Spaz

Feeling on the verge of a panic attack...Jack came home with news from work that they are looking for volunteers to move overseas (U.K. or Germany) and of course he's interested in us going. On paper it looks great - move back to Europe on the government's dime, bank serious cash (full salary plus extra housing allowance, COLA, extra leave, universal healthcare,) awesome travel opportunities, be close to Shakira & Mr. Shakira, and possibly the opportunity for Petal to become bilingual.

But I am freaking the F out. Listening to Depeche Mode and Duran Duran on repeat trying to get myself together. I have a board meeting in 15 minutes and I am so glad for the distraction.

A Bigger Life

When it comes to attraction, I'm kind of like one of Lorenz' ducklings. Lorenz demonstrated the concept of imprinting by proving that ducklings will follow any creature that they initially identified as "mother." I don't follow Mama Duck impostors around town, but I do find myself pulled to specimens that remind me of my first full blown teenage romance.

It was the summer of 1995, he was a blond haired blue eyed skater punk and I was a braces-wearing long haired brunette with a fondness for belly baring shirts from The Limited Too and jean shorts with holes in the butt. The attraction was undeniable and intense. He gave me my first kiss and my first I love you, both at sunset. I thought it was magic. But he was one of those guys who had too much testosterone to be tied down by any one woman and he moved along his womanizing way. I cried for a year. Too bad, so sad.

One year later, another blond haired boy, this time with green eyes, stole my heart. We quickly began the kind of teenage relationship that was as serious as marriage by high school terms, as in, we will never ever ever break up!!!! My parents had to drag me wailing out of the house to the taxi to the airport for our trip to Florida, because this was before cell phones and I would have to use a calling card with limited minutes to talk to High School Boyfriend (HSBF)  for a WHOLE WEEK! By the time we had been together for a year it was clear that both of us needed to have separate life experiences in order to get the most out of those fleeting high school years, but it took us six months to be able to make the break and finally limp away, bruised and bloodied from the emotional warfare that is a teenage breakup.

The rest is often-told history. Blond-haired blue-eyed Jack, blond-haired blue-eyed boys loving me. Is it because of how hard I fell for Skater Punk? Or maybe my Norwegian genes aching for a chance to be expressed reproductively with someone who looks like my ancestors? In the end, the result is the same.

There was nothing really wrong with my relationship with HSBF other than the fact that we were both too young and needed to grow up. I could have married him. I could have been happy living where he does, just one town over from where I grew up. He was a devoted, loving boyfriend and I'm sure he was a devoted loving husband to the wife who left him just a few years after they got married. He works at a car dealership and hangs out with his friends from high school. His parents, sisters, cousins all live near by. It would have been a perfectly nice life.

I live my life with Jack on a much grander scale than I would have lived had I married HSBF. We did our LDR big, like across the ocean big. We moved around, not from town to town but from time-zone to time-zone. We've been to amazing places together. We talk big, about world events and history, stuff HSBF has little interest in. We live in the pulsing heart of where things happen career-wise for Jack and he goes after big dreams. 

I was not the kind of teenager who had wanderlust, I would have been perfectly content to stay in my hometown with my high school besties forever. But the people around me were big dreamers, too many of my friends as well as my siblings live their own big lives so staying put wouldn't really have been an option for me unless I had married someone like HSBF, whose whole world dwells within Massachusetts state lines. 

My taste for adventure has grown into the large space I've been afforded by my big life with Jack. Petal will have plenty of space to explore in the big life she was born into. I like my big life. But I also like that I can visit my small life. My big life has enough room for my small life to dwell inside it and grab center stage once in awhile.