Nothing earth-shattering has happened in the Kling household. We bought a new stove with some of our tax-refund money. It's a really nice professional-style one, but is stainless steel, so eventually I'll have to swap all the other appliances out to match. I've been going to the gym. I made it through another cardio-circuit class Thursday without keeling over (which at one point seemed a likely scenario while I was hopping up and down on a BOSU balance trainer.) It snowed one of the nights last week and we got about 4 inches of thick wet snow on the ground. My poor crocus didn't know what to do! All things that make me miss Jimmy. I didn't realize how much we called one another and told each other every day stuff, until the phone connection to his office and his cell weren't there anymore.
I seem to have moved into different circles over the years. I have some really wonderful friends, but none of them are carry-overs from growing up. I see some of my old friends every once in a great while - a Christmas card or an e-mail here or there. It's wonderful to see them and hear about their lives, but it's sporadic contact at best. My friends are set in different times of my life - with very few of them wandering from one time to another. (For example, there's no high school friend who's still an integral part of my adult, married-with-children, life.) I've come to realize that Jimmy fulfilled many roles in my life - the one I'm missing the most lately was long-time friend. Someone who knew just about all my stories from then until now. He knew just about everyone who ever crossed my path. I could say "Hey - Greg's in Portugal now at the University of Lisbon." and he knew just who Greg was and that it was very much like him to be an academic in Lisbon. Jimmy knew why I'd want to know what Greg was doing almost 20 years after my circle moved to include a different set of friends. Don't get me wrong - I have Mark and I tell him just about everything, but things about people and places from before I knew him, just aren't of much interested to him. (Although sometimes it's a small world, as I found out Mark dated a friend of mine from Junior High...long after Jr. High!)
Life goes on, but I feel I've lost my historian - the person who tracked the details of my life. Almost like there was a book "The Marventano Children," which included interwoven chapters of our lives. We created that book together, each of us aware that the other one was adding to the book. Adding our interpretation of events in the other one's life. Hearing about a fight with a spouse and knowing they reacted the way they did because of growing up with our parents and grandparents. I've said before that Jimmy called me cheap in NYC when I refused to take a taxi from JFK to Central Park because the subway was so much cheaper. It's a funny story, but when he called me cheap, there were so many pages of our book that jumped out with those words that made it a good inside ribbing between the two of us.
There's no one that transcends time in my life like Jimmy did. Even going forward, if Mark and I live until we're 100 and 104, there will always be a good 27 years of my life that are dark for him. 27 years that really made me who I am and who he married. Chapters in the book written in a language only James Robert and I knew - things that made us the quirky, odd birds that we are. Now I'm just an odd bird and no one really understands why! He at least knew I was an odd bird and couldn't help it...it was Mom & Dad's fault! ;-)
No comments:
Post a Comment