I was rooting through the attic the other day trying to get organized.
There was the girls crib and their wooden rocking horse and box after box of all their school memorobelia. It all brought back memories.
Then I noticed a carton shoved way in back, unmarked on the outside. I opened the carton and it was filled with spiral bound notebooks.
They weren't mine or the girls so they could only be Mike's.Each one was carefully numbered and they were all in sequential order.
I took the first one out and began to read. It was dated the year we were married.
It was Mike's journal. In it he talked about our relationship and his love for me . He talked in words I had never heard him express to me.
He talked of the first time we made love and tears welled up in my eyes. In our entire marriage he had never expressed these feelings to me.
Why would he write it down but never say it aloud? Was this really how he felt? I took out he next notebook and began to read again.
He talked more about our relationship and our sex life, some things good some things not so good.
He talked about a day we had gone to Martha's Vineyard and about my getting a flat tire on my bike and how he had walked all the way back to the rental shop to get it fixed for me.
He talked about the blizzard we had that winter and how we had been snowed in for three days. He talked of how we made love during those days. Memories came flooding back, some thngs I had totally forgotten.
I kept reading into the afternoon. I didnt stop for lunch or even to get a drink.
I read about the birth of our first daughter, how totally blown away he had felt by the thought of becoming a dad.
It was getting late and Mike would be home soon, I still had more journals to read.
I closed up the box and crawled out of the attic.When MIke came home that day I didnt even mention my "find " in the attic.
The next day I went back up into the attic and continued to read.
I read about all the places we had been on vacations, all the girls sporting events and special awards they had received through school.
I read about how he felt about being a dad and how much it meant to him to watch them growing up.
I kept reading, I was captivated by his expression of feelings, feelings that had been locked away.
The tone of his journals changed as he spoke of his desent into alcoholism. He talked about how hard it was to stop. He talked about rehab centers and DUIs and moving to an apartment when he moved out of our house.
I could feel his pain as he taked about these things. They joy I had felt in reaing his earlier entries was replaced by the pain I felt in reading these later entries.
I couldn't stop reading, I was spellbound by his words and his emotions.
I read about his cancer diagnosis and cried when he talked about how frigtened he had been
and how alone he had felt.
I read how he came to terms with his alcoholism and how he had found a higher pwoer to guide hm.
I read how he felt about having his family and his life back.
And then I read a statemet that made me cry. It was a statement about how much he loved his life once again and how much he loved his wife.
I didn't finish the last two journals. I packed them all neatly back in the box and pushed it to the back of the attic again.
I decided not to tell Mike that I had found the box. If he had spent all these years expressing his feelings through his writing then that wasn't going to change now.
I had loved him unconditionally for all these years and it was obvious to me now that he had felt the same way.
I went downstairs and cooked him his favorite meal and lit the candles all over the house, a sign of things to come after dinner.
I didn't have to hear him express his thoughts, it was enough just to know he felt them.
If there was one thing I had learned after all these years was that people don't change. No matter how hard you try, we are all who we are, and to accept that is probably the greatest expression of love.
|
Submitted by:
Patricia
view profile
|
You have new unread mail messages!
Click here for your Inbox!
