Buttercups

there was a bouquet of buttercups in a vase on the cedar chest in my living room when I got home from work this afternoon. My first thought was damn him. How dare he bring me buttercups now?

When the husband and I were first dating, there was a late winter/early spring afternoon, a picnic and a country road. We were just out driving, taking in the new green, the treat of fresh air and silence after classrooms and dorms always too full of people and noise. We drove past a field covered with yellow blossoms, and I squealed, "Buttercups!" He stopped, jumped out of the car and picked me an armful of buttercups. Dozens of them. A bounty.

A few weeks ago, he told me that he saw the first buttercups of the season and thought of me. I just looked at him and said, "Don't talk to me about buttercups." You see, every year after that, he brought me the first buttercup of the season. This was my decidedly unromantic husband's consistent shining moment. For over twenty years, he paid homage to our surprising and unexpected youthful love with a single blossom snapped from the side of a road and handed to me with few words and a smile rich with memories.

About four years ago the buttercups stopped. He might mention when he saw the first one of the season. I'd see clusters in a yard and think back on that stolen armful and remember it with fondness and longing. Other kindnesses had stopped by then as well, but I still had hope that they could return. That hope is long gone, and what is left is some anger but more fatigue.

Giving up that hope was actually a blessing. Some things do pass out of your life without you knowing it because it looks like they're still there. Saying goodbye to that specific hope let me see the coldness and indifference that had replaced it. What I had cherished was long gone. Lately, the husband seems to be missing some of what he's lost and is trying to spend more time around here. It may just be that I'm easier to live with than his mother. She won't make excuses for him any more. He's found out that I won't either. He still can't live here, but I will allow him to clean up the mess he left behind in the garage and the office.

So, tonight, when I saw buttercups in my living room, I didn't want my hope resuscitated. It's easier for me without it. I'm much more willing to face the reality of our marriage without that hope and the reminder of those wonderful early years. I felt the first few spikes of a migraine returning, took preemptive medication and left to pick up the womanchild at her job.

When I got there, she asked me if I had noticed the buttercups. I just snorted out a harsh yes. I should have known better. These buttercups were clustered into a nearly perfect round ball and put in a vase filled with water with a penny at the bottom. The husband would have just left the posy lying on the table as it was. My daughter had picked these flowers for me. We've been fighting like cats and dogs lately, and this was a sweet, sweet gesture of love.

In my pain, I just stepped all over it. Her defenses have gone back up. Her voice was harsh, disdainful and ugly when she spoke for the rest of the evening. Her words were critical, and any restoration of the peace has been delayed. She deserves to be hurt.

This is what is so damn painful about separation and divorce. It's just this self-perpetuating monster. One pain creates another which creates another, and we are left struggling not to be consumed. Sometimes your choice in life is this pain or that pain. I'm just trying to take the shorter term pain that will lead to peace.

marriage, separation, divorce