As I thought about seeing Wendell, I reminded myself that I didn't need to begin the conversation with every question at once.<\/p>\n
I could start with the thing that had brought us here.<\/p>\n
The paper.<\/p>\n
The photographs.<\/p>\n
The date.<\/p>\n
I could ask what they meant and give him time to answer.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to decide what his answer should sound like.<\/p>\n
That was one of the hardest parts of waiting.<\/p>\n
My mind wanted to prepare for every possibility.<\/p>\n
It wanted to imagine a simple explanation, then a difficult one, then a dozen others that had no evidence behind them.<\/p>\n
I had to keep bringing myself back to what I knew.<\/p>\n
Wendell had written my name.<\/p>\n
He had written the date.<\/p>\n
He had been working in the garage.<\/p>\n
When he saw me looking, he had seemed deeply affected.<\/p>\n
Everything else remained uncertain.<\/p>\n
I could not turn uncertainty into knowledge simply by thinking about it longer.<\/p>\n
That was a lesson I had learned before, though I seemed to need reminders.<\/p>\n
There had been times after Dwight's death when I tried to understand the future by worrying about it.<\/p>\n
I thought if I considered every possible hardship, I might be prepared when one arrived.<\/p>\n
But worry did not make me prepared.<\/p>\n
It only made me tired before anything had happened.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to do that to myself again.<\/p>\n
I wanted to leave room for what was actually in front of me.<\/p>\n
And what was in front of me was a man I cared about, a holiday that mattered to him for reasons I did not yet know, and a conversation we had postponed for too long.<\/p>\n
That was enough to begin.<\/p>\n
I thought about how Wendell had treated me throughout our relationship.<\/p>\n
He had been attentive.<\/p>\n
He had remembered the small things I told him.<\/p>\n
He had made space for my memories of Dwight instead of asking me to leave them behind.<\/p>\n
Those were not imaginary kindnesses.<\/p>\n
I had experienced them.<\/p>\n
I was allowed to trust what I had experienced while still asking about what I did not understand.<\/p>\n
Trust did not mean I had to close my eyes.<\/p>\n
It meant I could approach the conversation without deciding in advance that Wendell had done something wrong.<\/p>\n
I wanted to give him that fairness.<\/p>\n
I wanted the same fairness for myself.<\/p>\n
If I admitted that I had felt shut out, it did not mean I was accusing him of being cruel.<\/p>\n
It meant I was telling him the truth about my own experience.<\/p>\n
He might have had reasons I did not know.<\/p>\n
He might have believed he was protecting a special moment.<\/p>\n
He might have struggled to explain something personal.<\/p>\n
I couldn't know until he told me.<\/p>\n
And even then, I would need to listen carefully rather than rush to defend my fears.<\/p>\n
That did not mean I would agree with everything.<\/p>\n
It meant I would give the truth a chance to be heard.<\/p>\n
I wanted us to be able to do that for each other.<\/p>\n
There was something frightening about caring enough to have a difficult conversation.<\/p>\n
When someone mattered to me, I wanted the words to come out right.<\/p>\n
I wanted to avoid saying anything that could cause unnecessary hurt.<\/p>\n
But I had learned that trying to find perfect words could become another excuse for silence.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the kindest thing was simply to speak honestly.<\/p>\n
I could tell Wendell that I cared about him.<\/p>\n
I could tell him that the yellow paper had made me hopeful and confused at the same time.<\/p>\n
I could tell him that I wanted to understand why he had kept his house separate from the rest of our relationship.<\/p>\n
I could say those things without accusing him of having bad intentions.<\/p>\n
And then I could listen.<\/p>\n
That was the part I wanted to remember.<\/p>\n
Listening was not the same as waiting for my turn to speak.<\/p>\n
It meant allowing his words to reach me, even if they did not match the explanation I had imagined.<\/p>\n
It meant asking for clarification when I needed it.<\/p>\n
It meant being willing to say, \u201cI don't understand,\u201d rather than pretending that I did.<\/p>\n
I had spent so much time trying to understand Wendell from a distance that I wanted to make sure I did not continue doing it when he was finally speaking to me.<\/p>\n
I wanted to hear him.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know what he meant.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know why December 24 had been written beneath those three words.<\/p>\n
I wanted to understand the photographs and the paint and the ramp.<\/p>\n
But more than anything, I wanted to know whether he was ready to let me share the part of his life he had kept separate.<\/p>\n
That was the question beneath all the others.<\/p>\n
I could have asked it in a dozen different ways.<\/p>\n
I could have dressed it up in gentle words.<\/p>\n
I could have tried to make it sound less important than it was.<\/p>\n
But the simplest version was also the truest.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be included.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to be included only when everything was easy.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be included when a conversation was awkward, too.<\/p>\n
That was how closeness grew, I believed.<\/p>\n
Not because two people always understood each other, but because they kept trying when they didn't.<\/p>\n
I thought about the way I had approached Wendell's privacy.<\/p>\n
At first, I had tried to be respectful.<\/p>\n
Then I had started making excuses.<\/p>\n
I told myself that he was private.<\/p>\n
I told myself he would explain when he was ready.<\/p>\n
I told myself that asking again might make him feel pressured.<\/p>\n
Each thought had sounded reasonable on its own.<\/p>\n
Together, they had kept me from saying what I needed to say.<\/p>\n
I didn't regret trying to be patient.<\/p>\n
I regretted the moments when patience became a reason to silence myself.<\/p>\n
I could do better than that now.<\/p>\n
I could be gentle and direct.<\/p>\n
I could give Wendell room without disappearing from the conversation.<\/p>\n
I could tell him that his privacy mattered to me, but so did the relationship we were trying to build.<\/p>\n
I didn't know what he would say.<\/p>\n
That uncertainty remained.<\/p>\n
But I no longer believed I had to eliminate it before I could speak.<\/p>\n
I only had to accept that I could not control his answer.<\/p>\n
I could control my honesty.<\/p>\n
I could control my willingness to listen.<\/p>\n
And I could decide what I needed after I understood what he was telling me.<\/p>\n
That was enough.<\/p>\n
The more I thought about the garage, the less interested I became in solving the mystery on my own.<\/p>\n
I wanted the photographs to become part of a conversation rather than a collection of clues.<\/p>\n
I wanted the yellow paper to mean something we could talk about together.<\/p>\n
I wanted the date to be explained in Wendell's words.<\/p>\n
I didn't need to be clever enough to figure it out.<\/p>\n
I needed us to be honest enough to share it.<\/p>\n
That was a simpler hope than the one I had carried before.<\/p>\n
It was also a stronger one.<\/p>\n
I could wait for Wendell without putting my life on hold.<\/p>\n
I could look forward to Christmas Eve without turning it into a promise he had never made.<\/p>\n
I could care about him without pretending I had no fears.<\/p>\n
And I could walk into the next conversation knowing that my feelings were not an inconvenience I needed to hide.<\/p>\n
They were part of the truth, too.<\/p>\n
As I thought about seeing Wendell, I reminded myself that I didn't need to begin the conversation with every question at once. I could start with the thing that had … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feel-every-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17926,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17906\/revisions\/17926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feeleverystory.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}