GABY’S SECOND VIDEO, PART ONE

NOW, THIS IS A FIRST! Never before have I sent a video that got three of the four of you to call me the day you received it. I should get married more often. And, oh, yes, I assume that after you called me, you called each other. I love that.

Okay. It’s very early up here in western Mass. All you can see through the den window is darkness. That’s because it’s four-fifteen in the morning.

You see, I’ve been up all night.

Thinking.

Now here goes.

I’ve been thinking about your dad. And…well, that’s what I want to talk to you about.

Even after three years, it’s as if, if we don’t talk about Peter, then he’s not really dead. He’s just gone away for a while. You know what I mean?

Let me tell you a secret I haven’t shared with anybody else. I still reach for him in the middle of the night.

And I sometimes buy lamb chops because they were Peter’s favorite.

Something will happen during the day, say, in my classroom, and I’ll think, oh, I can’t wait to tell Peter and the kids. I know, I’m a sap. The last of the sentimentalists.

I mostly remember good times. Who wants to remember missed mortgage payments and arguments, when there are so many sweet, funny things that we shared?

You know, I just finished reading Freedom, and I do believe Jonathan Franzen writes beautifully, but I think he only has a partial view of what it’s like to live as most of us do. He seems to think that people are empty-headed if they don’t obsess about the obvious absurdities of life and that intelligent people can’t possibly be happy. Well, I don’t believe that’s necessarily true. I think that most people can lead very satisfying lives, as long as they don’t spend too much time staring at their belly buttons and worrying about things that aren’t within their control.

Anyhow, I was being sentimental before I interrupted myself…I remember a time when Peter and I fell asleep on the dunes in Truro. Two hours later we had so much poison ivy we could barely sit in the car to drive back to the inn. But still, I treasure that lost weekend.

And I remember how proud he was of the new window he installed in Lizzie and Claire’s room. Only he put it in sideways, and even today, every time I open it, I laugh. Except for today.

And when he asked me to marry him—quite beautifully, poetically—and I smiled and said “Sure,” I think he was hurt a little. So then I spent at least fifteen minutes telling him all the things that I loved about him. I could do the same thing right now.

As I’m sure is the case for you guys, not a day goes by that I don’t think how unfair it was that he was taken from us. How stupid, really.

Oh, damn, I was afraid this might happen. A waterfall is coming.

Hold on. I’ll be right back. I need to tell you something important.