The Winter of My *Content*

Back in March of 2020, the husband was still employed by the inexorably disintegrating Little PDX Pillow Factory.  Though “we” had left Portland and moved to Eugene, Little Pillow Factory had remained on the top of husband’s priority list.  He was committed to spending three nights a week in fleabag motels so that he could be at the factory in PDX three days a week.  He came home on Thursdays to work from home Fridays and Mondays.  We had weekends together.  A familiar arrangement that conjured up unpleasant memories of a terrible time in my life.  But I consented to it.  Because that “old” arrangement was almost 20 years in the rearview.  In the intervening years, we had lived together apart for so long, it no longer mattered to me if he honored the “agreement.”  I knew I could/would carve out some kind of life for myself without him here.  I had been there and done that.  For many, many years.

Then COVID hit. 

And I lost it.

I dove into a pit of anxiety on the level of a 24/7 panic attack.  I could barely leave the house to even walk the dog around the neighborhood.  Going ANYWHERE—to the grocery store, to the DMV, to the optometrist, even to my sister’s homes—was too difficult to imagine.  I couldn’t go anywhere, could  hardly touch anything…could barely breathe.

While it was possible (though unhealthy) for me to stay home and hide under the bed, there was this issue of the husband traveling up to Portland every week and exposing himself, and ME, to god-knows-what.

I couldn’t deal with it.  Though I was so awash in anxiety I could hardly string together sentences to form a coherent thought, I gave him an ultimatum.

If you go to Portland this week, DO NOT COME HOME.

Wonder of wonders, he did as I requested.

Immediately, my anxiety began to wane.  Just having him HERE, being able to focus on someone besides myself, was the miracle cure I for which I could never even have thought to hope. 

And in the end, it was a path to healing for both of us.  COVID pulled the rug out from under what was left of the Little Pillow Factory, and it became obvious it was IN the tar pit rather than just heading for it.  I was able to at least be close by while husband navigated the demise of the thing that had been his number one priority for 26 years. 

So for 8 months, while the pandemic raged around us, the husband and I held each other up, learned to lean on each other, bit by bit, a little more with each passing day.  The Little Pillow Factory drew its last breath in August of 2020.  Desperate to grab a life line to The Next Thing, husband signed up for a tax preparer course that kept him engaged through January of 2021. 

Then that fizzled as well.  All that was left for him to do was keep applying for jobs in order to keep the flow of unemployment $$$ into the coffers.  Beyond that, he was ALL MINE.

We didn't have Thanksgiving last year.  We didn't have Christmas.  But we had a season of love, harmony and contentment that rivaled all our Christmases stacked on top of one another.

What a winter we had!  We drove up hill and down dale, looking for wildlife, taking pictures, dragging picnics to sodden little parks, sitting in the car and munching on chicken salad and potato chips.  We sat together in the evenings and binge-watched some of our favorite old TV shows.  We tackled project after project around the house—we painted, we constructed, we dug in the dirt.  With a minimum of the sniping in which we had customarily engaged when attempting to work together. 

I know this doesn’t exactly sound like paradise to most people, but for me, it WAS. 

In April, as luck would have it and with the unemployment about to run out, he landed a new job.  I wish I could say I was happy for him; I was...resigned.  I knew he was the type of animal that was happiest being engaged in some kind of occupation to give his days structure and his life some connection and meaning.  This was what he wanted.  This was what he needed.

But for weeks after he went back to work, I was SO sad.  Depressed.  Angry, even.  It seemed like I spent every hour on the verge of tears.  I couldn’t shake it.  I started to wonder what the hell was wrong with me?  I had spent years being by myself.  I knew how to do it.  Going back to it should be easy…liberating.   Comforting, even.  It was what I was used to.

Yeah.  I could go back to that.

But I didn’t WANT to.

So I sweated and coughed my way through the grinding days of summer, through vaccines and hope and almost going back to "normal," but then, not...through delta and re-masking and staying away from strangers, largely on my own once more.

Now that the days have cooled and the leaves have changed and I’m settling down into MY time of year, I’m thinking of last winter and how magical it was…and I sigh.

Because I know this year will not be the same. 

I realize that last winter, for the first time in way too long, I was happy.  Honestly, I feel a little guilty about it, because the world at large, and our country in particular, were going through the tortures of the damned.  Leave it to me to be so contrary that a wind that brought sadness, illness, fear and death to so much of the world, brought me connection and contentment—LOVE—I hadn’t known in ages, with the person with whom I had chosen to share life’s yoke so many decades ago. 

I am grateful beyond measure for those three months.

And, honestly, I'm afraid to hope we'll ever be able to recapture that bliss.  Because life does what life does.  And my life has not exactly pointed in the direction of sweet contentment for any length of time.  Between creeping old age and grappling with a pandemic, we can hardly dare to count on anything.

But we can hope.

And we shall see.