cbstaples

Does It Feel Like It’s Been That Long?

Posted on July 3, 2021 by cbstaples

This morning you asked me if it has felt that long. My answer surprised you. Yes, there are times when a moment flashes through my memory, and I feel like it happened only yesterday. Most days, I can no longer categorize my memories into pre and post you. I can look at a photo from my childhood and remember, but my eyes always scan for your face and my mind wonders what you were doing in that instant. I know you were not there and yet I don’t. Memories are tricky little things.

At the risk of sounding cliche, you have been my constant, for twenty-two years. When I get lost in the day to day stress, when anxiety creeps in and settles, when the chronic pain has worn me down, you are my light. You are my home. My hand just fits in yours. Your arms are always there when my legs choose to not quite work. Your eyes are what I search for when I scan a room. Your smile calms my chaos.

Today, my mother told us that “we make it work.” There are days when the work feels tedious, suffocating, impossible. On those days, those difficult days (like tonight,) I look for your light. Our journey has been happy and sad and messy and loud.

Some days it feels like we have been us since the beginning of time. Some days it feels like we’re just beginning.

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Lost In The Minutiae

Posted on June 22, 2021 by cbstaples

Some times I cannot catch my breath. Thoughts settle so heavily on my chest and then retreat to clumsily swirl through my mind over and over like a tiny ballerina learning how to pirouette.

I can remember times throughout my life when I was able to breathe freely and silence the dancing thoughts. Getting lost in the minutiae was easy.

The rain is falling steadily. A slight breeze is carrying faint sprays of raindrops through the window screen. This is a quiet murmuring, white noise rain.

For a few minutes it is just me, the rain and the petrichor. That smell of rain hitting hot earth lends to flashes of sitting on city stoops while thunder rolls and lightning blazes in the distant, mixed with nights in the woods watching heavy rain drops plop through the pine trees creating small winding rivers along the rocky dirt roads.

And just like that the rain stops, a group of teen boys come crashing through the front door, dogs bark, the twirling thoughts come dancing back in and I’m plunged back into the chaos.

I hope to get lost in the minutiae again and again.

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What It Sounds Like

Posted on April 21, 2021April 27, 2022 by cbstaples

Do you wanna go for a ride and listen to my new favorite song?

This is what love sounds like after 22 years. Well, it’s what our love sounds like after 22 years.

There are daily “I love you(s),” and at the end of each phone conservation. There are reminders to take my medication, and calls on the way home asking if I need anything. There are daily 4:00 AM alarms waking him so he can go to work and provide for us. There are requests to snuggle and watch movies, and of course appeals to make a grocery list so he can go food shopping. There is the sound of my car moving up the driveway in the snowy winter so I don’t have to walk too far to start it. There are even still some, “you look good today(s).”

But my favorite is, “Do you wanna go for a ride and listen to music?” It usually begins with his new favorite song, but the ride always extends into a peripatetic concert. In the confines of the front seat, as the music plays, the melodies seduce our words, feelings and struggles out of the margins of our mouths.

The music has always been there. It was song lyrics written on a desk calendar in my office. It was mix tapes and cds listened to on long drives to NY and late at night. It was/is Tom Petty, Dave Matthews and Brandi Carlile concerts. It was homemade daily calendars with purposeful lyrics handwritten on each day. It is songs “given” to me through texts. It is crackly vinyl playing while we make dinner or play cards.

This is what love sounds like after 22 years.

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Recent Miscellaneous Ramblings

Posted on April 20, 2021April 27, 2022 by cbstaples

11/14/20

I’m sitting in the front seat of your truck watching you. You’re meticulously exploring through bins of records in some shady, industrial warehouse. The loading gate is open allowing me a glimpse inside. Your gaze is fixed. You’re not looking for anything in particular, just anything that will make you smile, remember. With each gentle flick of your finger, memories materialize. Late night trips to Newbury Comics and Tower Records fade in and out. You have coupled music to every piece of our relationship and life; a beautiful, chaotic, tumultuous soundtrack of us. You hold your discoveries as gentle as you did our babies. You protect your music, and for the first time I understand why. Those songs and melodies are proof of your past or glimpses of your future. Almost an hour has passed. I don’t mind. You’re feeding your soul while I write, listen to Fleetwood Mac, sip tea and feed my own. When we return home later, you will play your music for me, for our kids, for our neighbors (whether they like it or not) and for yourself, adding to our bitter sweet symphony.

11/20/20

I’m the dusty, mismatched batteries you find in the back of the junk drawer on Christmas morning. I work just enough to make that new toy light up or turn on and bring a smile or two. Luckily attention wanes because my charge is weak. The lights dim and the sounds become low, jumbled and drawn out. I need recharging. I need to plug in and unplug from schedules,homework assignments, laundry, cooking, cleaning, sports sign-ups, practices, IEPs, meetings, lesson plans, Google meets, hydrating, eating healthy, moving more, arguments, emails, text messages, social media, politicians, Covid and worrying. Too much to maintain. My energy is almost gone. Maybe if someone takes me out, spins me around and puts me back in, I’ll work for a little longer.