boston commoner.

welcome home

Well, anxiety has found me and has taken up residence around the bulk of my internal organs. He’s sitting on my intestinal tract with his legs wrapped around the top of my stomach, holding on rather tenaciously with one small but powerful fist to the bridge between my lungs – you know, where air likes to go. I’m sure if he took bodily form he would look like a small, slippery, hairless monkey. Occasionally he gnaws on my aorta (the little booger) and laughs.

I attribute this unwanted internal visitor to the arrival of another guest of a not-so-small, slippery, or hairless sort:

He’ll be here Thursday night, Lord willing, and actually seems excited about the prospect of subjecting himself to four fun-filled days – one of which is Christmas – with my beloved (I mean that) family (whom he’s never met). I can’t decide which of us is the masochist in this set-up. This is very new to me. I have no idea what to do, or how to control the situation, or how to control the other people in the situation. My mom has been obsessing about how to alphabetize and/or color-code her soup collection in case he dares open a cabinet while he’s here and thinks her disorganized; my dad is mostly nonplussed, but occasionally says he told me so (I’m not sure what he told me), and my pastor is making all sorts of threats about making Jeremy’s first visit to Boston and the IBCB a “memorable” one… So there’s a monkey riding my guts.

Don’t get me wrong. I can’t wait to see him. It’s been almost five months, afterall. For two people who aren’t really phone people, we utilize a lot of free minutes (something like 2000 last month, according to his last phone statement). It’ll be nice to talk to him without reception cutting out every time an ambulance goes by (I live in the city, okay?), without elbow, thumb, and yes, even ear cramps from holding that little black box to the side of my head, and without, well, 1000 miles and an hour’s time difference between us. Know what I mean?

All in all it’s a good thing. Of course it is. It has to be. The good news is that he almost never reads my blog (which I can hardly blame him for, as I almost never post anything on it), so I can write anything I want about him and he’ll probably never know ;o) Fortunately at the moment I could only say good things. Which brings me to what perhaps really conjured the anxiety monkey – the nagging question in the back of my mind as to why this kind of a guy (the utterly considerate, kind, intelligent, rather fabulous kind) would take the trouble and expense and put himself through this kind of mixing-of-worlds ordeal just to hang out with me. It doesn’t quite add up — and I’m not fishing for compliments, here, either. I really just don’t deserve it, that’s all.

I wish you all could meet him. Merry Christmas, monkeys and all.