Stone Fox Bride

The summer my husband moved out the house he lived in an Airstream parked down the block. My kids would cry at bedtime, "why is Daddy living in that house on wheels?" I didn't know what to say. I tore our wedding photos off the walls. I dumped the box of love notes we'd once left on each other's pillows down the garbage chute. I texted him "unless you want it, I'm going to set fire to our wedding ketubah". I was livid with rage. The hair on my arms stood on end that summer. The inside of my head was hot. It throbbed. Things we'd gathered over the years: books, photos, blankets, the nylon hammock we never once hung, day after day, I dragged them all out to the dumpster. But life is what happens when you're making other plans. Three months after M. settled into the Airstream my Dad was diagnosed with leukemia, and four months later, he died. My husband was in the room holding his hand when he took his lucid breaths. Needless to say, the whole thing was an emotional clusterfuck of anger and devastation. And adding sadness to madness is like adding coke to whiskey — the sugar is so strong, so sweet, it becomes difficult to taste the bitterness of the booze. Cheryl Strayed has this line I like: "Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding ...understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness." FYI: My husband DID want the ketubah. Yesterday I asked him over text "do you still have it" and he said yes. I asked because I had just met with @amichailaulavie who married us about creating a new ketubah that outlines the responsibilities of our new family. Maybe we WILL end up burning it after all, but we will do it in front of our daughters, then forge foreward, the four of us, into the forest, and create a new path by walking it together. PS: There were also things I could never get rid of. I don't know why. Like this mug @thesettingnyc made a long time ago. I'm drinking coffee out of it right now. #divorcestories#stonefoxride #stonefoxmama