Renewing My Vows

Much has happened since I last blogged. Here’s the long emotional story bulleted short.

• Anxiety because I got the opportunity to write an article about phone sex for Granta Magazine!
• Horror when I realized that hubby was unaware of this particular chocolate chip in the cookie of my past!
• Suspense while I summoned enough courage to confess.
• Joy (I think)when he says he knows me better than I think. Joy (for real) when email announces that the article is accepted.
• Anxiety mounts as I anticipate how quickly and awfully this publication will knock over our picket fence.
• Horror as I try to mentally explain away this article to my family members in the generation above and below me.
• Joy when I get an email from a Granta requesting to publish the article anonymously as part of a new iphone app they have coming out in a few weeks.
• Relief as I email back a simple “god bless you”.
• Anxiety re-mounts when I get invites to the Granta launch party in NYC.
  

This is where I wanted to start but felt I had to give you some background. I got the invitation to the party and realized that in my nine years as a wife and mother I have not gone anywhere without the armor of my husband and children. I am his amusing wife, their dependable Mommy. My life is a series of well-rehearsed pirouettes. I spin around and around at the center of their lives, my arms radiating out gracefully to encourage them up and out to work, to school, to life. I have become a permanent part of my home; there is the couch in the living room, the microwave in the kitchen, the bathtub in the bathroom, the bed in the bedroom and Mom a portable feature in all of the above rooms keeping the family happy. My car briefly offered freedom but now is an extension of my house, giving me access to places in the city that I need to frequent in order to meet my family’s needs. This invitation upsets my balance; I cannot pirouette and go to NYC. I find that I am suffering from suburbia-induced agoraphobia. I begin to feel out reasons for not going and make the mistake of telling one of my more brutally honest sister-friends (heinafter to be referred to as Honest) all the reasons that I should not go. She listens patiently then tells me that if I don’t go I will resent it and then later resent hubby. I email another, more sympathetic sister she sends back a note:
What’s the matter with you - you used to do this kind of thing all the time. Throw a jacket and some pumps in your purse and quit complaining.
I resort to a third, very mild sister, who is quick to betray my assumption of her.
“What would you do if you were a man?” she says.
The three sisters work their magic and before I know it hubby is kissing my cheek bye and I am on my way to New York with Honest at my side.
We are in NYC at the door of Coco de Mer, an upscale sex shop I give my name shyly at the door while my panic due to agoraphobia rises rapidly.
“Of course,” says the man at the door and lets us in. In my city almost everyone is black, the postman has dreadlocks, the UPS man has cornrows, and I have to discourage my toddler from staring when we encounter white people at the bank. Honest and I are the only non-white faces at the party. I am sure his ‘of course’ is in answer to his own mental question about why these two black women are at the door: of course he’s thinking you are the one with the funny last name. I find out later that his ‘of course’ was because he has been instructed to look out for me and the other writers. Cultural shock replaces agoraphobia as the more current cause of my anxiety. Honest is impatient with me.
“You are here as a writer, for this magazine. Now mingle!”
A reddish brunette girl comes to talk to me. I am still feeling unbalanced and very house wifey so I can’t come up with anything to say to encourage the conversation. Only when she walks away do I notice that she is dressed in underwear and fishnet tights. I try to take in my surroundings but I am in survival mode swallowing down the adrenalin which is urging me to choose between fight or flight. Flight is out. Honest has long legs and would easily catch me and bring me, back even in peep toe heels. Fighting is the remaining option. I vaguely recalled being told to look for someone called Patrick upon arrival. A photographer spots Honest and her beauty heading for a couch - I failed to mention before that Honest has flawless skin, Nefertiti’s sharp profile and the grace of a gazelle.
“Wait” she says as he aims his camera, “I want to be in the picture with one of the writers.”
She grabs me. We pose between two paintings of pleasantly rounded female figures. Once the picture is taken Honest pushes me back to work on my mingling. I ask the photographer if he knows a Patrick. He does not but is kind enough to introduce me to a Hugh Laurie look alike named Doug. Doug guides me to a circle of conversation which breaks up enough for lovely Patrick to appear with ‘Ahhhs’ and hugs and kisses. I am introduced to a group of young men. Steve works for a corporate firm but confesses to having a bleeding heart. I ask who it is bleeding for and we have a long conversation about education policies. Steve is going to drive across America, with some of the friends he names in the circle. I beg them to blog for me because I want to follow the trip. I even name the blog for them “Cape to Cairo - Not”. I meet bright-eyed Joe with disobedient hair who tells me he is an actor. He asks what I do. I answer that I am a Mom most of the time but I write too.
“I love moms!” he exclaims, bending his knees on the “love” for emphasis. “I love mine so much. Moms are the best.”
I suspect his gushing is fueled somewhat by the wine but his eyes are sincere. I ask what he has been in and he names a movie. Honest reappears.
“There you are,” she says to me then peers into his Joe’s face as he is summarizing a movie he’s been in for me, I am not yet sure if I have watched it.
“It is you!” says Honest, not in the least bit star struck. Her kids loved the movie and she loves anyone who makes her kids smile. They giggle at each other. Joe and Honest chat while I turn to a guy who looks like he should be a Bob, Scott or Jim. His name is Kai. We translate names for each other and discuss the joys of carrying an unusual name. Somewhere between meeting Patrick and getting to the bottom of my glass of wine I have an in- then out-of-body experience and I see the Diana that I remember. I am smart, charming, intelligent and well spoken. I repeat Honest’s words “There you are.”
On the way home I feel transformed. I don’t want to hide in safe places anymore. I want to take life as a writer seriously. I want to take turns pirouetting with my husband, older daughter and, if necessary, hired help. When I arrive home I am happy to be back. I inhale the day I missed from my children’s hair and kiss their cheeks. I spoon with my husband, my chest to his back, arms around his, he adjusts against me in his sleep. As we bend our knees to the same angle I close my eyes and I take my vows again, this time I choose to be a his wife, their mother and my self.