When I'm Back From the Road and You're Out On It (The One Where Sparky Gets Caught Up)

So let's see . . . when last we left our heroine—I mean really left her (think back to March)—she was having an gender identity crisis and wondering what to do about it. Since I know you're all hanging on the edge of your respective seats, I shall tell you: it resolved itself.

I actually suspect that it was the Savvy Editor who was collaborating on this giant project who fixed the problem for me, quietly, in a private email to the Confused Editor. All I know is that about ten days later, shortly after another email exchange in which the Confused Editor referred to me again as “he,” I got an email from her apologizing for the gender confusion. “I believe I owe you an apology for the 'he' and 'him',” she said.

I was absurdly overjoyed with this news and I had a little celebration in my cubical in which I bounced on my wonderful balance ball (which I use instead of a chair and you can just shut up and stop knocking it because it has saved my lower back from Certain Doom) and laughed and then sat and listened to girly music on the internet. It was a Thoroughly Satisfying resolution, I thought.

In between the Unfortunate Gender Confusion and the ultimate resolution of said Confusion, I got to see Expat.

Yes, dear readers, my long lost husband and I were reunited for all of four days during our house hunting trip in dear old Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

I told you I have Much Newness to convey.

The short version: Expat's been hired as tenure track faculty in the English department at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, to start this fall (please don't count the number of prepositions in that last sentence). So this summer, we're moving. We always knew that Madison was a place of temporary residency and given the snowstorms predicted over tonight and tomorrow, I can't say that I'm going to be sorry to leave. At least, not the climate. The people, yes, and the city is very cool . . . but I digress.

So we met up at the Birmingham airport (BHM) and I need to remind you all here that I did my undergrad in Birmingham at the cleverly named Birmingham-Southern College, so I've flown out of and back into BHM plenty of times, but had never once met my husband there. His flight arrived before mine so it was strange, then, to walk out of the terminal and see him sitting where so many friends from college had greeted me after various trips and such. And then, it was just so good to see him. He was sitting with the laptop, doing god knows what, waiting. When he saw me, he smiled, and even though I'm sure I had a goofy, head-splitting grin on my face, my eyes went teary.

“Hello,” he said, still sitting, coiling the laptop power cord and stowing everything carefully before standing to hug me.

“I'd forgotten how cute you were,” I said, stupidly. And that was all I could think to say for a minute. And then, “Come here. Just put the damn laptop down and hug me.” And then, as an afterthought, “I won't step on it. I promise.”

He raised his eyebrow and stood. “Of course you won't step on it because I'm putting it away.”

And I laughed and we hugged and I buried my head against his shoulder and it Felt. So. Good.

The house hunting trip in and of itself is a story worthy of another post, but then it was over, and we were back at BHM and Expat's plane left before mine, so I walked with him through the security line as far as I could and thank god there was the security checkpoint that forced me to walk away and check in at my own gate, otherwise, I would have cried, I think, or held onto his hand and begged him not to leave. I know that sounds pathetic. That's because it is. I am. And I'm okay with that.

And then Weathergirl came to visit me and we had wonderful pictures made and imbibed every evening with dinner and once in the middle of the afternoon just because we could and she analyzed my knitting and told me that it wasn't as bad as I'd thought and then she bought yarn to make me a hat. We went down to New Glarus and bought Polish pottery for our Very Dramatic Mother for her birthday (all three of us have April birthdays) and spent a fair bit of time shopping for cute outfits for pictures and for Big Tacky Jewelry that Weathergirl can wear on camera when she's, well, doing the weather. Dressing for television takes more forethought than you might think. For my fairly reserved, cautious sister, the Big Tacky Jewelry makes things even more difficult. Being a vocal performance major who truly loves being the center of everything (I am a soprano, after all), I adore Big Tacky Jewelry and gravitate it to it with unwavering devotion. Give me bright colors and giant rhinestones any day of the week—the more sparkle, the better. Teaching Weathergirl to embrace the purple, plastic, emerald cut beads and the silvery-coated graduated faux pearls in all their Splendid Flashiness was an absolute delight. Convincing her that these things will appear Normal on stage or on camera, as the case may be, was a slightly more arduous task, but in the end, she came away with several fabulous pieces that even I could envy.

She was quietly pleased. She wore them that week and I caught her toying with the overlarge diamond-shaped plastic amber earrings dangling from her lobes and admiring her own reflection in passing store windows more than once.

The pictures with Big were, of course, a Phenomenal Success. We went on Weathergirl's actual birthday itself, and if she got tired of smiling sometime around hour three of our little photo shoot, she didn't let it show. We had fun. We wet to a playground and took pictures on playground toys. We Dressed Up and stood in awkward positions in front of somber backdrops, smiling as if these were normal things to do, never mind that one of us was standing on a phone book or craning her neck so that we looked like we were looking at each other when in reality all I could see was the corner of the fireplace. Little was a dutiful photographer's assistant, moving light boxes when told, never arguing with Big's sometimes seemingly hairbrained directions, and muttering funny asides under her breath at just the right moments to send Weathergirl and I into peals of laughter, even as Big was striving for, perhaps, a more contemplative, serious shot, and I was reminded again how they compliment each other so well.

Afterwards, we all went out to dinner and toasted Weathergirl's 21-ness with Frou-Frou liquor drinks and good Wisconsin fare. On the way home, Weathergirl sighed. “I like them. They're funny.”

“Did you have a good 21st birthday?”

“Yeah.” She smiled and looked out the window. “I did.”

“Me too.” She knew what I meant. “I'm glad you're here.”

And I was.