Date Night

I follow several blogs online.  Some are about cooking, some about miniature building, and some are about gardening.  The other day I came across a posting for a blog named Not Without Salt, a cooking blog that has some great recipes on it. This particular post talked about something called Eaton Mess, an English dessert that the author took some liberty with. Many of the recipes I read of hers are great and often look wonderful.  I try to replicate some, but often my attempts don’t look as appetizing as hers.  Perhaps as she is an art major, there is a level of artistic skill that I just don’t possess.

The other day she was talking about a date night she spends with her husband.  They have young children and when the children are in bed, they turn their attention to each other and concentrate on their adult world.  I somewhat envy her not because of her young children or her young marriage, but because she has time to enjoy with her husband.  It seems as if I am always doing something outside the home.  I realize that much of these obligations are things that I have taken on myself and I only have me to blame for my lack of time, but I envy the time she talks about where she can spend quality time with her mate.

My husband and I do try to enjoy each other’s company and have done a pretty good job through the 28 years we have been married.  We don’t set up a specific date night, but often one of us will express the need for one realizing we haven’t done one in a while.  We usually leave weekend nights to watch movies on our DVD player, or have a fire in the fire pit, and enjoy a glass of wine at the same time.  I know those evenings don’t result in “sparkling conversation” as my stepfather was fond of saying, but it’s the togetherness that we share.  Our son is grown and flown so we don’t have to worry about him going to bed or worry about when he is coming home (trust me, there is always worry going on about him – well at least on my end), so it’s just the two of us.  But I think we have made the best of our marriage and our partnership through some pretty rough patches in our lives. I agree that it is important to have a date night with your significant other to rekindle the attraction you first felt for each other no matter the path each of you has taken.  It seems like time together away from the world is a piece of the formula that couples are looking for when aiming for a long marriage.

Slighted

Upon pressure from my mother, I sent away for a copy of my father’s will.  She has been after me since my father died to get back her furniture he took when they got divorced.  My stepmother won’t speak to my mother so she has imbued my brother and me with this task.  I received it yesterday and basically it said she gets everything, which was what my stepmother said when she called to tell me there would be no reading of the will as she suggested there would be.  Also, apparently they don’t do that kind of thing any longer.  I won’t go into the nasty details of the strained relationship between my mother and my stepmother here suffice it to say that it is quite hideous.  My relationship with my stepmother is rather icy so I wasn’t about to ask her about the furniture to begin with, so my only hope was that it was mentioned in the will.

I received the copy the other day and read through it.  I was hoping to see some reference of me in there.  My stepmother, rather unceremoniously, gave me a box of his CDs and told me that my father instructed that I was to get the proceeds of their sale.  I supposed I wanted to see that behest in there, or perhaps some other item.  My name was not there at all!  My brother’s name, on the other hand, was there.  It says that if my stepmother can’t perform the duties of an executor, he was to do so.  I was shocked.  I am the first born and I felt it should be my responsibility to have that honor. Granted, my brother and he got along much better than he and I did, but after all I am his first born child. I suppose since I am a woman, he in his old fashioned ways didn’t feel I was up to the task.  When he wrote the will, he knew he was not going to outlive my stepmother.  She is his junior by at least 15 years to start with.  There was a very small chance that she would not be able to perform the necessary duties in carrying out his will, so having an alternate was routine anyway.

The only thing I can figure out is my gender.  I just can’t believe that in this day and age I, the first born child, would not have that responsibility simply because I am a woman.  Of course I can’t ask him, but it really riles me.  I feel slighted, I feel worthless, I feel small. My father was a very conservative person.  He and I fought about many social issues because of the difference in our beliefs.  Perhaps my brother wasn’t as vocal as I was about standing up to his views even though my brother and I often share the same.  Maybe this was my father’s final word.

To Contact or Not to Contact?

A Caring Bridge site for an old friend was forwarded to me along with a copy of a prayer from a mutual friend of ours the other day.  I had not heard from this person for a very long time.  So I went to that site and read some of her journal entries about her cancer and how she is dealing with it.

This woman and I had been very close friends from about junior high school through college and after.  I met her through my best friend.  Their respective mothers had sent them both to golf lessons, probably in the hopes they would be able to hold their own on the golf course which would no doubt make them better prospects for meeting men.  They both bonded through their hatred of golf and their anger at their mothers for continuing to try to make them suitable husband-catching material.  For a while the three of us were inseparable spending every waking, non-school hour together.  Ah, good times.    

After college and bad marriages, this woman and I roomed together for a short time until I re-married.  For some reason (to this day I still don’t know what that reason was) she suddenly stopped talking to me.  Things got very unpleasant in the house where we were living, so my fiancé and I found an apartment and moved in together.  Our mutual friend refused to tell me what the reason was and insisted I work things out with her on my own, but that was very difficult because every attempt I made – sending birthday cards, Christmas cards, and letters – were met with silence.  Eventually I gave up.  That was 21 years ago.

A few months ago, her old boyfriend called me to tell me that she was very sick and had asked about me.  He gave me her address and I sent flowers and a card with my cell phone number and said that if she wanted to I would welcome her call.  I didn’t want to bother her and wanted the communication to be on her terms.  Perhaps I should have called her but I didn’t think I could handle the rejection, and from the sound of things, she was too sick to speak to me.  Again, it was met with silence. 

So now, I have her email address and her other contact information and I have a choice.  Do I reach out again and call her and deal with the rejection, or do I wait until she responds to the posting I made on her journal guestbook?  Will there be a rejection anyway?  I guess I just will have to gather my courage and do it.