The Dance Between Darkness and Light (girlxgirl)

Alison

I can't say it was the smartest thing I ever did, and I can't exactly call it a mistake either.  I was just barely 21, and I was dating Avery at the time.  We were in love, but obviously things can change in a moment. That moment was when I laid eyes on Jack Ehrens.  I fell in love with him so quickly it was almost feverish, and it scared me how recklessly I could let go. We had dated only a few weeks, spending night and day together before he proposed and we were married 6 months later.  Both our parents were against it, but eventually relented to our wishes.  Mine had urged me to stay with Avery, we'd been together almost three years. I think they felt I threw Avery away; I kind of did. I get it and I can't say I blamed them, my parents were worried.  Avery was the safe bet and I wasn't quite done with school; Jack came out of nowhere and was an apprentice with an electrician, but we've proved them wrong so far.

The day I met Jack, I was starting my senior year at Hollis College.  He was throwing a frisbee in the campus quad with some of his buddies, and I think he must have missed the throw on his turn because the disc landed right in my lap. Admittedly, Avery was sitting right next to me, nose buried in a book, never even noticed. I was studying, really hadn't noticed Jack either, but when I looked up to find the frisbee owner I did. I was staring right into these insanely bright and vivid blue eyes. The kind that make you stop and stare just to see if you were imagining it. Who has eyes that blue you're probably asking? Jack does, and I do, too.

He reached down and grabbed a small piece of paper from my book, wrote his number on it, and as he handed it back he mouthed 'call me.' Avery never saw any of this.

Jack had these boyish good looks, sandy blonde hair, and a killer smile.  That smile crippled me, I was smitten before I ever even handed back the frisbee. I'm not proud, Avery and I were over the next day. To this day, I still have never told Jack about Avery. Didn't really seem all that important at the time. You're young and stupid at 21, right? Everyone is trying to figure out who they are, I was no different. At the time, I just knew it wasn't Avery I was supposed to be with.

If you had asked me who I thought I should be with I'd have never described someone like Jack. He is a simple guy by any standard. I honestly thought I would fall in love with someone who had the means to whisk me away, buy me nice things, take me on vacations. I thought it'd be someone with flash; someone who took me on breathtaking dates, the kind you bragged about to your friends.  Turns out I didn't need all that, and he didn't have to work all that hard to convince me he was the one.  What he lacked in my dream of financial wealth, he had an abundance of in the romance department.

I can pinpoint down to the minute when I fell in love with Jack.  It was a Friday afternoon, a couple weeks into the start of my senior year at Hollis.  I was completing a practicum in the Early Childhood Learning Center and we had plans to meet for lunch.  Jack was on time, I was behind in my tasks like usual, so I asked him to sit with a few of the little ones for a minute. He still doesn't know that I saw him, but one of the 3 year olds wandered over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. Jack leaned down so he was at her eye level, and he waited patiently while she put her hands up to his cheeks. Then she just stared at him, straight in his blue eyes. She was most certainly in his bubble, inches from his face, but he never missed a beat. He waited, not moving a muscle, smiling back as she smiled at him. When she pulled her hands away, he sat back up and she crawled right onto his lap where they proceeded to put a puzzle together until I was done. It was adorable, I've never forgotten that moment. I think those kinds of moments you witness stay with you the rest of your life. Those moments that grab hold of your heart and are so permanently etched in that you can feel the same intense emotion as the first time you experienced it.  It is entirely possible to focus in on those memories you've spent with a person and love who they were in that moment.

I was young and dumb, remember, so I didn't think it was possible to fall in love with more than one person at a time. I didn't think I was capable of loving anyone as much as I loved Jack.  But then along came our daughter, Mya, two years after we were married.  I'm not afraid to admit it; I love her more than I love Jack.  Of course, I still love him, but Mya! She is my everything, and I am not just talking about loving her.  I'm talking about the kind of love that makes your heart ache and you feel it down to your very core.  The kind that makes your heart feel as if it could burst.  The kind of love that you know without a doubt knows no boundaries, and you put them above all others.  I feel like no one on this earth could ever care for Mya as intensely as I do.

She's a small version of me and Jack all in one. She's smart and fierce and a little spitfire all wrapped up in a tiny little 6 year old frame. She's got my blonde hair and even bluer eyes than me and Jack combined. People stare at her a lot because of it, and I can't blame them; I've never seen eyes quite like hers either. Remember I said she's fierce? Well she knows no fear, she's my little tomboy. Outside all summer long running around playing with the neighborhood kids. Tag, catch, riding her bike, you name it, she's out there doing it all. All except playing with the other girls, she's always running with the boys. I bought her a few dolls, but I gave up, she doesn't ever play with them. I also bought her some cute dresses; she won't wear them. She screams if I even suggest she wear one. Mya despises anything even remotely 'girly.'  She definitely didn't get that from me.  But that is my daughter, my little Mya Lauren Ehrens.

If I could tell my younger self any one thing about life, I would tell myself it is possible to fall in love with more than one person at the same time. I've learned that love is never convenient or planned, and it's scary every time you fall. Emotions bubble up in you that you've never felt before and you have to sort them out; try to understand them. It's one thing to love your parents or your siblings. It's a whole other to fall in love with a person. That person becomes the epicenter of your life, and you? You have to back off, let go of control and depend upon them.  And you have to be there for them, too. You get these visions of how you perceive your life together will be; how the marriage ought to be. You think you'll do everything together, spend every night in each other's arms; you'll never be apart. I thought that would be me and Jack. I was young and ever the optimist. Turns out he's a really good electrician, one of the best in this area and the surrounding states. Even though he is a small company, people from all over hire his company for big contract jobs. My visions of sleeping in Jack's arms every night were a little off. Mya and I are home alone for long stretches of time. He used to only be gone for 2 or 3 days at a time, then it turned into a week or so. Just within the last two years, though, he is now gone as much as a month at a time.

I get lonely a lot. Mostly I miss having another adult to talk to at night. I teach kindergarten at Rosewood Day Elementary School, and then I come home after work to a 6 year old. The conversations I have in a day don't typically expand beyond going potty, learning letter sounds, counting numbers and repeating the days of the week. By the time Jack comes home, it's been a long month and I'm completely starved for his attention, really any adult attention. If I'm being completely honest, I've felt like a single parent for the last 3 to 4 years of Mya's life. I worry about her, and wish she had the ability to tell me what she really thinks of all this. What she really thinks of having an absent parent. But she's six. I know, I know...a six year old has a better understanding of what's going on than we give them credit for, but I worry because lately she's stopped asking about Jack when he's not here.

Jack's been gone for almost a week now out of the four he's scheduled to be away. He was home for 4 days from his last month long job before he left again for this one. I cried when he left, and I'm not too proud to admit that I'm struggling.  Plus, my job starts in a week, and the picnic for the school open house with the families is tomorrow. I'm a little nervous because enrollment declined at the school, and there aren't quite enough kids for 2 kindergarten classes, but there are too many for just one. So they combined my class with the other kindergarten class. I'll be co-teaching 38 students with a brand new teacher whom I've never met. I heard the original kindergarten teacher unexpectedly retired over the summer and the principal replaced her with a new young teacher fresh out of school. Apparently she just moved here? I'll meet her tomorrow, but I think I remember her name; I think it might be something like Emily Fields.