The Benefit of Hindsight

by Molly Flinkman

One of the more bizarre experiences of my life happened in a college lounge full of girls.

I mean, on paper I guess we were all technically adult women, but the feeling in that room—abuzz with the low hum of excited voices—could only be described as girlish. Everywhere I looked, someone was giggling or bouncing or both. 

A day earlier, a sign had been posted in the center of my suite: Please join us for a candle lighting. Wednesday. 7 p.m. 

“It’s this thing they do here when someone gets engaged,” our RA told my freshman friends and me. “You should go. You need to experience at least one.”

So, there we were, seated in a giant circle of twitterpated girls. The lights turned off and someone lit a wide, white candle which was then passed hand-to-hand around the room. When it got to me, I looked briefly at the shiny silver ring tied onto the middle before passing it on. The candle finished its first trip around the circle and began a second. 

The room was completely silent and tingly with anticipation when, suddenly, a girl across the circle from me blew out the candle. The room erupted in screams. The lights turned back on, and I heard someone shout, “I knew it was you! I can’t believe you kept this a secret!” The candle extinguisher untied the ribbon, put the ring on her left ring finger, and held it up for everyone to see. Then she proceeded to tell the gaggle of listeners every detail of her recent proposal, making sure to include, like all the girls who came before her, this line: “Sorry girls! I got the best one!”

I didn’t have a candle lighting. After my husband, Jake, asked me to marry him, I tiptoed into the bedroom my three best friends shared and whispered the news. I think there was probably some squealing and a proposal story to boot, but I never claimed to have snatched up the best guy. 

I’m certain I thought it though. Sure, I didn’t exclaim to a roomful of girls that I got the best one, but I believed it. Nothing in those days could have convinced me that there was anyone or anything out there better than Jake, and my deference to him reflected it.

The first time I ever drove to Jake’s home (before he was even my fiancé), he was not there. It took me six hours and a bunch of rural country roads to find his house only to be greeted by his dad, his mom, and his 10-year-old sister—none of whom I had ever spent more than five minutes of time with. We exchanged pleasantries, and then I played Guitar Hero with his sister in the living room for two hours while I waited for him to get home. Two hours. When he finally walked into the room, the first thing I noticed were his oversized railroad stripe overalls (an unnecessary detail but one I can’t not share) and the second was the grin on his face. 

Was I mad at him? In that moment, no. Instead, I instantly let go of any built-up irritation. He pulled me in for a hug and that was that. This is completely hilarious to me now. I didn’t even think to feel overlooked or ignored or forgotten.

Recently, I became obsessed with our doorbell. (Spoiler alert: this is not a story about a doorbell.) Some time in the last year, one of our kids pressed it too hard and too fast and smashed the whole thing entirely. I hate the sight of that busted up button, but because I lack almost all handy abilities (and have no interest in learning them), it has remained.

Jake called me the other day on his way to Home Depot to ask if we needed anything. A new doorbell, I said. A few hours later, in the middle of a deep cleaning of our house, I stepped outside to toss something on our deck. When I turned to walk back inside, there was the new doorbell—on the back of the house instead of the front. Why would he put this here? I asked myself. Nobody even uses the back doorbell.

Because I was already annoyed with some other minor grievances, my deep cleaning turned to rage cleaning and my regular Tuesday thoughts turned into an itemized list of every simple task or chore Jake has overlooked or forgotten or gotten wrong in our entire fifteen-year marriage. By the time he came into the kitchen, I had filled the air with thick silence.

Why is it so much easier to fixate on the ways other people have seemingly let us down? And what’s worse, why, in these moments, do I refuse to even consider all the other good? While I was cleaning, Jake fixed the vacuum cleaner and picked up our kids from school and drove two kids to basketball practice. Maybe I forgot to mention that. Maybe I forgot to notice it in my cloud of fury.

Somewhere in between my first road trip to Kansas and the Day of the Doorbell, Jake and I shared the upstairs bedroom of a 1950s Cape Cod house, and scattered randomly throughout the room’s wood floors were a handful of creaky boards. I never did figure out where they all were. 

We moved into that cozy home with a baby and a toddler and moved out with a baby, a toddler, and two school-aged kids, so I walked that wood flooring at all possible hours of the day to attend to our children’s various needs. Sometimes it was just a few steps to the bassinet and then a few more to the recliner in the corner. Other times, I had to walk all the way across the room to the stairs, so I could get to whichever kid was crying downstairs. Each time, without fail, I hit at least one of the creaky spots. 

I wasn’t the only one to walk that floor at unreasonable times of day. Jake worked ungodly hours while we lived there, so it wasn’t unusual for him to finally roll into bed at 2:30 a.m. or to wake up for the day long before the sun rose. And each time he crossed the floor of our bedroom, he took care to skip every single uneven place. No matter the time of day or night or how exhausted he was, he moved through our room with the stealthy silence of a jungle cat. We never once talked about it, but I know he did this for me because that’s the kind of guy he is—thoughtful in the smallest and best ways.

I tell this story with the benefit of hindsight though. It’s easy now to laud Jake’s quiet service because I can see it so clearly from my place in the present tense. I can’t be sure I always afforded him this same esteem back then.

I’m pretty sure that when I crossed those creaking boards in the middle of the night, I was mostly telling myself that I was the only one crossing those creaking boards in the middle of the night. More often than not, the thoughts in my mind started with phrases like Jake never and I always, and I suspect on some level, I wanted those boards to make sound so Jake would hear the great sacrifices I was making for my family.

What happened to that girl who chose not to be bothered by the fact that her boyfriend made her wait for him in his childhood home for almost two hours? To the girl who treated her best friend like he was the best one? 

I always pretended to roll my eyes at those squawky candle lighting girls. I wanted to be annoyed with them like everyone else, but the truth is, I admired their earnestness. I once embodied their earnestness. Sure my glasses were rose-colored and unscratched by the sharpness of life back then, but my default setting in those days was better tuned to grace. I could more easily determine the difference between what mattered and what didn’t. 

Where did nineteen-year-old me go? 

Or, maybe there’s a better question: How do I get her back?

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Molly Flinkman is a freelance writer from central Iowa where she lives with her husband, Jake, and their four kids. A lover of houseplants, neutral colors, and good books, she loves to write about how her faith intersects the very ordinary aspects of her life and hopes her words will encourage and support other women along the way. You can connect with Molly on Instagram or through her monthly newsletter, Twenty Somethings.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.