red shoe

Driving home from dropping Jim off at California Crossing Thursday morning, I was feeling sorry for myself, thinking, yeah, here we are, another wedding anniversary he'll miss by virtue of the good ole Army Guard. One more day in a long string of birthdays, Christmases, and national holidays when he was gone and I was home. Alone. Lonely.

A few minutes later noticed that someone had lost a bag of clothes and shoes. The garments were spread randomly along the edge of the highway, one red high heel laying dead in the middle of southbound loop 12, not too far from the hole in the ground that used to be Cowboy stadium. Wondered what poor person would look for that bag when they reached their destination and find it gone.

And my thoughts turned to the things we lose accidentally and the things we throw away on purpose. Like lumpy bumpy mattresses. Towels and washcloths that have lost their oomph. Napless rugs. Broken dishes. Old lamps.

And then (don't ask me why because most times my thought processes are so convoluted even I can't understand the stretches and jumps) I started thinking about love. I heard a woman say recently, when speaking of divorcing her ex-husband, “He killed my love for him." Can love die? And if it dies, was it really love to begin with?

Do we throw love away because it no longer suits our desires? Do we tend to focus on the fact that our partner just somehow is not meeting all our needs? And does that inevitably lead to the thought that maybe someone else out there somewhere would not only meet those needs but also do it willingly, gladly, lovingly, and with a dash of panache?

So. ok, tomorrow is our anniversary and we won't be together, but in the end, what's that in the long-term scheme of life within a committed relationship? I can't, indeed won't, throw away sixteen years of marriage just because of one more day spent without him. No matter how important the day.

But I do intend to bake a lemon cake.