Day One may have been perfect, but day two was far from it. Day One included a warm night complete with a summer breeze off the Chicago river, deep dish spinach pizza, and the coolest street performers ever (there were shitty moments to Day One, but I’m choosing not to remember those, particularly my kid being a two-year old and me reacting to him like one…enough said). Day Two was rain and me getting lost in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and realizing that not only is getting divorced the right thing, but it’s probably something I should’ve done a long time ago.
I hate getting lost. I hate it because it would mean I have to ask someone to help me find my way, and given how anxious strangers make me, asking a question I feel I should know the answer to makes me feel pretty silly. And anxious. But, I had never taken my husband to Nookies Too. And I love that place. The food is not spectacular; the place isn’t romantic or even ambiance-y. It just like that I know it and I love it. I’m a creature of habit (I can prove it, Suraj Hua Maddham is playing on my iPod right now, that song is older than dirt, and I know all the words).
So I tried to find it. I knew the cross streets, figured I’d find my way. An hour later, when I finally realized we must’ve passed Halstead like a mile and half back, I was basically beating myself up over it. I felt bad. My kid was hungry, my whining husband had a caffeine headache, and I was sitting in the front seat looking very forlorn. F*kcing forelorn, on a Saturday in Chicago.
What did I want?
“I’m not giving you a hard time about getting us lost, what more do you want from me?” he asked as I complained about his lack of support. How about some words of support and encouragement? How about a “Aww, honey, don’t feel bad. It’s not like you live here, or even that you have a map. It’s OK.”
I was, after all, taking him not only because I happen to like that place, but every time I ask him if I’ve ever taken him there before he says something like, “No, you’ve never taken me there, I’m don’t know who you took there but it wasn’t me”, a vague and hurtful reference to the people who existed before him. And how much he hates them. He claims to mean nothing by this statement. I’m no fool. In some small way I was trying to make up for that resentment, though it wasn’t mine for which to make up. Because even after the ink dries, the fact that we have a child together means we will forever be in each other’s lives.
But why the hell should I take him anywhere, when after I do he proceeds to sit through an entire omelet and two cups of coffee complete silently? Why should I take him to my favorite bar, or let him read my favorite books, when I get nothing from him? In a small way I’m trying here, trying to make him a part of my life, the life I had before we were married, and he chooses to be a baby instead. Pouting into his omelet and coffee. Well, screw that.
Instead we find ourselves back in Columbia, MO, visiting his friends. And I sit there, realizing I’m the only woman not wearing hijab, and I think to myself how stupid we were to ever get married. He insists that he doesn’t want what I think he wants, but come on! Look at all his friends and their wives! They’re all meek-as-all-get-out hijabis. I’m SO not. Believe me, I tried to be. But I’m not.
I hear him go on and on about how connected he feels to Columbia since it was the city he first lived in when he moved to America. I don’t say anything…but in the back of my mind, a hot ember burns. He can feel connected to this place, but I’m not supposed to feel offended when he says “Cleveland sucks” to me in response to my “Cleveland Rocks”? I fell in love in Cleveland. I got my education here, lived on my own there, become who I am there. Cleveland is my home. It may be a pile of stones shat, but it’s my home.
And it occurred to me in the night as I watch my son sleep, and wondered what the love of his life would look like and how her laugh would sound, that this is the ritual. You meet someone, you share something with them, it either works out or it doesn’t and you move on. I have taken other people to Nookies, even someone I dated once, but also my three close friends Cinaiya, Lourdes and Tiffany. When you find someone, you share. That is your job. You share who you are, in all your messed up glory. And if it doesn’t work, you move on and you grow, and you share with the next person. And the next person doesn’t have the right to make you feel like shit for sharing with the last person. Or people.
Because that’s f*cked up.
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