Dated

"12." Ok, that is it, the last of the china. My wedding china. I wonder if one of those guys from TV could take one look at my china cabinet and know exactly when I got married and how many people were invited. I still remember picking it out, wanting something new, modern, fresh. Had I ever been so young I didn't realize the opposite of timeless wasn't modern, it was dated. This china was definitely dated. Well, it is put away now anyway, back to the sink.

It had been such a nice dinner. I always feel a small swell of pride when the turkey looks that good. It tasted good too,but it looked good, that was important. And it looked good on my wedding china, with the silver that I am washing now and will polish later. The silver passed down from my parents, timeless. The kind of timeless that complements even my dated china. Timeless goes with everything from Thanksgiving dinner to hotdogs. Ok, I never eat hotdogs with fork, maybe the baked beans, maybe the potato salad. What does it matter-I am more like the china than the silver.

What happened to me. I remember being fresh out of school. Young, fresh, modern, getting married only because I was truly in love; not to conform to some societal norm. I was going to do it on my terms, life, married or otherwise was going to be on my own terms. Now all I feel is dated. My only child off at college. Home for Thanksgiving dinner. With a friend, who is more than a friend.

Dated, what else would make me think first about not having grandchildren. I was having such a nice time, the turkey looked picture perfect, even the sweet potatoes, bane of my existence turned out well this year. My daughter, home from her first semester at college, seemed to have blossomed while she was gone. She even brought a friend home, a very nice girl. A very sweet girl, which is what I told her when she asked me what I thought. I just hadn't expected her reply.

"Good, because we've been dating."

#5

#5

"I am not going up there with you." It was an echo of the words she hadn't said out loud last night. Now he knew for sure, she wasn't just refusing to climb a monument, she was refusing to come upstate with him. Last night when he finally told her about the job he'd accepted she had seemed genuinely happy even though he had waited until they were on vacation to tell her about it. They both agreed that is was the right choice for him. But she wasn't coming with him. No, she didn't want a divorce, she just didn't see why she should have to leave her career or her life behind. He looked down at the small speck that was Kathy on the ground below the temple. She was his wife, he didn't want to live separated from her. True, the demands of careers had made them spend a lot of time apart, but that was part of the dissatisfaction that had led to him accepting the job upstate. He had built it up in his head, he would rescue them from the rat race of the city, they would reconnect and have the kind of marriage he had spent the last 5 years waiting to magically happen, but never did. He was tired of treating his marriage like a sound investment, to have and hold and then retire comfortably with. He wanted a marriage in the present tense. He didn't what to be up here, while she stayed down there.