I am spinning

By Annabelle Hawes

"I am spinning. With centrifugal force I am twirling and all of the crap, the stuff that doesn't matter is flinging out of my life."

A girlfriend said to me last week, "I am afraid that you are spiraling down. And once you are down you will never get back up." She looked so worried and then she said what they all say, "I wouldn't say it if I didn't love you."

I think what she meant was I'll never be a suburban housewife again. She imagined I would snap another man into the place that Matthew once held -- as if they were interchangible. The wives hoped that some other husband might come and sleep with me and go to pick apples on sunny Autumn weekends. He might take me to Vermont for the weekend, or want to talk with me after dinner. Perhaps he would even share the remote, or laugh at a joke from time to time. No matter, to the other housewives, they are all the same. They would have welcomed him.

A bit irritating at times, husbands all have their bad habits. One has gas, another leaves his laundry on the floor. The wives complain about the husbands wanting sex as if they are asking them to wax the car. On weekends they get dressed and go to dinner and meet with friends. They can even be amusing for an hour or two assuming there was a bottle of wine and dinner wasn't deplorable. On Saturday mornings there is working in the garden, and watching the kids play soccer, there is a drip in the bathroom sink and new sheets are needed for the upstairs guest room. There are Sunday muffins and a coffee pot that leaks and a paper with the book section. Before you know it the weekend is over. Marriage is really only about 24 hours a week if you are a wife in Connecticut. So any man, assuming he is employed and discreet, is as good as another.

What the women don't know and what the wives choose to forget, is that men are not as good at numbing themselves as we are. They continue to live, to think and to feel. And they wonder what happened to us and if we really care what color the powder room is painted.

If I am spiraling, it is not down.

They knew that I was bored. When I went to the meetings at the New Haven Garden Club it was all I could do not to scream as we voted on what color napkins to have at our luncheon or which coffee cake we would all make for the bake sale. I might have complied. I might have baked my coffee cake and taken my xanex and closed my mouth and my mind. If I had done that he would have loved me. No... he never would have loved me.

I am not spiraling. I am spinning. With centrifugal force I am twirling and all of the crap, the stuff that doesn't matter is flinging out of my life. Be careful girls, you might be hit by an unnecessary spatula or broom or a pair of leather gloves.