Escaping The Loop

V

One morning we were having breakfast with the couple, and I watched them imagining myself with my husband one day; grey haired, retired, with grandchildren. They held hands, spoke sweet nothings into each other’s ears, acting like newly-wed couples, like they were at their prime. That same year my husband had declared that he did not want children. Of course any woman would refuse such a condition, depriving her of her maternal right, we fought about it and were cross with each other for months. I loved him, and a person in love is a fool indeed. Compromising so much for the sake of the other, sometimes condoning lost efforts. I submitted in the end and agreed we were “just not the people for children”. I was frustrated, how I managed to give up one of things I wanted the most: being a mother. How we continue to give up for the sake of loved ones, only to realize our exertions were in vain.    One afternoon I was walking in that lavender field marveling at its vastness.

Lavender was such a gentle delicate flower which demanded moderate weather. Moderation. Such a word! Such a thought! If only a person could live moderately and humbly and not strive for more as a result of greed, if only people loved and hated moderately, we would love logically and hate with reason. Yet the world did not rotate on this concept, extremes are taken rather than absolved. We strive due to ambition, we love deeply with the hope of being loved in return, we hate as a result of hurt and abandonment. We cannot stay in the middle, we have to be extremists.  

I saw a chair, distant from me, in the middle of the field so I went towards it. The chair was a wooden beach lounger that was perfectly in the center of the field. I sat and leaned so I could stare at my surroundings. I was surrounded by the most spectacular array of lavender. I inhaled deeply, inhaling the essence of the flowers encircling me. If only my life was here, no cases, no clients, no transactions, no lawsuits, no stress, just relief. If only my husband were to agree to this, which he won’t. He works to advance, he strives, he fights, he aims, and that was me back then; his adjacent. Yet that day in that field I felt a change in attitude. I saw from my stance the old woman coming towards me, her footing slow and passive. When she reached me she greeted me and I offered her my chair as I seated myself next to her on the soil. At heart I was still a child, and as a child I sat next to my grandmother’s chair as she told me stories of faraway lands and captured princesses. This old woman reminded me of my grandmother, and the action was systematic. We were both in silence as we observed our surroundings.

“Why are you hear alone child?” she asked inquisitorially.

“He had a business call and needed time for it. So I decided to take a walk in this wonderful field, how wondrous it is! One can easily get lost.” I answered in an attempt to change the subject.

“I used to come here to think, I still do, especially after a fight” then she looked at me as if she knew I had just come from a fall out with my husband. I complained to him that we were on this romantic vacation to re-kindle our romance and that we both agreed not to answer business calls, after the “no children” debate, he just implied I should have come alone, that I had enough time vacationing and that he needed to get back to work, that led to an argument where I allowed the child subject to resurface.

“It was really my fault, I opened a sensitive subject” I admitted in shame.

She looked at me and smiled, “child it’s never only one person’s fault, don’t blame yourself, you fought with your husband, that’s marriage! There is always this incessant need to argue to prove you are right! Bickering is fine.” She smiled.

I felt a need to confess, to tell her what was wrong, what felt wrong. “Have you ever felt that at a point, you had a change of heart? That things that seemed so benign, now appear to be very important?”

She gazed ahead at the field and nodded as if a breeze of wisdom brushed her.

“It is all about how you saw things and how they appear to be after a while”, she continued, “Close your eyes my dear”, I obeyed, and “what do you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Completely?”

“Just hints of light that I observe through my eye lids.”

“Now child close them shut, completely shut”, I obeyed again, “now what do you see?”

“Nothing. Darkness.”

“Open your eyes my dear”, I did and the lavender field revealed itself again, yet this time I appreciated the scenery more after a moment of darkness.

“The lavender field”, the woman interrupted, “I did not ask you what you see now, because I also am seeing it too.” And she smiled sweetly.

“Listen my dear, an advice from a very old lady, life is how you observe it. It is lived through three ways: eyes shut completely; darkness never knowing whether you are moving or in which direction, eyes slightly closed with the willingness to open after recognizing a hint of blessing, and finally eyes wide open gazing at a spectacular view and appreciating it. That is life and there are ways to understand and see it. Admiring a view or refusing to see it”, she continued, “and different people might look from your vantage point, or might perceive it from other perspectives. You have just slightly relaxed your eyelids to see a hint of blessings, and still haven’t completely opened your eyes to appreciate the view. Give yourself and your husband time. Hopefully you will cherish life together.” She ended with a smile. I could not help but smile back, “now let’s go have afternoon dessert, such salty subjects demand sweet for the after taste.” I laughed realizing how she put in the figure of speech. I still laugh about that day, how an ironic twist of fate bestowed upon my husband happiness, forsaking mine.

He did open his eyes, just not on my time. He is viewing life from a different angle, a better one, with someone else. And I’m supposed to be hopeful?

  I was forced into this state of limbo, I never needed this, and I was fine with how my life was. Yet fate apparently had other plans for me that I don’t understand completely. That’s how things work I guess. The things we want no matter how much we want them, if they are not meant for us, we are unable to attain them. Then later on we understand we did not even need them, and we find other purposes for our happiness that were meant for us. Was that my plan? The sudden verdict to disclose that I was not supposed to live the life I was leading?