That's Right!

I've been right about a few things. Not a whole lot of things, but a few. So few, in fact, that I remember all of them and can rattle off the whole list from memory. The most recent thing was a prediction I made over two years ago. I predicted that if my husband and I got divorced, the divorce was still in the "if" stage at that time, that he would buy a Harley and I would get cats again. The weird thing was that these events took place last summer on consecutive days. I brought Newton and Einstein home and the next day he picked up his new motorcycle. He had a motorcycle when we met, a Honda big enough for road trips, and we took it on numerous camping weekends while we were dating and the first year we were married. Just before I became pregnant with our elder son, we went on a monumental road trip across South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. We took in the Black Hills on that twelve day trip as well as Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park. When we told my in-laws that we were planning this trip my father-in-law's reaction was that I should drive our nice new car and let his crazy son ride the motorcycle. I replied that the trip was my idea so it would be not in the spirit of the thing if I was not actually on the bike for it. Let me tell you something about motorcycles. They terrify me. I don't like the wind or the noise or the bugs. I don't like the feeling of exposure to danger in heavy traffic nor do I like being at the mercy of the weather. But the trip was my idea, it was something I felt I needed to do. Doing the motorcycle thing with my husband was an exercise in trust and letting go of control, two things that I was willing to do to be able to join him in something he enjoyed. And I did look awfully cute in jeans, a tiny tank top, boots and a leather jacket. But it was something I never came to truly enjoy. That trip is packed with wonderful memories, though, and when I think about it, I felt closer to him and loved him more than anything then. But then we got home and I was pregnant six weeks later. Then life got in the way and we drifted apart on the interior of our marriage while our life appeared nearly perfect from the outside. I look at the dozens of photographs we took on that trip and I see optimism and happiness. I see beautiful scenery, mountains and water and trees. He sold that motorcycle eight years later and we spent the proceeds on new bicycles and a Burley cart so we could have family outings with our sons. But I couldn't help but feel that selling the Honda was somehow shedding off the last little vestige of our youth. That we were going to be practical now. Be grown-ups. So that's why I figured he'd buy a motorcycle again, if we split up. Then the if became a reality. And now I have to admonish myself to not feel smug about the fact that he only needed a Yamaha 350 dirtbike to get over his first wife. He needed a brand new Harley to get over me. I'm not necessarily right about his motorcycle purchasing motivations. But I was right about needing to take that road trip twenty years ago.