Choices Of The Heart

My first husband had been dead for a year and a half. It was the first significant loss in my life and I was devastated. We were living in Toronto at the time of his death so I buried myself in my work and my studies and the needs of two young teens.

It was Christmas and my teens and I flew home to the small town in New Brunswick where I grew up. We were looking forward to spending Christmas with my family.

My brothers and sisters had pooled their resources and bought a desk for my father. The day before Christmas, my sister's husband and his brother, Keith, delivered the desk. I said "hello" to them and turned back to what I was doing while the men sat at the kitchen table, talking.

I was not paying any attention to what they were talking about; I was concentrating on what I was doing. As Keith spoke, it was like I felt a hand reach right through me, into my stomach, pulling me in his direction. (Do we have heart-strings in our stomach? It appears from this that is where mine are.)

I opened myself to what was happening with a great deal of curiosity; I had never experienced feelings like this before. As the gentleness of his voice washed over me, I could feel all the tension leave my body.

Then I started listening to the words he was speaking. His words were like words that, up until now, I had only heard in my head. He was speaking of things that, up until now, had held value only to me.

Later that week, a group of us went sliding with the kids. Walking back, he stopped to play in the snow with his nephew. I had never seen a man play before. I thought how nice it would be to have a man like that in my life.

That's probably as far as it would have gone - I had full intention of going back to Toronto and burying myself in work, studies, and my teenagers. But we had a major blizzard and everybody was snowed in for twenty-four hours. It gave me plenty of time to think about what I was going back to and what I was leaving behind - Life in a big city alone with two teens or life in a small town, surrounded by family, where I could watch a man play (from a safe distance, of course), and let myself explore feelings that were completely new to me.

The second choice won out, hands down! Boy, did I ever make the right decision!