A Lonely Homecoming

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.
- George Eliot

I sighed as I turned the car left into the driveway. I knew he wouldn't be home. He had told me so a few hours before. Pulling into the garage, however, I felt a surprising wave of disappointment at not seeing his car in its usual place... the oil-stained garage floor an annoying reminder that he needed a new car. "Why make two car payments at once if we don't have to," he'd ask whenever I suggested we go car shopping. "I'll buy a 'newish' car when you're done paying off yours," he'd say. I still had two more years of payments. The Mercedes had been a shamefully indulgent thirty-fourth birthday gift to myself... a gift I well deserved. I loved that car, and so did he. It was the one morsel of extravagance we allowed ourselves in our otherwise fiscally responsible existence... a mind-numbingly responsible existence if the truth be told. A year later, however, on my thirty-fifth birthday, our years of fiscal responsibility paid off and we were finally able to buy our dream home in the country.

It had been much harder leaving our little Victorian bungalow than I had anticipated. I had moved in when I was twenty... just a few months after my mother had died. As my father had died when I was six, I was somewhat of an orphan and he welcomed me into his home without hesitation. It had been his kindness, patience and support that had carried me threw those too many dark years after my mother's death. "Just go to class," he'd say, "That's all you have to do. You can be as sad as you want to, but go." He knew that eventually the crushing sadness would pass, and was absolutely convinced that I was capable of great things. His blind faith in me, however ill-advised, gave me strength. For the next seven years I did little more than go to class. The sadness worsened and each day was darker than the last. At the end of those seven years, however, having passed the bar exam, I was overwhelmed with hope and gratitude. I would not have survived, let alone thrived, were it not for his unfailing love. The sadness began to pass.

As the garage door closed and I got out of the car, I found myself staring out the window... longing to see his car turning left into the driveway.