It’s almost 9 p.m. and my husband isn’t home yet. I think he’s still working, but he could also be at a friend’s house or on his way home or somewhere else entirely. If I let it, my imagination would run wild with the unknowing. But after too many fights about communication—my tendency toward and his reluctance to—I’m trying to ignore the urge to call him again to ask where he is.
I’m trying not to care.
Crawling in bed, I grab the book from my nightstand and open its dog-eared pages to somewhere toward the beginning. It’s a book I know by heart, a memoir about a couple who meet and, days later, head into the Oregon wilderness with pack mules for three years in the 1970s. It’s a love story. An adventure story. A coming of age story. A story of the allure of the American West.
The kind of adventure my husband and I dream of (or maybe it’s dreamed, past tense, at this point).
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to COFFEE + CRUMBS to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
 | A guest post by
|