HIS NEW GIRLFRIEND (near fiction)






His heart began to race, he couldn’t catch his breath.  He saw her sitting at the bar as soon as he entered. She was drinking from the big fruity drink in front of her as their eyes met in the mirror behind the bar.  Beautiful…mine, were the only thoughts that swirled in his brain.  He walked over as she twirled around and jumped off the bar chair.  As he stood before her she raised her arms and pulled his head down for a kiss. Pulling back and looking at her shining eyes he smiled.  Lovingly he caressed her face as he stared and wondered how he could feel like this again.

He took a quick glance at the wedding ring he’d worn for thirty years.  How life had changed.  When he and his wife were first married, they were full of energy, and passion.  Planning and dreaming for the life they were going to have.  Life was their oyster. Work, travel, love.  They did and had it all.  When the pregnancy test came back positive they were over the moon.  They read all the books and thought they were prepared for all the changes to come.  How can you plan for endless sleepless nights, exhaustion and separation as her attention became necessarily focused on the baby and his on work as he became the only bread earner. Her body no longer just his to enjoy as the baby needed it to live and thrive.  How do you make love to your wife when it causes her pain.  Finally, her body adjusts and the hormones return to normal and finally lovemaking is joyful again.  Just as he became used to the new normal the second baby came.  Once again he was put on the back burner.  Most of her energy directed at the home and children.

His work became a higher priority, longer hours, more travelling.  Days away from each other.  Nights spent in anonymous hotel rooms.  They would talk in the evenings about the mundane things that happened to each during the day. 

As time passed they had less time to be a couple.  He missed the passion that had been replaced with a more sedate lovemaking.  Trying to catch time with each other between meetings, trips and activities, more often conversation revolved around children and chores.  Dreams and dreaming disappear into reality.  He has work and coming home late, paying the bills and investing for their future. He tries to be the perfect family man by making sure his family has no financial worries and having small family holidays.  Her days are filled with PTA and soccer, parents and in-laws, laundry and dishes.   In the evenings they are seen together at the corporate events.  Networking is needed for his career and so family evenings give way to client dinners and special functions.  With only anniversaries to remind them they are a couple and not room mates.

Eventually the kids became teens and then adults.  She took the time to expand her horizons.  Volunteering, hobbies and classes allowed her to release her children into the world and in the evenings she put on her corporate wife face.  Meanwhile, he reaches the pinnacle of his career, finding the top a bit lonely as he realizes how much he missed of his family’s life.  The chasm between them became vast as their lives travelled in parallel.  Coming together rarely, more of a habit than a desire. 

Then came retirement.  His days became long with few ideas on how to fill them.  While her days continued as before but with interruptions from him.  He tries to tell her how to run the house she has managed for thirty years.  His years of being the boss and being catered to are gone and his place in the house is on the edge and not the center. 

Slowly he looked for new hobbies, new interests.  As he looked around he wondered where the excitement in life went. 

One day she comes to him and says she has had enough of being wife.  She has done all she wanted to do as wife and mother.  For the family and his career she has put aside so many dreams.  She has put her passions on the back burner.  She raised her children, she had taken care of the older generation, she had been the good corporate wife.  Now that they no longer had to worry about others it was time to do what she wanted.  And she was tired of being wife all the time. 

So she asks him on a date.  They go to the movies and hold hands and eat popcorn from the same tub.  They go to new restaurants and try new dishes.  She feeds him and makes his plate.  They hold hands walking through the plazas and malls.  She kisses him, when he least expects it.  At night she demands to be held and converse until each drifts asleep.  She hugs him from the back and tells him what he did right that day.  He begins to look forward to the simple touches that had disappeared through there years.  One afternoon she keeps him in bed all afternoon, holding and loving, eating and watching old movies.  Reminding him of the days when they dreamed and realizing it is those days he dreams of now. 

He sees his wife, the woman he has loved for more than 30 years the mother of his children, the caretaker of his family, the woman who supported his career and ambitions, as she put her ambitions to the side.  She is no longer young.  She has aged, her body is soft, her hair is grey and wrinkles are beginning to appear on her face. 

He takes his eyes from his ring and looks into the eyes of this new old woman, whom he has fallen in love with again.  He sees past the signs of time and looks into her soul and is grateful that he gets a second chance at falling in love again.  He pulls her into his embrace, with her head on his shoulder and he breathes in her scent.  He lets out a contented sigh as he lightly kisses the top of her head.  He thanks God for his new girlfriend.





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