Ice Cold Games

According to my mind in denial, the big freeze started during the 6th season. When I’m not carrying the bag housing my many rose colored glasses, I’d say it was more like year 4.

I should’ve known when I overheard him tell his friends “I wooed, I won, I’m done.” But no, I just put my fingers in my ears and kept trying to believe in fairy tales.

What started above water, ended below ice.

Raised in the wild woods we ran, hand in hand, delighted to have finally found a familiar. We held each other close and danced to not only the country music drifting across the stifling summer breeze, but also to that strong rhythmic longing for belonging…to something, to someone.

I’d lived through a tumultuous childhood, with fighting and frequent threats of divorce, long silences, followed by the storm to come, when anger overflowed and the shit finally hit the fan.

No stranger to difficulty, I found my comfort zone.

When I was little, I ran like a wild fae in the woods, and spent days in the pond, playing with leeches and catching frogs. When my mother went silent, I escaped to the wild, and let the earth babysit me. I would leave the house in the morning and scatter to the wind, not coming in until after dark, afraid of what I would find. When my dad finally did make it home after weeks away, I would hunker down in a dark closet, listening to them scream at each other, deciding my fate…yet again.

I wish I’d never told him about that. I wish I’d never told him about silence and how it made me crawl in my own skin. About how it reduced me to 6 years old and the ice cold fear of what comes after it.

I don’t remember what I did to start the freeze. But he left no doubt in my mind that the blame was securely fastened on me. He would leave for work without a good-bye and return without a hello. I spent the majority of each day, fully ensconced in reliving the moments right up until his last warm words to me, trying to ferret out where I had gone wrong, only to decide that maybe I had breathed too loud. I was trying so hard to be good. I really was.

In the presence of others he was jovial and kind, arm around me, acting proud of our partnership, nicest guy in the world. But when the door closed, he looked me in the eye, and slipped back into the game. His game. The game I never won.

Many times at night, I relived the same dream. I walked out on the ice of the pond, my tiny son attached to one hand, his curly haired, sweet sister holding the other. He motioned to us from the center of the pond, beckoning us forward, to meet him in the middle. I looked down at the ice beneath us and saw large cracks. As we moved forward, the squeaking and moaning of the ice made us stop in our tracks. I could feel it heaving beneath us. I released first one hand, and then the other, sending them running across the thin ice like leaves in the wind, into his arms. When they reached him, his eyes met mine over their heads, and he smiled. You know, the smile that makes you suck in your breath as an icy wind strikes your face? That smile.

I knew at that moment that it didn’t matter where I stepped, I was going down. I would wake in a cold sweat, gasping for breath and flailing my arms, only to look over at him to find him staring back at me…and smiling.

When one dies every night in their sleep, they tend to lose the fear of it.

One chilly winter morning we packed up the littles for a day of ice fishing. He assured me that the ice was thick. He should know, he’d been out there with the boys the last 2 days. He gathered the gear and headed out on the ice. We stood on the edge and watched. As he reached the middle of the pond, he turned to wave us out to join him. I heard the crack and the long low sigh of the pond, just before it gave way. But he didn’t say a thing. Not. One. Thing. Just more icy cold silence, as he dropped out of sight. All I could hear was the screaming in my head for help, the same screaming I had heard in my own head for the last 2 years, falling on my own deaf ears.

I had sat in silence so many times, knowing that as I died, he thrived. The pond knew. It had held me as a wild fae, giggling on its banks, tiny feet buried in mud. It knew. With each cold stare, and angry smile, it grew layers upon layers, deceitful about its strength, making everything look ok from the outside. Not just ok…inviting and safe.

As my faith in myself gave way, so did the ice.

We sat down on the shore together, the littles and I, and dug our bare feet in the mud, warm sunshine on our skin, watching what appeared to be a small chunk of ice floating in the center of the pond.