, you have to earn it and earn it and earn it again. And there's no guarantee that once you've been let in once, you'll be let in again anytime soon.

There is sometimes an angle in my hip, a sigh in my chest or a tilt in my head that will remind people that I am my mother's daughter, too.

But then I will retreat into my private, secret world, and it becomes all too obvious that I am my father's daughter.

A Slightly Unwelcome Nostalgia

She could feel a pang in her chest as she skated around the rink, hand-in-hand with him. A huge part of her felt amazed that, here she was, in her mid-twenties, finally holding the hand of a boy as she whizzed around the ice rink. Well, slid along on her crisp blades without falling down is more like it, but she felt like she was flying.

The pang surprised her.

But she knew immediately what it was.

She was happy to be here with him, but the reason she had come was to skate with her friend, the girl who had, in recent weeks and months, miraculously become her closest friend. And the pang hit her just as she skated by her friend, holding the side rail, staring up into the eyes of her on-again-off-again-on-again boyfriend. She missed her friend.

She also realized that this would be life now.

She will never have her friends the way she once had them. Even if all of the current relationships were to fall to pieces, all of the romantic entanglements dissolve, all of the friendships will have irrevocably changed.

She had wondered, cautiously, over the years in which she had no boyfriend, what she might have to give up, to sacrifice in order to have the thing she wanted most. She worried that something would happen, some karmic twist, that would balance out her happiness with the way the rest of the world felt. She had already recognized some of that sacrifice in the relationship with her parents. It simply isn't possible to maintain the same relationship she did when she lived at home and didn't have someone else who required most of her attention. When she lived at home, in those pre-boyfriend days, she really did only have to think about herself. And she often chose to situate herself next to her parents, for an evening in watching movies.

So, there she is, in this ice rink for the very last time before it closes. She looks at her boyfriend, the man holding her hand, the man with whom she argued just a few short hours before, about his desire to spend time with a friend she doesn't like at all. He lets go of her hand so that he can better balance himself on his wobbly, rented skates, and she retreats back into herself.

This is the last time she will skate on this surface. She'd only been to the rink twice (counting this time) since graduating from college, but in her sorority days, she spent more than one Saturday afternoon making "whips" with her friends, twirling, whirling and giggling. She realizes how long it has been since she really laughed with her friends, since those mostly carefree days of college. The worries she had before graduation were nothing compared to the big, weighty worries she has now, worries she tries not to register, believing, half-heartedly that God will sort everything out for her.

She's still awkward with him after their fight. She feels better about things, but it's hard to come back to their comfortable ways after she's told him some, but not all of what she was feeling. Their conversation is stilted, as if she's speaking with someone who doesn't know the language, or maybe it's her who doesn't know the language.

At last, his ankles can't take any more wobbling, and he goes to sit down next to her friend's boyfriend and another friend's husband. The men can't hack the somewhat graceful moves required to ice skate.

Her girlfriends join her on the ice. They talk, and they laugh. She fills them in on the fight. Their conversation is fluid and easy, and she misses her friends so much, even though they are right there. With a sudden, fierce intensity, she misses college and the sorority. She misses having someone to talk to just next door, or an IM away. She misses late night conversations, midnight runs to Safeway for ice cream, the lightness and freeness of being young, single and away from home. She misses setting her own schedule. She misses not having friends who have gotten married. She misses not having to worry about the big things like whether leaving her job would be career suicide.

They keep skating around. She hears more about her friend's latest, hopeful job possibility, and she's happy. She's happy to see a smile on her closest friend's face.

The other, a married friend, advises them both, and assures her that the right she had with him will be repeated. It is reassuring to hear that their argument is one that will repeat itself, that it's the kind of argument only real couples can have.

The pack of people on the ice thins. The music on the stero jumps erratically, and they can sense the evening coming to a close. The married girl jumps off the rink to try to persuade the men back on the ice for one final lap.

Out they come, and she's happy to see him, happy to hold his hand, but still just a bit melancholy that is presence means she's done having that easy, genuine conversation with her friends. She misses easy conversation not laced with arsenic.

They finish their lap. They leave the ice.

And she steps back into her life.

Another Tongue

"Do you want to get dinner tonight at that new Thai restaurant?" He asked.

"Yeah, that sounds good." She said.

"What sounds good?"

She stared at him, willing him to go on with that train of thought, to dare to tell her, once again, that she had simply misunderstood his words. "What?" She asked, not quite believing that this was happening once more.

"You said 'that sounds good,' but I asked whether you'd like to stay in and cook, or whether you want to go out somewhere, like maybe to the Thai restaurant." He blinked at her, daring her to call into question the logic he deemed infallible when compared to her feminine intuition and in-borne moodiness.

"No. Whatever. Thai. I'd like Thai." She raises her hands in the air, and lets them fall down, slapping them against her legs.

"You sure?" He cocks his head to the side and looks at her with wide, green eyes.

"Yes." She says through clenched teeth, not even remotely moved by the puppy dog stare.

"Okay, then."

It is another simple discussion gone horribly wrong. It ends alright. They'll eat Thai and move on to the next discussion, but it's just one more clear-cut example of the fact that she often wishes for a Him:Her translation guide.

He speaks another language. Luckily, he's told her himself that she has a knack for languages.

So, now, she'll buckle down and learn his, because, obviously, he's never going to learn hers.

How Many Times

In the last week, I have started to count, though not really keep track of, the number of moments when I realize that I would like to say the words, "I love you." I'm not talking about times when I would like to say it for the first time. No, I am counting the times I would like to say it if we were already saying it to each other.

For example:
*When he made pretzels, without being asked, to take to my parents' house for dinner
*When he felt comfortable enough with my friends to spend an entire evening with them
*When he asks if I want him to drive
*When I go to sleep at night
*When he leaves in the morning

I'll have to be careful, because I've started saying it to him, in my head, or just mouthing the words after his eyes are closed, or after he closes the door. Perhaps one time the words will just slip out of my mouth, unannounced. Perhaps I won't mind.