Anticipation

I rang the bell, not quite expecting to get an answer. And if I did, then what? What was I setting myself up for? Was I expecting her to welcome me with outstretched arms after this long? I hadn’t bothered to send even a postcard from time to time, just to let her know I was still alive. It had been a rough parting too, when I saw her last.

I rang the bell a second time. There didn’t seem to be anyone home, but I hadn’t come all this way for nothing. If there was any chance that she was here then I had to find out if she could forgive me. I had left her because I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t ready enough. I wasn’t mature enough. But between then and now I had realized how much I needed her. How much she meant to me, and how special she was to me.

This time as the doorbell sounded there was evidence of someone at home. A light turned on, and I could just barely hear the muffled sounds of someone getting up to answer the door; footsteps, stocking feet across bare-wood floors. As I stood there listening to the footfalls approaching, a queasy feeling bubbled in my stomach. Why did I decide to come back? What did I expect from her? A warm greeting: Good to see you again, glad you came back. What’s that? You’ve changed your mind? Oh that’s superb. Don’t worry that it’s taken you this long to realize it, I completely understand. In fact, I’ve been waiting for you this entire time. Was this what I was looking for as I walked up the stairs to the front door of the woman who has meant more to me than anyone else in my life?

Butterflies inside as I heard the deadbolt being thrown and the chain sliding back. I could feel my hands grow cold and clammy. A queasy feeling as all the blood rushed from my head. This was a bad idea. This was a bad idea. I want to say “Sorry, wrong address,” and turn and leave as fast as I can. This was a bad idea. I can’t move. The butterflies are a swarm of locusts and I can’t move. I shouldn’t have come here. What in the world was I thinking?

And then the door is open and I see her and I know exactly why I came back. There, in a sudden blast of memory, came the countless hours we spent talking, the priceless treasures we shared, the beautiful things she opened my eyes to, and the times I was able to show her something wonderful—I could see all the reasons that I had fallen in love with her the first time, and I knew, seeing her again in that instant, I had fallen in love again.

She answered the door with the same slight smile on her face and twinkle in her eyes that allows her to become friends instantly with anyone she meets. I opened my mouth to say something but I couldn’t think of any words. At all. The twinkle evaporated as recognition came, and in those deep, frustrated eyes I could sense a thousand questions. Why had I left her? Why had I never written? Why had I never called? Why had I come back now? The smile faded to expressionlessness and she blinked twice at me.

From the time I had heard the door latch click to this moment less than five seconds had passed, though it had felt more like fifty. And though my pulse had been racing in anticipation as if I had just finished running a marathon, for those five seconds while we stood under the dim porch light opposite each other the thumpthumpthump of my heart suddenly slammed to a crawl, only bothering to send blood to my poor dizzy head twice in a slow thump…thump that I could feel in my fingertips as they dug into my sweaty palms.

And suddenly my heart was racing again and everything was moving at a regular speed. I realized that my cheek stung like hell and that her arm was hovering in the air, shaking. It took me a few more heartbeats before I figured it out. She had just slapped me... I was elated.

For in her eyes, behind the shimmer of tears, I could see it buried.

She still cared.