robin is a friend I used to work with. I start her name and this sentence with a small "R" because that/s what she does. I've never seen it any other way. She is, hands down, the coolest person I know. She is a couple of years older than I am. She is also, hands down, the smartest person I know. She has an easy, common sense intelligence that amazes me. She married the love of her life--Pat--in her 20's and by about age 29 she was a widow with 2 kids. I don't know the details but I think Pat had a heart problem and I know he died on a ski slope. Jack was about 3 and Maggie was about 1 at the time.
robin was a manager but never got the manager attitude. It was just a natural place for her to be. She has a degree in Spanish. And a couple of my fondest memories were of Friday afternoons in the office as she read the lonely hearts ads from the newspaper or she was cleaning out the refrigerator, trying to figure out what she was throwing out once was. She always made me laugh.
After Pat, she dated some but always ended up with guys who turned very needy, very quickly. Mostly, their neediness amounted to their need to sit on their butts while she went to work every day and brought home the paycheck. She married 1 more time to a fireman but it did not last long. And she left the company once to follow a guy who actually sold doors for a living to a podunk town in New Mexico to live in an unfinished cabin. I remember when she left I tried to talk her into taking a leave of absence instead of quitting but she thought that would indicate she thought that someday the relationship might fail. Sadly, a little over a year later, when doorman had quit his job and was counting on her almost minimum wage job in a bank to support them, she was back at the company. She paid her dues and was eventually made management again a couple of years later only to be laid off when her department closed. In the meantime, she suffered through some really ugly breast cancer and a double mastectomy. She is now a consultant for the company and living in Austin. Today, she posted a great picture of herself on Facebook and she looks wonderful.
I will always think of robin as a person who never gave up on love. I don't know about her love life now because neither of us are great communicators but I can tell you she always followed her heart. No fear. Not in anything. My friend Leslee is like that too. I sometimes think of them as blow up clowns that get knocked down and just bounce back up, ready for another round. And I think of this because my friend Kim just moved from her house into a house with her husband of about a year. Both had houses when they got married and wanted a house that is theirs. Makes sense, sorta. And it makes me think of my friend Deb who told me the night she left town to move to New York with her husband "You are the only person I know who would understand when I say I quit my job and sold my house to move all the away across the country with a man I have only been married to for 10 years". And she's right.
Unlike robin and Leslee and Kim and Deb, I'm not sure if I am capable of "all in". I'm not sure I could take the chance of losing everything I have worked for in a marriage that has a 50% chance of failure. And that percentage would be even worse if you don't have the ability to trust, like I do. We all can guess that opportunity is never going to come up because I am closed off. I wish I could find a way--and a good man--to open my heart. Not to sound pathetic (though it will) I live with a loneliness that cripples me sometimes. And I am about to make move (probably) to a town where I basically know no one. But the truth is, even though i have friends here, we don't hang out that much, so I cannot even think there will be that big of difference in my life. We still have the phone!!
I guess my answer is that robin would go for it. A new adventure. She'd certainly go out with a more open heart, ready for her next love, but at least I'm going for the change. I pray everyday for the ability and the man to love in my life and maybe it will happen and maybe it won't but I'm going to give it a try.
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