The Future Is Now

Yesterday Mr. C got a letter in the mail.

It was a thin letter, the kind of letter that caused me to live in a constant state of anxiety from December 1988 to April 1989.

It was a rejection letter.

We are not moving to Ohio, just as we did not move to Wisconsin. We are staying right here in Chambana for at least the next 12 months. From May to May we’ll be here, playing on playgrounds, eating at Culver’s, going to Saturday evening Mass, fretting about our dead grass, traveling for the holidays, fussing, fighting and loving each other.

The matter is settled.

I thought I would feel bad. After all, the last time, I cried. I cried a little bit this time, too, but mostly out of relief. The unknown is now known. I can send my daughter to a school of our choosing, I can keep Shaggy with the same pediatrician, I can figure out how to be a friend and grow the circle of people who care about me and, in return, learn to care about something and someone beyond the small borders of my comfort zone.

The last 12 months have been fraught with anxiety for me. Beginning last spring when my pregnancy with Shaggy began to go awry. I had a terrible scare, thanks to incompetent care, and I could have lost him. Then he was hospitalized. Then we struggled to get him healthy and happy.

I worried about caring for and loving two children. I worried about finding work, and how we would manage to give them everything they needed as the fiscal world came crashing down. I was diagnosed with a painful, chronic disease. I struggled with depression.

Then came the job search and a whole new way to worry. I shut myself off from my friends, in what I now see as an effort to disengage from Chambana, to shut down the real sorrow I felt about leaving our life here behind. I harbored anger in my heart, for anyone and anything I could lash out at.

I was blind.

Yesterday when that envelope came in the mail, I knew before I opened it that we wouldn’t be leaving in August. The words “we’re sorry” never looked so good.

I am sad for my husband, whose ego is bruised. He, too, is relieved, though. It is time to buckle down, to get this chapter written so we can move on. I am embarking on a venture with one of the smartest women I know, something I dreamed about as a girl waiting for her words to come. The words will come for Mr. C, too, and we will bid goodbye to this strange middle-beginning properly.

With degree in hand. With goals met. With a family freshly minted. With the trappings of success.

The future is now.