Variations in the Seasons

And just like the seasons change, so did my life, quite unexpectedly too. I certainly wasn’t looking for it, if anything…I was trying to avoid it. Even my kids had been pestering me to “get out” to do something, to “meet someone”. Which was about the last thing I had any intention of ever doing, regardless of the promise I had made. So far I’ve managed to come up with enough excuses to put them all off. If it hadn’t been for my craving for peanut butter, which lately had become one of my main staples, maybe things would have continued on the way they had been.

Funny how something so simple as that can change your entire life.

I stood there in the aisle, a jar of smooth and creamy Skippy in one hand, and another jar of Skippy chunky style in the other. I actually found myself torn between which of the two I should buy when I heard a feminine voice speaking behind me.

“Live a little, buy both of them,” she told me.

I actually laughed at that without turning around. Funny how the simplest of things can strike you when you least expect them. I’d forgotten the last time I had actually heard myself laugh, which is when I turned to address the woman who had urged me to buy them both.

“Maybe you’re right…maybe I…” The last word stuck in my throat. There was something familiar about her, something about her eyes that told me in an instant that I knew her, though her name escaped me for a moment. And then she smiled, and then I knew who she was. That same smile now added to those eyes that had somehow remained the same after all these years. “Oh my God! Rose, is that really you?”

Now, don’t get me wrong here. Ever since the day that Stella and I had gotten married I had loved her with all my heart. And not that we didn’t have a few bumps in the road along the way either, because we did. I called those my stupid times. Stella had another word for it, but she forgave me for it anyway.

As I later did with her. Like I said, our marriage wasn’t perfect, but we truly did love one another, and eventually started acting like it…right up until the end. But Stella wasn’t the first woman I had ever loved either. Though back then, being the young teenage kid that I was, I wasn’t supposed to be in love, or even know what that really was. Though secretly I had told myself that I was…in love with Rose very early on.

But there was another problem with that too…I was five years older than Rose at the time, and being twenty one, infatuated with a young woman of just sixteen years of age, not only wasn’t very feasible, it wasn’t very damn likely that anything would ever come of it either. We ran in different circles, different peer groups and friends. Though fate always seemed to have a way of throwing the two of us together in the most unlikely of circumstances, just as it had done now.

“Sorry to hear about Stella,” she told me, her smile softening, her eyes pooling quite unexpectedly. I wasn’t even aware of the touch of her hand on my arm as she stood there supporting herself on her shopping cart as she stood next to me. Which is when I noticed she was missing a limb. Not that she wasn’t standing quite naturally, but to my surprise, she was wearing a pair of shorts, her metal leg,

which for the briefest of moments reminded me of the skeletal monster in “The terminator” flashed inside my head. I silently berated myself for the thought and looked back up into her eyes. Eyes that had already spoken without words as they did. But she was smiling again.

“Car accident, ten years ago,” she informed me simply. “I lost Dave in the accident, thankfully, the twins were home with a sitter when it happened,” she added.

It’s not like we had kept in touch or anything, because we hadn’t. I had heard when she had gotten married to Dave of course, a year after I had gotten married to Stella. I had also heard about the birth of her twin sons, though I didn’t even know their names. And I had heard about the accident too, though I hadn’t heard about her losing her leg, or that Dave had eventually succumbed to his own injuries months later, never coming out of his coma. Something Rose would tell me all about later, though not here.

“I’m sorry,” I said in response as we both stood there smiling at one another, words now failing the two of us as we stood there.

“Listen, I’m still a pretty good cook if I do say so myself, and one thing I hate doing is cooking for one. I don’t know of a single decent recipe for a single person without having a week’s worth of leftovers remaining behind because of it. How about you come over and join me for dinner at my place tonight?” She asked.

I hesitated, my thoughts suddenly a jumble of emotion, the past rushing by, the recent present hurtling head on towards it. She saw the mix of emotions in my face, but rather than allow me to come up with some sort of excuse not to, she somehow managed to convince me into agreeing to it.

“You bring the wine…dinners at eight,” She hurriedly scribbled down her address handing it to me, and then wheeled off back down the aisle, not even looking back once towards me as she did. Only then did I glance down at her note reading it, and realized, she’d not given me her phone number either.

Only the place where she lived. If I were to cancel the dinner date, then I’d damn well have to show up and do it in person, and not over the phone. Once again I heard myself chuckle, still holding onto my two jars of peanut butter. It felt strange hearing myself do that. Stranger still as I headed off towards the checkout counter carrying my two jars, whistling as I did.