To My Love, On Other Women

Darling,

We are so busy. We both work six days a week to pay for this bungalow, and our cozy little life in it.

There are things I often wish to tell you about, but I forget, for there is only time for “I love you” and “would you like me to make you coffee too?” As well as, “I am proud of you." All good things to be saying to one another, of course. Though, the extras sometimes get forgotten. So, I have written them here for you to read, perhaps on a smoke break, or on your day off, when and I am at work.

There is a gesture, when I make our bed, where I bend over the mattress, pulling the fitted sheet tight again after the displacements of the night; then I press my palms flat against the fabric and swoosh them up the bed, from rounded foot to rounded head. This action pushes all the wrinkles out of the sheet, leaving it utterly smooth and satisfying.

I have watched a woman do this countless times. She is tall, slender, brown haired and large eyed. She has been to me a second mother, and as I have grown, she has become a friend. You have met her on several occasions.

My own mother has given me gestures too. The way she holds a throw pillow as she plumps it. The putting out of a burning match after lighting a candle on the kitchen counter, flicking her wrist just once, a final gesture to smother the flame by the rushing air around it. I had to make many attempts before I could do that on the first try!

I tap the wooden spoon on the side of the pot in just the way I saw her do when I was small.

I wipe down the counter and backsplash the way my aunt does.

I put lotion on in a circular motion just like Beth.

I hang earrings in my lobes, with the movements of my older cousin, Abi.

I sip wine the way Shelby does.

My hands speak in tandem with my mouth the way Jess’s do.

Today, as I made the bed after you left for work, I smoothed the sheet and felt tears pricking at the corners of my eyes.

I have a small home of my own now, with you.

I am, in my father’s words, “making my way in the world.”

I, at times, feel alone, when I have gotten off work before you.

I am not a social butterfly, so much as I am a frog. I think I can survive for some time out of the water without my family and friend frogs, but I very soon will get dry and miss you and the other frogs very much.

Then I do chores, and they are every one of them with me as I plump pillows, wash dishes and fold laundry.

Isn’t it miraculous how, for so many years, I saw women doing these things, and now, without even a thought going into it, I find myself moving in a dance I didn’t know I had learned?

That is why I think women are powerful.

We don’t have to speak to communicate. I know what they think before they say it.

I have spent enough tear soaked nights with each of them to know what they will go to battle for, and I have memorized each note of the silent war cry they can sing.

You wouldn’t even know it was being sounded, but you will feel the shift in the room. And all of a sudden, there is a strength in air that wasn’t there a moment ago.

I do not write these things out as a threat to you or the other men-frogs.

Perhaps there is something similar to this in male friendships? I do not know.

I have only ever been a girl, and, of late, a woman.

I only write this out because they are the thoughts I have, and I like sharing them with the one whose home I share.

I love you; I hope your day is going well.

Kiss you soon.

-H