Will You Wake Me, Make Love to Me?

Will you wake me in the middle of the night and make love to me? They do that in movies, I read it in books.

I said those words to Jerry on our wedding night.  Can you see my smile? He did even though he was tired and had to be on the ship in the morning.

I was 17, full of dreams, looking to be loved and wanted. To make a family, be part of a family, have children.  My dream, shattered, my fault, his fault... too young.

Things I have forgotten, he is gone and cannot fill in those memories, good, bad, or indifferent.  Come back, please.

I cry for my children a father they really didn’t get to know.  I cry for myself a love I let go. I cry for the dream of finding him and making it right.  Tears from deep inside, from a time  past.  I cry for not really knowing how to make it all work.

I cry for him I cry for me, I cry for the family we were supposed to be.

I had to learn to iron his Navy whites. Everyone laughed at him the first time I did, crease in the wrong place. He came home and taught me the right way to do it.  Things wives do, even when they get morning sickness. 

I didn’t know this about myself, he wouldn’t have understood. Even though I was 17 years old biologically, I was emotionally only 15.  What had happened to me at 15, the birth and loss of my first child to adoption stagnated me left me stuck for a very long time.  That event had left me a fragile unhappy child looking to fix it all, looking for love, marriage and a baby.  

So here I sit, crying for myself, I understand that we can mess up our child’s lives when we don’t give them good role models, then again, even when parents do, our children can screw up our own lives.

So for now, tears will have to suffice. I can’t change or fix any part of the past; I can’t bring Jerry back and say I am sorry, please love me again.