While I'm Gone

Chapter 2 - Valentine's

Google search: Midlife crisis

About 1,650,000 results (0.35 seconds)

Midlife Crisis: Transition or Depression?

WebMD. What's a midlife crisis? It's the stuff of jokes and stereotypes – the time in life when you do outrageous, impractical things like quit a job impulsively, buy a red sports car, or dump your spouse (...) A midlife crisis might occur anywhere from about age 37 through your 50s.

Thirty-seven? Well, bugger me!

Top 40 signs of a midlife crisis revealed

The Telegraph. The top 40 signs of a midlife crisis include going to Glastonbury, listening to BBC 6 Music and buying an expensive bicycle, a study reveals (...) The male midlife crisis lasts between three and ten years.

Ten bloody what?

Typical signs include looking up ex-partners on Facebook, taking vitamin pills and taking out a direct debit for a charity...

4. Realise you will never be able to pay off your mortgage...

11. Take up a new hobby...

27. Think about quitting your job...

34. Can't sleep because of work worries...

38. Take up triathlons or another extreme sport.

Triathlon? Oh, dear God.

A deep sigh and I shut the laptop down. My back arched against the soft fabric of the swivel chair, and my eyes steered to the large window. Thick clouds blanketed the sky that morning and an unusually cold wind kept blowing the trees back and forth. The cadence of the branches scraping almost rhythmically against the shed roof in the garden filled the silence that reigned over the house.

My eyes returned to the desk, to the open calendar.

Oh my, time does fly, it'd be Julia's birthday the following week already. On February 21. Sadly, this year we wouldn't be able to celebrate it together; I'd be leaving for London in just a few days.

The steadily increasing rain began to beat harder against the windows, sounds that played along with the impatient tapping of my pen against a pile of books.

February.

Another sip from my coffee cup and mind was again filled with thoughts of Alex.

Valentine's.

Alex had never been the passionate, incredibly romantic kind of man, but on this day, he'd always brought me flowers—though I suspect his gesture was only the mere observation of a social rite, probably influenced by the female hysteria at the office.

Anyway, Valentine's was just around the corner and I thought we could do something different this year. I felt I should try to rescue him from what seemed a never-ending dark sea of whining and self-pity he'd plunged into since last spring. That he now hated his work, all the paperwork, the endless hours of useless meetings. That he felt suffocated and wanted to quit. He'd had it up to here with the government, the bloody crisis, the financial assistance programme, the IMF, the markets, oh well, pretty much with the entire world.

Maybe it was stress. Or maybe nearing his forties was making him more emotional. Was the alleged midlife crisis taking a toll on him? I couldn't tell, he'd always refused to talk about it.

After thoughtful consideration, I came up with a plan: we should do something special, something we hadn't done in years, something like—what the hell—going out to watch a movie! Only the two of us.

It doesn't seem much, I know, but have your own children and you'll see what happens: your once regular visits to the cinema will be reduced to a couple of animated Disney movies, usually around Christmas time.

So, we were going out on a date—but that wasn't really the bold move I had in mind. We weren't going to just any movie theatre!

Before I thought too much about my resolution and considered it completely crazy and hasty, I booked a flight to Lisbon and made a reservation at the Bairro Alto Hotel. Alex loved the years he'd spent working in the Lisbon branch, and having to return to the headquarters in Madrid was a harsh blow he still hadn't digested. I was certain he would be thrilled with the idea.

Besides, I thought it might be fun to embark on all the Fifty Shades hype and get on a plane to watch it somewhere else. There was such a big fuss about it, the trailer had constantly been running on the TV that week. At the time I had no real clue about the story, but it didn't matter. That was just a mere excuse for a weekend getaway.

Anyway, it was done. The documents with the flight details, the hotel voucher, the cinema tickets – everything was secretly hidden in the brown paper envelope I stashed in the middle of teaching notes and student assignments in my briefcase.

In the end, I couldn't contain a chuckle of excitement. We were returning to one of my favourite places!

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