What a Wonderful Weekend

What a wonderful weekend. I spent Friday night with Z. I had left him an email, “I don’t have kids at all this weekend, and I would really like to spend some time with you, but I’m leaving the choice up to you.” Wonderful as always. It’s so easy, so comfortable, and familiar. There is an unspoken intimacy between us that can’t be denied. Saturday he went to work for about an hour, and then we were off.

First we went to Hermann, to the Stone Hill winery. Tasted several wines and you have to understand, Z is a wine connoisseur. They offered a ‘Wine 101’ tour, where you could go to all the wineries in the area and sample their wines. Z, of course, could have taught the damned class. He’s been to Bordeaux, the wine capitol of the world. “When we get home, I’ll show you pictures, if you don’t mind pictures of the Ex,” Hey Z, you’re allowed to have a past, and a life. When I asked him about Napa Valley, CA wines, he said “Those wines are to wine as Natural Lite is to beer.” After buying a couple of bottles of wine, we were off to Hannibal.

Of course, this is the off season, so it’s going to be dead, and slow, and not much to really look at, but he wanted to ‘Visit Mark Twain’. On the way there, I realized we moved to Hannibal exactly 20 years ago this month. And, I haven’t been back since we left, 16 years ago. A lot has changed. Rampy’s are no longer there. The museum has moved and been changed, the visitor center has changed as well. They now charge $8 per adult to tour the home, when before it was just a donation, a suggested $2.00 donation. You can open doors and kind of go in the house, but not walk through it. The museum is better, it has more exhibits, and it’s almost worth the $8.00. It was nice to go back there, and share that with him. He told me, “When I was 7 years old, and I knew the world revolved around me, but I didn’t know of the world beyond my neighborhood, or my town. I knew there was a Missouri, and a Hannibal Missouri. I knew about Mark Twain.”

When we got back to his place, we leisurely cooked dinner, took time to talk, to visit, to chat, to laugh. Took time to eat, and enjoy a bottle of wine, and each other.

Then, he dug out his photo albums, and showed me pictures of France, Spain, New York, J.C (The Ex) and his family, his mother, his brothers, his sisters-in-law, Nick and Jonathan. In other words, he shared his life with me.

I wanted to hate J.C, ok, maybe not hate her, but I was prepared for stabs of jealousy and hurt because she still lives in his heart, and because she does, I can’t. I wanted her to be fat and ugly. And I saw the pictures, and she wasn’t either. She was cute; she looked like she’d be a lot of fun. And I found I couldn’t hate, in fact, I was jealous he knew her and I didn’t and we couldn’t be friends. I wasn’t jealous of their relationship. Looking at their pictures, I could see how happy and in love they were. No stabs of jealousy at all. He opened up his photo albums, opened his past, opened his life, opened his heart to me, and by the end of all the pictures, I had fallen in love with him.