Page 17 of Over the Verdant Hills
But there was no need to say any of that. His mom already knew it, and him saying it would just make her feel bad because she felt like it was her responsibility to take care of him. And she had always been very nurturing—she loved taking care of other people, and it was hard for her to sit and let others take care of her.
Everyone had a cross, he supposed. Some people had to learn to do things they hated, and others had to learn to be still and let others help, even when it was hard.
“I seem to recall you had a little crush on Claire when you were younger,” his mom said casually, like she was just making conversation and not accusing him of having a crush all of his life and still having it.
He tried not to take offense, and then he wondered why he would. Surely he could talk about someone he’d had a crush on when he was in junior high. But it made him uncomfortable… Did he still have feelings for her?
Had he carried them all the way from junior high, and seeing her again, remembering how she was… He supposed he’d always admired her. From a distance in their friend group, since she wasn’t interested in him in the slightest. Still wasn’t. And he supposed that was something he needed to remember so he didn’t go mooning over someone who wasn’t interested in him and never would be. But he thought they could be friends.
“She was my first kiss,” he told his mom, wondering if that was something boys were supposed to talk to their mothers about. Maybe if his mom wasn’t sick, maybe if she were able to have a normal life, he wouldn’t talk to her about those things. But she couldn’t really go out and have lunch with her girlfriends very easily. As her disease progressed, she was able to do less and less.
“My goodness. Where was that?”
“In Miss Mattie’s barn. We played truth or dare, and she got stuckwith being dared to kiss me. I forget how we were playing it, but I wasn’t too upset about it, though I think she was grossed out.”
“Well, sometimes teenage boys aren’t very appealing, and then they grow into themselves. Maybe she’ll notice that you’ve changed a good bit since you were a teenager.”
“I don’t think she’s interested in someone like me. She was married to a high-dollar lawyer in Boston, from what I understand.” He’d heard that from his mom, so he knew she knew it too.
“She’s not married to him anymore. There are reasons for that. Maybe she’s looking for something different.”
“Maybe I’m not looking for anything at all. Maybe I’m happy where I’m at. Maybe I’m not interested in the problems that come with being with someone who is divorced, with children, and all that baggage.”
It would be a lot of drama. And his mother and her illness was all the drama he could handle. Sometimes it was more—it felt like that anyway—even though he knew that God would never give him anything God wasn’t going to help him through.
And God could do anything.
“Maybe the drama of a wife, one with baggage or without, is what a man needs in order to grow and mature. Maybe that’s part of what makes him a man—dealing with all the trials that a woman brings into his life.”
“I suppose,” he said, although he’d never really thought about that before. It could be true. After all, dealing with people, learning how to get along with them, to love them despite their faults, to be patient with them when they didn’t live up to expectations, or when they fell into sin that he thought should be easily avoided, or just habits and flaws that irritated him—all of that helped him become a better person. He supposed his mother was right about that. What could be more helpful than having to live with someone who was just as big a sinner as he was, only in different areas? And who had just as many faults and flaws as he did, only in areas that irritated him.
“And I wouldn’t blame her for the baggage. Sometimes people can’t help it that they end up with stuff. Now, sometimes it’s our own fault that we get saddled with things, because we’ve made stupid decisions,but sometimes a man leaves a woman and it’s not really her fault at all. It’s just because he didn’t have the character to keep his word and stay.”
“You’re blaming the man an awful lot, don’t you think? It goes both ways. It could be the man who’s saddled with baggage because the woman he married didn’t have character or enough integrity to do what she said she was going to do.”
He was teasing his mom just a little bit, but he was also serious. It seemed like the world was so eager to blame men, and it was irritating sometimes, because it was almost like women got a free pass and men paid for everything. He did believe that a man should be a protector and provider, but he also believed that a man shouldn’t take the blame for the sins of womankind.
“Of course. I’m sorry. You’re right. I was blaming men, but that was because I was talking to you, a man, and we were talking about Claire, and I was just saying it may not be her fault.” She let out a little laugh. It sounded tired, and he thought maybe he should stop the conversation. But his mom continued to talk. “Of course, I could be taking Claire’s side in this, and maybe her divorce was all Claire’s fault. Maybe she ran off with a man who ditched her, and her husband wouldn’t take her back.”
“Somehow I doubt Claire’s really that type.” He pictured her standing beside the paint she’d already scraped off, her hands on her hips, her eyes going up the side of the house, trying to figure out whether she was going to be brave enough to stand on some kind of scaffolding or lift and scrape the higher parts.
She’d had her chin jutted out and her eyes narrowed, and he’d be willing to bet she got it done. He admired that kind of grit and didn’t really think that was the kind of person who’d run off with a man and wreck her family.
But he’d been wrong about a lot more than a woman’s character before.
“I didn’t think she was that type either.”
His mother smiled, and he got the feeling that she had really liked Claire, maybe still did, although she didn’t know her.
“Does she know she was your firstkiss?” she asked.
“I told her a couple of days ago. I found out that I was her first kiss too.” He laughed a little to himself and did not share with his mom that he had been more impressed with her initial kissing abilities than she had been with his. In fact, he’d gotten the feeling that she had been kind of grossed out by him.
It didn’t make him feel very good about himself, because it wasn’t like he’d done a lot of practicing between then and now. Some, but not much. Not much at all, since he didn’t see the point in kissing women he didn’t plan on marrying. And while short-term pleasure was tempting, he had never been the kind of person who had trouble looking at the long-term goals he wanted to achieve in his life. Kissing every woman in the county was not one of those. In fact, he didn’t want his wife to have to walk down the street and wonder which women they passed were women he had kissed.
Claire was in a select group, although it apparently wasn’t a group to be proud of, at least not in Claire’s opinion.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to head upstairs to bed. My legs are aching, and my back hurts too.”
