“Maybe you will,” she said, without cruelty. “Things come back.”
“I know. I’m not under the illusion that three months is a long time.” I was quiet for a moment. “But I’d like to see what April looks like.”
“You and me both,” she said.
We talked for another forty minutes, about other things — her work, a trip she was planning, a book we’d both read and wanted to discuss. When we hung up I sat by the window for a while looking at the January light, thin and pale on the bare trees, and thought about the coast in April: the sea will be cold still, and the wind will be the wind, and Nathan and I will be whatever we are by then.
I am choosing to be open to what that might be.
Not credulous. Not uncritical. Open.
It is, I have decided, the most honest position available to me, and honesty — in this marriage, about these things, about what I need and what I am willing to accept and what the line is — is the thing I have committed to. Whatever else happens.
## After the Agreement Is Made
One thing that doesn’t get talked about enough in stories like this is what comes after you’ve made the agreement. Not the dramatic moment when the agreement is reached, but the weeks and months when the agreement has to prove itself against ordinary circumstances, which are always trying to return you to your previous patterns.
Nathan and I made several agreements in the fall. The decision-making agreement: significant changes to plans we’ve made together require discussion before action. The labor-distribution agreement: he handles his mother, I am available as a person who cares about his mother, not as a secondary manager of her needs. The transparency agreement: when something is bothering either of us, we say it within a reasonable time rather than storing it until it compounds.