That Was a Long Winter

Last Saturday night, Jennifer and I headed out to Wakefield to catch some of the HiFi reunion weekend at Kaffe 1870. I never made it to the HiFi – its glory days in Ottawa preceded my own – but I liked everyone on the bill. The Recoilers, Jim Bryson, Janice Hall – I may not have been at the HiFi, but I've seen all those people play elsewhere and liked 'em.

We got into the bar, which is a lovely little place. We got our beer and got settled. We stood around chatting lady chat, as we do, and I mentioned that d.jack had rescheduled his return from London so as to come back a day earlier.

I must have looked slightly sheepish when I said that, because her response was to laugh and say “Did you Elinor Dashwood again?” And my response was to also laugh and look more sheepish and admit that I had.

If you've read the book, it's in there too, but what’s burned in my brain is Emma Thompson’s face at the end of Ang Lee's version of Sense & Sensibility. There's that scene, where Edward tells Elinor that he did not get married to the woman he did not love but felt obliged to marry. Elinor, played by Thompson, has been restrainedly and impossibly in love with Edward for a very long time. When she finds out the news, she isn’t happy. She breaks.

It was going to be a surprise, his early return, and that is a very sweet idea, but it may well have killed me, just finding him in my house unexpectedly. But he couldn’t wait, was maybe unsure of how I’d take it, too, and spilled the beans over chat.

I looked at the screen dumbly for a moment.

I typed "really?" a bunch of times and then variations on "are you joking?" a bunch more.

I felt a big lump in my throat. I thought Honestly, Butcher. Am I really going to do this agai- and started honking out jagged sobs. It didn’t last very long, but it was a relief, even if I felt slightly foolish after.

Today? Today’s that one-day-earlier day. As I type, he’s just started the drive back to Ottawa. Back home. Back to his family, his friends. Back to me.

I can’t fucking wait.