Another weekend without Mr. Magnolia. And the sun was out.
The sky was this tehnicolour, swirling blue, like my mother’s blue crystal ashtray that she bought in Stockholm in 1962 for my Dad back in New York.
Today was just a day to thank who ever you believe in for being alive. Ah, but I had to work, so I was headed to a client meeting in North London. The sun was so almost warm. Got on the Tube and dug out my ipod.
And turned it on. Back me up and slap grandma, what was the first song? Dammit all to hell. I had just picked it up this morning, don’t even know what mix was on it and the first song on it was a song Beautiful Boy had sent me back in July. It was this chilled reggae song by Patrice:
When I’m up in my room (and I’m thinking of you)
And I’m thinking of you (when I’m up in my room)
I’m just finding my way
through this sinister day
Just let the music play
Let’s build a house on the beach
plant a family tree
and live in harmony
Only in love we are free
that’s why I’m down on my knees (yeah)
to make you my queen
My mind and heart are making peace
Didn’t come here to please
nobody but Jah
let my colours increase
Let us run to the east
let us look for the keys
that can open the rooms
Great song. God last summer feels like years ago. We just were. Knew what each other would say before we said it. Simultaneous texters.
Like the colour of the sky this morning, it was so stupidly unbelievably good.
But that was before it dawned on him, before it dawned on me, that it was going to take me a long time to leave Mr. Magnolia.
Before I was honest with myself or him.
Being 23, like he was and still is, how could he understand what it was going to take for me to do this?
Could I have been more honest?
Not really.
Why? Because I had no clue in heaven what I was about to get myself into, to get out.
In my own way still, I was a kid too. Facing up to all the things wrong with my marriage made me grow up. A lot.
So there I am on the Northern Line, listening to this song. And I smiled. From the first moment we said hello on our mobiles at about midnight almost a year ago. His voice was croaky (he had a sore throat) and I was nervous as hell. My heart was racing.
And it went from there. Somehow. He guessed I was Mrs. Magnolia and that he was Beautiful Boy. I started to play tennis again so I wouldn’t think about him. And well, even with tennis 2x a week and full time work, I still couldn’t get him out of my head.
It was toe curlingly corny and fuck it, fantastic. God we made arses out of ourselves. The way we shared dreams. Jokes. Fantasies. Star gazed.
If you asked us now how we made that connection I doubt we could tell you. I certainly can’t. Hell, I can’t seem to make that same kind of connection with anybody else either (not for want of offers or trying dammit).
Maybe you never know, maybe you don’t orchestrate it, maybe it just happens. But what I guess I realise now is that no matter what it was like then, last summer, who said it would ever turn into real life?
I am not sure we could or would ever want to get back to that place.
Just like the sky today, it was lovely, but not real. Ya’ll have been there. You know you have. You can’t put it into words and actually, even the word ‘love’ doesn’t do it justice.
Real love is the day in, the day out, the daily slog, the laughter at the top of a mountain you climbed together or when your getting a divorce but you make sure your children buy your soon to be ex-mother in law roses in her favourite colour for mother’s day. Love is hard work, love is sacrifice and love is a celebration of the human soul. But don’t let me define it for ya’ll. Love is what you make it.
Towards the end of last summer, Beautiful Boy said something along the lines of if I were his age, he would be in love with me by now. A few months later I actually told I loved him. What an idiot. Bless.
I realise now, I didn’t.
And the night I said it, he told me the only reason I said it was to get a reaction.
And he was right.
Right, right, right. Because I did.
And because I couldn’t and didn’t love him. I loved the idea of him.
How did he know it was for a reaction when I didn’t know it myself? How?
But he did. Maybe that is why he got to me. Why he inspired me to take this journey.
The funny thing is, what we had last summer was better than lots of kinds of love.
We were like two little kids with a gloriously greedy bag of fruit gums from Wollies.
All different flavours in electric neon colours that nature never intended, coated in sticky sugar, gritty granules.
It wasn’t love.
It was more like a Technicolor blue sky in the middle of winter. You have to savour it because it doesn’t last.
Oh, yeah, I hear you. What makes me write about him after all this time?
Because he texted me just before Valentine’s Day to say he’d spent most of Sunday drinking beer in the sun by the river at the pub where we first met.
My heart didn’t leap. Didn’t do anything really. Part of me was cross if I am honest.
I re-read the text before deleting it.
What the hell, no one can take those out of this world Bobby Ray outside the high school dance kisses away from the night we met. I can still remember his hands on my face. Can’t remember the smell of his skin now or the first taste of his mouth.
I won’t text him back.
Its not because I don’t care. Its not because I don’t miss him.
There will be other Bobby Ray kisses in my life, I have faith in that, I just might have to wait a little while for the next one and play a lot more tennis till one comes along.
In the sun today, after these very difficult months, I know that being happy isn’t about Beautiful Boy, or Mr. Magnolia, or anyone really. It is about loving the life you have chosen. And knowing you’ve chosen it carefully. That this time round, you have been very particular.
And like those vows I took all those years ago, what I am about to do is not an enterprise ‘to be entered into lightly or wantonly, but soberly and advisedly.’
Getting divorced with two young children at the tender age of 36 is still in the main, the path less chosen, but its honest and at least its my path.
Not my mother’s.
Not my father’s.
Not my grandmother’s.
Who knows, maybe Beautiful Boy and I will meet again one day and we’ll even go to Woolies and buy a new bag of sweets, in different flavours, but just as sticky and messy and complicated and colourful and…just and, and, and go to Vegas and not get married.
And not be in love with each other.
Nope, not going to text back.
What in the world would I say?
It seems silly.
Text him: Hi! Hope you’re well. I’m almost divorced, let’s pick up where we left off. X
It don’t work like that.
Mrs. Magnolia
