Healing

The man I love is a complicated man...but who isn't "complicated" in some way, right?
He cares for animals. He likes babies. Animals and babies seem to...gravitate to him, it's weird and I'm jealous. Old people like him, men and women both. I could go on and on of the things I love about him, but I won't. Who wants to hear that? (Rhetorical question)

There has, however, alwyas been something about him that worried me. He was always a little angry. Always a little unhappy with his cards in life...always walking and testing and missing something. Always just not calm enough. Rarely enough to really seem scary....but I say "rarely". And "rarely" happened. And it was. But this something was never enough to really point out what was the main problem...never enough to demand a change, a more equal give-and-take reather than just 'take'.

The man standing in my living room is a very different man. Same good qualities, same delicious smell and his kiss that takes my breath away...but he's melted somehow. (Are visions of The Wicked Witch going through your head now?) It's as if he's just softened, mushed up around the hard edges. I could use analogies. Like a big weight has lifted. An empty glass partly filled up. But I won't. (But I just did!)

And again, the melting (melting!) is not enough to pinpoint, nothing to comment on yet. The sense of haste, of urgency in everything this man did, everything he had in life, has gone. Poof. Poof! It's only been two days, and I can see it. I'll be cautious. But I'm relaxing myself, and I can see where I can do a little less "take" also. I'm giving just a little more, listening and discussing and just enjoying what we have, not enough to pinpoint. But enough.

As a mother, my heart and my children are the same. When they get stiitches, so does a little part of my heart. My heart tears up when one of them cries, with every retelling of schoolyard snubs, it bruises.The same heart, it sings along with my daughters at every bedtime song, and dances in each ballet recital. I had never thought about how a Dad would feel without his children. But now that I wonder...well, it seems stupid to even wonder.

I won't dare to hope that my life and relationship will be perfect from now on, I'm not expecting rainbows and sunshine and faeries all the fucking time, fersher.

But I can hope for the healing that happens when a Dad hugs his children for the first time in over five years, when he and his son watch a ppv UFC fight on a Saturday night. The healing that happens to every parent's heart when they put their child to bed at night and they know that tomorrow will bring more.

"Pretend" Story Number Two

A woman came in to apply for food stamps. This woman looked awfully familiar...hmmm...where had I seen her before? Ah ha! She looked exactly like a woman who had worked here a few weeks ago, but with a different hairstyle.
Let's backtrack a little bit. I was in a training class with a few new people. One of the women, we'll call her Threnody, did not seem the type to be working here. She was very verbally abrasive and bias and opinionated. Don't get me wrong, I love opinionated people, even if their views are different from mine. It's just that in this job, one has to be unbias towards clients. And Threnody was not. Threnody worked there for a month or two and then quit, stating she was "headed for greener pastures".
Okay, so as I was saying, this women looked like Threnody's twin sister in a bad wig. She had a different name and a social-security number to go with that name. She had a story of woe. Well, guess what a person needs to get food stamps? A story of woe, and a picture ID. Yep, you guessed it. The worker who was interviewing her gave her food stamps.
When the interview was over, we clued Worker in on who we thought it was. All was not lost, part of the interviewing process in being fingerprinted. Guess who's also in the fingerprint database? County workers. We all waited with bated breath.
Lo and behold, this woman and Threnody had matching fingerprints! Amazing! The Welfare Police were called down. After Threnody was questioned (and claimed not to know how she got there) and her husband was called from work to come down (who she refused to recognize), Mental Health was also called over.
We're not sure what happened after that. Confidentiality and all that. We workers have our theories though...was she crazy? Having a bad day? Or something else?

"Pretend" Story Number One

An older lady walked into the Welfare Office. She looked to be about in her late fifties maybe? Anyhow, she had a belly on her. (I'm not making fun of older fat people here, gimme a sec.)
The lady announced to everyone that she was...pregnant! She was very proud of this news, kept boasting and talking about, how, "even though I'm old, I'm keeping this baby!"
She seemed a little strange, but it might have been the fact that she looked like a grandma and she was pregnant. Huh.
Before the woman could continue with her application interview though, she left. Where did she go? Why, she went to the bus-stop right outside to catch her bus. What did she do before she got on the bus, you ask? She bent down and gave birth to a pink pillow "baby" before she got on the bus.