Last year's love

It could have been the constant effort to keep the house clean for prospective buyers.

Or maybe it's the learning curve for the new job.

Possibly it's the fact that I never feel on top of the DQ's homework.

And maybe it's the constant thrum of reviews and work that looms on the horizon, the checks to balance, the papers not filed.

Caught between a sense of my own limitations and the constraints of a life conducted mostly online during the day, I felt miserable.

Today I wholeheartedly endorsed the idea of the pathetic fallacy, the grey woman on a gray day.

Even though I knew of course, it was fallacious.

So you can see I was feeling sorry for myself.

The kids who saw their mother's tearswept eyes in the kitchen this afternoon were wonderful.

A quick hug, and a "mom, you don't look more than 32" went a long way towards making me feel better.

But I still wasn't myself.

Asking for an hour of grace from dinner prep, I jogged off to our local elementary school track.

The skies had temporarily stopped pouring rain upon southeastern Pennsylvania, yet they promised more -- this was just a moment's intermezzo.

The scent of woodsmoke filled the air.

The grass was the brilliant green that only a good soaking can give it.

My sneakers squarely hit the tarmac, and the gravel, and the puddles.

As I moved from jogging into running, I was very aware of my own incapacities --- the hip that sometimes aches, the lower back, the crankiness of a stressful day.

But as I went on, I found my stride (sometimes I wonder if it is lost), and the pain was forgotten.
And then my MP3 player hit David Gray's song "This Year's Love" -- and the years spun past.

Years ago, I fell for a guy who was wrong for me.

Wrong in many of the ways a man can be wrong. Only our glimmers of sanity and honor saved us from carnage.

I can't tell you the times that I would run on the main road that went by his house (but not on his street, no stalking), tight tank top and running shorts on display, hoping that he would somehow show up.

Give in.

"If ya love me, gotta know for sure."

Rescue me from my life.

"Won't you kiss me on this midnight street, sweep me off my feet, singing "ain't this life so sweet?""

I didn't believe in fairy tales -- but if I could have, I would have made it happen for us. Two people who would not have made it for a half a day in real life.

When you don't have something, and you are a romantic, it seems more precious than when it shows up at your door.

"Don't ya notice life goes on?"

And so it does.

Thank goodness for the cruel words that eventually opened my eyes, all those years ago.

Cos it takes something more this time
Than sweet sweet lies
Before I open up my arms and fall
Losing all control
Every dream inside my soul

Otherwise, I'd still be running that purgatorial loop, dreaming of a secular miracle, waiting to be rescued -- a willing prisoner of my own delusions, and the pagan god of love.

"This year's love, it better last".

Actually, it already has -- the many years of practicalities creating a love that lasts.

I run home to the teasing of children, the still unfiled receipts, dinner still waiting in the freezer.

No ghostly bodies in my way, no unhealed wounds, no sense of failure - the life we could have lived

So glad for what I have -- and what I don't.